Al Franken

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to express my strong support for the Veterans Jobs Corps Act. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the bill. I would like to thank Senator Nelson for introducing the bill, and I would like to thank Senator Murray, chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, for bringing this bill to the Senate and for all she has done for our Nation's veterans. Veterans have done so much for our country, serving courageously in the military, and they have been tested so profoundly and so many times over the last decade. These men and women have done everything for us. We owe them. That means they deserve the best health care and other benefits they have earned from the Department of Veterans Affairs. And that means a home. Last weekend I was back in Minnesota for Habitat for Humanity, making critical home repairs for a Minnesota Guard veteran, SGT Brian Neill, and his family. Brian is a 23-year veteran of the National Guard, is part of the Minnesota National Guard unit, the legendary Red Bulls, who had their deployment in Iraq extended so that it was one of the longest, if not the longest, deployment in U.S. history. While Brian was in Iraq, his son was hit by a drunk driver while returning home from his junior ROTC training. He sustained a severe brain injury and is severely disabled. In Iraq, Brian, who mentored younger soldiers, saved the life of one of those solders. Brian, being a 23-year vet, mentored these young kids. They were in a convoy, and he saw one of them get out and collapse. He recognized the heatstroke and saved his life. Sergeant Neill himself returned from Iraq suffering from very serious physical and psychological wounds that leave his wife Jane as a caregiver for both Brian and their son. I have to tell you, they are the most wonderful people. It was an amazing experience to help them with home repairs to make sure they will have the home that meets their needs. But when I talk to veterans in Minnesota these days, the thing I hear most about is jobs, about employment. Jobs mean money, of course, but it means much more. It means a new mission. Without a job, you really cannot reintegrate into your community and start a new phase of your life. Veterans unemployment in Minnesota, as I am sure it is in the Presiding Officer's State of New York, is way too high. My message to employers in Minnesota is simple: These are the people you want to hire. They have skills. They have discipline. We all have a role to play in making sure veterans have jobs--employers in the private sector, State government, colleges and universities, municipalities, and also the Federal Government. This is how we do it in Minnesota. Let me give an example. We had several thousand Red Bulls deployed to Kuwait. The Minnesota National Guard recognized that a large number of them were not going to have jobs when they came back, so the Guard and Minnesota's outstanding Department of Employment and Economic Development went upstream, as they say, to Kuwait to get ahead of the problem. They brought corporate leaders from Minnesota, businesses such as Target and Best Buy, and they also brought folks from MNSCU, which is the Minnesota State Colleges and University System, to Kuwait to provide training for the Guard members on entering or reentering the workforce. They were able to share valuable information with the Red Bulls on writing resumes, getting ready for an interview, and doing it well. One of the problems is that very often soldiers coming back from Afghanistan, coming back from Iraq, from Kuwait, very often in a job interview will say: We did that, we did this, we did that. That is how you think in the military. Employers want to know what you yourself individually did. So it was simple. The employment guys from Target said: Say ``I''--you know, little tips like that. And it has been very helpful. So we all have a role to play. At the Federal level, last year we passed the VOW to Hire Heroes Act that expanded and created new tax credits for businesses that hire veterans. I have been spreading the word in Minnesota--I know the Presiding Officer has been spreading the word in New York--so our businesses know that for every unemployed veteran they hire, they can get a tax credit for up to $9,600. That is $9,600 for hiring a veteran who has a service-related disability and then ratchets down a little bit. But this is a good incentive for businesses to be hiring our veterans. The legislation we are considering today, the Veterans Jobs Corps Act, is the next step that we can and should take at the Federal level. The bill creates a Veterans Job Corps through the Department of Veterans Affairs, in cooperation with other departments, where thousands of veterans will be able to work on conservation and resource management in our Nation's public lands. Under this bill, veterans will have the opportunity to restore and protect parks, forests, and other public lands, whether they be national, State or tribal. Veterans will be hired to maintain the infrastructure and facilities on these public lands. It will also provide funding for veterans to become firefighters and law enforcement officers. It will also provide licensing and certification for certain skills veterans had when they were deployed-- emergency medical, nursing assistants, and also drivers. Many men and women drive in these theaters, and to ease their getting certification, this bill does that as well so they can work in our Nation's parks and these national lands that are so treasured. This is really based on the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC from the New Deal, which was created through a combination of actions by Franklin Roosevelt and legislation, of course, by Congress. It was very successful. It was the most popular program of the New Deal. In fact, at that time veterans were specifically included among those who could be enrolled in the CCC. As I said, the CCC was one of the most successful programs to help us get through the Depression. My wife Franni's uncle James, who died not long ago at the age of 96, worked for the post office, the Postal Service, and served with the U.S. Army postal service in England, France, and Germany during World War II--a ``greatest generation'' guy. But before that, during the Depression, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. He was part of the crew that built the road through Evans Notch, a beautiful, mountainous area at the border of Maine and New Hampshire. My wife is from Maine. This was one of James' proudest achievements in life. If you read his obituary, it was one of the most prominent parts, along with his service during World War II. That is the kind of thing the Veterans Job Corps can be. We have to do this work on our public lands, our parks, our forests. Our public lands need to be maintained and preserved and improved. Why not put our veterans to work doing it? They have the skills, they have the experience, and they have the discipline. For instance, if you spent a lot of time on duty outside and you work in teams, which is obviously true of a huge number of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are going to be very well suited for this work. If you built roads in Iraq or Afghanistan, you are well prepared to maintain or manage resources in Minnesota's beautiful parks, forests, trails, and other public lands--under a little less pressure, by the way. Minnesota has over 227,000 acres of land in 73 State and national park and recreation areas. That does not count our innumerable public lands under more local jurisdiction. Those are some of the most beautiful places in the country--the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Voyageurs National Park, Superior and Chippewa National Forests, or the trail along the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers, just to name a few. Those need to be protected, maintained, improved, and restored too. This is important work, and it is dignified work. If you are making sure it is in your obituary 70 years later, you know it is very important, dignified work. What better way to preserve the beauty of these places than having veterans do it, for our heroes to do it. The bill also incorporates a number of other veterans job provisions from other bills sponsored by my colleagues from both sides of the aisle. The one I started to mention before is the certification- licensure requirements for becoming a nursing assistant or emergency medical technician--I knew I was looking for a word; it was ``technician''--and for getting a commercial driver's license. This is also an issue on which my colleague, my senior Senator from Minnesota, Ms. Klobuchar, has spent a lot of time. The provision in this bill authored by Senator Pryor also states that they have to take military training into consideration in issuing licenses for those jobs if they want to continue getting Federal funds for some important veteran employment programs that States administer. This will provide an additional incentive for States to make sure that servicemembers' highly relevant training and experience in these fields can be translated into civilian qualifications, eliminating the need for duplicative training and opening the door to many more jobs for highly trained veterans. I can tell you, after seven USO tours, our men and women in the military are magnificent. They are highly trained and, man, are they disciplined and, man, are they great. They deserve this. The Veterans Job Corps is a great idea for employing our Nation's veterans doing the important work of preserving, protecting, and improving our Nation's public lands and serving as first responders, police, and firefighters. It is my strong hope that we will be able to bring debate on this bill to a close, pass it, and have it enacted into law. Our Nation's veterans deserve nothing less. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I just want to do one thing in terms of responding to Senator Grassley, who is a friend. We enjoy a very good relationship on the Judiciary Committee, and we are just friends. But the idea that these new provisions in the VAWA bill are political just couldn't be further from the truth. Let me talk about just one provision. It is about women on Indian reservations who get abused by a partner or a boyfriend or husband who isn't Native. And this happens all the time. This provision gave jurisdiction to the tribes to prosecute these individuals. I am on the Indian Affairs Committee. I talk to tribal leaders all the time. I go to reservations all the time. My colleagues have no idea how grateful tribal leaders were and how important this was. One out of every three Indian women in this country is raped at some time in her life, and by far the largest majority of that is not by male Indians, it is by non-Indians. I can't think of anything that is less political. I just can't. And I ask my colleagues to think, to give a second of thought before they say stuff like that. It really is, as Senator Murray said, offensive to her. I actually found it more sad. I find it sad. The Medicare Diabetes Prevention Act of 2012 Mr. President, I came to the floor to talk about diabetes. And the Presiding Officer has been such a champion in talking about the money that can be saved in our health care system by the prevention of chronic disease. The burden of chronic disease in our country is staggering. Chronic disease affects half of all American adults, and 7 out of 10 deaths each year are due to chronic disease. If current trends continue, by the year 2020, 52 percent of American adults will either have type 2 diabetes or elevated glucose levels, known as prediabetes, and diabetes can often lead to other chronic diseases, such as heart disease. But as grim as these statistics are for our country, we also have some of the best health care researchers in the world. A few years ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, conducted a pilot program called the Diabetes Prevention Program in two cities: St. Paul, MN, and Indianapolis, IN. This program, which was administered by the YMCA, is a program focusing on 16 weeks of nutritional training, eating healthy, and physical activity. It costs about $300 per participant. The results of this pilot were extraordinary. Among adults with prediabetes--who are at the highest risk for developing type 2 diabetes--the program reduced chances that a participant would be diagnosed with diabetes by 58 percent. For adults over the age of 60, it reduced the likelihood of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes by 71 percent. That is why Senator Lugar and I introduced legislation in 2009 to authorize the National Diabetes Prevention Program as a grant program through the CDC. This bill was passed as part of the health care law and is helping community-based organizations such as the YMCA administer the program across the country. No one can participate in this program if it is not available, which is why we needed the CDC to help expand the program and scale it up. Thanks to their work and to our provisions in the Affordable Care Act, the YMCA is now offering the Diabetes Prevention Program at more than 300 sites in 30 States. But we also need health insurers to pay for the program to make sure everyone who needs it can get it. We know that when eligible adults participate in the program, it saves everyone money. In fact, the CEO of United Healthcare told me that they will cover this. Why? Because they save $4 for every $1 they invest in the program because their beneficiaries are healthier. And the Urban Institute estimated that implementing community programs such as the Diabetes Prevention Program could save $191 billion nationally, with 75 percent of the savings-- more than $142 billion--going to Medicare and Medicaid Programs. That is why the Federal Government should also invest in this cost- saving program for seniors. Nearly one-third of Medicare beneficiaries had diabetes in 2010. The Diabetes Prevention Program costs about $300 per participant, as compared to more than $6,000 a year in added health care costs for someone with type 2 diabetes. There is no question that by preventing diabetes, we can all save money while keeping our seniors healthier. That is why I introduced legislation yesterday with my friends, Senators Lugar, Rockefeller, Collins, and Shaheen, to allow Medicare to cover the National Diabetes Prevention Program. We are doing this to help our seniors enjoy their golden years while staying as healthy as possible. We are also doing it because it is the fiscally responsible thing to do. That is why the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, the American Public Health Association, and the American Council on Aging have all endorsed this legislation. The National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, the National Association of State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Programs, and the YMCA of the USA have also endorsed the bill, as have 79 State and local organizations. We know a really good way to prevent type 2 diabetes, and we know how to do it while saving the Federal Government billions of dollars. In fact, we know doing it will save the Federal Government billions of dollars. Let's all here work together to prevent chronic disease in our country. I urge the Presiding Officer and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in guaranteeing that every senior has access to the Diabetes Prevention Program when they need it. I-35W Bridge Collapse

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to recognize that today is the fifth anniversary of a tragedy in my home State--the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. The collapse killed 13 people and injured 145 others. That collapse was a shock to Minnesotans and to the country. How could a bridge on our Interstate Highway System collapse? It underscores the importance, of course, of investing in our infrastructure. We did move quickly to replace the bridge--and it is a beautiful bridge--thanks to the leadership of Senator Klobuchar and others. I wish to say a few words about the response by the people and the first responders in Minneapolis and the metropolitan area. It was amazing. All the first responders had interoperable radio signals. People in Minneapolis ran to the bridge to help. People did heroic things. I am very proud of Minnesota. I am proud of Mayor Rybak and the response of other first responders in the metropolitan area. I am so proud to represent Minnesota. My heart goes out to the families of those who perished that day and also to their loved ones and their friends and also to the survivors who are still recovering in so many different ways. I urge my colleagues not to forget that day. We need to invest in our infrastructure to make sure this doesn't happen again. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business.

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, over the last few weeks hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans have received letters or postcards in the mail from their health care insurers. These notices are letting people know whether their insurer met a new rule in the health care law--a rule that I championed--called the medical loss ratio, sometimes called the 80-20 rule. It could also be called the 85-15 rule, but it is known as the 80-20 rule, and I will explain. This provision, which I based on a Minnesota State law, requires large group insurers to spend 85 percent of the premiums they receive from their beneficiaries on actual health care services, not on marketing or administrative costs or CEO salaries. Eighty-five percent of their premium dollars have to be spent on actual health care. For insurers in a small group and individual markets, this threshold is 80 percent; hence, the 80-20 rule. This summer, across the country Americans are getting notices from their insurers that the insurer met or did not meet this 80 or 85 percent threshold. When those notices say the insurer failed to meet the medical loss ratio, Americans are also getting something else in the mail--a check or lower premiums for next year because under my medical loss ratio provision, insurers who do not spend at least the 80 or 85 percent of premiums on actual health care services for their beneficiaries have to rebate that money to their consumers. August 1 was the deadline for insurers who didn't meet the MLR threshold to rebate the difference to their consumers, and because of the medical loss ratio more than 123,000 Minnesotans got rebates from their insurer. Those rebates added up to an average of $160 per household. It was more in other States. This isn't unique to Minnesota. Across the country 12.8 million Americans got rebates from their insurers who overcharged them, and other insurers lowered their premiums for last year to comply with the medical loss ratio. Aetna in Connecticut lowered premiums by 10 percent last year because of the MLR. Minnesota has a culture of high-quality low-cost care. In fact, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality recently announced that in 2011, Minnesota's health care quality was the highest in the Nation. We were again No. 1. We are always No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3. The medical loss ratio, which was first passed as a Minnesota State law, is yet another example of Minnesota's leadership in bringing down health care costs while preserving quality. Minnesota's unique health care culture includes the Mayo Clinic, cooperative models such as HealthPartners, and visionary public health leadership from State legislators. Health care in our State is also distinguished by the fact that 90 percent of Minnesotans are served by a nonprofit health plan. These plans outperform their national peers and are able to put 91 percent of every premium dollar toward actual health services. In other words, they have a 91 MLR. By taking profits out of the health insurance industry, Minnesota health plans do a better job helping our residents live longer, healthier lives and deliver the No. 1 quality care in the Nation. The medical loss ratio within the health reform law is holding all health plans to the same standards we have set in Minnesota by requiring that 80 to 85 percent of premium dollars actually pay for health services. Before this year, in other plans throughout the Nation, less than 60 percent of the premiums were put toward health care. The rest was being used for administrative costs, for marketing, for bonuses, and for profits. In fact, one study of insurers in Texas a few years ago showed MLRs, medical loss ratios, as low as 22 percent--meaning that of all the premiums families were paying in to their insurers, the insurers were spending only 22 percent on actual health care services for them. That is why my medical loss ratio provision is so important. It squeezes the fat out of the health insurance market and makes your premium dollars go farther. For many families it is actually lowering costs, delivering $1.1 billion a year in rebates. Those checks, $1.1 billion, are in addition to lowering the premiums. For example, the 10- percent reduction by Aetna in Connecticut. This was an incredibly important step because we know premiums were going up way too fast, a lot faster than those families' income. This is just one way the health care law is already changing the culture of care in our country. One of the other things the law did was move toward rewarding quality of care, not quantity of care. It specifically directed Medicare to start paying doctors based on the value of the care they provide, not the volume. This is a provision that I and Senator Klobuchar and several other of our colleagues championed, called the value index. That is because when Minnesota doctors get paid less for providing higher quality care, everyone else loses. Minnesota loses because Minnesota reimburses 50 percent less per Medicare patient on average in Minnesota than for each patient, on average, in Texas. So Minnesota actually gets punished for being No. 1. It gets punished for higher quality care with lower reimbursements. Patients in Texas lose because they are not getting the highest value care for their health care dollar. And all taxpayers lose when Medicare pays for unnecessary or overpriced service in Texas or other low-value States. This is not about pitting Minnesota against Texas or other low-value States. It is about incentivizing the Texases to be more like Minnesota--which, again, has the highest health care quality in the Nation. That will begin to happen when the value index kicks in under this law. It would be an understatement to say the law has received some attention this year, and I know there is a lot of uncertainty among our constituents about how the law will affect them. That is because sometimes there is a little misinformation put out there. I just had a colleague say there is nothing in the bill to address paperwork. That is certainly not true. In fact, I authored a provision on simplifying billing. There is some misinformation on why IRS agents are there to look into your insurance--and anything done in the law to address workforce shortages. That is not true. There is an entire title on workforce. Sometimes people have to sort out what is being said on this floor. So there is some uncertainty. Let me take a moment to talk about a few of the other things the law is already doing for the people of Minnesota. This is all in the law and happening. I am just telling what is going on right now. First of all, starting tomorrow, August 1, 900,000 women in Minnesota and 47 million women around the country will have free access to preventive health services, including gestational diabetes screenings, preventive health visits with their doctors, and FDA-approved contraceptives. Because of the health care law, women, not their insurance companies, can now make decisions about their health care and can access the services that will keep them healthy. The health care law is also helping families in Minnesota and across the country by prohibiting insurers from denying health coverage for children who have preexisting conditions. I have met children who are alive today because of this provision. As a parent, I know how grateful their parents are. Parents around the country can now sleep a little easier, knowing that if their child gets sick they will still be able to get the health care coverage they need. We should be celebrating that. This is not about putting the government between you and your doctor, as I hear sometimes. This is about getting an insurance company out of the way and making sure that children can get coverage. And adults. We have seen the limitation of lifetime limits on care. Your insurance company can no longer put an arbitrary cap on your care. I have seen a gentleman whose life was saved because of this. Before this law came into being they could drop you--and they did. That is over. That is done. People do not have to worry about hitting an arbitrary limit and then being thrown off their insurance--because they have. We should be celebrating that. That is something that should be bringing a lot of relief to people. That is why we are going to be having far fewer bankruptcies. Parents will also be relieved to know that young adults can now stay--they had been able to stay on their parents' health insurance plan until they are 26. Because of this provision, 35,000 young adults in Minnesota are now insured on their parents' policies. I was at a senior center in Woodbury the other day. Seniors are very happy with the changes that the health care law has made. When I visit senior centers in Minnesota, I hear relief from seniors who now can pay for their medications thanks to the provision in the health care law which is closing the doughnut hole. The provision has already allowed 57,000 seniors in Minnesota to receive a 50-percent discount on their covered brandname prescription drugs when they hit the so-called doughnut hole, an average of $590 savings per person. I can see the Presiding Officer nodding. I know she goes to senior centers in New Hampshire and knows when seniors hear that people want to repeal this they are miffed. I have actually been at a senior center when they said, What can we do? And they wanted to get up and go out and start being activists for the health care law when they heard that some of my friends want to repeal this. Some of them are making it just on Social Security. Now the doughnut hole is closing and they like that. It means they can take their medication and it means they do not have to take it every other day or they don't have to cut it in half. My friends on the other side want to repeal it. Seniors are also getting free preventive health services under the health care law, such as mammograms, colonoscopies, as well as free annual wellness visits to their doctor--and, boy, do they like that. I could go on and on, but I will not. The point is, because of the law more people are getting care, the quality of care is better, and we are lowering costs. I am proud of that. As we here in the Senate head home to spend August in our States, I urge my colleagues to listen, as I do, when constituents tell us about the rebates they received. I was on a plane two weekends ago. A woman showed me her check. The woman I was sitting next to showed me her rebate check. I urge my colleagues to listen to constituents talk about the rebates they receive, the kids who are able to stay on their parents' insurance, the health screenings that save the lives of grandparents. I hope they will listen to the stories of kids with preexisting illnesses who were finally able to get coverage and seniors who were able to afford both their prescriptions and their dinner. I urge my colleagues to acknowledge these benefits and to support the continued implementation of the Affordable Care Act. I yield the floor.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about our Nation's defenses against cyber attacks, and I wish to commend the Senator from Maine for her leadership. She is the ranking member, of course, on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. I wish also to commend all three chairs, Senators Lieberman, Feinstein, and Rockefeller, for their work. As I said, I rise today to talk about our Nation's defense against cyber attacks and how our Nation needs to respond to those threats which affect our national security, our economic security, and our privacy. News reports and experts confirm our Nation's critical infrastructure, such as our water systems, our power grid and so forth, are vulnerable to attacks from hackers and foreign governments. Every few weeks we hear about yet another breach--Yahoo and Gmail, Citibank, Bank of America, Sony PlayStation. Millions of people have had their names, passwords, credit card information or health information compromised. It isn't just our national security or economic well-being that is being threatened by these attacks, it is the Internet itself. If you want to use Facebook or a cloud-based e-mail provider to communicate with your friends and loved ones, you need to know that your private communications won't be exposed by hackers. If you want to use the Internet to spread new ideas or fight for democracy, you need to know your work won't be disrupted by hackers or repressive regimes. Unfortunately, it is hard to write a good cybersecurity bill, because when you try to make it easier for the government or Internet companies to detect and stop the work of hackers or other bad actors, you often end up making it easier--or very easy--for those same entities to snoop in on the lives of innocent Americans. Until recently, every major cybersecurity bill on the table would have done too much to immunize and expand the authority of the government and industry and far too little to protect our privacy and civil liberties. These bills would make it too easy for companies to hand over your e-mails and other private information to the government--even to the military. Setting aside the fourth amendment, these bills would allow almost all of that information to go to law enforcement. And these bills do far too little to hold these companies and the government accountable for their mistakes. A few months ago, I teamed up with Senators Durbin, Wyden, Sanders, Coons, Blumenthal, and Akaka to try to address this situation. We worked with privacy and civil liberties groups on the left, the right, and the center to come up with a package of proposals. We worked with the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, which are traditionally associated with progressives; we worked with the Constitution Project, which is a bipartisan centrist think tank; and we worked with TechFreedom and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which are conservative libertarian organizations. Together, we approached Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins, Chairman Rockefeller, and Chairman Feinstein, and proposed a package of amendments to the information-sharing title of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. The information-sharing title is the part of the bill that will make it easier for companies to share critical information about cyber attacks with each other and with the government. These Senators engaged with us earnestly and in good faith. After a lot of hard work and a lot of conversations, the sponsors made a series of changes to the bill that are major, unequivocal victories for privacy and civil liberties. The bill is still not perfect, from my point of view, but I can say with confidence that when it comes to protecting both our cybersecurity and our civil liberties, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is the only game in town. I want to take a moment to explain the changes made to the information-sharing title, and compare how the Cybersecurity Act now stacks up with its rival bills, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, which recently passed the House, and the SECURE IT Act, which has been introduced here in the Senate. First of all, I agree we need to make it easier for companies to share time-sensitive information with experts in the government. But the cyber threat information that companies are sharing often comes from private, sensitive communications, like our e-mails. And so the gatekeeper of any information shared under these proposals should never be the military. It should never be the NSA. The men and women of the NSA are patriots and they are undoubtedly skilled and knowledgeable. But as Senator Durbin said, that institution is too shrouded in secrecy. And--he didn't say but as I will say--it has too dark a history of spying on innocent Americans to be trusted with this responsibility under any administration. Under the new, revised Cybersecurity Act of 2012, the one that will soon be before us on the floor, companies can use the authorities in the bill to give cyber threat information only to civilian agencies. That is a critical protection for civil liberties, and it is a protection that CISPA and the SECURE IT Act do not have. I want to be very clear. An America with CISPA and an America with the SECURE IT Act is an America where your e-mails can be shared directly, immediately, and with impunity, with the NSA. Second, any cybersecurity bill should focus on just that-- cybersecurity. It should not be a back door for warrantless wiretaps or information entirely unrelated to cyber attacks. In other words, once a company gives the government cyber threat information, the government shouldn't be able to say, Hey, this e-mail doesn't have a virus, but it does say that Michael is late on his taxes; I am going to send that to the IRS. Under the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, once a cyber exchange gets information, it can give that information to law enforcement only to prosecute or stop a cyber crime or to stop serious imminent harm to adults or serious harm to minors. CISPA actually has similar protections, but SECURE IT allows a far broader range of disclosures to law enforcement. Here in the Senate, the Cybersecurity Act is the proposal that does the most to respect the spirit and letter of the fourth amendment. Third, a cybersecurity bill should make it easier for a company to share information with experts in the government. But it has to hold companies that abuse that authority accountable for their actions. Both CISPA and the SECURE IT Act give companies immunity for knowing violations of your privacy. Under CISPA and the SECURE IT Act, if a company's CEO knows for a fact that his engineers are sending every one of your e-mails to the NSA, there is nothing you can do about it. That is not an exaggeration. Thanks to the changes I have pushed for--along with Senators Durbin, Wyden, Coons, Sanders, Blumenthal, and Akaka--the Cybersecurity Act does not protect companies that violate your privacy intentionally, knowingly, or with gross negligence. Fourth, and finally, a cybersecurity bill should also hold the government accountable for its actions. Under both CISPA and the SECURE IT Act, companies can start giving the Federal Government your private information well before the government actually has privacy rules in place for how to handle that information. Under the SECURE IT Act, the government has total immunity from lawsuits arising out of its cybersecurity operations--total immunity for the government. The SECURE IT Act also lacks any regular independent oversight of the Federal Government's actions under these new authorities. The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 now has all three of these protections. Under this bill, privacy rules have to be in place on the first day companies start giving the government information. People can sue the government when it abuses its authority. And there will be recurrent, independent oversight by both the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and inspectors general. These are just the four main categories of changes that the sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act have adopted. There are other changes, too, that I won't go into now. Before I close, I want to elaborate on one way I do think we need to improve the Cybersecurity Act to better protect privacy. The sponsors of the bill have rightly adopted several critical protections. I hope they will accept at least one more amendment that I think is very important. I will talk about my amendment more on another occasion, but for now I want to flag it for my colleagues. For decades, Federal law has given Internet service providers and other companies the right to monitor their systems to protect themselves and their customers from cybersecurity threats. They also have the right to deploy what are called countermeasures to protect their systems against those threats. So these companies have the right to monitor and protect themselves; but at the same time, Federal law prevents them from abusing those rights. If an ISP starts randomly picking customers and reading their e-mails, their customers--and the government--can take them to court, and the ISP can't throw its hands up and plead cybersecurity. This is why, when the President of the United States brought together all of the Federal agencies to craft a bill that would comprehensively protect our cybersecurity, that proposal included a new authority for companies to disclose information to the government but contained no new authority for companies to monitor e-mail or deploy countermeasures. When the administration's lawyers were asked why that was, they said that doing so would have been duplicative--duplicative-- because the companies already have those rights. Right now, the Cybersecurity Act and the President's proposal are not in line with each other, because unlike the President's proposal, the Cybersecurity Act does give ISPs and other companies a brandnew right to monitor communications and to deploy countermeasures. That right is very broad--so broad that if a company uses that power negligently to snoop in on your e-mail or damage your computer, they will be immune from any lawsuit. I plan to offer an amendment to delete these new monitoring and countermeasures authorities and bring this bill in line with the President's proposal. I hope my colleagues here in the Senate will join me in passing this amendment. Seven of my colleagues have already indicated they will cosponsor this amendment. But I want to end on a high note. I don't want my amendment to cloud my central message here, so I will repeat what I said earlier. The Cybersecurity Act is not perfect, but when it comes to striking a balance between cybersecurity and privacy and civil liberties, it is the only game in town. It is far more protective of our rights than either CISPA or the SECURE IT Act. I thank the sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act for taking this high road, and I urge my colleagues to vote to proceed to the bill so we can have a good, full debate on it. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I plan to speak on cybersecurity tomorrow. I thank Chairman Lieberman, Chairman Rockefeller, Chairman Feinstein, and Senator Collins for their work on this very important issue, and also all the other Senators who have worked so hard on this, including the Presiding Officer. I ask unanimous consent to speak this evening as in morning business.

Mr. FRANKEN. ``The Dark Side of Death'' by Tom Davis. The good news: my chemotherapy is working and I'm still buying green bananas. I've lost about 50 pounds. (I need to lose 49.) . . . False hope is my enemy, also self pity, which went out the window when I saw children with cancer. I try to embrace the inevitable with whatever grace I can muster, and find the joy in each day. I've always been good at that, but now I'm getting really good at that. I wake up in the morning, delighted to be waking up, read, write, feed the birds, watch sports on TV, accepting the fact that in the foreseeable future I will be a dead person. I want to remind you that dead people are people too. There are good dead people and bad dead people. Some of my best friends are dead people. Dead people have fought in every war. We are all going to try it sometime. Fortunately for me, I have always enjoyed mystery and solitude. Many people in my situation say, ``It's been my worst and best year.'' If that sounds like a cliche, you don't have cancer. On the plus side, I am grateful to have gained real, not just intellectual empathy. I was prepared to go through life without having suffered, and I was doing a good job of it. Now I know what it's like to starve. And to accept ``that over which I have no control,'' I had to turn inward. People from all over my life are reconnecting with me, and I've tried to take responsibility for my deeds, good and bad. I think I've finally grown up. It is odd to have so much time to orchestrate the process of my own death. I'm improvising. I've never done this before, so far as I know. Ironically, I will probably outlive one or two people to whom I've already said goodbye. My life has been rife with irony; why stop now? As an old-school Malthusian liberal, I've always believed that the source of all mankind's problems is overpopulation. I'm finally going to do something about it. Tom faced death with humor and courage. Rest in peace. Exhibit 1 The Dark Side of Death (By Tom Davis). The good news: my chemotherapy is working and I'm still buying green bananas. The bad news: two years ago, before we knew it as MDD (Michael Douglas Disease), I was diagnosed with tonsorial squamous cell carcinoma, a/k/a head and neck cancer. After surgery, I elected to go with radiation therapy sans complementary chemo, which was probably a big mistake. The malignancy unexpectedly spread to the bones of my pelvis and lower spine, where it has been munching away without thought of its host's well-being. It's now described as ``exotic and aggressive,'' but it's getting its cancerous ass kicked by taxotere, a drug that imitates the chemistry of the European Yew tree. Made in China, of course. I'll be using it, or a related drug ``for the rest of my life,'' which could be as long as two more high-quality-of-life years. I'd be thrilled with that. There are side effects, the two weirdest being a ``recall effect,'' in which radiation sores reappear, and neuropathy in my fingernails, which are in the unpleasant process of falling off. Ow. I've lost hair from all over my body. With only a little bit of white fluff on my head, I visited my mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease in Minneapolis. ``Now I want you to take all your medicine and your hair will grow back,'' she said cheerfully. ``I think you look a little like that bird Woodstock in Peanuts.'' I'll take that; better than Uncle Fester. My old comedy partner (Senator) Al Franken, volunteered to draw my hair back on with a magic marker, which would be funny for about two days. We're planning to write something for him to read once I de-animate, the final Franken and Davis piece. We'll see. Typically, we would wait until the last minute. I've lost about 50 pounds. (I needed to lose 49.) It's great to wear jeans from the 70s, although I remember making a few people laugh when I said I would save them in case I got cancer. Once, in the early eighties, Franken and Davis appeared on the David Letterman Show as ``The Comedy Team that Weighs the Same,'' a piece so stupid it was really funny. We dressed in bathrobes and Speedos for the final weigh-in on a huge scale. David asked if any other comedy team had weighed the same, and I said ``Laurel and Hardy, but only near the end of Ollie's life,'' which got a good groan laugh. Maybe I tempted fate a little too often. My grocer at the Claverack Market, Ted the Elder, recently asked if I had heard that there are two stages in life: ``youth,'' and ``you look great.'' Wish I'd thought of that. Several close friends have asked if I was aware of alternative medicines, therapies, protocols, doctors, clinics, and books. One offered personal testimony. His colon cancer was supposed to have killed him several years ago. He attributes his survival to an exclusive diet of blueberry smoothies. My fear is not death; my fear is spending my last years slurping blueberry, whey and soy powder shakes in a rock star hospital in Houston, surrounded by strangers. No. False hope is my enemy, also self pity, which went out the window when I saw children with cancer. I try to embrace the inevitable with whatever grace I can muster, and find the joy in each day. I've always been good at that, but now I'm getting really good at it. I wake up in the morning, delighted to be waking up, read, write, feed the birds, watch sports on TV, accepting the fact that in the foreseeable future I will be a dead person. I want to remind you that dead people are people too. There are good dead people and bad dead people. Some of my best friends are dead people. Dead people have fought in every war. We're all going to try it sometime. Fortunately for me, I have always enjoyed mystery and solitude. Many people in my situation say, ``It's been my worst and best year.'' If that sounds like a cliche, you don't have cancer. On the plus side, I am grateful to have gained real, not just intellectual empathy. I was prepared to go through life without having suffered, and I was doing a good job of it. Now I know what it's like to starve. And to accept ``that over which I have no control,'' I had to turn inward. People from all over my life are reconnecting with me, and I've tried to take responsibility for my deeds, good and bad. As my friend Timothy Leary said in his book, Death by Design, ``Even if you've been a complete slob your whole life, if you can end the last act with panache, that's what they'll remember.'' I think I've finally grown up. It is odd to have so much time to orchestrate the process of my own death. I'm improvising. I've never done this before, so far as I know. Ironically, I probably will outlive one or two people to whom I've already said goodbye. My life has been rife with irony; why stop now? As an old-school Malthusian liberal, I've always believed that the source of all mankind's problems is overpopulation. I'm finally going to do something about it.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about loss. I know I speak for all Minnesotans when I say how shocked and saddened we have been by the loss of life in Colorado. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who died, and to those who were wounded in that massacre. Anyone who has watched reports can only feel outrage or profound sadness. So many of those who died were so young. A number died so heroically, shielding a loved one from the madman's bullets. So much grief, so much suffering is unspeakable. The one hopeful lesson we can draw from this tragedy comes from the stories of courage and selflessness we have heard about those who were in the theater, the first responders, and the outpouring from the community of Aurora and the rest of the Nation. Minnesota unfortunately has also seen its share of senseless violence. It is something no State is immune to. Hopefully, out of this tragedy we can draw lessons that will make these kinds of tragedies far less common. Remembering Tom Davis Today I come to the floor to talk about a personal loss to me and to so many of his friends and family and fans--a Minnesotan who brought so much laughter and so much joy to his fellow Minnesotans and to millions and millions of Americans. My friend Tom Davis died last Thursday after he was diagnosed 3 years ago with cancer. I had the privilege to be Tom's comedy partner and best friend for over 20 years. We started working together in high school in Minnesota and did standup together for years, and were among two of the original writers for ``Saturday Night Live.'' I spoke with Tom's mom Jean last Thursday, not long after Tom died. She told me how fondly she remembered the laughter that came from the basement when Tom and I started writing together in high school over 40 years ago. That is what I remember about Tom, his laughter. I last saw Tom about 2 weeks ago at his home in Hudson, NY. Dan Aykroyd, who collaborated so often with Tom, was there too with his wife Donna and Tom's wife Mimi. We laughed and laughed. Tom's humor was always sardonic, and as you might expect, it was a little more sardonic that day than usual. But his humor also had a sweetness about it. We laughed. But Tom told us that he was ready to go. He faced death with great humor and courage. Tom created laughter. The obituary cited Tom's body of work--some of it. He and Dan Aykroyd created the Coneheads. Tom was the key collaborator with Bill Murray on Nick the Lounge Singer, and on and on and on. This started an outpouring of blogging on the Internet--people writing about Tom and the laughs he brought them. I was happy to see him get his due. People called him an original. He was. They called him a brilliant comedian. He was. Since last Thursday, I have been hearing from our friends and colleagues, how Tom's voice was unique, how so often his stuff came seemingly from out of nowhere, how Tom had come up with the biggest laugh of the season in the rewrite of this sketch or that one or how Tom had been the first to nail Ed McMahon's attitude when he and I did Khomeini the Magnificent, and how Tom was such a loyal and generous friend. People would always ask me and Tom what our favorite moment was from ``Saturday Night Live.'' We worked on so many sketches that it was impossible to single anything out. Both of us would always say our favorite memory was rolling on the floor--the 17th floor at 30 Rock-- rolling on the floor, laughing at 2:00 in the morning or 3:00 in the morning at something that someone wrote or at a character someone had just invented. This was that moment of creation. There was the laugh at whatever it was that one of us had come up with, combined with the joy that you knew you had something. This is your job. Woody Allen once said that writing comedy is either easy or impossible. When it is impossible, it can be agony. When it is easy, when you are laughing and rolling on the floor--literally, when Danny, Billy, Belushi, Gilda, Dana Carvey, Jim Downey, Conan O'Brien, or Steve Martin or any of the many hilarious people whom we had the privilege to work with would come up with something that made us explode with laughter and roll there on the 17th floor, that was just pure joy. Tom was an improvisational genius. The first public stage we performed at was Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis. Dudley's was essentially the Minneapolis version of Second City, based on the same improvisational techniques. When Tom and I were in high school, we did standup there. But while I went off to college, Tom joined the company at Dudley's, and when I came back, I saw that he had mastered improv and mastered it hilariously. Now, as a writing team, Tom and I brought different strengths to our craft. Sometimes we would get stuck, and Tom would find an object. The third year of SNL, Tom and I were watching TV, and we saw Julia Child cut herself while doing a cooking segment on, I believe, the ``Today Show.'' So we wrote a sketch that Danny performed brilliantly that is now known as ``Julia Child Bleeding to Death.'' The sketch worked so well that when they installed the Julia Child exhibit at the National Museum of American History, in addition to her TV kitchen set--I believe this was at her insistence because she loved it so much--they included a monitor with the sketch of her bleeding to death on ``Saturday Night Live.'' When Tom and I were writing the sketch, we could not find an ending, and Tom found an object--the phone. The phone hanging on the wall of Julia Child's cooking set. I don't actually think there was one; Tom just found it. That is something improv artists do when they are on the stage, they find objects to work with. So Danny, as Julia Child in the sketch, is spurting blood, and Julia is trying everything to explain how to make a tourniquet out of a chicken bone and a dish towel or how to use chicken liver as a natural coagulant, and nothing is working. She is losing blood. So, in desperation, she sees the phone on the wall, and turning to it, she says, ``Always have the emergency number written down on the phone. Oh, it isn't. Well, I know it. It's 911.'' She dials 9-1-1 and realizes it is a prop phone and throws it down sort of in disgust and starts to get woozy and rambles on about eating chopped chicken liver on Ritz crackers as a child. Finally she collapses, and as she is about to die, she says, ``Save the liver.'' It was a tour de force by Danny. When I was with Danny and Tom a couple of weeks ago, we started talking about this somehow, and Danny says he remembers me there under the counter pumping the blood. Only I wasn't the one pumping the blood; it was Tom. I remember that was something of a union issue because that is a special effect, pumping blood, pumping the blood to get exactly the right pressure so that Danny could release the spurts at precisely the right time. Now, every once in a while, the special effects guy or the sound effects guy would let a writer do the effects because it was all about the comedic timing. Also, they liked Tom. Everybody liked Tom. The special effects guy knew that Tom knew exactly what to do, and it was all about teamwork with Danny, who was also controlling the spurting when Tom was controlling the pressure. Man, it was hilarious. Now, this is live TV. We did hundreds and hundreds of sketches together, a lot of stuff that was just so stupid that it was funny. We just had so much fun. Tom and I toured together all over the country. I told Senator Mike Johanns, my colleague and friend from Nebraska, that Tom and I played Chadron State twice. And last week we had a witness in Judiciary whom Senator Sessions introduced from Anniston, AL, where Tom and I played. We did a gig to six students in Huron, SD, because they booked us by mistake during spring break and there were just six students there. There were five members of the basketball team who couldn't afford to go back east for the break. The sixth guy had been grounded because he had gotten caught smoking pot freshman year and they wouldn't let him leave campus except during summer vacation. I think this was his junior year. I think Tom and I played 45 States. When we flew, we always booked ourselves in aisle seats across from each other, C and D seats, so we could talk to each other. Tom would always get on first and find our row, and if there was a pretty girl in the middle seat of one side, he would sit next to her, and I would sit next to the fat, sweaty guy in the mesh shirt, which, by the way, I think should not be allowed on planes. I plan to introduce legislation on that. This went on for years. Tom would board first, get to a row, and take the aisle seat next to an attractive woman or quiet-looking, slender man, and I would sit next to the large loud guy who looked like he wanted to talk through the entire flight. I thought, what a coincidence, Tom's aisle seat is always next to the more desirable seatmate. Finally I checked my ticket stub, and I saw that Tom had taken my seat. That is when I realized he had been doing this for years. He said: Yeah, I was just waiting for you to figure it out. Now, I really had to blame myself. Tom had played me, and it was my fault for being a kind of trusting idiot. Tom saved my butt on occasion. We used to go camping and fishing up in the Boundary Waters of the wilderness area between northern Minnesota and Canada. Tom was expert with a canoe, and I wasn't. I really wasn't. Once, we went up there in October. It was kind of cold, but we were catching a lot of walleye and having a great time. There were three of us--me, Tom, and our friend Jeff Frederick. We had put in for just one canoe. On the third evening I decided to fish from this point near our campsite on this island. I cast out and got my line caught in something, so I decided to go out alone in the canoe and untangle the line. So I am paddling out, and I get caught in this current and start getting carried away from the island we were camped on, and I start calling for help. Now, we are in the Quetico wilderness in Canada in October. We had not seen another human being in the 3 days we had been there. So Tom and Jeff come running and yelling and cursing at me because if I didn't make it back with the canoe, they were pretty much stuck on this island for the winter, and I am probably dead because I have no gear, nothing, just the paddle, which isn't doing me any good at this point. This is where Tom's improvisational skills came in really handy because he talked me back. He was screaming and cursing, but he talked me out of the current that was carrying me away to my certain death, and I was able to circle back and get to the point-- exhausted but so relieved. Maybe that is why I cut him some slack when he played me on the aisle seats years later. Now, speaking of cold, Tom and I were huge Vikings fans. We would go to the old Metropolitan Stadium during the Bud Grant years when Grant would not allow heaters on the side lines even when it was below zero. I once asked Bud Grant why he did that, and he said: There are certain things people can do when they are cold. Tom and I were there on a very cold winter afternoon at the Vikings- Cowboys playoff game, the one where Roger Staubach threw the Hail Mary that Drew Pearson pushed off on and caught for a touchdown--and he did push off. Senator Hutchison and Senator Cornyn need to go back to the videotape. Drew Pearson pushed off. It was offensive pass interference, and the Vikings should have won that game and gone to the Super Bowl. That is how I saw it, that is how Tom saw it, and that is how the fan who threw the whiskey bottle from the bleachers and knocked the ref out saw it. Tom and I both saw the bottle glinting in the cold winter Sun as it arced from the bleachers. We were stunned when it hit the ref right in the forehead. That was not Minnesota nice. Tom and I suffered through four Super Bowl losses and through last season. As sick as he was, Tom watched our Vikings and complained bitterly to me on the phone later on Sunday. Tom and I went to a lot of Grateful Dead shows together--more than even Senator Leahy. Tom and I went to a lot of New Year's Eve Dead shows. This year I went up to New York to celebrate New Year's with Tom and Mimi at their home. We knew this would probably be his last, and at midnight we turned on the Dead and we danced. Now, unlike me, Tom became an accomplished guitarist, and he could sit in with rock or blues bands. Tom was a terrible student in high school, but the fact is he was a renaissance man. He loved to read history, philosophy, and fiction. He devoted a lot of his last years to his art, sculpting solely from found objects from the creek that ran by his house in upstate New York. Tom was an original. Some time ago, Tom and I talked about writing something for this occasion, but about a year or so ago he wrote a piece for a literary magazine that, to me, said what needed to be said. It was Tom and his take on what he was facing. It is called ``The Dark Side of Death.'' I decided to read from it, with a few edits for the Senate floor, and I ask that the piece in its entirety, with some other edits, be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Hoeven, for his courtesy of allowing me to speak now so that I may take the Chair and listen to his speech. I rise today to urge my colleagues to support our economic recovery, endorse fiscal responsibility, and bolster the middle class by voting to extend tax cuts on income up to $250,000. Minnesotans are still struggling, and we need to act now so people making under $250,000 can keep their tax cuts. Middle-class families need every bit of help they can get. At the same time, we need to make sure the richest 2 percent of Americans are paying their fair share so we can pay down the deficit. It would be irresponsible not to. Thanks to the policies of the Recovery Act, we emerged from one of the worst recessions in generations and actually stopped it from becoming the second Great Depression. That being said, too many working families are still struggling to find work, pay their rents or their mortgages, find affordable childcare, and send their kids to college. By extending tax cuts to these families, we will be putting money in their pockets and, in turn, they will likely go out and spend that money in their communities, at their local small businesses, and further bolster recovery. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle look at this a bit differently. They have put forward a proposal that would extend tax cuts on income over $250,000 for a year as well, which would cost us over $800 billion in revenue over 10 years. They argue if we let taxes go up on the richest 2 percent of Americans, we are inviting another recession and we are stifling growth. They can make that claim over and over, but there is no evidence of this. It would be more helpful to examine the facts and what recent history has taught us. First, it is essential to clarify who exactly would get a tax cut under the Democratic proposal. Luckily, the answer is easy: essentially everyone. If we pass the bill proposed by the majority leader and extend the tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income, everyone who currently pays income taxes will get a tax cut extension. If a person makes $50,000, our bill preserves that person's entire tax cut. If a person makes $100,000, this bill preserves their entire tax cut. If a person makes $250,000, it preserves the person's entire tax cut, and their tax cut is also a lot bigger than the guy making $50,000 or $100,000. That might not be clear from some of the rhetoric we have been hearing lately, but it is true. People making over $250,000 would still get a tax cut worth thousands of dollars, and it would be larger than anybody else's tax cut. The only portion of their taxes that would increase--or it would stay the same as under the law we have now, which is to not extend the Bush tax cuts--would be on any additional income above $250,000. If a person makes $250,000 plus $1, that person pays 39.6 percent on that extra $1. That is a difference of 4.6 cents, a little less than a nickel. So for those people under this plan, they get the benefit of thousands and thousands of dollars in tax cuts, minus a nickel. Secondly, claims that not extending the extra tax breaks for the richest 2 percent will cause harm to the economy are not supported by history. Let's take a look at President Clinton. When he proposed his deficit reduction plan in 1993, every Republican in the House and every Republican in the Senate opposed it. And what was their claim? Their claim was that it would hurt businesses and cause a recession. Every Republican voted against it. What really happened in the ensuing years? Not only did we have an unprecedented expansion of our economy for 8 years, creating more than 22 million new net jobs at the very tax rate we are talking about now for people over $250,000, but, at the same time, we turned the biggest deficit in history into the biggest surplus in history. President Clinton handed President George W. Bush a record surplus. So the only time in the last 30 years in which we actually had the budget in balance was after we raised taxes on those at the top--the very level we are talking about now. Between 1993 and 2001, this country created an unprecedented number of jobs--22.7 million net--and did so while benefiting everyone up and down the economic ladder. Not every individual but every quartile. There was economic growth in every quartile. We witnessed a decrease in the number of Americans in poverty, and we saw the creation of more millionaires and billionaires than ever before. President Clinton's deficit reduction plan not only reduced the deficit as planned, it eliminated it entirely. So not only did we create all that prosperity, President Clinton then handed off a record surplus. I think this needs to be said. He handed off a record surplus to incoming President George W. Bush. In fact, when President Bush took office, we were on track to completely pay off our national debt with $5 trillion of surpluses projected over the next 10 years. In other words, we would have zeroed out our national debt last year--zero, no debt. But he cut taxes in 2001, and he cut taxes in 2003, after we went to war--unprecedented in our Nation's history. The decision before us today is a fundamental one: Should we extend these tax cuts on income up to $250,000, preserving tax cuts for everyone, with the largest tax cuts going to those with incomes of $250,000 or more--they would get the largest tax cuts--or should we ask the richest 2 percent to pay their fair share, to pay 4.6 percent extra on income over $250,000, which has been shown historically to create jobs? It poses a question about choices: We can choose to do the economically responsible thing or we can choose to provide additional tax cuts for people who least need them. When everyone pays their fair share, our Nation can get back on a path to fiscal responsibility and, at the same time, invest in quality education, in infrastructure, in R&D for high-tech industries. These are the things which create prosperity. We can create good jobs in our manufacturing sector and other emerging industries. In fact, investing in the middle class is a win for everyone. The buying power of the middle class is what sustains our economy, makes it grow. Our economy doesn't grow from the top down. If our experience over the last 30 years teaches us anything, it is that. It grows from the middle class out. President Clinton understood that and so does President Obama. I have friends who have been very successful in the business world. I have enormous respect for them and what they have accomplished, and I do for almost every American who has been successful in building their businesses. There are some people who have taken some shortcuts and maybe don't deserve our approval, but they are a very small fraction. We honor, we celebrate people who have been successful. This is what my friends who have been successful tell me. They say when the middle class is strong--when they have customers--they grow their businesses and can make more money. Believe me--I have had friends tell me exactly this--they would rather pay a 39.6-percent marginal rate on $2 million of income than pay 35 percent on $1 million of income. That is the difference between a booming economy and a stagnant one. How many times have we heard that the deficit is what is hurting our economy? We are talking about a difference of almost $900 billion to get our deficit under control. All this is just common sense. It is common sense and taking a little bit of a look at history over the last 30 years. Policies that support and grow the middle class benefit everyone and increase prosperity all along the economic spectrum. So, in the end, we have a big decision to make today. Do we stand for our economic recovery and for middle-class families and for addressing the budget deficit with the Democratic proposal or do we continue to give extra tax breaks to the richest 2 percent of Americans instead of extending improvements in the child tax credit and earned-income tax credit affecting more than 13 million working families while adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit? Let's be clear. The Republican plan would raise taxes on 13 million middle-class and working-class families and get rid of the expanded earned-income tax credit to people who are working so we can pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. I hope we can show the American people that common sense still prevails in the Senate by acting in unison across the aisle to do what is responsible. I urge all of my colleagues to extend the middle-class tax cuts and to vote for the majority leader's bill. Thank you, Madam President. I thank my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven. I yield the floor.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Rhode Island for his leadership on this and so many other issues. I thank the Senator from Arkansas for his comments. I recommend them to anyone. Minnesotans are proud of our participation in civic life. We believe very strongly in hearing each other out. In the last Presidential election, 78 percent of eligible voters in my State turned out to vote--well above the national turnout of 64 percent of voting-age citizens in 2008. In fact, Minnesota has led the Nation for voter turnout in the last six elections. This is really remarkable. It is one of the reasons I am so proud to represent my State here in the Senate. But when the Supreme Court upended 100 years of law with Citizens United, it yanked the microphone away from average Minnesotans and turned it over to a handful of millionaires and billionaires and corporations intent, as Senator Pryor said, on controlling the outcome of our election and controlling the decisions that are made that affect the men, women, and children in my State. A single person writing a check for $1 million or $10 million or $100 million can drown out the voices of everyone else, and they can do so in total secrecy. We have heard about a handful of millionaires and billionaires who have written fat checks to bankroll Presidential candidates, but what is most terrifying about this is that we only know about those people because they decided to let us know. For every billionaire who tells us he is writing a check to a candidate, there are probably 10 or 100 or 1,000 corporations and ultrawealthy individuals who are writing similar checks in secret. Even one of the ones we know about because he decided to let us know now says he is also going to give secretly. I was listening to C-SPAN radio in my car. That is right, I listen to C-SPAN in my car. They had a woman on who was a journalist. Her beat is money and politics. She writes for a major American daily paper. C-SPAN was talking calls, and one caller basically said all of this is about privatizing Social Security and Medicare so Wall Street folks can get their hands on the money from those programs and so insurance programs get their hands on Medicare money. You know there is truth to that. So the expert says in the answer--and I am paraphrasing--that is what we thought. Most people thought it was going to be corporations giving us money, but it turns out it is just ultrawealthy people who are doing it. Then she paused and said: Of course, we don't know that because so much of the money is secret. I thought to myself, here is a woman whose whole area of expertise-- this is what she thinks about 10, 12 hours a day--money and politics-- and yet, even she, because this money is secret--even she is capable of being confused or not understanding the implications of all this secret money--even if it was just for her for a moment or a couple of moments. That is the purpose of why we are up here tonight to talk about the proliferation of secret money post-Citizens United and its implications on our democracy. Americans may not like it--I sure don't--but the Supreme Court has ruled. At least for now Citizens United is here to stay. The Supreme Court isn't final because it is right; it is right because it is final. So we need to accept that. Absent a constitutional amendment, Congress can no longer limit corporate contributions or campaign contributions to outside or independent groups--so-called independent groups. As much as we may want to, we can't stop corporations and ultrawealthy individuals from flooding our elections with massive amounts of money. We can't stop it. But the Supreme Court said we can shine light on the shadowy interests behind those unprecedented contributions. We can force these organizations and ultrawealthy individuals to disclose. Justice Anthony Kennedy said this in his majority opinion in Citizens United: Prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation's political speech advances the corporation's interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are in the pocket of so-called moneyed interests. Justice Kennedy went on to say: The First Amendment protects political speech, and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages. I could not have said it better myself. This is in his majority opinion of Citizens United. My colleagues and I have simply taken Justice Kennedy's words to heart, and we have drafted a bill that will bring transparency and accountability to the electorate so they can make the decisions about who should lead our country. That is critical because elections matter. Elections determine who is going to get to Washington, who is going to get here to make decisions on behalf of the rest of the Nation. Americans need to know who is spending tons of money to get candidates elected. That is why we are here today to talk about the DISCLOSURE Act. This bill is not a panacea. It will not overturn Citizens United, and it will not stop the tsunami of money pouring in from corporations. But it will require that all that special interest money be disclosed publicly, and that will have tremendously beneficial effects for this country. We may not be able to stop the tidal wave of unlimited cash, but we can, and we should, at a minimum know who is writing those big checks. Not only will this type of disclosure discourage backroom deals conducted under a cloak of secrecy but, more importantly, it will discourage donors from unleashing negative, misleading, and deceptive ads against politicians who are trying to do the right thing. But that is not our world today. Companies don't want us to know they are giving lots of money to elect or defeat someone. So they do something that looks a lot like money laundering, but it is legal. They might create and give money to a shell corporation, which in turn donates to a super PAC. When we look at the records for the super PAC, we will see the shell corporation but not the original source of the money. A company might give money to one shell corporation, which in turn gives money to a PAC or another shell corporation, and so on, until it finally reaches the ultimate super PAC. It is nearly impossible to trace it back to the original corporation. That is in the super PACs. The company can just give money to a 501(c)(4)--a so-called social welfare organization--which is under no obligation to disclose a single thing. Of course, there are rules in place to make sure these nonprofits are truly social welfare organizations and deserving of their privileged tax-exempt status. Specifically, they must spend less than 50 percent of their money on political activities. Unfortunately, the IRS has not been aggressively enforcing this rule. We suspect that many of these 504(c)(4)s are not spending more than 50 percent on nonpolitical ads. But no matter how companies or wealthy individuals secretly funnel their money into elections, we all lose. We lose because we don't know who is paying for the negative attack ads that are constantly dominating our TV or the newspaper ads or the Web ads online or the robocalls that interrupt dinner or the misleading mailers or the field operatives who knock on our door or call us on Saturday mornings. Minnesotans believe strongly in hearing each other out, and they want honest, informed debate. They want to hear all sides of an issue before they make up their minds. This is why we have such a high voter turnout in our State. They want to listen to the competing priorities for our State and our Nation because these issues are not simple. They want to hear all sides before deciding who to vote for at the polls. Unfortunately, Minnesotans cannot listen to all sides when worthwhile debate is being drowned out by a tsunami of corrosive, negative, and often deceptive ads paid for by outside special interest groups. These days, especially if one is in a swing State, people can't turn on a television without seeing them. But it is not just volume that drowns out legitimate debate and turns off voters; it is what the ads are saying. More and more are negative, deceptive or both. According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center-- listen to this--85 percent of the dollars spent on Presidential ads by the four top-spending 501(c)(4)s--or so-called social welfare organizations--were spent on ads containing at least one deceptive claim--deceptive. No wonder people are disenchanted with our political system. Anonymity fuels this. It is easy to pay for ads that deceive voters when they don't have to attach their name to them, and so they have no accountability. It is easy to launch personal attacks when they are doing so in secret--under the cloak of anonymity. It is these so-called social welfare groups that are responsible for so many of these deceptive ads that have absolutely no requirements to disclose their donors. The public doesn't know when they watch political ads whether they are true or deceptive. That is a problem because there is no question that advertising works. People watch TV. They love TV. I love TV. I made a living in TV. When we watch TV, there are commercials, and commercials work. Do you know the show ``Mad Men''? It is popular and it is about advertising in the early 1960s and it is about how advertising works. They discovered this a long time ago, and it is true; it works. Advertising helps influence what we buy, what we eat, what we drink, where we shop and, yes, which politician we will support when we go to the polls. Most Americans don't watch or listen to C-SPAN in their spare time. Most Americans aren't engrossed in politics, keeping track of every vote we take in Congress. That is why political ads can make or break how Americans feel about a candidate come election day. The Supreme Court recognized this in Citizens United when it noted it had previously upheld disclosure laws in order to address the problem of purportedly independent groups running election-related ads while ``hiding behind dubious and misleading names.'' It is these generic and sometimes misleading names for outside groups--with nice words such as ``America'' ``freedom'' or ``prosperity'' in their titles--that are manipulating the public now. In the 2010 election, these outside groups spent more than $280 million on campaign ads, which was more than double what they spent in 2008 and more than five times what they spent in 2006. Even more shocking, there are estimates that outside groups will spend more than $1 billion on independent expenditures this election cycle. The public has every right to know who is bankrolling these ads, so it can better understand what motivates these messages and take what they say in some context and with a grain of salt. As important, what we are not seeing, what has been drowned out by all these negative deceptive ads is debate and discussion about the issues most Americans care about: How am I going to pay my mortgage? How am I going to put my kids through college? How am I going to find a job in this difficult economy? Will I be able to retire and enjoy my golden years? Why is this happening? Why aren't ads focused on these issues? The answer is quite simple. Ads that dominate the airwaves are expensive, and they are being bought by corporations and ultrawealthy individuals for their own interests. Corporations aren't evil--far from it. There are many great corporations in Minnesota. But it is their duty to maximize shareholder profit. Their focus is on cutting costs or consolidating their position in a market or on reducing the number of regulations they need to comply with to keep their workers safe, in some cases, or maybe to keep our air and water clean. Their first priority isn't helping the middle class, and they are not going to spend money from their general treasuries on ads urging candidates to keep college affordable or push for funding for Pell grants, Head Start or for medical research. But the bigger issue--and the reason why disclosure matters so much in our political system--is that corporations don't just buy ads to make their views known; they use them as a weapon against politicians. This is a real problem. It is happening today, and it is only going to get worse and worse now that corporations can spend what they want, as much as they want, whenever they want, with absolutely no transparency. Candidates know if they do not support the policies that corporations are pushing, they are likely to face a torrent of negative ads funded by that corporation or industry when they are running for election or reelection. All those ads will come from a shell organization with a name such as the American Prosperity Fund for America's Prosperity in the Future in America. The public will not know that a corporation or wealthy individual is buying these ads, but the candidate will, and the candidate will be powerless to stop it. This is why I think the Supreme Court got it wrong in Citizens United--and this is a quote from the Supreme Court--when it found ``independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to the corruption or the appearance of corruption.'' Wow. That is what the Court said. They made that statement without any citation to legal authority, without any citation to evidence. This statement was plucked from thin air. It doesn't pass the smell test. Any Minnesotan knows intuitively that is just flat-out wrong. The reality is, unfortunately, money does equal power in this country. Elections cost money--a lot of money. With each election cycle it is costing more and more. When a corporation or wealthy individual can spend a truckload of cash to support its favorite politician and kick out a courageous politician who may have hurt its bottom line, our entire democratic system is undermined. If this continues, we risk becoming an oligarchy, which would undermine our already undermined middle class and would quash the working poor's aspirations for entering the middle class. It would be harder to get a wage that could put a roof over your head, harder to afford child care, and harder to send a kid to college. There will be an even greater disparity between the rich and everyone else. Already, since the 1970s, our Nation has been growing apart as the rich get richer and the poorer and middle class fall further and further behind. They have seen little or no return on their increased productivity and longer working hours. If money and power continue to accumulate among a few individuals and companies, it will only get worse. There will be less money for education, less money for unemployment insurance, and less money for basic research to cure diseases. It will be harder to get health insurance, if health care reform is repealed, and they might even be successful in pushing to privatize Social Security or Medicare. This will not benefit working families. Your power to sway elected representatives should be the same regardless of whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a police officer in a small town. Unfortunately, we are careening toward a world where that is no longer the case and where the average American's voice is drowned out by all the special interests monopolizing our public discourse. Thomas Jefferson once said: The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations. I fear, Mr. President, we are on the brink of just that. The DISCLOSE Act will not fix all the harms of Citizens United, but it is certainly a step forward. It will bring much needed sunshine to our political system which will go a long way toward reducing the number and dishonesty of negative attack ads that further corrode our public dialogue and ultimately threaten our democratic system. I am disappointed my colleagues do not recognize just that, and they have refused to even let us have a full debate on this important bill. I understand we may be taking up a motion for reconsideration, and I urge my colleagues to reconsider and join me in supporting this important piece of legislation and join those of us who are here tonight. If it is allowed to come up for an up-or-down vote, I am confident this body will pass it, and that would be cheered by the American public. In closing, I would like to remind this body of an exchange Benjamin Franklin had with one of the delegates at the closing of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. When asked whether we have either a republic or a monarchy, Dr. Franklin responded: ``A Republic, if you can keep it.'' Our Founders created the greatest Nation in history. It is our job to keep it that way and make sure a nation premised on equality and freedom does not become a nation beholden to just the rich and the powerful.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, our daughters' futures will be as bright as our sons'. That is the American promise. It is the American ideal-- that one's opportunity to prosper--one's economic security--depends not on one's gender but instead on one's work ethic--one's character--one's God-given talents. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was a made by Susan B. Anthony, who dedicated her life to women's suffrage and who famously said, shortly before her passing, that ``failure is impossible.'' History proved her right: 15 years later, women finally were given access to the ballot. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was made a generation later, by thousands of women who--under the banner of Rosie the Riveter--took to the factories and carried our national economy through a period of world war. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, in 1960, was passed over for a Supreme Court clerkship because she was a woman. Undeterred, she went on to start the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, a platform from which she argued several landmark cases. In 1993, she was selected to serve as a justice on the very court that, years before, turned her away. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that is made today--by women like Senator Barbara Mikulski and Senator Patty Murray and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro--women who have settled not for a mere presence in the halls of Congress but who instead have become among its most influential leaders. Generations of women have rejected inferiority. Because of these pioneers, the promise of gender equality in America has become more than just a promise. It has become our law. It is enshrined in the documents by which we are governed. This week, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Title 9, a statute that guarantees equal educational opportunities for boys and girls--for men and women. In just a couple of years, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark legislative achievement that codified our national commitment to ending discrimination in the workplace. So, yes, in America we have made a promise that one's gender will not be the deciding factor between having opportunities and being denied opportunities--between getting a job and being denied one--between getting a promotion and being denied one. We have made that promise. And we've come a long way toward fulfilling it. But we are not there yet. Even though women have been working outside the home for generations, they continue to face barriers in the workplace: Even though about half of all workers are women, only 12 Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that, in 2011, it received nearly 100,000 complaints of discrimination. Statistics show that women still receive unequal pay for equal work. Although this week marks the 40th anniversary of Title 9, it also marks the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Wal- Mart v. Dukes, a decision that has had an enormous impact on workplace rights across the country. On its face, that case was about civil procedure--it was about litigation rules and legal technicalities. But, in a larger sense, the Dukes case was about the current state of our equal employment laws. In that case, a group of women tried to band together to enforce their rights to be free from discrimination--rights afforded them by Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act. The women alleged that their employer's policies allowed bias--rather than performance and merit--to determine who would be promoted or given raises. The evidence in the case indicated that women comprised 70 percent of the employer's hourly workforce but only 33 percent of its management team. The evidence indicated that women were paid less than men in each of the employer's 41 regions. It indicated that managers around the country relied on outdated stereotypes when making employment decisions. Both the trial court and the appellate court agreed that the women should be permitted to try their case as a group. The trial court's and the appellate court's decisions were consistent with precedent. Governing rules said that a group of workers could band together if they first showed, among other things, that their cases shared a common issue of law or fact. This is known as the ``commonality'' requirement. The idea here is that if lots of workers raise a common issue, it's easier for the court to resolve that issue in one case than to resolve it over and over and over again in thousands of different cases. In Dukes, the common, central issue was whether the employer's policy of giving managers unfettered discretion to make pay and promotion decisions resulted in a disparate impact on women. In other words, all of the workers alleged that the employer's policy allowed bias to determine conditions of employment. Because the workers had presented that common question, ``Is the employer's policy discriminatory''; the lower courts concluded that the group could proceed together. But the Supreme Court concluded otherwise. Its rationale was unprecedented. In a 5 to 4 decision, the Court said that, to proceed as a group, the women had to show not only that they were united by a common issue, but also that they ultimately would prevail on that issue at trial. That is, to present their case, the women first had to prove their case. As Justice Ginsburg explained in her dissenting opinion, the Court's decision ``disqualifies the class from the starting gate.'' Since Dukes was decided, dozens of employment discrimination cases effectively have been stopped before they even started. This is a problem. When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Committee responsible for the bill issued a report in which it said that ``[t]he Committee agrees with the courts that Title 7 actions are by their very nature class complaints, and that any restriction on such actions would greatly undermine the effectiveness of Title 7.'' But it doesn't take a Congressional Committee report to understand the effect of the Dukes decision. Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff in the case, put it well when she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She said that, quote, ``[o]ur civil rights are only as valuable as the means that exist to enforce them.'' It is one thing to pass a law saying that men and women should be treated equally. It is another thing to give that law some teeth--to say that we really mean it. The Dukes decision makes it harder for women--for any group of workers, for that matter--to band together to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Unable to band together, many workers may not have access to legal representation. Unable to band together, many workers will choose not to challenge workplace discrimination at all, concluding that the personal costs of doing so--the potential for retaliatory actions-- outweigh any possible benefits. Unable to band together, workers will be less able to use the courts to address employers' discriminatory policies on a company-wide basis. So, today, on the one year anniversary of the Court's decision in Dukes, I rise to introduce the Equal Employment Opportunity Restoration Act. This bill will restore workers' ability to enforce effectively our Nation's antidiscrimination laws. Perhaps as importantly, this bill reaffirms the American promise of workplace equality. The bill creates a new judicial procedure--called a ``group action''--which mirrors the class action procedures that were available to workers before Dukes was decided. Instead of disqualifying workers' cases at the starting gate, this bill says that workers can proceed together if they create a reasonable inference that they were subjected to a discriminatory employment policy or practice. It will be--as it always has been--left to a trial to determine the merits of the workers' allegations and the viability of the employers' defenses. I am proud to introduce this bill with Congresswoman DeLauro and with my Senate colleagues, including Senators Leahy, Mikulski, Murray, and Harkin. I am grateful to the many wonderful organizations in Minnesota and Washington that have worked with me on this bill. They include the National Partnership on Women and Families, the ACLU, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Women's Law Center, the American Association of University Women, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Our daughters' futures will be as bright as our sons'. For more than a century, we have followed a path toward gender equality. The trail has been blazed by generations of women--women whose names are found in the history books, yes, but also by those whose names are not--the working mother who rises before dawn and punches a clock every day so she can support her family--the young woman, fresh out of college, who defies stereotypes and pursues an engineering career--the small business-owner who hires dozens of people in her community. We should continue along the path toward equality in the workplace. We should not stop now. We should not turn back now. The bill that we introduce today says that we won't.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, our daughters' futures will be as bright as our sons'. That is the American promise. It is the American ideal-- that one's opportunity to prosper--one's economic security--depends not on one's gender but instead on one's work ethic--one's character--one's God-given talents. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was a made by Susan B. Anthony, who dedicated her life to women's suffrage and who famously said, shortly before her passing, that ``failure is impossible.'' History proved her right: 15 years later, women finally were given access to the ballot. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was made a generation later, by thousands of women who--under the banner of Rosie the Riveter--took to the factories and carried our national economy through a period of world war. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, in 1960, was passed over for a Supreme Court clerkship because she was a woman. Undeterred, she went on to start the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, a platform from which she argued several landmark cases. In 1993, she was selected to serve as a justice on the very court that, years before, turned her away. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that is made today--by women like Senator Barbara Mikulski and Senator Patty Murray and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro--women who have settled not for a mere presence in the halls of Congress but who instead have become among its most influential leaders. Generations of women have rejected inferiority. Because of these pioneers, the promise of gender equality in America has become more than just a promise. It has become our law. It is enshrined in the documents by which we are governed. This week, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Title 9, a statute that guarantees equal educational opportunities for boys and girls--for men and women. In just a couple of years, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark legislative achievement that codified our national commitment to ending discrimination in the workplace. So, yes, in America we have made a promise that one's gender will not be the deciding factor between having opportunities and being denied opportunities--between getting a job and being denied one--between getting a promotion and being denied one. We have made that promise. And we've come a long way toward fulfilling it. But we are not there yet. Even though women have been working outside the home for generations, they continue to face barriers in the workplace: Even though about half of all workers are women, only 12 Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that, in 2011, it received nearly 100,000 complaints of discrimination. Statistics show that women still receive unequal pay for equal work. Although this week marks the 40th anniversary of Title 9, it also marks the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Wal- Mart v. Dukes, a decision that has had an enormous impact on workplace rights across the country. On its face, that case was about civil procedure--it was about litigation rules and legal technicalities. But, in a larger sense, the Dukes case was about the current state of our equal employment laws. In that case, a group of women tried to band together to enforce their rights to be free from discrimination--rights afforded them by Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act. The women alleged that their employer's policies allowed bias--rather than performance and merit--to determine who would be promoted or given raises. The evidence in the case indicated that women comprised 70 percent of the employer's hourly workforce but only 33 percent of its management team. The evidence indicated that women were paid less than men in each of the employer's 41 regions. It indicated that managers around the country relied on outdated stereotypes when making employment decisions. Both the trial court and the appellate court agreed that the women should be permitted to try their case as a group. The trial court's and the appellate court's decisions were consistent with precedent. Governing rules said that a group of workers could band together if they first showed, among other things, that their cases shared a common issue of law or fact. This is known as the ``commonality'' requirement. The idea here is that if lots of workers raise a common issue, it's easier for the court to resolve that issue in one case than to resolve it over and over and over again in thousands of different cases. In Dukes, the common, central issue was whether the employer's policy of giving managers unfettered discretion to make pay and promotion decisions resulted in a disparate impact on women. In other words, all of the workers alleged that the employer's policy allowed bias to determine conditions of employment. Because the workers had presented that common question, ``Is the employer's policy discriminatory''; the lower courts concluded that the group could proceed together. But the Supreme Court concluded otherwise. Its rationale was unprecedented. In a 5 to 4 decision, the Court said that, to proceed as a group, the women had to show not only that they were united by a common issue, but also that they ultimately would prevail on that issue at trial. That is, to present their case, the women first had to prove their case. As Justice Ginsburg explained in her dissenting opinion, the Court's decision ``disqualifies the class from the starting gate.'' Since Dukes was decided, dozens of employment discrimination cases effectively have been stopped before they even started. This is a problem. When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Committee responsible for the bill issued a report in which it said that ``[t]he Committee agrees with the courts that Title 7 actions are by their very nature class complaints, and that any restriction on such actions would greatly undermine the effectiveness of Title 7.'' But it doesn't take a Congressional Committee report to understand the effect of the Dukes decision. Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff in the case, put it well when she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She said that, quote, ``[o]ur civil rights are only as valuable as the means that exist to enforce them.'' It is one thing to pass a law saying that men and women should be treated equally. It is another thing to give that law some teeth--to say that we really mean it. The Dukes decision makes it harder for women--for any group of workers, for that matter--to band together to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Unable to band together, many workers may not have access to legal representation. Unable to band together, many workers will choose not to challenge workplace discrimination at all, concluding that the personal costs of doing so--the potential for retaliatory actions-- outweigh any possible benefits. Unable to band together, workers will be less able to use the courts to address employers' discriminatory policies on a company-wide basis. So, today, on the one year anniversary of the Court's decision in Dukes, I rise to introduce the Equal Employment Opportunity Restoration Act. This bill will restore workers' ability to enforce effectively our Nation's antidiscrimination laws. Perhaps as importantly, this bill reaffirms the American promise of workplace equality. The bill creates a new judicial procedure--called a ``group action''--which mirrors the class action procedures that were available to workers before Dukes was decided. Instead of disqualifying workers' cases at the starting gate, this bill says that workers can proceed together if they create a reasonable inference that they were subjected to a discriminatory employment policy or practice. It will be--as it always has been--left to a trial to determine the merits of the workers' allegations and the viability of the employers' defenses. I am proud to introduce this bill with Congresswoman DeLauro and with my Senate colleagues, including Senators Leahy, Mikulski, Murray, and Harkin. I am grateful to the many wonderful organizations in Minnesota and Washington that have worked with me on this bill. They include the National Partnership on Women and Families, the ACLU, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Women's Law Center, the American Association of University Women, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Our daughters' futures will be as bright as our sons'. For more than a century, we have followed a path toward gender equality. The trail has been blazed by generations of women--women whose names are found in the history books, yes, but also by those whose names are not--the working mother who rises before dawn and punches a clock every day so she can support her family--the young woman, fresh out of college, who defies stereotypes and pursues an engineering career--the small business-owner who hires dozens of people in her community. We should continue along the path toward equality in the workplace. We should not stop now. We should not turn back now. The bill that we introduce today says that we won't.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Monday, June 18, 2012, at 5 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 612; that there be 30 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of the time, the Senate proceed to vote without interviewing action or debate on the nomination; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H. Con. Res. 128.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 3 p.m., Monday, June 18; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the majority leader be recognized, and that at 5 p.m. the Senate proceed to executive session under the previous order.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, we continue to work on an agreement on amendments to the farm bill. We hope such an agreement can be reached. At 5:30 p.m., Monday, there will be a rollcall vote on confirmation of the Lewis nomination.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, as if in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the action of reporting the nomination of Erica Lynn Groshen be vitiated.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.