Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, is it necessary for me to ask unanimous consent to set the pending amendment aside?

Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRASSLEY. For the sake of my colleagues, the amendment that I sent to the desk is the White House-centrist bipartisan bill that was pending in the Senate--not pending but was filed after it passed the House of Representatives before the holidays with one slight modification that represents the Bond amendment on expensing, which was adopted. Otherwise, the amendment is the same as what has passed the House of Representatives and the President said he would sign. I hope we have an opportunity to get 60 votes for cloture on the amendment and that we are able to get that amendment adopted, get the bill to the President for signature, and consequently, then, immediately--not 3 or 4 months down the road when we have a conference committee trying to reach some agreement--get help to stimulate the economy through accelerated depreciation for business, through middle- income-tax reduction, making it permanent the 27-percent bracket down to 25-percent bracket, and tax rebates for low-income people to stimulate the economy on the demand side, consumer spending. All three are meant to create jobs and will create jobs. Also, this amendment is for the displaced workers; those mostly affected because of what happened on September 11 will get an increase of unemployment compensation of 13 weeks and a 60-percent tax credit for health insurance, and we do it in a way that people can have the option, if they do not want COBRA, to have other insurance, and also to help those who did not have any COBRA insurance where last employed. It is a well-rounded stimulus package that will get the job done. The fact that it passed the House of Representatives and will be signed by the President is reason enough for this body to adopt it, particularly because in this body nothing gets done that is not bipartisan. This has bipartisan support. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, as people who are watching know, we are in debate on the economic stimulus package with Members on both the Republican side, as well as the Democratic side, offering amendments to the underlying bill the Senate majority leader put down about a week ago. We are going to work our way through those amendments. I go back to what I call square one and remind our colleagues and the people of this country there has already been a bill passed in the House of Representatives, a bill the President said he would sign, a bill I hope we get a chance to vote on before we finish work on the economic stimulus package, a bill I hope will become the law of this land, one that is truly bipartisan and truly is a stimulus. I call that the White House-centrist stimulus plan. This bill that has passed the House of Representatives, that the President said he would sign, is something for the most part that has been worked out by Members of this body, not the other body, people who are Republican and Democrat, in the middle of the political spectrum of the Senate. Since it is bipartisan, since the President had an opportunity to meet with a bipartisan group and said he would sign it, before the holidays the House of Representatives went ahead and passed the bill. We did not have an opportunity to vote on it before the holidays because of the fact the majority leader sets the agenda for the Senate, and he did not see fit to bring it up. I will explain this plan so people know we do have a bipartisan proposal, not only a bipartisan proposal that would have bipartisan support in the Senate but one that has passed the House of Representatives and that would be signed by the President of the United States. As we think of the 800,000 people who are unemployed since the September 11 terrorist attacks, there would be some hope for those people in this legislation. I will name just a couple before I go into greater detail. One, a 13-week extension on unemployment benefits, beyond the 26 weeks that States otherwise provide. Second, provision of health insurance benefits for those people who would have had health insurance where they were last employed, even for people who did not have health insurance before they were laid off. They would get some benefit of that program, as well. If we can get this passed, it will take a lot of anxiety out of the daily lives of those unemployed people. A bipartisan benefit is needed to help dislocated workers. Another has tax provisions and investment provisions that would actually stimulate the economy to create jobs. The plan's unemployment insurance proposal represents an unprecedented commitment to American workers. It provides up to 13 weeks of additional unemployment benefits to eligible workers. An estimated 3 million unemployed workers would qualify for benefits, averaging $230 a week. These benefits would be 100-percent federally funded, meaning the States and the businesses in the respective States that support the unemployment trust fund would not have to have any tax increase as a result of what we are doing in mandating an additional 13 weeks. The plan transfers an additional $9 billion from Federal funds to State unemployment trust funds. This transfer provides the States with the flexibility to pay administrative costs and provide these additional benefits. Obviously, the intended purpose is to avoid raising their unemployment taxes during the current recession. We know it is bad to have a policy of a tax increase during a recession. That tends to make the recession worse. Also, in regard to the bipartisan White House-centrist plan is the plan's commitment to provide health care for dislocated workers. This is something that has never been done at a time this country has been in recession. This would be quite a departure from past social policies of our Government for a social contract with our people. It goes further and wider than any other proposal and gets more help to more people more quickly than any other proposal. When I say ``any other proposal,'' I mean all of these proposals are precedent-breaking for social policy of our Federal Government in helping unemployed people get partial payment or support for their health insurance. Several proposals have been put forth before the body. This White House-centrist proposal actually gets help almost immediately to those people who need it by getting a certificate at the time they apply for unemployment that can be used kind of like a voucher to buy health insurance. It commits over $19 billion to this health insurance assistance. This is over six times as much money for the temporary health insurance assistance that was provided under the original stimulus proposals. The White House-centrist plan takes a three-pronged approach to getting health insurance assistance to the people in need. First, the plan provides a refundable, advanceable tax credit to all displaced workers eligible for unemployment insurance. This goes beyond the present policy, COBRA insurance, that people can pay out of their own pocket once they are laid off, continuing, though, the insurance they had where they last worked for 18 months. We are through this legislation allowing the unemployed who had insurance where they previously worked to continue that health insurance and to have some help for the first time in paying for it, but it will go to those who were not covered by the COBRA policy, as well. The value of the credit would be 6 percent of the premium. The credit has no cap, so regardless of what the cost was to the employee and the employer where they previously worked, they will be able to continue to pay that full policy. Of course, this is available to individuals for a total of 12 months during their unemployment if that should happen anytime between the years 2002 and 2003. Individuals can stay with their employer COBRA coverage or they can choose policies in the individual market that may better fit their family needs. Obviously, this makes sense. If you want to lock people just into their COBRA policies, it forces people to stay with those policies that could be too expensive to keep when they are unemployed, even considering subsidy. The White House-centrist bipartisan bill also includes a major new insurance reform to protect people who have had employer-sponsored coverage and go out into the private market for the first time after being laid off. It makes COBRA protections available to people who have had only 12 months of employer-sponsored coverage rather than 18 months as under current law. By doing this, we greatly expand the group of displaced workers who cannot be turned down for coverage or excluded because of preexisting conditions. The new 12-month standard is especially important for people with chronic conditions who have difficulty affording coverage on their own without the Federal law helping these people get coverage that perhaps they otherwise would not get. The second prong of the White House-centrist bipartisan proposal is $4 billion for the States for enhanced national emergency grants which can be used to help all workers, not just those eligible for tax credits, to pay for health insurance. Finally, the third prong of the proposal includes $4.3 billion for one-time temporary State health care assistance payments to the States to help bolster their Medicaid Programs. We know the Medicaid Program is an important safety net for low-income children and families and disabled individuals. I detract a bit for a moment from my remarks, specifically about the White House-centrist bipartisan proposal that I hope we get a vote on, to speak about this $4.3 billion one-time temporary State health care assistance to help the Medicaid Program. We had a debate last week on two amendments that were put forth to supplement Federal Medicaid payments to the States because States in financial trouble are having difficulty keeping their commitments under the Medicaid Program. Even though the amendments offered last week were a little bit more money than what we are talking in the bill that passed the House, and that the President would have signed if the Senate acted on it before Christmas, the fact is that the States would have $4.3 billion in their treasuries right now to take care of some of these needs, except for the fact that we were not able to bring this bill up on the floor of the Senate prior to the Christmas holidays. This seems to be very important because, at the time before the holidays, the National Governors Association was asking for $5.1 billion of temporary help to the States for their Medicaid Programs. Obviously, $4.3 billion is not $5.1 billion. But the fact is, we could have had this $4.3 billion in the State treasuries right now, rather than having to debate that either in the White House-centrist bipartisan bill or in the amendments that were offered to the underlying bill last week. For instance, I met with legislators in my State of Iowa during the interim between adjournment on December 21 and our reconvening on January 23. During that period of time, they were bringing this up with me, speaking with me about the problems they were going to have keeping their Medicare commitments and that they really wished they had help from the Federal Government in this regard. I had an opportunity to remind them that I had a telephone conference call with a lot of Republican and Democrat legislative leaders, along with some administration people of my Governor, Vilsack, as well as Governor Vilsack himself, to discuss this very issue early last December at the time the National Governors Association was lobbying for that $5.1 billion of Medicaid supplement. I obviously had sympathy for our legislators, knowing that we had an opportunity to pass this bipartisan White House-centrist plan with the $4.3 billion in it that would have been in the treasuries of the States at that particular time. I reminded them that maybe Governors, instead of working with those of us in Congress who were sympathetic to their cause, probably should have spent their time talking to the Senate majority leader about bringing that bill up before Christmas so this $4.3 billion could have already been in the State treasuries. With that parenthetical on a very small issue of this White House- centrist bipartisan plan--that could have passed the Senate because it had bipartisan support, if we would have been able to bring it up last Christmas--I now move to discuss the individual income-tax reductions in this White House-centrist plan. This is really the stimulus part of this bill. The other part obviously addressed the need to help dislocated workers, people who are anxious because they are laid off. There are about 800,000 people who would probably not otherwise have been unemployed except for the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. This White House-centrist plan would accelerate the reduction of the 27-percent income-tax rate to 25 percent. Otherwise, this 25-percent rate is not scheduled to go into effect until the year 2007. Remember, the President signed a tax bill on June 7, last year, which was the largest tax reduction passed by the Congress in 20 years. That bill, signed by the President, did reduce some rates immediately. But it also scheduled various rate reductions in the year 2004 and 2006, both for all the rates except for the 10-percent rate and also the 15-percent rate, which were already low and had the benefit of other tax reductions, such as marriage penalty and child credit, and the refundable tax credit as well. So what we do as an economic stimulus in the White House-centrist plan is speed up from the year 2007 to immediately, the year 2002, that 25-percent bracket but only that bracket. We do not touch the 35-percent bracket, for instance, which will not materialize until the year 2007. The reduction of the 27-percent rate is going to benefit singles with taxable incomes as low as $27,000, heads of households with taxable income as low as $36,000, and married couples with taxable incomes as low as $45,000. Obviously, what we are trying to do by gearing this rate reduction to make it permanent immediately, from 27 percent down to 25, is to make sure that people with incomes as low as $27,000, $36,000, and $45,000 have an opportunity to have less money taken from their paycheck. They would have that money in their pocket. They could spend it or invest it. Whatever they do with it, it would be a stimulus to the economy and probably much more beneficial as a stimulus to the economy than any of the other things we are doing, particularly including speeding up the accelerated depreciation for corporations and even small businesses. I hope it is very clear from my concentrating on the lowest income that this is applicable to, for the 25-percent bracket, that these are not wealthy individuals. These are middle-class, working Americans. The Treasury Department has estimated that the White House-centrist plan's acceleration of the 27-percent rate reduction will yield $17.9 billion of tax relief in the year 2002 for over 36 million taxpayers, or approximately one-third of all income level taxpayers. Also, business owners and entrepreneurs account for about 10 million of those benefiting from rate reduction. When you can do things to help small businesses, particularly small businesses that are not incorporated, you are helping the people who create jobs in America. So these small business people will benefit from this rate reduction from 27 percent down to 25 percent as well. The White House-centrist plan also provides cash supplements to lower income persons who did not participate in last year's tax rebate. The amounts would be the same as the rebate that was signed by the President on June 7 last year: $300 for each individual, $600 for married filing jointly, and $500 for heads of household. The advantage of the tax rebate in this instance, on the stimulus plan, is philosophically exactly the same as we had in mind last spring when we passed the bill signed by the President with the tax rebates in it. That was to get money out immediately, particularly to lower income people who maybe have a tendency to spend it more than people who get rebates--people who have higher incomes, and stimulate the economy for the benefit of the demand side of the equation because that also creates jobs. So we are talking about individual rate reductions for middle-income people as a stimulus to the economy, we are talking about tax rebates for lower income people as a stimulus to the economy, and soon I am going to be speaking about bonus depreciation for businesses to encourage investment in businesses, large and small, to have another way of stimulating the economy. The 30-percent bonus depreciation is one way of doing it. The small business expensing amount from $24,000 to $35,000 is the second way of doing it through business investment. This will further stimulate purchasing by small businesses. The bipartisan White House-centrist plan also expands the net operating loss carryback period from 3 years to 5 years. This will allow businesses that are experiencing losses to improve their cashflow by reclaiming taxes paid to prior profitable years. The plan also eliminates components of the alternative minimum tax that most often causes corporation taxes to increase during an economic downturn. Oddly enough, under the alternative minimum tax, when a corporation's income goes down, it can actually be penalized through having additional taxes applied to them through the alternative minimum tax. I want to make very clear that this bill does not refund any alternative minimum tax credits that were accumulated over prior years. For instance, last fall you heard about the first bill to pass the House of Representatives. That bill has been shoved to the side. It is not the bill I am talking about here--the White House-centrist plan that for a second time passed the House of Representatives before Christmas. But that first proposal in the House of Representatives would have given cash refunds all at once for the alternative minimum tax credits. You have recently been reading--and have discussed, I presume--about that plan which would have given Enron hundreds of millions of dollars for previous alternative minimum tax credits. The White House-centrist plan, which passed the House of Representatives, as I said, as differentiated from that first bill that passed the House of Representatives, does not have the refund of those accumulated tax credits. So Enron would not benefit to the great extent you have been reading about in the papers. That is not stimulative. We didn't leave that out because of Enron. Enron was not an issue at the time this White House-centrist plan was written. We did it because refunding those tax credits is not a stimulus to the economy. We want this bill to be a stimulus to the economy as well as to dislocated workers through their time of anxiety and unemployment. The White House-centrist package is a solid economic stimulus plan. It is a compassionate plan that puts displaced workers first, and it is a bipartisan plan that has votes of enough Republicans and Democrats to pass. Albeit, I confess, if somebody wants to say they don't want anything going through the Senate that doesn't have at least 60 votes to stop a filibuster, this would not have 60 votes. It seems to me that should not have been an issue prior to the holidays when we weren't allowed to bring this bill up, when you consider that the former Secretary of Treasury under the Clinton administration was saying we ought to have a stimulus package. Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman, was saying we ought to have a stimulus package. The President of the United States and leaders of both political parties in the House of Representatives and in the Senate were saying we ought to have a stimulus package. Albeit, what kind of a stimulus package? There was some disagreement over that. But at the time of adjournment just before the holidays we had a bipartisan vote to get this bill to the President, and we weren't able to bring it up. That was a time of anxiety. We could have put that anxiety behind for all of these people who are unemployed and we would not be debating this issue right now. We have lost, I suppose, 5 or 6 weeks since our adjournment prior to Christmas. Here we are debating a stimulus package. I hope we have a chance to reach an agreement and get this completed and hopefully avoid a conference with the House. But if we have to go to conference with the House, we will have a stimulus package. Quite frankly, there are Members of this body who probably thought before Christmas that we would definitely need a stimulus package who now may have some question about it, considering the fact that unemployment last month was stable and because of the fact that we had a two-tenths percent growth of gross domestic product the last quarter of last year. Economists tell us they think the economy is turning around. I tend to see those as good prospects for the continued growth of the economy. But the reason I want a stimulus package even in light of all of that is the fact that most recessions after an uptick--in other words, in a recovery, there is growth but then there is a downtick somewhere along the line. Two or three-quarters out, there is a downturn in the economy, not having an official recession, which is a two-quarters downturn. If we can pass a stimulus package even in light of what we hope is an improving economy, it seems to me that we could have an insurance policy against having a downtick in the recovery as we have had in most recoveries in recent decades. We have an opportunity to do for the unemployed workers two things: One, help them during this time of unemployment with additional unemployment compensation of 13 weeks, and to help with their insurance costs that they might not otherwise be able to keep during their time of unemployment. But most importantly, because workers would rather have a job than have unemployment checks, we have an opportunity through the tax rebate for low-income people, through the 25-percent bracket for middle-income taxpayers, and through the accelerated depreciation for corporations and the expensing for small businesses, to create jobs. These workers, then, would get their paychecks from their own productivity. That is what the workers of America want. That is why we should have an opportunity to pass this White House- centrist bipartisan bill that has passed the House of Representatives. It can be brought up in the Senate at any time, and we can get it to the President with the assurance that the President will sign it. That is what the President said he would do. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, it is really above my pay grade to respond to what the distinguished Senate majority leader said because there are other Republicans who are likely to do that. I don't do it as a leader, but I want to observe some things which have been said and to respond to them kind of in the sense of how I see it as one Senator, the Senator from Iowa. I happen to be the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee that has jurisdiction over tax legislation, tax credits, health insurance, unemployment compensation, and most issues that deal with the stimulus package. My involvement, particularly with Senator Baucus as chairman of the committee, and obviously the top Democrat on the committee, has been in trying to arrive at some sort of bipartisan agreement on a stimulus package. We are not given much credit for what we have tried to do, if you compare the environment laid out by the Senate majority leader. For instance, I don't think it takes into consideration the fact that sometimes during our negotiations Senator Baucus was under an unwritten rule laid down by the Senate majority leader that if two-thirds of the Democrat caucus didn't agree with what he was negotiating or what he had agreed to, then it could not be accepted. That probably wasn't meant as a hard and fast rule, but it was surely interpreted as putting Senator Baucus in an impossible position to negotiate. If Senator Lott, as my leader, told me to not negotiate for anything if you do not have two-thirds of the Republican caucus behind it, effectively that would end negotiations. I wouldn't want to be negotiating under those circumstances. I do not know how you can arrive at agreement. If both political parties had a rule that you couldn't negotiate anything unless at least two-thirds of each caucus was behind it, that would be like saying you ought to have two-thirds of the Senate to pass any bill. We have some very conservative Members in the Republican Party--one-third of our group would be about 16 or 17 people--who could nullify anything I was negotiating because I am not as conservative as they are. If they had a veto over it, nothing could be done. On the same hand, there are probably 16 to 17 very liberal Members of the Democrat Party. If they have a veto over some of the things we are trying to get and which the center core of the Senate can agree to, nothing is going to be negotiated on that side either. That was the situation we had sometimes during the debate last fall.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield without giving up the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I grant the Senator from Montana 2 more minutes.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I raise a point of order under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act against the pending amendment, which is No. 2719, for exceeding the spending allocations of the Senate Committee on Finance.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator McCain, I call up amendment No. 2700, and I ask unanimous consent that it be explained and then laid aside.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment of the Senator from Virginia be set aside.

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

Mr. GRASSLEY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Since we started the other day with an agreement to go back and forth with one Democratic amendment and one Republican amendment, we will stick with that.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, if what the Senator is saying is that when it comes to a Member who offered four amendments, we would only vote on one of his amendments and alternate back and forth. Is that your goal?

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I believe we have consent from the other side to let the Senator from Virginia speak longer.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask unanimous consent to give the Senator 3 additional minutes, Mr. President.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator McCain, I ask unanimous consent that his legislative fellow, Navy Lieutenant Commander Paul Gronemeyer, be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of the Adoption Tax Credit Act.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Does the Senator from Minnesota want some time?

Mr. GRASSLEY. First of all, I need to know how much time our side has.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I will yield myself such time as I might consume. If anybody on my side would like to have some time, I will be glad to share some time with them. First, I have a philosophical comment based on the history of unemployment compensation legislation. We have set some national policy, but the details of our unemployment compensation regime historically--and I think I would be referring to six or seven decades of American history--have been left to the States to fill in the details. That is because we were then and still are a Nation that is very geographically vast and a country where our population is very heterogeneous--more so now than 70 years ago--to a point where Members of Congress and Presidents have felt it would be wrong to pour one mold in Washington, DC, that we would call an unemployment compensation insurance mold and have our country, which varies from one State to another--and the needs of one State to another, consequently, vary-- that it would be wrong to pour that mold in Washington and force every State to treat unemployed workers exactly the same way. All knowledge doesn't repose here in Washington, DC. There is a great deal of knowledge--maybe more so--with the State legislators than in Washington, DC. Consequently, we have left it to the wisdom of a lot of States to do, in a sense, their own thing with the broad Federal policy--how to treat and compensate the safety net of unemployment insurance. Now we have this approach, which I would not characterize as federalizing unemployment compensation, but obviously it federalizes to a much greater extent than we have right now the unemployment compensation legislation. Again, we are going to say--if we adopt this--that there is more wisdom in Washington, DC, and in the Congress of the U.S. than in the New York legislature or the Illinois legislature as to how unemployed people in those States ought to be treated or compensated, et cetera. I oppose this amendment on that philosophical ground. But to be more specific, as an example of the wisdom that the Senator from Illinois is saying through his amendment that he knows better how part-time workers ought to be treated than the State legislatures do. Several States do allow part-time workers to be covered. My State of Iowa is one of those States that has decided to cover part-time workers. So the legislature of my State, a very small State of 3 million people, with a low unemployment rate of 3 and a half percent right now--you might think, what is there about the Iowa legislature that they would cover part-time workers and some other larger State might not. Why did we leave it to the people of my State, the elected legislators, to make that determination? Why is not important. The fact is they did it. They did it because Congress, over several decades, has said we are going to leave that decision to the State legislatures. Why do we think that we have all the answers here in Washington, DC? So it is fair to say that part-time workers are already eligible for unemployment benefits because there are no States that disqualify unemployed workers merely because they work part time. The issue is whether part-time workers should be allowed to collect unemployment benefits while refusing to accept a full-time job. If a job is available, why should any worker collect unemployment instead of going back to work? Part-time workers--in other words, if there is a job available--should not be on unemployment compensation. Unemployment compensation is not an incentive to keep you out of the workforce. It is historically--and rightfully so--to tide you over from a period of being disconnected with one job until you get back to that job, or until you have an opportunity to take a job someplace else. Part-time workers are not entitled to benefits simply because their employer paid unemployment taxes. Employers pay unemployment taxes on numerous categories of workers who are not entitled to benefits, for that matter. Such categories would include corporate officers, full- time students, professional athletes, workers who quit their jobs, workers who are not seeking work, workers who are not available for work, and workers who even refuse suitable work. There are a number of States that allow workers to limit their job search to part-time employment and still collect unemployment compensation. If that is what that State decides it wants to do, let that State do it accordingly. However, this is voluntary State decision. The Federal Government has never dictated such eligibility standards to the States. There is no need for Congress to preempt State decisions on this matter. Expanding eligibility on the basis of part-time work would create new administrative burdens on the respective States. The States would have to decide what hours of the day and what days of the week are suitable for part-time work. As an example, if a worker loses his Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, noon to 3 p.m. cashier job, can that person still collect unemployment benefits if he refuses to accept a Thursday, Friday, Saturday 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. cashier job? So State unemployment agencies, right now, lack the resources that it takes to investigate contested claims, like I just described, and others that are too numerous to describe at this point. Thus, it is for that administrative body to make accurate determinations so that you have the enforcement of the unemployment compensation laws done in a fair way. That is why it is wrong, it seems to me, to establish this policy, as if Congress knows what is best for the 50 States and knows that it can be enforced in a certain way, or let the individual State legislatures make the determination on how they want to expand their unemployment compensation laws, and at the same time they will know whether or not they have the administrative capability of enforcing the law the way the State legislature put it. Case law for part-time workers is going to take years to develop. It is not going to take years in Iowa because we have that decision made and there is a lot of case law there right now. Most part-time workers live with other workers. Thirty-five percent are married with a working spouse. Thirty percent of these part-time workers are children with working parents. Most of the time when workers live with another worker, they will have less incentive to seek new employment--a factor that should be taken into consideration when you start to cover a new class of people at the Federal level without letting the States make that determination. One of the premises of unemployment compensation for anybody is that you be actively seeking a job, that you are out there going door to door to put in your application, asking if there are any vacancies, and to try to benefit yourself during a process in which you are being helped by the unemployment compensation regime to make sure that you have basic necessities while you are trying to make this determination. It is not meant to pay people who are not actively seeking jobs. So there ought to be some relationship between those and the extent to which we include part-time workers. Without the State making that determination, there might not be that continued relationship that is a basic philosophical underpinning of our unemployment compensation laws. It seems to me that if we allow this disincentive in accepting new employment, this will lead to longer and more frequent spells of unemployment, more Government spending, and, in the process, reduced economic growth because economic growth is directly related to the productivity of the workers. Moreover, the provision we are discussing will allow full-time workers to switch to part-time status for unemployment purposes. This will result in even more unemployment and further loss of economic output. At this point, I am going to yield the floor for colleagues, but I have only spoken to one part of the Durbin amendment, that part dealing with covering part-time workers. There are other parts to it, but I think my underlying philosophical objection will apply to all parts: that all knowledge on unemployment compensation does not rest in the Congress of the United States. We have had this seven-decade tradition of leaving it to the States to fill in the details. This amendment departs from that tradition. Why should we depart from that tradition? We are departing during a time of 5.8-percent unemployment. We did not depart to this extent when we had 10- and 12- percent unemployment, or at least on all these parts that the Senator from Illinois will try to change. I yield the floor.