Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, with the close of the 112th Congress, the Senate will lose its most determined champion of fiscal prudence and balance, Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. Senator Conrad is best known nationally for his leadership as chairman of the Committee on the Budget. Again, that committee has limited legislative power, but that did not stop Senator Conrad from using that committee relentlessly for fiscal restraint, for honest budgeting. As we all know, he has spent countless hours on the floor educating, exhorting Senators on budget issues, driving home his points by displaying a seemingly endless array of charts and graphs. Indeed, I would note in 2001, the Committee on Rules and Administration assigned Senator Conrad his own printing equipment because he was producing more charts than all his colleagues combined. The other day, we had this so-called Secret Santa that Senator Franken had established, where we draw names out of a hat and we exchange these little gifts. You never know who is going to give you a gift. You know to whom you are giving, but you do not know who is giving you a gift. It turned out my gift giver was Senator Conrad. So I got a nice little book. But most importantly, I got three charts. They were charts from the 2008 farm bill we both worked on, and of which I was chairman at that time. I thought that was a great gift, both to get some of his charts but the charts pertaining to a major piece of legislation on which both he and I had worked very closely. We have been long-time colleagues on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. He joined that committee as a freshman Senator in 1987, just 2 years after I got here in 1985. We were in the midst of the worst economic crisis in the farm sector since the Great Depression. Senator Conrad left a major imprint on the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, advocating strongly for measures to help farm families and rural committees persevere through circumstances beyond their control, to preserve a family farm system of agriculture as well as to preserve small towns, the fabric of rural America. Over the years Senator Conrad has been a key advocate in enacting major drought relief bills and other disaster assistance. He has consistently fought for effective programs to protect and enhance farm income through the farm commodity programs and crop insurance. For many years we have been allies in advancing farm bill initiatives to promote renewable energy production on farms and in rural communities. Let no one doubt that Senator Conrad has always been a relentless, fierce advocate for the interests of his constituents in North Dakota. I know Kent is very proud of a framed resolution presented to him by his State's Standing Rock Sioux tribe. It bears his honorary Sioux name, Namni Sni, which translates as ``never turns back.'' I think that describes Kent Conrad. He never turns back. Kent Conrad and I are proud of our shared roots in the upper Midwest. He has been an outstanding Senator, a good friend for more than two and one-half decades in this body. I join with the entire Senate family in wishing Kent and Lucy all the best in the years ahead. Dick Lugar In these closing weeks of the 112th Congress, the Senate is saying farewell to a number of retiring colleagues. One of our most poignant farewells is to a Member respected and esteemed on both sides of the aisle. I speak of Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana. He is a friend, a fellow Midwesterner. But to all of us, he is much more. Dick Lugar is truly a Senator's Senator. He epitomizes the very best in this institution, and it is a sad commentary on the state of our Nation's politics that the main reason why Senator Lugar is leaving the Senate is because his primary opponent attacked him for the very qualities we admire and need here: his readiness to forge fair and honorable compromises, his insistence on putting country ahead of party or ideology, his enormous decency and civility. As we all know, Senator Lugar has been the Senate's most passionate and effective advocate of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation. The program he created with former Senator Sam Nunn has assisted Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union to secure and dispose of their weapons of mass destruction. What an amazing accomplishment by Senator Lugar. I also want to salute Senator Lugar's record of principled, conscientious leadership on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, including as chairman from 1995 to 2001. He is a key author of landmark measures strengthening Federal agricultural conservation policies and programs, particularly in the 1985 farm bill and succeeding farm bills. He has been instrumental in strengthening--and in fighting for at critical junctures--Federal nutrition assistance, including school lunch, breakfast, and other child nutrition programs through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and through support for food banks and other emergency food assistance. Dick Lugar has also been an outstanding leader in enacting Federal initiatives to research, develop, and market farm and forest commodities by converting them to energy and bio-based products. For me, it has been a great honor to be Senator Lugar's friend and colleague for 36 years and to serve all of that time with him on the Agriculture Committee. Our friendship, of course, will continue, but I will miss, as we all will, Senator Lugar's calm, positive, always constructive influence on this body. Across 36 years of distinguished service, this Senator and statesman has faithfully served the people of Indiana and the United States. There is no doubt that he will pursue new avenues of public service in retirement. So I will miss his day-to-day friendship and his counsel in the Senate. I wish Dick and his wonderful wife Char all the best in the years ahead. Daniel Akaka Mr. President, we are bidding farewell to one of our most respected and beloved Members, Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii or, as we all know him, ``Danny.'' With his retirement, our friend is bringing to a close a remarkable and distinguished career in public service spanning nearly seven decades. Having witnessed, as a 17-year-old boy, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he took a civilian job with the Army Corps of Engineers before joining the U.S. Army in 1945. We honor him, along with his senior colleague from Hawaii, Senator Inouye, and Senator Lautenberg, as the only veterans of World War II still serving in the Senate. Not surprisingly, Senator Akaka has been a leader on veterans issues. He served as chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs in the 110th and 111th Congresses, and he remained active on that committee despite relinquishing his chairmanship in the current Congress in order to chair the Committee on Indian Affairs. We will not soon forget Senator Akaka's retort when another Senator was holding up a package of veterans benefits, demanding that the costs of the veterans benefits be offset. Senator Akaka calmly, very deliberately argued that the costs did not need to be offset, stating: The price has already been paid, many times over, by the service of the brave men and women who wore our Nation's uniform. Needless to say, Senator Akaka carried the day. Senator Akaka has played a leading role in demanding improvements in the handling of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries sustained by service men and women. In 2009, he joined with Senator Inouye in securing compensation for Filipino veterans of World War II who fought for the United States. Senator Akaka is the only ethnic, Native Hawaiian to serve in this body. Throughout his congressional career, including 4 years in the House and 22 years in the Senate, he has been a determined and impassioned advocate for the people of his State of Hawaii. He has fought for legislation that would grant Federal recognition to ethnic Native Hawaiians, the same recognition we have granted to American Indians and Native Alaskans. In 1993, President Clinton signed a resolution sponsored by Senator Akaka officially apologizing on behalf of the U.S. Government for overthrowing Hawaii's last monarch a century earlier. In so many ways, Senator Akaka represents the Senate at its very best--the Senate the way it used to be in less partisan times. He works tirelessly behind the scenes, and he shuns the media limelight. He prides himself on reaching across the aisle and forging honorable compromises. He is the ultimate gentleman, and his word is his bond. Across these many years Danny Akaka has been a wonderful friend and colleague. Of course, that friendship will continue, and I will miss him in the Senate. I join with the entire Senate family in wishing Danny and Millie all the best in the years ahead. Jeff Bingaman

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, with the close of the 112th Congress, our good friend and colleague Senator Herb Kohl is retiring after four terms of dedicated service to this body, the people of Wisconsin and the United States. As a Senator, Herb Kohl has shown the same dedication and work ethic that previously allowed him to build his family-owned business into a nationally known brand name. Indeed, during his 24 years in this body, he has been a classic workhorse Senator, as opposed to a show horse Senator. Few Senators have been more willing to shun the limelight and share the credit in order to get important things done for the people of this country. Senator Kohl is also a proud and principled progressive. His work in the Senate brings to mind the great words of the late Senator Hubert Humphrey: The moral test of government is how its government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. Senator Kohl has been respected as a leading advocate on children's issues. For instance, he authored legislation to expand the school breakfast program and has been a strong supporter of child nutrition programs. He also authored legislation requiring that handguns be sold with separate child safety locks. Of course, as chair of the Special Committee on Aging, he has led the charge in the Senate on issues affecting older Americans, something especially important in my State of Iowa. In particular, I salute Senator Kohl for authoring the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, which was included in the Affordable Care Act. The Sunshine Act, which was the focus of a series of hearings chaired by Senator Kohl, will require transparency and disclosure on payments made to doctors and surgeons by drug and medical device companies. Senator Kohl has been our leader in improving the safety and quality of nursing homes, ensuring criminal background checks for employees in nursing homes, and working with CMS to institute new and meaningful quality ratings for nursing homes. Senator Kohl and I worked together, in my capacity as chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on legislative reform of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation and its outside board. Senator Kohl also deserves enormous credit for his committee's indepth hearings and reports identifying financial scams and abuses targeting seniors and the elderly. Herb Kohl is a good friend, and he has been an outstanding Senator. He has accomplished many things during his four terms in the Senate. But I can think of no greater accolade than to say, simply, that Herb Kohl is a good, decent, honorable person with a passion for social and economic justice and a determination to make life better for ordinary Americans. I join with the entire Senate family in wishing Herb the very best in the years ahead.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to rise to express my deep sadness about the events in Michigan. Denied the chance to participate in their own government, Michigan workers have been the victims of backroom political trickery, and they have lost much in a short period of time. It is also a sad day, however, for our entire country because Michigan is only the latest battleground in a much larger war on workers' rights. If we lose this great battle, the casualty will be the American middle class. I have always said and believe that strong unions are the foundation of a strong middle class. When union membership was at its peak in this country, we all grew together. The middle class grew and prospered. Everyone, from the richest CEO to the minimum wage worker, benefited from our Nation's prosperity when labor union organization was at its peak. Michigan's economy has always been a shining example of that shared prosperity, where an autoworker who put in a hard day's work could earn enough not only to buy one of the cars he made but to buy a house, send his kids to college, take a nice vacation, have a good retirement, and live the American dream. As unions have declined in this country, the middle class has suffered. Those at the top earn more and more, while ordinary working people are seeing the American dream slip out of their reach. It is not just union workers who are losing ground because unions don't only benefit their members. They benefit each and every American worker, regardless of whether one has ever held a union card. It is unions that fought for all the things we sort of take for granted. It is unions that fought for the 40-hour work week, a fair minimum wage, laws against discrimination, and laws that keep workers safe on the job. It is unions that are fighting today for Medicare, Social Security, job training, and other programs that help working families succeed. I think it is important to go back to, truly the founding father, if you will, of the American labor movement, Samuel Gompers. He was asked once, ``What does labor want?'' Here is what he said: What does labor want? We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures. That was Samuel Gompers, and he went on to say: Where trade unions are most firmly organized, these are the rights of the people most respected. Historically, we know that is true. Perhaps, most important now, America's labor unions are the last remaining voice strong enough to speak out for those who are not rich and not powerful. That is why they are under attack. Unions are under attack because they are one of the few remaining groups strong enough to stand up to the powerful, the very wealthy interests that want to run our country and ship our jobs overseas. Last Thursday, Governor Snyder of Michigan called a press conference with the Republican leaders in the Michigan House and Senate and announced their plans to force through a change in Michigan laws for the so-called right-to-work law. By the end of that same day, Republicans had introduced and passed right-to-work bills. There was no real debate. There were no hearings. To make matters worse, they manipulated the process to prevent the voters in Michigan from ever reviewing their actions. Why do I say that? Because Michigan law allows voter referendums on most laws but has an exception for appropriations bills. So the Republicans in the legislature attach their antilabor provisions to an appropriations bill to deny voters in Michigan the chance to even be heard on it. But here is the key thing about the American people, when we are fighting for our families and our children's future, we will not be bullied, nor will we be silenced. This week's events in Michigan illustrate this so powerfully. Ordinary working people with bills to pay, kids to feed, and worries on their minds are taking time out of their busy lives to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, to say enough is enough. This is not, again, just about organized labor. There are huge stakes for the middle class in the ongoing Republican assault on the right of American workers to organize and bargain collectively. There is a very direct connection between this war on unions and the harsh reality that American workers' incomes have effectively stagnated and even declined in recent decades, even as corporate profits have skyrocketed. In an important column earlier this week, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, points out that even as the economy has struggled, corporate profits are at an alltime high. Moreover, as Professor Krugman points out, ``profits have surged as a share of national income, while wages and labor compensation are down. The pie isn't growing the way it should--but capital is doing fine by grabbing an ever-larger slice, at labor's expense.'' As this chart shows, corporate profits have been rising rapidly for a decade in dollar terms, but wages have been stagnant, barely keeping up with inflation over time. In dollar terms, total wages have been increasing slightly, but that is because of inflation and the size of the workforce. A growing number of workers are dividing up their share of the pie. But corporate profits have been skyrocketing, almost tripling over a decade. Therefore, the worker's share gets smaller and smaller. This is what this second chart shows. It is kind of a little confusing, so I will explain it. If we look at a longer period of time in terms of the gross domestic product, what we see is that from the 1950s till 2000, wages and corporate profits moved back and forth relative to each other. But since the 1980s, we see a picture of corporate profits increasing and exploding over the last decade. At the same time, wages and salaries have been on a steady downward slope as the economy has grown. As I said, this pattern has accelerated dramatically over the past decade. So let's take a look and try to make some sense out of this chart. Here are wages as a percent of the gross domestic product. If we look back at the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, up to about 1980, we will see that labor's share was right around 50 percent, give or take a little bit-- right around 50 percent of GDP--and corporate profits basically kept in line with its share. Beginning in 1980, wages--the red line--started going down and corporate profits started their huge climb. But for the recession, where they took a dip, we can see the huge increase now in corporate profits as a percent of GDP has more than doubled from its low point in the recession of a decade ago. It has reached its highest point in over 70 years. Wages have fallen down to below 44 percent of GDP. So as a percent, we can see that corporate profits have skyrocketed but not wages, and this is what is happening: More and more of the pie is going to corporate profits, and less and less is going to wages. That is the squeeze that is going on. If we look at unions and trade unions during this same period of time, we see, beginning right in here--beginning early in the 1980s, right in here--the huge attack on organized labor, the eroding of labor's rights in many ways, and so wages started going down. These are not just wages of union people. These are wages of all working people--all working people. That is why I say it is not just union members who have benefited from the strength of organized labor; everyone in the middle class has benefited from it. Throughout most of the 20th century labor unions led the push for higher wages, for pensions, health care benefits, and safer working conditions. The gains won by unionized workers served to lift wages, benefits, and working conditions for nonunionized workers as well. Millions of middle-class Americans who never thought about joining a union have received very considerable benefits from the labor movement. I always ask people: How did we get the 40-hour workweek, time-and-a- half overtime, paid vacations, worker safety? This didn't happen because management voluntarily gave it. People struggled for this. They fought for this, marched for this, and many got beat up, lost their jobs and their livelihoods fighting just for a 40-hour workweek or for time-and-a-half overtime or paid vacations. Yet it has benefited the entire middle class of America. That is why I say when the Republicans are doing an open assault on organized labor, they are assaulting the middle class of America. They are dragging down the middle class of America. As the war on unions has succeeded in dramatically shrinking the share that is unionized, this has reduced the ability of most workers across the entire economy to negotiate increases in wages and salaries. The result is the growing imbalance--skyrocketing corporate profits at a time when personal income is stagnant or declining. The fruits of the expanding economy have accrued overwhelmingly to corporations, their executives, executive pay, and shareholders, leaving workers behind. Despite skyrocketing profits, and despite the fact that corporations and shareholders have taken the lion's share of income from the growing GDP, corporations are still demanding lower rates of taxation and huge additional advantages regarding corporate taxes. So corporations get more and more of the GDP at the same time they say: We don't want to pay any more taxes; we want to pay less taxes. Corporations paid an average effective rate of just 7.9 percent in 2011--7.9 percent. Now, wasn't it Mr. Romney, the Republican nominee, who said corporations are people too? Well, I bet a lot of people in this country would like to pay 7.9 percent of their income in taxes. But the corporations are still not satisfied. They want even lower rates, even as the middle class and the poor are asked to make major sacrifices--major sacrifices--as we address the so-called fiscal cliff and the real deficit that we do have. Very high income Americans get most of their income from capital gains and dividends. The tax on that type of income is now 15 percent-- the lowest percentage since the 1930s. I repeat: Since the 1930s, the lowest percentage on capital gains and dividends is right now, at 15 percent. But until 2003, dividends were taxed at the same rate as regular income. Now dividends are getting the same very generous treatment as capital gains, while regular income rates are now 35 percent. So just think about that: It wasn't until 2003 when we said, OK, capital gains, dividends, 15 percent. Before dividends were always the same rate as regular income. So who gets that? The wealthy. Average working people don't have significant dividends or capital gains. Republicans claim that economic calamity will occur if those rates go up. But let's look at recent history. When the 1993 tax bill passed, every Republican here voted no. Many Senate Republicans predicted economic calamity if it passed. I was here. I remember those debates. You can look it up in the Record. However, in the 5 years after the passage of the Clinton tax bill in 1993, 14 million jobs were created. Contrasting that, in the 5 years after the 2001 tax bill passed--that lowered the regular rate to 35 percent--only 4 million jobs were created. Now, I am not saying raising taxes creates jobs, but raising tax rates does not kill jobs either. As we address the fiscal cliff, corporations and high-income individuals can afford to pay a greater, fairer share of Federal revenue. In recent years, they have seen their incomes grow by huge sums. It would be grossly unfair to shift the burden to the middle class, which has already been deprived of its fair share of the growing economic pie in recent decades. Mr. President, people in Washington are obsessing about what they call the fiscal cliff. Well, we do indeed face fiscal challenges in the future. But I am more concerned about the crisis of America's middle class--a middle class confronted by stagnant or declining wages, with jobs being shifted overseas and with traditional benefits, such as pensions and health insurance, being taken away. There is no doubt the debate over collective bargaining rights will continue--in Michigan and across the country--for months, probably years to come. While there is little I can do standing in the Senate to directly help the people of Michigan today, I wanted to come to the floor to tell them a lot of us stand with them, and we will stand with them tomorrow. A great injustice is being committed in the State of Michigan--again, not just against union members but against the middle class. I think we have to recognize what is happening in this country: an assault on union workers, on collective bargaining, and the assaults we have seen by my Republican friends on the National Labor Relations Board, the National Mediation Board--anything to take away from workers their right to bargain collectively. When you are a minimum-wage worker or just above, and you are working at Walmart, how much power do you think you have against the Walton family or their corporate executive? What, are they the second or third richest family in the world now? Do you think you have some bargaining power? You don't have anything. But if you are unionized, and you have all of the union members with you, now you can bargain. Now you get on a more even keel with wages and capital to make sure wages and capital don't get too far out of kilter. That is simply what has happened. Too much of our GDP in the last 30 years has gone to capital and not enough to labor. When that happens, middle-class America suffers. When middle-class America suffers, we all suffer because we know from history, from our American experiment, the American economy grows best from the middle out, not from the top down. So, again, Mr. President, I feel sorry for those workers who were caught off guard in Michigan. I feel sorry for the middle class in Michigan--those whose rights are being undermined. But we stand steadfast in our support for the rights of working people and for the inherent--the inherent--right of people to be able to join together to form an association or a trade union and to bargain collectively for their wages, hours, and conditions of employment. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to give some perspective on the debate going on in Washington about the so-called fiscal cliff. The so-called fiscal cliff is a misnomer, but what it reflects is the concern that unless we act our economy is going to be hit by significant austerity in 2013. Not at 12:01 on January 1, but over the course of the year. So it is not a cliff, it is more like if we do not do something we are going to start on a slope. But we are not falling off any cliff at 12:01 on January 1. Fortunately there is an easy way to address one of the major parts of this puzzle. The Senate earlier this year passed a tax relief bill for the middle class. It would extend for 1 full year all of the Bush-era tax cuts on middle-class families. That is sitting in front of the House of Representatives. President Obama has said, If they pick it up and pass it tomorrow I will put my pen to it immediately. That is one thing that could be done right now. But the House Republicans will not take it up. I say if they were to take it up today, pass it, the President signs it, I think you are going to see a lot of middle-class families maybe even do a little bit more Christmas shopping because they know their taxes are not going up next year and that will help spur our economy. Again, I point out some of my friends on the other side of the aisle, here and in the House, have been talking about doing that very thing. So there are some Republicans who recognize that this would be one of the best things we can do, and that is pass the middle-class tax cut that we passed here in July. Nonetheless, I keep hearing what we really need to do to address the so-called fiscal cliff is to enact significant entitlement reform. What does that mean, entitlement reform? Let's be upfront with the American people. When you hear our friends the Republicans and others talk about entitlement reform, they are talking about three things: cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare, and cutting Medicaid. That is it. That is what they are talking about. For example, let's take a look at Social Security. It has become an article of faith, almost, among a lot of people around this city that one of the ways to reduce the national debt is to ``reform Social Security.'' That is really fishy because Social Security can pay full benefits, 100 percent, until 2033, and by law it is not allowed to add to the deficit or debt. So, therefore, it is not driving our long-term debt. What is really going on here? I think one of the ways to figure it out is a close look at the proposals under consideration. If you look closely you will find almost all of these serious proposals to save Social Security purport to do so by cutting it. For instance, one proposal is to raise the retirement age so that hard-working Americans, including nurses, cashiers, carpenters, mechanics, truckdrivers, have to work even longer before they can retire with full benefits. I remind people we already raised the retirement age. We did that in the 1980s, from 65 to 67. That is being phased in right now. The Bowles-Simpson Commission, what did they want to do? They wanted to raise it to 69. I remind people that life expectancy at age 65--that is the amount of time you are going to live after you reach 65--has not grown equally among all Americans. Not surprisingly, higher income Americans have seen much larger gains in life expectancy after 65 than low- and moderate-income families. So you raise the retirement age for Social Security, you help those who have money and you hurt those who do not. That is exactly what it is. You hurt low- and moderate-income Americans who work at some of the most physically demanding jobs in our economy. It hits them the hardest. So we can dismiss that. I was looking at the list of people proposing that we raise the retirement age--Bowles-Simpson; the Third Way; Lloyd Blankfein--CEO of Goldman Sachs, how about that--Senator Coburn, the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Republican Study Committee. Oh, yes, the Ryan budget, by the way. We know what the voters of America thought about that Ryan budget. Anyway, there is a whole list of people there who are saying we have to raise the retirement age. Let's see what kinds of jobs they have, what kind of work they do during their lifetime. Another proposal we have heard about to kind of ``fix'' Social Security is to base future cost-of-living adjustments, the COLAs, on the so-called chained CPI. That is a phrase you are hearing more and more of. What it does is basically it reduces annual cost-of-living adjustments. It is nothing more than a benefit cut by using a measurement of inflation that reflects the costs faced by seniors even more poorly than the current measurement. In terms of take-home benefits for an individual beneficiary, the chained CPI will result in a benefit cut of $136 per year for a 65-year-old. However, because of the compounding, the benefit cut would increase to an average of $560 per year less for a 75-year-old retiree. That is a severe benefit cut, particularly for the oldest Americans who are the most likely to have gone through all their own retirement savings and must rely totally on Social Security. Furthermore, the chained CPI is simply not a more accurate way to measure inflation. Rather, it more accurately measures the degree to which people are reducing their costs and as a result it can mask big changes in the quality of life for Americans. I have talked to people in town meetings about chained CPI. If an elderly person is on Social Security and due to heating costs or perhaps some medical bills that person's budget is pretty tight, instead of buying beef for dinner, he decides to buy chicken. This decreases his costs a little bit. Chained CPI would look at that and say that since his costs have gone down, we should reduce his COLA. Now that his COLA is reduced, he is sort of locked in there. Now his budget is a little tighter so he decides to go to beans. In this scenario, he has gone from beef to chicken and is now eating beans. The chained CPI said his costs went down further so we will reduce his COLA even more. Pretty soon he is reduced to drinking warm water for soup and the COLA keeps going down even more. That is what the chained CPI does to an elderly person. Don't be fooled by a fancy CPI. Chained CPI is akin to being on a boat and you have to swim to shore and someone puts a big log chain around your ankle and tells you to swim. It is going to drag you to the bottom. Chained CPI chains you and drags you down. There are long-term challenges confronting the Social Security system, and we know that. The baby boomers are retiring and we have fewer workers contributing to the system. Fortunately, we knew this has been coming for decades, and that is why we have the trust fund in the first place. The trust fund pays 100 percent of the benefits until 2033. What happens in 2033? A lot of people say Social Security is going to go belly-up. No, it doesn't. Unless changes are made, the Social Security trust fund will pay out 75 percent of anticipated benefits in 2033. What happens if we reduce unemployment? What if we reduce unemployment from its present 7.7 percent down to 4 percent? Guess what. That 2033 now goes up because there are more working people paying into the system. So one of the best ways to fix Social Security is to get jobs back for people in this country. That is why those of us who are committed to honestly strengthening Social Security will resist any effort to cut Social Security and are saying, no, don't make it any part of a grand bargain. It should have no part of it whatsoever. There are approaches that can strengthen Social Security. To do so, I introduced legislation earlier this year that would provide seniors with greater economic security. My proposal does it three ways. First, we actually raise the amount of Social Security that people get by $65 a month. Some might ask how can that save money. I thought we were supposed to cut benefits not increase them. I say there is a way. We can increase it by $65 a month. Others might say that to an upper income person, $65 is not much. To some who have paid in the minimum amount to Social Security, they have had minimum-wage-type jobs most of their lives, so $65 a month over 1 year can be quite a bit. Secondly, my proposal ensures that COLAs better reflect the cost of living for seniors than what we presently do right now, and we certainly don't do chain CPI. Finally, how do we do this? By applying the payroll tax to every dollar of eligible earnings by removing the so-called wage cap. We don't do it over 1 year; we phase it in over 10 years. For the life of me, I have never been able to understand why it is equitable for someone who is making $50,000 a year to pay their payroll taxes on every $1 they earn, but for someone who is making $500,000 a year, they only pay payroll taxes on the first 20 cents of every $1 they earn. The rest of the 80 cents they pay no payroll taxes on. We talked about this for a long time and we have never done it. It is time to remove the wage cap which will allow us to pay $65 more per month per person. According to the actuaries of Social Security, the 100-percent benefit that would expire in 2033 goes to 75 percent and would be extended beyond 2050. Just by doing that, we will extend the life past 2050, pay $65 more a month per person, and make it fair for everyone by ensuring that everyone pays into the trust fund on every $1 they earn. These are the kind of changes we should consider as part of any effort to reform Social Security. Regrettably, I don't hear from those who want to put Social Security on the table as part of a debt reduction package calling for these type of reforms. They want to just cut benefits, that is all. As we work to resolve the fiscal cliff on our long-term deficits, our core principle should be that we need a resolution that is good for the middle class, and that starts with strengthening and protecting programs such as Social Security. It also means we should take this opportunity to continue to support hard-working families and create jobs, particularly through programs such as infrastructure investment. We should also continue to provide help, such as the middle-class tax cut, to working Americans by giving them more money to put in their pocket to spend and drive the economy forward. However, we must not continue the payroll tax cut of the last 2 years because of the threat it poses to the integrity of Social Security. Two years ago, to help middle-class families through tough times, we reduced the amount they paid into Social Security by 2 percent, from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. In order to make up for that, we put money from the general fund into the Social Security trust fund. It is the first time we have ever done that. I said it was wrong, and I still say it is wrong. We then extended it for 1 year until the end of this year. I thought that would be the end of it. Now I am hearing voices say we ought to extend this payroll tax cut. Two of the critical strengths of Social Security are that it is universal and it is self-funded. No dollar paid in benefits comes from any source other than the payroll tax. As such, Social Security does not add one dime to our deficit. Again, that fact alone is a strong argument for those of us defending Social Security from misguided attempts to cut the system in the name of deficit reduction. I have often argued that Social Security doesn't add one dime to the deficit. It never has. However, if we are taking money out of the general fund, which we know is borrowed money, and we are putting that into the trust fund, then the trust fund is now taking money that is borrowed. No longer can we say every dime paid out of that is from the payroll tax since it is coming from the general fund. I think we made a mistake 1 year ago by extending it. Now it is the time to end it. It must not be extended. I, for one, will do whatever I can as a Senator to stop the extension of the payroll tax cut in order to help solve the deficit and in order to help middle-class families. How can we help middle-class families? It is very easy. First of all, pass the tax cut extension that we have sitting before the House. Secondly, rather than cutting payroll taxes by 2 percent, we should put in place a modified version of the Making Work Pay tax credit that we did under the American Recovery Reinvestment Act. That credit provided working Americans with $400 per person, $800 per couple in 2009 and in 2010. We can adjust that credit and double it to $1,600 per couple to replace the payroll tax cut. So as we put the 2 percent back to where everyone pays back in at 6.2 percent, what we do on the other side is provide for a Making Work Pay tax credit that goes to people who are working. Obviously, no one gets the 2-percent payroll tax cut if they are not working. The Making Work Pay tax credit would also go to those who are working and make it a similar amount of money as they had on the Social Security payroll tax fund. This would have a greater bang for the buck because it would better target working Americans of modest means who tend to spend more of what they get back. I will clarify what I mean by that. Under the Social Security payroll tax cut--the 2-percent cut--the maximum amount of money someone would get would be at the highest level they paid into Social Security, which is approximately $110,000 on a payroll of $110,000. So that person would get $2,200 back. That is for someone making at least $110,000 a year. If someone is making $20,000 a year, they would only get $400 back. So the higher your income, the more they get back; the lower the income, the less they get back. It is just topsy-turvy. It should be the other way around. There should be more benefits to lower income and less benefits to higher income. With this tax credit, that is what we do. More would go to people who are making $40,000, $50,000 $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year than to those higher income people. That is why the Making Work Pay tax credit is much better than extending the Social Security payroll tax. We are at a turning point in our economy. We can either move forward with an agenda that will strengthen the middle class or be dragged backward by misguided policies that consign us to additional decades of unequal growth and stagnant wages for working families. I stand ready to work with my Senate colleagues to reduce the deficit and debt but not at the expense of hard-working, middle-class families who make this country the great country it is. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, as my colleagues know, I was the lead Senate author of the Americans with Disabilities Act the ADA. The ADA stands for a simple proposition--that disability is a natural part of the human experience and that all people with disabilities have a right to make choices and participate fully in all aspects of society. Thanks to the ADA, our country has become a more welcoming place not just for people with a variety of disabilities but for everyone. In that context, I want to raise an issue in H.R. 2838, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2012. Under current law, there is a provision that requires that no survival craft allow a person to be submerged in water. H.R. 2838 requires a study and report on this requirement to be completed within 6 months. While I have no objection to the Coast Guard doing another report on the issue, I want to be sure that this study will appropriately take into account the specific needs of people with a diverse variety of disabilities who may need to utilize these survival craft. For example, my expectation is that the study would not recommend that all individuals be required to hold on to the outside of the survival craft or other items, since an individual with a significant disability may not be able to do so, as a result of their disability. In addition, it is important that not only the means of egress, but also the avenues for evacuation and rescue should be accessible for people with disabilities. I would also want to be sure that the study will be completed within the 6 month designated period.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr President, I appreciate the efforts of the Senator from West Virginia, the chairman of the Commerce Committee, and I look forward to continuing to work with him to assure that individuals with disabilities have access to survival craft that will properly protect them from injury.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in the last few years, a number of colleagues and I have grown increasingly worried about the fees that consumers face when using an automated teller machine, ATM. According to Bankrate.com 2010 Checking Survey, the average surcharge a consumer pays to use an ATM has increased to $2.33. Over 99 percent of ATM operators charge this fee. Some ATM operators also charge balance inquiry fees. In addition, consumers are also increasingly likely to face a fee from their own financial institution for using an ATM not owned by their institution. According to the same Bankrate study, 75 percent of checking accounts charge this fee, which is now up to $1.41 on average. Therefore, frequently, consumers may face fees of almost $4.00 for accessing their own cash. Consumers who use prepaid cards are especially likely to pay a variety of fees for using an ATM. They can face ATM withdrawal fees, balance inquiry fees, and denied transaction fees. They may get no notice at the ATM of fees charged by the prepaid card.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first I thank Senator Kerry, Senator Lugar, and Senator McCain for their great leadership and their dogged persistence in making sure we can get this treaty through the committee and to the floor. It has been inspirational to watch them work together in a bipartisan fashion to bring us to this point. I hope we don't lose that in terms of the vote. I just came over from the Dirksen building where we had a wonderful ceremony honoring former Senator Bob Dole. Some time ago I went back and I read Senator Dole's maiden speech on the Senate floor, dated April 14, 1969. Mr. President, I commend these remarks to my colleagues. Senator Dole spoke of the future of people with disabilities in America and what we need to do to change our society. That was in 1969. It was 21 years later when we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act. The country has changed so much for the better because of that. We are sitting here now with a convention by the U.N. which basically says to the rest of the world: You have to do what America did. In establishing this convention, the U.N. was informed by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and a lot of it is based upon what we did here. As the committee showed, not one of our laws or anything has to be changed. Not one. We are the best in the world at this. Yet what this convention gives us is a seat at the table. When other countries have signed on to the treaty, it gives us a seat at the table to be able to work with other countries and to help them upgrade their laws so that people with disabilities have more opportunities in other countries. Why would we deny ourselves a seat at the table when we have been a leader in this effort for so long? I listened to the speeches by both Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma and Senator Lee from Utah. These are unfounded fears. I repeat, there is nothing in there that is going to allow anyone from the United Nations to take a child away from a family or tell a family they cannot homeschool a kid or anything such as that. There is nothing in there. These are totally unfounded fears. We should not be driven by unfounded fears. We should be driven by what we know of our experience, what we have done, what the wording of the convention is, and the fact that none of our laws has to be changed because of it. The Senator from Utah made the point that we all know people with disabilities. We have family members or friends, and we value them. We truly do value people with disabilities in our society. Well, if we truly value them, why don't we listen to them? There are over 300 disability rights groups that support this. Not one said they won't support it. So if we value them, why don't we listen to them? Do we want to keep patronizing people with disabilities and say, you are all right, but we won't listen to you because we know what is best for you? We don't know what is best for people with disabilities. We know who knows what is best for people with disabilities: It is people with disabilities. They all said this is important. There are 300 disability organizations that asked us to support this ratification. I think we should listen to them and get their advice. Think about what the disabilities community here in America could do with that seat at the table and how we can work with other countries to help them upgrade their laws. I have a hard time understanding why people would be driven by unfounded fears to vote against this with all of the evidence from 22 years of the Americans with Disabilities Act, including the hearings held by Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar which brought out all the information and pointed out that not one of our laws has to be changed at all. In the face of all of that evidence, someone will vote on the basis of an unfounded fear. I remember when we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. It took a long time. There were a lot of fears out there. There were fears of: Oh, my gosh, we are going to have to do this and that. Buses have to have lifts on them, and we have to build those curb cuts. What, kids with disabilities get to go to school? They were unfounded fears. We became a stronger and better society because of it. This treaty will make us a better world in which to live for all people and not just those who have disabilities. I urge all of my colleagues, don't give in to unfounded fears. Take the good advice of Senator Bob Dole, President Bush, former Congressman Steve Bartlett, John McCain, John Kerry, and Dick Lugar, people who have been in the trenches on this, and take the advice of the disability community here and abroad. If you will do that, we will win a resounding victory today. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. First of all, I commend and compliment my friend from Connecticut for sponsoring this bill and pushing it through. Animal fighting is a despicable thing to be engaged in. To think people take their kids there, and families. It is something we should not be doing and I thank the Senator for his leadership on that issue, getting the bill passed. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities I want to take the floor for a few moments. I know others want to speak. They were kind enough to let me get in front of them. I want to comment for a couple of minutes on the vote today on the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. I said off the floor that this was a shameful day for the Senate, and I meant it. Today was a shameful day for the Senate. To turn our backs on a convention, a treaty which was based upon the Americans With Disabilities Act in our own country that is now 22 years old and has done so much to enhance opportunities for people with disabilities and their families, to turn our backs on that for no real reason is something I have a hard time comprehending, and I have been in the Senate a long time now. There are reasons people can come up with a vote this way or that on certain things and most times they are very legitimate. People might have some legitimate concerns about a bill or an amendment. I could find no legitimate concerns about the Convention on the Rights of People With Disabilities--legitimate concerns. We heard all this talk about home schoolers, people who are homeschooling their kids, the U.N. was going to come in and take them away--nonsense, utter, sheer nonsense. What happened today was the triumph on the Senate floor of fear. Unfounded, unreasonable fear triumphed over experience--the experience we have had with the Americans With Disabilities Act, reasoned, rational thought--unfounded fears that somehow, someplace, somebody is going to do something. Out of the U.N. they are going to come in and take over or something. But we proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that none of our laws had to be changed. This gave the U.N. no authority over our country or our laws or anything. Yet this unfounded fear took hold to the point where people who were sponsors of the bill voted against it. Sponsors of it now turned around and voted against it. Again, for what reason? Unfounded fear. What message did we send today to the rest of the world? A message that, OK, we are pretty good. We did a lot of good stuff in terms of passing legislation to uphold the rights of people with disabilities, to break down barriers, give people with disabilities opportunities the same as everyone else. We have become a better country for it, a better Nation. Other countries have come to us over the intervening last 22 years to find out how we did it, what they could do. So here the United Nations said we would come up with a convention, a treaty for all countries, and put it up for them to sign it, encouraging them to emulate what we did. This would be giving us a seat at the table helping other countries to bring their laws more up to what ours are in terms of the rights of people with disabilities. But we turned our backs on that. There are a lot of things that make America a shining city on a hill, but there is one thing that no one can dispute that does put America as a shining city on a hill and that is the Americans With Disabilities Act and what it has done to our society, like our Civil Rights Act, what it has done to break down the barriers and to show that people with disabilities can contribute to society if only given the chance and the opportunity. You would think we would want to then say, yes, we will be a part of a worldwide effort to break down those barriers against people with disabilities. We want to be part of a worldwide effort to say it is not all right, it is not OK to leave a baby on the side of the road to die simply because that baby has Down Syndrome. You would think we would want to be part of a global effort that says it is not all right to keep kids out of school and away from education because they have a physical disability--they use a wheelchair--or have an intellectual disability. You would think we would want to be part of an effort such as that, that says it is not OK to put people in cells, chained in cells, people whose only crime is that they are disabled. You would think we would want to be part of that effort. We have done that in this country. We have done wonderful things. Yet there is some fear, some unfounded fear that the United Nations is going to come in with a black helicopter or something, I don't know what, and say you cannot homeschool your kids. The Americans With Disabilities Act, we had it for 20 years. Did it stop home schooling? Of course not. Did it lead to more abortions? Of course not. After this vote, after it was defeated, I walked out into the reception room, the Senate reception room. There was a throng, a number of people in the disability community. They were crushed, just crushed. They could not understand this. How could it be? Every disability community in America, every disability organization supported this. We had 21 veterans organizations, everything from the American Legion to the VFW, AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Disabled Veterans of America--21. Every veterans group supported this. I ask, were these veterans groups so dumb, so blind, so misled to support something that is going to give the U.N. the right to come in and take kids out of your home? That is what people were saying. They do not get it, veterans groups? Is that what they were saying, that they do not understand this? Of course they understood it. They know those were unfounded fears. Walk out and see Yoshiko Dart out there, holding Justin Dart's hat; Justin Dart, God love him. A man in a wheelchair, used it almost every day in his life; a man who traveled throughout this country day after day to get people organized to support the Americans With Disabilities Act, Justin Dart. He has since passed on, but his widow carries his hat around. She had his hat there and they were just crushed by this vote. How could we turn our backs on something so important to our country and the world? Pat Wright--others. Before we had the vote we had a wonderful ceremony honoring Bob Dole. Yesterday was the International Disability Rights Day, so they wanted to honor Bob Dole for all he had done, Senator Dole. It was a wonderful event. I saw people over there honoring Bob Dole for all the work he had done on disability rights who voted against the bill today.

Mr. HARKIN. I said, wait a minute, they are there to honor all the work Bob Dole had done on disability and Bob Dole was one of the strongest supporters of the CRPD, as it is called. He came over here today in his wheelchair with his wife, former Senator Elizabeth Dole. Yet people voted against it. I do not get it. Veterans? There was a young veteran sitting in the gallery today. I met him yesterday for the first time. Senator Kerry spoke at length about him. His name is Dan Berschinski. I ask unanimous consent to have his op-ed printed in the Record at the conclusion of my speech.

Mr. HARKIN. I met him yesterday, a young man 25 years old. He said for the first 25 years of my life I was an able-bodied American and played football and soccer, even ran a few marathons. He graduated from West Point and went to Afghanistan and had both of his legs blown off. He walks on prosthetic legs now and talks about going to South Africa on a trip and the fear gripped him because of the fact he couldn't get around. In the hotel they had curbs. He had the kind of problems he doesn't have here. I saw him out here in the reception room after the vote. He had been sitting in the gallery. He came down. I went up to him and I said: Dan, what can I say? I am sorry. I am sorry. But, I said, we will come back again. We are going to come back at this thing. But, I said, I am sorry. You know what he said to me? He said: You know, Senator, watching this and seeing this makes me want to get just about as far away from politics as I can. Is that the message we send to young veterans, young heroes like this? I don't want to take any more time. Others want to speak. As I said, it is a shameful day. I do say we will be back. Senator Kerry will be back, Senator McCain. Again, I give them the highest plaudits for what they did. Senator McCain and Senator Kerry did a magnificent job, and Senator Lugar, in carrying this bill forward. I know they do not want to give up either. I was hoping we would pass it before Senator Lugar leaves the Senate. It would have been wonderful that Senator Lugar did this during his time here in the Senate. But I guess that is not to be. We will be back in January or February. Senator Kerry is committed to doing that, bringing it back to the committee, so we will be back again. I hope over the Christmas break and New Year's those who did not vote to support this will search their conscience, search their soul, think more about our being involved in this and having a seat at the table, helping the rest of the world change their laws. I hope when we come back we will have some reconsiderations and people recognize that maybe the first vote was not the right vote and change their vote and maybe we can get it passed then. That is my hope. I hope we can get to that when we come back after the first of the year. Exhibit 1 [Dec. 4, 2012] Leading on Disability Beyond Our Borders (By Dan Berschinski) For the first 25 years of my life I was as an able-bodied American. I played football and soccer and even ran a few marathons. All of that changed three years ago. Having graduated from West Point, I was serving my country as an Army infantry officer in Afghanistan when I was seriously wounded: I stepped on the unseen trigger of an improvised explosive device, and both my legs were instantly torn from my body. From that moment on, my life has, been drastically different. Today, after three year's of hard effort, I'm proud, to be able to walk using prosthetic legs. Yet obstacles that might seem inconsequential to the fully able-bodied, like sidewalk curbs and stairs, take on a whole new meaning for people like me who struggle to walk, or who use a wheelchair. Fortunately, the United States leads the world in accessibility and equality of opportunity for the disabled. Unfortunately, the advantages we take for granted here at home--the policies that allow people like me to live fulfilling, independent lives--don't exist in much of the rest of the world. Eight months after being wounded in combat, and while still a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I joined a few friends in a trip to South Africa to watch the World Cup. There I found myself in a different country, with no legs, a brand-new wheelchair and a lot of apprehension. While I should have been enjoying this once-in-a-lifetime trip, I was constantly worried about my ability to get around. South Africa had done a fairly good job on accessibility, but there were still plenty of curbs that had to be jumped, ditches that had to be crossed, and flights of stairs that had to be, well, hobbled up. As a disabled Anierican at home, I can depend on accessible accommodations; as a disabled tourist abroad, I had to hope for the best while preparing for the worst. Today, the United States has an opportunity to show leadership and reduce the challenges that millions of disabled people around the world face every day: The Senate can vote to join the U.N. treaty on rights for people with disabilities. By encouraging other nations to strengthen their own accessibility laws, we can improve the lives of our 56.7 million disabled U.S. citizens, including 5.5 million disabled veterans like me, when we travel and work abroad. Many of those opposing this treaty claim to support military veterans, but a vote against ratifying this treaty undercuts that support. I am honored to join fellow veterans, Republicans and Democrats, including Sens. John Kerry and John McCain and former Sen. Robert J. Dole, to say that the case is clear- cut: Only by voting in favor of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities can the Senate truly honor the sacrifice of those disabled while answering this nation's call. I am proud to have served my country; I am proud of how my country has taken care of me. And I will be proud when we extend our leadership on disability issues beyond our borders.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank my good friend and former chairman with whom I have served all of these years in the Senate for his very kind remarks and kind words. More than that, I thank my friend for his many kindnesses that he has shown me and for upholding the finest traditions of the Senate. I say to Pat Leahy, through the Chair, when we think about a Senator and what a Senator should do and how a Senator should conduct himself or herself, we have to think about Pat Leahy. He has just been a stalwart. He is always willing to work with people, always willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt, always willing to help move legislation through the Senate. That is the way the Senate used to be. It used to be that way. Thank God, we still have people here like Pat Leahy. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I rise to support the ratification of the U.N. Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities or, as it is known, the CRPD. First, I wish to thank Chairman Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his diligence and for his leadership on this issue. He has carried it through the committee; he has brought it to the floor. In fact, I was reminded earlier today, we were both on the committee back in the 1980s when we first started working on the Americans with Disabilities Act under the tutelage, really, of Senator Lowell Weicker, who remains a great friend to this day and is still a great leader on the issues of people with disabilities. So we go back that far working together on these issues. I thank Senator Kerry for his great leadership in bringing us to this point and, hopefully, the point being that we are going to ratify this wonderful treaty. I thank Senator Lugar again for all of his efforts through so many years on so many different issues, and on this issue especially, going back to the beginning of the Americans with Disabilities Act. If I might divert from this just for one brief moment to thank Senator Lugar for his leadership in making the world safer by getting rid of nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union. What a singular effort that has been. Senator Lugar has done much to make the world a better place for us and for our kids and grandkids. So I salute him for his wonderful leadership in that area. Senator McCain, of course, was here and worked with us on the Americans with Disabilities Act back in 1989 and 1990. He was very much involved in it; Senator Durbin, Senator Barrasso, Senator Moran, Senator Udall, and Senator Coons, I guess all of whom worked very hard to secure the ratification of this important convention. As the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and as the lead Senate author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I want the United States to become a party to this convention so we can apply the expertise we have developed under the ADA and help the rest of the world remove barriers to full participation and to honor the human rights of citizens with disabilities. One of my greatest joys in the Senate has been my work with so many Senators on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The ADA stands for a simple proposition: that disability is a natural part of the human experience and that all people with disabilities have an inherent right to make choices to pursue meaningful careers and to participate fully in all aspects of society. So thanks to the ADA, our country is a more welcoming place not just for people with a variety of disabilities but for everyone. Twenty-two years ago, on July 26, 1990, President Bush gathered hundreds of Americans with disabilities on the White House lawn for the ADA signing ceremony, and here is what he said. It is wonderful. This historic act is the world's first comprehensive declaration of equality for people with disabilities--the first. Its passage has made the United States the international leader on this human rights issue. Well, thanks to the ADA and other U.S. laws, America is showing the rest of the world how to honor the basic human rights of children and adults with disabilities, how to integrate them into society, how to remove barriers to their full participation in activities that most Americans just take for granted. Our support for disability rights inspired a global movement that led the United Nations to adopt the CRPD. In fact, I might just add parenthetically that after the Americans with Disabilities Act was adopted, we had people from many countries come here. I can think of, first, Russia. Then it was Greece, Ireland, Great Britain, as well as a number of people from other countries who came here to learn what we had done and then to pick it up and move forward in their own countries. Our legal framework influenced the substance of the convention and is informing its implementation in the 125 countries, I think, that have ratified it along with the European Union. My staff was involved in 2002 when the U.N. first broached this subject of coming up with a convention and, in turn, provided to them the substance of the Americans with Disabilities Act, its history, its provisions, and what had been done from its adoption in 1990 until 2002 and the changes that it had brought about in our own country. So, really, I think the Americans with Disabilities Act informed and laid the basis for what the U.N. began to do in 2002 and completed in 2006. So, again, I am very grateful for the leadership of Senator Kerry, Senator McCain, as well as Senator Dole, who I know is not able to be with us right now, but I thank them for all of their support for the ratification of the CRPD. I also appreciate that former President George H.W. Bush, his White House Counsel Boyden Gray, Attorney General Dick Thornburg, former Congressman Steve Bartlett, and Tony Coelho have all been actively supporting this ratification. I am also grateful for the support from the U.S. business community, including, clearly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Information Technology Industry Council for ratification of this treaty. Because of their experience with the ADA, American businesses have developed expertise they can apply in the global marketplace in a way that gives them a competitive advantage. If we are a party to the convention, the U.S.-based companies with this expertise will be on much more solid footing when they are seeking to help other countries write and implement domestic legislation consistent with the convention and consistent with U.S. standards for accessibility and equal opportunity. Like the Americans with Disabilities Act, the CRPD enjoys widespread support in the disability, civil rights, business, veterans, and faith- based communities. I could be off a little bit, but as of the writing of this statement we have letters of support from more than 250 American disability organizations, 21 veterans service organizations-- and I caught some of the comments made by our distinguished chairman, Senator Kerry, in talking about veterans and our wounded warriors as they travel around the world and being able to access in other parts of the world what they can access here in America; a very good point--and 26 faith organizations also in support of the CRPD. These entities all realize the critical importance of America's position as a global leader on disability rights. They want our country to have a seat at the table and to share that expertise as the States Parties to the Convention work to implement it around the world. I might add here, under the convention a committee will be established to assist and to help other countries in implementing and changing their laws and conforming. If we are a party to this, we get a seat at the table. If we are not a party to it, we will not have a seat at the table. Why shouldn't we have a seat at the table? We have been the world leaders. So by ratifying this convention, the United States will be reaffirming our commitment to our citizens with disabilities. Americans with disabilities should be able to live and travel, study and work abroad with the same freedoms and access they enjoy here in this country. Again, as other countries that have been signatories to this treaty grapple with how to change their systems and to make their systems more accessible, we can be at the table helping them to implement this treaty and to learn from our experience. The administration has submitted reservations, understandings, and declarations that make clear that U.S. ratification will not require any change in U.S. law and will have no fiscal impact. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has modified these reservations, understandings, and declarations to address concerns that were raised in the committee markup. Although U.S. ratification of the CRPD will not require changes in U.S. law and will not have a fiscal impact, I think it is very clear that U.S. ratification will have a clear moral impact. It will send a signal to the rest of the world that it is not OK to leave a baby with Down Syndrome on the side of the road to die, it is not OK to warehouse adults with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities in institutions, chained to the bars of a cell, when their only ``crime'' is having a disability, it is not OK to refuse to educate children because they are blind, deaf, or use a wheelchair, it is not OK to prevent disabled people from voting, getting married, owning property, or having children, it is not OK to rebuild infrastructures in Iraq or Afghanistan or Haiti or other war-torn or disaster-stricken areas without improving the accessibility of the infrastructure at the same time. Former President Reagan frequently talked about America as a city on a hill, a shining example for the world of a nation that ensures opportunity and freedom for all its people. Thanks to our country's success in implementing the ADA, advancing that law's great goals of full inclusion and full participation, America, indeed, has become a shining city on a hill for people with disabilities around the globe. By ratifying the CRPD, we can affirm our leadership in this field. We can give renewed impetus to those striving to emulate us. We can give them that renewed impetus by our example and by sitting down with them and working with them only if we are a signatory to this treaty. Again, you think about American exceptionalism. We are a pretty exceptional country, when you think about it, in many ways. We are not just exceptional because we have the most tanks and guns and bombs and things such as that, but we are exceptional in what we have done in terms of civil rights and human rights and to include all in our family--our family being our citizenship. We took great strides. America has always been evolving as a country to expand civil rights and human rights, and one of the latest, of course, was to extend those rights to people with disabilities in our society, making sure people with disabilities had all the rights and opportunities that anyone enjoys in our society. It seems to me that this is the kind of exceptionalism we ought to be promoting around the globe. We ought to be proud. We should be proud of what we have done as a country in this regard. We should not be afraid--not be afraid--to join in a convention to extend to the rest of the world what we have done here, basically, and to be helpful in making sure that other countries can also attain that kind of a standard that does not exclude anyone because of a disability from their society. I know there were some who were not part of the bipartisan vote to support ratification in the committee. I understand that. But my hope is that in the intervening time, in the course of Senate debate, we will have addressed any remaining concerns, move forward with a strong bipartisan vote to provide our advice and consent, and pass the resolution supporting U.S. ratification of the CRPD with overwhelming bipartisan support. When we voted on the ADA in 1990, it was a vote where only 6 people in the Senate voted against it--91 to 6. It was a historic law. My hope is we can achieve the same kind of strong bipartisan statement of support for the human rights of 1 billion people with disabilities around the world. As to those of us who travel a lot around the world--maybe I see it more because of my involvement in this issue--I cannot begin to describe how often it is people come up and ask us how we can help, help them change so that people with disabilities can have more access, be more involved. Many times I have been to countries where someone comes up and may not know of my involvement in this issue, but through the course of conversation--maybe it is someone in business, maybe it is someone in government, in education--they mention this: They mention accessibility because they have a brother, a sister, a friend, someone who has a disability, and they talk about how easy it is for them in America to get around, to move around, to go to school, to do business, and they would hope that maybe their country could do the same. It happens a lot. Here we are, we have the opportunity to be a key player in this global effort. It was important for us as a country for the first 10 to 20 years to focus on our own internal problems in terms of advancing the cause of people with disabilities, when you think about all the changes that have come about in the last 22 years. And now we take a lot of it for granted in terms of accessibility, mobility, education, health care, job accessibility. It is just not unusual any longer to walk into a business and see someone with a physical disability or an intellectual disability working there. We kind of do not even think about it much anymore. We do not think about kids with disabilities mainstreamed in schools. I remember when our oldest daughter was in grade school and IDEA was just coming into force and effect, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and a child with a disability was integrated into the classroom. There was this big hue and cry from a lot of the parents about: Oh, this kid was going to be disruptive. And how are the other kids going to learn? Well, we got through that. Now we have a whole generation, what I call the ADA generation, kids who were mainstreamed in school, and kids without disabilities do not think anything about being their friends, going to a ball game with them, going to the theater with them, working alongside them. So we have this whole new generation where you do not think about it any longer. It is a normal aspect of life. That is not so in other countries. In other countries, it is still, quite frankly, a sign of disgrace when a family has a child with a disability. Well, it is time to get over that. By being a country signing on to this, we can help them in so many ways. It is not just kids or young people with physical disabilities; it is people with intellectual disabilities. For how long have we looked down on people with Down Syndrome, for example, and said: Well, they cannot do anything? We segregate them in society. We send them to special schools. We give them occupations that do not challenge them. Now we have broken that down. Now so many people with intellectual disabilities, we find, can do a lot of things, and they can be challenged. And, yes, they can do competitive employment. They do not need sheltered workshops. They can be in competitive employment, with just a little support and a little training. So many things have changed for the better in this country. It would be a shame--be a shame--if all this good we have done through all sectors of society--the business community, government, transportation, education; all these things we have done to make sure people with disabilities are not discriminated against and they have full opportunities, all the opportunities that anyone else has in our society--it would be a shame to say that somehow we are not going to support a convention, an international convention that basically takes what we have done and says: Here, world, this is what we should be doing globally. To have 125 countries already signed up to it, and here we are--those who took the leadership in this area, everyone from the White House to, as I say, the Chamber of Commerce, that was supportive of the ADA, the business community that worked so hard on this--it would be a shame if we did not ratify this and become players in this and have a seat at the table to help the rest of the world attain what we have attained in this country. Again, I thank Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar, and so many others, Senator McCain and others--I am probably forgetting to mention someone--but so many people who have worked so hard to bring this issue to this point. I have to believe--yes, I know there are some Senators who have some problems, and I do not question anyone's motives or anything like that. I think some people do have, maybe, some concerns about this. Hopefully, through the amending process, we can allay those concerns. I hope we get resounding--resounding--support for the ratification of this treaty and show the world that we are proud of what we have done, and we want to join with the rest of the world in making sure they too can advance and progress and have the same kind of support and accessibility and opportunity for people with disabilities as we have had in America. Again, I thank my colleague and my classmate and my longtime friend Senator Kerry for his leadership on this issue, and I hope we have a resounding, overwhelming vote, just as we did for the Americans with Disabilities Act 22 years ago. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 27, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 27, 2012, at 10 a.m., to hold a hearing entitled, ``Update on Arms Control Matters''.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I listened to the speeches of the majority leader and the Republican leader. I would like to add my statement of congratulations to my longtime friend Senator Grassley for reaching this milestone of 11,000 votes in the U.S. Senate and to our State of Iowa and to our Nation. Senator Grassley and I were elected the same year, sworn in the same day of January 1975, although he preceded me to come to the Senate by 4 years, but I can say without any fear of contradiction that Senator Grassley and I have had a wonderful working relationship. Obviously, anyone who knows our records knows we don't always agree on things all the time, and that is the way it ought to be around here; we have good debates, but we have always been friends. The one thing I also know is that we have always worked together for the betterment of our State of Iowa. I think politics tends to end at that doorstep, and when it comes to Iowa, what is good for our State, we have always worked very closely. We have always had a great camaraderie, and our staffs have worked together very closely over the years. So, again, I wish to commend the senior Senator from the State of Iowa. I now have the distinction of being the most senior junior Senator in the Senate. It used to be Fritz Hollings for years. Now I am the most senior junior Senator, and I couldn't ask for a better colleague and a better friend on that side of the aisle from the State of Iowa than Senator Chuck Grassley. I congratulate him on reaching this milestone.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Commitee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, November 15, 2012, at 9:45 a.m. in room SD-106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Pharmacy Compounding: Implications of the 2012 Meningitis Outbreak.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Elizabeth Jungman of the committee staff on (202) 224-6859.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, our Nation faces an absolutely fundamental choice in this year's election: Are we going to rescue, restore, and rebuild the middle class or are we going to continue to shift even more wealth and advantages to those at the top at the expense of the middle class? As I have done every day we have been in session here, I want to point out to the American people what the blueprint is for this country under the Romney-Ryan budget. That is their budget. A budget is a blueprint of where you want to go, what you want to do, how you want to build something--how you want to build the future of our country. That is the Ryan budget. So I want to take a look again at the Ryan budget and what it does for the future of this country. First of all, the very centerpiece of the Ryan budget is whopping new tax cuts, mostly for those at the top, the richest 2 percent. Those making $1 million or more a year would receive $265,000 a year in new tax cuts on top of the $129,000 they would get from extending the old Bush tax cuts. That means now if you are in the top 2 percent and you are making over $1 million a year, you get $394,000 in new tax cuts. We keep hearing about Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan talking about entitlements. We have got to cut back on entitlements. Don't we? What about this? That is what they always talk about. They are talking about people who are lower income, who rely upon certain things such as nutrition assistance or job training programs, maybe Pell grants for students, for poor kids to go to college--cut back on those. What about this entitlement? This is an entitlement; you are entitled to it: If you make over $1 million a year, you will be entitled to those tax cuts. We don't hear them cutting back on that entitlement. No. They want to extend it. How do they pay for all these new tax cuts? The total is $4.5 trillion over 10 years. They do not exactly say how, but the Republican budget, that Ryan budget, would offset these tax cuts by making very deep and Draconian cuts in programs that undergird the middle class--everything from education, student loans, grants, law enforcement, clean air, clean water, food safety, medical research, highways, bridges and other infrastructure, all cut in the Ryan budget. The Ryan budget, as I will explain a little bit more in detail shortly, would end Medicare. We will hear a lot of people saying it will end Medicare as we know it. Well, if we end something as we know it, that means we end it. The Romney-Ryan budget, since Mr. Romney called it marvelous--the Romney-Ryan budget would end Medicare and make it a voucher care system. That would force seniors to pay nearly $6,000 more per year out of their pockets for health care in the future. Last, they offset these tax cuts by raising taxes on the middle class--actually raising taxes on the middle class. Mr. Ryan's budget is to use the deficit crisis as a pretext for dismantling Medicare, Medicaid, cutting education and environmental protection, workplace safety, and all the things I have said. What they do is double down on the theory that if we just give more and more to those at the top, it will trickle down to everybody else. That theory was tried under President George W. Bush, and it did not work out too well. Today I want to focus on the devastating impact of the Romney-Ryan budget on Medicare and on health care generally. Since he first arrived in Congress, Representative Ryan has consistently pushed a very specific and radical health care program to end Medicare. Under his proposal, seniors would no longer have the guaranteed Medicare benefits they have enjoyed for decades. Instead, they would get a voucher from the Federal Government. They can then go out and buy individual private insurance or Medicare. Again, they say: You can buy Medicare. You can stay in Medicare if you want or you can buy private insurance. Let's take a look at that. In 10 years the Ryan plan would eliminate Medicare, shift to vouchers, but the vouchers would not be enough to cover the health care costs so seniors' out-of-pocket costs would go up. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the Ryan proposal could increase annual out-of-pocket costs for seniors by more than $1,200 in 2030, almost $6,000 in 2050. If we total all these years, if we add one year after the other that seniors would have to pay, seniors retiring in 2023, over their lifetime, would be paying almost $60,000 more in total. For seniors retiring in 2030 it would be about $125,000. When we get up to 2050, a senior retiring then would be spending about $330,000 over their retirement years just for health care. That is what voucher care means. In addition, the Ryan plan would leave the traditional Medicare system in a death spiral. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan, in extolling their budget, say: You know, we will give them a voucher. If you want to, you can go out and buy traditional Medicare or you can buy a private insurance plan. What does that mean? That means if someone is a very healthy senior they might get a better deal by going out and buying a private insurance plan. So who stays in Medicare? The poorest and the sickest. Then the Medicare costs explode and it becomes unaffordable and we destroy the whole Medicare system. Do not buy that argument of Mr. Ryan, that someone can stay in Medicare if they want. No, it would destroy it. Make no mistake, the Ryan plan is a radical break with the past. This is not some little transition. This is not some little bit of experimentation or something. No, the Ryan budget is a radical break with what we have had in the past. It turns a successful, reliable comprehensive source of health care that seniors have depended on for decades, paid into over years of hard work--they turn it into an unpredictable, unreliable voucher care system. Our approach is very different. President Obama has fought to strengthen Medicare, not end it. He believes Medicare is a sacred compact, and he has improved Medicare in the Affordable Care Act or what we now know as ObamaCare. My friends on the other side of the aisle have been saying ``ObamaCare'' as though it is a pejorative. It has a bad connotation. I use it as a very good connotation because I want to tell you President Obama does care. He cares about the fact that kids can stay on their parents' policy until age 26. He does care that insurance companies can no longer put lifetime caps on real sick people any longer. President Obama does care if someone has a preexisting condition, they cannot be denied affordable health care insurance. So, yes, President Obama does care. That is why I think ObamaCare really does describe it well--Obama cares. For example, in ObamaCare we eliminate gaps in coverage; that is, the doughnut hole. We close the doughnut hole. We reduce the cost of prescription drugs. According to Medicare's Actuary--not me, the Actuary--the Affordable Care Act extends the program's solvency by 8 years, from 2016 to 2024, by getting rid of wasteful subsidies to insurance companies, getting rid of fraud, waste, and abuse in the system. So our plan for Medicare is simple: Mend it, don't end it. That is just what we do. The Ryan plan is bad news for those who depend on Medicare for their basic health care needs. It is disastrous for people who depend on the Medicaid Program. The Ryan budget would block-grant Medicaid, put the entire program under the States, and then cut it by $810 billion over the next 10 years. That's right. The Medicaid Program, block-grant it to the States, cut it by $810 billion over the next 10 years. What does Medicaid do? Seniors, if they pay into the program, have Medicare when they retire. If they become disabled, if they have paid in the requisite amount of money, they can get disability coverage or survivors' benefits. I am talking about Medicaid, health care for low- income Americans and other populations. The Medicaid Program is something we instituted over half a century ago now to tell all Americans that they are going to be able to have quality health care. Do you remember that debate? I remember watching one of the debates that the Republicans were having in their Presidential series. The question was asked: You know we take care of sick people in our country. Where do they go? They can go to the emergency room. It costs a lot more money. But the question was asked-- something about, do you just deny that? A lot of people would say just let them die, leave them out on the street. Is that the kind of country we want to be? If we are sick and we do not have the wherewithal we cannot get health care? We moved beyond that. We have moved beyond that as a society. The other population is Americans with disabilities. Almost one in every two Americans, almost 50 percent of Americans with disabilities depend on Medicaid for access to health services and support that span everything from hospital to home care. Services from the Medicaid Program allow our citizens with disabilities to live with dignity and with purpose in their homes and in their communities. Nearly 3 million seniors and people with disabilities use the Medicaid Program to avoid costly nursing home care. If we cut home and community-based care for this group of Americans, then they would have to turn to institutional care. The short-term cuts, these cuts they are going to make in Medicaid, will lead to longer term expenses because we know that institutional care is more expensive than care at home or in the community. I guess, unless we just say to them: Tough luck, you are on your own. Tough luck. You have a disability? Cut your Medicaid. Can't live at home? Go live in an institution. Oh, the institution is no longer there because we cannot afford it--then I guess you have to go out on the street and beg. Is that what we want to see? Like many third world countries where we see people with disabilities on the corners begging? Families with a child with a disability out in the street begging? Is that what we want? Do we want to walk down the street and see people who, through no fault of their own, are disabled and they are out there begging with a tin cup and a tin plate? Is that the kind of country we want to become? To dismantle the Medicaid Program, as they would do under the Ryan budget, would dismantle our commitment to quality affordable health care for all. The Medicaid Program is a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of middle-class families--yes, middle-class families, working families who have children with lifelong disabilities such as Down syndrome or autism. Instead of cutting these families off from a critical lifeline, we should be strengthening the long-term viability of this program, Medicaid, reassuring these families that America is not going to turn its back on them when they need help the most. You do not have to take my word for it about shredding this compact. I have said many times that we have a unique American social contract, a compact that evolved over our march from a society in which we had child labor, which, if people were older and poor, they went to the county home; where children died in infancy; where, if people were disabled, they were put in dark places. We evolved a social contract. We said, basically, in America we are going to provide a ladder of opportunity or ramp of opportunity. We are going to make sure we take care that we educate our young and take care of our elderly, a social safety net. Here is the former Reagan economic adviser, Mr. Bruce Bartlett. Here is what he said: Distributionally, the Ryan plan is a monstrosity. The rich would receive huge tax cuts while the social safety net would be shredded to pay for them. Then again, we don't have to take those words. I think the bishops had something to say about that when the bishops said the Ryan budget fails the moral test. The Nation's Catholic bishops reiterated their demand that the Federal budget protect the poor and said the GOP measure ``fails to meet these moral criteria.'' That is the Ryan budget. At the centerpiece of the Ryan budget is its promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare. Again, once we get past this political theater and look at what repeal of the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare would actually mean, it is not a very pretty picture. Repeal would reopen the Medicare prescription doughnut hole, requiring seniors to pay about $600 more per year on average for prescription drugs. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare, about 86 million Americans received at least one free preventive service in 2011 and almost 1 million Iowans received at least one free prevention service in 2011. That would be repealed, and then they would be charged. Americans now get services such as mammograms, colonoscopies, and other cancer screenings. Eighty-six million Americans received free preventive services. This is in keeping with ObamaCare's goal that changes from a sick care society to a health care society. Rather than focusing all of our attention and money on emergency room care or when people get the sickest, we start to move it more upfront to preventive care. We would get to people early and prevent illness. We would keep people healthy and out of the hospital in the first place. The Ryan budget shreds all of that. It is back to the old system we always had--no preventive care. When someone gets sick, they go to the emergency room, and that is busting us as a country. That is breaking our budget. We have to put more into prevention. Mr. President, your mother was right, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I don't know why we have not learned that. We did learn it. We put that in ObamaCare. The Ryan budget says, no, we want to get rid of that. The repeal of ObamaCare would allow insurance companies to deny people coverage because of a preexisting condition. Nearly half of Americans have some form of a preexisting health condition, and right now the Affordable Care Act covers all children. In 2014--just 1 year and a little over 2 months from now--everyone will be covered even if they have a preexisting condition. This is Eleanor Pierce from Cedar Falls, IA. She was denied health insurance, when she lost her job, because of a preexisting condition of high blood pressure. Without coverage, she racked up $60,000 in medical debts. If you repeal ObamaCare, more than 30 million people would be denied access to affordable and comprehensive health insurance. It would make insured Americans pay more than tens of billions of dollars of uncompensated care when they show up in emergency rooms. Actually, repealing ObamaCare would cost American families an average of over $1,100 extra in premiums annually right now that we are paying for uncompensated care when people show up in an emergency room. Repeal would kick more than 3 million young people off their parents' policy. That hurts people like Emily Schlichting. She testified at one of our hearings. She is a young woman from Omaha. She said that ``young people are the future of this country and we are the most affected by reform. We are the generation that is most uninsured. We need the Affordable Care Act because it is literally an investment in the future of this country.'' She suffers from a rare autoimmune disorder. In the bad old days, that made her uninsurable. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare, she is now covered under her parents' policy until age 26. Guess what. In 2014 her preexisting condition will mean nothing. She will be able to get affordable health insurance. The Ryan budget says, sorry, Emily, you are on your own. These are just a few of the ways in which the Ryan plan to repeal ObamaCare would drag us backward to the bad old days when insurance companies were in the driver's seat and millions of Americans were one illness away from bankruptcy. Over the last few weeks, Governor Romney and Representative Ryan have been saying that the President's health reform robs Medicare. I heard that he said that in Florida last night. I don't know how else to say this, but that is totally false. That is untrue. First of all, nonpartisan economists have certified that the President's health care plan or ObamaCare has strengthened the Medicare Program and extends its solvency by 8 years. If we were robbing the Medicare Program, how could it extend its solvency by 8 more years? The Affordable Care Act doesn't rob Medicare, it makes the program more efficient and more reliable. It saves $700 billion, not from beneficiaries, not from recipients who are on Medicare, but from overpayments to private insurance companies, providers, pharmaceuticals. It cracks down on fraud, waste, and abuse. What is interesting is that the Ryan budget has exactly the same savings in his budget as ObamaCare has in the plan we passed here. It is the same and exact to the dollar. It is written the same way. As President Clinton said: ``You gotta give [him] one thing--it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.'' Ryan put in his budget exactly what we had in ObamaCare, and now they are attacking President Obama for what they have in their budget. Go figure. In both of his budget proposals, Mr. Ryan keeps all of the Affordable Care Act's medical improvements that we put in the Affordable Care Act. I heard Mr. Romney in Florida last night attacking President Obama for doing what Mr. Romney said was marvelous about Mr. Ryan's budget. In short, Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan would end Medicare. There is something else that I hear them say all the time. They say they are going to protect everyone over age 55. Under the Ryan plan he says they are going to go to this voucher care, but anyone over age 55 is protected. I have to ask: Protected from what? I mean, if it is such a good deal, why don't we do it for everybody? Yet Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney say, no, everyone over age 55 has the same Medicare system and they don't get the voucher program. It is only for those under age 55. There must be something wrong with it then. If it is so darn good, why don't they put everybody in there right away? Conversely, if they are protecting everyone over age 55, why don't they protect everyone under age 55? Got it? If they are aged 55 and over they are unprotected. Put them on a voucher program. That is the dirty little secret they are not telling us. Again, by repealing the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, 439,000 Iowa seniors would be forced onto these vouchers, 60,000 Iowa seniors would be forced back into the doughnut hole and paying more money for their drugs, and 400,000 Iowa seniors would pay for preventive services that they now get at no cost. More than 30 million people will be denied coverage under the Ryan budget. ObamaCare insures more than 94 percent of all Americans. That is what would happen; they would be denied coverage. I will close with this: The bottom line is President Obama and ObamaCare protects Medicare. It keeps it solvent. It keeps everyone covered. The Ryan budget shreds the social safety net for Medicaid and destroys Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. ObamaCare protects Americans from insurance company abuses, expands coverage, increases the quality of care, shifts more into prevention and keeping people healthy. The Ryan budget does away with all of that and would drag us backward to the bad old days. When we look at the Ryan budget--or the Romney-Ryan budget, since Mr. Romney called it marvelous--we have to shake our heads in disbelief that they would take America back that far after we have come so far in covering people and getting rid of preexisting condition clauses. ObamaCare takes off caps on lifetime coverage for those who have a serious illness so they don't go bankrupt. ObamaCare makes sure kids in America can stay on their parents' policies. We don't want to go back, and that is why this Ryan budget must be totally defeated. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Abby Duggan, Anne Berry, and Nikki Hurt of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I truly am sorry to see this happen on the Senate floor, I say to my good friend from Utah. This has been a long time coming. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities started here, started in America. It started with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Ninety-one Senators voted yea on that--strongly supported by conservatives, liberals, moderates, understanding that we had to take that next step in having a broad civil rights law that covered people with disabilities in our society. After that was passed and during the 1990s, it became clear that it kind of ignited a conscience around the world that we needed to do something globally about people with disabilities. So really the United States sort of became the leader in promoting this Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the United Nations. In fact, I have a quote I would share with my friend. When President Bush signed the bill on July 26, 1990--and we were all gathered at the White House--here is what he said: This historic act is the world's first comprehensive declaration of equality for people with disabilities--the first. Its passage has made the United States the international leader on this human rights issue. So starting after that, our diplomats and others started working on this issue, and so this convention was developed through the United Nations. I do not know all the wherewithal of how that was done, but it was done and we had great input. So now the convention has come out. It was sent to us a couple of years ago. Under our laws, the President, whoever it might be, has to send that out to all of the departments and agencies to see whether there are any conflicts of laws or did we have to change any of our laws to comport with this convention. Well, that bureaucracy takes a while. That took a couple of years to wind through. I do not know when the President got it back, but he sent it down to us this spring, and the finding was that the administration made it clear that through all of this, the ratification of this convention will not require any change in U.S. law and will have no fiscal impact. So it does not require any change in our laws. That makes sense because we are the leader in the world on disability law. We are the leader. Senator McCain and I were the two leadoff witnesses when the Foreign Relations Committee had their hearing. But we were not the only ones. Boyden Gray, who was so very helpful in 1990 in getting the initial ADA passed through the Congress, was there. He testified. Senator Dole sent a letter. He could not show up in person. Former Attorney General Thornburgh testified. Steve Bartlett, who was a Congressman from Dallas, later left the House, became mayor of Dallas, and now I think he is the executive director of the Business Council here, testified and has been instrumental in not only helping us pass the ADA but passing the ADA Act amendments of 2008 which the second President Bush signed into law. I say this to my friend from Utah. This is not something that sort of popped up overnight. This has been a long time coming. A lot of effort has been put into it. As I said, all the departments have said there is no conflict with our laws. We do not have to change anything. I also say to my friend that we do want to be that city on the hill, that shining city on the hill. This is one area in which the United States has no equal. We have taken the lead in the world on this issue. Countries come to us to see how they can do something, what they can do for people with disabilities. One hundred sixteen nations have already signed it, and the European Union. If we do not sign it, then when other countries have to change their laws to comport with this convention, I think we should be at the table. We should be there with them, sharing with them what we have done in America to make accommodations better, to make education accessible to people with disabilities, employment, all of those things. If we do not sign it, we are not going to be a part of that. Yet the rest of the countries are looking to us for leadership. So we should be at the table. One other thing I would say to my friend from Utah is, we are a very mobile people. We travel around the world a lot. More and more people with disabilities are traveling, veterans with disabilities, nonveterans. And yet how many times have I heard from people who have traveled overseas say: Gosh, I wanted to go here, I wanted to go there, but because I have a disability I could not get around? It would be nice if other countries did this. Well, other countries have now signed on to it. I was hoping we could vote and we could be a part of it and we could be a part of helping other countries to change their systems and to be more accommodating for people with disabilities. Quite frankly, I must say to my friend from Utah, I am perplexed, I really am, as to why this is an issue. I do not know why there is an objection. Maybe there is something I do not understand. I thought I did. But maybe there is something I do not know that the Senator can enlighten me on as to why we should not bring this up. I suppose if someone wants to vote against it, they can. It takes a two-thirds vote of the Senate to pass this. I am perplexed as to why we cannot do this. It seems to be so bipartisan. It seems to me to be so much above the political fray. I do not know the politics in this whatsoever. So I had assumed we would bring this up and pass it. I was not aware this was going to happen this way. I was in my office when I was alerted to this. So I say, I do not know why we cannot bring this up and have a small debate on it and vote on it. I have more to say, but I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I do not know what it would take to satisfy my friend from Utah. It goes out to all of the departments. They have to analyze this. They took over a year, almost 2 years, to do this, to find out if there were any conflicts with laws. So if you go through all of that, and all the departments report back and they cannot find any conflicts of laws or any laws we have that need to be changed, I do not know what would satisfy the Senator from Utah. What could that possibly be? He is almost raising an impossible barrier, unless the Senator can inform us as to what it would be that would satisfy him. I do not know what else you could do other than what has been done on this bill. Again, I can understand people saying they had a hearing on it. I think it was well attended. But as I said, this is not something that sprung up overnight. This has been in the works for a number of years. To think that here we are the world's leader on this issue. I did not understand all the Senator said. He said something about it could have an effect on the election or something like that. I have no idea what he is talking about. If there is truly a nonpartisan, bipartisan issue, it is this. We have always made it thus. When we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, it was truly bipartisan. When the Supreme Court made their decisions in the Sutton case, the Sutton trilogy in the Toyota case in the late 1990s, early 2000, that kind of threw a monkey wrench into the works on employment in terms of disability, it caused a lot of consternation in the disability community and in the business community. We had to right that. We had to kind of tell the Supreme Court what we meant. Well, that was in 2001. It took us 7 years of working with Republicans and Democrats and the administration, everybody. But in 2008 we passed a bill in the Senate unanimously, passed it in the House unanimously. President George Bush, the second Bush, signed it into law. I was down there for it. The first President Bush who signed the initial Americans with Disabilities Act was there. We were there with Republicans and Democrats. It was not seen as any kind of an issue. If I am not mistaken, 2008 was an election year. And yet President Bush did not say, we cannot sign this because there is an election. This has nothing do with politics. So I find it almost bizarre that the Senate cannot act on something so close to us as a people, something we have taken such a lead on, something which means so much in terms of our leadership globally, that we cannot act on this. Again, so many people have taken the lead. Senator Durbin and Chairman Kerry of Foreign Relations, Senator McCain, Senator Barrasso, Senator Moran, Senator Lugar, Senator Udall, Senator Coons, many bipartisans have been working on this. I admit, obviously I have a deep interest in this since I was the Senate author of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It has been a key part of my Senate career for 25 years now--25 years. One of the great joys was passing the Americans with Disabilities Act with such bipartisan support. Thanks to the ADA, our country is a better place for everyone, not just for people with disabilities but for their families, for everyone. I cited earlier what President Bush said when he signed it. He said: This historic act is the world's first comprehensive declaration of equality for people with disabilities--the first. Its passage has made the United States the international leader on this human rights issue. That is President Bush, 1990. The first. We were the first. We are the international leader on this issue. And now, 116 other nations, the European Union, can sign onto this but we cannot? This is truly bizarre. Thanks to the ADA and other U.S. laws passed under the umbrella of the ADA, America has shown the rest of the world how to honor the basic rights of children and adults with disabilities, how to integrate them into society, how to remove barriers to full participation and activities that we now take for granted. We can take pride in the fact that our support for disability rights has inspired a global movement that led the United Nations to adopt the CRPD, the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. We led that. Our legal framework influenced the substance of the convention and is informing its implementation in the 116 countries that have signed and ratified it along with the European Union. As I said, I am grateful for the leadership on both sides of the aisle; some Senators who were here before but not now, Senator Dole; some who were here who were active in supporting the Americans with Disabilities Act, Senator McCain; new Senators, Senator Barrasso, Senator Moran, and others. President George Herbert Walker Bush, the first President Bush, has been an active supporter of the CRPD. His White House counsel Boyden Gray, his Attorney General Dick Thornburg, have all been enthusiastic supporters of the Senate ratifying the CRPD. By ratifying this convention, the United States will be reaffirming our commitment to our citizens with disabilities. As I said earlier, Americans with disabilities, including disabled veterans, should be able to live, travel, study, work abroad with the same freedoms and access that they enjoy here in the United States. As the state parties, these different countries, come together to grapple with the best ways to make progress and remove barriers, we, America, should be at the table with them, helping them learn from our experience. As I said, the administration has submitted what they call reservations, understandings, and declarations that make clear that U.S. ratification of the CRPD will not require any change in U.S. law and will have no fiscal impact. I do not know what else you can do to satisfy someone. I would say, if people feel that we do not want to take that leadership, then they can vote against it. But at least we ought to bring it up for a debate, discussion, and vote on the Senate floor. I would say that although U.S. ratification will have no impact on our laws, it will not have a fiscal impact, my hope is that U.S. ratification will have a moral impact--a moral impact. My hope is we would send a signal to the rest of the world that it is not okay to leave a baby with Downs syndrome by the side of the road to die. It is not okay to warehouse adults with intellectual disabilities in institutions, chained to the bars of a cell where their only crime is that they have a disability. It is not okay to refuse to educate children because they are blind or deaf or they use a wheelchair. It is not okay to prevent disabled people from voting or getting married or owning property or having children. It is not okay to rebuild the infrastructures in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and other war-torn or disaster-stricken areas without improving the accessibility of the infrastructure at the same time. Former President Reagan frequently talked about America as a city on a hill, a shining example for the world of a nation that ensures opportunity and freedom for all its people. Thanks to our country's success in implementing the ADA, advancing that law's great goals of full inclusion and full participation for all our citizens, America indeed has become a shining city on a hill for people with disabilities around the globe. By ratifying the CRPD, we can affirm our leadership in this field. We can give renewed impetus to those striving to emulate us. We can give them that renewed emphasis by our example and by sitting down with them, if we are signatory to this treaty. Again, I guess I have to recognize there are some Senators who were not part of the bipartisan vote to support it in the Foreign Relations Committee. I guess there are some who are not ready to support the unanimous consent request before us. My hope, since we are obviously coming to a close, is that we will use the time between now and when we come back in our lameduck session after the election to address any issues that have been raised about the CRPD. If Senators have issues and want them raised, let us get them out and then let us move forward, when we come back after the election, with a strong bipartisan vote for us to ratify the CRPD. When we voted on the ADA--the Americans with Disabilities Act--in 1990, we had 91 Senators. OK, there were nine who didn't vote for it. I understand that. But 91 Senators voted in support of that historic law. My hope is, when this comes up for a vote after the election, we can achieve the same kind of strong bipartisan statement of support for the human rights of 1 billion people with disabilities around the world. We must reaffirm our leadership on this issue and let the rest of the world know we are not stepping back on this. We are going to maintain our support for the dignity and the rights of people with disabilities not only in America but anywhere in the world. I am very sorry we couldn't have brought this up. I haven't done any head counts for any votes, but I think I know most of the Senators are people of good will, and I believe when they look at this and think about it, it is going to get an overwhelming vote of support. So I am sorry we couldn't bring it up, but I look forward to passing this when we come back after the election. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mike Sobaski and Peter Visser of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. HARKIN

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