Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I spoke at some length on this bill, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the other day, but as we move to end debate on the bill itself, I want to once again express the critical nature of the bill for ensuring equality in the workplace for all Americans. I was just on the floor listening to Senator Merkley's very poignant remarks, and I want everyone to know that we would not be here at this point in time with this bill before us ready for passage tomorrow were it not for the leadership and the persistence of Senator Merkley from Oregon. He has been a champion of this issue since he served in the Oregon Legislature, and when he first came here he became a champion of this bill. He truly picked up the mantle of Senator Ted Kennedy in picking this bill out from sort of the ashes of 1996, the last time-- the only time--we ever had a vote. I say through the Chair to my friend from Oregon, we thank you for your doggedness on this issue and for working across the aisle, on both sides of the aisle, to bring it first to our committee and then getting it through the committee and now on the floor. Again, I want the record to show that it was Senator Merkley who really spearheaded this effort, along with Senator Mark Kirk on the Republican side. The two of them fought very hard to get us to this point and to make sure we were actually debating it. So we are greatly indebted to the distinguished Senator from Oregon for his leadership on this issue. We had an incredible vote the other night that demonstrated more clearly than anything I can say that the Members of this body believe in the message of equality and fairness that is embodied in this bill. The commitment and good faith with which Members have negotiated and offered amendments has been a tribute to the Senate. What we are seeing here is how the Senate ought to work. This is sort of the Senate at its best. We can do business here and get important work done when we share a commitment to fairness and when we act in a spirit of compromise and good will. I listened to the Senator from Oregon, who so eloquently pointed out that too many of our citizens are being judged not by what they can contribute to a business or an organization but by who they are or whom they choose to love. Well, the Senate is poised to take an important step toward changing that. Quite frankly, I say with all candor, I think the American people have gotten way ahead of us on this one. The American people--a great majority--believe in the right of an individual to earn a living free from discrimination and to be judged in the workplace based on their integrity, their ability, and their qualifications. This bill ensures that the same basic employment protections against discrimination that already protect American workers on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and disability also apply to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans. It is rare to have before us a bill with such broad and deep support. ENDA is supported by some 60 faith-based organizations, including congregations and organizations varying from the Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church to the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the Union of Reform Judaism, the Union Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and the Islamic Society of North America. A poll showed that 76 percent of American Catholics support basic workplace protections for gay and transgender workers, and in the same poll almost 70 percent of evangelical Christians support employment protections for LGBT persons. Over 100 businesses support the bill, everything from Pfizer, Levi Strauss, to Hershey, Capital One, Alcoa, Marriott Hotels, InterContinental Hotels, Texas Instruments, and on and on. Seventy-four percent of Fortune 100 companies and nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies already have sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination policies in place. In the course of our committee hearings on this bill, we heard from executives of Nike and General Mills, who both testified that ``ENDA is good for business.'' A Nike representative told the committee: Teams thrive in an open and welcoming work environment, where individuals are bringing their full selves to work. Since the Senate last considered a version of this bill in 1996, 17 States--and I am proud to say, including my State of Iowa--have put legislation in place that includes these basic employment protections for LGBT citizens. Those laws have been implemented seamlessly and have not led to any significant increase in litigation. But certainly that is not to say what we are doing here is not necessary. The majority of Americans--56.6 percent--still live in States where it is perfectly legal to fire someone or refuse to hire them because of who they are--a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender American. Discrimination in the workplace is real. Forty-two percent of LGBT workers report having experienced some form of discrimination at work. Seven percent reported having lost a job as a result of their sexual orientation. Far too many hard-working Americans continue to be judged not by their ability and their qualifications but by their sexual orientation or gender identity. I talked the other day about Sam Hall, a West Virginia miner who faced destruction of his property and verbal harassment from his workers because of his identity as a gay person. Sam is one of those millions of Americans who have no legal recourse without the law. I also talked about Kylar Broadus, who faced intense harassment at work as he transitioned from female to male and who has never recovered financially. I talked about Allyson Robinson, who was forced to live in a different State, apart from her family, because she could not find a job as an openly transgender female. This law will make a real difference for these Americans and for millions more like them. I remember 23 years ago I stood at this podium, at this desk, as the sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as the chair then of the Subcommittee on Disability Policy. Senator Kennedy was the chair at that time. I talked about the necessity for the Americans with Disabilities Act in terms of a courthouse door. I pointed out that as of that time, if you were an African American or a woman or let's say you were Jewish and you went down to get a job for which you were fully qualified and the employer said: I'm not hiring Black people; I don't hire Black people; I don't like you; get out of here; I don't hire Jews; get out of here, you could leave there and go right down the street to the courthouse, and the courthouse door was open to you because in 1964 we passed the Civil Rights Act that covered people that way. We said: You have recourse under law for violations of your inherent civil rights based on sex, national origin, religion, race. But, as of 1990, if you were a person with a disability and you went down to the prospective employer to get a job for which you were fully qualified and the prospective employer said: Get out of here; I don't hire cripples; get out of here, and you wheeled your wheelchair down the street to the courthouse, the doors were locked. You had no recourse under law for that violation of your civil rights because it was not a civil right. So in 1990 we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, and now the courthouse door is open. If you are discriminated against because of your disability, you can go down to the courthouse. You have the law on your side. I stand here today, 23 years later, saying that we have covered civil rights laws in this country for almost everyone--except for those for whom gender identity or sexual orientation is part of who they are. That is true. As I pointed out, we have reams of records here: people fired because they were gay or lesbian--not because they could not do the job, not because they were not doing their job, they were fired just because of who they were. Guess what. That gay person walked down to that courthouse door. It was locked. It was locked, just as it was for people with disabilities before 1990, just as it was for African Americans before 1964, and for women. I mean these young people working here, these young women, they do not realize in the lifetime of their parents, at least their grandparents anyway, you could fire someone because she was a woman or not hire someone because she was a woman. Guess what. The courthouse door was locked. You had no recourse. Some States passed civil rights laws. So we had some States pass civil rights laws. As I said, we have 17 States in America that do have laws on the books that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. But how about the rest of the States? As I said, over 56 percent of American workers live in States in which there is no protection. So in the long march of the American experiment, from the time of our founding and the Bill of Rights, from our Declaration of Independence which said ``all people are created equal,'' step-by-step, step-by- step, sometimes long, painfully--sometimes too long and too painfully-- we have expanded this covenant to bring more people into the American family to recognize that people should not be judged on the basis of some externalities such as the color of their skin or their sex or their religion or national origin or disability or whether they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Everyone should have these civil rights, to be covered by civil rights so they will be judged on their contribution to society, by what they do, not by who they are. That is why this vote is so important. That is why this is a historic step again for the Senate. You could look back and, yes, there were people who opposed the civil rights bill in 1964. We had people here that opposed the Americans with Disabilities Act. But look back and see what they did for America. We are a stronger and a better country because of those laws that were passed, much better for everyone--for everyone, for our families, for the elderly, for everyone. I hope that those who may be thinking: Gee, I do not want to support this; I am not a big fan of gay people or I may have some religious problems on that, we have religious exceptions in here. That is not the issue. The issue is whether that should be an allowable reason to be discriminated against in employment. As I said, we have said before that is not a legitimate reason for race, sex, national origin or disability; why should it be a reason based upon your sexual orientation or gender identity? I hope my fellow Senators will think about what they would have done had they been here to vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What if they had been here just 23 years ago to vote on the Americans with Disabilities Act? This Employment Non-Discrimination Act takes its place alongside all of those. That is why it is such a historically important vote. The bill's sponsors, Senator Jeff Merkley, Senator Mark Kirk, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Senator Susan Collins, have worked long and hard. They have worked closely with us in the committee over the last few days to continue to build support for this bill, to work through proposals to change and improve the bill. We are finishing the debate tomorrow. We will have the final vote on this bill. Passing it with a resounding majority will send a clear message to the American people and to the House of Representatives that we have waited long enough. Think about this. This bill failed by only one vote in 1996--one vote. So here we are 27 years later. It is time to pass this. It is time now to end workplace discrimination against any member of our American family based on sexual orientation or gender identity. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator for his question. He is correct, nothing in this amendment would modify the nondiscrimination provision that was included in the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act. What this amendment does is say that you cannot retaliate against an organization for discrimination in its hiring, firing, compensation, or other terms or conditions of employment if you are an organization that qualifies for the exemption under section 702(a) of title VII of the Civil Rights Act. ENDA's religious exemption does not create new grounds for liability or penalty.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Lauren Sarkesian and Jennifer Lucas of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today marks another step forward in the progress of the United States of America in making sure that all of our citizens are treated fairly and equitably under the law, that each citizen of this country will know he or she cannot be discriminated against because of race, religion, sex, or national origin. That was all covered in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1990 I was proud to stand at this very desk when we took another step forward when we said we were going to extend civil rights to cover people with disabilities. Today I stand here to mark another step forward when we will have a vote on proceeding to the debate to end discrimination in employment because of a person's sexual orientation. It is a huge step forward, one too long in coming. I was here in 1996 when we voted on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the bill that is now before the Senate. We lost by one vote--50 to 49. That was a dark day. We have been trying to get it before the Senate ever since, and we have finally done so. I am proud to say that we got it through the HELP Committee this summer on a strong bipartisan vote, and we now have it before the Senate. People should understand this is a momentous day in the development of our country, ensuring that every person is recognized for their individual worth and for what they contribute to society, not for the color of their skin or race or religion or national origin or whether they have a disability. Today we also say: We will make sure you cannot be discriminated against because of your sexual identity or whom you love. It has been 17 years since Ted Kennedy, who chaired the committee at the time, brought this bill to the floor in 1996, and it was, again, one vote shy of passage. In the meantime, over those 17 years, the attitudes in this country have changed dramatically about the rights of gay, lesbian, transsexual, and transgender Americans. In a nutshell, I think the vast majority of Americans believe that individuals ought to have the right to earn a living free from discrimination and that they should be judged on their performance in the workplace based on their talent, their ability, and their qualifications. Interestingly enough, since 1996, 17 States--including my State of Iowa--have passed legislation that includes basic employment protections for all LGBT Americans. I will use that acronym or those letters to explain lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans. Eighty-eight percent of Fortune 500 businesses have included protections in their nondiscrimination policies, as have the majority of small businesses. Over 100 major businesses, including pharmaceutical and technology companies, banks, manufacturing companies, and chemical companies have announced their support for this bill. In fact, there are polls that show 8 out of 10 Americans already believe that discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation is already illegal; for example, that it is illegal to fire someone for being gay or for being a lesbian. Why are we here today? Twenty-three years ago I stood at this desk as the manager of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That bill was to extend nondiscrimination clauses to people with disabilities. At that time a lot of people said: What is the problem? Here is the problem in a nutshell. Let's say you are an African American--or a woman or Jewish or Catholic or anything else--and you applied for a job for which you were fully qualified and the prospective employer said: No, I am not hiring African Americans. I don't want any Black people working here. No, you are Jewish; get out of here. Do you know what you could do? You could turn right around, walk out the door, go down to the courthouse, and the courthouse door would be open for you. You can go into that courthouse and take that case to court. When I stood here 23 years ago, I said: Until the President signs that bill into law, a person with a disability--for example, someone bound to a wheelchair--could be turned down in spite of being qualified for the job. The prospective employer could say: Get out of here; I don't hire cripples. If you then went down to the courthouse, the door was locked. You had no recourse under law for the violation of your civil rights. That is true today for gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender Americans. They could be fired just because of that. If they go down to the courthouse door, it is locked. They have no recourse under law. As I said, 17 States have State laws, some municipalities have municipal laws, but the vast majority of Americans live in States in which there is no civil rights law governing LGBT people. The majority of Americans--more than 56 percent--live in States in which it is perfectly legal to fire or refuse to hire someone because of who they are--lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. They have no recourse under law. As I said, most people in America think they are covered. They think you can't discriminate against someone because of that. The fact is that it is still perfectly legal to do so in most States in the United States. As I said, I think we have changed quite a bit in the 17 years since we last considered this bill. That last vote was 49 to 50. We lost by one vote, and there were no amendments. At that time a majority of Senators would have been enough to pass it. All we needed was one more vote. I remember Vice President Al Gore was sitting in the chair, but we were one vote short. Today, however, as times have changed, we know we need 60 votes to pass bills. Just think about that--17 years ago 51 votes would have passed this bill; now we have to have 60 votes. I won't get into the necessity of having to change the rules of the Senate. We need 60 votes before we can even bring up the bill. It is a tribute to the leadership of the bill's sponsors, Senator Jeff Merkley and Senator Mark Kirk, that we have now reached 60 votes. As of last week we only had about 57 or 58 votes, and then 2 more people decided to support the bill. Now that Senator Heller of Nevada has announced his support for the bill, we have 60 votes. We have 60 votes, and I predict we will get more than 60 votes. Once we reach the critical mass, I think my colleagues will understand that this is another step in the direction of opening America and making our society more inclusive rather than exclusive. Senator Kirk, who is managing the bill for the minority, had been a supporter of this legislation before he was elected to the House. Senator Merkley, who is the sponsor of the bill, was the leader of this effort when he was in the Oregon State Legislature. One Republican and one Democrat were champions of this bill before they came to Congress. They both played a critical role in ensuring the bill was brought before our committee. Even though Senator Merkley left our committee to join the Appropriations Committee, he always kept on top of this. With their help, we voted it out of our HELP Committee in July with a strong bipartisan vote of 15 to 7. I thank the present occupant of the Chair, the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, for all of his help and support for getting this bill through. We had the support of three Members of the minority as well. The vote was 15 to 7. It was a great vote. Despite the passage of laws at the State and local levels, discrimination in the workplace continues to be all too real. Forty-two percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual workers report having experienced some form of discrimination at work. Even with the progress that has been made at the State and local levels, as I mentioned, too many hard-working Americans, whether employed by private companies or public entities, are judged not by their ability and qualifications but by their sexual orientation or gender identity. Consider the example of Michael Carney, who was denied reinstatement as a police officer three times before successfully using the protections of State law to get his job back. This is a job in which he has now served with distinction for many years. Consider Sam Hall, a West Virginia miner who suffered destruction of property and verbal harassment from coworkers because of his identity as a gay person. Sam is one of those millions of Americans who currently have no legal recourse without this law. Discrimination against transgender Americans is even more common, with 78 percent reporting harassment at work. I was fortunate enough to hear from Kylar Broadus, who was a witness at our HELP Committee hearing last year. Kylar faced intense harassment at work as he transitioned from female to male. He has never fully recovered financially from the loss of his well-paid position. Allyson Robinson also provided written testimony to the committee regarding the painful separation from her family that she endured because of financial hardships while she searched for her first job as an openly transgender female. Again, too many of our fellow citizens are being judged not by what they can contribute to the workplace but by who they are and whom they choose to love. Unfortunately, we can cite countless cases of bigotry and blatant job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Equal opportunity is not just an abstract principle or a matter of statistics. Every day, decent hard-working Americans are being hurt by this form of discrimination. It has been almost 50 years since we first took steps to eliminate discrimination at work and 23 years since we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities. We still have a long way to go, but our country is a far better place because of laws against discrimination based on race and sex and national origin and religion and age and, yes, disability. At long last, it is time for us to also prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Such discrimination is fundamentally wrong and cannot be tolerated any longer in our country. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans deserve the same civil rights protections as all other Americans. This bill will accomplish that. It will say to millions of LGBT Americans that they are full and welcome members of our American family and that they deserve the same civil rights protections as every other American. The bill is very simple. It is very clear. It states that private businesses, public employers, and labor unions cannot make employment decisions--hiring, firing, promotion or compensation--because of a person's actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. There are exemptions for small businesses and religious organizations, and current rules that are applicable to the Armed Forces are not affected. The bill expressly prohibits disparate impact claims. I wish to repeat that. The bill expressly prohibits disparate impact claims. It is modeled on title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That law has been in place, as I said, since 1964. This bill also incorporates many suggestions from members of both sides, Republicans and Democrats, on our HELP Committee, and I am glad we could work on a bipartisan basis to improve the bill and get it through our committee. ENDA, as it is known--the Employment Non-Discrimination Act--has unprecedented support from major American businesses, including Dow Chemical, General Electric, Hilton Hotels, GlaxoSmithKline, Chevron, Wells Fargo, Marriott Hotels, Coca-Cola, Cisco, Kaiser, and on and on. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this list of over 100 companies that support the passage of the bill.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in the course of our hearings on this bill, we heard from executives from Nike and General Mills, among others. Asked why they had chosen to implement strong nondiscrimination policies themselves, the Nike executive testified: ENDA is good for business because teams thrive in an open and welcoming work environment, where individuals are bringing their full selves to work. The bill we are debating specifically protects religious liberty with a substantial exemption that allows specific religious organizations to continue to take sexual orientation and gender identity into account when making employment decisions in their religious organizations. I might point out this bill is supported by 60 faith-based organizations, including congregations and organizations ranging from the Presbyterian Church of America, the Episcopal Church, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the Union of Reform Judaism, the Union Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Islamic Society of North America, and many others. Among other things, polls show that 67 percent of American Catholics support basic workplace protections for LGBT workers. Almost 70 percent in that poll of evangelical Christians supports LGBT employment protections. So there is overwhelming support for this bill, as I said, amongst people of faith and religious-based organizations. Again, I acknowledge the leadership of Senator Kirk, as well as the bill's lead sponsor, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who has championed this bill and without whom, I dare say, we would not be starting this debate today. In addition, we are fortunate the lead Democratic sponsor of the bill in the House in previous Congresses is now a Member of the Senate and a member of our HELP Committee, that is Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. I hope she will soon be able to say she helped pass this bill in both the House and the Senate. I look forward to the vote later today when we will vote to proceed to this bill. As we all know, under the rules of the Senate, after cloture is invoked, we will have up to 30 hours of debate and then the bill will be on the floor and open. We had several amendments filed in committee that members of the HELP Committee reserved to try to bring to the floor. So I am confident we can work with those if they are offered again. I hope all amendments that are offered will be directed at improving this important civil rights legislation. I hope amendments that are focused on unrelated matters can wait for another time, another day, perhaps when that issue is on the floor. This is just too important--this major step forward in expanding our concept of civil rights laws--too important to be dragged down by spurious amendments that have nothing to do with the bill whatsoever. I hope we do not get bogged down with that. As I said, it has been a long time coming for this bill, when we think about it. Seventeen years ago we voted on it and lost by one vote. Attempts have been made periodically to get it back to the floor again and it has just never happened, but now we have the opportunity. We reported it out of committee, as I said, with a good bipartisan vote. ENDA is a critically needed bill. It is commonsense legislation. It has overwhelming support from corporate America, from religious groups, from small and large businesses all across the country. As I said, 8 out of 10 Americans already think it is the law. So let's make sure those 8 in 10 Americans who already think it is the law will now know it is the law, and we can pass it, send it to the House. Hopefully, the House will pass it and the President can sign it into law as soon as possible. No American should be turned away or have to fear the loss of their job or their means of support or fear of not being hired, even though they are eminently qualified, for any reasons other than their ability to do that job. People shouldn't be fired and shouldn't be discriminated against in hiring because of the color of their skin, their race, their religion, their sex, national origin, disability. That is already in the law; now we put this next piece in place--no one should be denied a job, an opportunity to work because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. That is what this bill does. I encourage all Senators to join with us in passing this important civil rights legislation and continuing our Nation's advance toward freedom and inclusion for everyone in our society. Let's say this is a bright day for America. We are finally bringing it to the floor. As I said, we will have the vote later today. We have 60 people who have said they will vote for it; I hope we have more. Sometime later this week--I don't know if we will use the 30 hours but, hopefully, sometime later this week, we can finally pass it. As I said, I think this week will be one that will be an uplifting week. We have had a lot of problems around this place over the last couple of months. I know from the polls that Members of Congress, in both the House and the Senate, are probably about as popular as a toothache with the general public right now. But this week we can show the American people we can come together and we can lift our eyes above the haze and the smoke on the horizon, and we can make this country a better place for all of us by passing this bill. Let's do this, and let's bring to the American people what they think they have already and what they now want. That is, a society free of discrimination. I yield the floor and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, the Senate is about to take another historic step. Think about it. In 1964 we had the Civil Rights Act. In 1990--23 years ago--I stood here when we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which extended civil rights to people with disabilities. Today we are taking one more step to make the American family more inclusive and once and for all ban employment discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. This is a historic opportunity for the Senate once again to say that we are all members of the American family. No one should be discriminated against because of race, sex, religion, or national origin. They should not be discriminated against because of who they love, who they are or whether they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. This is a historic step for the Senate to take today. I urge a yea vote on the motion to proceed.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise to congratulate the Employee Benefit Research Institute on its 35th anniversary this year. As chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, I know how important it is for policymakers to have access to quality data on our health and retirement systems. And for 35 years, EBRI has been providing just that kind of information. For instance, EBRI is a major source of information on how health plan coverage has evolved over the years and how employers have responded to market changes. EBRI is also a unique resource on both 401(k) and IRA ownership, and during the Enron crisis of several years ago, EBRI was one of the only sources of data on what was happening with company stock in 401(k) plans. Because of their expertise and reliability, we in Congress frequently ask EBRI's experts to testify at our hearings, since we know we can trust what they have to say. Health and retirement coverage for American families is critically important to our Nation's future. We are fortunate to have such a respected and reliable source as EBRI to tell us what is happening with employee benefits, and I commend them on their anniversary.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Sergio Plaza and Warren Erickson of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session and that Katrina Rogachevsky be granted floor privileges for the duration of this week.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business for debate only until 7 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, my good friend from Tennessee has raised just another effort to divert resources from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act which we can then use to fix the very problems he has mentioned. I will point out that we report jobs data on a monthly basis, and this is going to be a different standard. I might also point out that in Medicare Part D, we release those data on a monthly basis. I agree with my friend that there should be accountability for the mistakes that have happened and the implementation of the law going forward. In fact, right now, the Department is giving us daily updates on their progress in fixing the Web site. So, again, let's get on with business. I think enough focus has been placed on the mistakes. Hearings are ongoing. There will be hearings in the Senate also. Let's get the problems fixed and move ahead on enrollment without diverting resources. I thought about my friend's proposal, and I thought maybe we should amend it to say we will put in more money and get more people. I don't think my friend would want to do that, either, so we can take care of it. So the people there need to get the problem fixed, and let's move ahead aggressively to get people enrolled in what is going to be a positive change for health care in America. On that basis, I object.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in executive session on Wednesday, October 30, 2013, at 9:15 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to mark-up S.__, Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act of 2013; S. __, CHIMP Act Amendments of 2013; H.R. 2094, School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act; S. __, Older Americans Act Reauthorization Act of 2013; S. 1302, Cooperative and Small Employer Charity Pension Flexibility Act, H.R. 2747, Streamlining Claims Processing for Federal Contractor Employees Act, the nominations of Michael Keith Yudin, to serve as Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Department of Education; James Cole, Jr., to serve as General Counsel, Department of Education; and Chai Feldblum, to serve as Commissioner, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; as well as any additional nominations cleared for action. For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the Committee at (202) 224-5375.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, October 31, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Attaining a Quality Degree: Innovations to Improve Student Success'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Aissa Canchola of the committee staff on (202) 224-2009.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, again, I want to thank my colleague and good friend Senator Alexander for a great working relationship on our committee. Obviously, we have differences of views and opinions on matters--that is the nature of legislation and this body--but we have always worked together in a very conciliatory fashion, and open, and working things out. So I appreciate his approach and the fact that the Senator is willing to give us cloture so we can get an up-or-down vote. I understand he has certain reservations about the nominee. I understand that. But, again, I thank my colleague for being willing to get us to the point where we can have an up-or-down vote on Mr. Griffin. Madam President, tomorrow--we were going to vote today, but the leader came out and announced there was an agreement on both sides to put the vote off until tomorrow to consider the nomination of Mr. Richard Griffin to serve as General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, a very important role as the top prosecutor for violations of this country's labor laws. Given his depth of experience and knowledge of the act, Mr. Griffin is exceptionally well qualified for this position, and I have no doubt he will do an outstanding job of enforcing our Nation's labor laws for workers, unions, and employers. In July, we confirmed five new NLRB members, preventing the agency from shutting down, giving it a full slate of members for the first time in a decade. With a fully functional five-member Board and a new Senate-confirmed General Counsel, it is my hope we can provide this important agency with some much-needed certainty, mark a new positive chapter for the NLRB, and finally put an end to the delay and obstruction that has recently become all too familiar every time a new NLRB nominee is appointed. Without relitigating the previous controversies, I think it is fair to say that over the past few years the NLRB has been the target of unnecessary political attacks and obstruction. What most concerns me about this political game-playing is how it affects the everyday lives of working people across America. These attacks on the Board have had real consequences for real people. Working Americans need and deserve a fully functioning agency to protect their rights and enforce our Nation's labor laws. That is why over 75 years ago Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing American workers the right to form and join a union and to bargain for a better life. For both union and nonunion workers alike, the act provides essential protections. It gives workers a voice in the workplace. It allows them to join together and speak up for fair wages, good benefits, and safe working conditions. These rights ensure that the people who do the real work in this country see the benefits when our economy grows and are not mistreated or put at risk on the job. The National Labor Relations Board is the guardian of these fundamental rights. Workers themselves cannot enforce the National Labor Relations Act. The Board is the only place workers can go if they have been treated unfairly and denied the basic protections the law provides. Thus, the Board plays a vital role in vindicating workers' rights. In the past 10 years, the NLRB has secured opportunities for reinstatement for 22,544 employees who were unjustly fired. It has also recovered more than $1 billion on behalf of workers whose rights were violated. I know many times people think: Well, a lot of these old abuses of workers whom you read about in your history books--well, that is just history and we have gotten over that. Quite frankly, I wish that were the truth. But the fact that in 10 years 22,544 employees were reinstated because they were unjustly fired indicates there are still unfair labor practices being committed by businesses today. And $1 billion recovered on behalf of workers just in the last 10 years--that is $1 billion that unscrupulous companies took from their workers without the right to do so, and the NLRB got that money back for workers. Think about that: $1 billion. The Board does not just protect the rights of workers and unions; it also provides relief and remedies to our Nation's employers, our businesses. The Board is an employer's only recourse if a union commences a wildcat strike, for example, or refuses to bargain in good faith during negotiations. By preventing labor disputes that could disrupt our economy, the work the Board does is vital to every worker and every business across the Nation. Further, the NLRB, you have to understand, is divided into two independent sides. There is the Board side, which adjudicates and interprets the law; then there is the General Counsel side, which investigates filed charges, prosecutes violations, and generally supervises the processing of cases. The general counsel position is important because the NLRB receives about 20,000 to 30,000 charges per year from employees, unions, and employers, and it is the primary function of the general counsel to make sure these charges--each charge--are thoroughly investigated and prosecuted if they are determined to have merit. The general counsel also serves an important role that some of my colleagues may not know about. The attorneys in the General Counsel's Office help facilitate settlements to resolve disputes efficiently. For example, when two unions picketed Walmart in 2012, Walmart filed a claim with the NLRB, and the agency negotiated a settlement. Indeed, settlements are not the exception at the NLRB but the rule, and they are encouraged. In fact, over 90 percent of meritorious unfair labor practice cases are settled by agreement, either through a Board settlement or a private agreement by the two sides. Now that I have discussed the importance of the NLRB in protecting rights and the role the General Counsel plays at that agency, I want to turn the page and talk about Mr. Griffin, the nominee who is before us now to be the General Counsel, and I want to again indicate why I strongly support his nomination. Richard Griffin has a wealth of experience as a labor lawyer. He is deeply steeped in labor and employment law. He most recently served as an NLRB board member himself from January 2012 until this past August. Prior to that, Mr. Griffin was general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers for more than 17 years. Mr. Griffin actually began his legal career over 30 years ago at the NLRB as a counsel to Board members. Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have agreed that Dick Griffin is well qualified to serve as general counsel--indeed, I think his expertise in labor law is difficult to question--but some of my friends on the Republican side continue to oppose his nomination because of an outstanding legal issue that has nothing to do with Mr. Griffin's previous public service, his background, or his ability to function in this new position. Here is what this is all about: Much has been made about the process by which Mr. Griffin was previously recess appointed to serve as a Board member. The controversy began when the District of Columbia Circuit Court issued a ruling in a case which is called the Noel Canning case that diverged from the decisions of three other courts of appeals--the Second Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, and the Eleventh Circuit--and my friends on the Republican side are questioning the validity of an appointment process that has been in place for over 220 years. And that was the decision in the Noel Canning case. Subsequently, two other appeals courts have addressed this issue. The Supreme Court is set to resolve the legal issue once and for all during this session of the Supreme Court. Again, to sum it up, we have different circuit courts deciding differently on an appointment process that any President uses to fill recess appointments. This litigation is still pending. The legal question remains unresolved until the Supreme Court decides it. But a number of my colleagues during that period when we had different circuit courts deciding differently on this appointment issue called for Mr. Griffin to resign his position on the Board, even though he had done nothing personally wrong and he had taken an oath of office to fulfill his duties. I believe that request from my Republican colleagues was unreasonable. There was clear precedent at the Board for Mr. Griffin to continue to serve until the final legal matter was ultimately resolved. When there is a split among the circuit courts of appeals, the NLRB has a longstanding history of waiting until the legal question is resolved by the Supreme Court before they take action, particularly when the issue involves the Board's operability. The situation that was facing the Board after this Noel Canning case is directly parallel to a circumstance by the Board a few years ago when the Board only had two members--only had two members. The DC Circuit ruled in a case called the Laurel Baye case that the two-member Board lacked a quorum to do business. Even after the DC Circuit's decision, the two-member Board, one Republican, one Democrat, continued to hear and issue cases until the Supreme Court ruled on the question. Not a single Republican Senator called on either one of those two Board members to resign simply because they refused to acquiesce to the decision of the DC Circuit. So here is what happened. Mr. Griffin and his fellow recess appointee Sharon Block acted appropriately in following this direct precedent and continuing to serve on the Board until the Supreme Court addressed the validity of their recess appointments. To argue that Mr. Griffin's decision to uphold his oath of office and follow the Board's prior practice, that somehow that makes him unqualified to now serve as the Board's General Counsel is, quite frankly, a position I think is not only disappointing but I think without substance. In addition to this questionable objection, Republicans also continue to claim that recent NLRB nominees, including Mr. Griffin, are unacceptable simply because they have worked on behalf of workers or unions and support our system of collective bargaining. These nominees have been accused of being biased and unfit to serve. But now I want to point out what the law actually says. Keep in mind, when Board members, as well as general counsel, are appointed to the Board and we confirm them, they take an oath of office to uphold the law. So it is kind of interesting to note what the law actually says that they are sworn by oath to uphold. I have often quoted from the National Labor Relations Act on this point. I will do so again. Here is what the law says, the National Labor Relations Act--the law that Board members and eventually Mr. Griffin, if he is confirmed--and I believe he will be--will take an oath of office to uphold. Here is the law. I will quote it exactly as it is written: It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection. Those are the exact words. That is what the law says. The purpose and the policy is to promote collective bargaining, to promote collective bargaining and freedom of association, protecting workers and their rights of self-organization, the designation of representatives of their own choosing. That is what the law says. I think the fact that Mr. Griffin takes that purpose seriously makes him more qualified, not less qualified, to serve as general counsel. His past career is not cause for concern. Most labor lawyers devote their careers either to representing workers and unions or the management. That is the nature of practicing labor and employment law. We have confirmed NLRB nominees in the past, some of whom have been union side and some have been management side. We have done so without substantial controversy. The fact that Mr. Griffin happens to come from the union side practice does not make him inherently biased. For years, Republican and Democratic Presidents have appointed promanagement attorneys to fill positions at the NLRB. There is even the one example of where a Board member came directly from an in-house position at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But I do not hear anyone on the Republican side accusing those nominees of bias. I guess it is only when you represent labor unions that you are biased, not when you represent the Chamber of Commerce. I would also like to point out that while I certainly have not agreed with the politics or ideology of every past NLRB nominee, I voted to supported Republican nominees, such as Phillip Miscimarra and Harry Johnson, who are on the Board now, not because I agreed with them but because, given their experience and their diverse backgrounds, they were qualified to serve. They were qualified, as is Mr. Griffin, eminently well qualified. Board members can and do separate their past work as an advocate from their work as a neutral interpreter of the act once they are confirmed. I am absolutely sure Mr. Griffin will do the same if confirmed as General Counsel. I have every confidence that Mr. Griffin will be, in the words of one of the current Board members, not prounion, not proworker, not promanagement, but pro-act, pro-Labor Relations Act or put maybe more succinctly prolaw, prolaw enforcement. With this in mind, and for all of the reasons I have mentioned, I urge all of my colleagues, my Republican colleagues, to consider voting for Mr. Griffin because he deserves a strong bipartisan vote. As I stated earlier, I voted for Republican members. When we had Board members earlier this year, in July if I am not mistaken, in July of this year, Democrats voted for the two Republican nominees, again not because we agreed with them ideologically, maybe where they were coming from, but they were qualified to serve. Yet when we have nominees with whom the Republicans are opposed ideologically, even though they are well qualified, Republicans vote no. Think about that. When we have nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, whom the Republicans support, to whom we may be opposed ideologically but they are qualified, we vote for them. Democrats vote for them. When we have nominees to the National Labor Relations Board who are well qualified but whom the Republicans disagree with ideologically, they vote against them--quite a difference. Now is the time to start breaking that down. It did not used to be this way. It never was this way in the past. If they were qualified under a Republican President, we would support them; a Democratic President, we would support them. We wanted to know what were their qualifications, what were their backgrounds, were they vetted properly--no criminal activity, nothing in their background that would indicate they could not judiciously act openly and fairly. I am sorry it has gotten to this position now where Republicans feel they have to vote against someone to the National Labor Relations Board simply because that person was a lawyer for a labor union. I voted for NLRB members who were lawyers for businesses. That is fine. I have no problem with that. Why do my Republican colleagues have such a problem voting for someone who was a lawyer for a labor union? Labor unions are legal entities protected by national law, the National Labor Relations Act. So I hope again that my Republican colleagues will look at Mr. Griffin for who he is, for what he is, for his background, eminently well qualified, has always been fair, has always been judicious--a good lawyer. Yes, he represents labor unions. But in all of the vetting we had in our committee on Mr. Griffin, we had people from the business side and others who all said he represented labor unions, but he did so fairly. He did that fairly, with competence and with the ability to work out agreements with the other side. What more can you ask? I am hopeful this vote tomorrow will mark a new beginning for the National Labor Relations Board. We will have a vote on cloture and then we will have an up-or-down vote. So we have 60 votes for cloture to bring it to a close. Then there will be up to 8 hours of debate on the nominee. I do not think we need to take that long. I am hopeful some of my Republican colleagues will vote for Mr. Griffin and start to break this thing down, where if it is someone appointed by a Democratic President, Republicans vote no; if it is someone appointed by a Republican President, Democrats vote no. That should not be the way it should be, not the way it has been in my lifetime here, in all of my time in the Senate. I have served with three Republican Presidents in the Senate. They have made nominations to the National Labor Relations Board. I have been on this committee since then. We always supported them. As long as they were qualified and they went through the vetting process and they were qualified, it was fine. The President should have his nominees. We would vote for them. I am hopeful we will get back to that. I hope we will have a new era, where the agency is no longer haunted by political attacks, political games. It is time, long past time, to allow the NLRB to function as the law intends and let the dedicated public servants who work there do their jobs. We will have this vote, I am told, tomorrow afternoon on cloture. As I said for the benefit of Senators, we will have up to 8 hours. I do not imagine we will take all of that. We will have up to 8 hours of debate on the nominee. Again, I hope we have a good strong vote on both cloture and on the nominee himself. Mr. Griffin, as I said, is eminently well qualified--eminently well qualified. Nothing in his background would ever indicate that he would be anything less than an outstanding counsel at the National Labor Relations Board. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Molly Ganley, Katrina Rogachevsky, and Thomas Hecht of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, here we are, it is October 14, and the government has been shut down for 2 full weeks. We are about 3 days away from a debt ceiling deadline. I keep hearing rumors that a deal is close. I certainly hope that is true, that we do make some breakthroughs and we get through this impasse, but I have some observations on that, and I thought I might take a moment to set the record straight based on what I have been hearing over the weekend on some of the talk shows and some things that came out over the weekend. In the last day or so there was talk about Democrats putting ``a new issue'' on the table, that Democrats are now putting sequestration on the table in these talks. Well, I don't know how anyone could think this is a new issue. In March the Senate approved a budget that replaced sequestration with a mix of entitlement reform and revenue increases. In April the President put forward a budget that replaced sequestration with again a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases. Throughout the spring and summer the Appropriations Committee, on which I serve, debated and passed bills that conformed to the budget resolution replacing sequestration. Republicans in the House and Senate have taken part in this debate. Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee responded with a letter objecting to our policy of replacing the sequestration cuts. The House passed its own budget, the Ryan budget, which also takes their position on sequestration. They even made it worse by preventing cuts in the military and taking all the rest out of nondefense discretionary spending. I know that sounds like a big word, but it is spending that comes out of things such as education and social services and health, NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and all those other things. Now, again, we heard a lot of talk by Republicans on the Senate side that we Democrats were violating the Budget Control Act by coming in at a higher level than what sequestration called for. At the same time, the Republicans on the House side violated the Budget Control Act by not taking 50-50. In other words, the Budget Control Act said that if sequestration goes into effect, then the cuts have to be made 50 percent from defense and 50 percent from nondefense. The Ryan budget-- what they did in the House--left defense whole and took everything out of--as I said, everything else, mainly out of health, education, labor, and that pot of money. So I guess you might ask whether both sides violated the Budget Control Act. No. Both sides had their approach on how to deal with the Budget Control Act. The Budget Control Act is not the Ten Commandments written in stone for all eternity. It is a law. And when we have laws around here, periodically, guess what. We change them or modify them, of course. So the Budget Control Act was passed, the supercommittee was set up, it didn't hit its goals, so sequestration went into effect. Now that we have seen the disastrous consequences of sequestration for this year, those on my side of the aisle said: Well, look, it is time to get rid of sequestration, and let's make our decisions as legislators on how we want to spend the taxpayers' money and how we might want to raise revenues. The Republicans on the House side--I don't say they violated anything, they just did their own thing. They said: To heck with the Budget Control Act. We don't want to take any money out of defense. We will leave that whole and take it out of everything else. That would have been the proper time for the House and Senate Budget Committees to get together in a conference so they could work out their differences. But 19 times we have come to the floor to ask to go to conference on the budget, and 19 times the Republicans have refused to let us go to conference to even talk about it. So sequestration is the biggest difference between these two budgets. I might add, with regard to the budget Mr. Ryan came up with in the House, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, a Republican, called it ``unworkable,'' for whatever that is worth. Nonetheless, sequestration is the biggest difference between our two budgets. Again, that is why we asked to go to conference time and time again. So sequestration is not some kind of new issue. It is the issue of the year. It will be the issue of next year. Do we blindly cut everything? Sequestration is a blind cut of everything, even programs everyone here might agree are worthwhile and should be funded. But that is what we are elected to do. We are elected to make those kind of choices and work them out in a conference committee. If you think sequestration is some kind of a new issue, I guess it is only a new issue if your memory is only 2 weeks long. If you know what has been going on for this year, sequestration is the major difference. Two weeks ago Senate Democrats compromised in an attempt to keep the government open. How did we do that? We agreed to keep the government open for 6 weeks--at that time, until November 15--at the current levels, which included the sequestration cuts. It was not in our budget, but we agreed, to give us time before Christmas to go to conference and work out the differences. We passed it at the same level which was included in the continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives. We agreed to compromise our level down to the House level for 6 weeks to keep the government open. We passed it and sent it over to the House. It has been sitting there ever since. Speaker Boehner will not permit it to come to the floor for a vote. Why? Perhaps he knows if he brings it up for a vote, it will pass and the President will sign it. Instead, they began this by saying we had to change ObamaCare. We had to make changes in the Affordable Care Act--which has nothing to do with this budget, by the way. That didn't work. So now they have shifted to a whole bunch of other demands. And we have never really gone to conference. What the Republicans are now saying is we should give up a whole year. Forget about the budget resolution we passed here, and agree to what they passed in the House for the next year without even going to conference. So first the Republicans in the House won't agree to negotiate on the budget unless we agree to their top priority--no revenue increases. Then Republicans insist upon shutting down the government to stop ObamaCare. Now this weekend Republicans have been saying they won't agree to reopen government or lift the debt ceiling until Democrats agree to the total spending level in the Ryan budget. This is truly unprecedented. We heard over and over Republicans wanted the Democrats to produce a budget. We did. Now they are doing everything in their power to avoid discussing our budget. But what is truly incredible is that Republicans want the world to believe Democrats agreeing to a compromise for 6 weeks was an agreement to give up our entire budget for the whole next year. I don't know why the press is playing into this. They seem to be saying it is tit for tat. It is one side; it is the other. No, it is not. We agreed to 6 weeks. Now the House says that we must agree to it for 1 year. That was never part of our budget we sent to the House. So that is not a compromise. I will happily vote for a bill that extends the current level for 6 weeks or so. We have already voted for that. The House wanted 10 weeks. But I think a debate over whether to keep or change sequestration for the year--which is the entire debate between the Senate and the House budget resolution--is too important to be used as a bargaining chip for basic government operations. I didn't watch the Sunday shows. I rarely ever do. I have better things to do on Sunday. But I couldn't help but read the paper this morning, and there was a statement in the paper made by the senior Senator from Arizona. I guess he was on a talk show, and they were quoting him. Senator McCain said: I guess we could go lower in the polls. Right now we are down to blood relatives and paid staffers. That is kind of cute. And I am quoting the newspapers, so I don't know if he said it this way or not. He said: But we have got to turn this around and the Democrats had better help us. What does that mean? They are the ones that shut the government down. As I said, there is a bill before the House right now. If the Speaker would put it on the floor, it would open the government. We passed that here. We helped them. We agreed to their level for 6 weeks. How much more help do they need? The more I read about this in the print and watch the news programs, the more it becomes clear to me there is an attitude being pushed by the Republicans that if they agree to reopen the government and if they agree to extend the debt limit, they are doing us Democrats a favor. Read between the lines. It is like they are doing us a big favor to do this. Therefore, we have to give them all these concessions because they are doing us a favor. I tell my Republican friends, they are not doing us Democrats a favor whatsoever. If they agree to reopen the government and extend the debt limit, they are doing the Nation a favor, not the Democrats. So get that out of your head that somehow, because you are willing to do that, we have to give concessions on something else. We can talk about concessions, and we can talk about sequestration and other budgets when we go to conference--if they will let us go to conference. Nineteen times they have opposed us going to conference. But talking about concessions now as a means of reopening government or extending the debt limit--that shouldn't even be a part of the equation. Somehow the press continues to report this as a legitimate demand on the part of Republicans; that if we want to open the government, then they get to demand certain concessions. Why is that legitimate? The legitimate thing is to reopen the government. It is very simple. Other people have come to the floor to talk about the impact of sequestration, and I thought I would just take a moment again--I did the other day, I will do it again today, and I will continue to do this--to alert people as to what another year of sequestration would mean for programs which come under the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, which I have been privileged to chair or be the ranking member of since 1989. Here is what would happen next year if we continued sequestration: Some 177,000 fewer children will get Head Start services. Maybe that is not your kid or my grandkids. Everybody here has plenty of money. But it affects a lot of low-income families in this country. And 1.3 million fewer students would get title I education assistance--no kids of anybody in this body or the House, none of our grandkids. We have plenty of money. But low-income families all across this country, in urban areas as well as rural, get title I assistance. And 760,000 fewer households will receive heating or cooling assistance under what we call LIHEAP, Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program. Again, it won't affect anybody in this body, it won't affect anybody in the House, and probably none of our families. But it will affect 760,000 households with an elderly person without much money, maybe just living off a Social Security check and nothing else. Special education programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We fund a portion which goes out to the States. By sequestration, the less money we put out will mean 9,000 special education staff will be cut from classrooms. Maybe the States will come up with the money. Maybe local taxpayers will come up with the money. I am just saying, under sequestration we will not be paying for 9,000 special education teachers and staff. Sequestration next year means $291 million less for child care subsidies for working families. These are families that go to work every day, and many are single parents. These are low-paying jobs, and the only way they can go to work is to have some kind of child care subsidy, and $291 million will be taken out of that. Again, it won't affect anybody here. Two billion dollars less for the National Institutes of Health. That is 1,300 fewer research grants next year. Which one of those grants will lead to breakthrough discoveries in medicine and cures? We have a fraud and abuse program in Medicare. It recovers $7.90 for every $1 we appropriate. A lot of that comes because of overcharges from drug companies. We have seen cases in Wisconsin and a number of other States with huge settlements because the drug companies were overcharging. For every $1 that we put in, we recover $7.90. Because of the cut, because of sequestration, we will lose about $2.7 billion next year in funds that we would assume we would get back. Aside from that, drug companies know we won't have enough cops on the beat, and that will be an excuse for them to just start overcharging again. So those are just a few of the things that will happen if we continue sequestration. There are probably some on the other side who just don't care. For example, one Member of the House Republican caucus asked Representative Bachmann about the government shut down, and she said: We are very excited. It is exactly what we wanted, and we got it. Then there is Representative Culberson who reportedly said: It is wonderful. We are 100 percent united. What are they excited about? They are excited about the government shutdown. They are probably excited about sequestration. They are excited about hundreds of thousands of low-income kids not getting Head Start. They are excited about low-income families not getting heating and cooling assistance. They are excited that special education teachers will be cut. They are excited about this. This is their vision of America. The tea party had some big gathering here in Washington the last few days. I happened to be reading about it. There was one woman there talking to reporters. She said we need to go back to the late 1800s in this country when we grew our own vegetables. I thought to myself, fine. If you want to, you can do that. There is nothing restricting her from going out and living without electricity or running water, health care. She can go find a cabin someplace in the woods, I suppose, have a little plot of land, grow her vegetables, do her own canning. You can do that, if you like. But why does she insist that we all want to do that? I don't think a lot of people want to go back to the late 1800s in this country. Think of what life was like then: child labor, people working 60, 70 hours a week, no minimum wage, no Social Security, no Medicare, no education for a lot of low-income kids. If you had money, you were fine. Disease was rampant--polio, measles, smallpox. That was the late 1800s. That is what the tea party wants. They want to go back to that. They keep up this hue and cry about that; things have just gotten out of hand. Things have not gotten out of hand. We are a big country. We are a big nation--powerful, big. We have a lot of economic assets, but we have a lot of human assets too. We have to take care not just of the economic assets but our human assets as well. There are no economic assets without human assets. We need to invest in our people and not listen to those who want to turn the clock back to the 1800s. That is what sequestration would start to do. It would start to turn the clock back--oh, maybe not to the 1800s--I don't want to exaggerate--but certainly before the Great Society and certainly, probably, even before the New Deal. They do want to get rid of Social Security. They do want to get rid of Medicare. I guess Grover Norquist, who is sort of their patron saint, said: We want to reduce the size of government so small we can drown it in the bathtub. That is what they want. That is their vision of America. That is their vision of our future. I am hoping we do reach some agreements and we can get out of this. But the Republicans have dug themselves in this hole, not us. Now they say they want us to help them. We already have. We passed a bill and sent it to the House to open the government. We now have before us, as we did on Saturday, a bill to extend the debt limit without strings attached until December 2014. Every single Republican voted against even going to that bill to even discuss it on Saturday. I opened the newspapers on Sunday to read about it, and there is very little talk about that. Is there something I missed? Did we not have a vote here on Saturday on a motion to proceed to raising the debt limit for 1 year-- just to go to the bill so we can discuss it? People could offer amendments. Every single Republican voted against even going to that bill, even discussing it. We have thrown plenty of lifelines out there. If what the senior Senator from Arizona meant by ``help'' is that we have to give up on everything in terms of our budget, sequestration, all that other stuff, that is nonsense. I made a counterproposal. I said if they are going to keep putting all that stuff on there as conditions, we ought to start putting conditions on it too. If they want some help, how about raising the minimum wage right now? That would be something we could do. Wouldn't that be neat? If they want to reopen the government and extend the debt ceiling, let's raise the minimum wage right now for people in this country. I would put that on the table right now. I would put on the table that we need to put more money into special education to help our local taxpayers and more money, certainly, into early childhood education. Maybe those are the things we ought to put on the table, saying: If you want help, agree to these things. I will not go there. But if they continue to push this idea, if the Republicans continue to push this idea that somehow we have to capitulate on everything else, then I think we just throw these things on the table and say: OK, you want us to agree to that? You agree to this. We will have a little tit-for-tat on that and see how far it goes. That is why this whole talk about giving up on sequestration and budget matters is a nonstarter. Open the government--very simple. Extend the debt limit--very simple. Then go to conference and talk about this. That is the way out of this. That is the real, adult, democratic--with a small ``d''--way out of this mess. I call upon the Republicans not to do us a favor. Do the country a favor. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President. I understand that we are in session for Senators to speak for up to 10 minutes?

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, we are here on Saturday, and we just had a very significant vote in the Senate. The vote was on whether we would move to a bill, fully debatable, to raise the debt ceiling without any strings attached. The Republicans, en bloc, voted against that. As a result--since we need 60 votes to bring a bill to the floor--the vote was 53 to 45. There should be no mistake in anyone's mind. This was a very clear vote, simply to move to a bill, fully debatable, amendable even, but the Republicans would not even vote to go to that bill today. Quite frankly, I must admit that when I was driving in to the Senate, I was thinking about this. I thought what we will do is that we will get on the bill. Obviously they will vote for cloture to proceed to the bill, and then we will get on the bill. I was wondering to myself how long we will have to be on the bill, what kinds of amendments would be offered, and then would we have to file cloture on that bill also. I was quite surprised to see every Republican vote against even going to the bill. It begs credulity. I am incredulous at this, especially with the markets opening in Asia later tomorrow, on Sunday. How are they going to read this? I think if we had voted to at least move to the bill and debated it, they would have stabilized somewhat because they would say at least they are willing to talk about it. Now they can look at the bill and say simply, Republicans are not going to discuss this. It is shocking that this would have transpired today at this last minute. No one gave up anything in the bill. It was simply to move to the bill, and the Republicans said no. We have been closed for 2 weeks. I have come to the floor several times, as I know others have, to talk about this irresponsible and dangerous episode in our Nation's history. I understand that different groups are coming together trying to float some kind of an idea. I hope something comes of it. I truly hope cooler heads will prevail and we will reach some agreement that will allow the government to reopen, allow the debt ceiling to be extended with no strings attached for at least 1 year or more--at least to get us through the next elections of 2014--and then we ought to go to negotiations. Our Budget Committee passed a budget. The House passed its budget. They should meet and try to work it out in conference. Our Appropriations Committee passed our bills. The House hasn't passed all of them. Then we could go to work and work these things out in the next 6 weeks, up to December 1. I hope that works and we get that kind of a compromise, but I do not want to see some kind of compromise which says to one side or the other that you have to do this or you have to do that. It should be open. Our Budget Committee is under the able guidance and direction of Senator Murray of Washington. I am not a member of the Budget Committee, but they ought to go to conference without any strings attached or some artificial levels put in. They ought to take what we passed as the budget, as the House did. What is happening is that--and it is getting worse every day, another week, another 2 weeks--it is unfathomable how many more people are going to be hurt. A lot of Americans may think sequestration wasn't a big deal or that closing the government wasn't. I saw a piece in the paper where some tea party people were meeting. What came through is they weren't being directly hit or hurt by the government shutdown. One respondent was quoted in the paper as saying: We need to go back to the late 1800s, the way this country ran then, where everybody grew their own vegetables. I would say to that person: If you want to grow your own vegetables, you can grow your own vegetables. If you want to live somewhere without electricity, air conditioning, with no health care, and never go to the doctor, you should be able to do that. But why should you make the rest of the country go back to the 1800s? This is what a handful of people are trying to do. They can't do it legislatively, they can't do it through the courts, they can't do it politically, and they can't win elections on that basis. So they are trying to do it by holding a gun to our heads, keeping the government closed, and threatening to default on the full faith and credit of the United States. I wish to say in the few minutes I have remaining what another yearlong sequester would mean in human terms. These are things that come under the jurisdiction of my Appropriations Committee, which I have been privileged to chair or where I have been the ranking member since 1989. We have never had these kinds of problems before-- Republicans or Democrats--when Republicans ran it or Democrats. I have been back and forth on this many times, in terms of Republicans chairing it--Democrats, Republicans, Democrats. We have never had these kinds of problems. If we go 1 more year under sequester, that means 177,000 fewer children will get Head Start services--177,000--and 1.3 million fewer students will receive Title I education assistance. What is Title I? This goes to the poorest kids, the poorest families, the poorest areas. So 1.3 million low-income kids won't be helped. Oh, our kids will be fine, kids from the middle class, the upper class, and of Senators and Congressman. They have money. I am talking about the poor kids, and there are 1.3 million. There are 760,000 fewer households that would receive less heating and cooling assistance under the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, and mostly they are elderly poor people. There will be 9,000 fewer special education staff in the classroom. In other words, under IDEA we provide money for special education teachers and support staff for special education students, and 9,000 will be cut. There will be $291 million less for childcare subsidies for working families, for people who need childcare subsidies. They are low income, they are going to work every day, but they need some childcare help-- $291 million cut away from that. How many will not be able to go to work or what will they do with those children? Will they put them in substandard childcare facilities? One thing that is mind-boggling is we have a program in Medicare that goes after fraud, waste, and abuse. We know from the past that for every dollar that we put into that, we actually recover $7.90. I don't mean something phony. I mean we actually bring back $7.90 for every $1 dollar we put into it. Because of the cut under sequester that means in the next year there will be $2.7 billion that we will not recover. By reducing the number of people in the fraud, waste and abuse section, that means it opens the door to fraud. People say: Oh, they are not there. They are not checking, right? People say: Well, now we are going to give them flexibility under sequester. But there is no flexibility. That has to be cut. Another yearlong continuing resolution under sequester means $2 billion less for the National Institutes of Health, which means 1,300 fewer research grants. Again, I would say that people say: Well, we will give flexibility. My colleague on the other side says: We will have sequester, but we will leave flexibility to the departments. Let's see how that goes. The funds for the Administration for Children and Families--what would they do? Would they preserve Head Start slots by cutting childcare subsidies? At NIH, would you preserve cancer research by cutting Alzheimer's research? These are terrible choices. Flexibility does not answer these questions. It is not the answer. When they talk about flexibility, I know what is on their mind-- military spending. Everybody likes to talk about the sequester and the level of sequester. Do you know what the House did? A sequester says it is 50/50, 50 percent cut from defense, 50 percent from nondefense discretionary. What the House did in the Ryan budget was to leave things whole and take it out of things like Head Start, IDEA, special education, and programs such as that. They took it out of there, but they left defense whole. That is not at all what was in sequester. In my area of Health and Human Services, education, labor, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NIH, next year we would cut about $34 billion. People will say, I don't know what that means. As I said, it is how many more children will not be in Head Start, how many more families will not get childcare subsidies, how many more research grants will not be funded by the NIH. We will not have our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologists out in the field watching for food outbreaks, food-borne illnesses, et cetera. It is a disaster if we continue with the yearlong sequester and a continuing resolution. That is why we need a short-term one, so our committees can go to work. Perhaps cooler heads will prevail, and we can get a better budget for next year before the end of the year. To me, this is the way to proceed. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Does the Senator from Wyoming still have the floor?

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator from Wyoming yield for a question?