Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, am I correct the time for debate under this bill will expire at 4 p.m.?

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, after listening to the previous three speakers, it is hard to know where to begin to correct the record with all the misstatements. Maybe I will kind of work backward. My good friend, the Senator from Wyoming, gave a whole list of different things about where this money was spent. He mentioned something about California and fast food construction. I did not get it all. But I am informed there was absolutely no money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund that went for that program. If the Senator from Wyoming has any evidence to the contrary, I would be more than delighted to look at it. Then there was the one about the dogs and cats in Nashville, TN. I thought the newspaper article that was in the Hill newspaper put that one to rest, but I guess it did not. It just goes on and on. That money actually was funded by private grant money. I guess PetSmart, from what I am told, put that money in for pet spaying and neutering in Nashville, TN. Again, that money did not come from the Prevention and Public Health Fund. If the Senator from Wyoming has evidence to the contrary, I would like to look into that. Then the Senator from Wyoming mentioned the New York Department of Health using $3 million to lobby in New York for a soda tax initiative. First of all, I will tell my good friend, the Senator from Wyoming, there is an absolute prohibition on Federal moneys being used for lobbying. So if anyone has any evidence of Federal funds being used to lobby, please let us know. We would like to take them to task for that and sic the Justice Department on them. That did not happen. It was not CDC funding. This was funding by the New York State Department of Health. Again, none of the CDC money we used in the prevention fund was used for that. Those were just three of--I do not how many examples my friend the Senator from Wyoming had, but those are just three of them there that absolutely had nothing to do with the Prevention and Public Health Fund, but somehow this has gotten out in the popular press. The city of Nashville received a $7.5 million grant to provide free pet spaying and neutering. You put that out there and the radio talk shows pick up on that and all that kind of stuff. Then they bat this around and it gets everyone upset. My God, we are using tax money now to neuter dog and cats in Nashville, TN. Who would not be opposed to that? It is not true. That is all. It is simply not true. As I say, if anyone has any evidence to the contrary, please let me know and we will get the Justice Department after them. Again, I say to my friends on this side of the aisle that talk about seriousness of whether--how we are going to pay for this. I heard it said by the previous three speakers we all agree the interest rate should not go up. OK. We have before us, as I understand, two choices right now. The Republican choice is the one passed by the House of Representatives a couple weeks ago, which would eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund and put that money in to keep the interest rate down at 3.4 percent rather than letting it go up to 6.8 percent. So they would eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, about which I spoke at length a little while ago. Our bill would close a loophole in the Tax Code that allows certain subchapter S corporations to avoid paying their FICA taxes, their Social Security and Medicare taxes, because of the way they are arranged. I am going to get into that in a minute and try to explain exactly how that is set up. We are not going after small businesses at all. We are simply providing more of a bright line on what are legitimate dividends from a corporation, which does not have to pay FICA taxes, and what are wages and salaries that they do have to pay FICA taxes on. Right now, in certain subchapter S corporations, it is kind of cloudy. It is kind of cloudy. As someone on the other side said, we have seen this big increase in subchapter S corporations. Well, of course. People who have had partnerships before or sole proprietorships all of a sudden are rushing to establish subchapter S corporations, with very few stockholders, to get away from paying their legitimate taxes on Social Security and Medicare. Our bill would close that loophole. We have these two choices in front of us. Which do we want? If those are the only two, do we want to eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund or do we want to put a bright line on subchapter S corporations and say if they cross that line they have to pay their Social Security and Medicare taxes? Maybe we can have that vote. Maybe we have to actually have that vote here. I would like to see if my Republican friends want to eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Earlier this year, from our committee I passed out to every Member of the Senate how much money went to the individual States and what it was used for in the Prevention and Public Health Fund because I wanted to be transparent and above board. So I pointed out, for example--these are not private things; these are public. I pointed out to my friend from Tennessee that $4,669,362 was made available to Tennessee in this Prevention and Wellness Fund for fiscal year 2011. I listed all the things it went to: community programs to promote healthy living, detection and prevention of infectious diseases, clinical preventive services, strengthening of public health infrastructure, tobacco prevention programs, some to East Tennessee State University for the training and preparing of a public health workforce, Vanderbilt University Medical Center for clinical preventive services. I get right down to the dollar, where it all went. I am not trying to hide anything. I say to my friend from Tennessee, ask these people where did this money go. We know where it went. Does my friend propose that we cut out all this money that went to the State of Tennessee? Here is Arizona: $7,758,944 went to Arizona in 2011. I gave this to my friend from Arizona listing exactly where it went and what it went for in prevention and wellness. Does my friend say this ought to be eliminated? Wyoming got $1,785,534. Every bit of it is listed here, exactly where it went. If we accept the Republicans' proposal, we do away with all of that, all prevention and public health. It has been said on the other side that even our President wanted to do away with or take money out of it. I point out that the President did propose earlier this year as a pay- for for the extension of the unemployment insurance program and for other things to keep tax rates from going up that we take $5 billion out of this program over the life. But I think the President made it very clear that was it. In fact, we have a Statement of Administration Policy on this bill which states unequivocally that the President will veto this bill if there are any cuts in the Prevention and Public Health Fund. While I was personally opposed to the $5 billion that the President proposed taking out--and was taken out of the fund--I can say that, well, that ought to be the last penny taken out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Now we see that the President agrees, no more. We took $5 billion out and that is the end of it. People keep calling it a slush fund. I have here where every dollar went in all of the States, what it went for. It did not go to neutering dogs in Nashville, TN, regardless of how many times we may read it or hear it on Rush Limbaugh or Joe Scarborough or anyplace else. It is not true. I challenge anybody, if they have that evidence, let's see it. Again, I just think what the Republicans have offered as an offset is not serious. I cannot believe they want to do away with the Prevention and Public Health Fund. On the other hand, is our proposal serious? Do we want to really close this loophole for professional corporations under subchapter S? Yes, we do. I think that is serious. There has been a lot of abuse of people using the cover of subchapter S to avoid paying their taxes. A number of cases have come before us that I have seen where people have used subchapter S as a means of not paying their fair share of taxes. One of the examples that just came through was former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, a former Member of this body, a former Presidential candidate and Vice Presidential candidate. I will not get into his personal life; that is something else. But former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina claimed, over a multiyear period, that $26 million in revenue from his subchapter S corporation was unearned. He claimed he didn't really work for a large share of his income from winning court cases. By making this argument, he avoided nearly $750,000 in payroll taxes. That is not fair. That is an inappropriate gimmick. It is a gimmick when we allow a professional to give his or her spouse and children 95 percent of the stock in their subchapter S corporation and then declare it their profit and not their work as an accountant or as a lawyer that is responsible for the income. That is a gimmick. That is why people are rushing to form these subchapter S corporations. We have a recent case where the taxpayer was an S corporation, an accounting practice owned by a CPA and his wife. The CPA served as the corporation's president, treasurer, director, and only full-time accountant but received no salary. Imagine that. He received no salary. Instead, the CPA ``donated'' his services to the corporation and withdrew earnings from the entity in the form of dividend distribution. During the years under audit, the CPA worked for the corporation approximately 36 hours per week. In addition to testifying that his work was crucial to the continued success of the corporation's business, the CPA also indicated that dividends were drawn in lieu of salary to reduce employment taxes. Imagine that. The corporation asserted that the CPA was not an employee, and even if he was an employee dividend distributions cannot be taxed as wages. Well, he was caught in an audit. But, we know audits are few and far between. So the court found the shareholder to be an employee who performed significant services. His wages encompassed all remuneration for services, and it constituted all wages for tax purposes. That is what is happening. That is what is happening out there. What does our bill do? Right now, if you are in a subchapter S corporation, you, the person, get to say whether what you are making is income or dividends. I heard mentioned something about Warren Buffett. I don't know his whole deal, but it seems to me that most of his income is from dividends and capital gains. We are not talking about that. We are talking about--this would be--if we took the subchapter S situation and applied it to C corporations, which Mr. Buffett would be in, then Mr. Buffett would face a board with independent people making a decision on officers' salary. Now with subchapter S corporations with only one, two or three stockholders, they are making their own decisions on their personal taxes, whether they are dividends or salary. What do you think people decide? Again, an accountant tells a subchapter S corporation it can do 40 percent and it would not get audited, they do 40 percent and don't get audited, and they don't have to pay Social Security or Medicare taxes on what is really gain. What do we do in this bill? We say: Look, if you are a professional subchapter S corporation and you have three or fewer shareholders, then we draw a bright line. If your income is over $250,000 a year for a joint filer, and if in fact there was earned income, then it would be subject to FICA taxes. That is the bright line that we are drawing. In fact, what it will do is give subchapter S corporations a better idea of whether profits are earning money or dividends. Quite frankly, not only are we helping to raise money for the Medicare and Social Security trust funds, we are actually making it better for people out there who may not know where they fall. Is it dividends or is it earned income? Our bill only covers a very narrow share of S corporations. It deals only with certain professional corporations. It doesn't touch manufacturing or retail activities. It doesn't touch real estate activities. It covers the area where the abuse is most prevalent right now. I want to speak for a minute on what Senator Alexander was talking about earlier about the money that came from students and whether it was given back to students. He said that instead of 6.8 percent, it would have been 5.3 percent. We voted on that and it failed. So we did speak on that. Again, what I point out is that most of this money--most of the money that we had in that $61 billion, most of that indeed went for students. I think I had it here--of that $61 billion, $36 billion went to Pell grants, helping raise Pell grants; $750 million went to bolster college access for students through the College Access Challenge Grant Program; $2.55 billion went to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and minority-serving institutions; $2 billion went to community colleges; about $10 billion was used for deficit reduction; $9.2 billion, as I said, went to certain health care activities. Guess what one of those was that was paid for. Requiring dependent coverage--saying that a young person can stay on his or her parents' health care policy until age 26. Does that help students? Of course it helps students. How many young people who go off to college, and they are in college and maybe drop out a little while to make some money and then go back to college and maybe even graduate, but they don't have a full-time job--they can stay on their parents' policy until they are age 26. I cannot tell you how many people I have heard from in my State of Iowa who have said what a godsend this is to them and their kids who are students. I make no apologies for the fact that some of this money out of that $61 billion that went to subsidize banks went to help students stay on their parents' health care policy. When they say some of the money came from students, it didn't. The $61 billion all came from cutting the subsidy to banks. The great bulk of it, all but about--well, $10 million went to pay the deficit down, and $9.2 billion went to things such as banning lifetime limits, requiring dependent coverage, expanding community health centers, that type of thing. So none of it actually came from students themselves. It all came from closing the loophole where banks were making on that money. The next thing that was said I wanted to correct was that the Medicaid expansion in the affordable care act--100 percent of that expansion is paid for in the Federal side, not the stateside. Senator Alexander talked about this and was saying we are expanding Medicaid, which is a burden on the States. That would be true, but for the fact that 100 percent of this expansion is paid for by the Federal Government. I think that phases down to 90 percent in the future, but it never comes below 90 percent. If the Senator would like to debate whether Medicaid should be all Federal, or Federal and State, we can do that and maybe even find some common ground on that, but that is not the case before us. I didn't think the debate on this bill to keep student interest rates low would now morph into a debate on health care. But if you want to have a debate on health care, I will be more than happy to do so, and whether or not we should use money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund to pay for it. So, again, I would say no money--no money--comes out of the Medicare trust fund to pay for this bill--none--and certainly none comes out of the Social Security trust fund. The money that is raised goes to the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare trust fund. None of it is actually diverted from the trust funds. Under the budget rules we are operating under, money raised can be used as an offset even though that money is raised for Medicare. I want to make it crystal clear that the money we are raising from closing this loophole on subchapter S corporations, none of it--none of it-- actually comes out of the trust funds for student loans or to keep the interest rate low. It does go to the Medicare and Social Security trust funds. Under the Republican proposal, we would not get any more money into Medicare or Social Security. They would just do away with the Prevention and Public Health Fund and take that money and use it to offset keeping the interest rates low, but not one nickel of that would go to Medicare or Social Security. Our bill would help those trust funds. So our bill really has three benefits: First, it closes a tax loophole, provides for more definitive application of what is subchapter S income or dividends for a narrow class of companies-- earned income or unearned income; second, it provides money to the Social Security trust fund and Medicare trust fund, which is needed; and third, it allows the student interest rate loans, Federal subsidized loans, to stay at 3.4 percent for the next year. Sometime in the next year, obviously, we are going to have to figure out a long-term fix for this or what we want to do on these subsidized loans in the future and how we are going to pay for this down the road. In the meantime, as everyone has said on both sides, we both agree it ought to stay at 3.4 percent for the next year. So I guess the debate does revolve around how we pay for it. Again, from my viewpoint--not my viewpoint; the House already voted last week to kill the Prevention and Public Health Fund, and that is what the Republicans are proposing here. Again, to refer back to where I started earlier this afternoon, I think the lead editorial in the New York Times today was quite clear in talking about the findings found in the New England Journal of Medicine about what is happening with type 2 diabetes and how devastating that is going to be in the future. They said the long-term goal should be the prevention of obesity and diabetes. The editorial said: Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are bent on dismantling health care reforms that could greatly assist in curbing the obesity epidemic. The Republican-dominated House last month narrowly passed a bill that would eliminate a Prevention and Public Health Fund, established under the reform law in part to pay for lowering the interest rate on subsidized student loans for a year. The editorial noted that there is no explanation for this move except for the usual anti-health care reform demagoguery and noted that the fund is already providing grants to state and local governments to help pay for programs to fight obesity and prevent chronic diseases, including diabetes, in the community, the workplace, and among minority groups. So I guess that is really the argument--how do we pay for it? It comes as no surprise, I am sure, when I say that I think closing this loophole is much better than doing away with the Prevention and Public Health Fund. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I say to my good friend from Wyoming--and he is my good friend, and we do a lot of good work together--I wish we could have this bill in our committee. I think we could work it out. But the fact is, to raise the money, it has to come from the Finance Committee, and we don't have jurisdiction over that. If we had jurisdiction over that, we could probably work it out. We have a good way of working things out in our committee. But we don't have jurisdiction over finance on this darned thing. If we did, we could probably figure it out.

Mr. HARKIN. Well, I think that is where this came from. I don't know. I would also say to my friend from Wyoming, because I was listening to him, I think it is fair, if we are going to have a vote on ours, that we ought to have a vote on yours. I think that if we are going to have a vote, we ought to have a vote on ours, which is the subchapter S corporation, and see how that falls, and have a vote on whether we want to end the Prevention and Public Health Fund and use that money. I would like to have that vote. I would love to have that vote. I would love to see how my friends on the other side of the aisle want to vote on whether they want to kill the Prevention and Public Health Fund. I would also say that on this subchapter S corporation issue, the IRS right now audits about one-half of 1 percent of the returns from subchapter S corporations. So they have to think, what are the odds they are ever going to catch me, and if they do, they pay a fine and that is it. The IRS doesn't have the personnel to do everyone. What we are doing, I wish to say again, just to make it very clear, that because of the sort of fog that surrounds subchapter S corporations right now, the IRS simply can't audit them all. They don't have the personnel to do that, and some claim that there is a lot of questions about whether something is income or dividends. But let me repeat again what our bill does. We create a bright-line test that affects only a narrow class of subchapter S corporations. It affects only professional subchapter S corporations, those engaged in professions such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants, lobbyists, where the gain is due to the professional work. This provision does not include subchapter S gains from unrelated retail, wholesale or manufacturing activities. The provision only covers subchapter S corporations where there are three or fewer stockholders. It only covers those earning more than $250,000 a year as a joint filer, and it only covers gains when 75% or more are attributable to 3 or fewer stockholders. So if a subchapter S company has income that is partially from professional activities, such as lobbying, and partially from other activities, such as real estate investments, the investment income does not fall under the rule. The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration have both issued reports that show that underreporting of earned income subject to FICA taxes is a significant issue. Using IRS data, the Government Accountability Office in 2009 calculated that in 2003 and 2004 tax years the net shareholder compensation underreporting amounted to nearly $23 billion. Since then, the number of subchapter S organizations has been increasing rapidly, and I would suggest that is a main reason why. Lastly, I just wish to point out for the record, to my friend from Wyoming, that the House bill did not go through the committee either. They brought it directly to the floor. It did not go through the Education Committee. It only went through the Rules Committee and then to the floor. So they did the same thing. They didn't go through their committee either. Again, I am hopeful we can work this out. But if we can't, I say to my friend, I hope we do have an up-or-down vote on both provisions. There was one other thing I wished to mention before I leave the floor this afternoon and leave this debate on the student interest rate bill; that is, I heard time and time again from the other side about the fact that the President took $5 billion out of this and the fact that I said earlier: Yes, and that was the limit and that was all and he didn't want any more taken out of it. Someone said, but he has $4.5 billion in his budget to take out. What happened, the President did put $4.5 billion in his budget to take out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund--which I hope comes as no surprise to anyone. Then, when the House and Senate earlier this year were engaged in negotiations on extending the unemployment compensation and also the payroll tax deduction, when we were engaged in that, they put that on the table. The President stuck with his $4.5 billion, the Congress added another $500 million, and they come up with a $5 million cut to the Prevention and Public Health Fund. The President said: That was in our budget. If you want to use it for that, use it for that but no more. As I said, we have a statement of administration policy that says that if the elimination or any cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund are in here, he will veto the bill. I just wanted to make clear that the $5 billion and the $4.5 billion are one and the same. They are not $9.5 billion that he wanted to take out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund. I wanted to make that clear. I see my friend from Florida is here, and I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, May 10, 2012, at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Beyond Mother's Day: Helping the Middle Class Balance Work and Family.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224 5441.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Paul Edenfield a member of my staff, be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. For more than 1 year, I have been working on a series of hearings, both in Washington, DC, and in Iowa, focusing on the state of the American middle class. We have learned that the American middle class is disappearing, falling into the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The people who do the real work in this country are being squeezed to the breaking point. Their paychecks aren't rising. Their benefits are disappearing. Their pensions are disappearing. Their jobs are being shipped overseas. When we looked into the causes of this crisis, we found that the middle class is not disappearing due to some inevitable effect of forces beyond our control such as globalization and technology. In fact, the decline of the middle class is primarily due to policy failures. We have failed to respond to our changing economy, while at the same time we have allowed many of the underpinnings of a strong middle class, such as a fair minimum wage, strong overtime laws, and defined benefit pensions to disappear. One of the biggest factors in this downward spiral has been the decline of American unions. As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explained when he testified before the HELP Committee last year, when unions were strong, the middle class thrived and our country prospered. In the mid-1950s, more than one-third of all American workers in the private sector were unionized and the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie. Nonunionized companies, fearing their workers would otherwise want a union, offered similar deals. As employers boosted wages, the higher wages kept the machinery of our economy going by giving average workers more money to buy what they produced. That is what the former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said. But now, unfortunately, that productive cycle has broken down. Workers have lost their unions, and they don't have money in their pockets to spend and help grow the economy. That is costing us the jobs and holding back our economy. There are lots of reasons for the decline in unions, but I think again this chart which I showed yesterday is instructive. If we look at the chart, from 1973 to 2010, we will see, first of all, in the green line is the number of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements. Look how unionization has declined. Here is the union membership. These are the ones covered by collective bargaining agreements. Here is union membership going down the same way. The red line is the middle class share of national income. Look how it tracks it. So as union membership and collective bargaining has decreased, the middle class share of national income has decreased also, almost parallel. Again, lots of reasons, but I think a big one is the broken union election process. It has become so riddled with abuses that people are giving up on it altogether. As I mentioned in my remarks yesterday, the number of union representation elections has declined by an astounding 60 percent between 1997 and 2009. When workers do file for an NLRB election, 35 percent give up in the face of extreme employer intimidation and withdraw from the election before a vote is even held, and that is after they have already signed the card to petition for the NLRB to have an election, one-third of them never get to an election. The rule we are discussing today cannot solve all of these problems, but as I said yesterday, it is a step in the right direction. It addresses some of the most abusive situations where unscrupulous companies are manipulating the process and creating delays so they can buy more time to intimidate workers. The primary way management can cause delay is to raise challenges at the preelection hearing. Some of these disputes, such as challenging the eligibility of an individual voter, can certainly wait until after the election to be decided. That is what we do in elections across the country. If a voter's eligibility cannot be confirmed, they vote a provisional ballot until their eligibility can be verified. We don't stop an election from happening until every voter's eligibility can be confirmed. We don't do that. If there is a challenge, they vote a provisional ballot and after the election they see whether they were qualified to vote. Some of these challenges are downright silly, but they have their intended effect, and that is to delay. In 2002, one employer raised a preelection challenge arguing that the International Association of Machinists was not a ``labor organization'' within the meaning of the statute. The NLRB actually held a hearing on this question and, of course, found that the machinists who had been representing workers since 1888 are indeed a labor union. But the election was delayed by a month to address that one issue. Some anti-union consultants bragged openly about their ability to abuse the process and create delays. One union-busting law boasted on its Web site how a 27-day hearing contributed to a 5-month delay between filing of a petition and the election at a Massachusetts hospital organizing drive. Why is delay so important to management who do not want to bargain in good faith with workers? Well, by delaying an NLRB election, they give themselves more time to conduct an anti-union campaign and make it more likely they will win. One former anti-union consultant wrote a book that is very instructive. Everyone should read it. It is called ``Confessions of a Union Buster.'' He described his strategy as ``[c]hallenge everything . . . then take every challenge to a full hearing . . . then prolong each hearing'' as long as possible, then ``appeal every unfavorable decision.'' The consultant explained that ``if you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers . . . lose faith, lose interest, lose hope.'' Let me repeat that. This is from an anti-union consultant who wrote this book called ``Confessions of a Union Buster,'' and he said, ``if you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers . . . lose faith, lose interest, lose hope.'' The impact on workers is clear. In 2000, workers at Dillard's distribution center in Little Rock, AR, began efforts to organize a union with the Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees, UNITE for short. The campaign involved a unit of between 500 and 600 workers employed as pickers, packers, forklift drivers, loaders, other warehouse workers, many making just over the minimum wage. Dillard's management began talking with workers about the union almost immediately after workers began signing cards--before the petition was even filed. Aware that the company was likely to quickly escalate its campaign, UNITE, the union, filed an election petition in the spring of 2000, a couple of weeks after it began meeting with workers. At the time it filed for the election, UNITE had signed union authorization cards from 65 to 70 percent of the workers to join a union. Well, what happened? Soon after the union filed the election petition, the company began holding mandatory captive audience meetings and one-on-one meetings with all workers. Basically threats were made that if the union were to succeed, the distribution center might lose its competitiveness and be forced to shut down. The employer also launched legal challenges to the workers' petition. Get this. The management claimed that all professional and white collar workers should be in the election unit--even those at the corporate headquarters in a separate building adjacent to the distribution center. Well, the company forced a dispute that took months to resolve. The company didn't want the white collar workers in the union, but by challenging it and saying they should be in it, forced the NLRB to have a hearing that took months to resolve. The company took advantage of this delay to continue its anti-union campaigning. It isolated union supporters by excluding them from captive audience meetings and changing their shifts or job locations. It distributed and posted anti-union literature and continued one-on- one meetings. Support for the union began to wane as workers' fears grew. Workers felt they were under surveillance at work and could not discuss the union at the worksite or even outside the distribution center before or after their shifts. Workers grew too scared even to accept union materials that their fellow workers handed out outside of the plant gates. Attendance at general meetings and organizing committee meetings fell sharply over the months leading up to the election. After facing 2\1/2\ months of intense anti-union campaigning, workers voted against union representation by a margin of two to one. About 3 months before that, over 65 percent to 70 percent of the workers had signed a petition to form a union, but less than 3 months later, they voted two to one not to have a union. The NLRB has put in place reasonable rules to limit the kind of game playing that the workers from Dillard's experienced. The NLRB hasn't tried to advantage or disadvantage workers or stop employers from spreading their message. All the board has done is send a clear message to employers. They cannot abuse the process to buy themselves more time to intimidate their workers. They get a fair period of time to convey the message, and then the workers deserve their day at the ballot box. This is not the radical act of an out-of-control board. It won't even affect most employers, union or nonunion, one bit. As I pointed out yesterday, 90 percent of all of the petitions that are filed succeed without having NLRB input anyway. Management and workers get together and work things out. But it is in those 10 percent of companies that go on this massive campaign to intimidate and frighten workers, that is what this rule is aimed at. Preventing abuses of our laws that keep workers from having a union is a small step in the right direction to help putting the middle class back on track. When I talk about this, a lot of people say, well, isn't it against the law for management to fire workers for union activities? And I say, yes, it is. But what is the penalty? The penalty is basically nothing. I pointed this out yesterday, and I will say it again. There was a young man in Iowa who had been organizing a union and was fired. He filed a petition with the NLRB and it took him about 3 years to settle the case. He found out that he had been fired because of union activities and the penalty for the company was to give him all of his back pay minus whatever he earned in between. How many people can go for 2 or 3 years and not take care of their family and pay their mortgage and pay to put food on the table without having a job? So, of course, that intervening time this person had to work, all the wages were subtracted from whatever the company had to pay him, and it turned out basically it was nothing. So there is no penalty. As I said, all the employer has to do is pay back wages minus an offset of whatever the worker made in between the time he was fired and the time the decision was made by the NLRB, so there is no penalty for the employers to do that. So, again, allowing our labor laws to be abused is a policy choice. As I said in the beginning, a lot of the reason for the decline of the middle class in America is because of policy choices that are made here. We have tolerated these policy choices for far too long, these abuses. Working families have suffered as a result; union membership has declined. As I pointed out, the number of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements has declined, and the middle class has declined right along with it. There is much more we need to do to move these trends back in the right direction. I recently introduced a comprehensive bill, the Rebuild America Act, that I think presents a bold agenda for restoring the American middle class. That agenda--everything from investing in the infrastructure to job retraining, better educational benefits, better pensions, raising the minimum wage--also has restoring the right to form a union to workers who have been unfairly denied this basic freedom. It would provide real penalties for employers who abuse and fire workers to bust unions and would try to restore real voice for the people who do the real work in this country. I hope that once we vote today and uphold the NLRB's eminently sensible actions, we can move on and have a real debate about some of these important ideas about restoring the middle class in this country and building an economy that works for everyone. I was listening to the comments made by my good friend from South Carolina, and he alluded to the recent situation with a complaint filed with the NLRB by the attorney for the NLRB. A year or so ago the general counsel's office filed a complaint with the NLRB that the Boeing company in Seattle had retaliated against its workers for union activity, that type of thing. The fact is the NLRB--the body my colleagues are attacking today--never acted on that. The company and the workers settled it. Isn't that what we want? But somehow to listen to my friend from South Carolina, he is saying he is even opposed to letting the general counsel file a complaint. Well, that takes away the basic right of anyone to have their grievances heard. So I hope that is not what my friend from South Carolina meant. I want to point out that I think there was a lot of abuse of the NLRB during that process even though the NLRB was doing exactly what we told them to do: Take into account all of the factors, look at all the evidence before you make a decision. That is what they were doing when it erupted here on the floor and a lot of political pressure was put on the NLRB. There were a lot of threats on the NLRB. And as it turned out, it all worked out because the union and Boeing got together, settled their differences and we moved ahead. That is the way it ought to be in our country. We should not cut off the right of people to actually file a complaint if they have a complaint. The duty of the NLRB is to investigate and to take into account all of the factors before they issue any findings. But that never happened in that Boeing case because Boeing is a good business. Boeing is one of our great businesses in this country and does a lot for America. So you get the good businesses, and the Machinist Union is a great union, and they worked it out. That is the way things ought to be done, and 9 times out of 10 that is the way it happens. What we are talking about here is the rules for NLRB to take care of those bad actors who are out there, and to give people who want to form a union at least a level playing field without having all of these abuses and delays and intimidations and things like that. That is what the issue is about, and hopefully this afternoon we will have a good, affirmative vote to uphold the ability of the National Labor Relations Board to issue this ruling. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield whatever time he may consume to my good friend the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, a couple things. I keep hearing it stated that: ambush elections. I want to point out, there is no timetable set in these rules--none whatsoever. I keep hearing: 10 days and 7 days and all that. That is not set. There are no timetables at all. As I pointed out, 90 percent of NLRB elections are conducted under voluntary agreements between the parties, and those procedures are unchanged. The current median time right now between when a petition is filed and when an election occurs is 37 to 38 days. Jackson Lewis, the Nation's biggest management-side law firm, said that--their attorney Michael Lotito told the Wall Street Journal he thinks the time under these rules would be shaved to between 19 and 23 days. Joe Trauger, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, says the elections would be held in 20 to 25 days under the new rules--hardly an ambush election. The other issue I want to briefly mention has to do with the contacts--contacting and the right of privacy I heard here. Right now, the only way a union can contact people is at their homes--at their homes. The only information the union is allowed to get after the petition is filed is the addresses of the workers, their home addresses. What the Board is considering--but has not implemented--is allowing unions to have access to e-mail addresses and/or phone numbers. Well, it seems to me that is a lot less intrusive than going to someone's home. Now, again, it is much harder, obviously, for a union organizer to go to a home. People go to their homes. They are with their families. They have their children. They are busy. That is more intrusive than e- mailing them, it seems to me. So I would hope we would look upon the possibility that they might say that having their e-mail addresses and phone numbers is less intrusive than going to their homes. But that is not part of these rules whatsoever. They would still have to contact them at their home, and the only information the employer would have to give would be their home addresses. Again, keeping in mind what these rules are--they are very modest rules. I keep hearing that: Well, there have only been three rules since the Board was comprised in 1938. Quite frankly, the Supreme Court and appeals courts have said, time and time again, they should do rulemaking because it is open, it is transparent, parties get to be heard. So I think this Board is being more open and more transparent than any Board before it. This is not anything overwhelming, but it is a step in the right direction to make sure we level the playing field and we do not have these undue delays where the management can intimidate--intimidate--and I gave some examples of it, and I have a whole ream of examples of where management has delayed and delayed and delayed in order to intimidate workers so they would eventually vote not to form a union. Again, an employer has the right to communicate to their employees all day long--in captive audiences, one-on-one meetings with supervisors. The union can only contact the worker at that worker's house, in the evening or on a weekend. So already the employer has much more opportunity to converse with and to get its views known to its workers than the union has--much more, all day long, at the job, on the job, through supervisors, one-on-one contacts, group meetings, over the loudspeaker, whatever it might be. So already there is much more ability for the management to weigh in on this than it is for the union. The one thing we are trying to do with these rules is to say: Fine, you can continue to do that. There will still be that disparity between the ability of management to communicate to the workers and the union to communicate, but what these rules are saying is, fine, you can do that, but you cannot continue to do it month after month after month and wear the workers down and intimidate them, make them afraid of losing their jobs. And if you fire one person for union organizing, that sends a chill across everybody else. You say: Well, but that is illegal. Well, it may be illegal, but as I have pointed out, time and time again, there are no penalties for that. It may be illegal, but there are not much penalties for that. Management can always find some excuse--that they may have fired someone for something other than union activity, but everyone would know that person was fired because that person was trying to organize a union. We are saying you cannot just continue to drag these things out month after month after month. The proposed rules simply say we will have elections, and if there are challenges, if there are challenges by the management as to who can vote in that election, then those challenges would be held until after the election and then see whether those individuals so challenged were really part of that unit and could vote or whether they could not and whether that would even make a difference. Again, if there were 100, let's say, who signed a petition to form a union, and that was 50 percent of the workers out of 200, and the employer was challenging 5 of those, well, as it is now they could challenge those 5, have a hearing, appeal the hearing, appeal that, and just keep appealing it. Well, the rules would say, OK, they can say those 5 are not part of it, their ballots would be set aside, and they would have the election. If the election was, let's say, 150 to 20 that they wanted to form a union, those 5 would not make a difference one way or the other. If, however, the election was very close and those 5 would make a difference, then the results would be held in abeyance until such time as it is determined whether those 5 so challenged were part of that bargaining unit or not. To me, this is a much more fair and decisive way of moving ahead rather than these constant delays and intimidations that go on right now in some of the places--not all, not all, but in some of the places. It is like a lot of times we pass laws not because there are, let's say, broad-based incursions on a person's freedoms or certain things we want to address, but a lot of times we pass laws because there are a few bad actors out there one way or the other and we want to make sure those bad actors are not able to act unreasonably, kind of in violation of what was intended by the National Labor Relations Act. So that is what they are all about. They are very modest and, I think, lend themselves to a much more reasonable path forward in union organizing and voting. I ask unanimous consent if there is a quorum call that both sides be charged equally on the time.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, there are just a couple of things I wish to bring up in response to some of the statements that have been made on the floor. First of all, I wish to make it very clear that the NLRB has scrupulously followed all legal and procedural requirements for rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act, and by increasing the use of rulemaking, it has been the most inclusive and transparent Board in history--in history. This process has given all sides abundant opportunity to provide input to the NLRB. There was opportunity for written comments, written responses to other comments, and even a public hearing. I would like to point out again that there is no requirement in the Administrative Procedure Act to facilitate a dissent. Even though there isn't, the NLRB's traditional practice has given Member Hayes an opportunity to dissent. He was given that chance. But these practices do not allow him to filibuster or run out the clock to thwart the actions of his colleagues. The Board filed a notice of proposed rulemaking on June 22, 2011, provided 60 days for filing public comments, and received over 65,000 comments, of which, I might note, all but around 200 were form letters. There were 65,000 comments, and all but around 200 were form letters. But still there were 200 comments, ensuring a wide range of views and stakeholder input. The Board arranged an opportunity for staff from Member Hayes's office to brief congressional staff on his dissent from the notice of proposed rulemaking, and, although not required to do so, the Board also provided an opportunity for oral public comments at a hearing conducted on July 18 and 19, 2011, in which over 60 labor and management lawyers, public interest groups, employer and labor organizations, workers, and other related constituents participated. The Board provided an additional 14 days following the 60-day comment period in which to file written reply comments. Again, this is not required by the APA--the Administrative Procedure Act--or any other law. Then the NLRB held a public vote on a final rule on November 30 and published the final rule in late December. So quite frankly, under the Administrative Procedure Act, which all other agencies follow, the NLRB bent over backward to be transparent and to allow dissent. I have heard it said that Member Hayes was not allowed enough time. Well, he had his first dissent. But from June 22 until November, Mr. Hayes had all that time to file a dissent if he wanted to--to write a dissent. I mean, is that not enough time to write a dissent? It seems to me that is more than enough time. But that was not done. So I just want to make it clear that I think Mr. Hayes was given more than enough time to write his dissent if he wanted to. He did write one dissent over the proposed rules, but he had the additional opportunity from June 22 until November. Again, the APA, under rulemaking, doesn't entitle him to dissent, but the Board allowed him to have a dissent if he wanted to. They had access to public comments on the proposed rules. They were given summaries and copies of specific comments the other members found informative. His office had months to incorporate those comments and write a second dissent but chose not to. That was his own choice. That was his own choice. He was not prevented from doing so. That was his own choice. There are a lot of little items like that which I think are kind of being misinterpreted, but here is the essence of it, right here. Here is the essence of what this is all about. Stripped of all the falderal and all of this and all of that and which Board member was for card check and who wasn't and on and on and on, this is what it is about, right here, this statement. This is Martin Jay Levitt, who was an anti- union consultant who wrote a book called ``Confessions of a Union Buster,'' published in 1993. ``Confessions of a Union Buster.'' Here is what he said: Challenge everything . . . then take every challenge to a full hearing . . . then prolong each hearing . . . appeal every unfavorable decision . . . if you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers lose faith, lose interest, lose hope. That is what it is about. It is about denying people their right under the National Labor Relations Act to fairly and expeditiously have a vote on whether to form a union. This is not new. This has been going on since the 1940s and 1950s, since Taft-Hartley. There have been forces at work in this country since the adoption of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 to break unions. They do not want to give workers a right to have a voice in collective bargaining. They will go to extreme limits to deny union members their rights. They will do everything they can to try to break up unions. Taft-Hartley was the first of that, and we have had several things since that time. Our job is to try to make it a level playing field--as level as possible, anyway--and to give workers a right that is not just a right in name only or in words but a real, factual right to form a union and have the election without challenging everything, taking every challenge to a full hearing, prolonging each hearing, appealing every unfavorable decision. As I quoted earlier, if you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers lose faith, lose interest, and lose hope. And I might add, if you drag it on long enough, it gives the employer every opportunity to intimidate workers so they won't join a union or maybe fire people who were active in the union organization drive--to find some reason why they should be fired, anyway. That is what this is about. What the NLRB has finally done, through an open process, through a rulemaking process, through perhaps one of the most open and transparent processes in the history of the NLRB, is to say: Let's have a system whereby certification votes can be held within a reasonable amount of time. There was no time limit put in there. There is no 7 or 10 days. That is what Mr. Hayes said in his dissent. He just plucked that out of thin air. But that is not in the ruling. That is not in the ruling at all. Most people who have looked at it have said: Well, it may shorten it to 20 to 30 days, somewhere in there. It seems to me that is fair enough. That is fair enough. But that is really what this is all about, and I hope Senators, when they vote, will recognize that what the Board has done is to take the unfair process we have had for so long and made it more fair for everyone. I will point out one last time that the procedures the NLRB has come up with, which are under fire right now from the other side, apply to certification votes as well as to decertification votes. If a company wants to decertify a union, then the union can't drag that out days and months at a time. They can't drag that out for decertification either. So it seems to me that on both sides--certification and decertification--we have a level playing field, and neither side can drag it out interminably to try to frustrate the real desires and wishes of the workers. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

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

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, over the past 2 days my Republican colleagues have raised several arguments about what the NLRB rule will do. I now want to respond to their points and to clarify once again: this is a modest rule that simplifies preelection litigation in the small number of cases where the parties don't reach agreement and must resort to litigation. First, my colleagues across the aisle have pointed out that unions have recently won about 71 percent of elections, and so, they argue, the current system is completely fair to unions. This is an incredibly deceptive statistic. Unions have filed far fewer petitions in recent years--down from over 4,100 in 2001 to just over 2,000 in 2011. And in almost a third of cases where petitions are filed, the petition is withdrawn before an election. In other words, the process of getting to an election can be so slow, and employer anti-union attacks so potent, that unions are discouraged from going through the entire election process. For the most part, only in the rare cases where support is truly overwhelming or the employer does not oppose the union do unions win. In a related vein, Republicans have argued that elections are currently held promptly--on average, between 30 and 40 days after a petition is filed--and therefore no change in the rule is needed. But this argument misses the point of the rule. Currently, in the 10 percent of cases that are litigated, it takes around 124 days to get to an election. It takes around 198 days when parties exhaust their appeal rights. This rule addresses those situations where employers engage in excessive--and often frivolous--litigation to slow down the process. Without question, in those cases, it takes far too long and these new NLRB procedures are a desperately needed fix to shorten that time period for the 10 percent of cases that are litigated. I have also heard the argument that if employers engage in misconduct that interferes with workers' choice during a long election campaign, the NLRB can rerun the election. But the time it takes to get to a second election only compounds the frustration and loss of hope workers suffer when their opportunity to make a choice is delayed for too long. Many unions won't bother to seek a second election, even if there was employer misconduct, if workers are too discouraged. One of the major improvements in this bill--deferring challenges to voter eligibility until after the election when they are small in number--has also been mischaracterized. Opponents of the rule claim that workers will be confused about who is in the bargaining unit with them. The reality is, challenged voters will be deferred only when they are small in number relative to the size of the bargaining unit. So there will be little or no confusion about the exact individuals in the unit. Moreover, workers will know full well the essential identity of the group they are a part of; individual employees may come and go over time as workers retire or find new jobs, but the identity of the unit is what remains constant. The unit identity is what workers need to know to be able to make an informed choice about whether to vote for a union. I hear a lot from the other side how this rule will dramatically shorten the time to an election and how it will lead to so-called ambush elections. There is no basis for this prediction. Opponents of the rule can't even agree among themselves how much time the rule will shave off an election. Senator Enzi suggested that this rule will lead to an election in 10 days; Senator Barrasso suggested it will almost halve the current median time of 38 days. An attorney from the management-side labor law firm Jackson Lewis told the Wall Street Journal that he thinks the time would be between 19 and 23 days. The vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers predicted a hearing 20 to 25 days after the petition is filed. The reason there are so many different numbers floating around is because the rule simply does not say anything about a timeframe for elections. Certainly it is true that in the 10 percent of cases that are litigated--where the process is abused and delays are rampant--the rule likely will shorten the time period by instituting more efficient procedures. But as to the 90 percent of cases where there is voluntary agreement, the NLRB will continue to work with parties as it always has to arrive at a reasonable election date. In connection with their undue speculation about timing of elections, supporters of this resolution have also argued that employers will not have enough time to communicate with workers under the rule. Because the rule does not actually address timing of an election in the great majority of cases, this is pure speculation as well. Moreover, it is well-known that election campaigns begin long before a petition is filed. If employers wish to mount an anti-union campaign, they will almost certainly do so when they learn a drive is happening. They will not wait until a petition is filed. Similarly, my colleagues have argued that workers will only hear the union's side of the story under this rule. I must point out that it is employers who continue to have the right to hold ``captive audience'' meetings. They can hold meetings on work time where they can require workers' attendance, and they can browbeat workers about why they think unions are bad. Unions have no such access to a workplace. The playing field for communicating with workers is currently dramatically skewed in favor of employers. It will remain skewed in favor of employers after this rule goes into effect. All this rule does is to put some limits on those employers who would drag out elections to better exploit their communications advantage. My colleagues on the other side argue that small businesses will have to confront election issues and familiarize themselves with the law in a very short timeframe. As I have said repeatedly, there is no reason to expect an election will occur any more quickly in the great majority of cases. Employers would have ample time to review the law. What the new rules do is to put small businesses on the same footing with large employers that can afford excessive, all-out litigation of preelection issues. The process is simplified so that all employers have to deal with straightforward and presumably cheaper procedures that give them all a fair and equal chance to address preelection issues. My colleagues have argued that this rule creates an uncertain business climate. In fact, the rule does just the opposite. It creates a very predictable process because it applies uniform procedures designed to cut down on pointless litigation. My Republican colleagues also suggest that this rule will cause more litigation because unions will have less incentive to reach voluntary agreements. But, in fact, unions will continue to have every incentive to have an agreement on election issues. Hearings still take time and resources even though they are now more streamlined than before. Unions would not want to undergo the expense, uncertainty, and delay of a hearing even though the process will be much improved under this rule. I am confident the great majority of cases will continue to be resolved by voluntary agreement. Let me stress that this rule treats both sides the same way--the rule applies to elections to decertify a union as well as elections to certify one. Although it has been pointed out that there are certain times, such as the first year after a certification vote, when workers are not permitted to petition to decertify a union, the NLRB does provide adequate, defined time periods when workers are permitted to file a decertification petition. Workers' right to file such a petition during those time periods is well-established, and workers who don't want a union have a clear method to vote the union out. Finally, it has been pointed out that the NLRB recently lost a court battle over its rule requiring a notice posting. But the reality is, the NLRB won this court battle in one district court and lost in another. One court upheld the core of the rule--that the NLRB can require a posting of workers' right to form a union. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has now blocked the rule to avoid confusion over who has to implement the rule and who doesn't. That court likely won't issue a decision resolving this matter until the fall, but it has absolutely no bearing on the legality or legitimacy of the rule we are debating today. Indeed, the furor over notifying employees of their rights is a perfect example of the extremity of Republican opposition to worker rights. My colleagues have all spoken about the importance of workers being informed about the pros and cons of unionization, but they object to a simple poster that explains workers' rights under the law. To conclude, this rule will cause no real change for the vast majority of businesses that approach the NLRB election process in good faith. It imposes no new requirements at all for parties who come to the process in good faith and negotiate an agreement. The rule simply addresses the small number of employers that abuse the NLRB election process and deliberately cause delay to buy themselves more time to bombard workers with an anti-union message. The rule also makes NLRB preelection litigation more efficient, saving government resources. It is a commonsense reform that deserves our full support. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote down the resolution disapproving of this NLRB rule.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I will, obviously, yield to my good friend, Senator Enzi, for his closing remarks, but I again just want to point out that this ruling by the NLRB is imminently reasonable. They went through rulemaking, as I have said before, one of the most transparent boards we have ever had in history. Rather than going through the adjudicative process, they went through rulemaking and a comment period. People were allowed to come in, and they even had an oral hearing which is not even required by the Administrative Procedure Act. Mr. Hayes was allowed due time for filing dissents. He chose not to do so for whatever reason. So everything was complied with. In fact, they bent over backwards to even do more than what the Administrative Procedure Act requires under rulemaking. So that is No. 1. No. 2, the essence of the rule is eminently fair. It applies both to certification and decertification. There is no 10 days. I keep hearing about this 10 days. Mr. Hayes put that in his dissent, but there is nothing in the rule that requires a 10-day election. Nothing. Lastly, again, what is this all about? I will say it one more time. This is what it is about, this is it: This is Mr. Martin Jay Levitt who wrote a book, ``Confessions of a Union Buster.'' He was a consultant to businesses that didn't want to have unions formed, and here is what he said in his book. Here is the way they should do things if they don't want to have a union: [C]hallenge everything . . . then take everything challenged to a full hearing . . . then prolong each hearing . . . appeal every unfavorable decision. If you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers . . . lose faith, lose interest, lose hope. That is what it is about. It is about establishing a level playing field now so workers do indeed have their full rights--not a paper right but a full viable right to form a union and to have an election within a reasonable period of time. Mr. President, I yield the floor. If my friend needs some more time, I yield him whatever time I have remaining.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m. to conduct a committee hearing entitled ``The Collapse of MF Global: Lessons Learned and Policy Implications.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``The Emergence of Online Video: Is It the Future?''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Anatomy of a Fraud Bust: From Investigation to Conviction.''

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 April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., to hold an African Affairs subcommittee hearing entitled, ``U.S. Policy to Counter the Lord's Resistance Army.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room SD G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the Constitutionality and Prudence of State and Local Governments Enforcing Immigration Law.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife of the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10:15 a.m. in room SD 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield myself whatever time I may consume.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I also want to clear up one parliamentary question. The occupant of the chair stated we had 2 hours evenly divided. I believe that is today. But on the agreement for the entire debate on the Congressional Review Act, if I am not mistaken, it is 4 hours evenly divided.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Paul Edenfield, a member of my staff, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.