Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

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 July 22, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Mr. HARKIN

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, after months of obstruction, we have overcome a shameful effort by the Republican minority to block the extension of emergency unemployment benefits. Because of the obstructionism of those on the other side of the aisle, more than 2 and a half million unemployed Americans have seen their benefits terminated in recent weeks--49 days ago, to be exact. They are among the nearly 6.8 million Americans who have been out of work for more than half a year. That is the highest number of long-term unemployed we have had since we started keeping track in 1948. Again, this is the highest number of long-term unemployment we have had since 1948. In recent weeks, I have come to the Senate floor several times to share the heartbreaking letters and e-mails I have received from long- term unemployed workers in Iowa. These families are struggling to survive. These Iowans are trying their hardest, doing everything they can to find any kind of work. But the jobs just aren't there. Officially, there are five job seekers for every new job opening. Unofficially, and more accurately, there are more than eight job seekers for every opening. Here on the chart, it says that when you include the discouraged workers who aren't counted in the official numbers, unemployment has gone up to 26 million. Yet there are 3.2 million job openings. So there is between five and eight unemployed workers for every job opening. I say to those desperate families in Iowa and across America that we have listened to you, we have heard you, and we have been fighting desperately over the last 49 days here to get an extension of unemployment insurance benefits. Every time we have tried it, we have been obstructed by the minority, the Republicans. So thanks, today, to the first vote cast by the new Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Carte Goodwin--by the way, I might say to Senator Goodwin, who was just sworn in at about 2 p.m. and then cast his first vote, he can be rightfully proud of the first vote he cast in the Senate--to help lift up people who, in many cases, have lost all hope, to make sure families get the necessary wherewithal to put food on the table and keep their families together. Thanks to the first vote of the new Senator from West Virginia, today we were able to get cloture and stop the filibuster. I also thank the two Republicans--Senator Snowe and Senator Collins-- who also voted with us today to make sure we were able to get this extension into law. Just remember, on three occasions this summer Republican Senators pulled out the stops to filibuster and kill efforts to extend unemployment benefits. During that time, we heard a rising chorus on talk radio and even from some Senators. They said that extending unemployment benefits would be a bad idea because, in so many words, people are lazy, and they are just relying on their benefits instead of looking for work. As the distinguished minority whip, the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl, put it: . . . continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work. I believe that is woefully out of touch with the reality of trying to survive on unemployment benefits. Let's look at the facts. While the numbers vary from State to State, the average weekly unemployment benefit nationwide is only about $300 a week. As this chart shows, $300 a week in UI benefits adds up to about $15,000 a year. That is the average. The poverty line for a family of four is $22,000 a year. So is the Senator from Arizona saying someone who is getting $15,000 a year--a family of four--would rather get that than find a job and make well over $22,000 a year, which would be the poverty line? Would they rather exist on $15,000 a year than, say, $45,000 a year or $55,000 or $60,000 a year? It is incredible to think that someone would say that when there is one job for five to eight people out there looking. To say that somehow by giving them $15,000 a year--$300 a week--that will keep them from going to work is preposterous. This line of argument is not just absurd and factually wrong, it is shameful. It is shameful to say that about hard-working Americans, who, through no fault of their own, are out of a job. I keep saying every time I come to the Senate floor that we all have jobs here. Every time I come here and look around, I see fellow Senators and staff--we all have jobs. We are not worried about tomorrow. Think about your own family. What if you were out of work and have been out of work for a year and you are out there looking for work, and for every job there are eight other people out there looking for that job? You have to put yourself in the shoes of those kinds of families. It is shameful to say somehow that by giving people unemployment benefits, they are not going to go back to work because of that--I have more faith in the American people. The American people want to work. In fact, the figures show that we are still the most productive Nation on Earth. Does that somehow point to lazy Americans? No. Given the opportunity, Americans can outwork anybody anywhere in the world--if there is only a job. To say that somehow giving unemployment benefits encourages people to be lazy flies in the face of the facts about hard-working Americans-- how hard they work and how productive American workers are. Well, there is little question that the long-term unemployed would like nothing more than to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. But this economy right now is very short on bootstraps. Our Republican colleagues have trotted out another justification for stopping extending unemployment benefits. They say that extending the benefits will add to the deficit. They argue that we should cut off some of the most desperate people in our economy. We should take away their last meager lifeline out of a concern for the deficit. Yet these very same Senators today are demanding that the 2001 and 2003 tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans be extended for another 10 years. Let me repeat that. These same Senators on the Republican side who are arguing that we can't extend the unemployment benefits because it would add to the deficit are some of the same Senators who are saying these tax breaks President George Bush and a Republican Congress gave to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans in 2001 and 2003 should be extended for another 10 years. And they are saying the cost of those tax breaks should not be offset, they should simply be added to the deficit. So let's be clear about what our Republican friends are saying. They are saying the roughly $33 billion cost of extending unemployment benefits for some of the most desperate workers in our society is unacceptable if it adds to the deficit, but extending tax breaks for the most fortunate and privileged Americans, which would cost a whopping $670 billion over the next decade, well, we can just add that to the deficit. So, again, $33 billion to help people who are out of work, who are desperate, to help them feed their children, stay in their homes, pay their mortgages, keep their families together, that $33 billion we can't spend because it adds to the deficit; however, we can extend these tax breaks that cost $670 billion for another 10 years. Oh, yes, we can add that to the deficit. That is what my Republican friends are saying. Well, this is breathtaking. It is breathtaking to hear this line of argument. It is nothing more than a return to the Bush years when the President, with a Republican majority here, dragged us into trillion dollar wars and turned major surpluses into historic deficits--historic deficits. Well, today, finally, the Senate said: No, we are not going to go any further on this. We drew the line. We had our vote. Shortly, we will vote on passage of the bill--49 days too late. Imagine, if you will, that you are one of those persons and you have a family. Maybe you have an illness in the family. Maybe you have a child who is sick or a child with a disability or maybe some other unfortunate things have happened to you. Maybe you have been out of work and you lost your unemployment benefits 49 days ago. What have you done for those 49 days? Think about it. Think about what you would do. Well, I am sorry. I apologize to all those Americans, on behalf of the Senate, that we didn't pass this 49 days ago. But the Republican minority would not let us do it because of a filibuster--because of a filibuster--which requires 60 votes. We didn't have 60 votes until today. So I am sorry people had to wait 49 days, but the unemployment extension we will pass today will be retroactive, so it will fill in those last 49 days. I hope and trust that many of the bills that piled up on those kitchen tables--maybe the mortgage payment that wasn't made or maybe the mortgage company is calling all the time and hounding you about it, maybe you have had to go out and get one of those awful payday loans with high interest rates to tide you over--I hope that will soon get taken care of, that you will get your unemployment benefits and be able to pay those off. These will be extended until the end of November. So we can now say to the people who are unemployed: You will get your unemployment benefits until the end of November. And I hope the programs we are working on will turn this economy around. Tomorrow, the President will sign into law the financial reform bill we passed here last week. This is going to go a long way toward reassuring the markets that we are going to have openness and transparency and that we are going to now deal openly and forthrightly with our financial institutions and demand of them that they deal openly and forthrightly with the American people. I am hopeful the economy will turn around, but the economists say things are still kind of dicey. Well, if that is the case, our obligation is to make sure we have a safety net, and the biggest safety net of all is unemployment insurance benefits. I am sorry we had to wait 49 days because of Republican intransigence and their raising the filibuster on this, but we finally got it done today, and pretty soon those checks will be going out to our American families. I just hope we don't have to keep extending it. I hope the economy turns around. But if it doesn't--if it doesn't--I say to my Republican friends right now, as we go into next year, these tax breaks they want to extend for the wealthiest 1 percent, I am sorry, that is going to have to take a backseat to the people who are unemployed in this country. We need to make sure we do everything possible to get them jobs, to get them back to work, and to make sure they get the unemployment benefits they need until such time as those jobs do return. Madam President, with that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Gabriela McCall Delgado, Jacob Sheahan, Conor McRitchie, Tom Stanley-Becker, and Anthony Tucci of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Yes, that is correct. We certainly understand that many special entities have internal managers that may meet the independent representative requirement. For example, many public electric and gas systems have employees whose job is to handle the day-to-day hedging operations of the system, and we intended to allow them to continue to rely on those in-house managers to evaluate and approve swap and security-based swap transactions, provided that the manager remained independent of the swap dealer or the security-based swap dealer and met the other conditions of the provision. Similarly, the named fiduciary or in-house asset manager--INHAM--for a pension plan may continue to approve swap and security-based swap transactions. Foreign Banks

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, the pensions community approached me about a possible unintended consequence of the derivatives title of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. They were concerned that the provisions regulating swaps might also apply to stable value funds. Stable value funds are a popular, conservative investment choice for many employee benefit plans because they provide a guaranteed rate of return. As I understand it, there are about $640 billion invested in stable value funds, and retirees and those approaching retirement often favor those funds to minimize their exposure to market fluctuations. When the derivatives title was put together, I do not think anyone had stable value funds or stable value wrap contracts--some of which could be viewed as swaps--specifically in mind, and I do not think it is clear to any of us what effect this legislation would have on them. Therefore, I worked with Chairman Lincoln, Senator Leahy, and Senator Casey to develop a proposal to direct the SEC and CFTC to conduct a study--in consultation with DOL, Treasury, and State insurance regulators--to determine whether it is in the public interest to treat stable value funds and wrap contracts like swaps. This provision is intended to apply to all stable value fund and wrap contracts held by employee benefit plans--defined contribution, defined benefit, health, or welfare--subject to any degree of direction provided directly by participants, including benefit payment elections, or by persons who are legally required to act solely in the interest of participants such as trustees. If the SEC and CFTC determine that it is in the public interest to regulate stable value fund and wrap contracts as swaps, then they would have the power to do so. I think this achieves the policy goals underlying the derivatives title while still making sure that we don't cause unintended harm to people's pension plans.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my friend and our majority whip, Senator Durbin, for laying out, I think in very stark and honest and open terms, what we are facing in this country today. I wish to pick up on that and to carry it a little further in talking about the number of people who are unemployed, what is happening to people across America today who can't find work, while the Congress sits here immobilized, unable to pass an extension of unemployment insurance benefits. It is unconscionable what is happening to so many people in America, through no fault of their own--people who are at the end of the line. They are looking to us, asking us to do something. Yet the Congress sits here immobilized, unable to act. We are unable to act because a small minority here in the Senate on the Republican side refuses to let us move ahead with an extension of unemployment insurance benefits. If we could ever have a vote--if we could get a vote on it--we would get over 50 votes. A majority would vote for the extension. But once again, under the rules of the Senate, a minority of the Senate gets to decide what we vote on. I wonder how many students in government classes that are being taught in high school today, even in college, are being taught that the majority does not govern in the Senate. I wonder how many understand that in our democratic form of government, 41 Senators decide what we vote on--41. Not 51 but 41 Senators decide what legislation comes before this body. You can go back to the Framers of our Constitution and read all they wrote in our Federalist Papers--what Madison said and others--and they all warned against the tyranny of the minority. That is why they set up a system of majority rule. I think it was Madison who referred to the aspect as perhaps a small junta being able to control legislation if we did not have a majority vote. Well, we have turned that on its head. Because today, a minority--41 Senators--decides what we vote on. Please explain that in terms of our democratic principles to kids who are taking government classes throughout America today. Go to other countries, where we are trying to get them to establish democratic forms of government, and tell them: Oh, it is okay to have a minority decide what you vote on. They have to scratch their heads and say: What are you talking about? We need a majority. Yet here in our own country, a minority rules in the Senate. I know a lot of polls show that people are angry and they are mad at Congress. I can understand that. If I had been out of work for 99 weeks and I had a family to feed and house payments to make and all of a sudden my unemployment insurance benefits ended, I would be pretty mad at Congress too. I think what the Republicans are counting on is that this fall they will be so mad they will vote against whoever is running Congress, and that is the Democrats, obviously. That is what they are counting on; that people will vote because they are mad, they are angry, and they will vote the Democrats out. Yet it is the Republicans, a minority, who are keeping us from voting on extending unemployment insurance benefits. I don't care what my friends on the other side of the aisle think. The American people will know. People are not stupid. The voters of this country are pretty smart. Oh, you might fool them for a little bit. As Abraham Lincoln said: You can fool them for a little bit, but not all the time. And pretty soon they will catch on. They will catch on that the Congress is not acting because a small minority of the Senate will not let us act. A group of business economists recently released their economic outlook and they said that we are on track for recovery. They gave a large share of the credit to the Recovery Act that we passed last year, of course without one single Republican vote. I think the recovery bill prevented a catastrophe. But, quite frankly, the economy is still in the doldrums. Sales of new homes plummeted last month to 33 percent, the lowest level in 40 years. According to the Federal Reserve, U.S. companies--get this--private U.S. companies are now hoarding an all-time high sum of $1.84 trillion in cash. Companies in America are holding $1.84 trillion in cash. They are unwilling to invest, to hire, or to expand. So again, it is a very fragile recovery that could dip back into even another big recession. We had the Great Depression in the 1930s. In the 1990s, as a result of the profligate spending and the huge tax cuts for the wealthy under the Bush administration and the Republicans who controlled Congress--as the Senator from Illinois pointed out--President Obama was left with a deficit of $1.3 trillion. When President Clinton left office, there was a budget surplus of about close to $300 billion. Because of all that, we have had the great recession of the 2000s--2007, 2008, 2009, and now 2010. A lot of figures are thrown around about how many are unemployed. The official unemployment is 9.5 percent with nearly 15 million workers. But the real unemployment, including those discouraged workers, those who are working part time because they can't find a full-time job, is close to 26 million Americans. Twenty- six million Americans can't find a full-time job. They are desperate and they need help. Right now, there are five job seekers for every new job opening. Actually, more accurately, there are more than eight. This 26 million who are right now unemployed, officially, they say, there are about 5 to 6 unemployed workers for every job. But actually, it is closer to about eight job seekers for every opening. I was reading an article in the Post yesterday. Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute--a libertarian think tank--said: Workers are less likely to look for work or accept less than ideal jobs as long as they are protected from the full consequences of being unemployed. That is not to say that anyone is getting rich off of unemployment or that unemployed people are lazy, but it is simple human nature that people are a little less motivated as long as the check is coming in. Boy, that almost takes your breath away, that we have people such as this in high places who are setting economic policy, or trying to set economic policy. He says: As long as people are protected from the full consequences of being unemployed. What does he mean: They have to starve; they have to go out on the street corner with hat in hand, give up their homes, put their furniture out on the street, send their kids to the orphanage? Is that what Mr. Tanner means by the full consequences of being unemployed? Maybe starving; can't get enough to even eat? What is he talking about--the full consequences--when there are eight people looking for every job? He says that by extending unemployment benefits, it makes people less inclined to look for work. You wonder where people like this come from. Where did they ever go to school? What did they learn in their lifetimes? Or are they just so uncaring about their fellow human beings that they just say: Let it happen. Whatever happens, let it happen and the government can't do anything to help. We had that attitude prior to the 1930s, prior to the Great Depression. But I thought we turned the corner. I thought we recognized that government could be an instrument to make sure that people's lives were not miserable, that they did not have to suffer the ``full consequences of being unemployed,'' being thrown out on the street or starving or putting their kids in orphanages because they couldn't take care of them any longer. I thought we turned the corner on that. But, obviously, there are some who would like to turn the clock back. There are eight job seekers for every one unemployed. They are hanging by a thread. Their savings are exhausted. They have no safety net whatsoever. Every day we get stories in our office, heartbreaking stories, of families back home struggling to survive, but there just are not any jobs. I heard from a woman in Waukon, IA. She worked in the same job for 33 years, the plant closed, she and 300 other workers lost their jobs. This is in a town of 3,500 people. She is a diabetic without health insurance. She has applied for more than 200 jobs. She is crying out for a job. She wants to work, but she comes up emptyhanded because there are no jobs. I heard from a worker in the Des Moines area who had been in the insurance industry for many years and was laid off a year ago. Her benefits were cut off last week. Here is what she said: My concern is that my family cannot survive without the unemployment benefits. We have depleted our savings just to save the house and not get behind on the bills. I know there are others far worse off. Please help pass the emergency unemployment insurance extension. These are hard-working people. They have tried their best. They have not shirked their duties and responsibilities. They are being good citizens, hard-working citizens. What we are talking about is just a matter of fundamental fairness and decency and using the power of the government to make sure people do not--what did Mr. Tanner say?-- ``suffer the full consequences of being unemployed,'' whatever that may mean. Yet in the face of these families in this crisis, the extension of unemployment insurance benefits is stalled, it is stuck. I would say it is cruelly obstructed in the Senate. We have tried time and time again to pass an extension. Every time it is blocked by our Republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle. As a result of this, more than 2 million Americans have now exhausted their unemployment benefits. Actually, when I took this floor before the Fourth of July recess, I talked about the number of people who would be out, and I said it would be about 2 million. It is now 2.5 million. Last week, 2.1 million; this week, 2.5 million. These are people out of work. They have been out of work so long, although they have looked for work, that now their unemployment benefits are gone. I ask people to think about it. Around this place we all have jobs, don't we? We all have jobs. Everybody who works on the Senate floor has a job. I have a job. You, Mr. President, have a job. We get paid pretty darned well too. We are not facing unemployment. No one who works here is facing unemployment. Just think how you would feel. Just think how you would feel if you got a pink slip yesterday, and it said don't come to work next week. You have house payments to make, you have kids in school, maybe one in college or two. You might even have car payments to make. All of a sudden you are out of work and you cannot find a job. They say: I am sorry, you can't get unemployment benefits either. What do you do? What do you do? Put yourself in the shoes of these people. What would you do? How mad would you be at the U.S. Congress and the government if you had worked all your life, like this woman from Waukon, 33 years--out of work, diabetic, no health insurance, has applied for over 200 jobs, can't find a job, and we cut off your unemployment benefits? How mad would you be? We keep hearing this, and I have heard it from the other side of the aisle, I have heard it from Sarah Palin and others, that people are lazy. They just rely on those benefits instead of looking for work. Even the distinguished minority whip, Senator Kyl, put it recently-- here is the quote: Continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work. There are eight people looking for every job. How low do we have to drive people down? I suppose if we paid people 50 cents an hour we might get people to work, to do things. Is that what we have come to as a country, that people have to be pushed that far down before we respond? I think those who say people are just lazy are out of touch with reality. Let's look at the facts. Numbers vary from State to State. Unemployment insurance benefits vary from State to State. Right now it is about $300 a week average nationwide--$300 a week. For a family of four, get this, if you get unemployment benefits--if you are lucky enough to still be on them--you are getting $300 a week average. That is about $15,000 a year. Can you keep your family going on $15,600 a year, a family of four? The poverty line is $22,000. I suppose, according to my friend from Arizona, Senator Kyl, if you are getting $15,600 a year, that is a disincentive for you to try to find a job that pays more than $22,000. I don't understand the logic of that reasoning. The truth is, the long-term unemployed would like nothing more than to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But the problem is, in the economy right now we are kind of short of bootstraps. Another argument I hear from our Republican colleagues is that extending the unemployment benefits will add to the deficit. Their argument is that we should cut off some of the most desperate people in our economy, take away their last meager lifeline, because we are concerned about the deficit. Yet those very same Senators are demanding that we extend hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our society. My friend, the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Sanders, who was here yesterday morning, gave a great speech on what is happening in our society in terms of the few controlling more and more and the rest getting less and less. As he pointed out, the top 1 percent, the richest people in America, control 90 percent of the wealth. They control 90 percent. The rest can get all the rest. Yet my Republican colleague said we have to keep giving them more tax breaks, but we cannot help people who are unemployed; it will add to the deficit. Extending these tax breaks for the wealthiest in our society also adds to the deficit, but I guess in their way of thinking that is all right. Again, when we talk about extending these tax breaks, my friends on the Republican side, they don't say we have to find an offset for it. They say, no, add that to the deficit; we don't have to pay for that. But if we want to extend unemployment benefits, we have to somehow pay for that. Again, I am sorry, I am lost in the logic of that. According to our Republican colleagues, adding massively to the deficit to finance tax breaks for the wealthy is fine, but adding to the deficit to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed is unacceptable. I just happen to think those are misplaced priorities. Let me speak a little bit about deficits because they are a concern and they are something we do have to pay attention to and we are going to have to fix for the long term. We are in a fiscal mess. But it was not so long ago then-Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the need for fiscal responsibility when they were cutting tax breaks for the wealthy, spending more and more. Here is what he said: ``Deficits don't matter.'' Vice President Dick Cheney said: ``Deficits don't matter.'' Again, under his administration, with President Bush, they didn't matter. Boy, the deficits just spiraled out of control. I do not remember any significant Republican dissent from Mr. Cheney's view during that period of time, that deficits don't matter because they were off going after weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that misplaced war has cost us pretty close to $1 trillion, not counting untold lives lost, people injured for life. And the tax breaks for the wealthy spiraled us, again, into a deficit. But Mr. Cheney said deficits don't matter. I tend to disagree with Mr. Cheney. Deficits do matter. They matter because when Mr. Clinton was President, we got out of the deficit hole. They said deficits don't matter when Republicans were in control. Now they say deficits do matter. They blame the Federal Government's fiscal mess on President Obama and actions taken by this Congress. That takes a wholesale rewriting and air brushing of recent history. As we all know, it was the administrations of President Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush in the 1980s that launched America into a new era of large budget deficits. President Clinton then spent the following 8 years cleaning up the fiscal mess he inherited. In 1993, President Clinton, along with the Democrats, the Democratic Congress, passed a painful but a courageous deficit reduction plan without one single Republican ``yes'' vote in the Senate. That plan not only produced record budget surpluses, it expanded our economy. People were employed. It put us on a path, by the year 2000, to completely eliminate the national debt within a decade. We could have wiped out the national debt. I remember that debate. I was here. In 1993, I remember the Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm, getting up, wailing about how this plan was going to destroy America. It was going to plunge us into fiscal crisis. It was going to create unemployment. It was going to create a disaster. We passed it without one Republican vote. Look what happened: the economy grew, unemployment went down, we paid down the national debt, and we left in 2000 with a huge budget surplus. Yet in 1994, the year after we passed this without one single Republican vote, Republicans were all over the country taking the Democrats to task for raising taxes. You know what happened in 1994. The Democrats lost the Senate and lost the House and Republicans took over. But we were able to keep that program intact. They couldn't repeal it and we kept it intact during the 1990s, resulting in a good strong economy, more employment, less unemployment and, as I said, putting us on a plan to pay off the national debt. Then in 2001 George Bush came to office, Republicans gained control, and again we moved into deficits once more in our country--huge deficits. As my friend from Illinois said, according to CBO, when President Obama took office we had a $1.3 trillion deficit. When President Bush took office in 2001 we had about a $300 billion surplus. What a difference. What a difference. Now, because of the profligate spending and the deficits of those 8 years of Bush, because of the huge hole we were in when President Obama took over, our economy is in a tailspin. Now we are trying to work our way out of it. That is why we had the Recovery Act. The Recovery Act helped us gain more jobs in this country. As I said, it kept us from having a catastrophe. Now we know we can bring the deficit back under control. We did it during the Clinton administration, and we can do that again. As my friend from Illinois said yesterday, President Obama nominated Jack Lew to serve as Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He held that same position in the Clinton administration, in the latter years of the Clinton administration. So again we are looking to Mr. Lew to help us work our way out of this mess we are in. So I can say that we Democrats are proud of our record of fiscal responsibility. But forgive us for asking: Why is it that again and again we Democrats are cast in the role of the shovel brigade in the circus cleaning up after the elephants? Why are we always doing that? And then people get mad because we have to clean up the mess. Well, I am tired of being the shovel brigade after those elephants. We all understand that deficits are unaffordable and unsustainable. However, among economists, a broad array of economists in this country; among many Senators--I am one of them--I believe there is a more immediate and urgent concern; that is, getting a recovery from the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Do unemployment benefits cost money? Of course they do. Are they in our long-term interest? Absolutely. The single most effective way to reduce the deficit is to keep the recovery on track. If we can do that, we can reduce the deficit, according to CBO, from 10 percent of GDP this year to 4 percent by 2014. I will be the first to say we cannot do it overnight. We did not do it overnight in the 1990s. It took us literally 8 years, but it built up slowly, and toward the end we were really rolling by the year 2000: low unemployment, the economy was booming, we had budget surpluses. But it took a long time to get there, and it is going to take us some time to get back there again. But extending unemployment benefits is an essential way to keep us on that path to recovery. Economists calculate that for every dollar invested, the unemployment insurance safety net generates about $1.63 in economic activity. Again, they tell us: If you are going to spend government money, if you are going to do that, you get the most bang for the buck by putting it in food stamps. Because when poor people get food stamps, they go out and they buy food. The next is unemployment benefits. When you give it to people who are unemployed, they go out and they spend that money. They buy food, they pay their rent, they pay their food bills, they pay their clothing bills, they pay for car payments, house payments, all of those things just to keep afloat. So that spurs economic activity. Yet look down here--extending the Bush tax cuts. For every dollar we extend the Bush tax cuts, we only get back 49 cents. Compare that to unemployment benefits. Yet the Republicans want us to do this, spend every dollar we have to extend the Bush tax cuts, for which we will get back about 49 cents. They do not want to do unemployment benefits that for every dollar we spend we get back $1.63 in economic activity. They say unemployed households spend these dollars on immediate needs. From the Recovery Act alone in Iowa, more than 3,700 jobs were created in 2009 thanks to the economic activity of the Recovery Act. Did that get us all of the way out of the recession? No. But it sure as heck helped a lot of families and kept us from sinking even further. So that is why we had the Recovery Act, which has at least helped us out of a depression. David Walker is the former Comptroller General under the Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration. Now he is president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an organization that is single-mindedly focused on cutting long-term deficits. Last week, he testified before the bipartisan deficit reduction panel. He said it is a ``myth that we cannot address our current economic crisis and our long-term fiscal crisis at the same time.'' Yet that is what we are hearing from Republicans: We can't do both of those; we have to focus on the deficit, and don't worry about the crisis we have right now. David Walker continued: In our view, the answer is to continue to pursue selected short-term initiatives designed to stimulate the economy and address unemployment, but to couple these actions with specific meaningful actions designed to resolve our long-term structural deficits. Well, I agree. We have to address the short term and then think about the things we have to do here to address the long-term problems of the deficit. So, again, for the sake of all of the families who have written in to my office, for all of the families who are at the end of the line, I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to stop this cruel obstructionism and do the right thing right now for people who desperately need our help. Stop the filibuster. Let us vote. There are more than 50 votes. There is a majority here to extend unemployment benefits. I ask the minority to allow us to vote on it, to help these families in desperate need all over the country. It is my intention, as often as I can, to get to the floor to continue to speak about the desperate needs of those families we cannot continue to ignore. To those who think they can gain politically at the polls in November, who think they can gain politically by having people suffer more, by having them more desperate and more destitute, I say that is an aberration, that is a total abdication of our responsibility as officers, as people who are sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is unworthy. It is unworthy of a great country for their leaders, for their elected leaders, to show they can get political gain by making people more desperate than they are today. So I hope we can have the vote, we can extend the unemployment benefits, and we can help people who really need a lifeline right now. Anything short of that is not worthy of our great country. I urge the minority to let the bill come up for a vote so we can vote it through. It should be done this week. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 14, 2010, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 14, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Future of Individual Tax Rates: Effects on Economic Growth and Distribution.''

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 July 14, 2010, at 9:30 a.m., to hold a closed hearing entitled ``The New START Treaty (Treaty Doc. 111-5): Monitoring and Verification of Treaty compliance.''

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 July 14, 2010, at 2 p.m., to hold a hearing entitled ``Afghanistan: Governance and the Civilian Strategy.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 14, 2010. The Committee will meet in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building beginning at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 14, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Evaluating The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, S. 2930.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness of the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 14, 2010, at 3 p.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Marine Wealth: Promoting Conservation and Advancing American Exports.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Water and Power be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to conduct a hearing on Wednesday, July 14, at 3:30 p.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Stephen Hart, Sean Long, Cara Krueger, and Jesse Greenwald, of my staff, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, with the passing of our colleague, Robert Byrd, a mighty oak in the forest of Senate history has fallen. There are flowers on his desk, but there is a tremendous void in our midst. As we all know, Senator Byrd was the longest serving Senator in the history of this body. But what was most remarkable about Robert C. Byrd was not his longevity but his unique stature and accomplishment in the Senate. No individual in our long history has been a more tenacious champion of the traditions, prerogatives, and rules of this body. Senator Byrd was very fond of noting how many Presidents he had served under. He always answered, ``None.'' As he explained it, he had never served under any President but he had served with 11 Presidents as a proud member of a separate and coequal branch of government. Likewise, no individual has had greater reverence for the Constitution and for our Founders' vision for an assertive, independent legislative branch. As the ``Almanac of American Politics'' says in its profile of Senator Byrd: He may come closer to the kind of Senator the Founding Fathers had in mind than any other. For so many years, if anyone on the Senate floor needed to look up something in the Constitution, we knew where to turn. Senator Byrd always carried a copy in his left breast pocket, directly over his heart. It was Senator Byrd's reverence for the Constitution that led to what I consider to be arguably his finest hour in the Senate--his outspoken opposition to the rush to war in Iraq in 2002 and his fierce warning to his fellow Senators that we would regret surrendering our power on this war to the President. Senator Byrd's speeches at that time opposing the invasion became a sensation around this country and on the Internet. A white-haired Senator, well into his eighties, became an icon and a folk hero to young people in universities all across America. Why? Because when President Bush was at the peak of his popularity and power, Senator Byrd dared to say that the emperor--any President--has no clothes when it comes to declaring war. Senator Byrd said the reason given for the invasion--Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction--was trumped up, and he predicted the war would be a colossal mistake. I remember those impassioned speeches he gave at that time. If only we had taken the advice of the wise Senator from West Virginia, how many young American lives--over 3,000--would not have been lost, perhaps 10 times that many injured, carrying the wounds and scars of that war for the remainder of their lives, not to mention the nearly $1 trillion spent out of our Treasury for that war in Iraq. Later, in his outstanding book, ``Losing America''--I recommend this book to every young person. I see our pages sitting here. Pick up that book by Robert C. Byrd. It is called ``Losing America.'' He just wrote it about 5 or 6 years ago. It became an instant bestseller. It is a great book. In that book, ``Losing America,'' Senator Byrd decried the Senate's willingness to cave in to the President. He did not care about whether the President was a Democrat or Republican. He said cave in to any President--it is readiness, as he put it, ``to salute the emperor.'' He referred back to his earlier book he had written on the Roman Senate, noting that it was ``the progressive decline of the already supine [Roman] Senate'' that led to the decline of the Roman Republic, and he warned that the same could happen in America. I have always had a special affinity for Senator Byrd because we were both the sons of coal miners, both raised in humble circumstances. I will miss seeing Robert Byrd at his desk or in the well and going up to express my best wishes and converse with him. He would always grab my hand; he would look at me and say: We have coal miners' blood running in our veins. We were the only two sons of coal miners to serve in the Senate, at least at this time. He always said that to me. I am going to miss that. In reading about the Senator's early years--lifting himself out of poverty before running for the West Virginia Legislature in 1946--I was reminded of Thomas Edison's remark that ``opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.'' In his early days, Robert Byrd was dressed in overalls, and he worked. But he made his opportunities. He made his own opportunities with that relentless work, his self-education, and striving always. I will always appreciate the way he tutored me in the ways of the Senate when I arrived in this body in 1985. I was assigned to the Appropriations Committee, one of the few freshman Senators to ever get that assignment. I will not go into how all that happened, but I can remember going to visit Senator Byrd--who then, of course, was the ranking minority member, when I first came to the Senate, on the Appropriations Committee--to ask for his guidance and his willingness to work with me and to instruct me on how to be a good member of the Appropriations Committee. For the next 25 years, he was either the chair of the committee or the ranking member. So I was privileged to learn at the elbow of a master appropriator and legislator. During his more than 58 years in Congress, Senator Byrd witnessed astonishing changes, when you think about it. Our population during his service grew by more than 125 million. He served for 25 percent of the time we have been a republic. There has been an explosion of new technologies. America grew more prosperous, more diverse, more powerful. But across those nearly six decades of rapid change, there was one constant: Senator Byrd's tireless service to his country; his passion for bringing new opportunities to the people of West Virginia; his dedication to this branch of government, the U.S. Congress, and to this House of Congress, the U.S. Senate. Robert Byrd was a person of many accomplishments with a rich legacy. In my brief time today, I wish to speak of one area of his advocacy which I have had ample opportunity to observe in my capacity both as the longtime chair or ranking member of the Appropriations subcommittee for education and as a longtime member and now chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. During all these years, Senator Byrd was passionately committed to improving public education in the United States and expanding access to higher education, especially for those of modest means. As we all know, as I said, he was raised in the hardscrabble coalfields of southern West Virginia. His family was poor, but they were rich in faith and values. His adoptive parents nurtured in Robert Byrd a lifelong passion for education and learning. He was valedictorian of his high school class but too poor, too underprivileged to go to college right away. Again, keep in mind, those were the days before Pell grants and guaranteed loans or even Byrd scholarships. He worked as a shipyard welder, later as a butcher in a coal company town. It took him 12 years to save up enough money to start college. As we all know, he was a U.S. Senator when he earned his law degree. No other Member before or since has ever started and finished law school while a Member of Congress. But degrees do not begin to tell the story of the education of Robert C. Byrd. He was the ultimate lifetime learner. As I told him once, it was as though he had been enrolled during the last seven decades in the Robert C. Byrd school of continuing education. That always brought a smile on that one. I guarantee no one could ever get a better, more thorough education at any one of our universities. Senator Byrd's erudition bore fruit in no less than nine books that he wrote and published over the last two decades. We know he wrote the book on the Senate, a masterful, four-volume history of this institution that has become a classic. What my colleagues may not know is he also authored a highly respected history of the Roman Senate. There are some who joked--and I am sure he would not mind me saying this because we said it to him many times in the past--there are some who think Robert C. Byrd served in the Roman Senate. I can tell you, that part of the Byrd legacy and legend just is not so. We always said that. It always brought a smile, and he always chuckled when we talked about that. He was an expert on the Roman Senate. He knew it, and he knew who served in the Roman Senate and how it worked to bring down the Roman Empire. I have talked at length about Senator Byrd's education because this explains why he was so passionate about ensuring every American has access to a quality public education, both K-12 and higher education. Coming from a poor background, Senator Byrd believed that a cardinal responsibility of government is to provide a ladder of opportunity so that everyone, no matter how humble a background, has a shot at the American dream. Obviously, the most important rungs on that ladder of opportunity involve education, beginning with quality public schools, including access to college and other forms of higher education. During my quarter century now in this body, no one has fought harder for public education than Senator Robert Byrd. As long-time chairman, ranking member and, most recently, the senior member of the Appropriations Committee, he was the champion of education at every turn--fighting to reduce class sizes, improve teacher training, bringing new technologies into the classroom, boosting access to higher education. In 1985, my first year here in the Senate, he created the only national merit-based college scholarship program funded through the U.S. Department of Education. Congress later named it in his honor. The Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholars Program is a federally funded, State- administered scholarship program that rewards high school seniors who have exhibited exceptional academic excellence. Currently, there are more than 25,000 Byrd Scholars across the United States eligible for a $6,000 grant during 4 years in college. I can remember speaking with him about this and the funding of it, and he reminisced more than once with me about how he was valedictorian of his class, and that he so wanted to go on to higher education but, because of his economic circumstances and where he lived, it wasn't available. So he wanted to make sure that young men and women today who exhibit that great excellence in academic performance were not denied the opportunity to go to college simply because of the circumstances of their birth. Senator Byrd has something in common with Winston Churchill. Both were prolific writers, and both were major players in the events they chronicled in their writings. Senator Byrd was also a great student of literature, and he loved to recite long poems from memory. I could never understand how he could remember all of the poetry he would recite here on the floor, in a committee meeting, or sometimes in a meeting when a subject would come up and he would remember a poem that perfectly fit the temper of what people were talking about. I am sure Senator Byrd knew ``The Canterbury Tales,'' a lot of it probably by heart. In ``The Canterbury Tales,'' describing the Clerk of Oxford, Chaucer might just as well have been describing Robert C. Byrd. Chaucer wrote: Filled with moral virtue was his speech; And gladly would he learn and gladly teach. ``Filled with moral virtue was his speech; And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.'' Senator Byrd's speeches were a wonder to behold, full of eloquence and erudition and moral virtue. Senator Byrd never stopped learning and he never stopped teaching. Americans for generations to come will continue to learn from his writings and his example. Senator Robert C. Byrd was a great Senator, a great American, a loving and wonderful family man. He has both written our Nation's history and has left his mark on it. The United States of America has lost a patriotic son. We have lost a wonderful friend and a mentor. Tomorrow, here in the hallowed Chamber of the U.S. Senate, which he so loved and served for so many years, Robert C. Byrd will lie in state. We would do well to honor his memory by making a renewed commitment to making the U.S. Senate work and to work for all of the people of this country. May he rest in peace with his beloved Erma, and may the Senate always remember and honor his lifetime of service. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am sorry I was not here on the floor-- but I was watching in my office--when my colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, made his recent statement on the Senate floor. I think Senator Brown pointed out very poignantly what is happening to so many people in our country today who have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits. I would like to follow up on the comments made by Senator Brown to reinforce what he said just a few minutes ago on the Senate floor and the dire straits that so many people find themselves in going into the Fourth of July holiday. Recently, a national group of business economists released its 2010 economic outlook, predicting that America's economy is ``on track'' toward recovery. Well, this is encouraging news. It indicates we are moving in the right direction under President Obama's leadership. But we also know the recovery is very fragile. For example, last week, we learned that sales of new homes plummeted 33 percent in May, to the least level in 40 years. Let me repeat that. Home sales in May fell to the least level in 40 years. Banks are still reluctant to lend to small businesses. It is not that they do not have money. According to a new Federal Reserve report, U.S. companies are hoarding an all-time high sum of $1.84 trillion in cash, but they remain largely unwilling to invest, hire, and expand. U.S. companies are hoarding an all-time high sum--$1.84 trillion in cash--but they are not investing, they are not hiring, and they are not expanding. So the threat of this double-dip recession is very real. These economic warning signs are not just abstract facts and figures. They have very real consequences for families across the country. That is what my friend from Ohio was talking about earlier. The unemployment report for May was very disappointing. By the official numbers, there are 15 million hard-working people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and they are struggling to find work. Those are the official numbers--the official numbers. Many experts in this field agree that the real numbers are far higher. So when you count the people who have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work, or who are working part time involuntarily because they cannot get full time work, the number of unemployed workers is far higher, like about 30 million people. So as shown on this chart, here is sort of the official figure of 15 million. But that is just people who are right now on the unemployment rolls who are actively looking for work. We have enough data to show that people have been out of work for so long--they have hunted for so long, and they are discouraged; they are not looking right now actively--they are not counted as unemployed. The young people who have not had jobs for the first time, who are out of school but have not had jobs for the first time, they are not counted as unemployed. People who are working makeshift jobs for bits and pieces here and there, part-time, who one time had a full- time job, they are not counted either. When we add all those up, our real unemployment in this country is right around 30 million people. The official figures will say there are five unemployed workers for every available job. That is not true. It is more like 10 workers. Job openings in America: 2.69 million. That is how many jobs are in America right now that are open--at least last month anyway. There are 30 million people out there after those 2.69 million jobs; not 1 in 5, but 1 in 10, a little over 1 in 10. It is little wonder that the average spell of unemployment in this country has skyrocketed to 34 weeks, far higher than in previous recessions. This chart shows that--here is the recession of 1980, 10 weeks; in July of 1981, 14 weeks; in July of 1990, 12 weeks; March of 2001, the recession, 13 weeks. These are the unemployment spells we had during those recessions. We are now up to 34 weeks and counting. Compare that to the recessions of the past. It is a small wonder that a lot of people say this is not a recession, this is a depression. People don't want to say it, but in many ways, we are on the edge of a depression. As a result, a record number of Americans is facing long-term unemployment; 6.8 million Americans out of work for more than half a year, by official numbers alone. That is the highest number of long- term unemployed we have had since we started keeping track in 1948. Let me repeat that. The number of Americans out of work for more than half a year is the highest--the highest--since we have kept track of this since 1948. The families of these long-term unemployed are hanging on by a thread. Their savings are gone. Unemployment benefits are the only lifeline they have to pay the rent and put food on the table. Again, I know I am not the only Member of this body whose office has been flooded with heartbreaking stories of families back home struggling to make ends meet. We heard a number of those stories from Senator Brown from Ohio. These are people trying their hardest, doing everything they can to find work, but the jobs aren't there. I heard from a community college professor from Sioux City who was laid off due to budget cuts. She has applied for dozens of jobs, many far below her skill level. She is often told she is overqualified. She has exhausted her unemployment benefits. She and her sons, one of whom is a special needs child, are on Medicaid and they have applied for food stamps. I heard from a worker in Des Moines who has been in the insurance industry for many years. She was laid off almost a year ago and has struggled to find work. Her benefits were cut off last week. Here is what she writes. She says: My concern is that my family cannot survive without the unemployment benefits. We have depleted our savings just to save the house and not get behind on the bills. I know there are others far worse off. Please help pass the emergency unemployment insurance extension. I heard from a schoolteacher in northern Iowa who was laid off in October of 2008. She recently ran out of unemployment benefits and had to apply for welfare. She writes: I have not felt so humiliated in 20 years. I have been a productive and hard-working woman since I was 13, but now I feel insignificant. Please do not misunderstand. I have been trying to find full-time employment, but to no avail. Again, these are hard-working people trying their best, who never imagined they would be in need of Federal assistance. They paid into the unemployment insurance system while they were working. Their employers paid in. They ought to be able to count on it when times get tough. To me, it is a matter of fundamental fairness and human decency. Yet, in the face of so many families in crisis, an extension--a short-term extension--of unemployment insurance is being needlessly, and I would even say cruelly, obstructed here in the Senate. Time and again we have tried to pass an extension of unemployment benefits and time and time again that effort has been blocked by Members on the other side of this aisle. As a result of this political gamesmanship, as of the end of last week--at the end of last week--1,350,000 Americans exhausted their unemployment benefits because of the lapse in this program. By the end of this week, that will go up to 1,720,000 who will be cut off because we won't extend it here. By July 10, 2.14 million--2,140,000 Americans will have their unemployment benefits cut off. Blocking this bill may be a political game for some over here in the minority party, but it is not a game to millions of Americans who have lost their lifeline. For them, the obstruction of this bill is a personal and family crisis of the first magnitude. Imagine: We are about to go out of here in a couple of days for 10 days, 12 days, something like that, to celebrate our Nation's birthday, the Fourth of July weekend. I am sure Senators will be with their families; Congress men and women will be with their families, and all of our staffs. We all have jobs. We have good jobs that pay us well. We have good benefits--health benefits, retirement benefits--as does our staff, Republican staff and Democratic staff. Republican Senators and Democratic Senators, we have good pay. We will have a good Fourth of July with our families. We will watch the fireworks and have hot dogs and hamburgers, listen to patriotic speeches, maybe make a few ourselves. How about all these people? How about these people? How about these families? What are they thinking about on the Fourth of July? They have lost their benefits. They don't know where to turn. What are they going to be celebrating? What are they going to think about their country? What are they going to think about this Congress, that turns its back on these people? There is no reason why we can't extend the unemployment insurance benefits, none whatsoever. I think that is what we have to be thinking about. Another thing that I think hits pretty hard, I have heard political candidates out on the stump who want to take a place in the Senate, or maybe in the House of Representatives, out there talking about how we shouldn't extend these benefits because this encourages people not to go to work; it sort of encourages laziness. Well, I think that is insulting and illogical. As I said, there are 30 million people out of work looking for 2 million jobs. They say, Well, but if you give them these unemployment benefits, it makes them lazy. They won't go to work. The numbers vary from State to State, but the unemployment benefit nationwide is about $300 a week, below the poverty line. So here is the average income for a family of four on unemployment benefits: It is about $15,600. It is more in some States, less in other States. That is an average. So what is the poverty line for a family of four? It is $22,000. That is below the poverty line. They are telling me people don't want to go to work? These are people who had work. They are not out of work because they walked off the job; they are out of work because they were cut off of work. In some States, benefits are smaller. For example, in Mississippi, the weekly maximum benefit is $235 a week. Again, that is thousands of dollars less than the annual salary of a full-time minimum wage worker. Again, I can't imagine anyone who had the alternative to make more money and to have a full- time job would say, No, I want to stay on unemployment benefits. That is insulting. It is insulting. I have also heard my colleagues object to this benefit extension on the grounds that providing these benefits is too expensive. It will add to the deficit. I understand the concern, and we are all concerned about the deficit of this country. But, it doesn't hold water when we are sitting in the midst of an economic crisis. We are about to pass a supplemental appropriations bill here sometime soon, probably after we get back from the Fourth of July break. It has about $37 billion in there in military aid to Iraq and Afghanistan. We are building infrastructure projects over there. We are putting people to work there. We are continuing to lose a lot of American lives, young Americans getting injured and killed, and that is adding to the deficit. Yet we are not paying for that. That is adding to the deficit. It seems to me if we are trying to look ahead and trying to protect the people of this country, we want to get people back to work. We want to get the economy going again. We need to get the recovery up and running. Unemployment benefits cost money, yes, but think about it this way. That money is spent here in America. It is not spent overseas and it is not spent someplace else. It is spent here. What do people do when they get unemployment insurance benefits? What do they do with that money? Do they put it in a shoe box? Do they bury it in a hole in the ground? No. They go out and they spend it. They spend it on food and clothes and the necessities of life: housing, rent, utilities. That money spins around in the economy. That is why the economists all agree that one of the--this is from moodyseconomy.com. The biggest boost for the economy in terms of benefits from the government, the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, are food stamps. That is because poor people who get food stamps spend it right away on food. Not all, but most of the food is grown in this country and processed; not all of it, but most of it. So you get a big bang for the buck. For every dollar in food stamps, you get $1.73 in economic activity in this country--$1.73 for every dollar invested. Unemployment benefits, $1.63. Right next to food stamps, unemployment benefits. Infrastructure investments that so many of us talk about, very close on their heels: $1.59. If we want to put people to work, let's start doing infrastructure rebuilding in America. Rebuild our sewer and water systems, our highways, roads, bridges, rails, high speed. That is a great investment, plus it will put a lot of people to work too. A whole lot of people say, Well, we have to extend the Bush tax cuts to get the economy going. Extending the Bush tax cuts is a 49-cent return on the dollar--not a very good investment, folks. Not very good. So unemployment benefits, yes, they cost money. Yes, they do add to the deficit, but they provide for a lot of economic activity in this country--a lot more than extending a tax cut. For example, in Iowa alone, more than 3,700 jobs were saved or created in my State in 2009 thanks to the benefits of unemployment insurance. That is 3,700 jobs in my State alone because of unemployment benefits. Again, under these circumstances, obstruction of an extension of unemployment benefits is inexplicable. How do you explain it? How do you explain something such as that to someone who is on their lifeline, has lost their benefits, or is on the verge of losing their benefits right now? It is like a person who is in the hospital with a serious infection. The doctor says, OK, here is a 15-day course of antibiotics. The patient goes home and says OK, 15 days, I have to take the antibiotics every day. But day 8 comes, day 9 comes, the patient feels better, they stop taking their antibiotics. The infection reasserts itself, the patient is right back in the hospital. That is where we are in this economic recovery. We made the mistake once before; history shows this. In 1937, we were getting out of a depression, the public works projects and things President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress put in place were getting us out of the recession. But then the so-called deficit hawks took over and began then to tighten down on the benefits and these programs. What happened? The Federal Reserve started tightening up the money, Congress slashed spending, the Fed tightened its policy, and the economy plunged back down into a depression. That is why I used the analogy of someone in the hospital with a serious infection and they are prescribed 15 days of antibiotics, but after 5 to 7 days, they feel better and they stop, the infection then reasserts itself, and they are right back in the hospital. That is where we are now. Well, quite frankly, there is an infection in our country. The infection is called a recession, a deep recession, a depression. Thirty million people are out of work. That is an infection. There is one thing that will help relieve that infection right now: the medicine of unemployment benefits.

Mr. HARKIN. I am delighted to yield to the Senator.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator, who has been a champion of working people and families for all the many years I have known him, and that is many years now. I thank him for telling us about what the CBO said in the deficit commission. I pointed out a couple of things earlier. The Senator is right on the mark in terms of economic activity, and that is why it is so important right now to get the economy moving again, to keep it moving. The biggest bang for the buck we get is food stamps. People spend those right away on food. Second to that, for every dollar we put into unemployment benefits, it causes $1.63 of economic activity. That is not a bad return on the dollar. Well, down here on the chart, extending the Bush tax cuts, you only get 49 cents back. That is what my Republican friends say you need to do--more of these Bush tax cuts. That is dismal. Yet an infrastructure investment brings $1.59 cents. If you invest more in infrastructure--sewer and water, plants and highways, roads, bridges, high-speed rail--not only do you get a great return, you get a lot of people employed at the same time. How can we leave here tomorrow or Friday, when we leave for 10 or 12 days, when we know this is what is happening? At the end of last week, 1,350,000 Americans lost their unemployment benefits. At the end of this week, it jumps up to 1,720,000. By July 10, before we come back, it will be 2,140,000 Americans who will lose their benefits. How can we go home and celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks--the birthday of our Republic--and give patriotic speeches about how great we are, what a good country this is, when we are going to leave all these people out in the cold? What does that say about this body, about the Congress? I will tell you, I say to all those families who have written me letters, contacted me by e-mail, and have come into my offices, telling me of your joblessness and your struggles: You are not forgotten. We are here fighting to try to get this done. My Republican colleagues refuse to let us extend unemployment benefits--even for less than half a year, a short period of time. Well, we will do everything we can to get this done. For the sake of these families, our country, and for the sake of, yes, our economy, we can't leave here without extending these unemployment benefits. I ask my Republican colleagues who have been blocking this to have a sense of humanity on this, a sense of compassion, of caring for these families. We all make good money around here. We get good pay and benefits, good retirement benefits. All our staffs are employed. Everybody here in this Chamber is employed. How about these people who are unemployed? You have to think about them before we close up shop and leave here this week. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Adam Pelzer and Madeline Daniels of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Sarah Cramer and Michael Crusinberry of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Heidi McDonald and Amanda Spinney from Senator Bingaman's office be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of today.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, one of the great joys of my job as Senator is working with non-profit organizations dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans. I would like to take a moment to salute one such organization, the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The Fraternal Order of Eagles is an international nonprofit organization with over 1 million members worldwide. Established in 1898, the Fraternal Order of Eagles has truly made the lives of people across the world better by raising millions of dollars to combat cancer and heart disease, help children living with disabilities, and support the elderly. Two years ago, over 700 delegates representing the Fraternal Order of Eagles voted by unanimous consent to commit $25 million to the University of Iowa to create the world's premier diabetes research center. Already a world leader in medical and diabetes research, the University of Iowa has the unique ability to fully maximize every dollar being donated. But that isn't the only reason the Fraternal Order of Eagles selected the University of Iowa to receive these funds; both the Eagles and the University of Iowa have had a tradition of helping those in their communities and beyond for over a century. One of the missions of the Fraternal Order of Eagles is to lessen the ills of mankind, and I can't think of a more appropriate way to do that than to join in the fight against diabetes. In the United States, over 23 million children and adults already suffer from the diabetes, with an additional 1.6 million adults being diagnosed every year. It is said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and perhaps nowhere is that more applicable than in the case of diabetes. Unlike other chronic diseases which do not appear until later in life, diabetes does not spare the young. Almost 200,000 Americans below the age of 20 suffer from diabetes. It was recently predicted that one in three children born in 2000 will eventually suffer from diabetes if current rates continue. The health care cost associated with caring for these patients is enormous, amounting to over $170 billion in 2007. But the costs to patients and their loved ones who suffer from diabetes are even greater. Patients with diabetes are subject to an increased risk of blindness, kidney failure, high blood pressure, need for amputations, nerve damage, and premature death. The potential benefits of a cure for diabetes are truly outstanding, and that is why donations such as the one made by the Fraternal Order of Eagles are so important to improving the lives of all Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ``Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?'' I think it is quite clear that the Fraternal Order of Eagles is doing a great deal. For this donation and for their other good works, I commend the Fraternal Order of Eagles.