Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch).

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise to explain the reasons I voted for Roberts amendment No. 1826. First, the amendment would increase America's energy supply by approving the Keystone XL pipeline, opening lands in the Outer Continental Shelf and the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, and implementing a commercial leasing program for oil shale. The amendment would also extend a number of important temporary tax provisions that expired at the end of 2011. Significantly, it would not extend a number of provisions that are unsound policy or no longer necessary. However, the amendment did extend some provisions that I believe should be ended because they are unwarranted subsidies that distort markets. These include tax credits for energy-efficient homes, alternative fuel vehicle refueling property, biodiesel, energy- efficient appliances, and alternative fuels. While I supported the Roberts amendment, I do not want this vote to be interpreted as support for each and every provision that was included. I hope that as the tax extenders package continues to be considered by Congress, a number of unnecessary and harmful provisions will be eliminated. Ideally, Congress will consider comprehensive tax reform that lowers rates, eliminates special subsidies, and makes sound tax policy permanent.

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the Baucus amendment No. 1825. Although I wholeheartedly support full funding for the Payment in Lieu of Taxes, PILT, Program, I have to oppose this amendment because it also includes a reauthorization for what is known as the Secure Rural Schools, SES Program. The SES Program was created in 2000 as a 5-year temporary funding measure to assist rural communities suffering from the loss of timber sale revenue caused by policies that decimated the timber industry in the 1990s. Because it has operated for more than a decade, communities have now come to rely on it, turning it into a ``would-be'' entitlement program. Though, the program expired last year, and, as painful as it is, we must let it sunset for good. The Federal Government can ill afford to continue to forever finance what was supposed to be a short-term safety net. I support extending full funding of PILT payments. These payments to local governments help offset losses in property taxes due to nontaxable Federal lands within their boundaries. I recognize that the inability of local governments to collect property taxes on federally owned land can create a negative financial impact, particularly in States like mine that are dominated by Federal land. In Arizona, more than 85 percent of the State is under Federal control. PILT payments are one of the ways the Federal Government can fulfill its role of being a good neighbor to local communities. Had this amendment been limited to full funding for PILT, I would have voted in favor of the amendment.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to respond to some arguments made in a recent opinion article by the chairman and ranking member of the Senate and House Budget Committees, respectively. It is entitled ``GOP Budget Attacks Misguided.'' The crux of the piece is that President Obama has made great progress in improving the economic outlook, and it would improve even more if only Republicans would embrace his policies. The first set of claims I want to respond to relates to the strength of the economic recovery. The authors write that ``we've come a long way'' since the peak of the recession thanks to ``actions taken by the Obama administration'' and have had ``23 consecutive months of private- sector job growth.'' To start, I don't think the 12.8 million unemployed Americans would agree we have come a long way. Indeed, it has been 2\1/2\ years since the recession technically ended, and we are still experiencing the weakest recovery since the Great Depression. Growth is anemic, and there are 700,000 fewer employed Americans today than when President Obama took office. Although it has been 3 years since passage of the stimulus bill, unemployment has been above 8 percent for the last 35 months. Remember, this legislation was sold as a way to keep unemployment below 8 percent. These are some of the signs that ``actions taken by the administration'' are not working to get Americans back to work or improving the economy. Regarding the claim that America has had 23 consecutive months of private sector job growth, the President has been citing this number on the campaign trail, averring that 3.7 million jobs were created during that time. But the claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Those who cite it don't account for the role new workforce entrants play in employment statistics. Economists generally agree that for employment to hold even, about 150,000 jobs must be created each month to employ new entrants into the workforce. These people include those who recently concluded military service or family obligations and recent graduates. If we multiply 150,000 by 23 months, we get about 3.45 million jobs. That means even by the administration's own figures, only about 250,000 new jobs have been created in roughly 2 years. Moreover, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the net positive increase in payrolls was above 150,000 during just 9 of the 23 months to which the set referred. So, yes, it would have been nice to have 23 consecutive months of private sector job growth, but that is not what happened. Again, we need 150,000 just to stay even with the new people entering the workforce, and in only 9 of these 23 months did the economy produce that many jobs. The second set of claims I want to discuss relates to supposed blame on Republicans for the debt and the hampering of a stronger recovery. The authors of this op-ed claim that ``while the deficit has remained high over the past 3 years, that is largely a result of the policies of the previous Republican administration.'' Let's take a look at the actual deficit numbers. Labeling the last three deficits as ``high'' is quite an understatement. According to President Obama's own budget numbers, in 2009 the deficit was $1.4 trillion. In 2010 the deficit was $1.3 trillion. In 2011 it was, again, $1.3 trillion. The deficit this year is expected to top $1.3 trillion. At the end of the budget window, in 2022, the deficit is projected to be $704 billion. The highest deficit under President Bush was $458 billion, in 2008. Every deficit under President Obama has been almost three times that figure--more than double. But President Obama should not be accountable for the debt problem? How does that work? The President and his supporters like to point out that the budget contains $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. But most of this reduction is based on new taxes and gimmicks, such as alleged ``savings'' from actions that Congress has already taken or from ending operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a USA Today editorial quoted today: [The budget] relies on gimmicks and avoids some problems instead of tackling them. . . . Most glaringly, Obama takes credit for about $850 billion in savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were paid for with borrowed money in the first place. These were not actual savings. The Committee for a Responsible Budget put it this way: When you finish college, you don't suddenly have thousands of dollars a year to spend elsewhere. In fact, you have to find a way to pay back your loans. Regarding the supposed problem of Republican resistance to demand- based policies, there is a major misconception that consumption fueled by government spending actually creates jobs. This is the stimulus myth. It does not. It just inefficiently moves money around from one pocket to another or one taxpayer to another. That helps explain why the stimulus failed. If Americans cannot spend enough money to stimulate more demand, how can the Government accomplish that for us? It is our money that is being spent. Simply put, demand policies do not work. There have been ample opportunities to prove otherwise in recent years. Let's remember the President got everything he wanted from Congress during his first 2 years in office. He has been in office a little over 3 years. The first 2 years there was a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. The 111th Congress passed all of the demand-based policies he asked for: spending, temporary tax credits, tax holidays, the stimulus. Yet here we are. A better idea is to encourage economic activity and greater opportunity through the supply side of the economy. That means reducing government consumption of taxpayer dollars and not raising taxes on anyone, especially job creators. That brings me to the third set of claims involving the notion of ``balance.'' The authors claim the budget ``calls for a balanced approach . . . with everyone sharing responsibility for deficit reduction.'' They also note that balance is ``missing from the GOP approach.'' Balance in the Obama budget, of course, means higher taxes. I ask how is it balanced to tax job-creating small businesses even more than they are being taxed today? According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, nearly 750,000 flow- through businesses--these are the small businesses, the businesses that pay their taxes as individuals--nearly 750,000 would be subject to the President's proposed tax rate hikes that would take effect on January 1 of next year. One-quarter of our Nation's workforce depends on these employers for a paycheck. According to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, up to 25 percent of the workforce is employed by businesses that will be affected by the President's proposed tax hikes. Perhaps job growth is so slow because these job creators are skittish because they do not have certainty, and they certainly have not for a long time. In fact, the only thing they can see is the President's attempts to impose more taxes on them. The specter of tax hikes has loomed for years and has inhibited job growth. If the tax increases actually occur, we can be sure any economic growth we might be perceiving will be killed. Finally, the authors claim the President ``has demonstrated that he was willing to go the extra mile to reach a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement.'' I will note that the debt talks fell apart last summer because the President dug in his heels and insisted on harmful tax increases that Republicans, of course, opposed, for the reasons I just noted. When we had another opportunity to do something about the debt this fall, the President was not particularly helpful or encouraging. Often missing in action, he never participated in the process. The plan put forward by the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania at the time was the only balanced approach that put significant revenue on the table in the context of progrowth tax reform. The majority whip called it a ``breakthrough,'' but it was never enough for the other side. So here we are, still debating this subject. So much for the President going the extra mile. In conclusion, I would like to say the President's budget is more of the same spending, taxes, and debt we have seen for the last 3 years. Last year the budget was so unpopular with the American people that the Senate voted it down 97 to 0. Not a single member of the President's party voted for his budget. The massive amounts of spending, taxing, and borrowing in his budget will hinder an economic recovery. In times like these we have to focus on growing our economy, not our Government and debt. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KYL

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

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, on behalf of the Republican leader, I ask unanimous consent, notwithstanding any other rule of the Senate, that immediately following the disposition of the pending Transportation bill, the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 3606, a bill received from the House, which would increase American job creation and economic growth by improving access to the public capital markets for emerging growth companies; I further ask that the bill remain the pending business to the exclusion of all other business until it is disposed of.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I appreciate what the majority leader said. He is right about the importance of the legislation approved by majorities of both parties of the House of Representatives. I join him in hoping we can bring this to the floor as soon as possible with an agreement so we can consider it and try to provide some economic growth so people can go back to work in America.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. KYL

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

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, last week I came to the floor to talk about how free enterprise helps people achieve earned success and thus helps them pursue true happiness. Today I want to talk about another moral benefit of free enterprise--its effectiveness in reducing poverty and promoting economic mobility. This is an important conversation to have since President Obama has made income and class inequality the centerpieces of his reelection campaign. For example, in his Osawatomie, KS, speech last year, he said: This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. He followed up with similar themes in the 2012 State of the Union speech, saying that he believes in ``an America where hard work paid off, responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried--no matter who you were, where you came from, or how you started out.'' Of course, these are quintessential American values in no dispute. But the President's soaring rhetoric is at odds with his main policy, which is to achieve greater economic equality not by equal opportunity but through forced redistribution of wealth. For example, the President has proposed a litany of tax increases, such as the so-called Buffet rule, higher marginal income tax rates, and higher taxes on investment. New taxes don't lift anybody, but they do tear some people down. The President also proposes more government spending to redistribute the new tax dollars collected. Redistributionist programs have a role, of course, as government safety nets. They help, for example, people who are ill temporarily, down on their luck, or not able-bodied. But, unfortunately, they do not cure poverty. If they did, poverty would no longer exist in America. The only permanent cure for poverty and the only system capable of producing massive increases in economic mobility is free enterprise. Senator Mark Rubio put it well when he said that ``the free enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than all the government anti-poverty programs combined.'' As we will see in a moment, economic data confirms this is true. As Arthur Brooks and Peter Wehner wrote in their book called ``Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism,'' before the rise of free enterprise; that is, for most of human history, life was ``bleak, cruel and short.'' Life expectancy was low, infant mortality was high, disease was rampant, and food was scarce. Education was only for the wealthy. Indeed, the wealthy were the only people who lived in relative comfort. But the emergence of free enterprise roughly two centuries ago helped to change all that. As the free enterprise system took root, particularly in Western Europe, protectionist measures eased, trade increased, and businesses accumulated capital to grow and create new jobs. People pursued their self-interests free of state coercion or corruption, and the economic benefits flowed to every strata of society. As Brooks and Wehner note, ``Markets, precisely because they are wealth generating, also end up being wealth distributing.'' By every universal measure, life has improved dramatically in free market societies. Literacy, basic living standards, and life expectancy have increased, while disease and starvation have plummeted. Child labor has been eradicated. As free enterprise has spread during the last two centuries, the world's average per capita income has skyrocketed by about 10 times. These are major moral achievements. Yes, some people are richer than others, and that is true in all nations whether characterized as market economies or not. But where it exists, free enterprise has helped make the poor make tremendous gains, and they continue to climb. In the modern era of globalization, we have seen this on an unprecedented scale. Since 1970, as economic freedom has grown in developing countries such as China and India, the number of people living on $1 a day has plunged by 80 percent, according to a recent study. What about President Obama's arguments that free enterprise has harmed middle-class prosperity? Over the past quarter century, economic studies have shown otherwise. Indeed, as Hoover Institution fellow Henry Nau pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal article, middle- income earners have become richer and many have leaped into the upper- middle class. Between 1980 and 2007, a period Nau calls ``the Great Expansion,'' the United States grew by more than 3 percent per year and created more than 50 million new jobs, ``massively expanding a middle class of workers,'' in Nau's words. Nau continues: Per capita income increased by 65 percent, and household income went up substantially in all income categories. . . . In the past three decades, households making more than $105,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars doubled to 24 percent from 11 percent. These are remarkable increases in wealth. What policies produced this expansion? Again quoting Nau: Precisely the free-market policies of deregulation and lower marginal income-tax rates that [President] Obama decries. If the President wants to increase class mobility and prosperity and build on the successes of the ``Great Expansion,'' then he must turn away from the statist policies that have dominated his 3 years in office. As Brooks and Wehner write: The answer is not less capitalism, it is better capitalists. And I would add, that includes the President and his advisers. Most fundamentally, our policies must reward hard work and merit for the simple reason that people are more successful and industrious when they get to keep more of the fruits of their labor. That is what we call earned success. Their prosperity flows to others when they open businesses, create jobs and new products, compete for workers, raise wages, and invest their profits, which can then be lent to other entrepreneurs. But when market forces are restricted--when taxes are too high and regulations are too stifling--entrepreneurship loses its appeal. If people think outcomes are predetermined by the government, they don't have incentives to compete. A 2005 study by economists Alberto Alesina and George-Marios Angeletos underscores the point. They found that beliefs about meritocratic rewards are self-fulfilling. They concluded that if a society thinks people have a right to enjoy the fruits of their effort, it will choose low taxes and have lower tolerance for redistribution. Effort will be high in these places. Conversely, they found that if citizens believe the system is rigged and that luck and connections, not merit, are the key determinants of success, then they will demand forced wealth redistribution and effort will be lower in these places. Simply put, if people think the system is inherently unfair, it will wind up that way. That is precisely what has happened in countries such as Spain and Greece, where outcomes are divorced from effort, and, to a large measure, bureaucrats and special interests dictate who gets economic rewards. Since everyone does better when effort is rewarded, then protecting merit-based success is a moral issue. Indeed, the first American immigrants left countries with too little opportunity for advancement to come here and earn rewards based on merit and be the masters of their own destiny. Polls have shown that, over the years, Americans have not grown tired of the merit-based system but instinctively support it. U2 singer Bono colorfully explained why individual determinism in America is so great: In America, the guy looks up at the mansion on the hill and says, ``One day, if I really work hard, I am going to live in the mansion on the hill.'' In Dublin, they look at the mansion on the hill and say, ``One day I'm going to get that [guy].'' Free markets breed a culture of aspiration and mobility, in which people reject the politics of envy and instead focus on their own advancement and their own success. If our goal is to foster such a positive culture of achievement, then we must eschew class warfare in favor of the free-market policies that have done so much to boost prosperity both at home and abroad. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller).