Mary Landrieu

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to consideration of S. Res. 407, submitted earlier today.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I understand there are three bills at the desk. I ask for their reading en bloc.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I now ask for a second reading, and I object to my own request, all en bloc.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate agree to the House request to return the papers on H.R. 5, the HEALTH Act, and authorize the Secretary of the Senate to return the papers on H.R. 5 to the House of Representatives.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent it adjourn under the previous order.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. It is a good thing. The Senator from Alaska is right on as usual on this subject and in the main stream of what most Americans, I believe, are thinking about. I wanted to ask the Senator from Alaska, following his comments--I mean, why does my colleague think our friends on the Republican side want to spend this week beating up on the President as opposed to doing something that might help energy policy advance in the country? I do not know if they do not realize that people are very frightened and anxious and upset about these prices or what does the Senator think is driving this sort of theater on the Senate floor?

Ms. LANDRIEU. I am surprised myself. I hope when we do go home constituents in all of our States will say: Stop the bumper sticker politics on the floor of the Senate and get down to passing an energy bill. I think we most certainly, if we stop electioneering and start legislating, could actually do that. Now the Senator from Alaska and I--and I have been here a few years longer than the Senator, but he has been a most welcome addition to this issue because he is knowledgeable. He comes from a State that is larger than almost half of the lower 48. His State is rich in resources. I have had the great pleasure to go to Alaska. I am looking forward to traveling there again this summer and actually going to the North Slope because in Louisiana we build many of the ships that actually operate in Alaska for their exploration activities.

Ms. LANDRIEU. That ship was just christened this weekend in Louisiana. So the relationship between Louisiana and Alaska goes back a long way. I am very happy to have the Senator here advocating for a smart and effective energy policy. This debate some people are having--I do not believe I am included in that because we are having our own colloquy about serious issues. But this so-called debate that everybody else is having is going to result in nothing, just a lot of sound bites. There will be no energy policy that comes out of this because the fact is--and everyone knows this that follows this--both parties are guilty for not having the right kind of energy policy, Democrats and Republicans alike. Democrats, from my perspective, do not appreciate the way they should the need for more domestic drilling. So they resist sometimes the need for more domestic drilling. I think Senator Begich and I have pointed out there are some places where there are people--Governors and Senators, Democratic Senators--who are open to drilling. We could go to those places and do a better job of developing onshore and offshore. But Republicans are not good at all when it comes to conservation. They resist helping the auto industry, for instance, to retool itself, which we know has had an absolute direct bottom line on less petroleum products being used for gasoline. Many of the new automobiles coming out of domestic manufacturers, because of what Democrats and President Obama, who led this effort-- which he never gets enough credit for on the other side--have done to retool Detroit so that just this week in the newspaper, I believe it was the Washington Post--I wanted to ask the Senator from Alaska if he saw this article. The most amazing thing that has happened over the last 10 years is that our imports of foreign oil have decreased for 2 reasons: One, we are producing more oil and gas at home, although there have been some setbacks with this administration which we are not happy about, the two of us, but also because of the conservation we have done in this country. Mass transit is a part of that, which many Republicans reject. Conservation initiatives are a major part of that, which Republicans reject. Helping the domestic auto industry, which they--even Mitt Romney, their leader on the Republican side, said that was a mistake to help Detroit, Ohio, et cetera, Michigan and places in Ohio. So I am coming to the floor to say this blame game is not going to work because both parties are almost equally at fault. Senator Begich and I would like to believe that we represent a little bit of the Democratic side, a little bit of the Republican side, coming from States--both of us being Democrats but from States that know something about drilling. I want to put up my map of Louisiana so people believe when I say that we know something about drilling. This is what my State looks like. Some people might not like this picture. This is the oil and gas infrastructure in Louisiana. To someone who is a purist and does not like pipelines and does not like oil wells and does not like leases, they may recoil at this. But people in Louisiana like this because this is about money, and it is about domestic energy self-sufficiency and independence. These are pipelines. There are 9,000 miles of pipelines under south Louisiana. We have been drilling onshore and offshore for the last 50 years. Until the Macondo Well blew up in spectacular fashion and killed 11 people, which is very unfortunate and the fault of BP and some of the contractors who were not doing their jobs correctly, it has been mostly successful. We have drilled 40,000 wells--40,000. So when the Senator from Alaska says we know something about oil and gas drilling, trust me; it would be like asking the Senators from Michigan: Do you know something about building cars? We know about that. We have been fracking. We have been using horizontal drilling. We know there is a lot of oil and gas still to be found, and the Senator talked about some of his reserves. I know the Senator is aware that Louisiana--just off the coast of Louisiana--produces just about as much oil as we import from Saudi Arabia every year. I do not know if the Senator knows that. How are the reserves looking in Alaska?

Ms. LANDRIEU. It is a very good paying job. This is a very good point because I have tried to remind everyone here that this oil and gas industry that exists in Louisiana and Alaska does not just support the people of our States. Think about it. There are only 500,000 people in Alaska. If that is going to create 50,000 jobs, that would be 1 for every 10 people. But people fly in and fly out. They will work for 2 weeks or a month and fly back. We have people working on our rigs that are from Maine or from Colorado or from New Mexico or from New York. Most of the people who work offshore are from the Gulf Coast States, I might say. You can tell this when you drive through the parking lots and see the license plates which are easy to spot. But I can tell you there are people from all over the country who work in this industry. If I showed you a supplier line, you would see supplies coming from all over the United States to fund the operations like, for instance, the boat that is going to be operating in Alaska was built by people from Louisiana. Some of those boats are built in Mississippi, and some of that may even come from the east coast. I do not know if the Senator is familiar with that.

Ms. LANDRIEU. It is also producing great wealth. I do not think people understand because a lot of the land in the West is public land. So we hear this debate about public land, et cetera. But most of the land in my State is private land. In fact, the Federal Government owns less than 2.5 percent. Now, we are at polar ends of this debate. We are at opposite ends because in Alaska the Federal Government owns 90 percent of that State. It only owns 2.5 percent of my State, and the farther east you go it is less and less and less. So when there is more drilling, like in Louisiana, it is private land owners who are getting wealthy. In many of these instances, such as in the Haynesville shale, which is up along this area in Louisiana, northwest Louisiana, farmers whose land was virtually worthless or who were growing crops but not really making it very well, now the gas has been discovered on their land, so they are getting royalty checks for $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month. That is more money that people have made or ever dreamed about making. I have heard of royalty checks of $50,000 a month that people are getting. So they take that $50,000, they are not even drilling for oil and gas; they have just leased their property. They go out and start a business in their hometown or they go out and buy two new automobiles for their family or a new pickup truck for their operations. I know the Senator understands the indirect impact. It is not just the direct jobs for the industry, but the wealth that is created personally, and the U.S. Government collects quite a bit of taxes from this industry as well.

Ms. LANDRIEU. We don't have to drill everywhere. The resources are so spectacularly promising. I have to get back to this blaming President Obama. I don't know if my friends on the other side remember who the President was when the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, a Republican, opposed drilling off the eastern gulf. The President at the time, his brother, George Bush, honored that no drilling pledge. I remind my friends on the other side that their party is not blameless in this debate. They could do a lot better for the country if they would stop trying to throw President Obama under the bus every minute--although I don't agree with all his energy policies; I didn't agree with the moratorium in the gulf and other things. I think they made some strong points. But this should not be about hurting anybody; it should be about helping our country. We do that by using a balanced approach, such as the Senator from Alaska said. It is how we came together on the Transportation bill. It was balanced, a compromise, and it was a little of this and a little of that. We put a jobs bill together that will help our Nation. We could put an energy bill together if we have both parties stop beating up on people. One beats up on the companies and the other beats up on the President and the poor people are the ones who suffer. I wish to show you something about oil and gas taxes. People say: There goes Landrieu again; she is defending the oil and gas industry. Frankly, some of them, and the industry itself, should be defended because it is an honorable, good industry. It has provided jobs. It provided the oil we needed to win World War II. How do you think the allied troops got across Europe? They didn't do it on a wish and a prayer. That oil came out of the Permian Basin in Texas. We have a long patriotic history in that industry. We get our dander up when people beat up on the industry. People say the oil industry gets these subsidies. I wish to put two things into the Record. It says that according to the Energy Information Administration--which is our administration, not a third- party spinmeister group. It says in the study published in 2008 that oil and natural gas received only 13 percent of the subsidy but produced 60 percent of the energy needed to power our country. I will repeat that. The oil and gas industry receives only 13 percent of all the subsidies, but we produce 60 percent of the energy that keeps the lights on in this building and powers everything in the country. We spend about $16.6 billion on U.S. energy subsidies over the course of 1 year on everything, and renewables, refined coal, nuclear, and others accounted for more than 85 percent of the subsidies. So the oil and gas industry got less than 13 percent of the subsidies, but they continue to be the bogeyman in all this. In addition to receiving only 13 percent of the subsidies--and my friend from Alaska will know this as well--look what tax rate they pay. ConocoPhillips paid 46 percent. This was the effective tax rate from 2006 to 2010. Chevron paid 43 percent. They made a lot of money. They are absolutely making a lot of money. These are public companies, and their executives are paid well. I think they are probably paid a little more than I would pay, but that is what they are paid. These are public companies, and the shareholders are making money as well. But they are paying this very high rate in taxes. Look down here on the chart. Walmart only paid 33 percent. Philip Morris only paid 27 percent. PepsiCo--a very good company--only paid 24 percent. These are effective tax rates. My favorite--although I like them very much, but GE only paid a 9-percent effective tax rate. When the Senator says we need tax reform, we most certainly do. If you came to me and said in a major bill we are going to have an energy bill and have some tax reforms to balance this out, I would be for that. But in good conscience, I cannot take away the subsidy from oil and gas when they only represent 13 percent of the overall subsidies but produce 60 percent of the energy. I certainly don't want to raise taxes on an industry now with prices at the pump being so high. If we do, we are just going to drive them up, which is the last thing we want to do, particularly when this is the truth about the tax rates. The Senator from Alaska is again absolutely correct. This debate we are not having but everyone else is having is not getting us very far.

Ms. LANDRIEU. The Senator is right. I am glad he mentioned this as well because I happen to also represent a State that has a tremendous petrochemical industry. Of course, that is because the Mississippi River is there, as well as the great finds in the 1950s and 1960s for gas. So when big companies--particularly petrochemicals but big manufacturers--look around in the world to where they go, one thing they look at is the tax rate. But that is not the most important thing. The other thing is to make sure they can find the skilled labor they need. They need cheap energy costs because they cannot produce steel competitively, for instance, if we don't have cheap energy. So a lot of these companies came to Louisiana in the 1960s because we had cheap energy. That changed, and a lot of them left. Maybe we did other things to drive them offshore. You know what is happening today. Because of this $2 gas, they are all coming home. You should see the building we have going on. That is why the Texas unemployment rate is the lowest in the Nation. I know the Governor would like to take all the credit for this. My Governor likes to take all the credit for this too. They are two outstanding Republican Governors, and they may be pretty good, but it is the low price of energy that is driving this. That could happen in Colorado, it can happen in Illinois, if we just support the oil and gas industry in a balanced way, instead of choking it off. Not only does that money go to them, it helps undergird this entire industry which employs millions more people, and it helps us to compete better with China, with India, and I know the Senator understands that. He doesn't have as much heavy construction or refining in Alaska because of a little bit of the isolation. But I think he can appreciate what happens in New Jersey and Louisiana and Illinois, as an example.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Yes. I wish to reemphasize too the importance of getting back to the basics on energy policy. I have been privileged to be here long enough where I have helped to pass comprehensive energy bills. I remain hopeful when I wake too. I am a person with the glass half full and not half empty, and I try to remain optimistic in the face of evidence to the contrary. I remain hopeful we can continue on the path of more energy independence for our country. That is why that article, written this week, which I will put in the Record, was very telling to me, because I have been saying, similar to the Senator from Alaska, are we making any progress? I believe if we cannot manage, we cannot measure. What is the measurement? One of the measurements is, are we importing more or less oil from dangerous places in the world. And when I saw that had dropped by 15 percent, I was very encouraged. And the article pointed out two reasons, not one--not drill, baby, drill or conserve and conserve only but both, because America has been doing a better job. Despite the setback of the moratorium, despite the setback with the Deepwater Horizon, despite some of the President's slow policies on drilling, and despite the Republican resistance to conservation, we have been doing something right, because we have reduced our dependence on foreign oil, which is good. We don't want to be dependent on Venezuela, and we don't want to be dependent on the Mideast, particularly Saudi Arabia. They have been somewhat of an ally, but they do not share all our values, let's be honest. Women just got the right to drive this year--no, actually, to vote this year. I don't think they have the right to drive yet officially. So do we share those values? No. So why don't we kind of get back to the basics here of drilling more at home, promoting and expanding our nuclear industry safely. And I mean drilling where it is safe and not everywhere, as some Republicans suggest--let's drill everywhere. We don't have to drill everywhere; we just have to be smart and strategic about where we drill, compromise some about the places that are really opposed to it. We can drill more, have revenue sharing, which makes sense with the coastal States of Alaska, Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama because that builds a strong partnership and stakeholders between the local, State, and Federal governments. I think we could do more on building efficiency. We can do more on natural gas vehicles. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have the kinds of vehicles that run on electricity or on--and I don't know if this is possible yet, but we could experiment on electricity, on natural gas or on petroleum fuels or on diesel or bio so that if the price of natural gas was low, you would just sort of power yourself on natural gas. If your electric bill is low because you are on nuclear and the nuclear price is low and you are getting your electricity from your nuclear powerplant, you just plug in your automobile and you pay very little. Why can't we break this dependency by producing more of everything at home and transforming our auto industry, which is the big pull on fuel. You know, our industries run on coal or natural gas or some oil, but the real pull on this oil is our automobiles. So that is why Republicans are wrong. They do not want to fund this transformation, but we have to fund the transformation to help America move from an old-fashioned petrochemical, where we just fill up at the pump because we only have one thing to get--and that is petroleum--to where we can fill up with several other things. This isn't pie in the sky, this is happening right now. But with a little more government investment, it could happen more, and wouldn't that be a relief? The Senator from Alaska will know this, and I don't want to misquote here because I could get in trouble, so I will be careful, but if we had a system like that and the price of gasoline was $10, no one would care. Do you know why? Because they wouldn't have to use it. Think about that. You wouldn't have to buy it. You wouldn't need it for your airplanes, you wouldn't need it for your trucks or your cars because we would have created a system of choice. And choice is power for the consumer--really good choice. They could fill up their car with natural gas or they could fill it up with another source. That is where we need to go. Then we will break it. We will break the dependency because it could be $10 or $100 a gallon and who would care, because no one would have to buy it. So that is where we need to go. We can get there. We are sort of creeping there. That is what this article also said--inch by inch we are getting there, but we could accelerate it--no pun intended--if we get off this ridiculous ``blame the person in the White House so you can win the next election and then get back to doing nothing.'' So I will turn the conclusion over to the Senator from Alaska by saying that the debate with sound bites for elections coming up and bumper stickers to put on cars will not help, but I am ready for a real debate. We have introduced several pieces of legislation. I have been a cosponsor of every piece of legislation since I have been here on any kind of major Energy bill, but it has to have a conservation component, it has to have an environmental safety component, it has to have more drilling, revenue sharing, and then I think an expansion of nuclear power would be very important and the right subsidy mix for the kinds of energy we would like to produce in this Nation. That would make our Nation much stronger when it comes to energy, but it would make us so economically powerful and it would make us militarily more powerful because we would negotiate treaties differently if we didn't have to get on our hands and knees and ask countries that don't even share our values to pump a little more gas for us when we could pump it ourselves. I yield to the Senator from Alaska.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, while I am on the floor, I would like to speak for a few more minutes, if I might, on another subject but one that is equally important. The Senator from Alaska and I just spent some time talking about a balanced approach to energy production and the fact that if we could get there, we could create jobs. The Senator was saying that no matter what we do, it won't create jobs overnight, and he is right again. It will take a long time, it won't lower the price overnight, and it will create jobs. But there is a bill that actually will create millions of jobs overnight that is pending, hanging around this Capitol, that if we could get passed would mean a great deal immediately--tomorrow, literally the day after the bill is signed by the President--and that, Mr. President, is the Federal highway transportation bill which last week was passed and compromised by one of the most liberal and progressive Members of this body and one of the most conservative Members of this body, Senator Boxer of California and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, who worked for over a year and a half to put a transportation bill together, a 2-year transportation bill. Many of us would have liked it to be 5 years or 6 years, but 2 years is what they could negotiate. And you know what, it is a lot better than the short-term 3- month, 6-month, 2-month, or 3-month temporary measures we have been under for the last several years. That gives no consistency--none--for our States and our counties and our cities. If you talk about uncertainty, the business community, real estate developers, planners, community planners, transit planners--these entities do not know what it is going to look like 6 months from now or even next year. This bill would give at least 2 years of certainty, and then we could come back, hopefully, and pass a long-term extension of 5 years or 6 years. But 2 years is much better than 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, which is what the House is contemplating. I am proud the Democrats and some Republicans are standing up in the House and saying no short-term extension. We have a bill. We have the Senate bill that got over 74 votes of Republicans and Democrats, compromised again between a more progressive and a more conservative Member for the benefit of our country. There are 1.9 million jobs at stake. For the gulf coast Senators, there is an extra bonus. Besides funding our rail, our highways, and our transit, the gulf coast Senators and House Members from the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida got a very significant amendment to fund coastal restoration and flood control protection and economic development in the gulf coast, directing the fine money that is going to be levied against BP sometime in the next few weeks or months. Instead of that money coming to the Federal Treasury to be spent on a variety of different things, it will stay where the injury occurred, along the gulf coast, and 80 percent of that money will stay in those coastal areas and those coastal States, helping our economies to revive ourselves and to save our coastlines. So gulf coast House Members, I am speaking and hoping some of them will hear this message. Gulf coast House Members of either party, Democrats or Republicans, should stand tall and say: Yes, let's pass the Senate Transportation bill for the benefits that will come to our State and our Nation, creating or securing literally almost overnight 1.9 million jobs for the country, helping our recovery. But tucked into the Transportation bill is a bill that could bring billions of dollars to the gulf coast to help with coastal restoration and beach erosion. I have seen the clips every day since we passed RESTORE, from Tampa, FL, to Mobile, AL, to Jackson, MS, to Gulfport, MS, to the Times Picayune in New Orleans, to the Houston Chronicle, and as faraway newspapers as the New York Times which have editorialized on: Pass the RESTORE Act now; bring jobs and economic relief to the gulf coast, an area and environment that has been hard hit by the 5 million barrels of oil that were spilled in the gulf. Next month, it will be the 2-year anniversary. I don't know what the House of Representatives is thinking. They have a real jobs bill over there right now, voted on by Republicans and Democrats here, not just a few Republicans. I think more than half the Republicans in the Senate joined with us to pass this bill. In addition, it has the RESTORE Act in it. As the Presiding Officer knows, he had a great hand in supporting the part of that effort to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund which will provide money to all the States for park restoration and maintenance and for land purchase with willing sellers. So I am on the floor to support Barbara Boxer, to support Jim Inhofe, to say to the House: Take the Senate Transportation bill. Take it now. It is good for all your States and for the gulf coast House Members particularly. The RESTORE Act is very bipartisan and bicameral. Theirs is a RESTORE Act very similar to ours. Please, let's join together, stop procrastinating, and pass this bill. We have had many supporters of this bill. The chamber of commerce has put out messages to everyone today: The Chamber strongly supports this important legislation . . . Passing surface transportation reauthorization legislation is a specific action Congress and the Administration can take right now to support job growth and economic productivity without adding to the deficit. I wish to say one word about this extension. Extensions are not benign. As Senator Boxer told us today, extensions in some States aren't worth the paper this extension will be written on because we know that most of these projects are funded by approximately 75 percent Federal money, 25 percent local. In the old days when States were flush with cash and people were running surpluses, when we messed up in Congress as we are messing up now and not giving them the Transportation bill on time, some of our States could just dip into their local money, keep their projects going, waiting for us to do our job. Those days are over. Do you know any State in the Union running a massive surplus right now? Do you know any State anywhere? I don't. Because States have drawn down their reserves. They are running on very tight budgets because they are all coming out of this recession. Even our State that has a very low unemployment rate relative to everybody else, that never experienced the recession as everyone else did, is still running pretty sizeable deficits at the State level. I can tell you, my State doesn't have any extra cash to front the Federal Government. When these projects run out and don't get reauthorized, a lot of these transportation projects will come to a halt. States will stop buying right-of-way. They will cancel or put on hold what is under contract until the money comes forward. So I am going to be in touch specifically with the State of Louisiana on how this is going to work in our State, but we were told today that there are a handful of States that have already started to put out notices to their contractors: There will be no more paychecks associated with this road project or this bridge project or this mass transit project. Let me show everyone what I do know about our State. These are the grades we get from the Civil Engineering Association. I am not proud of these grades. But the reason I am not too embarrassed is because just about every State has these same grades because, overall, America's infrastructure generally is graded at a D. We are the most advanced country in the world but get a D rating when it comes to our infrastructure, surface transportation, water infrastructure, dams, levees, et cetera. Our airports in Louisiana are C. Our levees, despite the huge investment the Federal Government has made recently, but because of the longstanding overall long-term disinvestment or lower investment over time, we still have a C. We have more bridge surface than almost any State in America--I think we are third--and we have a D-minus. We have more ports; in fact, Mississippi's southern port from Plaquemine to Baton Rouge is one of the largest in the world, definitely the largest in the country, a C-minus, and our roads are D. Senator Boxer has been on the floor now all week, and I am joining her and helping her tell the House of Representatives they are playing with fire. They are playing with dynamite. We have to get this Transportation bill out. I am sure other States can benefit from this bill. If we don't, this will be the ninth short-term extension since 2009. People at home must think we have lost our minds. The clearest thing to people at home--they may not understand, and sometimes it is hard for us to understand, all the intricacies of every issue. But everyone in America, even our children understand that to build roads we need a road crew, to build bridges we need a bridge crew, to build mass transit we have to have people actually constructing. We need jobs in America right now, yesterday, today, immediately. Why is the House of Representatives sitting on a bill that is paid for--contrary to some comments from House Members, paid for--that will go for 2 years? It is as long as I would like. It is not 4 years, it is not 5 years, but it is 2 years. It is longer than the 60-day, 90-day extensions we have been living under since 2009. It is 2012. Let's get a transportation bill. My final point: For the gulf coast this is critical. We have a major piece of legislation tucked inside this bill. With the Transportation bill that the Senate passes, the RESTORE Act passes with it. We create an oceans trust fund, land and water conservation with willing seller provisions, and we invest billions of dollars in the gulf coast. It is a real jobs bill, not a pretend jobs bill. It is a real jobs bill. It means everything to our States. Whether one has a Republican or a Democratic Governor, they are waiting on us to pass this bill so they can get their people to work. I know mayors I have spoken to, police in our State, county commissioners are waiting for this money as well so they can get plans and put people to work. So I most certainly hope that in the next 24 hours, before we leave on Friday, the House of Representatives will pass the Senate Transportation bill, send it over to us, and let's put our people to work. It is only going to last 2 years. We can argue about the differences, about how the money should go directly to the States. We could argue about mass transit. We can debate that for the next 2 years. Let's pass the bill. Let's get it done. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until Wednesday, March 28, at 10 a.m.; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2230, the Paying A Fair Share Act, with the first hour equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the second 30 minutes; and that at 5 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session under the previous order; further, that the filing deadline for the first-degree amendments to S. 2204, the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act, be 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. There will be two votes around 6 p.m. tomorrow on judicial nominations. Additionally, cloture was filed today on the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act. If no agreement is reached, that vote will occur on Thursday.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Wednesday, March 28, at 5 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 464 and 497; that there be 60 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on Calendar Nos. 464 and 497 in that order; the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I may be the last speaker of the day, but I did not want to leave the Chamber or the building without taking a moment to come to the floor, as so many of our colleagues did today, to honor one of our own, one of our favorites. Not only is she a favorite to us but I am certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is one of the favorite Senators ever to represent the State of Maryland. She is respected, she is beloved, and she is admired by millions of her constituents from Maryland, but I can promise you that is true of constituents in Louisiana, potentially in your home State, Madam President, and throughout the world. Last Saturday our friend and colleague Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland became the longest serving woman in the history of the Congress. I can only say that we have come a long way since the first woman was appointed, as I recall back in the 1920s. She was only allowed to serve 1 day and was not going to be given a paycheck but insisted that she be paid for her service. I think she might have been paid $1 for her service. Of course, the record of that 1 day on the floor speaks for itself. We have come a long way since that day. But Barbara Mikulski was first elected to the House in 1976, and then to the Senate 10 years later. When she first entered this Chamber, there was only one other woman here, her friend and her good, strong, supportive colleague, Nancy Kassebaum, a Republican from Kansas. So a Democrat from Maryland and a Republican from Kansas, but the two of them were quite a team and Barbara Mikulski speaks fondly of her days with Senator Nancy Kassebaum. Today there are 17 of us and proudly we continue that tradition of respect and bipartisanship set in large measure by two of the women we greatly admire. The late Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, who served from 1925 to 1960, had previously held the record for the longest serving woman in Congress. Breaking this record is only one of the many milestones Senator Mikulski has accomplished during her tenure in the Senate. But, as she would so quickly say, it is not how long you serve but how well you serve. It is not the length of your service, as she said to us so many times, but the quality of your service. We could not have a better role model--in terms of effectiveness, strength, tenacity, courage, boldness--than in our own Senator Barbara Mikulski. She was the first female Democrat, the first in the history of our country, to serve in both Chambers of Congress, the first female Democrat to be elected to the Senate without succeeding a husband or a father, and the first female to chair an Appropriations Committee. I serve on the Appropriations Committee. It is one of the most powerful committees in our Congress. When I think about the fact that it took over 225 years for a woman to get the gavel on just one of the 14 subcommittees--that number has changed over the decades--but if you think about it, from the beginning of our country's history, those early days through the expansion out West, through the Civil War, post- Civil War history, the early part of the 1900s, World War I, World War II--never did a woman hold a gavel to write one budget for one committee in the entire country, until Barbara Mikulski received one of those gavels. I can tell you from personal experience serving with her on that committee, our country is a better place--in health, in welfare, our space program, our science and technology programs--because Barbara Mikulski has used that gavel not to promote herself but to promote the people she serves and the principles for which she fights. She is well respected for her wisdom, for her tenacity and her strength. She is respected by female and male peers who serve with her. As most of my female colleagues in the Senate have also experienced, Senator Mikulski took me under her wing when I was first sworn in as a Senator. She extended her hand to help me in every way possible, to help me find my footing here as a Senator and to navigate through the intricacies of the Senate process. She was never too busy to hold out a helping hand or for a pat on the shoulder. She was always willing to give that extra advice and, I might say, was always willing to suggest that you might have made a mistake--try it a little different way the next time--not one to mince words, but as a good Big Sister would take us under her wing and help us out as any good Big Sister would do. In addition to that wonderful, helpful, and thoughtful gesture that she shared with me and so many, she has been an inspiration to many women, particularly young women who have looked up to her, trying to follow in her footsteps. I can only say that this Senate and this Congress--the people of Maryland, the people of our country and women throughout the world-- have been blessed by her leadership. What has touched me the most about watching her is the fearlessness in which she serves. She does not back down. She knows herself, she is comfortable in her own skin, and she doesn't try to be someone she is not. She is very proud of her Polish-American background, always proud to talk about the bakery her parents owned, her immigrant background, and always so willing to share from her heart as well as her mind some of what she believes. She has been nothing but an inspiration to me and to many. I am so glad I could come to the floor today, I am so glad. I think almost every one of our colleagues has made it to the floor to honor her. When God made Barbara Mikulski, he threw away the mold. I don't think there will ever be one like her. There most certainly isn't anyone in politics today who is like her. That is good, to be unique in that way. She will be long remembered. I hope she will serve here for many wonderful years to come. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking Senator Harkin for his excellent statement and, as usual, his very good judgment on an issue that the Senate is going to be voting on at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. today as opposed to 20 minutes from now, because this issue needs more debate, and the Senator from Iowa raised some very important questions that need to be answered. I want to start by thanking the Senator for raising the issues that are so important for us as we consider this House bill that was--in your words, and I will add--rushed over to the Senate. I spoke to Barney Frank yesterday, a very respected Democratic Member, and he assured me we were actually doing the right thing by slowing this down.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Through the Chair, I thank the Senator from Iowa. I also recognize the Senator from Oregon, who is on the floor, who has had such an impact on helping us to focus on the details of this bill that was rammed through the House and was on a fast track to get approved over here. As I have said many times, I am not opposed to the underlying concepts of this bill, which will broaden the opportunity for average people to have some excellent opportunities for investments to help them increase wealth. We on our side of the aisle are not opposed to increasing wealth. We want to make sure that basic investor protections are in the bill, and they are absent from the House bill. We are not talking about mom-and-pop operations when you are talking about companies with revenues of $1 billion. The Senator from Iowa is well aware, as is the Senator from Oregon, of mom-and-pop operations. We have them in our States. We have mom-and-pop farmers, office supply companies, shoe repair companies, even substantial businesses. There are families who own three and four and five restaurants. We are very familiar with that. But under no circumstance would those companies meet the $1 billion in sales, so we are not talking about small business. That is why, as the Chair of Small Business, I am here to say there is nothing small about this bill. This is about big business getting out from underneath regulations that we spent decades trying to put into place for good reason. Did we not just have a financial meltdown on Wall Street? Did I miss a chapter in this saga? Didn't we just pull ourselves up from the brink of international financial collapse started not by Korea, not by Japan, not by China, but by the United States of America with our inability to properly regulate our financial system? Didn't we just almost bring the world economy to a halt? Did I miss this? So this little innocuous bill flies over here from the House with a fancy name talking about jobs, and because we are all desperate to create more jobs--we understand our people need more jobs. We understand that government has a role in creating jobs, of course, with the private sector. We know that the policies we drive here, whether it is tax policy or regulatory policy or whether we say this is legal and this isn't, have a real impact on job creation. We look at the title of the bill, it says jobs, and we cannot wait to vote for it. But if we are not careful and we pass the House bill on this subject without an amendment, it will not create jobs, it will kill jobs. As the Chair of the Small Business Committee, I have to say I don't think any Member has stood on this floor longer or spoken more directly to the issue of getting capital into the hands of business than I have. So I hope I have developed, on both sides of the aisle, some credibility to say: Yes, we want to open capital opportunities to business, but we must have investor protections. If not, we will set ourselves backward several decades as opposed to forward, and that is not what we want to do. I rise to urge Members to consider voting for the substitute that Senator Reed, the ranking member on banking, Senator Levin, the chairman of the investigative committee who has done extraordinary work rooting out fraud and corruption, a long-serving, well-respected member of this caucus--obviously the senior Senator from Michigan is more concerned about jobs than any of us. He has lost more jobs--well, probably per capita except potentially for the State of California. So why would he be joining us in opposing a jobs bill? Because he knows what I know, what Senator Reed knows, what Senator Merkley knows, what Senator Harkin knows--and those who have taken the time to review the bill--that on its surface it looks good, but even the Chair of the SEC has cautioned us not to vote for the bill as it stands, and also says it can be fixed. It can be amended, but we need to oppose cloture so we don't end the debate but we begin the debate and then get to a position which the leadership can most certainly get us to where appropriate amendments could be offered. I am saying: Please don't let the word ``jobs'' in the House bill-- which sounds so enticing--fool you. In reality this is less about job creation than it is about rolling back key protections for investors. Unfortunately, I have to say that I think there is a little election year politics at play from both the White House's perspective and the Republican caucus that saw this as a good way to position themselves for the election. Look, I have been guilty of doing that myself. Nobody is perfect around here, but there is a time when you do something like that that it is called to your attention and you say: I am sorry, I shouldn't have done it, and this is the right way to go. And that is what we need to do now. As Sir Francis Bacon said over 400 years ago: Knowledge is power. The more knowledge we have about this bill will give us the power to advocate against it. I am here again to tell my colleagues the more you will learn about this runaway freight train, the more red flags are being waved. Red flags are waving because of the unintended consequences of the House bill for investors, small businesses, and our economy in general. That is why Senator Jack Reed, Senator Carl Levin, Senator Merkley, and others have been down here now for days encouraging Senators to review the bill, go back and talk with your staff. Please allow us some time to make some serious changes. Now, even if my colleagues can't believe me on these issues, I most certainly hope my colleagues can believe the Bloomberg report. The Bloomberg report comments that have been made--Bloomberg is a very widely read, very reputable wire service and newspaper now, and, of course, they have other interests as well that comment daily on the financial markets of the world. It is one of the most respected sources. They have basically editorialized against the House bill. Why would they do that? Let me read my colleagues what the Bloomberg editorial said a few days ago. They said: [T]he JOBS Act simply goes too far. It would gut many of the investor protections established just a decade ago in Sarbanes-Oxley. A wave of accounting scandals--think Enron and WorldCom--have destroyed the nest eggs of millions of Americans and upended investor confidence in Wall Street. The relief would extend beyond small businesses and apply to more than 90 percent of companies that go public. At a time when we are trying to build investor confidence, to build our economy, and to create jobs, we are about ready to exempt 90 percent of the companies that are going public from full disclosure? I am the sponsor of the amendment that tried to exempt small companies from these regulations--companies of $50 million or $100 million in sales. That would cover every mom and pop known to man. But the House bill exempts companies up to $1 billion in revenues from full public disclosure. Is this what we want to do at a time when we are just regaining investor confidence? I don't think so. Bloomberg says to put on the brakes: At the center of the package is a new class of emerging growth companies, defined as those with as much as $1 billion in annual revenue, which would be exempt from a host of disclosure, reporting and governance rules. These companies would be able to operate up to 5 years without an independent test of their internal controls--the checks and balances that help companies prevent outright fraud and costly accounting mistakes. It goes on to say: Emerging companies would also be able to promote public offerings with less-than-complete information by ``testing the waters'' with fancy PowerPoint slides and other pre-IPO materials. Executives wouldn't be held accountable for any misrepresentations. I say to my colleagues, what are we thinking? We are not. We have to put on our thinking caps. Let's amend this House bill. The bill from the House did not even go through our Banking Committee. Had the bill gone through the Banking Committee, had it been under the watchful eye of some of our Democrats and Republicans on the Banking Committee, and had the bill come out of the Banking Committee with a Democratic and Republican vote--or even with the majority of Republicans and one or two or three Democrats--this Senator would not be standing here because this is not my jurisdiction. I am not on the Banking Committee. I am the chair of the Small Business Committee. I would honor the work of the Banking Committee, and I would have simply said I don't necessarily agree with the bill; I will just vote no. But the bill didn't even go through the Banking Committee. It just flew right here to the Senate floor because somebody wants a bumper sticker for their next campaign. AARP doesn't think the bumper sticker is a good one because they have come out against it because many of the people who got their bank accounts down to zero were the elderly, the people who can least afford this kind of scam and fraud on Wall Street, let alone on Main Street. They are the ones who saw their 401(k)s go down from $300,000, which took them their whole lives to save, to $50,000. How do we think they feel? That is why AARP has come out against the House bill. I am sure there are some people saying this is just Democrats wanting to regulate everything and not allow capitalism to thrive. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have spent my whole time trying to create jobs and opportunity for small businesses in America that represent 27 million businesses, and 20 million of them are independent operators and 7 million are classified as small businesses below 500 employees. I know them pretty well. I have worked with them very closely. Many of them are Main Street alliances against this bill, small business alliances, and the chamber of commerce has even expressed some concern about the House bill. We are creating jobs. This is what the President inherited: a freefall of job loss in this Nation. This is what he inherited when he became President in the early part of 2009. He was elected in 2008, but he didn't take office until January 2009. He walked to the captain's chair and sat down after the ship had hit the iceberg, not before. He has battled with us mightily to move these numbers to where we can see jobs being created. The last thing we need to do is to stop this, and the House bill, without investor protections, absolutely has the possibility of doing just that. Time and time again, I have stood right here on the Senate floor fighting with my colleagues to increase access to capital for America's job creators. I support adding capital and directing it or helping it to be directed to better places, to make the process more democratic. I understand the system has been basically set up for those who go to the high and mighty Ivy League schools, who join the same clubs, whose families socialize together for years and years. I understand the rules have been written for that group. I would like to write them for everyone, and I am attempting to do that. But we have to write and expand those rules with the right protections, and they are not present in the House bill. I am a Democrat who used to love what President Clinton would say: Our job is to create more millionaires in America, not less. I am proud of the book ``The Millionaire Next Door,'' which says most millionaires in America aren't people who inherited their money but people who worked hard for it because of our system. I am proud of that. I have spent my life helping to build it. I am for people getting rich, for people making money. But we have to write these rules fairly or it is the poor people, it is the middle class, it is the people who didn't go to the Ivy League schools who don't have the right insider information who are going to be led down the Primrose path. So let's be careful. Let's not support the House bill as it has come over here. We scrambled--and I mean the word ``scrambled''--last week to try to put a substitute together, and that substitute has my name on it. It has Senator Jack Reed first, my name second, Senator Levin third, and a group of others who have joined us. Our substitute is not perfect either. I hope our substitute can get 60 votes and that we can amend a few things the SEC has brought to our attention since we were kind of on a tight timeframe to get something to the leadership. I would rather be more careful with the work I submit to the Senate, but we were under a tight timeframe, and even our bill has to be amended. I am asking my colleagues, if they can't vote for our bill, which is the substitute bill, then please do not provide cloture to the House bill either. Let's take a few days. We are not asking for weeks. I am not even trying to kill the House bill. I am simply trying to amend it so it works for people who can't go to Harvard and can't go to Stanford and can't go to some of these Ivy League schools; that it works for people who are going to some community colleges and to schools in their States, middle-class families who want to participate in the great American dream and would like to invest in these new rules and regulations on the Internet, to invest in companies that have potential. But, please, let's give them, the investor, protections they deserve. One more thing and I will turn it over to the Senator from Oregon. I wish to say this to the community bankers: You may have some others who support you on this floor, but I don't think you have anybody who does as strongly as I support community bankers. There is a provision in this bill that expands your shareholders from the cap of 500 shareholders that was put there in 1960. In our bill, the substitute, we move it up to 750 shareholders. I am willing to go back up to the House number of 2,000 because banks are regulated. They are overregulated community banks, in my view. So I am willing to extend that to 2,000 shareholders. Barney Frank agrees with that. I have talked to Senate Democrats, and they agree with that. Please don't put your political might in supporting the House bill just because you have your number in there that you want because you will, in my view, undermine investor confidence in this new way we are trying to help people, called crowdfunding on the Internet. We will take care of your issue. I have it in my sights. I know it is important to you, and if you give us time we can try to fix that. I thank the Senator from Oregon for joining me. He is truly an expert on this particular subject, and he can add some more detail to what I have tried to explain, and we will be happy to answer any questions our colleagues have about this underlying issue which is so important. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I would like to wrap up my comments in about 5 minutes. I see the Senator from Delaware on the Senate floor. He may choose to speak. I thank the Senator from Oregon for his comments. I think it is telling--very telling, actually--that this is a Tuesday afternoon at 12:10, and normally when there is a bill that is popular on the Senate floor, there are lots of people who come down to speak for it. I understand not one person yet has shown up this morning to speak for the House bill we are going to be voting on today. I caution the Democrats to raise your awareness. That is highly unusual. Usually, if a bill is well thought through and is popular and can stand on its merit, there are any number of people on the floor speaking for it. The only people who have come to the floor are those of us warning you to read the bill, to reconsider your position, to not be lured by the title--JOBS bill, JOBS bill--but to read the bill and realize there are some far-reaching regulation elimination portions of this bill that are not going to be good for the small businesses described by the Senator from Oregon or the small businesses we advocate for, both Republicans and Democrats, on the Small Business Committee. Just at a time when investor confidence is increasing, where jobs are being created in the country, why would we go to such a far-reaching bill? Let me start with statements that have been made just in the last 24 hours. I have quoted from Bloomberg, AARP, the chamber of commerce from last week and over the weekend. Today is Tuesday. These are things that have come in just in the last 24 hours. Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post from March 18: What we also know from painful experience--from the mortgage and credit bubble, from Enron, WorldCom and the tech and telecom bubble, from the savings-and-loan crisis and the junk bond scandal and generations of penny- stock scandals--is that financial markets are incapable of self-regulation. In fact, they are prone to just about every type of market failure listed in the economics textbooks. Regulation is necessary. I am here to say we need to reduce regulations on community banks that are now heavily regulated by the new Sarbanes-Oxley, by their own State regulators. I am approving and supporting reducing regulations to bankers in this important legislation. That is not the issue. The issue is what the Senator from Oregon spoke about: the new developing opportunities for the Internet to be used as a powerful tool to raise money for ideas, for businesses. We can see this tremendous revolution occurring before our eyes. It does not mean that needs the same regulations as the old-fashioned financial models. But we do need some regulations. What we are saying is that the House bill goes too far. Listen to what Floyd Norris of the New York Times said: It gives some flavor of just how far the House bill goes that one of the changes the three senators are pushing would force a company trying to raise money from the public to show investors an audited balance sheet. One of our amendments is for investors to provide an audited balance sheet. In the House bill we are considering, they can provide their own documentation--not audited by anyone, made up. Then there are no consequences. There are no safeguards--or very few safeguards--in the House bill. I have quoted Bloomberg now many times. Again, the terrific Bloomberg News editorial: [T]he JOBS Act goes too far. It would gut many of the investor protections established just a decade ago in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law. A wave of accounting scandals--think Enron and WorldCom--had destroyed the nest eggs of millions of Americans and upended investor confidence in Wall Street. The relief would extend beyond small businesses and apply to more than 90 percent of companies that go public. John P. Mello, Jr., wrote in PC World on March 18: During the go-go days of the dot-com era, it was common for analysts to promote IPOs being offered by their investment bank masters, regardless of the worth of the offering. The existing rules, which would be scrapped by the JOBS Act now before the U.S. Senate, were designed to protect investors from the conflicts of interest that damaged the IPO market after the pop of the dot-com bubble, damage from which it has only recently recovered. Let's not jump back into the briar patch. We are just getting ourselves untangled from it. What is the rush? This bill from the House has not even gone through the Banking Committee. We have spent a decade arguing about Sarbanes-Oxley. We had multiple hearings. We had multiple debates on the floor. We had people come and testify, pro or con. Whether you are for it, it passed with lots of public debate. I know there are some people who still think those regulations are too onerous. Yes, we are trying to relax them where we can. But a blanket exception for companies up to $1 billion in revenue, I think that is going a little too far, a little too fast. We have senior citizens to give some guidance and protection to. We have the middle class that is struggling from this recession. They depend on us to set the rules of the road. This is not about Big Brother, Big Sister government. People have to make their own choices. But when people make choices on the Internet based on what looks like an official documentation, they assume someone either in their State capital or their National Capital has framed these rules and regulations in a way that gives them a fighting chance. We do not want to legalize fraud, and that is about what the House bill does. It legalizes pathways to fraud. That is not what we want to do. How we get out of the mess we are in, I am not 100 percent sure. Because we have a substitute on the floor, which is the Reed-Landrieu substitute--I plan to vote for it. If we can get 60 votes, then we can get on debating that bill which is a substitute to the House bill. Perhaps the leadership will allow us to amend our own substitute, which we would be happy to do. I think we could come to some agreement within less than 2 days about what should be done in the Senate and then send the bill back over to the House for their consideration and then on to the President's desk, a bill we can all be proud of and confident we are trying to do the right thing with this new sort of frontier on Internet investing. We want to support our entrepreneurs. We want to make this process more democratic. We want to get out of the secret boardrooms and the private conversations on Wall Street. So many more people could take advantage, appropriately, of exciting investments in the entrepreneurial spirit of America. Absolutely we want to do that, but that is not what the House bill does. So let's take our time. I am urging my colleagues, if they can vote for the substitute and give us cloture on it, we promise we will be open to amendments from both sides. If we do not get cloture--I see the Senator from Delaware--if we do not get cloture, please vote for the Ex-Im Bank amendment, which is a proper amendment to the bill, and then vote no on cloture. We do not want to end this debate today. Senators will be doing their constituents a great disservice to vote on cloture on that House bill today. We need to fix it. We need to amend it and we can. Then we will have a bill we can all be proud of and at least be confident we have established the right safeguards and that we can be helpful to getting capital to Main Street and increasing opportunities for entrepreneurship in America today. I thank the Senator from Delaware. He has been so outspoken and comes with such knowledge on these issues. I appreciate his thoughtfulness. I hope he will agree to join me in voting against the House bill and for his support of a new crowdfunding proposal. I yield the floor

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Following up on the leadership of the good Senator from Rhode Island, let me say there are many reasons--many reasons--to vote against cloture on the House bill, and I will get to that in a minute. But I am urging my colleagues to vote yes on cloture for the Reed- Landrieu-Levin substitute. We have tried to address the many concerns raised by the House bill in our substitute. If we vote yes on cloture for our substitute, we can then go into some more meaningful debate on the Senate floor, and this bill needs some additional debate. Mary Schapiro from the SEC said, clearly, the House bill goes too far. The Chamber of Commerce even says there are concerns in the House bill. AARP is opposed to the House bill. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Mary Schapiro wrote last week: H.R. 3606 would remove certain important measures put in place to enforce separation between the research analysts and investment bankers who work for the same firms. These careful principles were put in after the scandals that ensued on Wall Street. This bill has flown out of the House. Even Barney Frank said what we are doing in the Senate, by slowing it down and amending it, is the right thing. So I urge my colleagues to give our substitute a chance. They can vote yes on Senator Cantwell's amendment, and vote no on cloture to the House bill so we can continue this important debate in the Senate. Cloture Motion