Mary Landrieu

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I support the chairman of the Banking Committee and his call for us to come together this week to support the expansion of the Export-Import Bank. It is an extremely successful tool to use to help small, medium, and large businesses to be able to compete overseas and to give small businesses--particularly Main Street businesses--the help they need to succeed in overseas markets, which can be very daunting. I thank the chairman for his strong support and the way he worked in a bipartisan manner. I plan to vote for that amendment tomorrow. The biggest vote we are going to take tomorrow is not on the Ex-Im Bank. That is something that I think there is generally broad support for, a general understanding, and a general level of comfort with, although there will be some who do not vote for the expansion of the bank because they philosophically are opposed to a muscular role of government. Those of us who believe that the private sector, the government, and nonprofits all need to have muscle working together on behalf of the people we seek to serve will most certainly not allow ideology to get in the way of voting for a good idea such as the Ex-Im Bank. That is not our problem. Our problem is the IPO legislation. I call this the ``ill-advised political opportunity'' bill, the Jumpstart America bill, the JOBS bill. It has several names, but what it does is deregulate financial markets under the guise of job creation. Over the weekend, there were literally dozens and dozens of editorials against the House bill that we are going to vote on tomorrow. I know we are not coming fully into session in the morning, as not all the Senators are back in Washington at this hour on Monday. But I know their staffs are watching the goings-on on the floor. I want to call everyone's attention to this IPO bill flying over here from the House of Representatives. It is not what you think it is. It is not what you have been told it is. It is flying under the guise of job creation. It is flying under the guise of democratizing the credit market. It is flying under the guise of we have to do something to get money into the hands of mom-and-pop operators. I said this last week. I don't think anyone has spent as much time on the floor of the Senate arguing to get more credit into the hands of small business. I hope my credibility on that issue raises some questions, at least, if I am on the floor saying vote against the House bill; do not vote for cloture on the House bill. I hope Senators can support the substitute, which I have offered in good faith with Senators Levin and Reed, the second ranking member on the Banking Committee, and Senator Levin, who chairs the investigatory committee for the entire Senate, the committee that has looked into financial scandal after financial scandal. And I am chair of the Small Business Committee. We have come together, the three of us, to say: Wait a minute, slow down; this bill coming from the House, which had broad support, no doubt, is not what it looks like. It needs more work. It needs more investor protections. It is a major change in the way people can raise money, which is illegal now, for private companies on the Internet. If you want to start a company in America, you can ask your friends, your parents, your children, or your neighbors--you can do a small circle of investors. But once you sort of make that known publicly, in a public way, such as in a radio announcement, or on a billboard, or in a public way, such as on the Internet, there are rules and regulations you have to follow to make sure you are telling the truth. Those regulations, in large measure, have been taken out of the House bill, generally. Let me share with you, besides this name ``ill-advised political opportunity''--and look, some good people voted for the House bill, people of good will, but I kind of think this bill got cobbled together because the majority on the House side can sort of put something in a Rules Committee and that is the way it will be and, thank you, if you have any opposition, the minority voice is quelled over there. That is the nature of the House. But the minority should not be silent over here, and our rules allow for a more full debate. This is the time for the Senate to act as the Senate and slow this down, cool it off, get the right safeguards, and maybe it can be an excellent opportunity for changes to our financial markets. But it has to go through the process. This bill didn't even go through the Banking Committee. It was going to go through the Banking Committee, and then the decision was made to step on the gas, let's go for it, before it went through a markup in the Banking Committee. A part of it came through our committee. We didn't even have a markup, but the two pieces from the SBA are not controversial, and we would be happy to mark up the bill if given a chance. We could do it later this week. Let me share with you some of the headlines. The New York Times, which, if there was any newspaper in America that understands Wall Street, both its great strengths, its weaknesses--if there was any newspaper that understands the financial markets, the New York Times would be one of them. They said--and they are talking about the House bill--they said the JOBS Act is ``Paving a Path to Fraud on Wall Street.'' We don't need to go back. We are just leaving the path to fraud. We are moving away from fraud. Now what are we going to do? Turn and go back to it? The Washington Post said: ``Wall Street Credo: Ripping Out Their Eyeballs.'' The PC World: `` `JOBS Act Would Revive Dot-com Abuses,' official claims.'' Investment News: ``Job Act Merits Greater Scrutiny.'' Most shocking to me was the Bloomberg News: ``Small Biz JOBS Act Is a Bipartisan Bridge Too Far: View.'' They wrote an excellent piece on this, which I will read some of into the Record. Senator Jack Reed spoke about this. I am saying, Members, whatever you have been told about this bill, please read the details and please read some of the very credible articles that are being written about the House bill. There are good parts to it. I am a general supporter of crowdfunding, which is what I described--to make it legal for the first time in history for people to go on the Internet and raise money for private entities. I think the idea is a very good one. With the right safeguards in place, it could be a boon to small businesses and growing businesses that sometimes are shut out of those very fancy boardrooms where decisions are made behind closed doors and in very secretive meetings. I have been an advocate my whole life for opening this, so that ordinary people, middle-class people, can get involved in creating wealth through investing, instead of it being a small club of those who may go to the same school or go to the same social events and have the same social network. We want to move beyond that. America is a great experiment on how to create a middle class and give ordinary people the opportunity to create great wealth. We do that very well. America has also been a place where we almost took down the whole world financial community with us. That is how big we are, how strong we are, and how careful we must be. We are not being careful; we are being too political with the House bill. We are not being careful. What does Bloomberg say? They say this: A spirit of bipartisanship is sweeping Capitol Hill, with lawmakers poised to approve a package of bills aimed at reducing regulatory burdens on small businesses. We wish we could raise a glass. This moment has been too long in coming. But the legislation it has spawned would be dangerous for investors and could harm already fragile financial markets. This is Bloomberg. Please listen. Bloomberg is not right on everything--no one is, no publication is, no Senator is; but this is Bloomberg, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and this is the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission saying the bill is good but it lacks investor protections that are essential for its proper implementation. They go on to say: We agree that redtape can needlessly tie up small companies. We also agree that security laws that bar start- ups from harnessing the power of the Internet to raise funds could use updating. And it makes sense to allow, as the bill does, an initial public offering onramp, which could give start-ups a chance to grow. But the JOBS Act goes too far. It would gut many of the investor protections established just a decade ago in Sarbanes-Oxley. A wave of accounting scandals had upended Enron and WorldCom and destroyed nest eggs of millions of Americans and upended investor confidence in Wall Street. We have to be careful. That is why the AARP sent out a strongly worded letter. This is one of the most powerful organizations in the country. Some of their members--the ones who were so grossly hurt by the greed of Wall Street and the insatiable appetite of some of these large investment banks to make more money, because people need to make more than $5 million a month. I don't know how you spend $5 million in a month, but some people think they are entitled to make $60 million or $240 million a year. It is beyond comprehension. It wasn't enough for them. They had to make more and more and more. Millions of people whom I represent, and some in New York and in Florida, lost their life savings. Are we going to go back to those days, just because we want a bumper sticker that says we are about creating jobs here? We are creating jobs now in America. Maybe it is not fast enough for everyone, but every month the reports come out. Let's not rush and do something that will set us back. This is what AARP said: We are writing to reiterate our opposition to the lack of investment protections in H.R. 3606. If you vote for cloture on H.R. 3606 tomorrow, I hope when you go back home, the members of AARP--the largest and one of the most politically powerful groups in the country--will ask you why did you vote on that bill? Please don't tell me it is about creating jobs. It is really about pulling the rug out from under investor protections, of which many older Americans who have a lifetime of savings in investments are disproportionately represented among victims of investment fraud. They go on to say: We share the concerns raised by SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, the North American Securities administrator, law professors, investor advocates, and others that absent safeguards ensuring proper oversight, the various provisions in H.R. 3606 may well open the floodgates to repeat the kind of penny stock and other frauds that ensnared financially unsophisticated and other vulnerable investors in the past. AARP urges the Senate to take a more balanced approach. Mr. President, that is what we are trying to do, to take a balanced approach. I am not trying to kill the crowdfunding idea. I am not trying to kill the IPO onramp idea, which is to help fast-growing gazelles, they call them, to grow a little before they have to bear the burden of some of those regulations, which, while important, can be burdensome. I understand that. My committee has been working for months coming up with some very interesting ideas about how to get capital into the hands of small businesses. It is not something that I am unaware of, but the House bill is not the way to go. Even President Obama sent a statement. The White House sent a statement that I will get in just a minute because I think it is important to see the nuances. Yes, it is true the President supported the House bill. It is true some very good Democrats who are very good watchdogs on this issue voted for the bill. But let me read the last sentence of the President's latest Statement of Administration Policy because the nuance is important. The administration did say it supports the House passage of the bill--meaning H.R. 3606--but the last sentence says: The administration looks forward to continuing to work with the House and the Senate to craft legislation that facilitates capital formation and job growth for small business and provides appropriate investor protections. The nuance is very important. The White House is signaling that while they do support H.R. 3606, they would also welcome additional work to put investor protections into the law. I think that is good. I know this President, this administration has worked hard to clean up Wall Street. They have kept the automobile industry from the brink of financial collapse and have brought it back. That has restored confidence in Wall Street, under great controversy and great criticism. I know it is one of the proudest achievements of this administration. So under no circumstance would we want to go backward, not at this crucial point. That is why I am afraid, if we don't fix this bill, that is exactly what will happen. I wish I could have this in a larger format because I don't know if the camera can see this, but this reflects the loss of jobs under the former administration and the loss of jobs when President Obama took office. Now we can see this almost reversing itself, with jobs being created in almost every month and every quarter. More than 3.9 million private sector jobs have been created in the past 24 months. And, yes, we need to do more, but the House bill goes too far. But don't just take my word for it; listen to the Bloomberg editorial, the Boston Globe op-ed against the House bill, the Investment News editorials--``JOBS Act Merits Greater Scrutiny'' from the Business Journal. Now, this is blog 3, but these are pretty reputable blogs. We just don't bring any blogs to the floor of the Senate. These are reputable bloggers that have received some kind of following--``Why the JOBS Act Should Be In Trouble.'' New York Times column: ``Paving Path to Fraud on Wall Street. JOBS Act to Rewrite the Rules of Silicon Valley Investing.'' This is very interesting because my staff tells me the ``bio community'' and the ``high-tech community'' are for this bill. I get that. But this is what I don't understand, and I am quoting from one of the blogs by Rafi Needleman, and he is writing as if he is in Silicon Valley, and he is: There is a lot of smart money looking for new places to land, and these funding sources cannot only write sizable checks, they can offer start-ups or other material benefits-- connections, tactical and strategic advice, and partnerships with other start-ups in their portfolio. So the question he is asking is, Why, basically, is it necessary to move outside of these traditional sources when there is plenty of money? They are just looking for some good ideas. Throwing more money through an unregulated financial scheme is not going to create any new ideas. It is just going to create a lot of money that could be taken advantage of by very sophisticated people who understand how to take good ideas and twist them into greed and fraud, if we don't have the right protections. So there is a lot of capital out there. It is just not necessarily in the right place. There is some opportunity for us to do some things. But the last thing the Senate would want to do is debate this bill on the floor of the Senate. This needs committee work. This bill needs to go to a markup where it can be, in a few days, debated, negotiated, and there can be amendments back and forth and we can fix some of the problems. The last thing we need to be doing is flying a bill of this nature right through the Senate. As I said, there has not been a jobs bill where I haven't kind of rushed to the floor. It may not have been perfect, but I have said: Look, we have to create jobs. Let's try it. Let's do it. And we have tried some new things. But when I saw this bill from the House was coming directly to the floor without going through the Banking Committee, that made me nervous. It made my political instincts stand up and say: Wait, wait, why are we rushing? The more I learned and the more I read, it became apparent to me this bill from the House is not ready for prime time. It is not ready to go to the President's desk for signature. So here we have Senator Reed, the ranking member on the Banking Committee, and Senator Levin of Michigan, who has been a voice of reason and wisdom on financial deregulation and fraud and the scams that have occurred not just on Wall Street but offshore in secret island accounts where people have ripped off our citizens and then run for the hills and we can't find them or run to the islands. Who knows about these things? And he said: Wait a minute. What is going on here? So that is why we are here. I know the Senator from Michigan is here to speak, so let me wrap up by saying we have offered, in the spirit of trying to improve the House bill, a substitute. I am going to vote for the substitute. It is the Reed-Landrieu-Levin substitute. I hope our Members and some Republicans--I hope many Republicans; but if we could get a few, that would be good--will vote for our substitute. If we get cloture on that then we will go to a 30-hour debate on our substitute. I want that bill to be open to amendment. I am not trying to ram anything through. We should be open to amendments--maybe 10 on the Republican side, 10 on our side or whatever the leadership can agree to so that we can address some of the problems even in our own bill. We had to rush so quickly to get in a substitute, there are one or two things we would like to correct in our bill that have been brought to our attention. In conclusion, if you can't vote for our substitute, please vote no on cloture on the House bill--on the ill-advised political opportunity bill, or whatever they call it, the IPO bill, the JOBS Act bill, the onramp bill. They have a dozen names for it, but what it does is just what the New York Times said: It is a pathway to fraud. We don't want to go back there. It is just what Bloomberg said. It is bipartisanship that we cannot raise a glass to. They said: We wish we could toast it, but we cannot raise a glass. It goes too far. So we have an opportunity to do something good for our markets, and our Presiding Officer, Senator Blumenthal, who is from the State of Connecticut, which has a tremendous amount of financial sophistication--he is well aware, as a former prosecutor, how important some of these issues are. So it is important to get this right. The bill, again, has come over from the House, rushed over here, and has not gone through our Banking Committee. I will be happy to negotiate with anyone on this floor. I am not wedded to any specific or particular position on the small business pieces. They can be in there--I think they are good--or we can take them out, and it can just be a banking bill, although we have a lot of support for the increase in the SBICs and the 504 lending, which is very important to the small business community. But I feel so strongly about getting the deregulation part of this correct, I would take that out if it would help my Republican colleagues to negotiate on the other part of the bill. So I see Senator Levin on the Senate floor. I will turn it over to him now. But, please, I am pleading with my colleagues to take a look at this House bill. Just read some of the details. Read some of the comments of some great financial columnists, both on the left and right, who have written us against the House bill and urged further consideration. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I thank Senator Reed and Senator Levin who have helped to lead this effort to make a bill that is coming over from the House much better and much safer for investors, as well as to generate opportunities for more capital to flow to some of the good and solid ideas that are out there in our marketplace to create jobs. I am pleased to join these two Senators and about a dozen to date and potentially dozens more of our colleagues as people learn the differences--and they are substantial--between the House version of what they call an IPO bill and the Senate version we have worked on very diligently and carefully over the last 48 hours. The three of us are prepared to vote against the House bill as it stands now. The only hope of getting our support, and many others here, is to try to amend the House bill. That is what our efforts are. We are not trying to say no to everything that is in the House bill because there are some excellent ideas. Even the President himself and the White House and some of the Democrats voted for that bill because there are some good ideas in the bill, and some ideas that have come from some of the brightest entrepreneurs in our country. We are not trying to say no to those ideas. We are trying to say yes to those ideas, but do it in a way that protects investors--older investors, younger investors, sophisticated investors, and your average sort of nonsophisticated investors because the Internet has opened a whole new opportunity. When these security laws were written 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago and amended, the Internet wasn't what it is today. So that is why this crowdfunding bill--which is, in essence, a way for the Internet to be used to raise capital that is illegal generally today, and there are very specific rules about how people can raise capital for their businesses. Some of those regulations are too onerous; some of them are right on. But this whole idea of, oh, my goodness, now the Internet is here--look what opportunities could be. We can get our ideas to the marketplace without having to go through middlemen. We have a great idea, a wonderful patent. We want to be able to raise money. We are very excited about this. But there is a right way to do this and there is a wrong way to do this. With the House bill, we know that we are on a little bit of rocky ground when they don't really have a name for it. They have called it everything from an IPO bill to a jobs bill to a capital expansion bill. What I am calling it today--and I will have a poster made over the weekend--is an ill-advised political opportunity bill. That is what IPO stands for, in my mind. It is ill-advised because the safeguards that are required to make sure these new ideas happen the way they should are absent from their legislation. That is why, when I found out, surprisingly, that the Senate of the United States was getting ready to take that bill and just adopt it whole hog, I said: Absolutely not. We have to slow this down, try to amend it--not kill it but amend it. The reason is because there are very respected groups out there that started sending letter after letter after letter to the Senate urging us to do just that. This isn't about a conservative-liberal fight. This is about the right regulations that are necessary before we take a good idea and mess it up. Crowdfunding is a good idea. It is an exciting idea. There are great entrepreneurs out there. The Internet could be a very powerful tool. But everyone knows if you enter into new territory without caution and care, you can fall off a cliff that you didn't even know was there. That is exactly what the House bill is going to do. If you don't want to take my word for it, let's talk about what AARP says about it. This is the first letter. I am going to put a dozen letters into the Record in the next 10 minutes to try to get the attention of the people on the other side of the aisle. This is all an attempt to get their attention over the weekend, and I hope the press will write about these letters so when they come back on Monday they can say: Oh, my gosh. We have a good bill that came from the House, but there are some real flaws and we should fix it before we create another Wall Street debacle or before we see people ripped off again like we just went through in the last 6 years. How short is our memory about investors getting stripped, going bankrupt because of exactly the same thing: just not being careful, not having the right rules in place, not having the right enforcements in place. This was like yesterday. That is why when the leadership said we were just going to take up the House bill, I said: Wait a minute. No, no, no. This is what the AARP said, Joyce Rogers: I am writing to reiterate our opposition to the lack of investor protections in H.R. 3606-- Again, the House-passed, ill-advised political opportunity bill. That is what I am calling it. That is what it is-- that soon will be considered on the floor of the Senate floor. AARP's primary concern is that this legislation undermines vital investor protections and threatens market integrity. So AARP doesn't urge the Senate to kill the bill. AARP urges the Senate to take a more balanced approach, recognizing both an interest in facilitating access to capital for new and small businesses and in preserving essential regulations. . . . We believe the amendment to be offered by Senators Reed, Landrieu and Levin, moves closer to achieving this balance and deserves your support. It goes on to say that sometimes the people who are taken advantage of are the elderly. So wake up, Senators from Florida. Wake up, Senators from Michigan. Wake up, Senators who have big senior populations. The AARP is against the House bill, the ill-advised political opportunity bill. North American Securities Administrators Association--they sent a letter yesterday, from Jack Herstein. It is seven pages long. They go into great detail: On behalf of the North American Securities Administrators Association-- I don't think this is a liberal think tank. I think this is a very well respected, not a leftwing, regulate-everything-that-moves kind of group. I think that is correct. He says: I am writing to express concerns regarding several provisions, most notably our strong concern with the extraordinary step of pre-empting state law for ``crowdfunding'', contained in [the ill-advised political opportunity bill which was passed by the House.] State securities regulators support efforts by Congress to ensure that laws facilitating the raising of capital are modern and efficient, and that Americans are encouraged to raise money to invest in the economy. However, it is critical that in doing so, Congress not discard basic investor protections. I am going to submit this letter, without objection, I hope, to the Record. This is from the Council of Institutional Investors, ``a nonprofit, nonpartisan association of public, corporate and union pension plans.'' Let me repeat, not just union pension plans but public and corporate pension plans. They are writing with questions about the House ill- advised political opportunity bill, and it goes into great detail. I am putting this into the record hoping people will actually read the Congressional Record. Another letter to Speaker Boehner and Nancy Pelosi. This was delivered to the House. It may be a little different from the one to the Senate, so I would like to put that into the Record. These are very important letters received just recently. That is why I am asking people to wake up, pay attention. Securities and Exchange Commission, March 13. This is to Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member Shelby basically saying: Last week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3606. . . . As the Senate prepares to debate many of the capital formation initiatives addressed by H.R. 3606, I want to share with you some of my concerns on some important aspects of this significant legislation. That is by Mary Schapiro, Chairman, outlining a dozen of her concerns because, of course, she thinks there is going to be a debate. She would expect a debate on a bill of this nature and magnitude and diversion from the ordinary. But we were not going to have a debate. We were just going to be told to take the House bill or leave it until a few of us said: No, slow this train down. This is no way to run a railroad. We are not trying to kill the bill. We are not trying to delay. We are trying to have at least a 2- or 3-day debate on an important piece of legislation that, if it is not done right, is going to absolutely ruin the best chance we have had in decades to actually get capital into the hands of businesses. Everyone here should now know me well enough as chair of the Small Business Committee to know I have spent literally nights, days, and weekends on the floor of this Senate trying to figure out ways to get capital into the hands of small businesses. Why would I stand here and try to stop that? I have spent my whole time as the Senate chairman of the Small Business Committee trying to do that. But, again, there is a right way to do that and a wrong way. If we take the wrong path and fall off of a cliff, we are going to ruin the chance we have with this new Internet tool, this very exciting opportunity, and we are going to ruin our chance to get this done. Who is going to suffer? The same people who suffer all the time, the small businesses and the exciting opportunities and entrepreneurs who need our help. Any bill that is a major bill can stand the scrutiny of time before the public, and amendment. If it cannot stand that scrutiny, then I suggest there is something terribly flawed with it. That is what we are trying to provide, scrutiny. This letter comes from the AFL CIO, from Jeff Hauser, an e-mail: America needs jobs. Yet Congress cannot enact such basic legislation as the reauthorization of the surface transportation bill-- Which we passed, but it has not been completed. He goes on to say: Workers' retirement savings will be in greater risk of fraud and speculation if securities market deregulation once again is railroaded through Congress. Once again our economy will be at risk from the folly of policy makers promoting financial bubbles and ignoring the needs of the real economy. The AFL CIO calls on Congress to set aside the politics of the 1 percent, the old game of special favors for Wall Street. They are very strong in their language, probably a lot stronger than these other organizations. But I think they have reason to be. Many of their members were taken to the cleaners by scams on Wall Street. They have yet to recover. Their 401s have yet to recover. Even yesterday, or last week, in the paper I saw one of the big companies that failed. I think it was MF Global. Did you all see that in the newspaper? They failed. Of course, it was a terrible debacle. Lots of people lost money. But the CEO is walking away with a $7 million bonus. People who work hard all day have a very hard time understanding how we in the Congress can allow the CEO to walk away with a bonus of $7 million when he bankrupted thousands of people. That is a good question. Are we going to do that again with this House bill? I hope not. Let's put the AFL CIO on record saying slow down. This is the next message I want to put in from the secretaries of state--and I want to read off who they are: the secretary from Missouri, Robin Carnahan; the secretary from Massachusetts, William Falvin; the secretary from New Hampshire, William Gardner; the secretary from Mississippi--I believe is a Republican--Delbert Hosemann; the secretary from North Carolina, secretary of state Elaine Marshall; the secretary from Nevada, Ross Miller; the secretary of state from Indiana, Charles White; and the secretary of state from Illinois, Jesse White. Jesse White says the same thing: Beware of the House bill. It is flawed. It has some good ideas in it, but those flaws need to be corrected. That is what the Reed-Landrieu-Levin et al amendment does. We are not trying to kill these wonderful, exciting ideas. We are trying to fix it so it is better. I hope our Members on the other side will join us in doing that, and I would like to submit this to the Record. There are two more. Actually, I am sorry, four more--we have so many. The next one is from my office of financial institutions from Baton Rouge, my commissioner, banking commissioner, who wrote me. He is generally in favor of some of the things in the House bill. But he said: I am writing to urge you to oppose the preemption of Louisiana law to protect investors. I would like to put that into the Record. The American Sustainable Business Council. It is signed by David Levine. Again, I don't believe this is a left-leaning group. I think it is a pretty centrist organization. They urge us to take a hard look at the House bill. Finally, Madam President, I want to have printed in the Record--this is when I got nervous: when I started receiving letters in my office from crowdfunders themselves against the House bill. The people who gave the idea to start up crowdfunding have now said the House bill is flawed. Here is what they say: I write in favor of the bipartisan compromise CROWDFUNDING Act proposed recently by Senators Merkley, S. Brown, Bennet and Landrieu. That is the crowdfunding act that is in this substitute. Yesterday evening's introduction-- This was last week-- of the first bi-partisan Senate crowdfunding bill is a big step forward in our fight to get equity crowdfunding passed through Congress. I have been to Washington, DC 7 times since mid-November, discussing [this legislation]. The offices of the Senators on the Banking Committee have been very receptive to input from the entrepreneurial community and have adopted many of our suggestions. But they go on to say: This latest bill . . . is important because, unlike previous bills, for the first time we have a Senate bill with bipartisan sponsorship, a balance of state oversight and federal uniformity, industry standard investor protections, and workable funding caps. This bill has a legitimate chance at quieting those who were previously trumping up fears of fraud [and] bad actors. . . . To date the main issues the opposition raised were regarding fraud and state oversight. What they are saying is we are the ones who helped invent this concept. We don't think the House bill is where it should be. We are supporting the Merkley-Bennet approach, which is in this bill. Launcht, we hear you, and we are trying to respond. Finally, Motaavi--again, a crowdfunder advocate. People, very entrepreneurial, coming up with these ideas saying the same thing. I ask unanimous consent to have those letters printed in the Record.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Again to recap so people can see on this chart, AARP has written us against the House bill. Consumer Federation of America-- against the House bill. The AFL CIO--against the House bill. Yes, those are some of the left leaning organizations. But we also have centrist and right leaning organizations. I am talking about the former Securities and Exchange Commissioners' Chief Accountant, this is what they say There are always paths to improvement for any complex system, the American Stock Exchange included. But how quickly these Congressmen seem to have forgotten why many such regulations were enacted in the first place. Last month marked the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of Enron. It has not been 10 years and we are going back to where we were when Enron took money out of the pockets of thousands of people in America. Why are we doing that Regulations that prevent capital multiplying companies that want to go public from doing so are bad. Ones that prevent capital destroying ones from becoming public nuisances are good. No job creation will be generated through the process of socializing capital destruction to the general public. But he is saying that the House bill goes too far. Again, Eric Schureunberg, editor of Inc.com--they are a very well respected voice in the small business community in America today. They are saying the House bill is flawed. I know we are going to be criticized on the other side by saying it is just the same old left wing groups that want more regulation and more regulation. But that is not true. That is why I am putting all of this in the record today so people can carefully consider it tomorrow, and over the weekend on Monday, before we come back here; to look and read what is being said about the House bill and to be open and honest in our efforts to try to reform it. Again, for the record, Mary Shapiro, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said: While I recognize that H.R. 3606--the ill-advised political opportunity bill, those are my words--is the product of a bipartisan effort designed to facilitate capital formation and include certain promising approaches, I believe there are provisions that should be added or modified to improve investor protections that are worthy of the Senate's consideration. So that is what we have done. We took the bill from the House and looked at it very carefully and on Monday I am going to hand this out to everyone and we are sending it to everyone's offices now. It has kind of become a famous small business blue line that is very easy for everyone to understand. It shows the differences between the Senate bill and the House bill. As we can see, both bills raise the cap on regulation A offerings from $5 million to $50 million. We are happy to do that. We improve the transparency of regulation A by requiring an audited financial statement. You don't need to have graduated from a master's program at Stanford or Harvard to understand that if you are getting ready to invest-- whether it is $1,000, $10,000 or $100,000--having an audited financial statement about the company you are getting ready to invest in would be a basic thing to do. I think we learned about this when we were in seventh or eighth grade. You don't have to go to Harvard to know this. The audited financial statement requirement is absent from the House bill. There is no requirement in the House bill for an audited financial statement, so we put an audited financial statement in our bill. I don't think that is a radical amendment. It is a simple one; it is an important one. In the House version of this IPO on-ramp, they exempt companies up to $1 billion in annual revenue. Madam President, $1 billion is a lot of money, so everybody wake up. The House bill says if you are less than $1 billion, you basically don't have to adhere to most of the rules and regulations; you can just go on your merry way. That sign is great--``ill-advised political opportunity.'' That is what I am calling the House bill. Let me check to see how many companies went public that were over $1 billion last year. Only 22 percent of companies that went public last year were over $1 billion. So if my math is correct, the House bill is going to eliminate 78 percent of the companies from regulation that raise money in the public. That is going too far. It is unnecessary. We bring that number down to $350 million in our bill, and the author of this provision in the Senate has signed on as a supporter, Chuck Schumer. The reason he did that is because he realizes--even as the sponsor of this on-ramp provision--that the House bill went too far. I am not going to go into all the rules and regulations, but it is not that complicated because-- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8--there are only about eight big differences, but they are important differences. I am going to wrap up by saying: Please study the record. Please look at it. In our Senate bill, which the Chair has been very supportive of, as has Senator Cantwell, and I wish to thank both of them publicly, as well as Senator Klobuchar--we have the Export-Import Bank in our bill, which is not in the House bill. The Chamber of Commerce has written us asking us to please support the Export-Import Bank. We also expand the SBIC, which is the small business investment program, which the President included in his State of the Union Address to authorize that program to move from $3 billion to $4 billion. Why? Because we are having such success, through the SBIC programs that exist in all our States, getting money out to Main Street, to small businesses. So that is included in our bill--and one the Chair has particularly been a lead on, and that is at no cost to the taxpayer. These things do not cost any additional money. There is the SBA 504 refinancing that is going to allow to extend for 1 year the ability of the small business loan program that has thousands of outstanding loans to extend for another year the opportunity to refinance their commercial loans. So we have added three provisions to the House bill that make it more balanced and better for small business, and we have put a couple oversight measures into their provisions that I think--in the words of many of even the advocates of this bill--``make the bill better.'' I don't know if we will be successful, but this is worth a try because the damage that could be done in venturing out so far into a new way of financing without the proper safeguards could set us back decades. We don't want to go backward; we want to go forward. We don't want to go back to the days of Enron and Bernie Madoff. Why would Republicans, in the face of these scandals, come up with--and some Democrats voted for it. I am not quite sure how that happened, but we are going to find out. Why would they want to go back to those days? We want to go forward with the right protections. I see my friend Senator Levin on the floor. He most certainly understands this issue in many ways better than I do on the technical side of it. He has helped write this bill. I am hoping he will give an even better explanation than I have been able to give, but I think I have covered it pretty broadly, and he can go into a lot more detail about the possibility of fraud in here if it is not locked down. I am going to end with a word to my community banks because I have tried to become a champion for them. I think they can appreciate it. I am not 100 percent sure. I believe in community banks. The Independent Community Bankers of America sent a letter supporting the House bill. I am going to call them over the weekend and talk with them specifically about my concerns and ask them to reconsider their position. I think our compromise is very good for our community bankers. I don't know whether they will. I know they want to get rid of some of the onerous requirements that were placed on them in the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and I appreciate it. I helped sponsor some of the amendments on their behalf. But I think this House bill is going too far. I am going to reach out to them. We will see what their view is. I do respect the views of my community bankers. We are going to have a lot more to talk about next week. Again, I thank Senator Levin and Senator Reed for joining with me and Senator Jack Reed for leading this effort to help put a bill before the Senate that is quite balanced and provides the investor protections and also opens some exciting opportunities for capital to create new businesses in America that are the backbone of our extraordinary--and not to be matched--entrepreneurship spirit in the world. We honor that, but we want to do it in the right way. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order to proceed to executive session at 2 p.m. be vitiated. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I want to take a minute to thank Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe and the staffs of both of those excellent Senators who have worked so hard on this bill that is so important to our country. From New York to California, from Alaska to Florida, this bill represents over $110 billion of investments in America. Whether we are talking about two-lane roads, farm-to-market roads, one-lane or two-lane roads, interstate, or rail that is running in our urban areas that are congested, time consuming, and frustrating for our drivers; whether it is for the trucking industry that depends on good, solid, strong highways; the petrochemical industry, the oil and gas industry, or our small businesses, it is important for America's infrastructure to be strengthened, and that is what we did today. I know the Senate has been criticized over and over again about not being able to function. But today we saw, as our leader said, one of our most conservative Members and one of our most progressive Members bring a bill to this floor and get 74 votes. That is hard work, and that is the way the Senate should work. I am so proud to have been a small part of this overall bill with Senator Whitehouse, Senator Shelby from Alabama, and many other Senators who joined us in an effort to put on a very important amendment to the gulf coast and to the country in this Transportation bill. That bill, which was adopted as an amendment to the Transportation bill, as you know, Mr. President, is known as the RESTORE Act. The reason we call it the RESTORE Act is because that is exactly what it will do. It will restore America's energy coast--the gulf coast. We are proud of our energy infrastructure. We are also proud of our fishing industry and our ecotourism industry. We are also proud of our commercial fishing and recreational charter captains who take people from all over the world off the beautiful coast of Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas with some of the best fishing in the world. We have fisheries that are alive and vibrant, not overfished, with people in business and restaurants serving this food all over the country. We are so proud to have passed the RESTORE Act, which is going to take not taxpayer money, not money adding to the deficit, but monies from a fine that is going to be levied by the courts very soon--very soon. This fine will be levied against BP because of the single largest environmental disaster in the Nation's history. BP, an operator of oil and gas wells not just in the gulf but all around the world, drills safely in many places. But, boy, they sure messed up this one. There were 11 men killed, others were injured, and hundreds of millions of gallons of oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. It was a horrible accident. It should not have happened. No industry is perfect. No operation like this, whether it is going to space or going below sea, whether it is producing sophisticated equipment or is involved in the mining or extraction business has a complete guarantee of safety and perfection. But this was a terrible accident. We wish it never would have happened. The courts are sorting out whether this company was simply negligent or grossly negligent. We can have our opinions, but it is not something we need to decide. What we did decide, though, is when the court set that penalty, that what is right for the States that were so injured-- with marshes inundated with oil, and pelicans, dolphins, and other wildlife and birds that live and breed and count on this environment to be there--is for that money to be redirected back to the gulf coast. Because of the good work of our Presiding Officer and Senator Baucus--and I want to thank, particularly, Senator Bingaman--we were also able to add--not in the RESTORE Act, not taking money away from the gulf but in a side-by-side--some money to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Now, it is only for 2 years, but there is going to be more money in that fund than has been there for a while, which will also accommodate the environment nationally, and that provides a balance and a synergy. The gulf coast wants to be fair. Our people have suffered. But we also know the country has been very generous to us through a series of very unfortunate events in the last 6 years: Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike, horrible hurricanes. But every part of the Nation has experienced disaster, whether it was the fires in California or the flooding in the Northeast or the hurricane last season that raked the Northeast. Last season, in fact, we will remember, was the season that had the largest number of disasters. There were 12 that cost over $1 billion. That has not happened before. So lots of parts of the country have suffered. But the gulf coast has suffered in a special way, unfortunately, with a series of events, hurricanes, and oilspills. So we are grateful. We tried to make this bill appropriate, leaving 20 percent of the general fund, which will secure doubling the amount of money in that liability trust fund. That is a benefit to the Nation. We put in some money for land and water. That will benefit the Nation, and there is some money to establish an oceans trust. I ask for another 1 minute.

Ms. LANDRIEU. That will benefit the Nation. But the bulk of that penalty money will go to the gulf coast, and it will not be wasted, I promise. The bill has tight safeguards and guidelines about the way that money will be spent restoring our marshes, rebuilding our coastline; we have lost the size of the State of Rhode Island. I wish to thank so much the groups. There were over 200 organizations, from Ducks Unlimited to the National Environmental Defense Fund, to Nature Conservancy, to many of the Chambers of Commerce, locally and nationally, that supported the RESTORE Act. Without their help, this never would have happened because we don't get a vote as we did on the Senate floor without a lot of help. We got I believe it was maybe 76 votes on the floor of the Senate. It is hard to get a resolution on mom and apple pie to get 76 votes today. So I am very humbled to say it was the work of many people. I was proud to lead this effort with Senator Shelby, my partner from Alabama. But my final comment is, work needs to be done. That is my final point. The amendment is in the Transportation bill. The Transportation bill has now left the building, left the Senate. It is now on its way over to the House. I hope the House will take this bill--and I know they have their own opinions about how things should be. But it is important to get this $110 billion of investments out for America. We need to keep this recovery going. People are looking for jobs, well-paying jobs. Small businesses get these contracts as well as large businesses for our rail, our water, our transportation. I hope the RESTORE Act, because it is safely tucked in this bill, will generate some additional votes on the House side. I hope my colleagues from the gulf coast in the House, Republicans and Democrats, will say: Overall, it may not be the House's Transportation bill, but you know what. It is a good bill. Twenty-two Republicans over here voted for this bill. As Senator Inhofe said, there is streamlining, there are new approaches, there are better approaches, less waste, less fraud, less abuse in this bill. So there are some good things they can vote on. I thank, again, in conclusion, Senator Inhofe and Senator Boxer and particularly Senator Baucus for his help in helping us, at the very end, to put what we needed to get together to pass this RESTORE Act. I will continue to report to all how the courts are going to rule, how much this fine is going to be, and how that money is spent in the next couple years to help save a very important part of our Nation and a part of the Nation that contributes substantially to the GDP of our Nation.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended until 5 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and that the time be equally divided.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the president of France's senate be permitted to join us on the floor for a few minutes.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, let me begin by thanking the almost 15 Members of this body who have been working on this very important legislation for almost 2 years, since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. I particularly want to thank Senator Shelby, who has been the lead on the Republican side, for cosponsoring this important and significant environmental and economic recovery of the gulf coast. We could not have done it without Senator Vitter and Senator Sessions, who were on the authorizing committee where this bill came out with almost unanimous support. I think we didn't get two votes in the committee. Everyone else, Republican and Democrat, was supportive. I particularly thank Senator Whitehouse, who led the effort on the Democratic side, as we have shaped, with his help, for the gulf coast, which is represented in this bill, a way to invest in our oceans by smartly using some of the interest earnings. Of course, we would not be here on the floor without the extraordinary leadership of Senator Boxer from California, whose coast gets virtually no benefit from the RESTORE Act as it was originally introduced, but she was willing to step up because she knows how important the gulf coast is to the United States. Let me first remind people what this accident looked like. It has been 2 years, but we remember the horror that we saw on our televisions for months about the largest environmental accident in the history of our country--5 million barrels of oil spilled along the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and seeped onto the coast of Florida and caused economic damage in Texas. Let me tell you, 600 miles of the gulf coastline were oiled, and 86,000 square miles of waters were closed to fishing, causing a $2.5 billion loss to the fishing industry. We still have concerns about what that industry will look like. The U.S. Travel Association estimated a $23 billion impact to tourism across the gulf coast. So although Texas did not technically get any oil, they had an impact along their coast with the tourism decline. Every commission, independent commission--Secretary of the Navy Commission, the President's commission, the independent commissions have all advocated that the proper response of the Federal Government is not to take this penalty money and stuff it in the General Treasury but, rather, to take a significant portion--our bill says 80 percent-- and send it back to the gulf coast where our people have great needs, both economically and environmentally. This is the time to act. Louisiana has lost 1,900 square miles since 1930. If we were the size of Rhode Island--we are not, we are bigger, but if we were, we would not have 50 States anymore; we would only have 49 because, as the Senator from California knows, we have already lost the size of Rhode Island. This is a national tragedy, not just for the 4.5 million people who live in our State. But I would like to put into the record for the few minutes that I have that we contribute $3 trillion to the national economy every year. The Gulf Coast States represent 17 percent of the GDP. Nearly 50 percent of the oil and gas that we consume every day in States all over this country comes from the gulf coast. We contribute $8 to $10 billion directly every year. All we are asking in the RESTORE Act--let's put that up here--is to fund, direct 80 percent of the penalty money that BP is going to pay--taxpayers are not paying this. This does not come out of any program. It does not come out of any education program, any other program. It is going to be paid for by BP. Let's do justice to the gulf coast, America's energy coast and, might I say, the coast that produces the most vibrant fisheries, the coast that supports, proudly, ecotourism, the coast that revels in clean beaches. Please give us the resources we need to restore this great coast. Again, I thank Senator Baucus and Senator Bingaman, who have joined now with supporters of this because we have added a portion to the fund, just for 2 years, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, for the entire country. We will be sending money to the gulf coast, creating an oceans trust fund, and fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund for 2 years. I think it is a balanced bill; it is a fair bill. Again, to the chairman of the committee, Senator Boxer, I cannot tell the Senator how much we appreciate her extraordinary leadership.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, this money will be shared with all the States. It is appropriate new money paid by BP--not taxpayer money--to the Gulf. Let me thank Senators Boxer, Whitehouse, and Baucus for their extraordinary help on our side and thank Senator Shelby. I don't know if Senator Vitter wants to say a word.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 1817

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, it is with great sadness that I mourn the loss of one of our brave Coast Guard airmen who gave his life in the line of duty when a Coast Guard MH 65C helicopter crashed during a training flight in the vicinity of Mobile Bay, AL, on Tuesday evening with four crewmembers aboard. Three other crewmembers remain missing, and the Coast Guard is continuing to search for them in cooperation with State and local authorities from Alabama and Florida. The cause of the incident is still under investigation, but it serves as a tragic reminder of the heroic sacrifices that the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard make on a regular basis to protect the people of this country from terrorist threats, natural disasters, environmental hazards, and criminal activity. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the airmen onboard the Coast Guard helo that went down Tuesday night, and I would like to take this opportunity to honor their service, and the exploits of many Coastguardsmen before them, who demonstrated extreme valor in the face of danger and epitomized the virtues of bravery and sacrifice in service of their country. Scores of grateful Americans will gather this evening at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans to honor 14 extraordinary Coast Guard heroes, and their family members will be in attendance to commemorate their legacy. Tomorrow morning, Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, LA, will dedicate its fleet of fast response cutters and deliver the very first in class to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Bernard C. Webber. This will be the first class of ships in the history of the U.S. military that bears the names of enlisted personnel, as opposed to U.S. Presidents and flag officers. I would like to take a few minutes to share some of their stories. PO Bernie Webber led a crew of four volunteers from Chatham Station in Massachusetts in February 1952 to respond to the tanker Pendleton, which was in distress. They braved 60-foot seas, hurricane-force winds, and blizzard conditions on a cold and rainy night off the coast of New England. Wind and waves smashed their windshield and compass along the way, but they managed to save the lives of 33 men in what many historians consider the most difficult small boat rescue in Coast Guard history. To this day, cadets at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT, have never been able to fit so many men into a boat the size that Webber commanded. William Ray Flores was 19 years old and less than 1 year out of boot camp when he gave his life to save his fellow shipmates. On January 28, 1980, the 180-foot Coast Guard buoy tender Blackthorn collided with a 605-foot oil tanker near the entrance to Tampa Bay. The Coast Guard vessel quickly began to capsize after impact, and crewmembers leapt from the deck to escape the sinking ship. Flores, however, decided to strap himself to the lifejacket locker door so he could float lifejackets up to the surface as the ship went down. Twenty-two of Flores's shipmates tragically perished that day, but 27 others survived thanks to his heroic sacrifice. SA Billy Flores was posthumously awarded the Coast Guard Medal for his actions that day, the service's highest award for heroism during peacetime. Margaret Norvell served for 41 years in the U.S. Lighthouse Service, beginning her career watching over the southern entrance to the Mississippi River at the Head of Passes and later taking over as keeper of the Port Pontchartrain Light and West End Light on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. In 1903, a storm destroyed every building in her small Louisiana community of Buras except Norvell's lighthouse. She immediately responded by taking in the entire community and providing shelter and comfort to more than 200 of her fellow citizens who had been rendered homeless. Later in her career in the year 1926, Norvell received a report that a naval airplane had crashed into Lake Pontchartrain. She immediately set out in her small rowboat and battled a merciless squall for 2 hours before she finally arrived at the scene of the crash, rescued the downed aviator, and brought him safely back to shore. Stewards-Mate First Class Charles Walter David was a cook aboard the Coast Guard cutter Comanche when the Army transport ship Dorchester was attacked by a German U-Boat off the coast of Greenland on the night of February 3, 1942. David dove into the frigid seas of the North Atlantic and helped to save the lives of 93 soldiers and many of his own crew including the ship's executive officer, who had accidentally fallen overboard. David did not return to his ship until every last soul had been rescued from the water. He contracted pneumonia several days later and died as a result of his efforts that night, for which he was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for bravery. Others, such as Isaac Mayo and Joseph Napier, returned to shore multiple times to reembark on new boats after previous attempts caused them to capsize and several of their fellow crewmen to perish in the punishing waves. Both men eventually completed their rescue missions successfully. These are just a handful of the 58 Coast Guardians who will serve as namesakes for the service's newest class of patrol boats, and their extraordinary acts of valor will continue to inspire future generations of heroes for centuries to come. We salute these brave Americans who risked and gave their lives to save others. We commend the Coast Guard for honoring their memory through the dedication of the fast response cutter fleet, and we thank the dedicated Cajun shipbuilders of Bollinger Shipyards in south Louisiana for providing the Coast Guard with the fastest, most durable patrol boats available to carry out its military, law enforcement, and maritime safety missions. Our Nation will continue to pray for the airmen onboard the Coast Guard helicopter that went down in Mobile Bay earlier this week, as well as their loved ones. We owe them all a debt of extreme gratitude for their service to this country.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, that was a beautiful tribute by my colleague. I come to the floor to just speak for a few minutes while we are trying to figure a way forward on a very important piece of legislation having to do with the transportation infrastructure for our Nation. I know it is a bill that Senator Boxer, as the chair of the EPW Committee, has worked on tirelessly for years along with Senator Inhofe. It is a very important piece of legislation authorizing billions of dollars of programs and projects. I really want to say that I appreciate her leadership so much. I was so hoping the Republican leadership and the Democratic leadership could come together so sometime in the next few days we could have some votes relative to this important legislation and move forward because I know for the people I represent in Louisiana, this is one of our most important infrastructure bills. I am sure, Mr. President, you have many people in Pennsylvania talking with you about the importance of getting these road projects authorized. At a time when people are looking for jobs and looking for work, this would be one of the bills we would like to pass. Let's all be patient but not too patient, to get this through because it is very important. While we are waiting for that, I thought I would come to the floor on this very special day, Valentines Day, to talk about a very special kind of love that happens between children and parents. Mr. President, you know because you have been a wonderful leader, along with many others here on the Senate floor, for the idea that every child deserves a protective family and that children do not do a very good job of raising themselves. Governments do not do a good job of raising children. Children need to be raised in a family. Children should be with their siblings whenever possible, raised in the protective arms and under the watchful eye of parents--at least one responsible adult. Mr. President, you know how heartbreaking it is on every day, but particularly a day like today when we are sending cards to our loved ones. I know the first call I made this morning was to my husband and to my children to wish them a Happy Valentines-- people are doing that all over the world today. In fact, I was given some very interesting information. I had no idea that 180 million Valentine cards were purchased today-- that is pretty amazing--200 million roses were sold today, and 36 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate will be eaten today. I have not gotten my box of chocolate; I don't know if you have. I am still looking for mine. But the sad thing is, there are millions of children who are not going to receive a phone call today. They are not going to receive a card. They will not receive a box of chocolates, and they may not even receive a pat on the head or a hug or a word of encouragement because they are orphans. These are children who live all over the world and in our own country, sad to say. We have about 100,000 children in our foster care system whose parents have had their biological rights terminated because of either gross neglect or abuse, children who are waiting for another family to step up. The Presiding Officer has been very active and successful in passing the adoption tax credit provision that provides some financial assistance to families who are stepping forward to adopt children in need in our own country and around the world. There are 100,000 children waiting for that Valentines card or that box of chocolate or a hug or just to belong to a family. Around the world, we don't even know what those numbers are. They are overwhelming. We know that in countries that have a high incidence of AIDS, for instance, that causes the death of a parent, particularly a mom--a dad as well--really that leaves sometimes families of eight children, nine children, six children abandoned. Even if a grandmother steps in to try to do that work and she dies within a few years, what happens to these children? Well, the Presiding Officer, along with many of my colleagues here, I am proud to say, has introduced a resolution today. I wish to thank my cosponsors, particularly Senator Lugar, who has been a terrific advocate as the former chair and now ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Klobuchar; Senator Grassley, who is my cochair on the foster care caucus; Senator Gillibrand; Senator Inhofe, who has probably traveled to more countries--more times to Africa than any Senator in the history of our country, and he should be commended for the work he is doing on that continent; and Senator Blumenthal and Senator Boozman, who have been outstanding advocates in their own right for different aspects of family policy. We are proud to submit a sense- of-the-Senate resolution. Of course, this does not have the force of law, but it most certainly expresses our views as a body and does have impact on policymakers around the world, nonprofits, the faith-based community, the private sector, and, most importantly, governments around the world. People would say: What does the Senate think about this, Senator? You say this, but what do the other Senators think about the fact of adoption or international adoption? Do they agree with you that children belong in a family? Because it is sad to say that there are some places in this world that think children can grow up fine in an institution or they can grow up fine without parents. Now, we don't think that in the United States. Not only do our hearts and our minds and our faith tell us otherwise, but the science also says that children who grow up in a family of loving nurturing, particularly in the early years--we know this is true raising our own children; I know this as a mother--every year but particularly those early years get the confidence and the affirmation of kindness and gentleness from a parent. I have been learning more about this lately, not only how important it is, but what I have been learning about is what the science says when children don't get that. The term that the American Academy of Pediatrics just released calls it toxic stress--toxic stress on the brain of an infant. They underline how even one caring and supportive relationship with an adult in those early years is so important that it can offset the damaging neurological and physiological affects of stress on children. I know adults have stress because I have it myself. What I didn't realize was that infants--the tiniest little infants--can have toxic stress that affects the development of their brain and their ability to function. I hope our country will realize how important it is for us to do a better job of connecting orphans and abandoned infants and neglected children of all ages--not to put them in an institution, not to turn them out on the street, not to allow them to be trafficked by drug cartels or sex traders or people who will exploit them for other purposes, but to put them in the arms of a loving family, connecting them to a loving and responsible adult. Of course, we try to keep children in their own biological families when possible, but if war or disease or death separates them, why don't we think that it is the most important thing in the world--because it is--to connect those children to a loving family? That is what this resolution says. It is just as simple as we can say it on Valentines Day: For kids who will never get a kiss or a box of chocolates or who haven't yet, there is still hope that we can give them a protective family, that we can protect these sibling groups. If government would work just a little bit smarter, not even necessarily throwing that much more money at it, although I find we can always use a little extra, but just working smarter and better and working with the churches, working with faith-based communities around the world, we can connect children to families. That is all this resolution says. It expresses the sense of the Senate. I hope we can pass this by unanimous consent. So when I travel around the world, as I do often, when I am in Guatemala or when I am in Uganda or when I have been in places such as Russia and in China, and the Senators there or the members or the people, the leaders, ask me, ``What do the other Senators say? Do they believe this as well?'' I can say, ``Absolutely.'' I am going to carry this resolution with me, and I will show it to them because all this resolution says is that every child in the world deserves a protective and loving family. So I don't know if Valentines Day will be perfect for many children. I hope my children have had a wonderful day today. But we can work a little harder to try to do our best to make sure they have at least one caring, nurturing, loving adult in their life. It would make a world of difference in our school systems, in our health care systems, in our criminal justice system. It will make our communities stronger. It will make our States and our Nation stronger and ultimately the world. I know the Presiding Officer believes that. I thank the leadership for allowing me to come to the floor and speak on this today, and hopefully all of my colleagues will vote favorably for this Senate resolution. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I will be as brief as I can, but I ask the Members to reject the House resolution that is before us. I ask Republicans and Democrats to reject the amendment that is before us. It is unnecessary and it violates the Budget Control Act. We just had a very strong vote--72 Members voted to fund relief for victims of disaster as we struggle to rebuild communities from Vermont to Missouri to the west coast that have been devastated by unprecedented disasters. The weather service just indicated that we had over 12 disasters this year of over $1 billion each. Defeat the resolution. It violates the Budget Act, and it sets a disruptive and dangerous precedent for forcing us to fund disasters in the years they occur. It will cut education, transportation, and discretionary programs unnecessarily and in violation of the Budget Control Act. I thank the Members. Please vote no.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Waive and vote. Vote?

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I would like to add my voice to the strong work that has been done by Senator Merkley and Senator Snowe. As the chair of the committee that has some jurisdiction over the HUBZone Program, I want to urge the Banking Committee and the staff and offer the staff of the Small Business Committee from the majority side to work very hard today to see if we can get this cleared. It is very important to the ranking member of our committee, who has worked so hard, and to the Senator from Oregon, who has made very strong arguments about expediting and streamlining some of these approvals, so I wish them the best. We are going to work today to see if we can get it cleared. It would be the second really substantial victory in the Small Business space, having gotten our SBIR bill through just recently after 6 years of very acrimonious debate. If we can get this fix to the HUBZone Program, it would be terrific. I thank the Senators for their hard work. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU

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

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the Homeland Security appropriations bill--one of the nine we approved this morning. I was proud to work with my ranking member, the Senator from Indiana, Mr. Dan Coats. I am very proud to work with the Senator from New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg, who serves as honorary vice chair of the committee because of his seniority and expertise in this area. I wanted to put into the Record some facts about the bill. This bill has been openly and publicly debated for almost 1 year. There are some very important components of the bill that I think are of great interest to the people we serve. First, the bill totals, for 2012, $39.858 billion, slightly below $40 billion. It is not one of the largest in our government, but it is neither the smallest. It is sort of in the midrange of departments, but it is a very important department--one just created, as you know, in the aftermath and the heartbreak of 9/11. It is a department that has had tremendous success in the 10 years but with a lot of growing pains. They had a lot of difficulty getting their feet underneath them and bringing in agencies from around the government to provide the frontline of defense against attacks to our homeland. I commend Secretary Napolitano for the great work she has done in the last 2 years to strengthen this department, to make very tough decisions, which all our Administrators are having to make, about how to allocate resources and set priorities because we are reducing budgets. We are in the process of eliminating, trimming, and rescinding. That is very difficult because, frankly, almost everything we do on the Federal level is important to somebody, to some entity, to some State, to some business cluster or to some activity of the government. Despite the common refrain that there is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse, the fact is, we have been shaving that, eliminating that substantially, over the last several years. Now we are down to the bone and muscle. When you are defending a country, you need to have a lot of muscle. When you are defending a country, you have to have a lot of brain power. Then you have to have a lot of backbone. That is what this bill represents, a lot of muscle and a lot of strength to defend our country. There is no guarantee we will not have another attack, but this is the bill that makes that less likely. That is why I will fight, as chair of this committee, to strengthen it and to have reliable partners at the State and local levels because we cannot do this alone. We need our local police and our State governments' eyes on the ground, in neighborhoods--both in urban areas, as the Chair basically represents in Delaware--but we also need them out in rural areas, where we have very sophisticated and serious potential targets for terrorists in terms of power structure, power generation, electrical structure, energy structure, our ports, which are mostly in urban areas, but sometimes we will find a certain niche port somewhere out there sort of off the beaten path. We need to protect it all. So we have to be very careful, and the members of the committee worked very hard to allocate the $40 billion that was given to us--$39 billion--which was less than we got last year, in an appropriate way. It was less than we got last year, but the needs are greater. Drug trafficking is increasing in Mexico, not decreasing. The pressures on our southern border are increasing, not decreasing. The need to expedite our travelers faster through the screening, both for commercial and vacation travel, is increasing, not decreasing. People think there is some kind of way we can come to Washington and wave a magic wand and make all these needs go down. Actually, as the needs are going up, we are flattening and cutting budgets, which makes it very difficult. My job--and I wish to get this point in--as an appropriator is made even harder, because despite the good work my ranking member has done on helping us to build this bill, as you know, the Republican caucus has been absolutely unmovable on putting any new money on the table--from any source. We have tried, and the President has tried, to raise revenues from people making over $1 million a year. Actually, you have to make over $1 million to pay this surcharge. We have been unable to convince anyone on the other side--or very few--we have had one or two Republicans who have stood, and I am very proud of them--to say we have to put some more money on the table as we continue to cut programs to close the deficit gap and make sure we have the basics covered. I think Senators McCain and Kyl think the basics are the border. They may be right, and I have supported them. We have added 1,000 new Border Patrol agents in the last year, but it costs money. We have had to find that money in this bill. So other things had to be reduced. I understand that. Businesses do that all the time. But businesses also need to sell more products and bring in more money. Businesses also can increase the prices of products sometimes to bring in more revenue. We are having a hard time getting the other side of this body to understand that sometimes you have to bring in more revenue, as well as cutting, to make this work. I am presenting a bill I am proud of, which is $39 billion. It is going to be very difficult to go much further down and to continue to do that which I am going to outline that we do in this bill. First of all, we spent a lot of time this year--because we had to-- talking about disasters. This was the worst year on record for disasters in the United States--from fires in the West, to floods in the Mississippi, to hurricanes raking the Northeast, to tornadoes. We have just had our fill. The weather service, just last week, came out and said that this year, for the first time since they recorded this, we had over 12 disasters of over $1 billion each. So this year, 2011, was a very tough year. Our members and I spent a lot of time talking about disasters, so I will not do that at this moment. We have done enough talk. We funded FEMA. It was a great victory for people who were looking for our help. I wish to talk about what else the Homeland Security bill does because it is not just responding to disasters, which I am proud we took care of this morning. We also do a lot of other important work and fund a lot of other important entities in this bill, including securing our borders--the whole border--the northern border, the southern border and ports of entry. I think we have over 125. People don't realize this. They don't see it as they do if they live in Missouri or in Kansas or maybe even in Arkansas. They are not familiar with the borders along Texas or how big they are, and Arizona. But it is a lot of land that has to be covered, and it is the Federal Government's responsibility. It takes a tremendous amount of money to secure this border, but our country wants us to do that. So we have invested in more border agents, in better technology, and I am even trying to come up with some very cost effective ways to improve the physical infrastructure of the borders because not only do they serve to protect our Nation from people who should not come in, but we also have to get a lot of things across our border, such as all the commerce and traffic and vegetables and agricultural products and manufactured products that our businesses depend on to have good trade with Canada and Mexico. With NAFTA, which is a very important trade foundation for our continent, we just can't close our borders and shut them down. We have to keep them open. America, unlike every other country in the world, is one of the only countries that both has to fight hard for our security but also remain open as a nation. This is a very hard thing to do. We have to have more research and technology, not less. We have to have smarter border crossings, not the old-fashioned, out-of-date type. That is what our bill supports--or, I should say, we try to. We are having a very difficult time because no one will put a dime on the table. So we have to keep finding ways to do this. We have to enforce our immigration laws. Everybody at home tells us they want the laws enforced. But it costs money to enforce those laws, and that is in this bill. As I said, we have to facilitate trade and protect our currency. We also secure cyberspace, which is a whole growing enterprise in space that we are learning a great deal about. We will not be fighting wars the way we have in the past. Our enemies will be attacking us in very different and innovative ways--not army to army, navy to navy, or men and women on the battlefield, as we have become accustomed. They may be attacking our utility sector, trying to shut down our financial systems. We are so reliant and interrelated on all the digital networking. It is very frightening to think what could happen, and we have all been in classified briefings to understand what could happen. This bill helps protect all of our Federal agencies and businesses except for Defense. Defense protects themselves. Our bill has to protect the homeland and the private sector, and we have a long way to go--and not just big companies but small companies have to be protected, and we have to work in partnership with them. Let me mention our TSA in aviation; we fund that. I also want to mention this for Louisiana: Our fishermen have had a terrible time. Maybe in Delaware and other places along the east coast and the west coast my colleagues will understand this. In the gulf, our fishermen are trying to make a living in the middle of hurricanes and oilspills and, in addition, we get crawfish and shrimp dumped from places such as China and Vietnam. So we need money in this bill to enforce those trade laws, and I stepped up and significantly enhanced that effort in this bill. I was proud to do it for the shrimping and fish industries in our country, and particularly along the gulf coast. So that is in this bill as well. I might mention the Secret Service, which we have to support, in addition to the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection. There is a lot in our $40 billion bill. Let me just make one other point. We have eliminated $204 million of rescissions in, as I said, low-priority programs. These were eliminated to spend money on high-priority programs. We have reduced administrative funding by over $800 million, and we have reduced the headquarters account by almost $100 million. I am one to shave some of this money off of administration, but I can't go much further, and I will tell you why. This department is a hard department to manage, and it can't manage itself. Secretary Napolitano must have the resources at the administrative level to manage a department that is only 10 years old, and that brings disparate agencies together to have them function. We have seen what happens when we don't invest in management. We have seen what happens when we gut administration. We had a weak shell of FEMA show up after Katrina and just about ruined our efforts for recovery. We are never going to see that again. So I am committed to funding the FEMA administration and to funding the Department. We can cut, and we have made some cuts, but I am telling the other side we just can't keep cutting the administration and then turn around and expect the same agencies to ferret out fraud, waste, and abuse. We need good managers to do that and so we must continue to fund them. I am proud I was able to include $358 million for six Coast Guard Fast Response Cutters. Those happened to be built in Louisiana--I am proud of that--but the decision was made well before I got to be chair of this committee for that construction. I am proud to have funded that effort and to give the Coast Guard the upgrade of equipment they need to do the work we are asking them to do. Their work just continues to go up. They are a very popular part of our Federal Government. I think everyone loves the Coast Guard. We are very fond of them in Louisiana because we depend on them for so many things, and I think their fleet needs to be upgraded. Some of these ships are built in other States--some of their infrastructure is in other States--and I am proud to support the Offshore Patrol Cutter. We included $110 million for 40 response boats; another $129 million for maritime patrol aircraft, mission pallets, and spares; and we have $18 million to replace a helicopter that crashed. I could recite some other things, but we have tried to do our best by the Coast Guard, to upgrade the equipment they need to help us during this time. We have also put in this bill--and I am very proud of this, and I hope the public will see some immediate improvements--250 machines for additional advanced imaging technology. We put in funding to pay for this so that people can get through those security lines faster. We are losing a lot of money as a nation with people stuck in lines, and it is just slowing down our productivity, which is important because our businesses need people to travel. Of course, being from a State that depends on hospitality--our Presiding Officer just recently visited Louisiana, and we are grateful to him and his family for coming to spend some time with us. We would like everyone to come and spend some time in Louisiana--Lafayette, Baton Rouge. I know the Presiding Officer had a great time and spent some time in hotels and restaurants. New York depends a lot on tourism, as does Nevada and California, and many other States. When people get hassled too much while traveling, they just stop going. Now, we can't drive our cars everywhere we want to go. So making flying a little easier once again for the public, yet still safe, is something I most certainly want to work on. Just a couple more comments and then I will close. I want to commend the group in Louisiana at our Cyber Innovation Center. They received--not out of this bill but out of the Department-- a very small grant to help with the improvement on training the workforce to be the cyber warriors we need them to be. We need to do that in Delaware, we need to do that in Louisiana, we need to do that in Texas, and we need to do it everywhere. We are not educating and producing the graduates we need to be the cyber warriors of the future. We don't want to have our warrior force-- as much as we are proud to have legal immigrants in our country-- outsourced to India or China or Japan, to have their Ph.D.s or masters or degreed individuals come to do this work. We want to raise our own to do this work, and we can do that. I am proud to support some of those efforts in this bill. Unfortunately, the tight spending limits necessitated deep cuts in first responder grant programs. While we were able to provide $354 million above the House level for such grant programs, the final agreement cuts funding by 30 percent. I believe the Federal government has a responsibility to work with and assist State and local first responders in developing their capabilities to mitigate, prevent, and respond to all disasters whether they are natural disasters or terrorist attacks. There are also significant cuts in science and technology activities. While we were successful in mitigating the excessive cuts contained in the House bill by restoring $129 million, the agreement reduces spending by $160 million below fiscal year 2011 levels. I believe that the Department of Homeland Security, like any successful business, must invest in science and technology to address evolving threats and I intend to make this program a priority going forward. To minimize these reductions, the agreement includes $204 million of rescissions of low priority programs, reduces funding in administrative accounts by over $800 million and reduces Departmental headquarters accounts by $9 million. The agreement also provides for the orderly termination of the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement and the Office of Risk Management and Analysis, programs that are either redundant or poorly executed. During our negotiations with the House, we were able to eliminate a number of objectionable language riders, including three immigration provisions that would have limited the Department's authority to enforce our immigration laws, a provision that would have prohibited Transportation Security Administration employees from collective bargaining, and a provision that would have required TSA to reduce thousands of screeners and transition toward a private sector work force. I am pleased that we were able to include in the agreement provisions that will: facilitate maintaining or hiring firefighters by local fire departments; allow FEMA to waive recoupment requirements for disaster survivors who, through no fault of their own, received overpayments as much as 6 years ago; extend the National Flood Insurance Program through May 31, 2012; and extend the authorities of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program for 1 year. The agreement also includes a provision that gives States the flexibility to use FEMA hazard mitigation grant funding to reimburse homeowners for storm mitigation work originally completed with a Small Business Administration loan. This provision provides equity of benefits among disaster survivors. The agreement includes funding for a number of critical investments that will enhance the department's capacity to respond to an evolving threat: Coast Guard funding includes: $358 million for six Fast Response Cutters; $77 million for long lead time material for the sixth National Security Cutter; $25 million for development and design of the Offshore Patrol Cutter; $110 million for 40 Response Boat Mediums; $129.5 million for two Maritime Patrol Aircraft, mission pallets, and spares; $18.3 million to replace a helicopter that crashed in 2010; $15.2 in response to the gulf coast oil spill, to enhance oil spill response capabilities, including 87 new positions; $200.7 million for shore facility projects, infrastructure to support new assets, and military housing; and $63.5 million for a new C-130J aircraft, by transfer from the Department of Defense. Funding is included for the Transportation Security Administration for: 250 additional Advanced Imaging Technology machines with the capacity to protect people's privacy; 145 new behavior detection officers; 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response, VIPR, teams; 20 additional explosives detection canine teams; and 53 new positions to strengthen international air cargo security. The agreement provides resources to Customs and Border Protection to support: 21,370 Border Patrol agents, sustaining the increased levels approved in the Fiscal Year 2010 Supplemental; 21,186 CBP officers working at the ports of entry, including 312 new officers and additional canine teams; $5 million for officer and agent integrity programs, including polygraph testing; $5 million to CBP to work within existing laws to increase collection of antidumping and countervailing duties and implement aggressive options to level the trade playing field for U.S. companies. The agreement provides $443 million for cybersecurity efforts, an increase of $80 million above Fiscal Year 2011, of which $22.8 million is for cybersecurity education and awareness. The increase will continue efforts to combat the cyber threat by reducing points of access to Federal computer networks, enhancing intrusion detection through Einstein, and building a cybersecurity workforce through education and training. So it remains the responsibility of each generation to make the necessary investments to secure our homeland. I take this responsibility seriously, and my members take it seriously as part of our Homeland Security Committee. We worked very hard to produce a good bill for the country. We are proud of this bill. It is about $40 billion of their money. I hope they believe we are allocating it and spending it accordingly. Mr. President, I look forward to the hearings we are going to have next year on some important topics, and I will close by wishing you and the staff and everyone here a merry Christmas and a happy and blessed holiday. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I wish to commend the minority leader for that beautiful tribute. I have been privileged to be on the floor several times when he has offered tributes to his constituents, and I always find them to be so beautifully written and delivered. I understand he writes them himself. I was very touched by his memories of a special constituent. I wish him and all the people of Kentucky a great holiday season.

Ms. LANDRIEU

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

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I will take the opportunity while the floor is relatively quiet to come and explain one of the votes we are going to be asked to cast tomorrow. In fact, it is very timely that I am here on the Senate floor at 2 o'clock in the afternoon because the House, I understand, just passed H. Con. Res. 94, and I am going to ask the Senate to reject that resolution when it comes here tomorrow for our vote. I am asking Democrats and Republicans to join with me in voting no on that resolution. I would like to take a few minutes to explain why. I think pictures are worth a thousand words, so let me just use four to save time. This is about disasters in 2011. This whole issue is about how we should budget for disasters. It is an important debate that has been one of the many debates Congress has had over this last year, and we are wrapping up that debate in the next 48 hours. So this is a part of that debate. I think pictures speak louder than words. This is a picture of Joplin, MO, a town that was virtually wrecked by a massive and monster tornado and tornadoes. This is a picture of the Mississippi River flooding in Cairo, IL. This year, the Mississippi River was at one of its highest levels in some places in over a century. We received our own share of that flooding in Louisiana, which sits at the base of this great Mississippi River basin. So our people, as well as people along the entire Mississippi River Valley, experienced unprecedented flooding. The lonely and distraught couple sitting in what looks like the middle of an ocean is actually in Nags Head, NC. This is what happened to their beach home as water virtually surrounded them and destroyed that community. Again, this happened this year with Hurricane Irene. Down here on the far right is a picture of the fires that raged and devastated parts of Texas, which experienced one of the worst droughts in the recorded history of Texas. What is sad about this debate is I could show picture after picture after picture of communities in our country devastated by tornadoes, fires, hurricanes--disasters that strike without warning and whose impact is virtually impossible to measure until months afterward because of the extraordinary damage. In fact, the Weather Service just this month did a recalculation of 2011 and declared it to be one of the worst disaster years since records have been kept, saying they have now concluded, as enough evidence has come in, that we had over 12 disasters in 1 year--in this year of 2011--over $1 billion each. So this year was a real outlier, but sadly--and the Presiding Officer has heard it in his State, and we have heard it in my State of Louisiana, and we have heard it around the world--these pictures may not be an aberration. These pictures may show what is to come. And while 2011 was a very bad year, people are starting to think that as a result of the changes in temperature and climate change--and whatever people think the reasons are for that, no one should disagree with the consequences of changing temperature, which are violent weather episodes. The question is, What are we going to do about it and what is the right way to move forward? Let me show my colleagues what the wrong way is before I explain the right way. This picture depicts the wrong way to respond. This has been suggested by some of my Republican colleagues. They suggest that when the water rises on your home or when the tornado rips you out of your bed and the roof falls on you and your family or when the river water rises and you look out of your second-floor window over your 100- or 200-acre farm and you can't see anything and your cows are swimming and your horses are swimming as well, that what you should do is climb on your roof, call Washington, call the hotline, and identify the offset in the Federal budget to provide the cost of your rescue. It is laughable. It is supposed to be funny. It is a funny cartoon. But when we think about it, it is really not funny to tell the American people that in order to be rescued, you need to call the budget office of the Federal Government, identify an offset, and then we will send a rescue unit to respond to your emergency. It is not funny. The American people aren't laughing. So I am going to ask my colleagues to vote no on H. Con. Res. 94 tomorrow because that is exactly what H. Con. Res. 94 does. I should get a big pen and write, ``If you think that grandma here with a cat and the phone is what you want your constituents to look like, then you just go right on and vote for H. Con. Res. 94.'' But I am not going to vote for that concurrent resolution because our leaders wisely--both Republican and Democratic leaders, wisely--in August, in anticipation of this issue, already provided for disaster funding in the Budget Control Act. They already provided for it. We don't have to tell our constituents that before we can send money to help them in Joplin or in Nags Head, NC, or Cairo, IL, or San Antonio or Dallas, TX, they have to identify an offset, because we wisely said within the Budget Control Act, within our efforts to close the budget gap, that we are providing for disaster funding, and that is what we have done. But some Members of the House will continue to want to adhere to trying to identify an offset before disasters can be responded to. They say things such as, we should pay for disasters in the year we respond to them. I am going to present a chart in just a minute, but first I want to try to explain the second reason this is a faulty way forward. In 2005, which wasn't that many years ago, the Federal Government allocated $45 billion--actually, I think this number is about $68 billion, and I will show the chart in a minute--in 1 year, and that year was the year of Katrina and Rita, which were the No. 1 and No. 3 most violent and disastrous and costly hurricanes in the history of our country. They happened in the same year to the same State--or to the same area, which was Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. We got the brunt of two of the worst storms that literally flooded a metropolitan area or flooded an area greater than the size of Great Britain. And that amount was $68 billion. If we followed the poor logic of some on the Republican side that we had to pay for this disaster in that year in the budget, I think we would have probably had to eliminate half of the discretionary budget of the United States of America. I am going to get that exact number. But it is ludicrous to think we would be able to find $68 billion in the budget in that one year. In fact, the whole homeland security budget--it wouldn't be half--the whole homeland security budget is $42 billion. So let me repeat: Instead of half, we would have had to completely eliminate the entire homeland security budget of the United States of America, plus another couple of smaller budgets, to meet the $68 billion requirement. It doesn't make any sense, and it is not right. It is not the right way to budget. It violates the Budget Control Act, and it is so hypocritical that some on the other side are requiring this for domestic expenses when they don't require the same thing for foreign expenses or international expenses. I would like to put up the next chart. To pour salt on the wound--and I don't quite understand the politics. I don't understand the math. I don't understand the budgetary consequences, and I don't understand the politics. They are wrong on all three counts because this is what those who voted for H. Con. Res. 94 have to go home and explain to their constituents. They are going to have to go home and say: When I was in Congress, I allocated $823 billion for the war in Iraq and required no pay-for. Then I went back to Congress and spent $557 billion in Afghanistan and didn't say a word about that. Then I went back and added a Medicare drug benefit for $180 billion, and we didn't pay for that. Then I went back and sent checks to everyone when George Bush was the President, and those checks cost $124 billion, and we didn't require any offset or budget implication for that. But when Americans had their homes destroyed, their farms flooded, their businesses ruined by disasters, I can't send a dime unless we take it out of health, transportation, or education. So they said no to this little $8.1 billion--after spending a grand total of $1.68 trillion on all these items. So I do not understand the math. I do not understand their position as to the budget. I most certainly do not understand the politics, and I do not agree with it because I think the American people should come first. Their needs from disasters should come first. We cannot possibly, because of the erratic nature of disasters themselves--we might think we are powerful in the Senate, but we are not more powerful than God, and we are not more powerful than nature; and I am not saying that God causes these storms, but nature has a way--we are not that powerful and we do not know and cannot predict when these will happen. All we can do is respond. We have responded appropriately in the Senate version of this bill. Our bill will provide funding for FEMA, for the Corps of Engineers, within the budgetary control structure. It will allow us to pay for this over time in future negotiations, which is the wise way to do it. But it will not force us to use disasters that occur in this country as an excuse to continue to ring out costs from health, transportation, and education. As my colleagues know, I feel very strongly about this issue, and I am proud to say I think many Democrats and, hopefully, some Republicans feel strongly that their constituents at home should come first, that the budget should provide for an immediate response when people are victims of floods or tornadoes or hurricanes or other disasters. I think most people in the Senate understand 2011 was a tough year. It was a historic year. But the sad thing is, I think we also understand it could repeat itself. Using these disasters, when it was not the case for the war in Iraq, was not the case for the war in Afghanistan, was not the case for Medicare, was not the case for the rebate checks--but when it comes to disasters we cannot seem to find $8.1 billion within the budget control structure. I do not, as I said, understand it. We have seen this cartoon I have in the Chamber before. I will not go into it. But I think it says beautifully why this is the wrong approach. Again, these pictures speak a thousand words. This other chart shows what a disaster looks like. I wish I had something to show what it feels like to lose everything, and then, when you have lost everything, trying to provide confidence to your own family, to your own children, and to your neighbors, to then listen to the debate in Congress that says: We write a blank check to Iraq, a blank check to Afghanistan, a blank check here, and yet, when it comes to funding for disasters, we have to have this argument. I am going to ask my colleagues to vote no on H. Con. Res. 94 tomorrow. In voting no, we will reject to the find-the-offset-now requirement. We will honor the agreement made between Republican and Democratic leaders back in August to include this in the Budget Control Act. We will send a powerful signal to our constituents that they come first; that disaster victims should come first in the budget, not last; that we understand how difficult it is for them to rebuild their communities, and the Federal Government wants to be and will be a reliable partner they can depend on in their time of need. With this ill-advised resolution, we return to an issue that consumed this Chamber for weeks this past fall. That issue is how we pay for disaster funding--money used by communities destroyed by disasters that are struggling to clean up, rebuild, and move on with their lives after a tragic act of Mother Nature. We have seen many such events over the past few years--from historic floods in the Midwest, to deadly tornadoes in the South, to the wreckage inflicted on a huge swath of the country earlier this year by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. Back in September, Republicans in the House stood in the way of this critical recovery money, arguing that no funds should be sent to disaster victims until Congress had figured out how to pay for it through other cuts. That is bad enough on its face. But what made it even more ridiculous is that this Congress had already agreed on a method for funding disasters. That agreement came over the summer when we passed the Budget Control Act--a measure that received significant support from Democrats and Republicans in both Chambers of Congress. That act included two contingency funds--funds that could be spent above and beyond the established cap on Federal spending. One of those funds was for overseas contingencies like the wars and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan that allows for $126 billion in spending above the cap. The other was for disaster relief and included an $11.3 billion cap adjustment for additional spending beyond the regular level. We made this agreement because we recognized that there is a real cost associated with disaster recovery--a cost that can't always be anticipated because natural disasters, by their very nature, are highly unpredictable. The stand-alone disaster funding bill we consider today, when combined with the minibus passed last month, will account for $10.4 billion of that $11.3 billion disaster funding cap--an amount completely within the requirements laid out in the bipartisan Budget Control Act. But now, House Republicans are once again trying to go back on that agreement by requiring that agreed-upon funding be offset with additional across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending. There are two reasons this is wrong-headed. Reason No. 1: The House Republicans are creating a double standard regarding offsets--one for defense spending and another for domestic disaster relief. That is because, in this proposal, they only require an additional offset for domestic disaster spending. They have sent over no such language for the additional funding provided in the bill we just voted on for overseas contingencies. Let's get to the heart of what that means. It means that House Republicans are saying: No, we don't have to pay for wars in places like Afghanistan or Iraq. But we do have to offset spending for domestic disaster recovery. Why is that? Why is it that the House Republicans say we are able to rebuild Iraq or Afghanistan without a single word of protest, but we won't rebuild Vermont or New Jersey or Missouri or Louisiana in a similar way? The omnibus bill has $126 billion in it for the costs of the wars. If we followed the same pay-for standard that the House Republicans are insisting on for disaster relief on the costs of the war, we would have to impose a 24-percent across-the-board cut on the Defense budget or a 12-percent cut on the entire discretionary budget. This double standard makes no sense. I remind my colleagues that when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the gulf coast, it required appropriations of more than $62 billion in fiscal year 2005 alone. If we applied the House Republican requirement to pay for a disaster of a similar size, we would have to cut domestic spending by 12 percent. During the 112th Congress, we have not cut defense. We have not increased taxes on individuals who make more than $1 million a year. But the House Republicans want to keep going back to this one small part of the budget to find savings. So, let's be clear. Here is what the Republicans do not require payment for: Iraq war, $823 billion; Afghanistan war, $557 billion; Medicare drug benefit, $180 billion; and Bush rebate checks, $124 billion. Now, you ask, what do they require payment for? Community disaster relief, $8.1 billion. Reason No. 2 of why the House Republicans' plan should be firmly rejected: The House Republicans' plan wouldn't require true across-the- board cuts to pay for disaster spending. It would only require cuts to domestic discretionary spending--a portion of the government that makes up only 14 percent of total expenditures. In April, we cut domestic discretionary spending for fiscal year 2011 by 7 percent. And the omnibus legislation before the Senate, consistent with the Budget Control Act, cuts it by an additional 1 percent. This proposal--the one we are currently considering--would pile on to that by cutting another 1.8 percent to domestic programs. I think we need to be clear about exactly what this would mean. There are consequences to these cuts--real consequences that the American people would feel immediately. Among them, it means that Title I education funding would be cut by $265 million. That means that almost 1,000 schools serving more than 350,000 disadvantaged students could lose funding, and about 3,700 teachers and aides could lose their jobs. It means that special education funding would be cut by $199 million. That could lead to the loss of 2,600 education staff serving special needs students. It means a $146 million cut to Head Start funding, which would eliminate 11,000 low-income students and their families from this critical program. It would mean a reduction of 400 Border Patrol agents--nearly half the number that we hired and trained since Congress enacted the border security supplemental 16 months ago. It would mean that 161,000 fewer women, infants, and children would receive food assistance under the WIC program. It would hurt our efforts to combat terrorism and crime, with more than 5,500 Department of Justice positions becoming vacant through a hiring freeze and furloughs. It would mean a cut to the IRS enforcement mission, resulting in lost revenues of approximately $4 billion annually. That would increase the deficit by at least six times the magnitude of the proposed reduction. It would mean a $15 million cut to the senior nutrition program, which means 2 million fewer meals to needy seniors. The House Republicans would like you to think that these cuts are nothing more than reducing bureaucracy. I beg to differ. These cuts have consequences in the everyday lives of Americans across our Nation. Here is the bottom line: Instead of being really serious about closing the budget gap and putting new revenues on the table or saying across-the-board cuts for everything, House Republicans continue to use everything, even disasters that strike home, as an excuse to cut health, education, and transportation. Well, I stand here today and say to them: Enough is enough. I urge my colleagues to vote against this resolution. This Congress made an agreement months ago on how to fund unanticipated disasters. We should stick with that agreement. There are times and there are places for politics. Aid for disaster victims is not one of them. Victims of natural disasters should not be victimized twice--first by Mother Nature and then by politics in Washington. There may be another expression of a different side of this argument. I have not heard a good one yet. But I look forward--if any of my colleagues want to come down and take the opposite side of this argument, I am around. I am not going anywhere. I will be here today. I will be here tomorrow. I will be happy to debate them on the floor on this subject. But as the chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, I have to take a strong stand on this issue because our budget is the one that basically gets called on to fund these disasters. Again, if I have to follow the requirement to fund them in the year the money is spent--1 year--I am going to have to come to this floor and tell everyone: We are not going to have a homeland security bill this year because we just had a category 5 strike Miami, and the bill-- as they said last night on the Weather Channel--will exceed $40 billion. So I am going to have to give up our whole bill, and we will have no security for the United States to pay for the disaster in 1 year. This is the chart I wanted to show. This is how erratic funding can be, as shown on this chart. This shows funding from 2003 to 2012. In 2003, we spent basically a little over $1.7 billion. Then it jumped up to a little over $6 billion. Then, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma--which was in Florida--moved us all the way up to $45 billion in 2005, and then we fell back again to about $7.8 billion. We can see the erratic nature of these storms. It is impossible for us to even get a good average. So the only thing we can do is put a baseline in our bill, and then if disaster strikes, to respond and put it in the Budget Control Act over our 302(b) allocations. If we do not do it that way, we are going to end up having to scramble every year to quickly calculate what the disasters were last year and jam it against some budget. It is either going to be education that gets gutted or health that gets gutted or agriculture that gets gutted or homeland security. I do not want to have to be the one to call the thousands of Border Patrol agents whom I have helped to fund in my budget or have to call Senator John McCain or Senator Kyl and say: I am sorry. We have to lay off all the Border Patrol agents along the border in Arizona for a year or two because we had a big storm in Miami, and I have to send the money to Miami. Whoever heard of such a thing. That is what the Republicans in the House have sent to us. It should be rejected on its face. There is a better way to move forward, and the way is in the Budget Control Act that our leaders wisely have already agreed to. So we will have this vote tomorrow. Again, I think I have raised three excellent points about why the House approach is wrong and why our approach is correct. If someone wants to come and debate it, I will be happy to maybe try to explain it a little bit more. I can understand some on the other side who say: We have to find a way to pay for it, even if we have already negotiated, et cetera, but when the other side refuses to put even a new penny on the table to help with some of these things, it makes it even harder to achieve what we are trying to achieve. I thank the Presiding Officer. I hope my colleagues will hear these arguments and let me know if there is anything further we can explain on it. But I think the picture says a thousand words. I will close with this again: No American should have to sit on their roof, while the water rises, and identify an offset to finance their own rescue. We are a stronger nation than that. We are a bigger nation than that. We most certainly can provide the funding for FEMA, for the Corps of Engineers, and other funding in the way our Budget Control Act stipulates in this budget. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, while we have a bit of quiet time on the Senate floor this evening, I thought I would make brief remarks about the extraordinary career of MG Benny Landreneau. General Landreneau recently retired as the most senior Adjutant General in the Nation, with nearly 14 years of service as head of the Louisiana National Guard, serving under three Governors, and nearly four decades of service to the State of Louisiana and our Nation. Over many years I have had the joy and pleasure of calling General Landreneau a friend and a colleague and I have worked closely with him and the 11,000 members of our Louisiana National Guard. Through the September 11 attacks on our country and through Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustaf, and Ike and the recent BP oilspill--one of the largest environmental disasters in our Nation's history--General Landreneau has proven his leadership to the people of Louisiana and our Nation time and time again. Benny, as he is known by his friends, credits his father with inspiring him to serve in the National Guard. His father Joseph Audley Landreneau was a World War II veteran and engineering soldier and a combat veteran. Benny, who grew up in Vidrine, LA, chose to follow in his father's footsteps and quickly rose through the ranks in the Louisiana National Guard. As a young man, in 1969 he enlisted as a light weapons infantryman in the 773rd Maintenance Battalion. Two and a half years later he graduated from Officer Candidate School and became a second lieutenant platoon leader as part of the 3671st Maintenance Company. From those very early beginnings in the National Guard, he progressed rapidly through the ranks. During his time with the Guard, General Landreneau was part of several major campaigns, including a deployment during Desert Storm. During the first gulf war General Landreneau and his 527th Engineer Battalion were tasked with any number of important missions, including the No. 1 mission for the gulf war commander himself, GEN Fred Franks. General Franks needed an unmanned aerial vehicle landing strip built immediately, so he knew who to call to get that job done. He called Benny Landreneau and his battalion. Need I say that it was done, I am sure, under budget and before time. After the 527th returned to the command headquarters, General Franks called General Landreneau to thank him for what he did, which was extraordinary, and asked the general what he could do as a return favor. Without blinking an eye, General Landreneau just said: Sir, please, if you could get us home for Mother's Day, it would be appreciated. So all of the mostly guys were home from other States--some women in the battalion as well--and they were thrilled to be home with their parents. In 1996, shortly after the gulf war, General Landreneau retired from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources where he served also as a State conservationist for almost 30 years. Since that time, he has taken the National Guard in Louisiana from a strategic reserve force to an operational force that continues to lead the Nation both on and off the battlefield, and I will talk about off the battlefield in just a minute. General Landreneau was quoted as saying: The Louisiana National Guard soldiers and airmen are part of the finest National Guard in America. It is their dedication and professionalism, their commitment and their hard work that has made the Louisiana National Guard the finest guard in America. The Louisiana National Guard has performed in such an outstanding matter in accepting these new challenges of being an operational force and responding to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and deploying throughout the world when called on and, at the same time, being able to take up the work of their State emergencies-- Which have been too numerous to count-- and being able to respond to the citizens of this State in an outstanding fashion. This is due in part, I say, to his leadership and vision. General Landreneau has also been instrumental in implementing one of the most phenomenal programs in our country: the Louisiana National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program. It is part of the National Youth ChalleNGe Program. This is what I mean by off-the-battlefield expertise as well as on-the-battlefield expertise. Some years ago--I think about 15--when General Conway was the general for the National Guard, he helped to start this program that now has graduated over 100,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 18 who are unfortunately drifting from the straight and narrow path. They haven't ended up in prison yet, but they are headed that way. They have given up on themselves. They have gotten into a little bit of trouble and need a second chance. This program offers them that chance. Under General Landreneau's leadership, we run three of the dozens of programs operating in the United States. I might say we run the best three, having been granted and acknowledged with awards in ceremonies for many years in Louisiana and having graduated the largest number of young people. This has been done because of General Landreneau's extraordinary commitment to the citizens of our State and to the young people of our State and the respect he has of his rank and file for these men and women to go beyond their regular duties and responsibilities and step up and say: There is an epidemic in America. Our dropout rate is too high. What can the National Guard do, in addition to everything else they do both abroad and at home, to help? It is extraordinary. His grandchildren and his children are proud of him. I know he is very proud of them. He has assembled over the last 14 years arguably the most tested staff in the Nation. He is being succeeded as Adjutant General by GEN Glenn Curtis, who has served as General Landreneau's right-hand man for the last 6 years. It is the hallmark of his leadership that General Landreneau leaves his staff ready to step up, ready to serve, and ready to continue the excellent service they have given to the people of our State and our Nation. Although General Curtis will bring his own brand of leadership to the National Guard, there is no doubt, as he has said to me many times, he has learned at the elbow of GEN Benny Landreneau. In conclusion, I would like to personally, on behalf of the people of our State, thank GEN Benny Landreneau for his many years of service and dedication to the people of Louisiana and our country. I want him to know he has positively impacted our State in ways that will long be remembered. The people of Louisiana are grateful for his service and for his dedication, and we honor his admirable career in the National Guard. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to Joan McKinney, who has been a beloved and respected mainstay of the Senate Press Gallery for almost 40 years. Joan retired recently after a decade of service on the Press Gallery staff. Prior to that, she served the people of my home State of Louisiana for 2\1/2\ decades as Washington correspondent for the Baton Rouge Advocate. Joan is originally from Greenville, SC, and is a graduate of Winthrop College. She came to Washington in 1971 to work on the press staff of our dear colleague Senator Fritz Hollings. As her career advanced, she chose to return to journalism, working first as a reporter for the Greenville News, where her father served as editor, and then for another paper from my home state, the Shreveport Journal. Joan was hired away by the Advocate when she continually beat the Advocate's reporter--who happened to be the son of the publisher--on stories. I came to know and respect Joan during our many hallway meetings that so often occur between Members and the press. I also had the great fortune of getting to know her as a person and as a friend. In her tenure as the Advocate's congressional correspondent, Joan came to be well respected by members of the Louisiana delegation from both parties. The Members from my State knew her as fair-handed and tough, and most of all, that there was nothing, nothing that could get by her. Through her work, Joan became an expert on the intricacies of the Senate and the Supreme Court. She took this knowledge with her into her role as a member of the Senate daily press gallery staff. I know her Senate acumen on the institution and its procedure was of great value to the reporters roaming the gallery who relied on her for deep insight about the Chamber they cover. Joan, who has won reporting awards from the South Carolina and Louisiana press associations, is a longtime member of the elite Gridiron Club of newspaper writers. She was one of the first women to become a member. I know that one of Joan's biggest interests is dance, something I am told she plans to be very active with in retirement. Long before ``American Idol'' and ``So You Think You Can Dance,'' Joan was an excellent competitive dancer. Her specialty is Shag, a regional dance popular in the Carolinas. This year, Joan won her first national Shag championship. With more time to practice, I am sure more dance titles are on the way. For those of us who have been fortunate to work with Joan, it is almost impossible to imagine the Press Gallery without her. But I know I join the entire Senate press corps in wishing Joan the best as she embarks on this new adventure in her life. Joan, thank you for sharing with this institution and our entire country your knowledge, experience and good heart. All of us are better as a result of your service to the best ideals of our democracy.