Mary Landrieu

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. I will take the 8 minutes I have left to read a couple of e-mails I have received from people all over the country to give courage and support to the colleagues that are negotiating this. I think they can see this is important to a lot of people. This is from ``Nobody.'' That is how they signed it. The name is Janice. I have three Nephews and two Nieces that are in our National Guard, and they are being sent over to Iraq. I am so angry at the Congress and the Senate today but I pray they never have to see their Sons or Daughters go to this war. Let alone their Grandchildren. My Nephews and Nieces have left behind 11 children without any health coverage, let alone monies needed to survive. Yes, survive! Today my Husband and I . . . are taking care of three children of our loving Niece. It is hard on us as we are retired and living on a fixed income. Might I add that I do not have health coverage any longer as the monthly payments became too much for us. Please continue your fight for our Soldiers! We love you Senator for your Grace . . . Another e-mail: Thank you for standing there bravely for all of our Americans who are becoming more powerless with each passing day. I am a disabled person barely able to stand on my own two legs, so I really appreciate that you are standing there for me and all of our National Guard troops. I am watching you on CSpanII today. I know you are fighting for us and I am moved to thank you [for trying]. I will be watching. I will be waiting, and I appreciate it. Your desire to assist those individuals points to a bigger problem--military pay. Service members deserve better, all servicemen deserve better. Your efforts to help will create a situation in which reservists and National Guardsmen receive higher compensation than that of the full-time personnel. The resolution to this problem is not providing a way to help reservists and National Guard make up income. It is helping them make up income and increasing the compensation for all service personnel. He goes on to say that he supports our efforts. Again, I will just share that in the last 14 years since 1990, we have called up 690,000 troops. In the previous 30 years, from the Berlin crisis to the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam war, we only called up 100,000. Our policies have put more pressure on the Guard and Reserve to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Active members. I agree, we need to improve the pay and compensation across the board, but I can't provide tax relief for the Active Reserve in the same way I can do it for the Guard and Reserve in this bill. There are other benefits that are being provided. If we can explore the possibilities in the amendment I am supporting, I will be happy to do that. But it is for all of our troops that we stand here and try to work on an amendment that will give a tax credit to the companies that are being patriotic, doing the right thing, trying to keep the pay their reservists were making when they were homeside and now are losing sometimes 40 percent of that pay when they go to the front line. Many of our employers are picking up the difference. The tax credit we have argued for will help those small companies-- some of them struggling--to continue to pay their guardsmen and reservists. It is clear. It is convenient for the accounting systems of our companies, and we most certainly can afford it. Again, $137 billion of tax relief getting ready to be voted on. I said I can't vote for this bill, but a majority of the Members will. I am not faulting them for that vote, but I am going to stay as long as it takes to get this amendment into this bill or at least get it attached to another bill so that we can say, as Senators, that we did our job and we did the best. I am happy to say the negotiations are going on, and they look promising. I thank my colleagues for being so open and for working through this today. I know it is unusual that we are in on a Sunday, but I thank them for their patience, and I retain the balance of my time.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I have 8 minutes left. I would like to take those 8 minutes, and then I will reserve the last 7 minutes I have because that is all I have. Would the Chair inform me, please, at 7 minutes?

Ms. LANDRIEU. So I have about 6 minutes, because I had 7 under my previous order.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank the leader, Senator Daschle, for his comments and for the respectful way in which he has addressed the situation we find ourselves in now, because the Members of this body have been working very hard the last couple of days on very important matters. As you know, each and every one of these matters is extremely important to our constituents from our own States, but some of these matters transcend our own States and our districts. Some of these matters transcend individual industries. Actually, the matter that is before the Senate, and the main reason for the filibuster--or one of the reasons; there are two or three--but the one I have been coming to the floor and speaking about, with several of my colleagues, is the fact we are in the process of passing a bill--if I can pick it up; it is quite heavy--a bill with about 600 pages in it of tax cuts, $137 billion that includes almost every industry you can imagine, large and small, in every part of the country, but the one group of people that is not in here, even if you read from the first page to the last, and even the small print, the one group of people who you will not find in this bill is the 643,000 men and women of the Guard and Reserve and the families they represent. There is not one sentence of tax relief for them. So I took the floor on Wednesday and said there must have been some mistake, because when it left the Senate 100 Members of this body--all the Republicans and all the Democrats--had supported a provision. It went over to the House, but something happened on the way back from the House. It was omitted. I did not read every page, and I trusted the summary. But when I scanned the 500 items in here and did not find it, I came to the floor. I went to the Republican leaders, I went to the Democratic leaders, and I said: Please know that I cannot accept passing a $137 billion tax bill that fattens the paychecks of many people in America, some of whom are, I am sure, deserving, but keeps the paychecks of the Guard and Reserve--the men and women who are taking 100 percent of the risk today, the families who are making almost all the sacrifice, and the men and women who are actually losing pay--I cannot for the life of me understand, and no one in my State can understand, how they were left out. So I have made it clear that I am prepared to stay here until the very end, whether that end is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. I know I cannot keep this whole Senate here forever, but I can keep the Senate here for the better part of this week. It is not my intention. I am respectful of all the Senators' schedules. I am respectful of their other commitments. I am very respectful that a third of them are in reelections. I am not up for reelection, and I understand the tenseness of this election time. And we actually have a national election. But my leader knows I do not come here with any small request. I do not come here with a Landrieu request. This is not even a Louisiana request. This is a national plea on behalf of the 645,000 men and women who have been called up to serve, to support us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all places in between. How do we have the nerve to pass a tax bill and leave them out? So that is what the filibuster is about. Let me be clear, I enjoy working with many Members on the Republican side. I see my good friend from Alabama here, Senator Sessions. He and I have worked together on coastal erosion issues. We have worked together on Armed Services before. I think he is going to have some comments about the work he has done which has been tremendous on the part of the Guard and the Reserve. I say to the Presiding Officer, you and I just passed one of the few appropriations bills. People said it would never happen; it cannot happen; the DC appropriations bill will not pass; it will be contentious. If I may say, pat myself on the head, and you, too, we did a pretty good job of getting our bill through under a lot of odds that were against us. That bill is already gone, on the President's desk to sign. It strengthens schools, strengthens child welfare agencies in the District, for which the Presiding Officer deserves a lot of credit. So please, I am not here to obstruct. I am not here to slow things down for no good reason. There are other provisions I did not get in this bill that I asked for. Fine, they are not in there. But I cannot, in good conscience, not speak and not stand on this floor for as long as it takes to get something done for them. I am representing many people, not myself, in this Chamber. Let me say the good news in the 5 minutes I have left. We made some progress today. Several Members who had questions about the amendment in question have been working with their staffs. We may be coming up with a way that we could together get this amendment intact as much as I have already described it and get it connected to another bill that we can send back to the House. I wish I could control what the House of Representatives does. I would like to go over there and give them a piece of my mind on their floor. But I am not allowed to do that. I am not. All I can do is stand here in the Senate, urge the Senators to stay strong and firm--we all voted for this amendment--and get it on a bill and send it back to them. And when the leadership over there decides--because they can control their floor action. Our leadership cannot really control us that much. They can put a lot of pressure on us, but we are Senators and we can speak; and I intend to. The Members over there cannot speak freely because of the Constitution and the rules of the Congress, but the leadership will get this bill and they can decide, in October, November, December, or January, in this Congress or the next Congress, what they want to do about it. But what we can do is get this amendment negotiated. I thank the Senators today who have been working on this. I feel not confident, but I feel encouraged. I feel encouraged that some parts of the amendment I have talked about that will help our Guard and Reserve to be a part of tax relief that we pass out of the Senate could be included. So I thank my leader. Mr. President, I inquire, how much time of the 15 minutes do I have left?

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the leader.

Ms. LANDRIEU. No objection.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I object.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, reserving right to object, I just ask the leader----

Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you, Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 30 minutes as in morning business.

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

Ms. LANDRIEU. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. There are no other Senators wanting to speak.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 30 minutes.

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

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 30 minutes as in morning business.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Ms. LANDRIEU. I will reserve the remainder of my time. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU. For one more question.

Ms. LANDRIEU. The Senator's first question, in my opinion, doesn't have a lot of merit. The second one does have a lot of merit, and I would like to respond to it. There is an argument that comes out of the part of the Pentagon, not the whole Pentagon. There is something unsettling to a man on the front line, some active and some Reserve, when both are driving in a truck in Iraq, that they should get the same paycheck. They both should get $30,000 no matter what. No matter if the reservist makes $70,000 in the United States in their regular work, when they drive the truck in Iraq they should make $30,000. I don't hold to that position. I will tell you why. Our Government benefits significantly financially, and the taxpayers benefit by not having to keep that Guard and Reserve full time, 24-7, year after year after year. We benefit as taxpayers, so we have more money to give out in tax cuts to everybody else. We benefit by not having to keep a force. We have 1.6 million Active-Duty, and we have 1.2 million Guard and Reserve who are now 40 percent of our force and growing every day. You can see during World War II, in the 1940s, we called up everybody. We had to fight the war. We called up everybody who would go, and even those who didn't want to go because they were forced to go under the draft. Our Active Forces are down at the lowest level since 1941. I hope everybody can see this. Our Active Forces are down to their lowest level since 1941. You know who makes up this gap? After the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and we are in a war, do you know who makes up this gap? The Guard and Reserve. They go to the front lines. All I am talking about is since we asked them to go, just let their paychecks follow them by giving a tax credit to the thousands of businesses, large and small, in this country that are doing the patriotic thing, as acknowledged by our President and our Secretary of Defense and the leadership. Can't we give a tax credit to keep their paychecks for their families? This isn't for the soldier. This is for their families. I think the men and women, active, traditional units, understand that. They get health benefits. They get other benefits when they are Regular Army or Reserve. The reservists don't even have a matching 401(k) savings plan. The reservists don't even have TRICARE. The reservists have very little, and we are blocking them from keeping the one paycheck they do have. Some Senators don't think they should be able to get the employers' tax credit to keep bread on the table and keep their mortgages paid. This is the issue. I understand the Pentagon disagrees with that. I understand their position. I don't agree with it. I think, yes, we should pay a differential, or at least allow reservists, when they go to the front lines, to keep as much of their pay as possible, even if they are in a fox hole next to a 10-year, full-time Army soldier. The full-time, traditional soldier gets other benefits and other compensation. They might get free housing. They understand that. I think the active Army and the active military support this amendment. I am convinced of it. They are not jealous about the Reserves.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I would like to respond this way. I have the greatest respect for the Senator from Oklahoma. I actually like him very much. He and I have worked on some important issues--the issue of child welfare, adoption, foster care. I respect him as a Member who understands the details of the finance and tax system and the Budget Committee. He chairs the Budget Committee. All I can say in answer to that is we drafted the amendment as carefully as we could to make sure that, in fact, that happens. I assure him that there are people wiser than myself, smarter than myself, who have worked here either as a Member or a staffer who could carefully craft such an amendment. I know they crafted this whole entire bill of 600 pages to help the railroads maintain their tracks, for ceiling fan importers so they can keep the fans on, but the troops in Iraq can't afford a fan. Their families can't buy one. The Senator can talk about whatever. I am respectful of his question. I am completely convinced that the amendment could be written in such a way. Does the Senator have any other questions?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Yes.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you. That is actually the question of the day. It may take all day or tomorrow to get the answer to that, but I don't know the answer to that. Maybe some Senator could give us the answer to that. I do not know why, but that is what this debate is about. Is there any compelling reason we could not do that, end this filibuster, move on? These bills are very important to do. I am not objecting to anything in this bill. I am not objecting to anything in the military construction bill. I am not objecting to anything in the intelligence reorganization bill. Surely there are things in here I don't particularly like, but that is the process. That is the process. I cannot write this bill perfectly. There are things in here my constituents would find absolutely laughable. But I have to tell them we have to laugh sometimes, that is the way it is. That is the process. I have been a legislator for 25 years. I know the process. But this is more than process. This transcends all issues, in my mind. This is about whether this Senate, Republican and Democratic leaders, will stand up for the men and women on the front line--yes or no. It is as simple as that.