Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 440 that is at the desk.

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so I may call up amendment No. 428, which is at the desk.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I wish to speak to the bill before us on the Economic Development Administration. I rise specifically to talk about the issue that is on the minds of all Americans; that is, the topic of jobs. Unemployment is far too high. My home State unemployment is very high, and that is before we count all the folks who are underemployed--those who have found some type of part-time work, but it is not enough to support their families. We all know how worried Americans are about this. It goes to the heart of their financial foundations, the success of their families, and it should be our top focus. The good news is that the bill before us creates jobs and stimulates the economy in our towns and regions that need help the most. Economic Development Administration assistance is targeted to both rural and urban areas experiencing high unemployment, low income, a natural disaster or other severe economic distress. It does this at a low cost and gets the most bang for our buck. The bill encourages private sector investment. Indeed, for every $1 the government spends on these projects, we leverage $7 in private investment. That is terrific leverage for our national investment. With national unemployment still above 9 percent and with extreme storms causing destruction around the Nation, our support in these regions matters now more than ever. Whether a town is recovering from a plant closure or a flood, it is critical that the community invest in planning for their new economic future. The kind of assistance provided by the Economic Development Administration is critical to promoting economic growth and job creation, particularly in small communities. I wish to share an example from my home State in the town of Vernonia, OR. It is a small community in the northern part of our State that was devastated by heavy flooding in 2007. Similar to many of the rural communities that are helped by these grants, Vernonia is too small to have dedicated staff to help them rebuild the local economy, and that is where the EDA has a great role to play. Through two EDA programs, the Federal Government was able to step in and help by partnering with local governments and private business, and today Vernonia is doing much better. As the executive director of that area's economic development district said: ``We would be lost without the EDA.'' Take another example regarding the timber industry in Oregon, hit hard by declining demand because the housing market is in the ditch. The timber companies and their workers are struggling, but they have two things on their side: great workers and great natural resources. With the help of grants from the EDA, one of those lumber mills on the Klamath Reservation has been turned into a new biomass plant, producing green energy for the region, bringing new economic activity to the Klamath Reservation and creating and saving jobs for Oregonians. Furthermore, the EDA can continue to help our timber companies and other similar businesses plan for the future and play a key role in helping communities by coordinating between private companies and the Forest Service. The EDA can help these companies project what timber contracts are likely to come down the road and how they can tailor their business model to grow accordingly. EDA investments are a proven path to retaining or creating new private sector job opportunities and helping small businesses diversify or expand. In fact, from 2005 to 2010, EDA projects led directly to the creation of more than 300,000 jobs--and this doesn't even count the many thousands more jobs that were created by those seven private dollars for every public dollar. Without question, the EDA represents an efficient and cost-effective way to help distressed regions overcome the challenges they are facing and build a new foundation for job growth in our communities. I urge my colleagues to pass this bill and to put our country back on the path to creating jobs.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am deeply appreciative of the dialogue that has just taken place. It was William Pitt in England who commented that the wind and the rain can enter my house, but the King cannot. It captured the spirit and understanding of the balance between personal privacy, personal freedoms, and issues of the Crown regarding maintenance of security. It was this foundation that came in for our fourth amendment of our Constitution that lays out clear standards for the protection of privacy and freedoms. So as we have wrestled with the standard set out in the PATRIOT Act, a standard that says the government may have access to records that are relevant to an investigation--now, that term is, on its face, quite broad and expansive, quite a low standard, if you will. But what happens when it is interpreted out of the sight of this Chamber, out of the sight of the American people? That is the issue my colleague has raised, and it is a very important issue. I applaud the chair of the Intelligence Committee for laying out a process whereby we all can wrestle with this issue in an appropriate venue and have a path for amendments in the committee or possibly here on the floor of the Senate because I do think it is our constitutional responsibility to make sure the fourth amendment of the Constitution is protected, the privacy and freedoms of citizens are protected. I say thank you to the Senator from Colorado; my senior colleague, who has led this effort from Oregon; my colleague from New Mexico, who is the Acting President pro tempore; and the chairwoman from California.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the work of Medford Chief of Police Randy Schoen, and all the officers, citizens, dispatchers, and volunteers being recognized at the Medford Police Awards Banquet. The Medford Police Department is doing its community a great service in holding the annual Medford Police Awards Banquet, acknowledging and encouraging the kind of work that keeps our citizens safe and makes our communities great. Chief Schoen has contributed much to his department and to the city of Medford, OR. He developed the department's first K9, SWAT, and drug and gang enforcement units. He has used technology to make the department more effective and responsive. He has rolled out programs that have increased the Medford Police Department's efficiency, community involvement, and clearance rates. Chief Schoen is a terrific example of what it means to be a public servant. He is now retiring after 25 years of meritorious service. His hard work will be missed. Also worthy of praise are the many other individuals being honored at the Medford Police Awards Banquet. These citizens and officers are receiving awards for Outstanding Achievement, Meritorious Lifesaving, and Citizen Recognition. Many of these individuals have risked personal harm to save the life of another, or ensure that justice is done. I thank the Medford Police Department for honoring them. I join the Medford Police Department and the people of Medford in commemorating the great work of Chief Schoen and all those receiving awards at this banquet. These individuals represent the ideals of civil service, personal heroism, and a just society. I thank them for their service and wish them all the best in their endeavors to come.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. The American middle class is hurting. Workers are unemployed. Families are losing their homes. Parents are worried, for good reason, that their children will not have the same opportunity they had. American people have sent us to do a simple agenda of creating jobs. They want a plan that will put our economy back on track and build a foundation for our working families to succeed. The Republicans have produced a plan, a plan that is in consideration before us today. But is it a plan that responds to the pleas of the American people to create jobs and to help those Americans who are out of work and to put this economy back on track? The short answer is, unfortunately, it is not. Perhaps it is a plan to invest in education. But then we look at the details and realize it savages the investment in education. Here we are as the first generation of American adults whose children are getting less education than we got, primarily because the cost of tuition is outpacing the average wages that working families earn. That is unacceptable. Perhaps the Republican budget decides to invest in infrastructure. I just came back from China with the majority leader and a delegation of 10 Senators and here is what we learned. China is investing 10 to 12 percent of its GDP in infrastructure. Europe is investing 5 percent. America is investing 2 percent. We are barely able to repair the infrastructure we have let alone add additional infrastructure for our economy to thrive in the future. But the Republican plan does not invest in infrastructure. Perhaps it invests in energy, recognizing that we are sending $1 billion a day overseas, that oil and our addiction to oil is half of our trade deficit, that both for national security and for strength of our economy and for a sustainable environment, we need to change this. But, no, the Republican budget sustains our addiction to oil and withdraws our investment in American--red, white, and blue American- made energy. Perhaps the Republican budget has paid attention to our Secretary of Defense who has listed $175 billion in programs that are not enhancing our national security and therefore should be cut. But, no, the Republican budget paid no attention to that, and, in fact, increased and overrode the vision laid out by the Secretary of Defense. So at a time when our middle class is struggling to get back to their feet, the Republicans did not address education or infrastructure or energy or defense but instead chose to do two things: end Medicare as we know it and give bonus breaks to the best off in our society--take away from seniors across America and give to those who earn more than $1 million a year and a whole lot more to those who earn more than $10 million a year. That is the Republican plan. In the Medicare side, there are two components. The first is to reopen the doughnut hole. That is the hole into which seniors fall when, after they have some assistance with the first drugs they need, they get no assistance until they reach a catastrophic level. It is in that hole that seniors have been devastated--had their finances devastated. We fixed it. Republicans want to unfix it and throw seniors back into the abyss. Then, instead of guaranteeing Medicare coverage for a fixed set of benefits for every senior--as Medicare does now--the Republican plan gives seniors a coupon and says: Good luck. Go buy your insurance. If the insurance goes up, too bad. In fact, seniors would pay $6,359 more a year. In my working-class community, that is real money. That is money senior families do not have. That is money families do not have because they are wrestling just to pay their basic expenses through Social Security. It is not the folks with golden parachutes who have multimillion dollar endowments from their previous work at the top of the economic pyramid. Most do not realize that $6,000 will devastate the family budgets of our seniors across this country. Indeed, under the Republican plan, whereas seniors contribute 25 percent of their health care costs today, they would, by 2030, pay 68 percent, more than two-thirds--more than two-thirds. That is devastating. Indeed, this voucher plan from our colleagues across the aisle puts an insurance company bureaucrat in the middle of our medical decisions, telling seniors what they get to have and what they do not get to have. The bottom line is that if something is good for your health, the insurance company does not want to pay for it, does not want to put it in the policy, that is too bad. One of Oregon's larger insurers is planning a 24-percent increase in the cost of health care next year--premiums up by 24 percent. Seniors' coupons, under the Republican plan, are perhaps 2 percent. So that does not work. Colleagues, our citizens have sent us to create jobs, not to destroy the lives of our seniors and hand the funds over to the best off in our society. Let's come back to planet Earth, recognize we are here to fight for an economy that raises working families and let's defeat this budget tonight. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to address the 4-year extension of the PATRIOT Act and to oppose that extension if the bill is not modified. I want to take us back to the principles on which our Nation was founded and, indeed, before our Declaration of Independence and before our Constitution when there was a deep tradition of the right of privacy. Let's take William Pitt's declaration in 1763. He said: The poorest may, in his cottage, bid his defiance to all the forces of the Crown . . . the storm may enter; the rain may enter. . . . But the King of England may not enter. It is the philosophy embedded in William Pitt's declaration of the sanctity of a man's home that underwrote the principle of the fourth amendment. That reads as follows: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The fourth amendment is powerful protection of personal privacy from the overreach of government. How does that compare in contrast to the PATRIOT Act that is before us? Let me tell you the standard that is in the PATRIOT Act for the government to seize your papers, to search your papers, and that standard is simply ``relevant'' to an ``investigation.'' Relevant to an investigation? That is the legal standard set out in the PATRIOT Act. That is a standard that was written to be as broad and low as possible. What does it mean to be ``relevant'' to an investigation? It certainly isn't something as strong as probable cause, which is in the fourth amendment. It certainly isn't describing the place to be searched, the persons and things to be seized. Indeed, the word ``relevant'' doesn't have a foundation of legal tradition that provides any boundaries at all. Let's take the term ``investigation.'' ``Investigation'' is in the eye of the beholder. I want to look into something, so that is an investigation. What happens to these words in the PATRIOT Act, in the section of the PATRIOT Act that addresses the sweeping powers to investigate Americans down to the books they check out, their medical records, and their private communications? Quite simply, there is a process in theory in which a court, known as the FISA Court, makes a determination, but they make the determination upon this standard--that this standard is ``relevant to an investigation.'' Now, the interpretation of that clause is done in secret. I would defy you to show me a circumstance where a secret interpretation of a very minimal standard is tightened in that secret process. But we don't know because we are not being told. This is why I support Senator Wyden's amendment. Senator Wyden has said we should not have secret law--secret interpretation of clauses that may result in the opposite of what we believe is being done. That is a very important amendment. But that amendment will not be debated on the floor of the Senate. It won't be debated because a very clever mechanism has just been put into play to prevent amendments from being offered and debated on the floor of the Senate on the 4-year extension of the PATRIOT Act. Quite frankly, I am very disturbed by that mechanism--a parliamentary move in which a House message is brought over and the regular bill is tabled, and that message will then have the regular PATRIOT Act put into it as a privileged motion, and it will be returned to the House. The effect therein is, because the tree has been filled, which is parliamentary-speak for ``no amendments will be allowed,'' we won't get to debate Senator Wyden's amendment. There are a number of Senators who have proposed to change this standard--the standard ``relevant to an investigation''--to make it a legally significant standard and make sure it is not being secretly interpreted to mean almost nothing. But we won't have a debate in this Senate over changing that low and insignificant standard into a meaningful legal standard with teeth in it, that has court cases behind what it means and interpretations that will protect us. There is no question that every Member of this Chamber has an enormous sense of responsibility in the security of our Nation. In that sense, there is significant feeling on every person's part that we need to enable our intelligence services, our military, to do the necessary work to protect our Nation. But that does not mean we should avoid having a debate about whether the PATRIOT Act, as written today, without an amendment, rolls over the top of the fourth amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. We can have both personal privacy and a high standard, as set out in the fourth amendment, for the seizure of papers and security. Those two things are not at war with each other. We have had two centuries in this Nation of embracing the twins of personal privacy and security. We have made that work. We can continue to make it work. I rise in protest about the process unfolding in the Senate in which amendments will not be presented and will not be debated. I rise to say the fourth amendment matters; that it sets a significant standard against unreasonable seizures and searches, and that the PATRIOT Act, as written, does not provide a clear implementation of the fourth amendment, a clear protection of the fourth amendment. I will close by noting it has been nearly 250 years since William Pitt declared: The poorest may, in his cottage, bid his defiance to all the forces of the Crown . . . the storm may enter; the rain may enter . . . but the King of England may not enter. Let us have a debate in this Chamber about modifications that protect our security but that hold faith with the principle William Pitt enunciated and with the principles we have adopted in the fourth amendment to the Constitution; that the right of the people against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time for debate on the motions to proceed to Calendar No. 42, S. 904, and Calendar No. 43, S. 953 be equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak to S. 940. Tomorrow evening, we are going to have a vote on whether to proceed to debate this bill, which closes oil and gas tax loopholes, thereby raising a significant amount of additional revenue for important projects in the United States of America. I rise in favor of this motion tomorrow because if we have a successful vote tomorrow evening, we will finally get to debate this issue of whether we should continue to have massive tax giveaways to the most profitable companies in America. Gas is at $4 a gallon. Every American is going to the pump, and they are finding that, once again, the total toll as they fill up their 15- gallon tank in their car is well over $50 and can hit $60. That is a huge chunk out of my family budget, once or twice a week. It diminishes what is available to be spent for other core expenses to the families. Indeed, that $4 a gallon at the gas pump is raiding Americans' pocketbooks. Americans do not also need to be subsidizing the same highly profitable oil companies through their paychecks, through tax loopholes. Make no question, the companies are highly profitable. Oil is now $100 a barrel. So the companies are able to sell oil that costs no more to produce today than it did 1 month ago, no more to produce today than it did 3 months ago, when oil was much lower, no more expensive to produce today than 1 year ago, when it was $3 a gallon. So oil companies are experiencing enormous profits. The final quarterly filings by ConocoPhillips, $3 billion in profits--this is just quarterly, over 3 months--BP, $7.1 billion in profits; Exxon, $10.7 billion in profits. That $10.7 billion equates to $5 million an hour every hour, day and night, throughout the week, throughout the weekend, through the entire quarter--$5 million per hour. I think, if you have an ounce of common sense, then you will recognize if you are making $5 million per hour, you do not need taxpayer subsidies to stay afloat. These subsidies come in many forms. The first is the domestic manufacturing deduction for oil and gas. This allows you to deduct a specified percentage--6 percent--of your qualified domestic production income. So it is not just that you get to deduct expenses, you also get to deduct income as if it was a business expense. Wouldn't all of us, when we are filing our taxes, like to deduct our income as an expense and, thereby, drastically cut our tax bill? Well, it is a sweet deal for big oil. Then they have the ability to expense intangible drilling costs. The basic notion is that when you have equipment that is necessary for the success of a company, then you depreciate that equipment over the life of the equipment. If it is equipment that lasts 5 years, you expense it over 5 years. These are things, for the oil industry, such as derricks and tanks and pipelines and other physical structures. But this allows the companies to take that deduction of the entire expense immediately, not expense it over the life of the capital equipment like everyone else. So it is another sweet deal. The third is a special deduction called the tertiary injection cost deduction. It comes in the form of a tax credit. A tax credit is much more valuable than a tax deduction because it is a dollar-for-dollar deduction in the taxes you owe. This is for employing enhanced oil recovery methods--methods that are to the benefit of an oil company because they get a lot more oil out of an oilfield if they employ wise stewardship of that field. So they have an incentive to do this anyway, but we are giving this huge bonus credit. That is a sweet deal. That is sweet deal No. 3. Then you have the dual capacity taxpayer credit. This one you almost cannot believe is real because dollar-for-dollar, we, the taxpayers in America, reimburse the oil companies for the taxes they pay overseas. Well, quite frankly, it is America subsidizing the foreign taxes. So oil companies just pass through. It certainly is an incentive for the foreign governments to tax the oil companies extremely heavily because they get it all back from America. It is also proven incentive for companies to call royalties a foreign income tax so they get reimbursed for their royalties as well. As proposed, changing this will reduce the deficit by $429 million in fiscal year 2012 and $6.5 billion in fiscal year 2021. That is the fourth sweet deal. The fifth is the percentage depletion deduction. Firms that extract oil or gas are permitted to deduct 15 percent of the sales to recover their capital investment in oil and gas reserves. They get to, again, deduct their sales, essentially in a situation as if they are an expense. That is sweet deal No. 5. In that case, often the value of that deduction exceeds the value of the original capital investment by the company. They get more than compensated. Then, No. 6: royalty relief for deepwater Outer Continental Shelf production. The Department of the Interior must allow companies doing certain types of drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf--deepwater drilling and deep wells in shallow water--it allows them to not pay royalties on a certain minimum volume of production. Royalty relief is a great benefit to the oil companies and comes at great cost to the American Treasury. That is sweet deal No. 6. This world in which companies have had, over the years, inserted various provisions--making a very strong case for each one at the time of why this was necessary, that was necessary--amounts to an enormous tax bill. This bill that takes and modifies these provisions for the top five companies that have the largest profits would produce about $2 billion in savings from closing these six tax loopholes. The question we all need to ask ourselves is: Can that $2 billion per year be put to better work than subsidizing companies that are making enormous profits at the pump? One possibility is that $2 billion could go toward decreasing our deficit. A lot of folks on the floor of the Senate talk about how important that is. Which is more important, giveaways to the most profitable companies or reductions in the national deficit? How about creating jobs? We have constantly been trying to get a bill to this floor that provides low-cost loans for energy saving renovations. It is considered the most powerful job creator dollar-for- dollar of any idea that has been put forward. It is in the form of HOME Star, which provides low-cost energy saving loans to families, and they can pay them back from the savings in energy. So it is a win-win for the family, and it puts people to work in America in a construction industry that is 50 percent unemployed. How about Building Star? It does the same thing on commercial buildings. How about Rural Star Energy, the bill that provides these low-cost loans through rural co-ops, so rural America can benefit from energy savings and can pay back these low-cost loans from the savings on their monthly utility bills. The reason this creates so many jobs is because not only can you not outsource overseas the jobs themselves for the construction work that is done, but almost every single thing that is used in the energy saving economy--from the insulation, to the caulk, to the double-paned windows--is made here in America. That is why you get so much tremendous leverage. You put the American construction industry to work and you utilize American products. Maybe it is more important to create jobs than it is to give away $2 billion a year to the most profitable five oil companies in America. Maybe it is important to shore up Medicare. Some of my colleagues have talked about they want to dismantle Medicare. They want to turn it into a voucher program, where the voucher would not increase as medical costs increase, so that slowly Medicare would be wiped out as the ability to provide health care for our seniors. Maybe it is more important to provide a strong Medicare Program than it is to give away $2 billion a year to the most profitable five oil companies in America. Maybe it is more important to enable our children to get loans to go to college. We are becoming the first generation of adults whose children are getting less education than we have because the cost of tuition has gone up disproportionately to the income of a working family. The more tuition goes up, in comparison, the more our students have to wrestle with whether they can afford to go to college and, if they go, whether they need to drop out after the first year in order to go back to work in order to save to go the second year. When students leave college in that situation, they do not often get back. Maybe it is more important that we proceed to help American students--our children--go to college than to give away $2 billion to the five most profitable oil companies in America. Tomorrow, we are going to have a vote. The vote is simply whether this is important enough to debate, whether it is important enough for us to come together as a Chamber and say it matters whether tax loopholes were carved out through special interest lobbying over the past 20 years in order to get very sweet deals when they serve no basic core purpose in the American economy. We need to have that debate. I wish to encourage my colleagues across the aisle to vote yes tomorrow, to vote yes on a motion to proceed, so we can get to the bill and have that debate. Under the rules that have been established, we need 60 votes; otherwise, my colleagues across the aisle threaten to filibuster, that they are going to do a silent filibuster, blocking the ability of this Chamber to have a debate. Let me tell you, this needs to be debated. Fiscal responsibility needs to be debated. These tax giveaways need to be debated. The tradeoffs between assisting our students and tax giveaways need to be debated. The tradeoff between reducing the deficit and these giveaways needs to be debated. The contrast and comparison between shoring up programs that provide health care to our seniors and these giveaways need to be debated. I encourage my colleagues: Do not shy from your responsibility to wrestle with difficult challenges. Come and vote yes tomorrow evening on proceeding to debating the giveaways to the five most profitable oil companies in America so we can consider whether those funds will be better serving American citizens by reducing the deficit or by providing core programs. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 164, which was introduced earlier today.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Eric Strod, be granted the privilege of the floor through the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 5; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to a period of morning business for debate only until 5 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the first hour equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the next 30 minutes.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I understand H.R. 1213 has been received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the next rollcall vote is expected on Monday, May 9, at 5:30 p.m. That vote will be in relation to a nomination.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 151 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to share my deep concern that we are careening toward a shutdown of the government. Just a little more than 24 hours from now--tomorrow night--our government will shut down if this Chamber and the House Chamber cannot come together and put a simple continuing resolution on the President's desk. There is a lot that we should be proud of. One is to be a nation that has been a light for the world, presenting the ideals of democracy in action and advocating for and defending human rights. We should be deeply pleased that we have fought for fair working conditions and economic opportunity for Americans across this great land. We should be proud of the tradition of public education that gives children an opportunity to fulfill their full potential. We should be deeply pleased of our history, advocating for freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of liberty. All of these things are part of a legacy for our Nation, a part of what this Chamber has been about. But we should not be pleased and we should not expect that this Chamber is now engaged not in those great and lofty ideals but in a very small argument over an extension of the budget for 6 months, and that we are so dysfunctional that we are risking shutting the American Government down for one of the few times in its history. That is not the model we wish to show to the world. I am deeply frustrated by what has transpired since 2000. The first 11 years of this century--indeed, the first 11 years of this millenium--have not been kind ones for the United States of America. In 2000 we were running huge surpluses. I was back in Oregon as part of the legislature and very excited by the fact that we were paying down our national debt. Economists were starting to debate whether we should pay it down in 3 years or 5 years; do we need to keep a substantial debt for some strange economic reason or should we pay the whole thing off. I was thinking, isn't that a great debate to have, because we are going to hand a debt-free nation to our children. Mr. President, I think we all share the thought that there will be discussions tonight and we will not shut the government down. That is what this debate is about right now. It goes back to the point that in 2000 we had a new President come in who decided that paying off the debt wasn't that important. No, President Bush said we should have bonus breaks, big giveaways to the wealthiest Americans, and he did so without paying for them in any other manner. Then we had a war launched in Afghanistan. Instead of the President coming forward and saying we must sacrifice and pay for this war, it is important to our national security, he came forward and said: American citizens, please keep spending a lot of money in retail stores. That is the way you can participate in this. So the debt was greatly increased to pay for that war. Then we had the President launch a war in Iraq--the same President, President Bush--and he proceeded to give away the Treasury to the wealthiest Americans. He decided not to pay for the war in Afghanistan. President Bush decided to launch a war in Iraq, on completely false premises, and to do so without paying for it. Then we had Medicare Part D, which happened in that same 8-year period--a huge expansion of a government program that has and will indeed help many Americans, but it was not paid for. Those four decisions doubled the debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion, but doubling it was not enough. Indeed, the Bush administration did something else; they created a house of cards out of the most important financial document for every American family, the home mortgage. By deregulating retail mortgages, they allowed liar loans, undocumented loans. They allowed teaser rates, 2-year really low rates that mortgage agents used to talk people into subprime loans when they qualified for prime loans--steering loans that were regarded as such for steering families from prime loans into subprime loans. Then they took all of those faulty subprime mortgages and packaged them into securities and allowed a new, unregulated form of insurance to back up those securities. Those were called swaps or derivatives. A $50 trillion unregulated industry came upon the American scene, and those securities ended up in every financial institution around this Nation. This great house of cards, which corrupted the fundamental value of primary wealth for most Americans, and the humble fully amortizing prime mortgage--subprime mortgage--was turned into an instrument of mass financial destruction. That financial destruction that was brought down on our house in 2008 and 2009 added another $4 trillion to the debt. We went from $5 trillion to $14 trillion. That process continued this last December with a compromise that added another $500 billion to the debt, a compromise I could not support because it added $500 billion additional to the debt. I had a lot of hope in January, 3 months ago, that we had a new group come in and we had a new Congress, the 112th Congress, and we were going to proceed to create jobs and do so by ending some of those frivolous giveaways, those massive oil and gas giveaways that line the bottom line of some of the deepest pockets in our Nation, those rules that prevent us from negotiating drug prices which results in our seniors on Medicare paying higher prices for drugs than seniors anywhere in the world, even though those drugs were invented right here, a potential savings of $6 billion per year; those bonus breaks for billionaires, on top of $100,000 per taxpayer, up to a million more for many taxpayers. Taking those bonus breaks away is a savings of $50 billion a year; ending duplicative Pentagon programs identified by the Secretary of Defense, a savings of $75 billion--all of these opportunities, and so many more, to bring our financial house into order. But those hopes were soon dashed because the new team in the other House of the Congress did not decide to fight for jobs, did not decide to fight to get rid of frivolous programs. Instead they decided to lay out a plan that attacks the very communities that have been most hurt by the previous disasters because that meltdown, that mortgage meltdown that haunted us in 2008 and 2009, destroyed the wealth of basic Americans of their homes, homes lost enormous value, it proceeded to destroy jobs that those families counted on, huge job losses, it proceeded to wipe out their retirement savings. No wonder so many families today do not have confidence that their lives, the lives of their children will be better than their lives. For so many families-- in fact, their current life is not better than their parents' life was because of these kinds of devastating decisions. The new arrivals said: No, we are going to increase the harm. We are going to attack the community development grants that build community organizations. We are going to attack the heating programs that keep people from freezing. We are going to diminish the food programs that keep people from starving. We are going to attack women's health programs, programs that have nothing to do, by the way, with abortion, but preventive programs, screenings, Pap screenings, breast exams. We are going to wipe those out because of misguided ideological opinions. And now we find a bill that says we are going to dismantle Medicare. We find an attack on housing for veterans. These are not the things that will bring jobs to America. These are not the things that will rebuild America. On top of all of these attacks on specific programs, my colleagues in the House decided to create a whole long list of ideological riders to add to the budget debate. I have a copy, 4 pages, of policy riders to H.R. 1. It goes on and on, everything one can imagine, from Job Corps centers to training for our unemployed Americans. It is a huge list. It defunds the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that will guard against the corruption of mortgages I was discussing earlier. It attacks the EPA's ability to enforce the Clean Air Act. And so on. It is an unbelievable list all Americans should see to see what the true agenda is on the other side of Capitol Hill. Now is the time to set aside these games, these ideological riders. Now is the time to set aside these attacks on the core programs that strengthen our communities. We are past the time to have the ability to do a simple 6-month extension of our programs in the United States of America so we can go on to debate fiscal year 2012. But not everybody is ready for that serious debate. We have been hearing a lot of chanting at rallies that they do want to shut down the government over these ideological riders. Indeed, on April 5, the Washington Post reported Republicans gave the Speaker-- that is on the House side--an ovation when he informed them to begin preparations for a possible shutdown. They want the shutdown because they want this ideological fight. After proceeding through devastating mistake after devastating mistake that increased our debt $5 trillion in 2000--remember, it was heading down toward zero--to nearly $15 trillion, we still cannot have a serious discussion. We have folks who want to shut down this government over these ideological riders. We must return to understanding our role in the Senate and in the House in terms of the broad and challenging and important issues facing America--the issue of providing fundamental services, the issue of creating jobs, and the lofty goals of advancing democracy and human rights and civil rights around this planet. Now is the time to set aside those shallow ideological games, focus on rebuilding our economy, and putting America back on track.