Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 24, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., to conduct a committee hearing entitled ``Housing Partnerships in Indian Country.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., to hold a briefing entitled, ``Intelligence Update on Syria.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Strengthening the Integrity of the Student Visa System by Preventing and Detecting Sham Educational Institutions.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 24, 2012, at 2:30 p.m., in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs' Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 24, 2012, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Private Student Loans: Providing Flexibility and Opportunity to Borrowers?''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 31, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I rise this morning in strong support of the Middle Class Tax Cut Relief Act that would extend tax cuts for 98 percent of the American people while letting the Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent expire at the end of this year. I also want to express my strong opposition to the McConnell-Hatch bill that would provide tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks next year to millionaires and billionaires who today are doing phenomenally well. Really, this is not a complicated issue. The United States now is seeing growing wealth and income inequality. The middle class is disappearing, poverty is increasing, the people at the top are doing very well at the same time that the effective tax rate of the millionaires and billionaires is the lowest it has been for many decades. This country has a $16 trillion national debt. We have a $1 trillion deficit this year. I believe to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires makes no sense, and I believe it makes no sense to the American people. Our Republican friends have made it very clear that when they say they don't want to raise taxes on anyone, that is just code for saying they don't want to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires. I should add that if Governor Mitt Romney becomes President, he has proposed even more tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country while at the same time cutting Social Security, ending Medicare as we know it, and slashing investments in education, transportation, child care, nutrition, and a variety of other programs that benefit working families and the middle class. Social Security This morning I want to say a few words about Social Security. Let me be very clear. When we talk about Social Security, it is imperative that we understand that Social Security has not contributed one nickel to our deficit or our national debt. So when people say we have a national debt problem and that we have Social Security and they fuse the two together, that is simply incorrect. As all Americans know, Social Security is independently funded through payroll tax contributions from workers and employers. Up until last year, it has received no funding from the Federal Treasury. Despite the rhetoric we hear from Republicans and those on Wall Street, Social Security is not in financial crisis. Social Security has a $2.7 trillion surplus. According to the Social Security Administration, Social Security will be able to pay out 100 percent of promised benefits to every eligible recipient for the next 21 years. Although the American people now take Social Security for granted, we should never underestimate the incredibly positive impact Social Security has had on our country. Sometimes we do forget it, especially when those people come up and say: Let's cut Social Security. Let's cut Social Security. But let's talk about what Social Security has accomplished. Since its inception over 75 years ago, through good economic times and bad, through terrible recessions, Social Security has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible beneficiary with minimal administrative cost. This is an extraordinary accomplishment. Nobody has ever received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying: Sorry. We are in the middle of a recession. We have had to cut your benefits in half. Every eligible beneficiary has received 100 percent of the benefits owed to him or her. During this 75-year period, Social Security has succeeded in keeping millions of senior citizens, widows, orphans, and persons with disability out of poverty. Before Social Security existed, almost half of America's senior citizens lived in poverty. Today, that number is still too high, but it is 10 percent not 50 percent. More than 55 million Americans now receive Social Security benefits. I would contrast that record to the situation we recently saw on Wall Street when millions of Americans lost significant or all of their retirement savings because of the collapse of Wall Street and the financial crisis we went through. Despite this success, despite this incredibly strong record, my Republican friends, and too many Democratic friends, are calling for cuts in Social Security. For example, we know where Mitt Romney stands on Social Security. Mr. Romney wants to begin the process of privatizing Social Security. I disagree with him because I think that would benefit primarily his friends on Wall Street, because if we privatize Social Security, where are people going to get their retirement benefits? From Wall Street. Those guys on Wall Street will end up making huge amounts of money by charging the average American a significant commission for their service. Mr. Romney wants to gradually increase the retirement age to 68 or 69. I don't agree with that. At a time when 23 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed and when the long-term unemployment for senior citizens is skyrocketing, tell me how many employers out there are going to say to a 68-year-old person or a 69-year-old person: We have a great job for you, especially if someone is in the construction trades or is a nurse or is somebody who stands on their feet 8 or 9 hours a day, such as a waiter or a waitress. I don't think those jobs are going to be there if we raise the Social Security retirement age. I don't know what those folks are going to be doing for income. Finally, the Romney campaign has put on his Web site the following: Mitt believes that [Social Security] benefits should continue to grow but that the growth rate should be lower for those with higher incomes. What does that mean in English? While Mr. Romney has been somewhat vague about his intentions and has not spelled out the exact details of this proposal, some of my Republican friends in the Senate have provided what I believe is the roadmap Mr. Romney is talking about. Last year, Senators Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee introduced a bill that would, among other things, reduce the future growth rate of Social Security benefits for the top 60 percent of earners--60 percent of earners--by establishing what they call a progressive price index. Who are these so-called higher income individuals whom my Republican friends are talking about? Under this Republican bill, a worker making about $45,000 a year today, retiring in 2050, would receive 32 percent less in annual Social Security benefits than under the current formula. How much is a 32-percent cut for this middle-class wage earner? It is about $7,500 a year, and that, my friends, is a lot of money for a retiree. It should come as no surprise that Republicans in Washington and Governor Romney want to slash Social Security. The truth is, Republicans have never liked Social Security, and they have been attacking Social Security since its inception. That is not news. The question that millions of Americans are asking themselves today, however, is where President Obama stands on Social Security. Unfortunately, he has been largely silent on this issue since he has been in the White House and during the current 2012 campaign. He made a very strong statement recently, incorrectly attacking the Republican proposal--the so-called Ryan proposal--to move Medicare toward a voucher program. But unless I am mistaken, I did not hear a word from him on the future of Social Security, and that is a shame. That is a shame because candidate Barack Obama, when he was running for President in 2008, made it very clear to the American people he would be a strong defender of Social Security. Let me remind the American people exactly what Barack Obama said on the campaign trail in 2008. On September 6, 2008, Barack Obama told the AARP the following: John McCain's campaign has suggested that the best answer for the growing pressures on Social Security might be to cut cost of living adjustments or raise the retirement age. Let me be clear: I will not do either. That was then-candidate Senator Barack Obama. On April 16, 2008, Senator Barack Obama said: The alternatives, like raising the retirement age, or cutting benefits, or raising the payroll tax on everybody, including people making less than $97,000 a year-- Which today would be $110,000 a year-- those are not good policy options. On November 11, 2007, candidate Barack Obama said: I believe that cutting [Social Security] benefits is not the right answer; and that raising the retirement age is not the best option. In order to address the long-term financial challenges of Social Security, candidate Barack Obama came up with an idea that I believe hit the nail on the head. It was exactly the right approach, and I have applauded him for coming up with that idea. What he said is that he would apply the Social Security payroll tax on income above $250,000 a year to make sure a millionaire and a billionaire pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security as someone who today makes $110,000 a year. The bottom line is we lift the cap on taxable income so billionaires and millionaires and those making above $250,000 a year start contributing into the Social Security trust fund. Recent reports have confirmed this would ensure Social Security would remain solvent for the next 75 years. In 2008, candidate Barack Obama was exactly right. That is the solution to the long-term financial needs of Social Security, and that is why I introduced candidate Obama's concept into legislation. It was the right approach. I have introduced it into legislation and it now has 10 cosponsors. Here is how the Economic Times reported on the subject back on June 14, 2008: Barack Obama would apply the Social Security payroll tax to all annual incomes above $250,000, which would affect the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans. The Presidential candidate told senior citizens in Ohio that it is unfair for middle- class earners to pay the Social Security tax ``on every dime they make,'' while millionaires and billionaires pay it on only ``a very small percentage of their income.'' That is what Barack Obama said when he was running for President in 2008. I agreed with him. He was very clear. I suspect millions of Americans voted for Barack Obama because of the strong stand he made in defending Social Security. Unfortunately, since he has been in office, he has been much less clear about his position on Social Security. There were reports last year he was considering cutting Social Security as part of a grand bargain with the Speaker of the House John Boehner. What I simply want to know, and I think what the American people want to know, is where does the President stand on Social Security? Is he going to keep faith with the American people? Does he continue to believe what he believed when he ran for President? Is he going to say to the millions and millions of seniors out there who are struggling every single day to keep their heads above water that we are not going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly and the children and the sick and the poor; that we are not going to continue to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who are doing phenomenally well and cut Social Security as part of some grand bargain when, in fact, Social Security has not contributed a nickel to the deficit situation? As the Presiding Officer well knows, in terms of Social Security, there is a lot of discussion in the Senate about moving toward a chained CPI--a chained CPI. Nobody outside this room understands what a chained CPI is, but I will tell you what it is. A chained CPI is significant cuts in Social Security COLAs, and it rests on the theory, if we can believe it, that COLAs for seniors on Social Security are too generous. When I tell this to the seniors in Vermont, I say: Please, don't laugh, but they always laugh. They say: Bernie, in the last 2 out of 3 years, while our health care costs have been going up, while our prescription drug costs have been going up, we haven't gotten a COLA at all. How could they possibly believe the formulation for coming up with these COLAs is too generous? But that is what the billionaires and the millionaires want, that is what our Republican friends want, and that is what some Democrats want. They want to come up with a formulation which will cut Social Security benefits. It will mean, if someone is 65 today, that when they become 75, they will receive $500 a year less; and when they are 85 and are trying to get by on $15,000, $16,000 a year, they are going to cut $1,000 from their Social Security benefits. I think--when this country has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth, when the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth of this country, when in the last study I saw 93 percent of all new income in 2010 went to the top 1 percent--we shouldn't balance the budget by cutting Social Security for people who are trying to survive on $14,000 or $15,000 a year. That is not the right formulation or the way we should go. I wish to conclude my remarks by simply saying I am going to do everything I can to defend Social Security. I am going to do everything I can--given the fact our deficit is largely caused by unpaid wars and tax breaks for the rich and the recession, which was created by Wall Street greed--to fight any effort to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Today, I think the American people know where the Republicans stand on Social Security. They know where Governor Romney stands on Social Security. But now is the time for the President of the United States to tell us where he stands on Social Security. Is he going to keep faith with the promises he made in 2008? Is he going to stand with the senior citizens of this country and say: No, we are not going to balance the budget by cutting Social Security? I look forward to hearing what the President has to say. This is an enormously important issue to the seniors and the veterans of Vermont, and I am going to continue dealing with it. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I appreciate the remarks of the Senator from Illinois, and I wanted to amplify on them a little bit. But before I do, I wanted to mention something we don't talk about enough here on the floor of the Senate. In New England, and I'm sure in Minnesota, we have a lot of sports fans. When we are interested in baseball, basketball, football, hockey, or whatever, the key question everyone always asks is: Who wins and who loses? Well, I think it is appropriate that in terms of the economy, as it currently stands, we should also ask that simple question: Who is winning and who is losing? Let me discuss that for one moment before I get into deficit reduction. We don't talk about it almost at all on the floor of the Senate. The media doesn't talk about it terribly much either. But the reality is we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth and more income and wealth inequality in this country than at any time since the late 1920s. Today the wealthiest 400 people own more wealth than the bottom half of America, which is about 150 million people. We could squeeze 400 people into this room, and if they were the wealthiest people in America, they would own more wealth than the bottom half of America. A report came across my desk yesterday which I want to share with the American people. This is quite incredible and kind of tells us where we are moving as a Nation, and that is that today the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame--the folks who own Wal-Mart--now owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America. One family owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America. Today the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth of the country. I think a lot of people are very surprised by that number. The top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth of America. But what people would be far more shocked at is if we asked them how much the bottom 60 percent of the American people own. I have done this. In Vermont, I have asked people. They say: 10 percent, 20 percent. The answer is less than 2 percent. The top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth of America. The bottom 60 percent owns less than 2 percent. The bottom 40 percent of America owns three-tenths of 1 percent, less than one family--the Walton family--owns. Why is that important? It is important because it tells us from both a moral and economic perspective the direction we have to move in terms of deficit reduction. I find it a little bit amusing that some of my Republican friends come to the floor of the Senate and say: We are deficit hawks. We have got to cut, cut, cut. We are worried about our kids, we are worried about our grandchildren, and we are worried about borrowing money from China. They have a whole set of talking points. They are worried about the deficit. I am worried about the deficit, every American should be worried about the deficit, but I have a question to ask some of my Republican friends who today are great deficit hawks and that is: Where were they a few years ago? I voted against the war in Iraq for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it wasn't paid for. The war in Afghanistan wasn't paid for. I find it kind of interesting that former President Bush, who was a great deficit hawk, and all of my Republican friends who are great deficit hawks went not just to one war, they went into two wars. And you know what. It just slipped their minds. They forgot to pay for it. We all have slips of memory. You go to the grocery store and forget to buy the container of milk your wife wanted you to buy. It just slipped their mind. They were so busy talking about the deficit, they went into two wars that cost trillions of dollars and forgot to pay for them. Today they have noticed and it has come to their attention that there is a deficit. I voted against the war in Iraq. I am not so sure many of them did. The second issue. If we go on a shopping spree or a gambling spree or whatever it may be and we spend a lot of money, give away a lot of money, we have less money. Our Republican friends fought for and created huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of tax dollars in tax breaks went to the top 1 percent, went to the top 2 percent. So our deficit hawk friends who come down here every day to tell us how concerned they are went into two wars they forgot to pay for, and, for the first time in American history, they actually gave tax breaks to the very rich while they were at war. Furthermore, one of the major problems our country is facing now in terms of the deficit, which Senator Durbin touched on, is that because of the recession, which was caused by the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street--and many of my Republican friends and some Democrats told us awhile back when I was in the House how important it was to deregulate Wall Street, to allow the large commercial banks that have merged with the investor banks to merge with the insurance companies, and just get the government off the backs of these honorable people on Wall Street who are looking out for the American people. It turned out, of course, that they are a bunch of crooks. We deregulated them, and they did what many of us thought they would do: they began exchanging incredibly complicated financial transactions, which took this country to the verge of an international financial collapse. And our friends on Wall Street needed their welfare payment from the middle class of America--$700-and-some billion of welfare payments for Wall Street--to bail them out. The Fed provided $16 trillion in low-interest loans on a revolving loan basis. So in the midst of all of that, what ended up happening is that revenue is now down to 15.8 percent of GDP, which is the lowest amount of revenue per GDP we have seen in a very long time. So we go into two wars and don't pay for them; we give tax breaks to billionaires; we deregulate Wall Street, which causes a recession; revenue declines as a percentage of GDP; and we have a serious deficit crisis, which is where we are right now. We have a $16 trillion national debt. I think it is a $1.2 trillion-a-year deficit--a serious situation. How do we deal with it? Everybody here recognizes that it is a problem. We don't want the younger generation to have to pick up this national debt. How do we deal with it? Well, my Republican friends have a great idea. Let's see. We went to two wars and didn't pay for them; tax breaks for the rich; deregulated Wall Street; a recession. Oh, I know how we can deal with the deficit. Let's cut Social Security. That is a good idea. After all, we only have 50-some-odd million people on Social Security. Why don't we come up with a chained CPI? Nobody outside of Capitol Hill knows what a chained CPI is. And to any senior citizen, somebody on Social Security, who is watching this, please don't laugh, but I do want to tell you what a chained CPI is. You will think I am not telling you the truth. Check it out. I am. There are people here in the Senate and in the House who think your COLAs have been too large; that the formula that determines COLAs-- cost-of-living allowance increases for seniors--has been too generous. Now, the seniors are saying: What is this guy talking about? How can it be too generous when for the last 2 years we didn't get any COLA? At a time when our prescription drug costs are going up and our health care costs are going up, what are they talking about? Well, you are right, I say to those back home, they are a little bit off their rocker. The idea that they could think that after 2 years of zero COLAs, those are too large, and that we have to create a new formula to reduce COLAs--that is what people--certainly Republicans and some Democrats--are talking about right now. So what about Social Security? How much of the deficit did Social Security cause so that my Republican friends--all of them--want to cut it and some Democrats may want to cut it? Well, the answer is zero, and everybody in America back home understands it, because Social Security is funded by the FICA tax, by the payroll tax. Social Security does not get general fund money, it comes independently. Social Security, according to the Social Security Administration, has a $2.7 trillion surplus--let me say it again: surplus--to pay every benefit for the next 22 years. Why do they want to cut Social Security? Go ask them. I don't know. It certainly doesn't make any sense to me. It should not be part of any deficit reduction effort. But it is not just Social Security that is under attack. They want to go after Medicare. They want to go after Medicaid. They want to go after nutrition programs for elderly people and for children. They want to go after Pell grants. You name the program that benefits working-class and middle-class families, and they want to go after it. What about asking the wealthiest people to pay a nickel more in taxes? Oh, we can't do that, just can't do that--moral objection to having billionaires, who are doing phenomenally well and who are now paying the lowest effective tax rate they have paid in a very long time--we cannot allow them to pay a nickel more in taxes. It is far more important to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and education. Well, I think that set of priorities is dead wrong, and I think the American people think those priorities are dead wrong. We have to work together to make sure that doesn't happen in some kind of grand plan or whatever it is. Yes, we can deal with the deficit. We should deal with the deficit but not on the backs of the elderly. Millions of senior citizens of this country are living on $12,000, $13,000, $14,000 in Social Security--it is either all or most of their income--and people here are talking about cutting Social Security? We have 50 million people who have no health insurance. We have 45,000 people who died this year because they didn't get to a doctor on time, and people say: Let's take our kids off Medicaid. Let's take lower income people off Medicaid. What happens? Let's do away, says the Ryan budget, the Republican budget, with Medicare as we know it. Let's give people an $8,000 check instead of Medicare. Well, a person has cancer or heart disease, and we have an $8,000 check for them to go out and get private insurance. How many days do my colleagues think they are going to stay in a hospital with cancer on $8,000? Not a whole long time, but that is what their plan is. So we are now in the midst of a great philosophical and economic debate. The rich are getting richer, and our Republican friends want to give them more tax breaks. The middle class is collapsing. Our Republican friends want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In terms of defense spending, I would just say this: Everybody here agrees we want and need a strong defense. Do we really have to spend more on defense in the United States of America than the rest of the world combined? We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. Do we really have to do that? We spend 4.8 percent of our GDP on defense. Our European allies, by the way, provide health care to all of their people as a right. Our European allies provide, in many instances, college education free to their young people--not $40,000 or $50,000 a year. Our European allies--and I say this in all due respect to them; I respect that, and it is what we should be doing--provide excellent quality childcare to their working families. Our European allies spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. We spend 4.8 percent. So we are in the midst of an interesting moment. I hope the American people become engaged in this debate because I think, by and large, the position the Republican Party is taking--tax breaks for billionaires, cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--is way out of touch with where the American people are today. I hope we have a serious debate on these issues. I hope the American people join us, and I hope the road we go down in terms of deficit reduction is one that is fair to working families and the middle class, and that means asking the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. With that, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS. I thank the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, before I begin, on behalf of Senator Merkley, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to the following member of my staff for the balance of the day, Maya Arrieta Walden.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse, Senator Schumer, and all those who have been working so hard on this enormously important issue which has everything to do with whether our country remains the kind of democracy most of us want it to be. I come to the Senate floor today to express my profound disgust with the current state of our campaign finance system and to call for my fellow Senators, as a short-term effort, to pass the DISCLOSE Act. Passing the DISCLOSE Act would be an important step forward, but clearly we have much more to do on this issue. Long term, of course, we need a constitutional amendment to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision--the Citizens United 5-to-4 decision of 2 years ago. Long term, in my view, we also need to move this country toward public funding of elections so that once and for all big money will not dominate our political process. Long term, there is no question in my mind that Citizens United will go down in history as one of the worst decisions ever rendered by a U.S. Supreme Court. Five members of the Court came to the bizarre conclusion that corporations should be treated as if they were people; that they have a first amendment right to spend as much money as they want to buy candidates, to buy elections. Somehow, in the midst of all of this unbelievable amount of spending millions and millions of dollars, the Supreme Court came to the conclusion this would not even give the appearance of corruption. I think that is, frankly, an absurd conclusion. Mr. President, let me tell you--and my take on this may be a little different than some of my colleagues--what concerns me most about the Citizens United decision. If we look at Citizens United in tandem with other trends in our economy today, what we see is this Nation is rapidly moving from an economic and political society to an oligarchic form of society. Economically, what we see are fewer and fewer people who control our economy. We see a nation which has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth, in which the top 1 percent of our Nation owns 40 percent of the wealth and the bottom 60 percent owns 2 percent of the wealth. That gap between the very wealthy and everybody else is growing wider and wider. That is wealth in terms of income distribution. The situation is even worse. The last study we have seen suggests that 93 percent of all new income between 2009 and 2010 went to the top 1 percent. So, economically, we are moving toward a nation in which a few people have a significant amount of the wealth of America-- significant amount of the income of America in terms of concentration of ownership. We see a situation in which six financial institutions on Wall Street have assets equivalent to two-thirds of the GDP of the United States of America--over $9 trillion controlled by six financial institutions. And the recklessness, greed, and illegal behavior of those financial institutions are what drove us into the recession we are struggling with right now. So now, as a nation, the trends are that fewer and fewer people own the wealth of America and fewer and fewer large corporations control the economy of America. But, apparently, that is not good enough for the 1 percent, for our millionaire and billionaire friends, because now they want to take that wealth and exercise it even more than has been the case in the past in the political realm. That takes us now to Citizens United. In the real world, we all know what is going on with Citizens United. We know billionaires are saying: Look, yeah, it is great I own an oil company. It is great that I own a coal company. It is great that I own gambling casinos. But, gee, I could have even more fun by owning the United States Government. So we have entities out there who are worth some $50 billion--and the Koch brothers come to mind. If you are worth $50 billion and you have all kinds of interactions with the Federal Government and you have strong political views, why wouldn't you spend $400 million--which is what the media says that family is going to spend, and maybe even more--if you can purchase the United States Government. That is not a bad investment. That is what Citizens United is about. It is billionaires spending huge amounts of money without disclosure--without disclosure. I would have gone further than this bill, but this bill is certainly an important step forward. What does it require? It says if someone is going to spend more than $10,000 in a campaign they have to make public who they are. I don't think that is a terribly onerous provision. The American people are not stupid. They understand if somebody is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political activities they want something. That is what it is about. Why do people make campaign contributions? Many of us get a whole lot of campaign contributions from folks who give us $25, $30, $40. Most of my campaign contributions come from people who give us less than $200. But if somebody is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a campaign, I think the American people have a right to know who that is and what they want; who is taking that money and what those contributors are going to get in return. If you are a billionaire and you want lower taxes, have the courage to say: Hey, I am a billionaire. I am putting money into a party, and what I am going to get out of it is lower taxes for the rich. If I am somebody in a corporation that is polluting the air and the land and the water, and I want to get rid of those regulations, have the guts to come forward and say: Yeah, that is what I want. I want to eviscerate the EPA. I don't care that children in Vermont or Rhode Island get sick, that is what I want. So what this is about is fairly elementary. What this is about is simply having those people, those institutions, those corporations and unions that are putting more than $10,000 into the political process reveal who they are. What concerns me very much about this whole process--and I think concerns the American people--is while our middle class disappears and poverty increases, while the gap between the very wealthy and everybody is growing wider, it appears very clear right now these folks are not content, the top 1 percent is not content with simply owning the economy, with controlling the economy. They now want to control, to an even greater degree than is currently the case, the political process as well. That is what these campaign contributions of hundreds of millions of dollars are about. When I think back on the history of this country and the enormous sacrifices men and women made defending the American ideal--the ideal that was the vision to the entire world. The entire world looked to the United States for what a strong democracy was about--one person, one vote. In my State of Vermont, we have meetings and people come out--one person, one vote--to discuss the municipal town budget, to discuss the school budget. And now we have evolved to a situation where one family can spend $400 million buying politicians, buying elections. That is a long way away from what democracy is supposed to mean in this country. The DISCLOSE Act is a very important first step forward, and I hope we can get strong support for that important piece of legislation. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for yielding. As a member of the Transportation Committee, I would like to congratulate Senator Boxer for her extraordinary efforts in pushing this bill forward. This is an enormously important bill that took a lot of hard work, and I commend her for the work she and her staff have done. Senator Inhofe and I have very little in common politically, but I also wish to applaud him and his staff for coming together on this issue and doing something that is extremely important and doing it in a bipartisan way. Anyone who drives in the State of Vermont or, for that matter, drives around America, understands, to a significant degree, our infrastructure is collapsing. In Vermont, we have dozens and dozens of bridges that are in need of repair. We have many hundreds of miles of roads that need repair. Our public transit system needs help. What this bill is about is a start toward rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our public transit and, in the process, putting a significant number of people back to work. It is estimated this bill will save more than 1.8 million jobs nationwide in each of the next 3 years, and it will create 1 million new jobs through an expanded infrastructure financing program. What that means in the State of Vermont are thousands and thousands of decent-paying construction and other types of jobs, something we sorely need. So this bill is an excellent start. Does it go as far as it should? No, it does not. Compared to China, compared to Europe, our investments in infrastructure are minimal. When we invest in infrastructure, we make our country more productive, we put people back to work, and we make ourselves more internationally competitive. So I just want to say this is an important step forward, but we have more to do. Today, we are focused on roads, bridges, public transit--very important--but that is not the entire infrastructure. We have to pick up the issue on rail. We are falling further and further behind China, Japan, and Europe in terms of high-speed rail. We have to invest in rail and there are great jobs in doing that. We have to invest in our water systems and in our wastewater plants. We have to make sure every community in America has high-quality broadband as well as cell phone service. That is what infrastructure is about. We have not invested anywhere near the degree we should, and now is the time to get started. So this bill, which focuses on roads, on bridges, and public transit is an important step forward, and I wish to congratulate Senator Boxer and her staff, Senator Inhofe and his staff for their important work. With that, I would yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, the American people are angry because they are living through the worst recession since the Great Depression. Unemployment is not 8.2 percent; real unemployment is closer to 15 percent. Young people who are graduating from high school and college are going out into the world, and they want to become independent and create jobs. There are no jobs. There are workers out there--and I am sure you know them--who are 50, 55 years old who intended to work out the remainder of their work lives, and suddenly they got pink slips and their self-esteem was destroyed. They will never have another job again, and they are worried about retirement security. What the American people are angry about is that they understand they did not cause this recession. Teachers did not cause this recession. Firefighters and police officers, who are being attacked daily by Governors all over this country, did not cause this recession. Construction workers did not cause this recession. This recession was caused by the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of the people on Wall Street. What these people on Wall Street did was spend billions of dollars trying to deregulate Wall Street, and they got their way. Five billion dollars in 10 years is what they spent. And then they were able to merge investment banks with commercial banks with insurance companies, and they got everything they wanted. They said: Get the government off the backs of Wall Street. They got it. The end result was that they plunged this country into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Four years after the financial crisis caused by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and the other huge financial institutions, one might have thought that perhaps they learned something, that maybe the lesson of the great financial crisis was that you cannot continue to maintain the largest gambling casino in the history of the world. But apparently they have not learned that lesson. They are back at it again. We have recently seen the $2 billion or $3 billion gambling losses at JPMorgan Chase. What we need from Wall Street if we are going to put people back to work is investment in the productive economy. Small and medium-sized businesses all over this country need affordable loans, and that is what financial institutions should be doing. They should be helping us create jobs, expand businesses, not continuing to engage in their wild and exotic gambling schemes. When we talk about why the American people are angry, they are angry because they understand that Wall Street received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. But it was not just the $700 billion that Congress approved through TARP. As a result of an independent audit that some of us helped to bring about in the Dodd- Frank bill, we learned that the Federal Reserve provided a jaw-dropping $16 trillion in virtually zero-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, the central banks all over the world, to large corporations in America and, in fact, even wealthy individuals. What the American people are saying is that if the Fed can provide $16 trillion to large financial institutions, why can't they begin to move to protect homeowners, unemployed workers, and the middle class of this country? The American people are looking around them. They are angry not just because unemployment is high, they are angry not just because millions of people have lost their homes and life savings, they are angry because they understand that the middle class of this country is collapsing, poverty is increasing, while at the same time the people on top are doing phenomenally well. The taxpayers bailed out Wall Street, and Wall Street recovers, Wall Street does well, but now we have kids in this country graduating college deeply in debt, can't find a job, and we have older workers losing their jobs, and people are saying: What is going on in America? I believe the American people ultimately are angry because they are looking at this great country--a country for which many of our veterans fought and died--and what they are seeing is this Nation is losing its middle class, losing its democratic values, and, in fact, is moving toward an oligarchic form of government, where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of this Nation. In the United States today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income since the 1920s. You are not going to see what I am talking about now on Fox or NBC or CBS, but it is important that we discuss this issue because it is one of the most important issues facing America. Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals in America own more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people--400 to 150 million. Today--and this is really quite amazing--the six heirs to the Walmart fortune--the Walmart company started by Sam Walton, his children--one family now owns more wealth than do the bottom 30 percent of the American people. One family owns more wealth than the bottom 30 percent or 90 million Americans. Today, the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of all of the wealth in America. The top 1 percent owns 40 percent of all the wealth in America. What do we think the bottom 60 percent of the American people own? I ask this question a lot around Vermont. I have a lot of meetings. I say that the top 1 percent owns 40 percent, and people say: That is not good, but we understand that. Then I ask: What about the bottom 60 percent? Maybe they own 15 or 20 percent, they say. The answer is that they own less than 2 percent--less than 2 percent. So you have the bottom 60 percent of the American people owning less than 2 percent of the wealth, and the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth. Here is another astounding fact. We don't see it much in the media and many colleagues don't talk about it too often, but, incredibly, the bottom 40 percent of the American people own three-tenths of 1 percent of the wealth in this country. I know we have some of my colleagues coming up and saying: Look, not everybody in America is paying taxes. You have millions of people not paying any taxes. No kidding. Well, they don't have any money. All of the money is on the top. According to a new study from the Federal Reserve, the medium net worth for middle-class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010, primarily because of the plummeting value of homes. That is the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle-class family. I have talked about distribution of wealth. That is what you accumulate in your lifetime. Let me say a word about income, which is what we earn in a year. The last study that was done on income distribution was done recently. This is what it told us, and this is literally quite hard to believe. The last study on income distribution showed us that between the years 2009 and 2010, 93 percent of all new income created in the previous year went to the top 1 percent. Ninety-three percent of all the new income created between 2009, 2010--the last information we had--went to the top 1 percent, while the bottom 99 percent had the privilege of enjoying the remaining 7 percent. In other words, the wealthiest people in this country are becoming phenomenally wealthier, the middle class is disappearing, and poverty is increasing. When we talk about an oligarchic form of government, what we are talking about is not just a handful of families owning entire nations, we are also talking about the politics of the nation. As a result of this disastrous Citizens United decision, which is now 2 years of age-- one of the worst decisions ever brought about by the Supreme Court of this country and a decision they just reaffirmed a few days ago with regard to Montana--what the Supreme Court has done is to say to the wealthiest people in this country: OK. You own almost all the wealth of this Nation. That is great. Now we are going to give you an opportunity to own the political life of this Nation, and if you are getting bored by just owning coal companies and casinos and manufacturing plants, you now have the opportunity to own the U.S. Government. So we have people such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson--the Koch brothers are worth $50 billion. That is what they are worth. They are worth $50 billion and they have said they are prepared to put $400 million into this campaign to defeat Obama, to defeat candidates who are representing working families. Sheldon Adelson, who is only worth $20 billion--he is kind of a pauper--is willing to spend what it takes to buy the government. If we look at it, that ain't a bad deal. If someone is worth $50 billion and they spend $1 billion or $2 billion, they can buy the U.S. Government. That is a pretty good investment, and that is what they are about to do. On the one hand, we have a grossly unequal distribution of wealth in income. These guys control the economy. We have the six largest financial institutions in this country that have assets equivalent to two-thirds of the GDP of America--over $9 trillion--and these six financial institutions write half the mortgages and two-thirds of the credit cards in America. That is a huge impact on the economy. But that is not enough for these guys. The top 1 percent own 40 percent of the wealth--not enough for these guys. Now they have the opportunity to buy the U.S. Government. So that is where we are. In my view, working families all over this country are saying enough is enough. They want this Congress to start standing for them and not just the millionaires and the billionaires who are spending unbelievable sums of money in this campaign. It seems to me what we have to do is start listening to the needs of working families--the vast majority of our people--and not just the people who make campaign contributions. I know that is a very radical idea. I do know that. But it might be a good idea to try a little bit to reaffirm the faith of the American people in their Democratic form of government. We could let them know just a little bit that maybe we are hearing their pain--their unemployment, their debt, the fact they are losing their houses, the fact they do not have any health care, the fact they can't afford to send their kids to college. Maybe, just maybe, we ought to listen to them before we go out running to another fundraising event with millionaires and billionaires. I do know, however, that is a radical idea. So let's talk about what we can actually do for the American people. In the midst of this terrible recession, where real unemployment is closer to 15 percent if you include those folks who have given up looking for work and those people working part-time when they want to work full time, we know the fastest way to create decent-paying jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. I see the Senator from Minnesota has taken the chair and is now presiding, and I don't know about Minnesota, but I do know in Vermont many of our bridges are in desperate need of repair, our roads are in need of repair, and our rail system is falling further and further behind Europe and China. We have water systems that desperately need repair, wastewater plants, and we have schools that need repair. We can put millions of people back to work making our country more competitive and more efficient by addressing our infrastructure crisis. Let's do it. It is beyond my comprehension why we can't even get a modest transportation bill. I know Chairwoman Boxer and Senator Inhofe are working on a modest transportation bill, but we can't even get that through the House. In fact, we have to do a lot more than that, but at least they are making the effort. At a time when we spend some $300 billion a year importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries, at a time when this planet is struggling with global warming and all the extreme weather disturbances we see, and the billions of dollars we are spending in response to these extreme weather disturbances, we need to move toward energy independence. We need to reverse greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, we need to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel into energy efficiency and into sustainable energies, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. When we do that, we also create a substantial number of decent-paying jobs. By the way, in the midst of a very competitive global economy, what we should not be doing is laying off teachers and childcare workers. We should be investing in education, not laying off those people who are educating our kids. I know there is a lot of discussion on the floor with regard to the national debt--almost $16 trillion--and the deficit--over $1 trillion. That is a serious issue and we have to deal with it. But my view is a little different than many of my colleagues in terms of how we deal with it. I think most Americans understand the causation of the deficit crisis; that is, President Bush went to war in Iraq and he went to war in Afghanistan, and he just forgot something. We all have memory lapses, don't we? We go shopping and we forget to buy the milk or the bread. He had a memory lapse. He forgot to pay for those wars--a couple trillion dollars' worth. He forgot to pay for them. To all of our deficit hawks out here, all those folks who say we have to cut food stamps, we have to cut education, we have to cut health care--oh, two wars, $2 trillion, $3 trillion, $4 trillion? Hey, no problem, no problem at all. For the first time, as I understand it, in the history of this country, we went to war--which is an expensive proposition--and at the same time not only did we not raise the money to pay for the war, we went the other way and decided to give huge tax breaks, including to the wealthiest people in this country. We spent trillions going to war and we gave tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country. That begins to add up. That is called creating a deficit. Then, on top of that, because of the greed and the recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, which drove us into this recession-- and when you are in a recession and people are unemployed and small businesses go under, less revenue is coming into the Federal Treasury. If we are spending a whole lot, less revenue is coming in, so you have a deficit crisis. Some of my Republican friends say--and some Democrats say--maybe we should have paid for the war. Yes, you are right. Maybe we shouldn't have given those tax breaks to the rich. Maybe you are right. But be that as it may, we are where we are and we need deficit reduction and we know how to do it. We are going to cut Social Security. My friends back home, when you hear folks talking about Social Security reform, hold on to your wallets because they are talking about cuts in Social Security--nothing more, nothing less. I don't know about Minnesota, Mr. President, but in Vermont no one has heard of the concept of chained CPI. I have asked them, and they do not know what chained CPI is, which is what they are trying to pass here. It is this belief--and senior citizens back home will start laughing when I say this--that COLAs for Social Security are too high. Seniors back home are scratching their heads, saying: Wait. We just went through 2 years when my prescription drug costs went up, my health care costs went up and I got zero in COLA and there are people in Washington--Republicans, some Democrats--who think I got too much in COLA? What world are these people living in? That is the reality. So some of the folks here want to pass something called a chained CPI, which, if it were imposed--and I will do everything I can to see it does not get imposed--would mean seniors between the ages of 65 and 75 would lose about $550 a year. Then, when they are 85 and they are trying to get by on $13,000 or $14,000 a year, it will cost them about 1,000 bucks a year. That is what some of our colleagues want to do-- virtually all the Republicans want to do it and some Democrats want to do it as well. I am going to, as chairman of the Defend Social Security Caucus, do everything I can to prevent that. They also want to cut Medicare and Medicaid. We have 50 million people without any health insurance at all, we have people paying huge deductibles, Medicaid covering nursing home care, and they want to cut Medicare and Medicaid. They have the brilliant idea, some of them, that maybe we should raise the retirement age for Medicare from 65 to 67. Tell me about somebody in Minnesota who is 66 and is diagnosed with cancer, and if we do what the Republicans want us to do in the House, which is to create a voucher plan for Medicare, we would give that person a check for, I don't know, $7,000, I think, or $8,000, and we would say: Go out to the private insurance market, anyone you want, here is your $7,000 or $8,000--remember, they are suffering with cancer--and go get your insurance. I guess that would last them maybe 1 or 2 days in the hospital is what it would do. But that is the Republican plan. I agree that deficit reduction is a real issue, and I think we have to deal with it. But we are not, if I have anything to say about it, going to deal with it on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick, the poor, and the hungry. The way we deal with deficit reduction in a responsible way, in a fair way, is to look to the billionaires in this country who are doing phenomenally well and make the point that Warren Buffett made, that there is something a little absurd about millionaires and billionaires today, in the midst of the deficit crisis, paying the lowest tax rates they have paid in decades. Yes, we are going to have to ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. I saw a piece in the paper the other day which was quite incredible. Rich people, apparently, are giving up their citizenship. They are leaving America and going abroad. These great lovers of America who made their money in this country, when we ask them to start paying their fair share of taxes, start running abroad. We have 19-year-old kids who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan who went abroad not to escape taxes; they are working-class kids who died in wars. Now the billionaires want to run abroad in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. What patriotism; what love of country. We have to deal with deficit reduction, but we don't have to cut Social Security, we don't have to cut Medicare, we don't have to cut Medicaid, and we don't have to cut education. We can ask the wealthiest people, the millionaires and billionaires, to start paying their fair share of taxes. We can end these outrageous corporate loopholes Senator Conrad talked about. He showed a picture of a building in the Cayman Islands where there are 18,000 corporations using the same postal address in order to avoid paying their taxes. We are losing about $100 billion a year. We have large corporations making billions, and paying, in some cases, nothing in taxes. That is the way to get to deficit reduction, not on the backs of people who are already hurting. We are at a very difficult moment in American history. We are in the process of losing the great middle class. We are seeing more of our people being poor. We are seeing savage attacks being waged against the elderly in terms of cuts in Social Security and Medicare, attacks against those who get sick in terms of going after Medicaid and Medicare. I think what the American people are saying is enough is enough. This great country belongs to all of us. It cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of billionaires who apparently want it all. I cannot understand why people who have billions of dollars are compulsively driven for more and more. When is enough enough? How many children in this country have got to go hungry? How many people have got to die because they don't go to a doctor because you want to avoid paying your taxes? That is not what America is about. That is not what people fought and died to create. We have a fight on our hands. The job of the Senate is to represent the middle-class working families of this country, all of the people, and not just the superrich. I hope we can begin to do that. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the amendment.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, this amendment is cosponsored by Senators Boxer and Begich and is supported by over 40 pro-consumer organizations throughout the country, including Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, the Center for Food Safety, and many others. This is a very conservative amendment. It says the American people should have the right to know what is in the food they and their children are eating and if that food contains genetically engineered products. This amendment grants States the authority to label genetically engineered food. It is not a mandate. It grants States that right-- something which, by the way, is now taking place in 49 countries throughout the world. If the people in England, Germany, France, and dozens and dozens of other countries have labels allowing their people to know if they are eating food with genetically engineered products, States in the United States should have that right.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I call up amendment No. 2310.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2254.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this is a noncontroversial amendment which, according to the CBO, has zero costs. It is supported by the National Wildlife Federation, the American Forest Foundation, the Biomass Thermal Energy Council, and the Trust for Public Land. This amendment would simply allow, under the Community Wood Energy Program, a new category of small grants to be created which would provide seed capital for biomass cooperatives through grants of up to $50,000. These cooperatives would have the opportunity to work with local wood pellet or wood chip manufacturers to supply bulk purchases that provide consumers with modest discounts. This amendment can help our Nation move forward to more locally produced renewable biomass heating. Again, according to the CBO, it has zero costs, and I would ask for the support of my colleagues.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I urge very strongly a ``no'' vote against the Inhofe resolution.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me begin by saying I suspect that I have the strongest lifetime proworker voting record in the Senate. I want to create jobs, not cut jobs. What Senator Boxer and Senator Cardin and others are talking about is creating meaningful, good-paying jobs as we retrofit coal-burning plants so they do not poison the children of Vermont and other States around the country. So to Senator Inhofe and others, I say respectfully: Stop poisoning our children. Let them grow up in a healthy way. The Clean Air Act is set to cut mercury pollution by 90 percent using technology that is available right now. That would be good news since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say mercury can cause children to have ``brain damage, mental retardation, blindness, seizures, and the inability to speak.'' We get exposed to mercury simply by eating fish contaminated with it, and we have seen fish advisories in 48 out of the 50 States in this country. Wouldn't it be nice if the men and women and the kids who go fishing could actually eat the fish they catch rather than worry about being made sick by those fish? Powerplants are responsible for one-third of the mercury deposits in the United States, but Senator Inhofe's resolution would let them keep right on polluting. His resolution would also eliminate protections against cancer-causing pollutants such as arsenic, as well as toxic soot that causes asthma attacks. Leading medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association, and the American Nurses Association have said ``Senator Inhofe's resolution would leave millions of Americans permanently at risk from toxic air pollution from powerplants that directly threaten pulmonary, cardiovascular and neurological health and development.'' That is not Bernie Sanders saying that; it is the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association, and the American Nurses Association. We are talking about preventing thousands and thousands of premature deaths. We are talking about preventing heart attacks. We are talking about what is a very serious problem in my State, and that is asthma. Maybe Senator Inhofe would like to join me in the State of Vermont--I go to a lot of schools and I very often ask the kids and ask the school nurses how many kids are suffering with asthma, and many hands go up. Thank you very much. We do not want to see more asthma in Vermont or in other States that are downwind. We hear a lot from some of our Republican friends about jobs. The truth is if we are aggressive in cleaning up these coal-powered plants, we can create, and we have already seen created, many good, decent- paying jobs. In fact, if we invest--if the utility industries will invest in pollution controls, we can create almost 300,000 jobs a year for the next 5 years--meaningful, good- paying jobs making sure that our air is cleaner and that our people do not get sick. Let's talk about job creation and cleaning up our environment. This is not just theory. I am the chairman of the Clean Jobs Subcommittee. We heard from Constellation Energy, which installed pollution controls at their 1280-megawatt coal plant in Maryland that cut mercury emissions by 90 percent. This $885 million investment created at its peak 1,385 jobs onsite at the plant for boilermakers, steamfitters, pipefitters, operating engineers, ironworkers, electricians, carpenters, teamsters, laborers--just the kind of jobs we want to create. The American people know we have to rebuild our infrastructure. We can create jobs doing that. This is one of the areas where we can create decent-paying jobs and help keep our kids from getting sick.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on June 20, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room SD 115 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the United States Patent and Trademark Office: Implementation of the Leahy-Smith American Invents Act and International Harmonization Efforts.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 20, 2012, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the IPO Process: Is It Working for Ordinary Investors?''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 20, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``Risks, Opportunities, and Oversight of Commercial Space.''