Debbie Stabenow

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Absolutely.

Ms. STABENOW. Absolutely. We had the support of farm groups and conservation groups all across the country.

Ms. STABENOW. Well, the distinguished Senator is absolutely right. One would think this would be the time to just pass it. And frankly, if not, because we know the House committee has a little different view on commodities, we offered to sit down all through August to work that out so we could come back now and come up with something that was a compromise. But the House committee wasn't able to do that because they do not have the support of the leadership to get that done. So here is where we are. What I know is that we have to have movement. We have to have the House act or we are not going to be able to get this done.

Ms. STABENOW

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I rise today to strongly urge my colleagues to support the nomination of an outstanding judge, Gershwin Drain, to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. We will have an opportunity to vote in a few minutes. Senator Levin and I join together in the strongest possible recommendation to our colleagues on this nomination. I have known Judge Drain for many years. I can tell you he is a very impressive individual with a long record of excellent public service. He has served in the district court, the Detroit Recorder's Court and the Wayne County Circuit Court. He is active in the community. When I am in the community and have the opportunity to be at events that are important for people, for families, for communities, for children, for economic development, Judge Drain is always there, supporting the efforts of Detroit and of Michigan. He is of course dedicated to his incredible family, who I know is very proud of him, as we are. But don't take my word for it. The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously rated Judge Drain ``qualified'' to serve on the District Court. He was named a ``Man Of Excellence'' by the Michigan Chronicle newspaper, and the Detroit News named him ``Michiganian of the Year''-- both very prestigious recognitions in Michigan. This is a very important judgeship that has been vacant for more than 2 years. It is important for people in Michigan and throughout the eastern district to be able to have the full measure of justice they expect and deserve when coming before the court. It is very important that we fill this vacancy. I am appreciative and proud that the President of the United States has nominated him. I appreciate the support of the Judiciary Committee in bringing this nomination forward and the agreement to allow us to vote on this nominee. Judge Drain has the qualifications, the experience, and the temperament for this very important position. I strongly urge my colleagues to support his nomination and to vote yes when it comes before us in the next few minutes. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate resume legislative session.

Ms. STABENOW

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

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for allowing me to take a few moments to speak when he was waiting his turn. I wish to also say Senator Hoeven has been a terrific member of our Agriculture Committee, coming in, in his first term, and has made a significant difference. He and our chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad, have been terrific powerhouses, and they never let me forget that 90 percent of the land in North Dakota is farmland. I thank him for allowing me to take a moment. Agriculture and the Drought

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I am not sure the House has completed the vote yet on a partial disaster assistance program, but I am rising to urge colleagues in the House to join with us in passing the Agricultural Reform Food and Jobs Act, commonly known as the farm bill. I wish to commend the chairman and ranking member in the House for doing what we did in Senate, which is to work together on a bipartisan basis. They worked very hard with their committee and reported out a bill. We have some differences with that bill, but they worked very hard together, and I know we can come to agreement on something that is a compromise between the House and the Senate. I commend them for doing that. I am very concerned and very disappointed that the Speaker and the House leadership did not support their efforts to bring this to the floor in July. I was on the Agriculture Committee in the House. This is my fourth farm bill. I have never heard of a situation where there was a bipartisan farm bill reported out of committee and not taken up on the floor. It is very concerning. But nonetheless, I support the chairman and ranking member in the House and look forward to working with them to actually get this done. My colleagues, of course, remember the long and intense debate we had on this bill, both in committee and on the floor, with more than 70 amendments. I wish to again greatly thank our majority leader for understanding the significance of this bill to the economy and to rural America and to jobs across the country. The majority leader and the Republican leader both allowed us the time to do that, and I very much appreciate that. We passed the bill, as we all know, with an overwhelming bipartisan vote, 64 to 35. The Senate came together and did what the Senate is supposed to do, and we worked very hard together to be able to get that done. Especially given the drought and the disaster farmers are dealing with--not just drought but other disasters--it is critical the House follow our lead and both pass a comprehensive disaster assistance program but in the context of real reform and a 5-year farm bill. The House Agriculture Committee passed their bill. I am anxious and I am, frankly, disappointed they did not have the support they needed to be able to bring it up, bring to the Senate, and put us in a situation where we are able to go to a formal conference committee, which I would like very much to do to resolve differences. But we do intend to begin that process, speaking together, listening to each other, negotiating in the next few weeks to see if we can't come together informally, to be able to offer a compromise bill to the House and the Senate for consideration. I wish to remind my colleagues that the farm bill is a jobs bill. Sixteen million people work in our country because of our agricultural economy and our food industry. We have the safest, most affordable food supply in the world. The bright spot is agriculture. Export surplus is in agriculture. We should be doing everything possible to support agriculture, our farmers, our ranchers, both in the short term for disaster assistance but also looking down the road on a 5-year farm bill. Second, the farm bill expires on September 30, less than 2 months away. We need to get it done. We are racing against the clock right now. We also know that this year our Nation is experiencing the worst drought in a generation. You turn on the news, and you see serious wildfires in Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Montana, among others. You look in Michigan and you see a fruit disaster that relates from warmth and then freeze. We have more than half of the counties in the United States that have been declared disaster areas not just because of drought, which is what the House has addressed partially, but because of weather disasters. That is 1,584 counties across the country, 82 of them in Michigan. We have only one county in Michigan that has not been declared a disaster area. Eighty percent of the country is now experiencing abnormally dry, moderate, or extreme drought, 22 percent of the country is facing extreme doubt, and so on. As an emergency measure, USDA has opened 3.2 acres of conservation land for grazing and haying, but we know there is a lot more to be done. That is what I want to speak about because when we look at this, all the disasters--and we understand we have to address drought. We have to address what is happening to livestock. I am very proud of what we have done in the Senate, what we passed, which is a stronger Livestock Disaster Assistance Program. It is permanent--not just for a couple of months, it is permanent. But we also understood that there are other kinds of disasters. For those fruit growers and cherry growers in Michigan who have no access to crop insurance--it is not available to them--we made sure there was support for them. For apple growers, for sweet cherries, for juice grapes, for others across the country, we have put in place provisions in the Senate bill. Frankly, I believe we need to do more and can do more as we look at how this has developed. We need to have the next few weeks to fully look at all that has happened, whether it is livestock in the drought, whether it is wildfires, whether it is what is happening to fruit growers, and put together a comprehensive effort in the context of passing a 5-year farm bill. But when we look at all this, these are the disaster areas, but most of Michigan is not helped by what the House is doing because it does not include the efforts to help those who currently do not have crop insurance, the fruit growers. Michigan is not helped. The Northeast, again, with fruit, or Florida with fruit, or out West, whether it is California or Oregon or in this whole area--not helped by what the House is doing. I appreciate the first step, and I certainly understand that the agriculture leadership in the House is trying to do whatever they can to take a step, and I commend them for that. But it does not cover this. It covers a good share, but it does not cover every kind of disaster we have before us. And frankly, it doesn't cover disasters waiting to happen because of inaction on a 5-year farm bill. Let me go through the differences right now between what the House and the Senate have done. We passed a comprehensive 5-year farm bill as well as a comprehensive disaster assistance bill. I will underscore again that I believe that after looking through the next few weeks and looking at everything that has happened, we ought to be looking at what else we can do--not less, as the House did, but potentially more. Both the House and the Senate have extended the livestock disaster program to 2012. We extend it permanently. On tree assistance, if you lose the entire tree in an orchard, you are helped--not if you just lose the food, like most of our growers, but the entire tree. These things are the same, so we have sort of disaster-lite up here. Then, in the Senate bill, we increase payments for livestock producers facing severe drought, so we actually have a stronger payment system and safety net for our livestock producers. As I said before, we help fruit growers impacted by frost and freeze. We create new crop insurance options so that, going forward, we don't have to be back here every year because we strengthen crop insurance and create opportunities for fruit growers who do not have insurance now to be able to have crop insurance--which, by the way, producers pay into, and there is no payout unless you have a loss. We also address urgently needed dairy reforms to save dairies from bankruptcy. In 2009, under the current dairy policy, we lost farms across the country. If we do not act in a 5-year farm bill, in the area of dairy, of milk producers, it is a disaster waiting to happen. So we need to have a comprehensive farm bill that deals with dairy reforms because that is part of avoiding the next disaster. There is permanent funding, as I said, for livestock disaster assistance and conservation efforts to prevent another dust bowl. One of the reasons we don't have a dust Bowl in many areas where the drought has been horrible, just horrible, is because of conservation efforts that we put in place that have worked. We need to strengthen those. We give the Forest Service tools to protect and improve forest health and deal with another disaster not dealt with here, which is forest fires all across the country. We improve crop insurance to protect against disasters, and finally, we provide farmers and ranchers with long-term certainty. They want to know going forward not only what help they will receive this year--and they need it, and we will make sure that happens--but they want to make sure going forward that they have long-term certainty. I appreciate in my own home State that the commodity growers are very concerned--strongly supportive of the Senate bill, want to support the Senate disaster assistance efforts. In fact, the Michigan Farm Bureau came out today opposing what the House is doing because, from a Michigan perspective, it just doesn't cut it. It is just not enough. We have gone through efforts that, in fact, will allow us to solve the problem long term and to also address the short term. What we need, after hearing from farmers and ranchers across the country, is a bipartisan farm bill that gives producers long-term certainty so they can make business decisions without worrying about risk-management provisions that are going to expire on September 30--which, by the way, is just 58 days away. I would like all my colleagues to know that we have really a dual strategy right now, knowing how important this issue is all across the country to rural America and really to everybody--everybody who eats. I think that is everybody. We all have a stake in having a strong agricultural policy, nutrition policy, conservation policy that maintains our position as the world leader in access to safe, affordable food. With or without official conferees and so on, it is our intent to have conversations to see if we might come together on something that would bridge the differences between House and Senate agricultural perspectives. We know there are things we need to work on together. We are proud of the fact that we passed a farm bill on a strong bipartisan basis, but we understand we need to work with our colleagues and listen. It is our goal to do one of two things: to either have the opportunity to come together in September and offer something that would be a compromise with the House and the Senate that we could offer and look for an opportunity to pass--that is the best thing. It includes comprehensive disaster assistance as part of that. That is far and away what we are hearing from farm country and what we are hearing from those across the country whose livelihood depends on agricultural production in the food economy. If for some reason we are not able to succeed, we need to assess all of what has to happen in the next 4 weeks and come back together and do what we need to do in September to pass a very strong, comprehensive disaster assistance program--not just for livestock, as important as that is, but for all of our communities in every State where there has, in fact, been a disaster. We will work with colleagues. We will be offering a bipartisan effort. I am extremely hopeful that we can come together around what really needs to get done, which is a 5-year farm bill. If not, we certainly will make sure that in September we have the opportunity to work together. As I close, let me just indicate the reason--what happens if we do not do the whole farm bill. We lose deficit reduction. The only thing we voted on in a bipartisan way with deficit reduction, we passed here together. I see colleagues of mine who played a tremendous role in this. The former head of the Department of Agriculture, the Secretary of Agriculture from Nebraska, the distinguished Senator from South Dakota--North Dakota--we did this on a bipartisan basis, $23 billion deficit reduction. We repealed subsidies that we all agreed from a taxpayers perspective we should not be doing anymore. We made some difficult decisions on that. We want to make sure we support farmers for what they grow but not give a payment for what they don't grow. And the number of reforms we did around payment limits and other things, including going through every part of this bill and doing what everybody says we ought to do, some of which is look for duplication, what doesn't work, what ought to be eliminated--and we actually eliminated more than 100 programs and authorizations. If we don't do a real farm bill, all of this goes away. I suppose you can say the folks who do not want reform would be trying to stop us from passing a 5-year farm bill--certainly the Senate bill--people who do not want reform, people who would like to keep status quo and would like to continue with a system that has not worked for many growers and ranchers. We in the Senate have come together, and we think that is not the right way to go. I am committed to working with my colleague, the ranking member from Kansas, who I know cares deeply as well about what is happening to livestock producers in his State. We have talked. I know how committed he is to making sure we have the right help to be able to support them. We are committed to doing that. But let's not do half a disaster assistance bill. Let's not do something short term that is less than what producers across the country are counting on us to do. They have sent a loud message. They want us to get it done. There is no reason we cannot. We did it here in the Senate. I believe that if we work in good faith, if we listen to each other, if we trust each other, we can get the whole thing done in September and have, really, something to celebrate and to offer to all of those in rural America, all of those who count on us, every one of the 16 million people who have a job because of agriculture and our food industry. Mr. President, I yield the floor. My colleague from North Dakota has been extremely patient, and I am very much appreciative of his willingness to allow me to speak.

Ms. STABENOW

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

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to update folks about what is happening as it relates to the very important effort to pass a 5-year farm bill for our country--for our ranchers, for our farmers, for those who care deeply about nutrition and conservation policy for the country. We have somewhere between 16 and 20 million people who work in this country because of agriculture--the farm bill and food policy--and I am very proud of all the work we did together to pass a bipartisan farm bill. In doing that, we sent a very strong message on a number of fronts that we were committed to economic certainty for our growers. We said we understand the need to have long-term policies in place, and we also sent a message about disaster assistance. I have spoken on the floor before, as my colleagues have, about the very serious situation happening all across our country as it relates to livestock and the broad question now of drought in every region of the country. We also have had areas, in addition to drought in Michigan and other places, where food growers have been hit with an early warming and then a freeze again. So we have had multiple reasons to care about short-term disaster assistance, and I am very proud the bill we passed includes a very good livestock disaster assistance program available for this year which will be very helpful for our livestock producers. We also added provisions for fruit growers that will help those who don't have access to any crop insurance. That will not only include this year, but we looked to the future by putting in new options on crop insurance, new tools for the risk management agency to develop with growers, with commodity groups across the country crop insurance for the future. So as we see these kinds of weather disasters, they will have more certainty because there will be better coverage and broader kinds of coverage for crop insurance for all commodities, which we don't have today. We definitely need to pass a farm bill. We need the House to pass a farm bill both for long-term policy but also for disaster assistance right now, and we know this is an opportunity to achieve deficit reduction. The only bipartisan effort we have had on deficit reduction on the Senate floor--and I would argue probably bipartisanship on the House floor as well--has been through the farm bill, with $23 billion in deficit reduction, with major reforms, changes in policy, and eliminating four different subsidies that are there when growers don't need them or for things they don't plant anymore and replacing that with a risk-based, market-based system for when farmers truly do need us, as they do now. So there is a whole range of things we have done--reforms and strengthening conservation efforts in our country, focusing on the right policies around nutrition, around local food systems and so on-- and all that is in jeopardy at the moment because the House, rather than bringing to the floor the bill passed out of the House committee, which, even though it is different and I would argue doesn't have all the reforms we have and takes a little different approach on commodities and so on, it is a bill we can work with to come to final agreement on between the House and the Senate. But instead of bringing that to the floor, getting it done, we are now hearing discussions about just passing some kind of a disaster assistance program. Certainly, we need to do that. We have already passed it and we can strengthen it as we move forward to a conference committee and I would support doing that as well. But instead of having a full 5-year farm bill policy, they are talking about kicking the can down the road one more time. That seems to be a very popular strategy around here. It is not one the public wants us to use. They want to extend the farm bill for another year, with no deficit reduction, no reform, no certainty for farmers, and with policies extended another year that don't work for a lot of industries and then just do some disaster assistance. I think that would be a disaster. I know we have colleagues on both sides of the aisle--and I am grateful for the leadership of the chairman and ranking member in the House for their advocacy and leadership--who want to get this done, but we need to know the House leadership will allow that to happen so we can get real reform, deficit reduction, and the kinds of policies we need in place that will solve problems and provide the safety net all our farmers need. If we end up in a situation with just an extension, what happens? As our distinguished Presiding Officer knows, it would keep in place for another year a dairy policy that doesn't work. I remember, in 2009, sitting around the table and talking about what was happening to dairy farmers--folks going out of business, losing their farms because of policies that didn't work. Now the House is talking about extending those policies for another year rather than adopting the changes and the reforms we have put in place that would help dairy farmers all across the country. They are talking about an extension that would eliminate about half the support for fruit and vegetable growers that we put in place. In the last farm bill, I was proud to offer that, and we strengthened that in this farm bill. It is one of the largest areas of commodities, groups of commodities, in the country. So that would not be continued. There are a number of things that, frankly, would not be continued or available, and there are a number of things that would continue that are bad policy. So if we have a 1-year extension, we are continuing something we rejected and that everybody on both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate said they didn't want to do, which is direct payments going to farmers, government payments, regardless of whether the prices are high or low, in good times or bad times, and continuing even on things that aren't grown anymore. We all said that makes no sense. We all said, instead, that we wanted to move to a risk-based system and have a strong safety net there when farmers and ranchers need us, to strengthen crop insurance and make sure farmers have skin in the game; that they are sharing in the cost on crop insurance. But none of that happens with a simple 1-year extension. We continue things we have all said are not good policy, that cost taxpayers money, and that we shouldn't be spending our money on at a time of huge deficits; that we should not have those kinds of subsidies in place. We eliminated four of those, with $15 billion in savings alone in the commodity title. All that would go away under what the House is talking about. We would be continuing things people have said were bad policy. Everyone talks about reforms and changes, but this would continue the old ways. We eliminated about 100 different programs, duplication, and things that do not work anymore--redundancy, whatever it is. About 100 different programs we eliminated in what we passed. They would all continue--every single one of them--for another year if we just do a 1- year extension. Let me just say in conclusion that I encourage House colleagues to join with us. We can have differences in what our commodity title looks like, and I respect those differences. We can work those out if we have the opportunity to negotiate in good faith and get things done. We will do that. We can have differences in what should happen in the nutrition title, but we should not be saying to farmers and growers that we are going to walk away from them and put in place another kick-the-can- down-the-road strategy that keeps bad policy or no policy going, no deficit reduction, and puts us in a situation where, frankly, 1 year from now it is tougher and it is a bigger mess than ever, with our growers trying to go to the bank, trying to figure out what they are going to do when planting season comes and making decisions, all the while looking at us and asking: What happened here? Why did you do this? We did our job in the Senate on a strong bipartisan basis. It was a lot of hard work. We spent a lot of time here. We need to complete the job. If our House colleagues will come together with us; if the Speaker, the leadership in the House, will decide to give us a vehicle with which to do that, I am very confident we can get the job done. I yield the floor.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 19, 2012, in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Impacts of Environmental Changes on Treaty Rights, Traditional Lifestyles, and Tribal Homelands.''

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate to conduct a hearing entitled ``Making College Affordability a Priority: Promising Practices and Strategies'' on July 19, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 19, 2012, at 10 a.m., in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 19, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 19, 2012, at 9:30 a.m.

Ms. STABENOW

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

Ms. STABENOW. Thank you, Mr. President. I wish to take a moment to speak about what just happened and my deep concern about what just happened with this vote. On the one hand, we have 56 Members, a majority--a substantial majority of Members who voted yes, that they want to bring jobs home, that they want to stop paying for jobs that have been shipped overseas, and that we want to support and provide assistance through the Tax Code to bring jobs home. Fifty-six Members--that is a majority. What we didn't have is a supermajority to stop a filibuster. So this is basically what has been happening here. We have a situation where, despite the will of the majority of the people here, the majority of Senators who want to move forward to this legislation and pass it, because we have 56 votes to pass it, we don't have a supermajority. This is what has been happening over and over in the Senate despite the fact that people want us to work together and get things done. What we are trying to do--and we are going to continue to push forward--is to say very clearly to businesses that if they are going to close shop and ship jobs overseas, it is on their dime, not the American taxpayers' dime. We are not going to help pay for it. If they want to bring jobs back, we are happy to have our Tax Code allow businesses to write off those costs. In fact, we will give businesses an extra 20 percent toward those costs. This is deeply concerning to me today. I think those watching around the country are probably scratching their heads or saying things that we probably can't say on the Senate floor about what in the world is going on when we can't come together on the simple premise that Americans should not be paying for jobs shipped overseas. So we are going to keep at it until we get it done. What we ought to be unified around is having the words ``Made in America'' on everything again in this country. We are going to keep fighting until we can get that done. Thank you, Mr. President.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I want to speak as the chair of the Agriculture Committee about what is happening on the droughts across the country. First, I want to take a moment as the author of the Bring Jobs Home Act to say that this afternoon we are going to have an opportunity to come together--as we did on the farm bill when we came together on a bipartisan basis--to focus on growing things in America and the need to strengthen our economy, provide economic certainty around agriculture and the food industry in America. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to get something done. This afternoon, we are going to have the same kind of opportunity to come together and recommit ourselves to making things in America. The Bring Jobs Home Act is a very simple, straightforward way to eliminate a subsidy that should have been gone a long time ago, and that is the tax writeoff for shipping jobs overseas. When someone is losing their job because a plant is closing to go overseas, to add insult to injury, as a taxpayer, they get to pay the cost of the moving. It is outrageous. What we want to do is stop that. That is what the bill does. It gives a business tax deduction for the cost of bringing jobs home and then adds another 20-percent tax deduction on top of it to encourage businesses to do that. We will be talking more about that later, but it is very important and I hope my colleagues will come together and send a very strong message about American jobs. Let's bring those jobs home. Drought Conditions Mr. President, I also want to talk today about the terrible weather conditions across the country. It started with an early spring and then a returning frost and snow in Michigan. Areas around the country have orchards and fruit crops that have gone from frost to an extension of a drought situation that is absolutely terrible. It is a very serious crisis around the country. Not since the days of the Dust Bowl have we seen this lethal combination of scorching heat and bone-dry weather in the production regions across our country. As I speak, 80 percent of the country is suffering from abnormal dry or drought conditions; 64 percent is suffering from moderate or severe drought. That is the highest percentage in 56 years. As we can see on the map, any area that is in color here has had some kind of a drought. The black areas are the worst. Either it is from abnormally dry, moderate, severe, or exceptional drought in almost every area of the country. This is extremely severe, and we need to take action to support our growers and ranchers. We have almost 1,300 counties across the country rated as drought disaster areas, and that is one-third of all the counties in the United States. Every day it seems the Secretary of Agriculture is adding more to the list. More than 75 percent of the Nation's corn and soybean crops are in drought-affected areas and more than one-third of those crops are now rated poor to very poor. This is devastating our crops and our livestock producers. Only one-third of our soybean crop is considered good to excellent right now, which is down by about 30 percent from last year. According to the Department of Agriculture's weekly progress report, less than one-third of the Nation's corn crop is in good or excellent condition. Nearly 40 percent is rated poor or very poor. So we are talking about a massive effect on farmers, on livestock producers, and ultimately on consumers in America. Facing higher food and feed costs and pastures that are withering due to the heat, our ranchers and livestock producers could see significant losses. I had an opportunity a number of months ago with Senator Roberts to be in Kansas and to see what was happening then, even before all of this. I understand how very serious this is for our livestock producers. The livestock sector could face significant declines in margins, and we could see a sharp increase in consumer prices for meat and eggs and dairy. At a time when middle-class families are still trying to recover from the great recession, paying more at the grocery store is not going to help. In fact, it is going to hurt a lot. The USDA has opened their Conservation Reserve Program so that land will be there for grazing, but we know it is not going to be enough for producers. There is no crop insurance equivalent for livestock. More producers may lose their ranches because of this drought. Livestock disaster assistance expired last year. We need the farm bill to become law so we can make this help available again because in the farm bill we extend the livestock disaster assistance program permanently, and we make it available for this year. This drought is a serious problem, devastating all of our farmers, and will come home to families here and around the world, unfortunately, all too soon. We can't control the weather. We know that. In fact, farming and ranching are the riskiest businesses in the world. I should say even though they are the riskiest businesses, we have the safest, most affordable food supply in the world, and it is part of our national security. We can't control the weather and the risks the farmers face, but this drought underscores the need for improved risk management tools and better crop insurance. It underscores the need for a farm bill. We need to get a farm bill done now more than ever. We have 16 million people who work in this country because of the agriculture and food industries--almost one out of four in Michigan. We came together-- and it was a lot of work, a lot of bipartisan effort, and I am very proud of what we did together in the Senate a couple of weeks ago--to pass a farm bill. We now have the House having acted in committee and passed a strong bipartisan farm bill. It is different. There are some things, certainly, we need to work out in our conference committee. Our bill has more reforms in it, and we certainly are concerned about the nutrition cuts. But I will say this: We need the House to pass their farm bill so we can come together in conference committee and find the right balance that is good for families, consumers, farmers, ranchers, and businesspeople across the country. I am very confident we can do that, but we need the House to act to be able to make that happen. Weather disasters are getting worse every day, which makes it even more important that we have our legislation and, frankly, that we work together to add some pieces to it in a conference committee so we can address what is happening. In our bill that passed, as I said, we extended a livestock disaster assistance program and made it retroactive to this year. We also included a provision for fruit commodities that don't currently have crop insurance to allow them to be able to buy into a program that is in law. We actually strengthened it, made it better. For those who don't have crop insurance, we also said they could get help this year. So we do have some things in the bill we passed, and we can work together to strengthen that even more. Senator Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, is working, and we are working closely with him, on something that would be a more comprehensive disaster assistance program. In order to be able to do that, we have to have a farm bill. This is not, as we know, a partisan issue. We came together across the aisle. Consumers, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, people who vote, and who don't vote--people across this country--care about a safe, reliable, and affordable food system, and that certainly goes for our farmers and ranchers and their families in communities all across America who were hit so hard by the drought. This drought is evidence that we need to come together and act. When we look at this kind of weather map and what is happening and the fact that the majority of communities in our country are facing disaster as a result of the droughts and other things that happened relating to the weather, we need to act. We need to act in a responsible bipartisan manner. We can do that. We did that in the Senate. The House committee did it, and I commend them for that. We need the support and help of the leadership in the House to be able to get this to the floor and get it passed so we can get it done. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, in just a couple minutes we are going to be voting on a very important policy, a very important bill I am proud to sponsor with a number of cosponsors, a number of colleagues, called the Bring Jobs Home Act. It goes to the heart of what has been happening in a global economy when we have not been paying attention to our Tax Code or other things that we ought to be doing to be able to bring jobs home and other countries are aggressively working to take our manufacturing base, to take our middle class. They know when they look at our country we have a middle class because we make products and grow products, so they are rushing to be able to make products and to innovate and so on and to create incentives for our jobs to be shipped overseas. We know we are in a global economy. We know our companies are competing with countries. We have a whole range of things we have been working to do to be able to support and incentivize and help manufacturers and other businesses here to innovate, expand advanced manufacturing, IT services, among others. But what we have not been paying attention to is how our own Tax Code actually is incentivizing or supporting--at the very least supporting and helping companies ship jobs overseas. There is a very important, very basic policy we will be voting on today. If a company decides to pack up and move overseas, should they be able to write that off their taxes and you and I--all of us as American taxpayers--pay for it? I do not think there are too many people in the country who would say yes to that. In fact, I can't imagine why anybody would say yes to that. The reality is, if somebody loses their job at a plant and then they find out they get the privilege, as an American taxpayer, to help pay for the move, folks say: Are you kidding me or they say a whole lot of other things. This bill, the Bring Jobs Home Act, is very straightforward. It simply says we are not going to pay for that anymore. That loophole will be gone. However, if they want to bring jobs back, we will be happy to let them deduct those costs as a business expense, for bringing a job home. In fact, we will give them another 20-percent tax credit for 20 percent of their costs on top of it. So we are happy to incentivize coming home and to support their efforts to come home, but we are not paying for them to leave. That is basically what this is about. We are going to have a vote on whether to proceed to this bill. As we know around here, unfortunately, we have seen the process that used to be used rarely now used on every bill, to where we cannot even get to the bill to vote on that with a majority vote without going through a supermajority to be able to stop a filibuster, which is right now what basically has been happening. There is an objection. We have to get 60 votes to overcome it; otherwise, the filibuster continues. We will need to do that today. We need bipartisan support to do that. I hope we will have that. A couple weeks ago we came together in strong bipartisan support. We worked together very hard, long hours, to pass a farm bill. That is about growing products in America. Now we have an opportunity to work together, come together in a bipartisan basis to support making products in America. We do not have a middle class unless we make products and grow products. It is not going to make any sense if we continue to have a tax policy that actually encourages or helps you to leave America. What we have seen now is that we are actually losing jobs. We know in the last decade 2.4 million jobs were shipped overseas. Those are just the ones they are able to count at this point. So 2.4 million jobs have been shipped overseas, at a minimum, and we help to pay for it. The good news is we have a lot of companies now, for a lot of reasons--the fact that we have the most productive, the smartest, most talented workforce in the world, we have high productivity in our country--we have companies now bringing jobs back and we want to accelerate that, to support that effort. I am proud that in our automobile industry we are seeing jobs come back with support and help from policies that allowed loans to retool older plants. Ford Motor Company has taken their largest plant in Wayne, MI, and retooled it, along within investment in advanced batteries. Jobs are coming back from Mexico. Some are coming from other countries as well. GM is doing the same kind of thing, Chrysler--I am sure other companies as well. We know many companies, large and small, are looking at this. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to have in a businessman from Michigan who is the CEO of a company called GalaxE.Solutions. He actually lives in New Jersey but is now having a major presence in Michigan, in Detroit, hiring 500 people in IT, information technology. Those are jobs coming back from India, Brazil, China. One of the things I heard, as he was talking yesterday, is when we look at the bottom line, costs matter. If we have a Tax Code that helps him bring jobs back rather than supporting him to take jobs away, to ship them overseas, it makes a difference. It matters. It matters not only for the cost but for the signal it sends about how serious we are in creating jobs in America. I cannot imagine anybody who doesn't want to see ``Made in America'' again on everything. We are not going to get there if we do not start with the basics. That is what this is. I know you have talked about this so many times as well. This is about the basic premise of saying we are going to stop loopholes in the Tax Code that reward companies that are shipping jobs overseas and we are instead going to support and incentivize jobs coming back. We know there are many other things, in addition to this, that we need to do. We need comprehensive tax reform in a global economy. There is no question about that. That is something I am confident we will be doing in the months ahead and into the next year. We need to do that. We need to do it on a bipartisan basis. But that is not a reason not to close this loophole, to stop this policy that makes no sense. We have a lot more to do. We know that. We need to come together around policies that focus on innovation and education and rebuilding America and supporting the great entrepreneurs of the country--small businesses, large businesses. We know that. There is much to do. But today we have a chance to do something. We have a chance to do something. This is very straightforward. We have a chance to simply say the Tax Code in America is not going to reward or pay for the costs of American jobs being shipped overseas. It is as basic as that. No other country in the world would do this. They think we are crazy to have this kind of policy in place. So today is a chance to say: No, we are not crazy. We get it. We know there is a lot to do, but let's come together on this issue and then we can come together on the next and the next and continue to build and rebuild our economy for the future. But today is very simple. Today is the day to say no to American taxpayers helping to pay the costs for American jobs being shipped overseas. It is a day to say yes to supporting, through tax deductions, jobs coming back and additional incentives on top of that. I hope my colleagues will come together and very strongly vote yes on this measure so we can proceed to debate and to pass something that I know is strongly supported across our country. Cloture Motion

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I first want to thank my friend and colleague from Connecticut for his commitment and compassion and passion on this issue. I appreciate very much his joining with me and others to come together to put forward what I think is a commonsense bill that focuses on closing a major loophole that is requiring basically taxpayers to help foot the bill when jobs are shipped overseas. So I want to thank the Senator from Connecticut for his efforts and commitment. I know he shares my belief that we need to be bringing jobs home, and that is what we intend to do. I do want to speak today about the legislation that is in front of us. We can come together and agree we don't have to go forward and have this vote to stop a filibuster. If we could agree to bring up the bill and discuss it and pass it, it would be terrific. We know we have a majority to support this bill and be able to pass it, send it to the House, and the President will sign it in 30 seconds, I know, to be able to close this loophole. But we are, unfortunately, engaged in something right now that we are engaged in all the time now. It used to be a rare occurrence to have an objection that triggers a filibuster. Now it is on every issue. So we find ourselves waiting to be able to vote to see whether we are going to be able to get a supermajority to be able to go to this bill. That is very concerning to me, given the fact that we do have the majority in the Senate that wants to debate and pass this bill and we have the vast majority of Americans. It is not about Democrats or Republicans. We have people all over this country who want to see us move forward on this bill as well as others that will focus on jobs and focus on bringing jobs home. We want to build an economy that lasts. The way we do that I believe is by making things--making things in America. Two weeks ago, we passed the farm bill on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote. As chair of the Agriculture Committee, working with my ranking member Senator Roberts, we very much appreciated the hard work and support of Members on both sides of the aisle to pass something that is involved in growing things. We don't have a middle class in this country and we don't have an economy unless we make things and grow things. So we showed we could come together around a major piece of legislation that invests in growing things and all of the offshoots of that as it relates to the food economy. This is an opportunity to say ``we get it'' when it comes to making things and bringing jobs back from overseas so we can make more things again in America. It is unbelievable to me--and I know it is unbelievable to hard-working men and women in Michigan and I know all across the country--that companies actually get a tax writeoff for packing up shop, paying for the moving expenses, doing what they need to do to close down and move jobs overseas. It is actually astounding. And when we look at the fact that we have lost 2.4 million jobs in the last 10 years because of that, it is outrageous when you think about it that we are losing 2.4 million jobs and it continues, and, at the same time, American taxpayers are helping to foot the bill. That makes absolutely no sense. We have heard a lot about tax reform from Members on both sides of the aisle, and I support that. I think there are some larger tax issues. As a member of the Finance Committee, I am committed to addressing a range of issues that deals with incentives and how we compete globally and our companies are able to compete globally. But this is tax reform we can do right now. We don't have to wait for something big to come someday. We are going to have an opportunity in the next day to vote on tax reform immediately. I know the Presiding Officer shares the desire to bring those jobs home. The fact is, we have something very simple and straightforward we are going to be asked to vote on. First of all, the Bring Jobs Home Act would end the taxpayer subsidies that are helping to pay for moving costs for corporations that are closing up shop and sending jobs overseas. Secondly, we are going to allow companies to have that deduction when they bring the jobs back. So if we have a company wanting to close up shop in China and bring the jobs back, we are happy to allow a business tax deduction for that. And, on top of it, we will allow an additional 20-percent tax credit for the cost of bringing those jobs back. So we are happy to do that. But we are not paying to ship the jobs overseas. I don't know of any country in the world right now that would have a tax policy that involves helping to pay for jobs leaving their country. If anything, we are in a situation today where we have other countries either trying to block us from selling to them or they create incentives. I have mentioned so many times but it is true, I have talked to companies that had the Chinese Government approach them and say, ``Come on over, we will build the plant for you.'' And then they steal your patent. But the fact is other countries are aggressively trying to get what we have had as America, what has created the middle class of America, which is the ability to make things in this country. We don't seem to understand that if we are not vigilant, if we are not paying attention, if we are not focused, if we don't have the right policies and the right kinds of investments and partnerships with the private sector, they are going to have all of those middle-class jobs. So when we look at this, it is time to begin that process. In fact, it is way past time to do this. Cheryl Randecker would certainly agree with that. She worked at Sensata for 33 years. She has a daughter who is ready to go to college. She is worried about how she is going to pay her bills and put food on the table and pay for her daughter's schooling. And now she finds she has lost her job. It is being shipped to China. Her employer gets a tax deduction that she is helping to pay for, for the moving expenses. Her coworker Joyce is 60 years old and has worked at the same company for 29 years. She has given them her whole career, and in those years she has developed a very specific set of job skills that have made her a tremendous asset to the work they do at their facility. But those skills aren't necessarily transferrable to another company, and she is worried those companies would rather hire somebody half her age to save money. She is another person who must be absolutely outraged to find out that the taxes she has paid for nearly 30 years in her career are being used to help her company ship her job to China. I have heard similar worries from my constituents all over Michigan, people who have worked all their lives--often for the same company--in their late fifties, early sixties, a few years shy of retirement, and who suddenly find the rug pulled out from under them. It is outrageous to think that those individuals, who have played by the rules and worked hard their whole lives, suddenly find themselves in a situation where their jobs are shipped overseas and American taxpayers are subsidizing it. We can change that. We can change that when we vote to move forward on this bill. The good news, and the reason we need to do this to keep this momentum going, is that we have a lot of companies that are now doing the math and finding it makes good business sense to bring jobs home. So we have some good news stories, and we need to keep them going. But our Tax Code needs to catch up with that and reward those companies instead of putting them at a competitive disadvantage when we have companies closing up here and shipping jobs the other way. Caterpillar is making major new investments in the United States, bringing jobs back from Japan, Mexico, and China. DuPont is building a plant in Charleston, SC, to produce Kevlar. That is great news. They are making investments in Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. All-Clad Metalcrafters, the folks who make high-end cookware, have brought their production of lids back from China to the United States. Keen, a shoe manufacturer, just opened a 15,000-square-foot plant to manufacture boots in Portland, OR--production that used to be in China. Master Lock, the world's largest padlock maker, moved jobs back to their facility in Milwaukee, WI, and they now have 50 products manufactured exclusively in the United States made with U.S. component parts. US Airways brought hundreds of jobs back to their call centers in North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. Today, Lori Manuel is joining me in just a few moments at a press conference to talk about how important those jobs are to her and her colleagues. Yesterday I was on the floor talking about our American automobile industry. I am very proud that Ford has retooled. The largest plant they have is in North America, in Wayne, MI, and because of that effort and new advanced batteries, they are bringing jobs back from Mexico and, we are now hearing, from China and other places. I know GM and Chrysler are very focused on jobs here and bringing jobs back, and that is all good news. These are companies that want to invest in America. They want to bring jobs home. Our Tax Code should be rewarding that, not rewarding those who want to leave. Our Tax Code still rewards their competitors who are not making investments in America, and it makes absolutely no sense. When CEOs are making calculations about where to move production, we do not want the Tax Code standing in the way. It is very simple. We know we have to focus on jobs in America. We are in a global economy. Our companies are competing with countries and policies of countries and investments by other countries. We have to make sure that we are doing everything, that it is all hands on deck, that everybody is moving in the same direction, that the Tax Code works, that we are partnering in the right way in every part of our economy so that the message is sent out: Bring jobs home. ``American made.'' We want to strengthen America. This is about America first. That is what the Tax Code ought to focus on, and that is what this bill is all about. I am hopeful that our colleagues will get beyond the politics of the moment. I know we are in an election year. I get the partisan politics of the moment. But there are people around our country counting on us--Democrats, Republicans, Independents, folks who vote, folks who do not vote--counting on us to actually step up together and do things that make sense. This makes sense. We need to bring jobs home. This bill will help do that. I yield the floor.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support the motion we have before us to begin consideration of my bill, the Bring Jobs Home Act. I thank my leader for making this a priority and thank the President of the United States for also making this a priority as we move forward. Let me start on process, to say it is true, of course, as the leader indicated, we could be simply on this bill and working to complete it and pass it. But unfortunately, as happens on everything now, when the leader attempts to move to a bill, there is an objection to that. When there is, it puts us into a situation where we have to spend several days trying to overcome a potential filibuster to be able to move to the bill. So, process-wise, that is where we are. From a substance standpoint it is absolutely critical that we move to this bill and that we pass it. The great recession and the financial collapse of 2008 were absolutely devastating to our economy. We know that during that time, 8 million Americans lost their jobs and many are still struggling to get out of their own deficit hole because of what happened. These are people who worked all their lives and played by the rules, only to have the rug pulled out from under them. Many of these people were folks who worked in manufacturing, many in my great State of Michigan. We are so proud that we make things in Michigan. We do not have a middle class, we do not have an economy unless we make things. That is what we do in Michigan. For decades, this has been the foundation of our economy. Frankly, it created the middle class of our country and we are proud it started in Michigan with the beginning of the automobile industry. It is no coincidence that as those jobs have disappeared over the decades, the middle class has begun to disappear as well and families are in more and more difficult situations personally as a result of that. Those jobs have been the driving force of our economy for decades, as I indicated. Those jobs are the jobs that allowed the ``greatest generation'' to build the greatest economy in the world, the greatest economy we have ever seen. Those jobs led to tree-lined streets with at least one car in every driveway, and the freedom to raise a family and send them to college and maybe have the cottage up north and be able to take the family on vacation and have the American dream. Today in fact that dream is in jeopardy and every American family knows that. But it does not have to be that way. In the last decade, companies shipped 2.4 million jobs overseas. To add insult to injury, American taxpayers were asked to help foot the bill. It is amazing. When I explain that to folks in Michigan, they say you have to be kidding--or they say other things I cannot repeat on the floor of the Senate. Just imagine if you are one of those workers in Michigan or in Virginia or in Ohio or in Wisconsin or anywhere in this country who maybe was forced to train your overseas replacement before you were laid off. Imagine what your reaction would be--more colorful than I have been able to state here. When an American worker is asked to subsidize the moving expenses, as they do today under current tax policy--the moving expenses and costs so their own job can be shipped overseas--there is something seriously wrong with our Tax Code and with our priorities. It does not have to be that way. In fact, we can change that. We can change that this week on the floor of the Senate by passing the Bring Jobs Home Act and sending it to the House and then sending it to the President where I know he will enthusiastically and immediately sign it. Instead of rewarding companies for shipping jobs overseas, we want to reward companies for bringing jobs home. That is the whole point of this bill. We stop the tax deduction for moving expenses related to moving jobs overseas. That is what this bill does. Right now you can deduct those expenses as part of your business expenses. We say: No more. Second, we say: However, if you want to come home, we will happily give you that deduction for the costs of moving back to the United States and we will add an additional 20 percent tax credit for those costs of bringing jobs back to the United States. That is what we are doing in the Bring Jobs Home Act. This is common sense. Unfortunately it is not that common these days, but it is common sense and it is good economic sense as well. It is so important that we pass this bill. We talk about tax reform. We talk about having a lot of tax loopholes. This is one we can eliminate right now, together, on a bipartisan basis. Let's start here, the No. 1 loophole, we will close it; No. 1 priority, jobs in America. I know some of my colleagues do not believe these jobs are ever coming back. I hear that all the time. We in Michigan have been seeing that same defeatist argument for 20 years. But in fact that is not true. One of the things I am proudest of in the last 3\1/2\ years is that we have refocused on advanced manufacturing, making things in America, in this country. We have a lot more to do but we have in fact refocused on jobs here at home and we are seeing, because of that, a whole range of policies--whether it is the advanced manufacturing tax cut I offered in the Recovery Act, that allows a 30-percent writeoff for clean energy manufacturing jobs, or whether it is the retooling loans we put in place to be able to help retool plants to be able to modernize in the name of advanced manufacturing. It is bringing jobs back. We put in place some initial actions that are making a difference and we are now seeing every month that manufacturing is having an uptick. It has been one of the only areas where pretty much every month we have begun to see a slow return. We are beginning to see some of these jobs come back as a result. Our companies are doing the calculations, finding out that bringing jobs home makes good business sense. It is time our Tax Code stops standing in the way and actually has caught up with what many businesses are doing. Ford Motor Company brought jobs back from Mexico to support advanced vehicle manufacturing at their newly retooled Wayne Assembly Plant in Wayne, MI. Chrysler is growing and expanding their operations here in the United States, investing--95 percent I believe is the last number which I heard of their investments are being done in America. We are proud to have them investing in Detroit and in Michigan. Last week we saw a report that GM is about to go on a ``hiring binge.'' I love this, I love anything called a hiring binge, as they bring almost all of their information technology needs back in-house, and to America. We have a great company in Detroit--actually from New Jersey, now in Detroit--Galaxy Solutions, that has an ``outsource to Detroit'' effort going on to bring IT back from places such as India and Brazil and China. We have on the side of one of our largest buildings this great sign that says ``outsource to Detroit.'' If we are going to outsource somewhere, let's outsource to our American cities. We love the fact that they are part of the effort to rebuild and refocus on Detroit. We have companies that want to invest in America. We have stories about GE coming back. We have stories in every State of companies that are bringing jobs back to America. We have men and women who want to work. We have companies that are looking at bringing jobs back. CNBC called it ``the stuff that dreams are made of.'' I think going forward the great economic resurgence for us is involved in advanced manufacturing, making things in America and bringing our jobs back to America. It is more than time. It is what our workers are dreaming of. We are proud in Michigan of our workforce, these folks who know how to work, they want to work, they work hard every day. I have to say that efforts such as ``outsource to Detroit'' are giving them a new chance to do that, as well as the other efforts that are going on around Michigan. There are so many opportunities right here in America. We have the great new ideas. We have the ingenuity and the innovation. We have to make sure we have the right policies to make it happen, that we are not doing anything in our Tax Code that encourages jobs to go overseas; that we do everything possible to support efforts to bring them back and then to reinvest and to expand upon research, development, innovation, retooling the plants we have, reinvesting in communities, reinvesting in our cities, and focusing on a strategy of American jobs. That is what everyone wants us to be doing. There is a great place to start and that is with our Tax Code so that it catches up with what leading-edge business leaders already know. American businesses, American workers can compete with anybody in the world if we have a level playing field and we give them a chance to do it. This is a moment, I believe, for us to indicate very strongly to everybody in the country that we get it and that we are not going to allow the Tax Code to continue to create a situation where if someone wants to close up shop and move overseas they can get a tax writeoff as a result. That makes absolutely no sense. I cannot imagine any other country in the world allowing that to happen. When I think about places such as China, where at this point they say: Come on over, we will build the plant for you. Forget about a retooling loan; we will build the plant for you. Of course, then we will steal their patents, and there are a lot other challenges, but: Come on over and we will build the plant for you. The last numbers I saw showed that China was spending $288 million a day--probably more now--on clean energy policies and manufacturing, and new cutting-edge efforts to try to compete and beat us in an area we should own. Between our universities and our businesses and our great workforce we ought to completely own these technologies. I am very proud to say that Michigan is now No. 1 in new clean energy patents. We were proud to open, last Friday, the first U.S. Patent Office outside of Washington, DC, in Detroit, MI, as a result of that. There are great ideas happening all over this country right now, innovators--frankly, people who have lost their jobs and they are now back in their garage or basement or the extra bedroom, with new ideas. We want to create businesses to support their creation of businesses by incentivizing them, not having a Tax Code that incentivizes somebody to move overseas. This legislation I think is pretty simple. It is about bringing jobs home to America. We are going to stop writing off the costs, allowing that business to be subsidized by all of us, including the people they lay off, in order to move overseas. Instead, we are going to say no, if you move overseas you are on your own. But if you want to come back we are happy to allow you a business deduction for those moving expenses and we will add another 20 percent toward the costs of your expenses on top of it. That is what we should be doing. That is smart tax policy. It is common sense. It is one step in a series of things we need to do in order to be able to bring jobs home and make things in America again. I hope we will see an overwhelmingly positive, bipartisan vote on this bill. It would send a wonderful message that we can work together. We worked together not long ago to pass a farm bill with a strong bipartisan vote because we need to make and grow products in America. That is how we make an economy; that is how we have a middle class. We came together, and I am very appreciative of everyone coming together and working with me and Senator Roberts to get that done. This is another opportunity. It is another way for us to come together and say: We get it. We understand what is going on in the country. Let's work together and get the job done. I strongly urge colleagues to come together and pass the Bring Jobs Home Act. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, if I might just have 1 more minute.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I first thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership. I am proud to join him and so many of my colleagues in supporting and cosponsoring the legislation in front of us. I thank the majority leader for his comments, and all of those who care deeply about, frankly, our democracy, which is what we are talking about this evening. I strongly believe in the DISCLOSE Act and think it is critical as step 1. I think there is much more that needs to be done even as we go forward to add to this. But this is a very important, basic standard of transparency. If someone spends $10,000 on ads trying to affect an election, people should know who they are. It is just as simple as that. I think it is important for us to emphasize the fact that the majority of the Senate this evening voted for this bill. The reason we did not pass the bill tonight is that the Republicans, colleagues on the other side of the aisle, are putting us in a situation where we have to reach 60 votes and therefore, by not doing that, they are filibustering the bill. So they are blocking the bill. They are filibustering the bill. We have a majority. All we want is a vote. Give us a vote. If we had an up-or-down vote on this bill, this bill would have been passed. I think it is incredibly important for everyone to understand that. It is not that we do not have the support. We have the votes. It was demonstrated this evening. At the moment what we do not have is the supermajority to get past a filibuster. I urge everyone listening or watching tonight to contact their Members, to urge them to support the effort to stop the filibuster--which is what we are talking about right now. Unfortunately, for everyone in America, we know this is going to be the most negative campaign cycle in the history of the country. Secretly funded negative ads with ominous music and shadowy figures and vicious attacks are going to fill our living rooms for the months between now and the election. In fact, in many States that has already been happening very intensely. We know why. We have been talking about that--a Court decision that has tied money to free speech, corporations are people, money equals free speech. That creates a situation where now we are being told through the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that we, in fact, cannot put limits on corporate money or union money or any other kind of dollars coming in because it is under the category of free speech. It has opened the floodgates for secret money allowing special interests--and that is who is spending the money, special interests with their own agenda--to spend unlimited funds to essentially buy elections, buy a U.S. Senate that works for them, a U.S. House of Representatives, a Presidency that works for them. It is not the majority of Americans, not the folks who got up this morning and went to work. Maybe they took a shower before work, but maybe they took a shower after work--the folks working very hard every day, trying to hold it together, who have been through the toughest recession we have seen since the Great Depression, who have most likely struggled with their house underwater and credit card debt too high and trying to piece together one or two or three part-time jobs to hold things together for their families. They are not the ones who are funding these secret ads. It is not their secret money. What we know so far is that over half the money that has come in has been from 17 multimillionaires in our country. When we think about that, it is pretty worrisome. When we think about the fact that 17 or 18 or 20 people in our country could decide to buy a form of government that works for them, that is certainly not a democracy. I think this bill is part of an effort that we are all working to achieve, to protect the basics of our democracy. It is not about making judgments for people about whom they should vote for, whom they should support, how they should be involved in elections. It is about making sure we all know--that the American people know--who is spending the money so each American can make their own judgment about the agenda of the people who are spending the money and whether that reflects their own agenda and their own values. This is simply about shining the light of day, opening up a process, transparency, so each of us can make our own judgments about whom we choose to believe and not believe in this political process. When we run TV ads, the law requires us to disclose. We go on at the end of the ad and say: I am Senator Stabenow, and I approved this message. Personally, I don't see why someone else running it should not be doing that too. I know the sponsor of this bill agrees with that as I know do my colleagues on this side of the aisle. But we are not even asking that. We are simply saying if someone spends $10,000 or more, they need to disclose it. They need to put it on a Web site so the public has the opportunity to know who they are and how much they are spending. There are a couple of brothers we talk about a lot now because of the money they have been openly talking about spending. It has been in the papers. Certainly, it has been in the media for months--two gentlemen called the Koch brothers who have been spending millions and millions of dollars. I don't know what the final numbers will be. I have seen numbers that show each of the two of them say they want to spend $200 million, $400 million together. I don't know, maybe more to impact the elections. I think it is a important for the people in Michigan, the people of Rhode Island, the people in Colorado, and across the country to know they are doing that. They should know who they are and how much is being spent in order to make a judgment about how they are choosing to spend their money. If someone, whoever it is, is spending $10,000 on influencing elections through ads, Americans have a right to know. We know right now from the way we have been able to piece together what is happening that we are talking about big, wealthy, special interest. It is no surprise as to who is spending the money. What is their motivation? What are they trying to buy? I know there are those who would like to keep special tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. We are going to have a chance, once we complete this debate, to vote on legislation of mine called the Bring Jobs Home Act. There are those who don't want us to eliminate the tax break that allows folks who are shipping jobs overseas to write it off their taxes, which I find outrageous. There are folks on the other side shipping jobs overseas who want to keep that tax break, and they may very well want to spend money against candidates and against Members who vote for my bill. We know big oil companies want to keep taxpayer subsidies even though they are the most profitable companies in the history of the world. Probably when the tax incentives started in 1916, it made a lot of sense for new and emerging companies. It doesn't make sense today, from a taxpayer standpoint, to be paying high prices at the pump from one pocket and subsidies to companies out of the other. We know they may very well want to spend money to be able to keep those subsidies. Seventy-three percent of Americans want to end oil and gas subsidies, but the special interests are fighting to keep them. We know there is money being spent in the elections, secret money, to support people who will keep those tax subsidies. So the question is: Why is this in the public interest? In America, the greatest democracy in the world, why in the world are we letting this happen? Our democracy is not for sale. It should not be for sale, and we are fighting to make sure it is not for sale. The people of our country are the ones who have the power to decide who represents them, and it should not be a group of anonymous billionaires somewhere who are able to do that. So when those billionaires want to buy attack ads and influence our votes, the least they can do is have the courage to come forward and say how much they are spending and put their name to it and be able to have to disclose that to everybody. The American people have a right to know. The people in Michigan have the right to know. We have already seen millions of dollars being spent in Michigan, and people have the right to know who is spending that money. What is their background? What is their interest? They need to know so they can make their own judgment about whether it has any credibility. The 2010 midterm election saw a more than 400-percent increase in spending from what has been called the super PAC. That is a 400-percent increase in spending 2 years ago.

Ms. STABENOW. Let me indicate also that in the first 4 months of this year, 90 percent of all outside money being spent on this coming November Presidential election was secret. Again, that is 90 percent of what was spent in just the first 4 months of this year was secret. This is about openness, transparency, and whether everyone in our country is going to have the opportunity to have information to make their own judgments. We need to be allowed to pass this bill. We need an up-or- down vote on this issue. We need to stop the filibuster that is happening by the Republicans on the other side of the aisle. Stop blocking the bill. Let us vote on it. We have the votes to get it passed. The American people deserve to have this passed. I yield the floor.