Debbie Stabenow

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Before I speak about a very critical piece of legislation, I wish to join the Senator from Virginia in recognizing our friend and colleague from Delaware who has done such an extraordinary job in the time he has been here. I wish to associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Virginia. There is no one who brings more intelligence, passion, commitment or generosity of heart than the Senator from Delaware, and the fact that he has given his life to public service is something we all thank you for. You will be greatly missed. Unanimous-Consent Request--S. 3706 Mr. President, I rise this afternoon and join with my friend from Rhode Island as well, a cosponsor, to speak about a critical issue affecting millions of Americans around the country. That is the question of lack of jobs and the need to help those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves without a job, trying to hold things together for their family, trying to keep moving, looking for work at a time that is incredibly difficult for our country. So I rise to speak and to offer S. 3706, the Americans Want to Work Act, and to ask that our body act on this today--now. Americans want to work. That is a fact. That is a fact. People want to work. But this is the worst recession in our lifetime, the worst since the Great Depression. Millions of people are out of work through no fault of their own and they need our help. Things are beginning to turn, but it is painfully slow, and too many families are caught in the middle. Nationally, we know the unemployment rate stands at 9.6 percent, much higher in my home State of Michigan. Of those, 42 percent who have been out of work have been out of work for more than 27 weeks and many of them, too many of them, much longer. The reality is, as much as people want to work, there are, frankly, not enough jobs. When people say: Well why don't folks get out and get a job, go out and get a minimum wage job, the reality is there are five people are out of work for every one job that is available. That is a fact. Now it is better than it was. At one time, it was six for one job opening. So we are creeping along. But the reality is we still have five people out of work for every one job. It is not their fault that they cannot find a job in this circumstance. We know there are about 3 million jobs available nationally, and there are more than 15 million people who need a job. We cannot just walk away from them, from this circumstance, caused by an economic tsunami between the crisis on Wall Street, between our lack of focus over the last decade on fair trade laws. We have seen too many jobs being shipped overseas, which we tried to address yesterday and could not get any of our Republican colleagues to support us on to be able to get past that. There are multiple things that have happened but none of them caused by the people who have lost their jobs. This is a moral issue as well as an economic issue. That is why I have authored the Americans Want to Work Act. I wish to thank all the cosponsors. First, I wish to thank our majority leader, Senator Reid, who has given us the opportunity today to make the case and who understands the incredible urgency of this issue, and to Senator Schumer as well, who has been a great partner in this effort in combining an extension of unemployment benefits with his very successful HIRE Act, to be able to give a one-two punch. I also wish to thank Senator Brown of Ohio, Senators Casey, Dodd, Levin, Reed, Gillibrand, Lautenberg, and Senator Whitehouse. Our bill does two things to help people who have been out of work the longest. It creates a new tier of unemployment insurance that extends benefits for an additional 20 weeks, and it extends and expands Senator Schumer's HIRE Act tax credits to encourage companies to hire those workers who have been looking for work the longest. I realize this is the longest extension of unemployment benefits ever. I understand that. But this is also the worst recession in our lifetime, and we also need to understand that. I have received so many phone calls and letters from people all across my State who are trying so hard to get work. They are out every single day pounding the pavement or checking the Internet. They are filling out applications. They are sending out resumes. They are making phone calls, trying so hard to find a job so they can put food on the table for their family and, frankly, keep their head above water, try to keep their house above water, to be able to have a roof over their head while they are looking for work. They want to work. They do not want to be getting unemployment benefits. They do not want to be in this situation. They want the dignity of having a good-paying job so they can provide for themselves and their families. I wish to share just one of the thousands of stories I received over the last month. It comes from Janice in Sterling Heights, MI. At the age of 54-- She writes-- I have already worked 35 years of my life. Back when I was young, there was always talk of 30 and out. Never once did I dream at my age that I would be unemployed for over a year. That even though I apply for any job I am qualified for, I never hear back. Now, all I have to look forward to is working until the day I die, wondering where my health care is going to come from, and how I am going to be able to continue to pay my bills. I do not know how long I can hang on until my current unemployment benefits run out. I have nothing, nowhere to go, if evicted. I am so angry because I was brought up that working hard all your life is what you are supposed to do to have a home and a family and a retirement. That is exactly what we are talking about--people who do nothing but work hard and play by the rules and are found in a situation they did not create. She goes on to say: I am angry and disappointed in the government because they are taking away benefits I have expected to be there after working for 35 years and paying into this system. There are millions of stories like Janice's, not only in Michigan but in every State. We have been working hard to create jobs, to get the economy back on track. We have passed, according to Business Week, four major jobs bills, including the small business jobs bill passed a couple of weeks ago and the President signed on Monday. That is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. The reality is we are in a situation where the majority of our Republican colleagues voted no on the small business jobs bill. Yesterday they blocked our ability to bring up a bill to close loopholes, to stop jobs being shipped overseas. We now stand asking that they not block again help for people who can't find work because this economy is not moving fast enough. I hope today my colleagues will join me in passing the Americans Want to Work Act. We should not walk away from so many Americans who are looking for work and need our help. I urge my colleagues to join us in saying yes on something, yes to the millions of Americans who want to work. I will offer a unanimous consent request in a moment. I yield the floor to my friend, the Senator from Rhode Island. Then I wish to return to make my unanimous consent request.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, the reality for us in America is that we will never get out of debt. We will never get out of debt with more than 15 million people out of work. We know it is substantially more than 15 million. We know there are millions of others who have exhausted their benefits. When folks talk about the deficit and leaving the deficit for our children, we will never get out of debt in this country until people get back to work, until they have good-paying jobs. And in between time, we will not move this economy forward until we are helping people to keep going in this recession. We know from the economists that for every $1 we put into the kinds of benefits we are talking about in this bill, we are stimulating more than $1.40 into the economy. So it more than pays for itself by the economic activity, and it is viewed as one of the top two best ways to stimulate the economy in a recession: to put money in the pocket of people who have to spend it because they do not have a job. I deeply regret that one more time it is ``object'' and it is ``no'' under the false argument that somehow we cannot afford to stimulate the economy, to understand that this is about Americans who want us to understand what they are going through, and to give some temporary assistance that does stimulate the economy, while we are focusing on putting people back to work. Unfortunately, this is the end of a week that demonstrates tremendous frustration, after we were able to get the small business jobs bill done, and then we hear ``no'' on efforts to stop jobs from going overseas, and ``no'' on helping the people caught because their jobs went overseas. So I am deeply disappointed. We will continue to bring the case of these millions of people to the floor of the Senate. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. STABENOW. The bill is designated, as other unemployment extensions have been designated, as emergency spending, just as we would do for any other catastrophe. If 15 million people out of work isn't an economic disaster, I don't know what is. For the millions involved, this is viewed as disaster assistance. We intend to move forward with a sense of urgency to put people back to work so in fact we will turn this economy around.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island. He is correct. The folks at the top got bailed out, and middle-class families are stuck on the hook. Five people looking for every one job. It is critical that we act. I am hopeful that instead of hearing another round of no, we will hear yes and that people will come together. There are millions of people out of work who have hit this wall. They are in every State. They are in red States, blue States, purple States. They are in every State. This should not be a partisan issue. On behalf of millions, at least 2 to 3 million people who find themselves in this particular situation, who are asking us to understand, who are asking us for help, asking us to give a lifeline to them so they can care for their families and get back to work, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from S. 3706, the Americans Want to Work Act; that the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statement relating to the measure be printed in the Record.

Ms. STABENOW. Yes.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Yes, I will be happy to.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I rise today asking that we vote to proceed to this measure so that we can have a full discussion and debate and work on the issues that are so important to middle-class families related to incentives for jobs being shipped overseas versus incentives to have jobs in America. I agree with my distinguished colleague from Iowa--we have worked together on many issues--that there is a larger set of issues. It is very important that in the next Congress we focus on comprehensive tax reform. Permanently extending the research and development tax credit, as the President has proposed, which I strongly support, is very important to us for long-term innovation and the ability to invest in America. I believe it is important to have fair trade agreements, agreements that are enforced. When we look at a country such as South Korea, where our manufacturers have been blocked from selling into South Korea, where automakers have been at a disadvantage, we need to make sure those issues are fixed before that trade agreement or any trade agreement moves forward. There are many issues on which we need to focus under the whole commitment that we want to export products, not jobs. I will talk about specifically what is in this bill, this piece of it, because this goes to the question of whether, in Michigan or in any State, if there is a decision made to close operations and take it to another country, lay off people in Michigan and move those jobs overseas, whether the workers, their families, Americans should subsidize that through a tax system that provides that you can take a deduction, a loss, or a credit for amounts paid in connection with reducing or ending an operation in America if you are starting the same kind of operation overseas--in other words, shipping your jobs overseas. Right now, you shut down, you get business tax deductions for what it costs you to shut down the operation and start it up somewhere else. To add insult to injury, we have workers training folks to take their place. We heard over and over what a challenging, humiliating, angering situation that is for too many of our workers. The question is, on this policy, knowing there is much more that needs to be done, which I support--and I do support looking at the entire tax system and how we are competing in a global economy and making sure our businesses in America have every advantage, every opportunity to compete successfully. But the question is, the single question on this vote that is coming up very shortly is whether we are going to allow companies that shut down operations and start similar operations abroad to write off their American taxes, whether the same people who are losing their jobs are going to have to help pay for the jobs going overseas. That is No. 1. We say no. We say that as a basic premise, that is wrong. No. 2, the question is whether we should end Federal tax subsidies that reward firms that move their production overseas under something called deferral. This bill says no. No. 3, the question is whether we are going to provide incentives-- among many incentives we have and need to have--whether we will say: If in the next 3 years you as a company choose to bring back jobs from overseas and hire Americans, we want to provide an incentive by giving a 24-month, a 2-year payroll tax holiday for those workers--if you are bringing jobs back from overseas. That is simply what this is. It is not everything, but it is a very important piece of the puzzle. That is what this is all about. For me, this is a fight about whether we are going to make products in America. If we make a commitment, as we have begun to do through the Recovery Act, through the advanced manufacturing tax credit, through the focus on manufacturing that has begun to get business moving again, we are going to have the ability to make it in America. And when we make it in America, we are going to make a lot of it in Michigan. The reason I am very committed to strengthening our manufacturing base is because I know that is going to strengthen Michigan because we have the engineers, we have the skilled workforce, we have the know-how, we have the innovation and the ingenuity. If we make it in America, we are going to be making a lot of that in Michigan. We are committed more broadly to doing that. We cannot have a middle class if we do not make products. If we do not make products and grow products and add value to it as a country, we will not have a middle class. The reason we are losing our middle class is because there has been in the last decade much more interest in how cheaply we can buy something rather than where it is made. Every other country has understood that it matters where it is made. China thinks it matters where it is made. India thinks it matters where it is made. Germany, Brazil, Japan--go around the globe. They look at us. They look at what created the middle class of this country. They want that, so they are focusing on manufacturing. They are putting in place their own barriers--and China, of course, wins the prize on this--to keep our companies out, to say, you have to make it in China, to say it has to be a Chinese patent, you have to turn over your technology, and so on. This bill is part of our effort to say that we are committed to fight for America, American businesses, American workers. This is not about punishing folks; this is about fighting for America. It is about fighting for a way of life. It is about fighting for the middle class of this country. We want to make it in America, and this bill sends a very simple message: Stop shipping our jobs overseas. Stop having loopholes in the law, incentives in the law that ship our jobs overseas. We have lost over 4.7 million manufacturing jobs in the last decade. We can debate the 8 years of the former Presidency and the incentives that caused job loss and too many of those in my State of Michigan. We know that if we focus on making products in America, we will bring those jobs back; that if we close loopholes, if we create incentives, we will bring jobs back. One example, and then I will close--I see my colleague from Ohio is here--when we focus on the right incentives, we do bring jobs back. In the last Energy bill, section 136--which I was pleased to author on tooling older plants to help businesses get retooling loans--caused Ford Motor Company to bring jobs back from Mexico to Wayne, MI. The jobs came back because of the right incentives. This bill is about the right kinds of incentives and closing the wrong kinds of incentives. I ask our colleagues to give us the opportunity to get to this bill, to work together to stop the bleeding, stop the shipping of jobs overseas, and give us the opportunity to make it in America again.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Thank you, Mr. President. I have found it interesting, having the opportunity to spend this evening listening to colleagues on the other side of the aisle. A lot of things have been talked about except the bill we are going to be voting on tomorrow. We certainly want to focus on the legislation we will have an opportunity to vote on together tomorrow to decide whether we are going to take up a bill that will stop shipping our jobs overseas. That is what this is about. We want to make things in America again and stop the incentives for shipping jobs overseas. I also wish to indicate that today, talking about certainty--and I agree with my friends on the other side of the aisle that we need economic certainty. I agree with that. It would be so helpful if everything was not filibustered and there wasn't sand thrown in the gears at every turn when we are trying to move forward and create economic certainty, making it take much longer in terms of trying to get to economic certainty. But I agree, and we agree, that we need certainty. I wish to commend the Senator from Florida for working with us on the small business jobs bill that was just passed. The previous speaker said we need bonus depreciation. Well, but that particular Senator and the majority of the Senators voted against that in the small business bill. We need to extend expensing provisions, we were told a while ago. Well, the majority of Republicans voted against that. We need tax cuts for small business, we were told. Well, we just had a bill with $12 billion in tax cuts for small businesses that the majority of the Republicans voted against. Again, with all due respect to my colleague from Florida who reached across the aisle and helped make that happen-- and we are very grateful--but I have been listening all evening to people talking about how we need tax cuts who just voted against tax cuts. They have talked about how we need certainty, and certainly one of the areas where we need certainty is in small business lending, and we have just created that. In fact, tomorrow, we are told, the SBA is going to provide about 1,400 loans for small businesses to be able to grow and expand and hire people--tomorrow--because of what was signed today. So that creates a little bit more certainty. We certainly need more of that. I am all for doing that, and I am all for creating the kind of level playing field that was talked about as well. We want to export our products, not our jobs. But at every step of the way, from the Recovery Act we passed 18 months ago to focus on manufacturing--making things in America, clean energy, advanced battery technologies, jobs and infrastructure--from that time until now we have seen nothing but delay tactic after delay tactic after delay tactic, slowing down the economic certainty that colleagues are now talking about this evening. So we want that certainty. We want certainty for middle-class families in this country who have been torn apart because of the fact that we have lost jobs. We have lost 4.7 million manufacturing jobs in this country under the policies of the last administration that now, we were told last week, they want to do again. The proposals unveiled by our Republican colleagues are exactly the same proposals that cost my State 1 million jobs. We are not interested in going back to that. We want to keep on a course that is going to get us out of the hole. So what is this bill about? I will soon turn this over to my colleagues to speak as well. What are we really talking about tonight? We are talking about doing three things that will bring jobs back that have been lost overseas. These jobs have been lost to China time and time again. They have been lost to India, lost to Brazil, lost to Mexico, and lost to many other countries because of a system we have that doesn't have a level playing field on trade, is not enforcing our trade laws, having some trade agreements that are not fair, and then having incentives that reward companies to write off their costs here while the jobs are shipped overseas. So we want to stop that. This bill, in fact, would prohibit a firm from taking any deduction, a loss or credit, for amounts paid in connection with reducing or ending the operation of trade or business in the United States and starting a similar trade or business overseas. What is that about? Well, we don't think American taxpayers should have to pay the bill through a deduction or a credit while their jobs are being shipped overseas. Companies shouldn't be able to write that off their taxes. We are also saying through this bill that we want to end the Federal tax subsidy that rewards U.S. firms that move their production overseas. Finally, we want to provide a carrot to say, if in the next 3 years a company closes down operations and brings jobs back--and we have success stories like that to tell of companies that are doing that--but if they do that, close operations in the next 3 years, bring the jobs back, they will get a 2-year payroll tax holiday. So they will get a tax cut if they bring jobs back. That is the simple bill. It is very simple. It is very straightforward. We want to take away the incentives to ship jobs overseas--the subsidies that cause Americans to lose their jobs-- turning around and then subsidizing the jobs overseas, and we want to create incentives to bring jobs back. That is what this is about. This adds to what the President signed today in terms of the small business bill that creates jobs. This is another step in our effort to make sure we are focusing on American jobs. We want to make sure we are making it in America again. It is no surprise we have lost the middle class as we have lost manufacturing. Our ability to have good-paying American jobs is built on the premise of a foundation that says we are going to make things in this country. We are going to make things. We are going to grow things. We are going to add value to it. That is what has created the middle class of this country. We are losing that. People are losing their jobs, losing their futures, their ability to care for their families, as we are seeing these jobs shipped overseas. This bill is about bringing them back. It is one piece of the puzzle. Take away the tax deductions and bring them back. That is what this is about. Tomorrow, the question is, Do you want to debate it? Do you want to move to the bill? It is not final passage; it is voting to move to the bill so we can have the debate about creating that certainty and creating jobs and making things in America again. I see my friend from Rhode Island, and I wish to turn things over to him because I know he is a passionate advocate for jobs, as I am. We often share, unfortunately, the same kinds of concerns about jobs in Rhode Island and Michigan. I know the Senator from Rhode Island cares passionately about bringing those jobs back to America.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, this evening, we will be discussing-- debating--a very important principle; that is, whether we are going to focus on making things in America and whether we are going to stop the incentives that ship our jobs overseas. This debate is about our efforts, through a bill we will be voting on tomorrow, to stop shipping our jobs overseas. That is what this is about. We know we are in a global economy. We understand we need to do business around the world, but we want to export our products, not our jobs. Right now, we are exporting too many of our jobs. Frankly, there has been no State that has been hurt more from this set of policies as well as inactions than my home State of Michigan. No State has been hurt more. For too long, we have not been enforcing our trade laws. We allow China to manipulate their currency so they can bring products into our country at a cheaper price artificially, which is against WTO. It is against the law. But they have been allowed to do that. I am very pleased the House is going to be taking action this week to address that. A number of us, Senator Schumer and I, Senator Lindsey Graham and a number of others, have legislation to do that, and we will be addressing that as we move forward in the Congress the rest of the year to get that done. So enforcing our trade laws, stopping currency manipulation, stopping countries from stealing our patents, from artificially blocking us from going in and selling to them, this is very important. But we also know there are policies in place that have put the wrong incentives in place--the wrong incentives. That is what the bill we will be voting on tomorrow will eliminate. We have two areas where we want to take away incentives right now to shift jobs overseas and we want to put in place an incentive to bring back jobs--three provisions in our bill. There is an incentive to create American jobs by allowing a company that, after the passage of the bill, brings back a job--hopefully a lot of jobs--to the United States sometime in the next 3 years. They would get a holiday of the payroll tax for 2 years, for 24 months, if they are bringing jobs back and it is clear that job was coming back from overseas. If they are stopping a job overseas, creating a job here, we want to create an incentive. We also want to take away those things that have encouraged jobs being shipped overseas. The second provision would deny business deductions of any costs associated with moving jobs overseas. The third provision would end corporate tax deferral of overseas income. Why in the world American taxpayers would want to subsidize essentially shipping jobs overseas through our Tax Code is beyond me. That is what we want to change. Someone should not be writing off the costs of moving the jobs overseas and setting up shop somewhere else. This legislation would take away that tax deduction, that business deduction for writing off those costs you use to ship jobs overseas. I have seen the devastation in communities around Michigan from efforts where a business will close up shop and will take jobs overseas. In many cases it is over the river to Canada or down to Mexico. I remember Electrolux, in Greenville, MI--it was 2,700 jobs in a community of 8,000 people--making refrigerators. They were productive, doing a great job. There was a second shift, in some cases a third shift. But they decided a few years ago to close up shop, 2,700 jobs lost, and they went to Mexico--where they could pay $1.50 an hour, by the way. We have a Tax Code that would allow Electrolux to write off the business expenses to take those 2,700 jobs down to Mexico. This legislation stops that. It would provide incentives for bringing jobs back. We cannot have an economy unless we are making things. That is the second part of what we are doing. We want to stop jobs being shipped overseas, but we want to make it in America. We want to make things in America again. We do not have an economy, no country has an economy, unless we make things and grow things and add value to them. I am very proud to say in Michigan that is what we do: We make things, we grow things, we add value to things. If we focus on making things in America again, we will not only bring jobs back, we will bring the middle class back because, as we have learned painfully, after seeing the last decade a focusing on cheap prices but not where things are made, that if we do not have manufacturing in this country and if we are not focused on where things are made, we will lose good-paying middle-class jobs. We have lost many of them. In fact, from 2001 until 2009 we lost 4.7 million manufacturing jobs in America. Nearly 27 percent of the jobs in manufacturing were lost during the last administration, from 2001 to 2009. We want to turn that around. In fact, we have been focused on turning that around. We have been focused in a number of ways to grow manufacturing, for example, in the Recovery Act with the Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit--48C it is dubbed--which has brought a number of new businesses to Michigan and others around the country, focusing on other kinds of clean energy manufacturing, to make things in America. We have begun to see the manufacturing numbers go up--way too slowly, but one of the ways to make sure it moves more quickly is if we close the incentives to ship the jobs overseas. If we close those incentives for shipping jobs overseas and, instead, put the right kinds of incentives in place, we will bring jobs back and we will be able to partner with businesses to be able to do that. One example I was pleased to author in the Energy bill passed a couple of years ago is a retooling loan program to help automakers and others manufacturing to be able to retool older plants and to be able to bring jobs back. We have seen a wonderful case of that with Ford Motor Company bringing the Ford Focus production back from Mexico to a plant in Wayne, MI, partnering with the Federal Government on the right kind of incentives to retool a plant--from a truck plant down to an energy-efficient, fuel-efficient car plant. Those are the kinds of incentives we need to have in place, not incentives that say if you ship jobs overseas you can write off the costs on your taxes. We know the kinds of incentives that can work. We have seen them work. We have to have a much more aggressive policy about making things in America and making sure that we are closing the loopholes that have stopped the efforts to take our jobs overseas. There is so much we need to do. I feel a tremendous sense of urgency about this issue of making things in America because of my great State, where we make not only automobiles, we make appliances, we make medical equipment--you name it and somebody in Michigan is probably making parts for it. We have created a whole generation and a middle class because of our ability to make things in America. Then we see what has happened, where we have seen the pressures coming in an international marketplace with other countries rushing to have a manufacturing policy--China, Korea, India, Germany, of course Japan--rushing to have a manufacturing economy and doing whatever they can, cutting corners, not following the law, stealing patents, manipulating currency, and putting up trade barriers. We are in a marketplace where we have to fight for our businesses and our workers, to keep the opportunities to make things here in America, not fold up and assume that your jobs are going to be lost and, in fact, incentivize that by tax policy. The legislation we have in front of us is one of the most important, fundamental pieces of legislation that we have voted on this year, in terms of jobs and turning the incentives around. We want to make things in America and we want to stop shipping our jobs overseas. We want to incentivize companies to bring jobs back by giving them a 2-year payroll holiday for jobs that are coming back from other countries and putting people to work. We want to take away the ability to defer taxes on profits made on businesses overseas and to use business deductions from the American tax system to be able to deduct from American taxes those costs that are being expended to ship jobs overseas. This is a time to be focused on fighting for America, on fighting for good-paying jobs and for workers and for businesses that have done the right thing. People who do nothing more than get up and go to work in the morning are proud of their skills. We have the best, most skilled workforce, the best engineers. We create the innovation in this country. But our tax policies encourage that to go overseas to create jobs. That is what this legislation is meant to address. This is about fighting for America, fighting for our American dream. It is about making sure that our priority is to make things in America again and to stop the policies that are shipping our jobs overseas. I see my colleague from California here, who is such a champion on this issue, who has spoken out so many times on behalf of her State of California. We share many things, actually, in terms of innovation. In fact, we talk about innovation oftentimes as created in California, that we are buying it and putting it in our automobiles as well as creating it ourselves in Michigan. We have a great partnership. You have more computer power in your automobile than anything else you own and we are very proud of that, and we are proud of the partnership we have--I am proud of the partnership with my friend from California, who is such a fighter for her people and a fighter for jobs. I will relinquish the floor at this time, but let me say this is very simple and the vote tomorrow is very simple. We want to stop shipping jobs overseas. We want to make it in America again.

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

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the legislation that allowed for the formation of real estate investment trusts, now commonly known as REITs. On September 14, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Cigar Excise Tax Extension Act. Included in that law were the critical provisions that first enabled investors from all walks of life to benefit from the income generation and diversification advantages of commercial real estate investments. Our predecessors in Congress recognized that without this innovation such investments would continue to be limited to institutions and wealthy individuals. The law signed by President Eisenhower enabled the creation of the first REITs. However, the groundwork for the modern REIT era was truly laid in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, when REITs were given the ability to operate and manage real estate, rather than simply owning or financing it. As a result, the great majority of today's REITs are owners, operators, and developers of properties in the office, retail, industrial, health care, apartment, lodging and self-storage sectors-- properties used by a broad range of tenants from across the economy. Reflecting the evolving real estate market, Congress and the Treasury have implemented incremental changes to the REIT approach to real estate investing over the years. For example, laws such as the REIT Simplification Act of 1997, the REIT Modernization Act of 1999, the REIT Improvement Act of 2004, and the REIT Investment Diversification and Empowerment Act of 2008 have been enacted with the support of Congresses and Presidents of both parties. While the REIT model has evolved, the original legislative intent of making large-scale, income-producing commercial real estate investment available to all types of investors remains at the core. For example, by definition in the Internal Revenue Code, 75 percent of a REIT's assets must be in qualifying real estate, 75 percent of its income must come from rents and other qualifying sources, and 90 percent of its taxable earnings must be distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends. Among active businesses, the requirement to pay out 90 percent of taxable earnings is unique to the REIT industry, which distributed approximately $13.5 billion to shareholders in 2009. Additionally, the income, asset, and distribution requirements, when combined with the disclosure and other regulations that govern public companies, protect shareholders and provide transparency in a way that other real estate investments do not. With 132 REITs traded on the New York Stock Exchange, ownership of shares in these companies also provides a significant liquidity advantage over alternative real estate investments. Michigan has played an important role in creating the vibrant REIT industry that exists today. Taubman Centers, Inc., based in Bloomfield Hills, is a leading owner of regional malls. In the 1990s, when they pioneered a new way to take public a portfolio of real estate that had been privately held, they unleashed a wave of initial public offerings by REITs in the 1990s. Three other REITs--Agree Realty Corporation, Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust, and Sun Communities, Inc.--also call Michigan home. And, more than 620 properties across my home State are owned by REITs. Commercial real estate accounts for more than 6 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States, and my colleagues and I are all too aware of the challenges facing this sector. In the face of this challenge, REITs have been well-served by staying true to their core values of careful investment, transparency, and liquidity. While commercial real estate is not yet out of the woods, I believe policymakers and the other participants in the commercial real estate market can learn a great deal from this business model, which has been emulated by more than two dozen countries around the world. I thank you for this opportunity to commend the REIT industry on its 50th anniversary. Allow me to also commend our predecessors in Congress for having the foresight to enable all Americans to access and benefit from investments in real estate. I look forward to working with my colleagues to continue this work that began more than 50 years ago.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, before my friend from Washington State leaves the floor, I thank her as well. She has been an incredible leader on this issue and we are very fortunate to have someone who has been in business, a successful businesswoman who brings her knowledge of business and of finance into the Senate. Her passion and partnership with Senator Landrieu have been very important in getting us to this point. I want to say thank you to the Senator from Washington for her leadership as well.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, before my friend from Pennsylvania leaves, I thank him for his wonderful commitment to small business and passion and voice on this issue. We are lucky to have him and very much appreciate all of his wonderful work. Pennsylvania and Michigan have a lot in common. Our hard-working folks, a lot of them who have been losing their jobs in one industry, are starting small businesses. They are looking to us to understand what it takes to start a small business and to keep a small business. That is what this bill is all about. I echo what the Senator from Pennsylvania said about the importance of this bill, and the chairman of the Small Business Committee, and wish to stress a couple provisions we haven't talked as much about. First, of course, the major piece is about access to loans from SBA, increasing the loan limits and the size of microloans. That will increase lending through the SBA by about $5 billion next year. A lot of small businesses will buy new equipment, will be able to hire staff to expand or keep their business going. The large lending facility we have all talked about that takes $30 billion and partners with community banks and creates $300 billion worth of capital for small businesses--I can't imagine a better shot in the arm than having that capital available. There is something else that is also important. I am pleased to be a part of the President's Export Council. The President has set a goal of doubling exports in the next 5 years. Many of the businesses we are talking about interested in exporting are small businesses. We have international businesses in Michigan, and they have their own operations around the world. They are not in need of support through the export operations in the Department of Commerce, but small businesses need that. I think of one woman whom I know. Her sister-in-law is a dear friend of mine. I talked with her. She lives in northern Michigan on Leelanau peninsula, which is absolutely beautiful, north of Traverse City, MI, the kind of place you would like to be today. It is absolutely beautiful up there on the Great Lakes. It is certainly much less warm than here. She is in an area where there are wonderful cherry growers and all kinds of fruit and vegetable growers. She has put together nutritional products from the power and nutrition of cherries and has come up with a number of things that are very healthy to help people with joint problems and other issues which cherries are actually very helpful with, a very powerful commodity in nutritional assistance. She is interested in exporting. She started a small business up in northern Michigan, and she has now moved out to, the last time I talked to her, 300 different places around Michigan and the country. We have talked to her about what she could do to sell her product overseas as a nutritional product. There is a great deal of interest in doing that, and I hope we can help her do that. But she needs assistance from the export expertise in the Department of Commerce. In this bill, we have small business trade and export promotion efforts. The great Senator from Minnesota, Ms. Klobuchar, championed this effort. It would improve the SBA's trade and export promotion programs. It establishes a State export promotion grant program and strengthens coordination. It would leverage more than $1 billion in export capital for small businesses. That is estimated to create or save about 50,000 jobs this year. So there are new opportunities. With the wonders of the Internet, we are now in a global economy. We can communicate around the world with our cell phone or certainly with the Internet. We have the ability to help small businesses create jobs by connecting them to the world in terms of the markets they can access. Help for that is in this bill. So that is another very important piece. There is also an increase in Federal contracts for small businesses. Just increasing Federal contracts for small businesses by 1 percent is estimated to create 100,000 jobs. Now, we know in the bidding process, again, larger businesses tend to participate, tend to have major contracts from the Federal Government. Yet this is an opportunity for small business. If we can increase contracts by just 1 percent, we can create 100,000 jobs; 2 percent, 200,000 jobs, and so on. Provisions are in the bill to increase contracting opportunities, which are very important opportunities for small business. We have talked about the tax cuts. I hear frequently as a member of the Finance Committee from friends on the other side of the aisle concerned about raising taxes on small business, and we certainly share that concern. We certainly are not supportive of doing that. But here you have an opportunity to cut taxes on small businesses, doing away with the capital gains on small businesses this year, increasing the deduction to start a new business, expanding the expensing provisions, bonus depreciation provisions for small businesses, and also something very important that we, of course, have been working on in health care, and put in place in the structure that will help small businesses down the road, in 2014, with the new insurance pool--a competitive way to price and purchase insurance. But until then we have a lot of self-employed people who find themselves in a very difficult situation, who cannot find affordable insurance, if they can find it at all. This bill would allow them to deduct their health care costs for payroll tax purposes on their tax returns. This is another important matter that people who own small businesses care about and worry about for their families. That is a part of this bill. When we go down through here and look at the huge effort around capital available for small businesses, the efforts in partnering with States to help small businesses that have lost the value of their property, their equipment--the collateral they would use normally to get a loan--there are provisions to address that, provisions to help small businesses afford health care by deducting their health care costs, help for exports, expanding bonus depreciation and expensing, eliminating capital gains, and giving small businesses more opportunities to contract with the Federal Government. When you look at all of this, I am stunned. Why are we still having to have this debate? How long are we going to have to do this when every day we have small businesses that are holding on trying to figure out what they are going to do to keep their doors open? We are at a point now where we have to come to a conclusion and pass this bill. I hope anyone who says they care about small business will join with us and show they do--not just talk about it--but show they do by supporting the small business bill, as the chairwoman said, that now has over 100 different organizations, business organizations, supporting it. I hope they will do that. I hope they will stop the filibustering, stop blocking this bill, stop the strategy of throwing sand in the gears over and over, using the rules of the Senate to tie this place in knots. What we need--what we need--is to just vote. That is it. What we need is to exercise the democratic process of just voting, do away with the filibusters, do away with all the efforts to block, and just allow the democratic process to work. People can vote ``yes.'' They can vote ``no.'' But just allow us to have a vote. We are looking for colleagues, just a couple of colleagues, joining with us. We have colleagues who have worked across the aisle. We are urging them to stand with us to stop this filibuster and allow us to vote on behalf of small businesses in America, to give them the support they need. Thank you, Mr. President.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I also want to start by thanking the chair of the Small Business Committee, the Senator from Louisiana. She has done a remarkable job. Her tenacity and passion and commitment for small business and for this legislation has gotten us to where we are today, and I am proud to be joining with her in this effort, along with the Senator from New Hampshire, who just spoke, and the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, who has been such a champion, and the Senator from Oregon--both Senators from Oregon--and the many Members who have come to the floor and colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have joined in particular provisions of this bill. As the leader and the chair of the Small Business Committee has said, this is, in fact, a bill that has significant pieces, if not the majority of pieces, that have been bipartisan or have come from the Republican side of the aisle. Yet what we are seeing is a strategy by the Republican leadership to continue to block and block and block, and to filibuster, filibuster, filibuster even something that is important for Main Street. This is not about Wall Street. This is not about a bailout to Wall Street hoping that they will lend to small businesses, which didn't happen after the crisis when credit markets froze up and lending didn't happen, certainly, in my State of Michigan or across the country. So we have had to come back and try a different route for Main Street, and this is what this is about--Main Street, the folks who are creating the majority of jobs which are in small businesses. We also have a lot of folks who have lost their jobs and who are now starting a small business. I know lots of folks in their forties, fifties, and sixties who have never been out of work before in their lives who are now out of work and are turning to a small business. They are going out in the garage or the basement or maybe the spare bedroom--maybe they are starting up a business with someone else--and they are starting something new. The problem is they can't get a loan to get started. They can't get the capital they need, and that is exactly what this bill is about. This is about a new partnership with community banks and small businesses to create a lending facility to open the doors to capital. It is also about expanding what the SBA is doing. Another very important provision of this addresses what happens when people's assets go down in value. People are seeing a decrease in the value of their own property, whether it is their home, their business, their equipment, their commercial buildings, so that their collateral has lessened and the ability for them to go to the bank and say: I have X amount of collateral to put up against the loan--now they are finding that the value of that property has been cut in half and they can't continue their line of credit or they are not able to get the loan. There is also an important provision in here that addresses a program that actually started in Michigan, Mr. President, and I am very proud of it. It is with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. This will allow a partnership with the State economic development entity to be able to back up the business, to be able to help them be able to finance even though their collateral has decreased. Before I talk more about that, I also want to mention that we are talking about basically allowing investors and small businesses to take a 100-percent exclusion from capital gains on small business investments made this year. So eliminating the capital gains provisions for this year--100 percent. We are focusing on other important provisions that relate to tax cuts for small business and also trade and export promotion. We want to help our small businesses export their products, not their jobs. So there are many important provisions in here, and I believe we have some 80 different business organizations supporting this legislation. This is not Republican versus Democrat out in the real world. We have Republican businesses, Democratic-owned businesses, tea party-owned businesses, all kinds of folks out there who can't get loans. This is not a partisan issue, and it is extremely unfortunate that it has become a partisan issue. I want to share a couple of stories. This is about a business called American Gear in Michigan. It is a 25-year-old manufacturer of custom- made machine parts. They sell parts to the automotive industry, to the U.S. Navy, the glass industry, and the steel industry. In 2008, American Gear made a record profit. But then in 2009 they saw a tremendous pullback from their customers and lost money for the first time in history. They were forced to cut staff, trim overhead, and tried to work with their bank to access additional cash to keep going. But they weren't able to secure access to enough of the capital they needed to complete their existing orders--even the existing business that they had. They are trying to expand. They are trying to get new customers. They are profitable once again. But because their 27,000-square-foot building has lost so much of its value, the bank has pulled their loan and they have been unable to get another lender. They have just hired two new employees to help with new orders, but they can't get credit. They might have to start cutting back again and turning away customers because they can't get access to capital. This bill will help American Gear. It will help this company that has been dealt the double whammy of reduced cashflow and property, which is used as collateral, that has decreased in value because of the recession. This is very important. This is something that has been overwhelmingly successful in Michigan. Michigan's program started in 2009 and targets businesses with good credit risks but those who can't get the cash they need because their collateral or their cashflow is falling short. That is what this is all about. The business I am talking about, American Gear, is a solid business. They are making a profit again. This is a business with good credit, but they have lost the value on their buildings, and they are unable now to get a loan. This bill addresses that. This bill addresses that. We also have another story from Michigan--and there are many stories from Michigan--about Michigan Ladder in Ypsilanti, MI. It is the oldest ladder maker in the United States. They have been in business since 1901. They are still in their original buildings with 20 employees in Ypsilanti, MI. Nearly all the other makers of ladders have moved to Asia or South America. Michigan Ladder sells primarily to commercial and industrial contractor suppliers directly. They manufacture several sizes of wooden ladders, distribute fiberglass and aluminum ladders which they have produced for them as well. The company experienced difficulty due to the poor commercial real estate market and the housing market. They trimmed their staff, cut benefits, and worked hard to rightsize themselves. They believe they can be competitive. They are aggressively working to continue to produce in Michigan, but they can't get the financing they need to buy equipment to produce new products because of the fact that their equipment, the collateral they have, has been reduced in value. This is a story that I have heard repeated hundreds and hundreds of times, Mr. President. This bill addresses that. This bill fixes that. Let me move now to process because substantively we have no reason not to pass this bill. There is absolutely no reason, based on the substance, on the need for small businesses and the support from over 80 different organizations across this country, not to pass this legislation. So why do we have a filibuster going on? I just want to speak about that for a moment because the reality is, we need to vote. The democratic process is to vote. When we run for reelection, if you get one more vote than the other person you win the election. We don't say a supermajority. We say simple majority, one more than the other person. That is a democracy. We are saying here, let's vote, give us a vote, an up-or-down vote. You can vote no or you can vote yes, but don't keep using these efforts that block us and force a supermajority to block us from even having a vote. That is what is happening here. Over and over again we are being blocked from even having a vote. Can you imagine in the election if there were a capacity to block an election day from even actually having the vote? We have men and women serving us in this country around the world, putting their lives on the line, losing their lives for the democratic process based on the ability to vote and majority rule. Yet here in the Senate the rules have been totally perverted and twisted to throw sand in the gears and require a supermajority to even move a step forward on anything. Let's review where we are right now. We have had 246 objections and filibusters since we started 18 months ago--246. That is unheard of. Not all of those have actually gone to a cloture vote, a vote to stop a filibuster, because we do not have 246 weeks. The leader cannot get us through that whole process that takes a week to stop a filibuster on every single objection. Some of these have gone to an actual vote, a 60 vote, and on others there have been objections that have stopped us from voting. It is unheard of. We have never seen this before in the history of our country. When our country started, there were two that year. Then some have been zero, some there have been maybe three or four or ten. Some sessions of Congress there have been no filibusters. Here we are. In the last Congress we ended the year at 139 filibusters, and we have topped that. This is what happened last time when this began to be used as a strategy by the Republican leadership. It is way off the charts. Now it is so far off the charts we cannot put it on the chart. This is now used as the basic strategy for everything: Stop everything, throw sand in the gears, and make sure nothing improves, that nothing happens that will improve the lives of families in this country, improve the economy, create jobs. I find that to be extremely unfortunate. We have a situation right now where we have the opportunity to do something for those on Main Street, the folks who have not caused any of the crises that have been facing our country. They did not make the reckless decisions on Wall Street that brought the financial crisis. They were not the ones who didn't enforce our trade laws fairly so we lost jobs overseas. They are not the ones who made any of the decisions. But they have been affected. Middle-class families, who may not consider themselves middle class anymore, are just holding on. Many of them own small businesses or work in small businesses or are trying to start a small business. These are folks in every one of our States, in every community that we represent--small businesses, mom- and-pop operations, small suppliers. Most of the people in the auto industry are small businesses. They are small companies, small suppliers such as the ones I mentioned, such as American Gear, a small supplier. They find themselves now in a situation where they cannot operate; they can't expand; they cannot conduct business. They are having to lay people off because they cannot get credit. We can fix that. We can fix that right here. All we have to do is one of two things: Have courageous colleagues on the other side of the aisle join us to stop a filibuster or, all together, stop this thing and vote. That is vote, that is all we are asking for, an up-or-down vote, yes or no. But allow a vote to happen. I hope we are close on an agreement. Unfortunately, our leader, who has an incredible amount of patience, finds himself too often in a situation where he is trying to negotiate but the numbers keep changing, the circumstances keep changing, and we are never actually able to get an agreement in good faith. I hope that is not the case here because we need to get this done. People are watching us and wondering what in the world is going on in the Senate. People understand what is happening in the real world, what is happening to small businesses. Every weekend when I go home--and I do go home every weekend--every weekend when I go home I hear about small businesses not getting access to capital. They cannot get a loan, they cannot continue their line of credit. Everywhere I go I hear about that. I understand my time is up. I again thank my colleague, the chair of the Small Business Committee, for standing strong. I stand with her. This is incredibly important and there is no reason whatsoever that we cannot get this done on behalf of small businesses across America.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I thank the Senator, the chair of the Small Business Committee, for her leadership and her passion. I could not agree more. We have to focus on jobs. When you support small business, both the underlying bill and the changes, in terms of tax cuts for small business, as well as this provision, this is a great opportunity for us to support small businesses in this country, where the majority of jobs are created. Every time I go home, as the Senator from Florida mentioned, I am approached by small businesses that cannot get capital and cannot get the loans they need or get their line of credit extended. This is absolutely critical for us. In addition, I thank Senators Klobuchar and LeMieux for their export promotion piece, which is equally important. When we look at opportunities for small business and the opportunity to support their efforts to sell their products overseas in a global economy, this is also about creating jobs. I had the opportunity not long ago to be in Beijing, China, at the global auto leaders summit. I heard from people with the Foreign Commercial Service that they needed more assistance. If they had more staff, they would be able to support more businesses being able to sell into China. We want, in this global economy, to be exporting our products, not our jobs. So focusing on exports and supporting what the President has called for--doubling exports in the next 5 years--creates jobs as well. I again thank Senators Klobuchar and LeMieux for their efforts on exports, and I thank Senator LeMieux and Senator Landrieu for the amendment as it relates to the lending authority. All of this adds up-- all of this together, the underlying bill, with tax cuts, support for small businesses, which have seen collateral depreciate, and the efforts that we can provide to be able to support them to get loans through a collateral assistance program, the loan program, which is, in my judgment, a core provision, and then adding exports--all of it together is a jobs bill. This is a fundamental jobs bill for small businesses all across the country. I urge colleagues to come together. I can't think of anything more bipartisan or anything that should be more bipartisan than a focus on American small businesses. This amendment is at the heart of that. I strongly urge a very strong bipartisan vote. I thank the Chair.

Ms. STABENOW. Will the Senator yield?

Ms. STABENOW. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her tireless advocacy and leadership in getting us to this point, because this is absolutely critical for small businesses, certainly in Michigan and across the country. I know we talked about it before. Isn't it true that when we look at job growth--and this is a jobs bill, I am sure the Senator agrees--small businesses are creating the jobs? Would she not agree, as well, that when we look at manufacturing in my State, the suppliers are small businesses? So what we are talking about here is growing jobs. Would the Senator agree and speak about the fact that this is about jobs, about the fact that the majority of the jobs are coming from small business, and these are the folks who didn't cause the financial crisis, and they didn't create the recklessness on Wall Street? They got hit by it, along with our community bankers who didn't cause it; would the Senator agree?

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Well, I absolutely agree. I wish to thank the Senator for his continuing leadership and passion on this issue. I would simply say, if over 15 million people out of work in this country isn't an emergency, I don't know what is. Those are the folks we are fighting for right now--the people who want to work, the people who have been part of this great middle class in our country and who now find that slipping through their fingers because of a global economy, where we have not understood the rules should be fair, where we have had policies put into place that affect only the privileged few, with the theory that it will trickle down to everybody else. You know what. I wish it had. I wish the policies of the former President and my friends on the other side had worked. I don't want people to be out of work. If trickle-down economics would work, I would celebrate it. But my folks are still waiting for the trickle down. They are still waiting. Instead, what is happening to them is they have lost their jobs or they are finding themselves with fewer hours or they are finding themselves in a situation where they are working two jobs, three jobs just trying to hold it together. I mean I have seen numbers that show almost half the families in Michigan have somebody in their immediate family who has lost their job. The idea of saying that somehow that is all because people are lazy, well, I would not say the words I would truly like to say, but I would just say that is a bunch of bunk--the idea that somehow Americans who have worked all their lives and are caught up in this are somehow just lazy. But this goes to a broader pattern that is extremely concerning to me, and it is the difference in world view and how we view what should happen and what is important in our country. When we had a bill in front of us--the President just signed it today--to put back some commonsense regulations on Wall Street so there are no more big bailouts and consumers can get good information to be able to protect themselves and their 401(k)s and their savings and to be able to address all the jobs--the 8 million jobs lost since the financial crisis started over a year ago--and when we have a bill on the floor that takes on the big banks, the big bonuses, the recklessness of some on Wall Street, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle vote no. Almost every single one of them sided with the big banks and the big bonuses. We are going to have a big debate about whether to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, whether we should give even bigger tax cuts to the top couple hundred families with huge estates in this country--to do even more than President Bush did on tax cuts for the wealthy and the wealthy estates that are literally only 200 or 300 families in the country. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will argue for that. They will argue that is the right thing to do. That is a different view. It is a different view than we have about what is happening in this country and where the priorities ought to be. Middle-class families in my State are saying: What about us? What about us? The big banks got their bailout, what about us? That is why we have been focused on jobs and on innovation. While we aren't out of the hole--we are nowhere near out of the hole--we are at least digging our way out. There were 750,000 a jobs a month being lost when President Obama took office. We changed the focus to working families, to middle-class families, and by the end of the year that was zero. Now we are gaining 100,000 or 200,000 a month, but we are at least gaining. I am not happy at all about the unemployment levels in Michigan. But when President Obama took office we were looking at 15.7 percent-- unbelievable--and that is just the people being counted. Now it has come down a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and now it is 13.2. That is still way, way too high, but at least it is moving in the right direction. We had 8 years of it moving in the wrong direction and we have turned the ship and it is beginning to turn around. The problem we have is that while it is slow in terms of job creation, too many families are caught in the middle on this, waiting for that next job, wanting that next job that is going to pay enough so they can care for their family. They are caught in a situation they never thought they would be in, in their life and they are embarrassed and they are mortified and they are angry. They are looking at the Senate and saying: What is going on here? You can't even get it together to do what every other President, Democrat and Republican, has done in the history of our country to come together and to understand this is an emergency--15 million people plus is an emergency--and that we ought to be extending the small unemployment insurance benefits to families who are caught in this. That is what this is all about. We find ourselves in a situation where we are wasting time right now on the floor of the Senate that we could be using after voting to extend unemployment benefits to go on to small business, which is also absolutely critical for us. The No. 1 concern from businesses is the inability to get a loan, to get the capital they need to extend their line of credit to do business or be able to expand, to get the loans they need. That is the bill we have waiting in the wings. That is the one we are trying to get done. Instead of focusing on that, which is jobs and small business, which is the growth engine of the country, we wait. We watch the clock--30 hours. For whatever reason I do not know. But I think it is a shame. I want to close reading a letter. I get thousands of e-mails. I am sure my colleague does too. I find them very heartbreaking. I want to read a little bit to put it in the Record, from Philip, from Belding, MI: I have just learned I exhausted my unemployment benefits. I am going to school under the worker retraining programs through Michigan Works. I have a mere 5 months left until I graduate. I am raising my daughter on my own. My life has been a rough ride, trying to do this on the limited funding already. Now I have to make a choice. This is an incredibly hard choice. I have to quit training to get a job or continue training and live with no income whatsoever. My decision must be made in the best interests of my child. I worked tremendously hard to be at the top of my class in my training and now I am faced with the fact that it was all for nothing. The last year of hard work and study is lost. The grants I received for Michigan Works were used fruitlessly. I know you are fighting for me and all the others in my position but I feel I need to let someone know . . . what is happening. There are so many people who have sent letters and e-mails and who have called me. They are just trying to play by the rules and care for their families and get another job or go back to school or do the things we all want to do for our families to be able to live a good life, be able to have that American dream as we define it. It is extremely unfortunate that we find ourselves in a situation where we continue to see objections and blocking and efforts just to stop something as basic as temporary assistance for people who have lost their jobs. We will get this done. We will get it done. It will pass. The difference between what is happening here and what could have been if we had gotten it done yesterday is it is going to be a few more days before somebody gets the help they need. I do not know how many people will lose their houses because those few more days mean they can't make that payment in time and they end up on the street or how many missed meals, how much hunger, how many times their kids go to bed at night hungry because we are wasting all this time on the Senate floor. I can tell you there are many of us, those of us on our side, who understand what this means for people. We are deeply sorry families are in this situation. They need to know we are going to continue to fight, we are going to continue to be there, we are going to continue to do everything we can to support them and their families until everybody in this country who needs a job and wants a job and is able to work has one and can get themselves back on their feet and have the kind of life they want for themselves and their families. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. STABENOW. That is right.

Ms. STABENOW. Well, people in Michigan are extremely offended by this, and I am very offended on their behalf. The people we are talking about have never been out of work in their lives. They are mortified. The idea of having to go get food assistance is unbelievable to them. These are people who built America. They built the middle class. It is not their fault Wall Street had the crisis. We had the good fortune to be with the President signing a bill that will change that, but it is not their fault what happened. It is not their fault there was recklessness on Wall Street and then the financial system collapsed so small businesses can't get loans and manufacturers can't get loans. It is not their fault we went through a decade of policies where the previous administration was not enforcing trade laws so our jobs went overseas. It is not their fault they find themselves in this economy. So they are saying to me: I want to work. Hey, I want a job. I don't want to extend my unemployment benefits. Give me a job. That is what we are focusing on too. I say to the distinguished Senator from Illinois, one of the things I find doubly insulting about wasting this time is that the legislation we are trying to get to is a small business bill so small businesses can get loans to hire people. So we are trying to create jobs and, instead, all this time is being wasted on an effort just to try to help people get by.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I say to our distinguished leader in the Senate--and I thank him for his advocacy--he is exactly right. We have waited--I am not sure now if it is 10 or 11 weeks--trying to extend unemployment benefits. We have had multiple votes. We finally get the votes through all kinds of different means. We finally get the votes yesterday, and it is unheard of that we would be in this spot, after getting a supermajority of 60 people and after having this go on as long as it has. It is unheard of. Never before with a Democratic or Republican President have we ever seen this, but now we are stuck again, and I don't understand why. I cannot fathom the motivation of why the folks on the other side of the aisle, the leadership on the other side of the aisle, would say: Let's wait another 30 hours, which for most people means it is on into next week, and most people have already been without that little bit of $250 or $300 a week. We are not talking about a lot of money.

Ms. STABENOW. But it is a difference between having a roof over your family's head, food on the table, and not. So now we are pushing into next week.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to thank our colleague from South Carolina for giving us the opportunity tonight to decide whose side we are really on. We are talking about upward of $1 trillion in spending to help a few hundred of our wealthiest Americans. We would not be helping small businesses or family farmers, all of whom we support helping, but the wealthiest Americans--close to $1 trillion--or helping 2.5 million people who lost their jobs, are out of work through no fault of their own. The crash on Wall Street, the crisis on Wall Street, which, unfortunately, colleagues chose not to vote to repair and to fix, has caused a situation where families are hurting.

Ms. STABENOW. Well, the Senator is absolutely correct. That is the fundamental question. It goes to a question of values and priorities. We will never get out of deficit with over 15 million people out of work, and that doesn't count people working two or three or four part- time jobs or who are underemployed. If people aren't back to work, aren't able to purchase as consumers, aren't able to contribute, we will never get out of deficit, which is why we start with jobs in the beginning. But to add insult to injury, we hear that giving another round of tax cuts to the only part of the American public that has dramatically increased its income--those who are at the very top; the top 1 and 2 percent--doesn't matter if it adds to the debt. Adding to the debt for tax cuts for wealthy people doesn't count, but changing the rules, such as we have never done before, and focusing on helping out-of-work people does count. That counts. We can't do that, if it is somebody who is out of work. But we don't worry at all about deficits when it is helping the privileged few. I can't imagine that. That is not the America I know and the majority of Americans care about right now.

Ms. STABENOW. Well, you are exactly right. I also hear, on top of that, about people who have done what we have told them they should do--they should go back to school and get retraining. So they go back, and the only reason they can actually afford to go back to school to go through one of the job training programs is that small check that has allowed them to have a little income for their family while they do what we have told them to do, which is to get a different skill to go into a different career and then hope there will be a job there. I have had so many e-mails from people not only about losing their homes and what is happening to their families but that they have had to drop out of school. Well, how does it make any sense, when we are trying to make sure people are productive in the workforce and are able to find a job that people are dropping out of school because of this as well?