Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a Kerry substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 841, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his constructive work in helping to craft an agreement to pass S. 2925. As he notes, sex trafficking is modern day slavery. It is a morally reprehensible epidemic that ensnares far too many children, and there is far too little awareness of the scope of this criminal enterprise in the United States. I also agree that in combating this heinous crime, and providing law enforcement agencies and services providers with effective tools, Congress must take care to do so in a manner that is fiscally responsible and that avoids inefficiency and duplication.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 581, S. 2925.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, with the passage of S. 2925, the Senate is sending to the House the first ever all-out battle plan to defeat one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in our country; that is, trafficking children for sex. Senator Cornyn and I have worked together on this issue for many months on a bipartisan basis with tremendous help from Chairman Leahy, from Senator Sessions, from Senator Durbin, and Senator Kyl, and before I begin my statement tonight, I wish to express my thanks to them. This is a textbook for how the Senate ought to work together on an important issue in a bipartisan way, and I am very grateful to my colleagues for their leadership. When I first approached Senator Cornyn, he said in our very first conversation: This has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans; this is about doing what is right for young people. So I am very grateful to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for the support they have shown on this matter. Each year, an estimated 100,000 children in America are trafficked for sex. They are recruited by violent criminals, and their average age is between 12 and 14. The fact is, sex trafficking in children is modern day slavery, pure and simple. Tragically, my home State of Oregon has become a hub for those who would exploit women and young girls, and the tragedy is my State is not alone. What we have seen--and this was brought out in hearings--is that the reason this is such a fast-growing crime is it is so easy to perpetrate and there is such big money involved. For example, experts in the field said for some time, you would see gangs zero in on drugs. The fact is, trafficking in children, according to many of the experts, is easier than trafficking in drugs, and today, with the Internet and the anonymity that the Internet provides these dangerous criminals who traffic in children, it is, as I say, one of the fastest growing crimes in American life. I got a sense of what this was all about this summer when I had a chance to go out with Portland police officers in my hometown on 82nd Avenue. What I saw is something I will never forget: a heart-wrenching example of why this bipartisan legislation is so important. I saw a 15- year-old girl essentially out there with the tools of the trade. She had a cell phone so she could be in constant contact with her pimp, and all night long they were getting messages: Made $80, made $100 on a customer here or somewhere else. So she had her cell phone. She had a butcher knife because she knew she needed a butcher knife to protect herself, and she had a purse full of condoms, because she knew she was going to have a bunch more customers during the course of the evening. So what you have--and this is not primarily about statistics. If one young woman, whether it is in the State of West Virginia or Oregon or anywhere else, is prostituted this way, trafficked this way, that is one young woman too many. What the Senate has done now with the passage of S. 2925 is draw a line in the sand and say, for the first time, that we are going to put in place a comprehensive strategy, bring together the law enforcement people and the human services people to deal with this in a way that is going to allow us to send a message on the streets of this country--and particularly the interstate highways which have become such a magnet for sex trafficking--that the odds are going to be different; that this time those who traffic in young women are going to face real prospects of a deterrent. The reality is these young women don't end up working as prostitutes by accident. The growing army of pimps I mentioned--violent, ruthless criminals--see this group as an ideal group of young people to prey on. The fact is, a pimp can make $200,000 a year trafficking just one victim. Of course, many of those pimps traffic multiple victims on any particular occasion. Once a young girl is under the control of a pimp, it is very difficult for that youngster to escape. The pimps use violence to control girls, as well as traumatize them. They move the girls constantly from city to city, keeping them isolated from any source of support and preventing them from developing any kind of other more healthy relationships. In talking to law enforcement officials, I learned that removing sex trafficking victims from the control of a pimp is very difficult. It is one that requires training, resources, and in effect a strategy, bringing together law enforcement people and social services people in order to break this degrading and often deadly spiral of sex trafficking in youngsters. There are a variety of needs these young people have. One that Senator Cornyn and I learned about in the course of our work is the need for dedicated shelter for these youngsters who have been trafficked. Without shelter, for example, there is no place to keep trafficking victims safe from the pimps and to give them the counseling and services they need. If there is no safe place for the victims to stay, there is no way the law enforcement authorities can build a case against the pimp. So this is a perfect example of how the important work being done by our social service providers, in terms of the work in the shelters, is absolutely a prerequisite to tough, aggressive prosecution of the pimps because if you don't have a safe place for the young women, there is no place for them to get the health care and services and counseling they need. In fact, the night when I was out in Portland and saw, in particular, that 15-year-old with what I call the tools of the trade, when the police picked her up--and Portland's professionals in the sex trafficking field are extraordinarily talented. I saw that firsthand, and officials from around the country tell me the same thing. One of the big questions they were faced with was, where would they send the young women they found that evening for the next couple of days in order to just work out a more permanent living arrangement? In Portland, we have been able to do it. But even in our city, which is now mobilizing all through the community, it has been very difficult. At present, there are only about 70 shelter beds for sex trafficking victims in the whole country. So that is why I mentioned that pimps know their chances of getting prosecuted for forcing girls to engage in prostitution are very low. We have some laws on the books, but we also need a strategy bringing together shelters, training for law enforcement officials and other resources if we are going to have the strongest possible battle plan against sex trafficking. Senator Cornyn and I got together to introduce this legislation. We would set up what amounts to model projects across the country to test out the best approaches for combating sex trafficking of children. We do make clear these approaches have to bring together law enforcement people and social services. It makes me very proud. The Chair, having served as Governor of West Virginia, knows from time to time you see some debates between law enforcement people and social services folks. Law enforcement people believe prosecution is the way to go. The social services folks believe their model is more effective. What Senator Cornyn and I found is that this is an area where the law enforcement people support the social services folks and vice versa because they know both elements--social services and law enforcement-- are going to be necessary to fight this scourge. I mentioned shelters. There would also be block grants available for mental and physical health care, treatment for substance abuse and sexual abuse, and also assistance with trauma care. There would be help for the victims with food, clothing, and other necessities; and together it means the youngsters--primarily young women--who are going to be in these shelters will know from the time they get to the shelter that caring individuals want them to have a different life. That is what drew me to this legislation. When you are talking about preying on young people, every Member of the Senate is concerned. What I think galvanized my attention was that a lot of these young women don't think anybody cares about them except their pimp. They have gotten to the point in life where they believe there isn't anybody in their corner. Their pimp says: You know, sweetheart, I care about you. You are what's really important to me. Let's just make some money, and eventually you will be out on your own. What you have with these shelters, and also the law enforcement people I saw in Portland, is young women saying for the first time that there is an adult, a role model, who wants them to have a different life, who wants them to have the prospect of a different future, where they are not degrading themselves, where they are not victimized, where they have a different set of possibilities for their lives. The human services aspects of this legislation are extremely important, and they complement the help that law enforcement would get as well. I was particularly struck, as we got into the law enforcement aspect of this fight against sex trafficking, that there, again, had been some model approaches. The law enforcement official I was particularly impressed with was the Dallas, TX, police sergeant Byron Fassett. He explained to me that without the right training, law enforcement officers would not know how to spot the signs of sex trafficking and would not know how to handle the victims. So Senator Cornyn and I thought, with the counsel of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, it would be important to provide specialized training for police officers and prosecutors to help them understand how to handle sex trafficking cases. The fact is, Sergeant Fassett of Dallas, TX, can only be at one place at a time. What this legislation is going to do is make it possible for other leaders in the law enforcement field to get the training out across the country, the state-of-the-art approaches about how to best fight the violent criminals who engaged in this activity, and I am very pleased that we were able to make possible part of the grant in this legislation assistance for the law enforcement community. Finally, the bill would address another issue that is a major component of sex trafficking, and that is runaway children. One-third of runaway children are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving their home. The evidence also shows that the children who have run away multiple times are at the greatest risk of being drawn into sex trafficking. So what we are doing in this legislation is making it possible for law enforcement officials to, in effect, make priority the children at greatest risk; that is, these runaways. I am very pleased we were able to work out a bipartisan agreement for our approach in this area. It would be hard to give appropriate thanks to all who participated in this effort--certainly, to do it without keeping you here until breakfast time. Let me name just a small number of the many groups and individuals who provided extremely valuable insight: the Polaris Project, Shared Hope International, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the FBI's Innocence Lost Project, and ECPAT-USA. I could go on with the list of many groups. Mr. President, I will tell you I am especially grateful to the faith community for all of their efforts. Throughout this debate, Senator Cornyn and I have been contacted by religious leaders from all over the country, from all particular denominations, talking about how important this legislation is to them; and what they conveyed to us is that this is what they see in their congregations. This is what parents go to bed at night worrying about--the prospect of seeing one of their youngsters caught up in this vicious cycle of degradation, crime, and lost hope for the future. We could not be here tonight if it wasn't for the faith community that, all across the country, contacted their Senators, contacted various civic groups, and made common cause with rallies and marches and petitions. This is what has made this night possible. So I have tried to make sure the Senate knows that a whole host of colleagues on both sides of the aisle have worked on this. I will say my older daughter said the other night: Dad, I have figured it out. You are in the only profession on Earth where somebody your age is considered one of the young guys. I thought about that, because I have had the honor of serving in the Senate for some time--recently was reelected--and I can't recall a time when I felt prouder of the Senate coming together to deal with something that would make a real difference. This one piece of legislation is not going to wipe out this reprehensible, heinous crime, where youngsters who are 12 and 13 and 14 are trafficked for sex. But with this legislation, from Portland, OR, to Portland, ME--and, frankly, this will have benefits internationally because a lot of these youngsters are also trafficked for sex far from the shores of the United States--tonight the Senate is making a difference. Tonight, the Senate is giving hope to parents who are concerned about their kids' future. For young women who are literally going to be hiding tonight near some of these interstates--Interstate 5, which goes all through the West--with the passage of this legislation and, hopefully, quick action by the House, this is a chance to make a difference for these young people. This is what public service is supposed to be all about--making a difference for young people and families and doing it not on the basis of Democrats and Republicans but on the basis of what is right, what is moral, what is just. There are a lot of people who deserve credit here tonight, especially my friend and colleague, Senator Cornyn, but I am very hopeful the House will act on this legislation. I am going to put additional remarks into the Record, but Joel Shapiro, of my office, did yeoman's work on this legislation and deserves considerable credit tonight. I will leave my additional remarks for the Congressional Record, but tonight, through the good-faith efforts of lots of community and faith leaders, there is an opportunity to help reduce one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in our country--certainly one of the most immoral--the trafficking of young people for sex. With that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 699 submitted earlier today.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5591, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 677, S. 1275.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, before she leaves the floor, let me say to the Senator from Maine that I very much appreciate her thoughtful views. She continually talks about the desire to get folks to come together. I think there are a variety of ways to do it. That is essentially what I was going to outline this afternoon. I just want to assure my good friend from Maine that I am very much looking forward to working with her on this issue and thank her again for her kind remarks. Madam President and colleagues, I think we have a choice. We can continue to have this debate at the margins about how to extend a thoroughly discredited, insanely complicated, job-killing system that we have today or we can find a way, as Democrats and President Reagan did back in the 1980s, to come together and put in place a reform system that will create, in my view, millions of good- paying, new jobs, the way Democrats and Republicans in the 1980s came together and created more than 16 million new jobs. To pick up on this discussion, I think there is a message for Democrats and Republicans together on this issue. This question of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax legislation has almost become a tax version of ``The Emperor Has No Clothes.'' We all know this story and have read it to our kids. It's about two swindlers spinning a tall tail about magical, invisible cloth. The emperor and his ministers and all of his subjects get so caught up in the story of the magical and invisible cloth that it takes a child to point out what everybody should have seen was obvious: The emperor has no clothes. The fact is, when we look at extending the 2001-2003 tax laws, what we will see at the end of the day is from the standpoint of creating good-paying jobs and the opportunity to grow the economy, the emperor really doesn't have any clothes. The numbers don't add up. When tax policy was partisan between 2001 and 2008, there was only 2.3 percent payroll expansion, 3 million new jobs, and real median income fell by 5 percent. Yet that is what we are hearing on the floor of the Senate ought to be extended. I say to my good friend from Pennsylvania, his State, as has mine, has been pounded by this economy. How can we explain to our constituents that we are extending a policy that based on the facts, not on political rhetoric, produced such anemic payroll expansion, such a modest number of new jobs, and a loss of real median income. I don't think we can explain it to folks in Pennsylvania and Oregon. What I do think we can explain that gets us away from this ``Emperor Has No Clothes'' situation is what happened in the 1980s when a big group of Democrats and Republicans came together and changed the discussion about taxes. Instead of Democrats and Republicans beating up on each other, it became the people against the special interests and, in effect, leading Democrats such as Dick Gephardt and Dan Rostenkowski and others joined with the President to point out the inequities. And we had Democrats then talking about the desire to make sure companies-- companies that hire people at good wages--would be in a position to benefit because they would be paying rates that would be competitive in tough global markets. There are opportunities--because I have been talking to folks in labor and folks in business--to do this. Why don't we take away the tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas and use that money to lower rates for folks who manufacture in the United States, who create good-paying jobs in hard-hit parts of Pennsylvania and Oregon. I would like to see our companies have a new incentive for green manufacturing which many of the companies in Oregon want to do. To do it, why not take away some of those tax breaks you get from what is called tax deferral and foreign tax credits and use that money to create more employment at home? We are not going to be able to do that if we just reup for this discredited, broken, insanely complicated tax system. Now, I have said to colleagues--and Senator Casey and a number of us have talked about it--that if it takes some very short-term extension of current law in order to make sure we don't hurt middle-class people and we don't hamper economic growth, I would be willing to look at it. I would be willing to look at that if we use the opportunity to then aggressively pursue bipartisan tax reform; tax reform, for example, that would do something about a Tax Code that nobody likes. This isn't like the health care issue. I think the Presiding Officer and my friend from Pennsylvania understand that part of what happened in the health care issue is a lot of folks said: I want to fix health care, I want to contain costs, but I sort of like the health care I have. There isn't anybody on the planet I can find who makes an argument that they like the current Tax Code. We spend 7.6 billion hours a year to comply with tax law. It costs us almost $200 billion to comply with our tax laws annually. That is the equivalent of 3.8 million people working full-time just to comply with the Tax Code. At one point in the tax reform discussions, after I got on the Finance Committee, I brought just a portion of the books that contain the provisions of the Tax Code. And there are thousands of pages. In fact, we add thousands of pages every few years. I am 6 feet 4 inches and just a portion of the books are taller than me. The complexity of the code increases exponentially, as Nina Olson, who is the Taxpayer Advocate at the Internal Revenue Service, has pointed out. So I offer this up--and I know my colleague is waiting to speak--only to say if we are asking the country to choose--and that is why I use this ``Emperor Has No Clothes'' analogy--between something we know hasn't worked--I would note, for example, that the Wall Street Journal, not exactly hostile to conservatives, pointed out that George W. Bush had ``the worst track record on record for job creation.'' How do you make the case to the American people, whether you are in Pennsylvania or Oregon or anywhere else, that you want to anchor them to the same discredited tax system that has failed to create jobs for the entire period in which it was in effect? So I hope as we get into this debate we look at the fact that perhaps we are having the wrong conversation. Perhaps we are having the wrong conversation in just debating extending the 2001-2003 tax provisions-- maybe we will extend them for some people and we will not extend them for other people. What we ought to be saying is, look at history. Look at what happened in the 1980s when Democrats and Republicans came together. In fact, back then there was almost a mirror image of what we have now. Back in the 1980s we had a Republican President and a Republican Senate, and Democrats in the House. So we have today almost a mirror image of that, and we know when they got together in the 1980s that it created millions of new jobs, millions of good-paying jobs. I think we can do that again. I want to spend 2011 working with my colleagues--the Senator from Pennsylvania, the Senator from New Hampshire, and Senator Collins, who gave a very eloquent statement on the advantages of real tax reform--I want to spend the next year working with colleagues on something that shows vastly more promise for creating more good-paying jobs and economic opportunity than these choices we are talking about on the floor of the Senate that, in my view, literally yoke us to a system that we know is not going to produce jobs. It would be one thing if the debate was in question; that maybe the numbers from the 1980s were a little ambiguous, and when tax policy was partisan between 2001 and 2008 the numbers were more encouraging. That is not the picture. The picture is crystal clear. When we went at tax reform in a bipartisan way in the 1980s with a Democratic effort in the Congress and a Republican President, big win: 16 million new jobs. When we got partisan with taxes in 2001 and 2008, we just went downhill to truly anemic economic growth. The country deserves better. I would finally say I think this is exactly the kind of bipartisan work that the country was calling for at this last election. Why not give it to them rather than serve up yet more that is seen as polarizing and divisive when our country is undergoing such economic anguish. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleagues from Idaho and Oregon, Senator James Risch, Senator Mike Crapo, and Senator Jeff Merkley, in introducing the Geothermal Production Expansion Act of 2010. This legislation will amend an already existing law--the Geothermal Steam Act--governing the way the Federal Government leases public lands for the development of geothermal energy projects. Geothermal energy facilities provide a continuous supply of renewable energy with very few environmental impacts. Although the United States has more geothermal capacity than any other country, this potential has been barely tapped. This shortfall is partly due to the high initial cost and risk involved in locating and developing geothermal resources. Like oil and natural gas exploration, until exploration and production wells are actually drilled, the true energy value of the site is not known nor is the full extent of the underground reservoir or energy source. This legislation is intended to expand the future production of geothermal energy on federally-owned lands by taking some of the uncertainty and guess work out of the leasing and development process by allowing the Interior Department to issue geothermal leases for adjacent lands on a non-competitive basis, based on fair-market value. This would allow a geothermal developer to expand a successful geothermal lease without being forced into a bidding war with speculators or uncooperative competitors who might threaten project expansion or even prevent the project from reaching commercial scale. Under current law, the Department of Interior is charged with issuing geothermal energy leases through a competitive lease sale. There are, however, several situations where the Department is allowed to issue non-competitive leases, for example, if there were no competitive bids offered, or where there is an already existing mining claim, or where the geothermal energy will be used directly on site for heating or other uses and not sold as electricity. This legislation would add an additional category of non-competitive leases for lands that are immediately adjacent to an existing, competitively-awarded, geothermal lease where there is an identified, validated geothermal energy discovery. They would not just be given away to an existing lease holder. These non-competitive leases would be made at fair-market value as independently determined by the Department of Interior. They could also not be taken away from any existing lease holder, if they were already leased, nor could they be removed from competitive leasing if they had already been nominated to be competitively leased. These safeguards are intended to insure that this new non-competitive lease authority is a limited exception to the general policy of competitive leasing for geothermal resources on our public lands. At the same time, this new authority will help ensure that when and where a geothermal resource has been discovered, the project developer will be able to tap that resource and turn it into a viable, commercial energy business and provide clean, renewable energy for our country. This bill is a companion to bipartisan legislation sponsored by Representative Jay Inslee in the House of Representatives. The House Committee on Natural Resources held hearings on the underlying House bill, H.R. 3709, in February of this year. The legislation Sen. Risch and I are introducing today incorporates changes resulting from those hearings, primarily making it clear that any non-competitive leases issued under this authority would be at fair-market value. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleagues from Idaho and Oregon, Senator James Risch, Senator Mike Crapo, and Senator Jeff Merkley, in introducing the Geothermal Production Expansion Act of 2010. This legislation will amend an already existing law--the Geothermal Steam Act--governing the way the Federal Government leases public lands for the development of geothermal energy projects. Geothermal energy facilities provide a continuous supply of renewable energy with very few environmental impacts. Although the United States has more geothermal capacity than any other country, this potential has been barely tapped. This shortfall is partly due to the high initial cost and risk involved in locating and developing geothermal resources. Like oil and natural gas exploration, until exploration and production wells are actually drilled, the true energy value of the site is not known nor is the full extent of the underground reservoir or energy source. This legislation is intended to expand the future production of geothermal energy on federally-owned lands by taking some of the uncertainty and guess work out of the leasing and development process by allowing the Interior Department to issue geothermal leases for adjacent lands on a non-competitive basis, based on fair-market value. This would allow a geothermal developer to expand a successful geothermal lease without being forced into a bidding war with speculators or uncooperative competitors who might threaten project expansion or even prevent the project from reaching commercial scale. Under current law, the Department of Interior is charged with issuing geothermal energy leases through a competitive lease sale. There are, however, several situations where the Department is allowed to issue non-competitive leases, for example, if there were no competitive bids offered, or where there is an already existing mining claim, or where the geothermal energy will be used directly on site for heating or other uses and not sold as electricity. This legislation would add an additional category of non-competitive leases for lands that are immediately adjacent to an existing, competitively-awarded, geothermal lease where there is an identified, validated geothermal energy discovery. They would not just be given away to an existing lease holder. These non-competitive leases would be made at fair-market value as independently determined by the Department of Interior. They could also not be taken away from any existing lease holder, if they were already leased, nor could they be removed from competitive leasing if they had already been nominated to be competitively leased. These safeguards are intended to insure that this new non-competitive lease authority is a limited exception to the general policy of competitive leasing for geothermal resources on our public lands. At the same time, this new authority will help ensure that when and where a geothermal resource has been discovered, the project developer will be able to tap that resource and turn it into a viable, commercial energy business and provide clean, renewable energy for our country. This bill is a companion to bipartisan legislation sponsored by Representative Jay Inslee in the House of Representatives. The House Committee on Natural Resources held hearings on the underlying House bill, H.R. 3709, in February of this year. The legislation Sen. Risch and I are introducing today incorporates changes resulting from those hearings, primarily making it clear that any non-competitive leases issued under this authority would be at fair-market value. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today, along with my colleagues Senators Sessions, McCaskill, and Thune, I am introducing a bill to help crime victims and state courts recover the restitution and fees that are owed to them. This bipartisan bill would accomplish this worthy goal by intercepting tax refunds of deadbeat debtors who've failed to pay restitution or court fees. If enacted, this bill would essentially allow state courts to cross-reference outstanding debts with the IRS and use existing procedures to withhold tax refunds in order to satisfy past due debts. This bill would not only deliver justice to crime victims who are owed restitution, but would also provide much-needed resources to help keep court rooms open and court programs operating. At a time when our State and local governments are struggling to find funding for vital programs--including keeping courthouse doors open--unpaid court fees represent an important source of revenue that should be captured. This bill would help close budget gaps and provide additional revenue without raising taxes or imposing any new costs or burdens. In fact, participation in the program would be optional for states, but I expect most states to participate and to benefit greatly from this bill. This bill would operate the same way as the very successful child support debt collection system. The bill will allow states to share information on outstanding restitution owed and court debts with the IRS, which would then be required to intercept any Federal tax refunds of debtors and send that money to the victim or court owed that debt. It has been estimated by the National Center for State Courts that outstanding court debts across the country total approximately $15 billion. In my home State of Oregon alone, the outstanding restitution and court fee debt amount is $987 million. Only a portion of outstanding debts are owed by individuals who will receive Federal tax refunds, so a portion of court debts would not be collected immediately. Nonetheless, the State of Oregon estimates that passage of this bill would allow the state to collect $30 million per year. Without this straight-forward and efficient mechanism, the collection of victim restitution and court debts is a costly and time-consuming process. Enactment of this bill would reduce the fiscal cost and administrative burden that victims and courts bear in attempting to collect those debts. Again, in the midst of a challenging fiscal crisis, it only makes common sense to collect revenues that are already owed--through an efficient and convenient method. Because this bill would benefit both the court system, and those who rely upon it, the Court Fee Tax Intercept Act is endorsed by a broad array of court, government, law enforcement, and crime victims organizations. The bill is supported by the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National District Attorneys Association, the American Probation and Parole Association, the Conference of Chief Justices, the Conference of State Court Administrators, the National Association for Court Managers, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, and the Government Finance Officers Association. I urge all colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today, along with my colleagues Senators Sessions, McCaskill, and Thune, I am introducing a bill to help crime victims and state courts recover the restitution and fees that are owed to them. This bipartisan bill would accomplish this worthy goal by intercepting tax refunds of deadbeat debtors who've failed to pay restitution or court fees. If enacted, this bill would essentially allow state courts to cross-reference outstanding debts with the IRS and use existing procedures to withhold tax refunds in order to satisfy past due debts. This bill would not only deliver justice to crime victims who are owed restitution, but would also provide much-needed resources to help keep court rooms open and court programs operating. At a time when our State and local governments are struggling to find funding for vital programs--including keeping courthouse doors open--unpaid court fees represent an important source of revenue that should be captured. This bill would help close budget gaps and provide additional revenue without raising taxes or imposing any new costs or burdens. In fact, participation in the program would be optional for states, but I expect most states to participate and to benefit greatly from this bill. This bill would operate the same way as the very successful child support debt collection system. The bill will allow states to share information on outstanding restitution owed and court debts with the IRS, which would then be required to intercept any Federal tax refunds of debtors and send that money to the victim or court owed that debt. It has been estimated by the National Center for State Courts that outstanding court debts across the country total approximately $15 billion. In my home State of Oregon alone, the outstanding restitution and court fee debt amount is $987 million. Only a portion of outstanding debts are owed by individuals who will receive Federal tax refunds, so a portion of court debts would not be collected immediately. Nonetheless, the State of Oregon estimates that passage of this bill would allow the state to collect $30 million per year. Without this straight-forward and efficient mechanism, the collection of victim restitution and court debts is a costly and time-consuming process. Enactment of this bill would reduce the fiscal cost and administrative burden that victims and courts bear in attempting to collect those debts. Again, in the midst of a challenging fiscal crisis, it only makes common sense to collect revenues that are already owed--through an efficient and convenient method. Because this bill would benefit both the court system, and those who rely upon it, the Court Fee Tax Intercept Act is endorsed by a broad array of court, government, law enforcement, and crime victims organizations. The bill is supported by the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National District Attorneys Association, the American Probation and Parole Association, the Conference of Chief Justices, the Conference of State Court Administrators, the National Association for Court Managers, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, and the Government Finance Officers Association. I urge all colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, consistent with Senate Standing Orders and my policy of publishing in the Record a statement whenever I place a hold on legislation, I am announcing my intention to object to any unanimous consent request to proceed to S. 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, COICA. Promoting American innovation, and securing its protection, is vital to creating new, good-paying jobs. But it is important that the government reach an appropriate balance between protecting intellectual property and promoting innovation on the one hand and the freedom to innovate, share expression, and promote ideas over the Internet. I am concerned that the current version of COICA has this balance wrong; it attempts to protect intellectual property in the digital arena in a way that could trample free speech and stifle competition and important new innovations in the digital economy. Of perhaps greater concern, the sweeping new powers offered to the U.S. Department of Justice under COICA are granted without giving due consideration to the consequences. COICA may not only be ineffective at combating copyright infringement and the distribution of counterfeit goods, it gives license to foreign regimes to further censor and filter online content to serve protectionist commercial motives and repressive political aims. Until these issues are thoroughly considered and properly addressed, I will object to a unanimous consent request to proceed to the legislation.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, let me commend the Senator from Massachusetts on a very fine statement, which I think highlights exactly what we are seeking to do. The Senator from Massachusetts has been a real pleasure to work with on this matter. As he says, the whole point of this, as shown by the recent election, is that people want to find some common ground. They are not interested anymore in food fights and bickering back and forth between the political parties. What Senator Brown and I are seeking to do is to show it is possible on a significant issue--I think we all understand health care is about as important as it gets--that we can come together, and the two of us have said we are going to come together to put the focus on innovation. It is pretty clear that what works in Springfield, OR, may not be exactly ideal for Springfield, MA. But what we can do is come up with a way to provide more flexibility and particularly more choice and more competition for our States and other States around the country. So I am very grateful to the Senator from Massachusetts for his effort. It is early in the lameduck session, and it is my hope this will be a signal in the Chamber that even on these difficult issues-- issues that were so contentious in the political campaign--it is going to be possible to come together and find some common ground. As the Senator suggests, if we can just move away from a Federal cookie-cutter approach and encourage the kind of creative thinking we have seen in Oregon and in Massachusetts and other parts of the country, I think we will be well served and will be in a position to better contain health care costs. I think we all understand that how to rein in these medical costs that are gobbling up everything in sight is first and foremost on the minds of our constituents. Literally, for the amount of money we are spending today in this country, one can go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the United States and pay the doctor more than $225,000 a year just for taking care of seven families. I always bring up this as almost a metaphor for health care, but usually after I am done, the physician who was listening in the audience comes up and says: Where can I go to get my seven families? It sounds like a pretty good deal. It just shows that we are spending this enormous sum of money. What Senator Brown and I are seeking to do is to encourage additional innovative approaches in States, approaches that are tailored to the needs of States' own residents, that will help us, in my view, to promote choice and competition in the American health care system. The States are free to do whatever they choose. I just offer up my own judgment that right now, at a time when most Americans still don't get much choice in their health care coverage, this is an ideal opportunity that both Democrats and Republicans can support. As States seek to go forward with this approach, they can make their own choices. I hope, in particular, States will take a look at what you, Madam President, the Senator from New York, and I have in our own health care plan. The Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan provides a lot of choice, a lot of competition. You can go out and fire your insurance company if you don't think they are doing a good job. That is the kind of idea a State could pursue and do so, we hope, more quickly if we act legislatively to speed up the waiver process. But as Senator Brown has correctly noted, this is about giving States the freedom to chart their own course, and I am very hopeful we will be able to get this legislation passed. In particular, what I have been concerned about, after talking to health policymakers over the last few months, is if, in the State of New York, for example, you go out and set up a process to comply with the legislation for purposes of 2014 and you see that the waiver, as now constituted under 1332, starts in 2017, you say: How am I going to reconcile those two? Am I going to set up one approach for 2014 and then do another approach in 2017? It is going to put us through a lot of bureaucratic water torture to try to figure out how to synchronize those two dates. So it only makes sense to speed it all up and make it possible for everybody to get started in 2014. One other point because my intentions have been much discussed. When I originally started talking about the State waiver, people questioned whether this was something that was going to be a special opportunity for Oregon and not for other States. For over a decade, I have been promoting the idea that all States--all States--be given the freedom to innovate under health care reform legislation. In fact, to give a sense of how I got into this, going back and looking at the history of the Clinton health care plan, in the early 1990s it was pretty evident that had President Clinton and Republicans thought then about giving States the kind of freedom Senator Brown and I envision, it might well have been possible back in the early 1990s to enact health care reform that would have gotten all Americans quality, affordable coverage. That opportunity was missed. So I decided by the mid 1990s--if I had the opportunity, the honor, of representing Oregon in the Congress, I was going to use every single opportunity to let all States--and I want to underline all States--have the opportunity to innovate in health care. So in mid 2005 I started putting together a piece of legislation called the Healthy Americans Act. It was a bipartisan bill, that had 14 or 15 Senators as cosponsors, depending on when you look back at the legislative history, that were almost evenly divided between the political parties. In the Healthy Americans Act, there was a specific section called ``Empowering States to Innovate.'' There was a provision in that bill that was first introduced in 2006, and a similar provision was included as section 1332 in the law the President signed. So I have long been interested in letting all States have the opportunity to innovate. One of the reasons I have been interested--and my good friend, Senator Merkley, is here--is that our State has been one of the leaders in the whole effort to reform American health care. From time to time, folks have said I am the Senator from the State of Waiver rather than the State of Oregon because we have tried so often to pursue innovative approaches in health care waivers. We were, as Senator Merkley knows, one of the first States to say Medicaid dollars that have been authorized for seniors to pay for services in institutions such as nursing homes should be used instead for home health care; thereby giving seniors more of what they want, which is to stay in their homes, at a cheaper price to taxpayers. We began those efforts, as Senator Merkley knows, with waivers from traditional Federal law. So we have a long history of doing this, and I have spent well over a decade trying to establish the principle that all States ought to have the opportunity to bring their creative juices to this issue of health care reform. We have outlined the two key changes in the legislation that is law today. The first change is to make the waivers effective in 2014 rather than in 2017 so States only have to change their systems once. The second thing the Empowering States to Innovate Act does is it requires the Department of Health and Human Services to begin to review State waiver applications within 6 months of enactment of the legislation. This would allow States early notification of whether their State waivers have been approved and would give them adequate time to roll out their State-specific plans. I think this, too, will help us create more competition, more choice, and more affordability in American health care because it will give the States adequate time to gear up. That is the philosophy behind the Empowering States to Innovate Act, whether one likes one particular approach or another. Clearly, there will be great diversity of approaches tried at the State level. At a time when we are looking for ways to bring this country together to deal with the most contentious issues of our time, we ought to be supporting innovation. We ought to be supporting unleashing creative kinds of approaches to deal with domestic issues. That is what Senator Brown and I propose in this legislation. I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, our country strives to provide exceptional support for the sick, elderly and terminally ill in home and hospice settings. These vulnerable individuals, as well as their family caregivers, are indebted to the many professionals and volunteers who have made it their life's work to serve those in greatest need. Nearly 83,000 hospice professionals, 46,000 hospice volunteers and 1 million home health providers, nationally, contribute significantly to our health care system through their compassion and commitment. Hospice care provides humane and comforting support for over 744,000 terminally ill patients and their families each year. These services include pain control, palliative medical care and social, emotional and spiritual services. Hospice supports the basic human needs for feeling comfortable, in a familiar environment, surrounded by loving caregivers and family during the later stages of life. Hospice care is an effective model for the interaction of interdisciplinary teams of health professionals, family members and volunteers in providing care for those needing care in our communities. The movement to provide health care and supportive services in the home environment has evolved rapidly over the past few decades. Home care services typically bring the expertise and compassion of providers in numerous disciplines into the setting where most sick patients prefer to reside--the home. More than 11 million Americans benefit each year from this approach. We have made great strides in advancing care for all Americans through the recently enacted Affordable Care Act. A key provision in this effort is the establishment of a Medicare hospice concurrent care demonstration program, which would allow patients who are eligible for hospice care to also receive all other Medicare covered services during the same period of time. Following establishment of this program, I am hopeful that this country will move in a direction where individuals and families do not have to make the difficult choice between hospice and curative care in the Medicare Program. On behalf of Oregon home health and hospice providers celebrating November as home care and hospice month, I thank the thousands of everyday heroes such as home health nurses, therapists, and aides, who work tirelessly to provide professional health and palliative care and support to millions of Americans in need of quality health services. Their efforts allow families to stay together, and provide greater comfort and dignity to those in our communities.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, The Senate has come back to a full-throated debate about the comparative benefits of the tax policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. We turn on our cable TV these days and hour after hour there is a great deal of analysis of which approach is better on one factor or another. I want to take a few minutes today to point out that I think that debate misses the point because either of those tax approaches--of George W. Bush or President Obama--in my view would anchor our country to an insanely complicated, job-killing, thoroughly discredited tax system. I think what is important is that the Senate begin work moving toward a tax system that can create, as I put up here and will walk the Senate through, at least 2 million new jobs per year. The fact is, in this discussion comparing the George W. Bush policies and the policies of President Obama, one side may end up winning, the other side goes away unhappy, but under either approach the taxpayers of this country will lose, will continue to lose as a consequence of this flawed and discredited tax system. For example, under either approach-- under policy advanced by President Obama or the ideas George W. Bush saw enacted into law--we would still have 3.8 million people working the equivalent of full time, trying to comply with our tax law. Under either of those approaches, that of President Bush or President Obama, we would still have Americans spending 7.6 billion hours complying with tax law at the cost of $200 billion a year. That is why I say the taxpayer loses under either of those approaches. How can you make the case to the American people, whether they are in Illinois or Oregon or anywhere else, that you want to anchor them to a system that is not doing enough to create jobs, certainly will not give us the opportunity to create 2 million new jobs, and on top of it will force 3.8 million people to work the equivalent of full time to comply, racking up 7.6 billion hours and the expense of $200 billion annually, simply to comply? The question is, is there a better choice? I submit this afternoon that there is a far better choice and it has bipartisan roots. The better choice is to pick up on the work that Democrats and the late President Reagan did in the 1980s when they came together. A Chicagoan, you will recall, was very involved, the late Dan Rostenkowski, and he said the enemy is not the other party. The challenge is to go after the scores and scores of special interest tax breaks that are tax expenditures, really tax earmarks as I would call them, that consume hundreds of billions of dollars and keep us lowering the rates for the middle class and small businesses and those who manufacture in the United States. I think the relevant comparison is not George W. Bush against Barack Obama. The more relevant measure is what happened when Democrats and Ronald Reagan worked together in the 1980s, as opposed to what happened between 2001 and 2008 when tax policy was partisan. Let me lay out for the Senate those specific numbers. When Democrats and Ronald Reagan worked together to reform the Tax Code in the 1980s, payrolls expanded by 17.6 percent and the economy grew by 16 million jobs. By contrast, when tax policy was partisan, between 2001 and 2008, there was 2.3 percent payroll expansion, 3 million new jobs, and real median income fell by 5 percent. So why in the world would it make sense to go back to the tax policies where, when you look at the numbers in terms of payroll expansion, new jobs and real median income, growth was not what the people of Illinois and the people of Oregon and the people across our land ought to expect. I am of the view, now that the people of this country have spoken that they want to see this Senate create more real good-paying jobs and fix problems, the first thing we ought to do is look at what worked. We especially ought to look at it when it has bipartisan roots, as we saw in the 1980s with Democrats and Ronald Reagan. I believe that Congress can now, picking up on what they did during that time--clean the clutter from the Code, broaden the tax base and lower tax rates to give the people of this country a simpler and fairer tax. Also, in the 1980s, by cutting marginal income tax rates--and again this was Democrats, some of the most stalwart Democrats in the history of our party: Dan Rostenkowski, Dick Gephardt--stalwarts of the Democratic Party worked with Ronald Reagan to cut marginal income tax rates to create more jobs and more investment, rather than handing out tax preferences to special interest groups. A quarter century later we find ourselves, today, with a tax system that you can only describe as a mess, a dysfunctional mess where even specialists in business in and IRS regional offices have trouble sorting out the implications of what one provision or another would mean. Given the fact that since the last time Congress moved in to drain the tax swamp--given the fact it has been a quarter century, Senator Gregg and I--he, of course, is the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee--spent more than 2 years, and our staffs week after week, seeing if we could come together and put forth a bipartisan tax reform bill. We have done that. I am very pleased to be able to report this afternoon that the two chairs of the Deficit Reduction Commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, said that a version of what we proposed--certainly not all the things we would agree with but a version of our proposal--should be one of the options considered by the commission and considered for the country to debate. Given that, I want to take a few minutes and outline some of the key provisions we pursued in our bill. It is S. 3018. We all know that anybody having any trouble sleeping at night can wade into a tax bill and you can conk pretty quickly, but S. 3018 is an attempt to pick up on some of the most important policy work done, in my view, by the Senate led by Democrats and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. What Senator Gregg and I do is end scores of preferences so as to be able to give tax breaks to the vast majority of working families instead of handing them out to a small number of narrow special interests who have incredibly talented lobbyists who can spend their day outside the Senate Finance Committee room. We take away those breaks and use that money to give real tax relief to millions of working class families. We take a special initiative to focus on job creation that will make us more competitive in tough global markets. I want to take a minute to describe exactly how this works. I am sure that when the Presiding Officer of the Senate goes to a supermarket in Illinois, as I have in Oregon, one of the first things somebody will say, when you start visiting about the work of Congress, is take away those tax breaks for the businesses that are going offshore. Go get rid of those. They will say that to the distinguished Senator from Illinois and myself and everybody else. You hear it every single day in any coffee shop, any grocery store, where people are talking about government and politics. Then of course we go out and visit with our companies and the companies say: We have to have those tax breaks because America has the second highest rate in the world. If we do not have those tax breaks for doing business overseas, we are going to lose out on jobs here in the United States because some of that work our firm does overseas helps create jobs here in America. We know from those conversations we have had in Illinois and Oregon that our blue collar people don't buy that; they don't buy that for a second. They want to have the tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas wiped out. What Senator Gregg and I did--and this lasted many months-- is we said to the companies: How can we work with you to take away the tax breaks for doing business overseas so you can use those very same dollars to lower the tax rates for small businesses and manufacturers that operate in the United States and have dollars for tax relief for the middle class. As a result of that, we arrived at a policy that takes away the tax breaks for doing business overseas but we lower the tax rate dramatically for manufacturers and small businesses that operate in the United States. Our big businesses are called C corporations. Most businesses of course pay taxes as individuals or partnerships or limited liability firms, but for our biggest companies when they manufacture in Illinois or Oregon or anywhere else in the country, in the United States, we lower their taxes from 35 percent to 24 percent, creating a dramatic new incentive for manufacturing and business in the United States that can let our companies be more competitive in these tough global markets. We all understand that a firm in Illinois or Oregon is not just competing against another State a few hundred miles away, we are competing against China and India. I think this provision that Senator Gregg and I have laid out in our proposal--a modified version of that has been recommended by Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson--is one that can bring our country together, bring our parties together. Senator Gregg, a Republican; myself, a Democrat, worked for several years on this with business folks, with labor folks. When I talk to labor folks--and I have at length--about taking away the tax breaks for doing business overseas and using that so we can have a rebirth of American manufacturing, they say that is the kind of tax cut for business I can be for. We have to bring back manufacturing. Manufacturing is not just a basic industry, it is a national security priority. I think the approach Senator Gregg and I have proposed, a version of which the deficit commission has picked up on, is the path to use. The Heritage Foundation--and I will confess that I do not quote the Heritage Foundation every single day here on the floor of the Senate, although I have a great deal of respect for their professionalism--said the approach that Senator Gregg and I have produced will create 2 million new jobs per year. In fact, they said it would create 2.3 million new jobs per year, increase disposable income for a family of four by $4,000 per year, and boost the real gross domestic product by an average of $298 billion per year. So the point is, at a time when we have been through a heated and certainly contentious election, I think there is an opportunity to move forward, and particularly on what has been a central concern of the American people, which is creating more jobs, having an economic system that lets us compete in these tough global markets, and helping our people to get ahead, helping all of our people to get ahead. If there is one theme in what Democrats and Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s and what Senator Gregg and I seek to do now, it is let us have a tax policy that gives everybody a chance to get ahead. If you are somebody in Illinois and Oregon, and you did not have much in the beginning of your life, we want policies that will give you a chance to get ahead. If you have been fortunate enough through your hard work to be successful, we want policies that will make that possible as well. That was done when Democrats and Ronald Reagan cooperated in the 1980s. And, boy, what an unlikely group of people, President Reagan, a rancher, a star in the movies, working with Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. He has a lot better jump shot than me, but I also know the value of teamwork. So there is another tall Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who would like to work on bipartisan tax reform. We have an excellent chairman, Chairman Baucus, and Senator Grassley. They have already had one hearing on this issue. There is a lot to work with on this tax reform issue. By the way, there is another group in addition to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson who have weighed in essentially behind the ideas Senator Gregg and I are talking about. President Obama had a tax reform commission that recently came in--it was chaired by the distinguished Paul Volcker--that made a very substantial case for simplifying the Tax Code to ease the burden on workers and families and businesses. Senator Gregg and I looked at the Volcker Commission proposals, ending the alternative minimum tax, increasing the standard deduction, consolidating incentives for savings and retirement, allowing taxpayers to ask the IRS to fill out their tax forms for them. Those were all recommendations by President Obama's commission, the Volcker Commission, that are part of the proposal that Senator Gregg and I have put together, now 318: get rid of loopholes, get rid of the giveaways to special interests, and you can keep down rates and provide tax relief to the vast majority of workers and families and businesses. In closing, there is a recipe for economic growth that is available to the Senate, a recipe for economic growth that has already been shown to work. What Democrats and Ronald Reagan did in the eighties proved that bipartisanship can create economic growth, help stimulate the creation of badly needed jobs, and rein in the deficit. So why in the world would we want to pass up the opportunity on a bipartisan basis to drain the tax swamp? Why would we pass up the opportunity to clean the tax house? Do we want to say this--and this is true. This is key to the discussion we are going to have all through this session if we go with either the approach of George W. Bush or Barack Obama. We will continue to see the full-time work of 3.8 million people doing 7.6 billion hours to comply with the tax law at a cost of $200 billion a year. Would not the people of Illinois--I know they certainly feel this way in Oregon--rather see $200 billion devoted to real progress in this country, improving our roads and bridges and our transportation system, and creating a public education system that is going to let us get those high-value, high-wage jobs and compete in these tough global markets? And you will have money left over to reduce the deficit which, of course, is why all of this was attractive to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson because they head up something called the Deficit Commission. Obviously, there is another big cost to all of this, this tax mess; that is, to the morale of our citizens and their sense of fairness. Because this tax system is so insanely complicated, ordinary taxpayers make mistakes, they overpay their taxes, they underpay their taxes, they get audited. But they are very much aware that the sophisticated taxpayer can go out and employ a legion of lawyers and accountants, and if that does not work, they will get lobbyists to kind of play around with their loophole and avoid taxes. That is not fair, and the ordinary taxpayer knows it. Even with their savings and home equity tapped out, we know hard- working middle-income folks will pay their fair share. But they sure resent the tax system that rewards elaborate tricks. I am of the view the message from this election is for Democrats and Republicans to get down to work, and the Tax Code is a good place to start. I said to folks in Oregon during the campaign, I do not believe either party has a monopoly on good ideas. I am prepared to work with anybody in the Senate with a good idea for moving us forward, especially when we can create 2 million new jobs per year. One of the reasons I wanted to begin this special postelection session this way is that I think on this tax issue, what is especially striking when we are having this intensely partisan debate about how to go about keeping a discredited tax system, there is something out there that will produce more good-paying jobs and could be bipartisan. So the real work on taxes for this special session seems to me to create a bridge to real tax reform, a bridge to tax reform that works. The Tax Code is so complicated today that the typical person cannot even use the relief that is given to them. Each Spring the Internal Revenue Service publishes something called the annual ``oops list.'' This is the list of the 10 most common mistakes that taxpayers make when they are filing. That ``oops list'' released in March included President Obama's Making Work Pay tax credit which was created to boost the economy and give working Americans a credit worth up to $400 for individuals and $800 for couples. Yet this year's ``oops list'' reported that many of the people who worked in 2009 could not figure out how to claim the Making Work Pay credit on their 1040 EZ form. That is not easy enough. In fact, if you and I walked the streets of Illinois and Oregon and asked anybody about the stimulus legislation, virtually no one would think that there were hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tax relief in that bill. They would say to the distinguished President of the Senate, as they have said to me, that was a spending deal. It is called the stimulus. There was not any tax relief in it. The system was so complicated that even with hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tax relief in it, people could not sign up for it, people could not figure it out, and it makes the ``oops list'' for the Internal Revenue Service. The Chair has been patient, this afternoon. I close simply by saying, I believe it is time to clean house as the Congress did in the 1980s working with President Reagan, purge this spider's web of tax breaks, kill the special interest goodies, and hold down the rates so that everybody can get ahead. Let the small businesses, as Senator Gregg and I advocated, expense all of their equipment and inventory costs in a single year, freeing up capital so they can expand and create jobs. Let's limit the dead weight cost of taxes as the Heritage Foundation said in their report, indicating our bill would create 2 million new jobs. Our 1040 form is 27 lines long--27 lines long. Back when we started this push, one of the financial magazines, one of the best known magazines, had some of their people, for a typical taxpayer, fill out their taxes with a form that was like ours. It took them 40 minutes. Think what that is going to do to change Americans' springtime when everybody is filing their returns in April. Talk about family values. We could actually get people a little more time with their families rather than filling out all of these forms and Turbo Tax and everything else. This is going to be an important session that begins today, and nobody is sure exactly how long it is going to last. But what we know is that there is going to be an extensive discussion about taxes, and I just hope our colleagues will zero in on the fact that under either of these approaches that are being discussed, that of George W. Bush or that of Barack Obama, either of them will anchor this country to a grotesquely complicated, job-killing, discredited tax system. We can do better. We know we can do better because in the 1980s, with leadership from a Republican President and Democrats in Congress, we did better. It created millions of new jobs. We can do it again. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 674, submitted earlier today.

Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Russell Sloan, a fellow in the office of Senator Pryor, be granted floor privileges for the week of November 15 through November 19, 2010.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolution be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, Senators should expect the first vote of the day to begin at approximately 11 a.m. That will be the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the Promoting Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles legislation. If cloture is not invoked, the Senate would proceed immediately to a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 3772, the paycheck fairness bill. If cloture is again not invoked, there would be a third cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 510, the food safety bill. Therefore, Senators should expect up to three rollcall votes to begin around 11 a.m.