Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

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. 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. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S.J. Res. 40, introduced earlier today.

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

Mr. 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 am pleased to join with my colleague from Utah, Senator Orrin Hatch, in introducing legislation to renew an existing Federal program to provide tax incentives for the installation of equipment to refuel cars and trucks with alternative fuels including biodiesel, gasohol, electricity, compressed natural gas, propane, liquefied natural gas, and hydrogen. The United States continues to import far more oil than we produce. Upwards of \2/3\ of the oil we use is imported from other countries, many of whom do not have Americans' best interests at heart, or worse. Similarly, \2/3\ of all of the oil used in the U.S. goes to power our cars, buses, and trucks. If the U.S. is going to reduce our dependence on imported oil, it is going to have to adopt alternative transportation technologies such as plug-in hybrid and all electric vehicles, fuel cells, and natural gas vehicles. Each of these alternative technologies has pluses and minuses in terms of their technical maturity, usefulness in different types of vehicles, cost, and the availability of refueling infrastructure to support them. This legislation only addresses the need for refueling and recharging infrastructure, but without a certainty that there will be places to refuel and recharge their alternative fueled vehicles Americans are not going to buy them. No one wants to run out of fuel while looking for a place to fill up. This legislation extends an already existing tax credit, Sec. 30C of the Tax Code, which is intended to help defray the cost of installing new alternative refueling and recharging equipment. The current credit expires in a matter of a few months at the end of calendar year 2010. Given the critical need to cut our national appetite for imported oil, it is essential that Congress extend this tax credit. This legislation would extend the existing credit for another 4 years, until the end of 2014. The legislation also makes several changes in the credit to make it more practical. For example, this bill would make it clear that a fueling station could obtain a separate credit for each type of alternative fuel that it chooses to distribute. Right now, the credit is capped at $50,000 per location regardless of the number of fuels that it may want to sell. The bill would also expand the base credit from $50,000 to $100,000 to bring it more in line with the actual cost of refueling and recharging equipment. Third, the bill would allow the credit to cover additional upgrades to building wiring or natural gas piping or other improvements that are necessary for the installation of the alternative fuel equipment, and expand the kinds of equipment that would be covered to include on-site fuel generation. The bill would also allow an option to obtain a smaller $10,000 credit for the installation of refueling devices, such as chargers for plug-in electric cars or slow-fill natural gas compressors, in lieu of the $100,000 credit per location. Finally, the bill would allow multiple owners of buildings, such as a condominium or a co-op, to share the credit. Continued dependence on imported oil is an economic and national security danger. Giving Americans options to use alternative fueled vehicles is one major way in which to dramatically reduce this danger. This bill does not tell Americans which kind of car or truck to buy. It does not pick winners and losers from among already recognized alternative fuels. What it would do is make the availability of all alternative motor fuels more likely, and then the market will decide which technologies work best. I urge other Senators to support this legislation and give Americans a real chance to cut our oil imports. 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 colleague from Utah, Senator Orrin Hatch, in introducing legislation to renew an existing Federal program to provide tax incentives for the installation of equipment to refuel cars and trucks with alternative fuels including biodiesel, gasohol, electricity, compressed natural gas, propane, liquefied natural gas, and hydrogen. The United States continues to import far more oil than we produce. Upwards of \2/3\ of the oil we use is imported from other countries, many of whom do not have Americans' best interests at heart, or worse. Similarly, \2/3\ of all of the oil used in the U.S. goes to power our cars, buses, and trucks. If the U.S. is going to reduce our dependence on imported oil, it is going to have to adopt alternative transportation technologies such as plug-in hybrid and all electric vehicles, fuel cells, and natural gas vehicles. Each of these alternative technologies has pluses and minuses in terms of their technical maturity, usefulness in different types of vehicles, cost, and the availability of refueling infrastructure to support them. This legislation only addresses the need for refueling and recharging infrastructure, but without a certainty that there will be places to refuel and recharge their alternative fueled vehicles Americans are not going to buy them. No one wants to run out of fuel while looking for a place to fill up. This legislation extends an already existing tax credit, Sec. 30C of the Tax Code, which is intended to help defray the cost of installing new alternative refueling and recharging equipment. The current credit expires in a matter of a few months at the end of calendar year 2010. Given the critical need to cut our national appetite for imported oil, it is essential that Congress extend this tax credit. This legislation would extend the existing credit for another 4 years, until the end of 2014. The legislation also makes several changes in the credit to make it more practical. For example, this bill would make it clear that a fueling station could obtain a separate credit for each type of alternative fuel that it chooses to distribute. Right now, the credit is capped at $50,000 per location regardless of the number of fuels that it may want to sell. The bill would also expand the base credit from $50,000 to $100,000 to bring it more in line with the actual cost of refueling and recharging equipment. Third, the bill would allow the credit to cover additional upgrades to building wiring or natural gas piping or other improvements that are necessary for the installation of the alternative fuel equipment, and expand the kinds of equipment that would be covered to include on-site fuel generation. The bill would also allow an option to obtain a smaller $10,000 credit for the installation of refueling devices, such as chargers for plug-in electric cars or slow-fill natural gas compressors, in lieu of the $100,000 credit per location. Finally, the bill would allow multiple owners of buildings, such as a condominium or a co-op, to share the credit. Continued dependence on imported oil is an economic and national security danger. Giving Americans options to use alternative fueled vehicles is one major way in which to dramatically reduce this danger. This bill does not tell Americans which kind of car or truck to buy. It does not pick winners and losers from among already recognized alternative fuels. What it would do is make the availability of all alternative motor fuels more likely, and then the market will decide which technologies work best. I urge other Senators to support this legislation and give Americans a real chance to cut our oil imports. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, there are currently 48 vacancies on courts that the Federal judiciary considers to be judicial emergencies. Let me restate that. Filling these vacancies is now such a priority that they are considered judicial emergencies. One of those vacancies considered to be a judicial emergency is one of the positions for the U.S. District Court for Oregon. My view is this problem is only going to get worse with another 20 judges having announced plans to retire. If these positions remain vacant, we all understand it could delay trials and certainly justice delayed is justice denied. The stalling of judicial nominations also discourages qualified candidates from serving on the bench. Those the country most needs on the bench cannot put their lives on hold for months or years while their nominations sit on the Senate calendar, blocked for no apparent reason. One of the things that is most striking about how the country has gotten into this predicament is that experts who have analyzed the situation with respect to the delay in getting judges confirmed come back to Senate procedures as a significant factor in the holdup. Repeatedly, these independent experts say the Senate's secret hold, the process by which one Senator, just one, can anonymously block a judicial nomination from being considered on the floor of the Senate, is a central factor in the delay in getting these judges confirmed. I have come to the Senate floor today to say, when we have so many designated judicial emergencies, when there are so many individuals who have won bipartisan support, and a big factor in not getting judges confirmed is the Senate is unwilling to do public business in public, it suggests to me it is time to eliminate the secret hold which is keeping sunshine from coming to the Senate when it comes to the consideration of judicial nominations and other important business. Fortunately, colleagues on both sides of the aisle--a big group on our side of the aisle and a big group on the other side of the aisle-- have repeatedly said they want to come together, end secret holds, and do public business in public. At this time I would particularly like to commend my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, who has spent well over a decade working on this effort with me, and also single out Senator McCaskill from Missouri, who has done outstanding work as well mobilizing colleagues from both sides of the aisle, and who also wants to have this procedure changed and have new accountability and sunshine in the Senate. All we need to be able to do is get this out in front of the Senate-- frankly, out in front of the American people--so they can find out who is in favor of transparency, who is in favor of accountability, and who still thinks we ought to do business behind closed doors. Some in the Senate continue to claim a secret hold does not prevent the Senate from consideration of a nomination or piece of legislation. They say, for example, the majority leader can always file what we know as cloture on that nomination or bill to overcome a hold. That may be true in theory, but for all practical purposes it cannot be done. The process of filing cloture on a nomination certainly can gobble up almost a week on the Senate schedule. So the Senate could easily spend the remainder of the time remaining this year with votes on just a few nominations now on the Executive Calendar and still not come close to clearing the backlog of nominations. The fact is, a secret hold can effectively kill a nomination or piece of legislation. As we have said, our big bipartisan group in the Senate repeatedly has said all of this secrecy, all of this work to keep the public from finding out what is going on--all of it can be done without anybody, any colleagues in the Senate or the American people, knowing who was the secret obstructor and why they were, in fact, obstructing. There is one other point I would like to make, particularly with so much of the country looking at how Washington, DC, works and how broken so much of our system is; that is, how much power a secret hold provides to a lobbyist. I am sure virtually every Member of the Senate has at some point gotten a request from somebody who is a lobbyist asking if the Senator would put a secret hold on a bill or nomination in order to kill it--to kill it without getting any public debate and without the lobbyist's fingerprints on it anywhere. Certainly, if a lobbyist finds it possible to get a Senator to put an anonymous hold on a bill, it is pretty much like hitting the lobbyist jackpot. Not only is the Senator protected by the cloak of anonymity, but so is the lobbyist, and in effect, through secrecy, a secret hold can let the lobbyist play both sides of the street. It can give a lobbyist a victory with clients without alienating a potential or future client. Given the number of instances where I heard a lobbyist asking for secret holds, I think it is fair to say a secret hold is in effect a stealth extension of the lobbying world. So when you think about the powers that lobbyists already have, why in the world would you want to give them another tool, the secret hold, which could, as I have characterized it, literally be a stealth extension of the lobbying world. I think it makes no sense at all, and I come down on the side of openness and transparency. I congratulate my colleague, Senator Grassley from Iowa, who stood with me, and Senator McCaskill--a big group of colleagues from both sides. On the other side of the aisle, Senator Collins, Senator Inhofe, and others have spent a great deal of time. Here it has been Senator Whitehouse, Senator Udall, and the presiding officer, Senator Gillibrand--a whole host of colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, who think it is time, when the American people are obviously so angry at the way Washington, DC, does business, to make it clear that we are all going to come together and change the process of letting an individual Senator obstruct the people's business in secret. It seems to me the bottom line is that a secret hold is literally an indefensible denial of the public's right to know, particularly at a time when there is so much frustration and anger at the way business is done in Washington, DC. The public's right to know ought to be sacrosanct. Certainly, we are talking about the kind of matters Democrats and Republicans talk about all the time in public. Nobody is talking about national security or classified matters being brought out here for the kind of sunshine that I and Senator Grassley and Senator McCaskill want to bring to the Senate. This is about the people's business--legislation and nominations, those judicial emergencies and the scores of appointments that are being held up, pieces of legislation that involve millions of people and billions of dollars. It seems to me there ought to be public disclosure. There ought to be consequences if a Senator fails to disclose a secret hold. In the interest of dealing with the crisis in our courts and the importance of bringing public business to the floor of the Senate, I hope my colleagues will come together and quickly pass the bipartisan proposal which will once and for all eliminate secret holds. There have been past attempts. Senator Grassley and I were able, as part of the ethics legislation, to get a provision through that we hoped would make a big difference. What happened then is, the friends of secrecy went back and found other ways to get around it. It is time once and for all to strangle secret holds. That is what a bipartisan group in the Senate wants to do, and it is important that measure be enacted and enacted quickly. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to take a few minutes to talk about this issue of campaign ads being run all across the land and millions of dollars being spent by groups with misleading names, leaving our voters without any knowledge of who is behind the ads they are hearing. To me, the lack of accountability and civility and literal accuracy in political campaigns is absolutely unacceptable, and I am of the view that we ought to be asking here in the Senate whether this is really the best we can do to ensure accountability and openness in American politics. I think the answer to that is, it is a no-brainer. There ought to be basic disclosure of who is behind all of those ads that are flooding the airwaves. That is what is behind the DISCLOSE legislation, the bill that has been brought before the Senate to ensure that it is possible for Americans, at a time when there is intense interest in American politics, to know who is sponsoring all of these commercials that are rushing at the American people pell-mell over the airwaves. What is striking is how stark the inequities in all of this are. What I am particularly troubled about is that as a result of the Supreme Court decision, it is possible today for a foreign interest with no vote here in the United States to have a more substantial voice in our elections this fall than any hard-working American taxpayer. When you break that down, you really get a sense of just how outlandish this Supreme Court decision is. Let me repeat that. Foreign interests, through a subsidiary, with no vote here in the United States, will have a louder voice in the State of Alaska, in the State of Oregon, than any of the hard-working taxpayers whom we are honored to represent here in the Senate. I think that indicates that the campaign finance system is way out of whack. This Supreme Court decision, in my view, has literally blown the hinges off the doors of our democracy. What is needed is legislation such as the DISCLOSE Act to ensure accountability, civility, and accuracy in political campaigns. My view is that the lack of that kind of accountability creates not only confusion but even resentment among voters. The reason I know that is that the situation the country finds itself in now is very similar to what I saw when I first ran for the Senate in 1996 against the man who eventually became my colleague and good friend in the Senate, Gordon Smith. That was the only race in the United States at that time, the winter of 1996. Attack ads were being run by all sides, left and right. Senator Smith and I literally had no idea who was behind a lot of the attack ads. We made the judgment that while policy differences and personal criticisms are certainly a fair and legitimate part of a political campaign, what is not acceptable is the situation our country finds itself in, once again; that is, the huge numbers of ads being run where nobody could figure out who was behind some of the attacks, attacks that were pretty vicious and certainly high decibel. So I came to the Senate in the winter of 1996, and I vowed to try to make some changes. I vowed to work with colleagues of both parties to bring transparency and accountability to campaign advertising. I had the good fortune to find a terrific partner in this effort with our colleague from Maine, Senator Susan Collins. As part of the McCain- Feingold bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, Senator Collins and I were able to win passage of an amendment which has come to be known as the stand by your ad disclosure requirement. Not only have we all seen these ads, everyone who has run to serve in this distinguished Chamber has recorded them. It is real simple. I am Mark Begich. I approved this message. I am Ron Wyden, and I approved this message. It is not a hard thing to do. It comes about as a result of the fact that a colleague on the other side of the aisle, Senator Collins, joined me in this effort that I believed passionately in after that Senate special election in the winter of 1996. That simple disclosure requirement gives voters very important information about who is behind a political ad. I am of the view that disclosure should not be required just for candidates but for anyone-- interest groups, corporations--who seeks to communicate a political message. Unfortunately, after the Citizens United ruling, there are a variety of these interests that are now free to spend unlimited amounts of money on political ads without voters knowing who is paying for the ads. That is dangerous for democracy. It is wrong, and it needs to be stopped. The stand by your ad provision of the DISCLOSE Act would require the top official, the CEO or a top official from a company, a union or any organization paying for a political advertisement to take responsibility for the ad. The DISCLOSE Act can't prevent the formation of misleading front organizations, but another provision would require disclosure of the top five funders to allow voters to know who is behind the ad. I am of the view that companies, unions, other organizations ought to be held to the same standards of transparency and accountability in their political advertising as political candidates and political action committees. It is, in a one-sentence description, all about sunshine. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. The disclosure requirements in this legislation are going to give voters more information and help them understand who is paying for these political ads. I continue, as the Presiding Officer knows, to do everything I can to work in the Senate in a bipartisan fashion. I am pleased to see my distinguished colleague in the chair. He has joined me with Senator Gregg and a number of colleagues on both sides of the aisle in what is the first bipartisan tax reform legislation in a quarter century. It picks up on another bipartisan model--legislation advanced by former President Reagan, Bill Bradley, Dan Rostenkowski, and others. A big day is coming up in tax reform. That is tomorrow. Chairman Baucus is going to lead us into the first debate in a long time about tax reform. I very much look forward to working with Chairman Baucus and his leadership on this issue. I see my colleague from the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley. If we are going to duplicate that important tax reform work of 1986, it is going to be Chairman Baucus, Senator Grassley, Senator Hatch, the leaders of our committee taking us forward in a bipartisan way so the distinguished Senator from Alaska and I and other more junior members can work with our colleagues and make some history and fix the American tax system, radically simplify it. But to do that we will have to work in a bipartisan way. I come to the floor to say, once again, I am hopeful that the DISCLOSE legislation, which provides an opportunity for transparency and accountability in campaign finance, can also become a bipartisan cause. There is absolutely nothing partisan about the question of making sure a political advertisement that is offered is one where the American people know who is behind it. That is not a partisan issue. As my friend from Alaska knows, it certainly isn't a partisan issue to take this unbelievable mess of a Tax Code that runs page after page after page, thousands of words, and simplify it to a one-page form, a one-page 1040 form. That is not partisan work, nor should disclosing campaign finance advertisements be partisan either. I ask on this question of election reform, look at the present system, where there is no accountability, where people don't know who is behind these advertisements, and ask: Is this the best we can do? I think the answer is obviously no. I think the answer is, instead, to say that companies and unions and other organizations ought to be held to the same standard of honesty and integrity as political candidates are required to do under the legislation Senator Collins and I authored as part of McCain-Feingold. The fact is, this Senate can do better in election reform. I urge colleagues to work together to bring transparency and accountability to American elections and pass the DISCLOSE Act. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this week marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most remarkable innovations in modern medicine. On September 21, 1960, at the University of Oregon Medical School, Dr. Albert Starr successfully implanted the first prosthetic mechanical heart valve. In 1958, Lowell Edwards, a retired mechanical engineer, approached Dr. Starr about the possibility of creating an artificial heart. Believing artificial heart technology to be a bit premature, Starr encouraged Edwards to consider valve replacement surgery. The valve they designed--a ball and cage mechanical valve--was successfully implanted in its first patient just 2 years later. For this achievement, Dr. Starr was the co-recipient of the Albert Lasker Award, for Clinical Medical Research in 2007. Dr. Starr continues to contribute to the development of medical science as the director emeritus of Providence Heart and Vascular Institute, medical director of the Albert Starr Academic Center, and director of bioscience research and development for Providence Health & Services in Oregon. Since the valve's first use in 1960, heart valve replacement surgery has saved millions of lives, giving hope to those with heart disease. Today, life saving heart valve replacement surgery is performed 300,000 times each year around the globe, with more than 90,000 of those operations taking place in the U.S. Dr. Starr says he considers his legacy to be about the people he has trained and his patients. For him, the human interaction has been the most important aspect of his lifetime of achievements. I am grateful for his passion to help people and to help advance medical science. It is an honor for me to recognize Dr. Albert Starr for his contributions to medical innovation and I am proud to have him call Oregon his home.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, it is clear from the debate on the Defense bill and the vote that was held a bit ago that this is a partisan time for our Nation. I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about an issue that is not at all partisan; that is, the question of doing public business in public. When you say those words--``doing public business in public''--people are almost flabbergasted when they are told that, regrettably, much of the important decisionmaking in the Senate is not done with that level of public accountability and public transparency. That is because of what are known as secret holds where one Senator--just one--in a completely anonymous fashion, can block a bill or a nomination from even coming to light, from even being heard in the Senate. For years now, there has been a bipartisan effort to change this procedure, to require that all Senators be held accountable. Senator Grassley and I have been involved in this effort in a bipartisan way for over a dozen years--for a dozen years--trying every way we could. We established the principle that the Senate would do public business in public, and if a Senator wanted to object to a bill or a nomination, they would have to be publicly accountable. For years now, the defenders of secrecy, the defenders of a system without transparency and accountability look for one dodge or another. But our bipartisan group--on the other side of the aisle, Senator Grassley, of course, the champion, Senator Collins, Senator Inhofe, a very significant bipartisan group; over on our side of the aisle, and particularly appreciative, is Senator McCaskill, who has done such hard work on the principle of establishing open accountability; my colleague from the Pacific Northwest, Senator Murray, an influential member of the Rules Committee, want this level of public accountability. It has been a big bipartisan group, and we seek to finally change this procedure through an amendment that would have been possible under the Defense authorization bill. It was said in the course of this discussion that a bipartisan effort to end secret holds through an amendment to the Defense authorization bill is ``a corruption of the process and procedures of the Senate if ever there was one.'' I believe the use of secret holds and not a bipartisan effort to end them is the real corruption of the procedures of the Senate. Secret holds cannot be found anywhere in the U.S. Constitution or anywhere in the Senate rules. We have had a considerable debate over the last few months about the Constitution, our reverence for this sacred document. Secret holds are nowhere in the Constitution and nowhere in the Senate rules. Yet in this Congress alone, they have been used to block what seems to be dozens of qualified nominees. I point out, this has gone on for years and years on both sides of the aisle. That is the point Senator Grassley and I have emphasized for over a decade: that this is an area of abuse where we have seen both sides of the aisle use the secret processes to the detriment of the public interest. The real corruption of the process, in my view, is the way secret holds have been used to block the Senate from acting on numerous nominations and pieces of legislation without any accountability to the public. That is why I believe it ought to be possible to debate a bipartisan amendment, to do public business in public to end these secret holds. The reason it needs to be done now is because past efforts to ban these secret procedures have been blocked from getting a vote. This has happened five times in just the past few months. In the course of the debate as well, there was a discussion about what our bipartisan effort--to do public business in public--has to do with national security. The answer is: a great deal. For example, earlier this year, one of our colleagues secretly placed a blanket hold on 70 nominations to critical positions in the Federal Government that were pending before the Senate. These nominations included nominees to positions in the Defense Department and the State Department. The Senator who secretly held up those 70 nominees said he was doing it to address national security concerns. Let me repeat that. We had 70 nominees under a blanket hold being held up from even an open debate to address national security concerns. It turned out that this particular Senator was concerned about a dispute about the Defense Department's contracting practices and an earmark for a counterterrorism center in the Senator's home State. This one example shows that secret holds have been used, and certainly the question of whether they have been abused, to hold up dozens of qualified nominees over defense and national security issues. This is only one example. Even today, there is at least one nominee for a national security position whose nomination is secretly being held up. No one knows who has the hold or why it has been placed. I come back to the connection, first, that changing these Senate procedures so public business is done in public is fundamental to all the operations of the Senate and certainly our accountability to the American people. But it has a direct link because of the examples I have cited this afternoon to the future of national security policy in our country. The continued use of secret holds is an abuse of secrecy by the Senate, and there is no better time to end this undemocratic process than through an amendment to the Defense bill. With colleagues on both sides of the aisle determined, finally, to get this done, I believe we will get it done when we get an open debate. Our democracy and our national security are weakened when secrecy is abused. I very much appreciate the opportunity this afternoon to highlight a number of key points in this discussion. First, this has absolutely nothing to do with partisanship. Second, it is absolutely key to the fundamental accountability of the Senate to the American people to end this process of secrecy and of all Senators held accountable. Finally, this has a direct connection to matters of national security because in so many instances, these secret holds have kept appointments to key national security positions from being open to debate and scrutiny in the Senate. At the end of the day, there are a lot of issues we face in the Senate that are hard to explain, that are complicated, and they are hard for folks to follow at home. What is not hard to explain is why it is so important to do public business in public. At a time when the American people are certainly voicing considerable skepticism about the ways of Washington, this is a chance to show the American people that the Senate is listening to them, that we share their commitment to open government, to doing public business in public. I hope the Senate will be able to change this offensive, antidemocratic procedure that has been used way too long to keep the American people from seeing the way the Senate operates. I look forward to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle having the debate on ending secret holds, doing public business in public. I believe that when we get that vote, we will get a resounding vote to finally close this dark chapter in the way the Senate does business and bring some sunshine to the decisionmaking process in the Senate. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from Idaho, Senator Mike Crapo, in introducing the Geothermal Energy Investment Act of 2010. This legislation will amend an already existing investment tax credit for geothermal energy authorized under Sec. 48 of the tax code. The bill would provide geothermal energy with the same 30 percent investment tax credit that is now available to solar energy and fuel cell technologies in Sec. 48 and extend this 30 percent tax credit for geothermal through December 31, 2016, as it is for these other technologies. Without this legislation, new geothermal energy projects would be allowed only a 10 percent investment tax credit under Section 48. This legislation will create a more level playing field among clean, renewable energy technologies and support substantial growth in utility scale geothermal power, distributed on-site power generation, and heating for buildings and commercial processes. 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. Extending the 30 percent tax credit through 2016 will help give geothermal developers the assurance they need to make the long lead- time investments in exploration and development necessary to make expansion of geothermal energy a reality. This legislation is identical to a bipartisan companion bill, H.R. 5612, that Representative Earl Blumenauer from Oregon has introduced in the House. 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 colleague from Idaho, Senator Mike Crapo, in introducing the Geothermal Energy Investment Act of 2010. This legislation will amend an already existing investment tax credit for geothermal energy authorized under Sec. 48 of the tax code. The bill would provide geothermal energy with the same 30 percent investment tax credit that is now available to solar energy and fuel cell technologies in Sec. 48 and extend this 30 percent tax credit for geothermal through December 31, 2016, as it is for these other technologies. Without this legislation, new geothermal energy projects would be allowed only a 10 percent investment tax credit under Section 48. This legislation will create a more level playing field among clean, renewable energy technologies and support substantial growth in utility scale geothermal power, distributed on-site power generation, and heating for buildings and commercial processes. 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. Extending the 30 percent tax credit through 2016 will help give geothermal developers the assurance they need to make the long lead- time investments in exploration and development necessary to make expansion of geothermal energy a reality. This legislation is identical to a bipartisan companion bill, H.R. 5612, that Representative Earl Blumenauer from Oregon has introduced in the House. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. A lifetime appointment to the highest Court in the land is a serious matter, and confirming each Justice is one of the most solemn duties of any Senator. When I sat down with her, I was struck by Ms. Kagan's obvious intelligence and candor. It was also obvious that her wealth of professional experience has given her a real reverence for our country's rule of law. As the confirmation process went on, I paid close attention to the answers Ms. Kagan gave to my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee in her hearing. What comes across loud and clear when one listens to Ms. Kagan is that she has a strong belief in the Constitution and an understanding of its purpose to serve and protect the American people. Throughout the arduous process of being a Supreme Court nominee, Ms. Kagan has impressed me at every turn with her intellect, integrity, and independence. These are fundamental traits our Nation needs in every member of the highest Court in the land. But being a Supreme Court Justice requires more than surviving the confirmation process. If confirmed, Ms. Kagan would be ruling on the most important and urgent matters facing our Nation. Her voice would carry with it the rich and varied background of professional experience that would sound a note of true intellectual independence. Although some have found fault with the fact that she has never served as a judge, I have never believed that lack of prior judicial experience should stop someone from serving with distinction on the Court. After all, some of our greatest jurists had no experience as a judge--Justices John Marshall, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and William Rehnquist among them. In place of that singular legal experience, Ms. Kagan brings expertise that she has earned in all three branches of government, as well as the private sector as an attorney in private practice and as the dean of Harvard Law School. In talking with Ms. Kagan, I came away confident that she well understands the proper role of a judge and will not attempt to legislate from the bench. I discussed with Ms. Kagan her views and approach to some of the important issues the Court will address in upcoming years, such as national security, the limits of executive power, and the protection of civil liberties. I also spoke with Ms. Kagan about an issue of particular concern to Oregonians one which they have endorsed twice at the ballot box--the right to control end-of-life decisions. Oregon voters twice approved death with dignity ballot measures. I have long believed that their decision should be respected by the courts, and I am pleased the Supreme Court has agreed with that view. While not taking a position on specific questions that could come before the Court, Ms. Kagan reassured me that she sees this as Oregonians do. She believes end-of- life decisions are protected by constitutional privacy rights, and she believes the Federal Government should not contravene State laws that protect individual rights on this issue. Finally, I was also comfortable with the way Ms. Kagan explained her views on a frequently litigated constitutional issue, the limits of congressional power to act under the commerce clause. Ms. Kagan's answers assured me she has a very thorough and nuanced understanding of commerce clause jurisprudence and that she will rule on commerce authority cases with both deference and wisdom. I am convinced, based on everything I have heard, that Ms. Kagan possesses the intellect, integrity, and independence to serve as an extraordinary Justice on the Supreme Court. With the retirement of Justice Stevens, Ms. Kagan certainly has large shoes to fill. But I have no doubt she is more than up to the task, and our country's laws will be safely guarded in her hands. That is why Elena Kagan has my support, and I will vote to confirm her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today the Senate has passed legislation that will make a historic investment in our children by approving the first increase in real terms of the reimbursement rate for school lunches in 40 years. Now 10,000 children a year will have new access to free school meals. Throughout the country, there are people working hard to make sure these kids have a least one healthy meal each day. In my State, one of the people who makes that happen is Betty Brain of the Blazers Boys and Girls Club in Portland. She is known as Chef Betty and every day she cooks meals for more than 200 underserved kids, dishing up healthy foods with fresh ingredients to keep them healthy and strong. Chef Betty is not just a cook. She is an inspiration to the kids who come to the Boys and Girls Club every day. These kids are family to her, and she makes it her personal responsibility to make sure they get not only a good meal but also a kind word and a helping hand. I can guarantee that there is a Chef Betty in every Boys and Girls Club in America--someone who understands how important it is to help a child in whatever way she can. For all the Chef Bettys in America, we need to reauthorize these programs so they can keep those kids from being forced into eating not just any food but good food made by good people.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Enforcing Orders and Reducing Circumvention and Evasion Act--or the ENFORCE Act-- of 2010. We all know what a tax cheat is; well let me tell you about a trade cheat. You see, under U.S. trade laws, when a certain import is found to be unfairly traded, that is, it benefits from government subsidies or is sold below market prices, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposes additional duties on these imports. These duties, we call them anti- dumping and countervailing duties, or AD/CVD, ensure that American producers are only asked to compete on a playing field that is level. But we have these trade cheats out there. They cheat American taxpayers out of the revenue that is supposed to be collected on imports, and which is needed to reduce the budget deficit, and they cheat American producers out of business that may otherwise be theirs. In short, the trade cheats steal American jobs and America's treasure. The U.S.' AD/CVD laws form its industries' protective backbone against injury from illegally dumped or subsidized imports. However, these trade remedy laws are only effective to the extent that they are enforced. We have an enforcement problem. The trade cheats are increasingly--and brazenly--employing a variety of schemes to evade AD/CVD orders. Sometimes, they hustle their merchandise through foreign ports to claim that it originates from somewhere it doesn't. Other times, the trade cheats will provide fraudulent information to government authorities at American ports of entry, or engage in schemes to mislabel and misrepresent imports. U.S. industry sources estimate that approximately $91 million in AD/ CV duties that were supposed to be applied to just four steel products went uncollected as a result of evasion in 2009. This is an amount equal to 30 percent of all AD/CV duties CBP collected that year. With 300 current AD/CVD orders in place on countless products from over 40 countries, the potential for AD/CV duty evasion is vast, and hundreds of millions of AD/CV duties may be unaccounted for. Every penny counts and we have an obligation to the American businesses, and the workers they rely on, to do a better job. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, is the nation's frontline defense against unfair trade and is responsible for enforcing U.S. trade remedy laws and collecting AD/CV duties. Yet if you listen to the concerns of domestic producers, as I and many of my colleagues do, timely and effective enforcement of AD/CVD orders remains problematic and AD/CV duty evasion continues, seemingly unabated. I have enormous respect for the men and women of CBP who manage U.S. borders, and believe its new commissioner is committed to improving the trade enforcement and trade facilitation functions of CBP. When U.S. producers spend the time and resources to submit to CBP evidence of AD/ CVD evasion, CBP should be held accountable to acting on that evidence and communicating its actions to U.S. industry in a timely manner. It is not held accountable now to the degree it should be. I grow concerned that U.S. producers are spending too much time and resources trying to indentify unfair trade and help government agencies enforce the trade laws. American industry needs to be free to do what it does best, which is to innovate and produce goods that are competitive in free and fair markets. The bill I am introducing today, with my friend and colleague, Senator Snowe from Maine, will go a long way toward empowering the Federal Government to do a better job to combat the trade cheats and enforce U.S. trade laws. I'd like to highlight just a few of the main provisions. First, the ENFORCE Act will expand the U.S. Department of Commerce's authority to investigate circumvention to include misrepresented merchandise that might evade AD/CVD orders. As the agency tasked with investigating allegations of dumping and harmful government subsidization, Commerce has the industry and product expertise to investigate this type of AD/CVD circumvention. This bill will not diminish CBP's role; rather, it will bolster greater cooperation and information sharing between the two agencies to combat the unfair trade practices that hurt U.S. industry and its ability to create jobs. Second, the bill will create a process by which U.S. industry can submit to CBP a formal petition containing allegations of AD/CVD evasion, and CBP must reach a conclusive determination within a set time period. If it cannot, then the petition is transferred to the Department of Commerce for separate circumvention proceedings. The ENFORCE Act will require a greater level of responsiveness and accountability to U.S. producers while providing for increased collaboration between these two government agencies to improve enforcement of U.S. trade laws. Third, the bill will enhance information among the federal agencies once an importer is suspected of evading an AD/CVD order. Many of the same schemes importers employ to evade an AD/CVD order, like mislabeling, often shirk other regimes put in place to ensure that products are safe for consumption by American families. Enhanced information sharing will provide greater protection against imports that may cause harm to U.S. consumers. This bill presents a commonsense strategy to combat trade cheating and the evasion of antidumping and countervailing duty collection. Enforcing U.S. trade laws and combating unfair trade practices must be a central pillar of an economic and trade policy that is designed to promote economic growth and job expansion. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate and with my friends in the House of Representatives to build support for this initiative and to take action on behalf of American producers. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Enforcing Orders and Reducing Circumvention and Evasion Act--or the ENFORCE Act-- of 2010. We all know what a tax cheat is; well let me tell you about a trade cheat. You see, under U.S. trade laws, when a certain import is found to be unfairly traded, that is, it benefits from government subsidies or is sold below market prices, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposes additional duties on these imports. These duties, we call them anti- dumping and countervailing duties, or AD/CVD, ensure that American producers are only asked to compete on a playing field that is level. But we have these trade cheats out there. They cheat American taxpayers out of the revenue that is supposed to be collected on imports, and which is needed to reduce the budget deficit, and they cheat American producers out of business that may otherwise be theirs. In short, the trade cheats steal American jobs and America's treasure. The U.S.' AD/CVD laws form its industries' protective backbone against injury from illegally dumped or subsidized imports. However, these trade remedy laws are only effective to the extent that they are enforced. We have an enforcement problem. The trade cheats are increasingly--and brazenly--employing a variety of schemes to evade AD/CVD orders. Sometimes, they hustle their merchandise through foreign ports to claim that it originates from somewhere it doesn't. Other times, the trade cheats will provide fraudulent information to government authorities at American ports of entry, or engage in schemes to mislabel and misrepresent imports. U.S. industry sources estimate that approximately $91 million in AD/ CV duties that were supposed to be applied to just four steel products went uncollected as a result of evasion in 2009. This is an amount equal to 30 percent of all AD/CV duties CBP collected that year. With 300 current AD/CVD orders in place on countless products from over 40 countries, the potential for AD/CV duty evasion is vast, and hundreds of millions of AD/CV duties may be unaccounted for. Every penny counts and we have an obligation to the American businesses, and the workers they rely on, to do a better job. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, is the nation's frontline defense against unfair trade and is responsible for enforcing U.S. trade remedy laws and collecting AD/CV duties. Yet if you listen to the concerns of domestic producers, as I and many of my colleagues do, timely and effective enforcement of AD/CVD orders remains problematic and AD/CV duty evasion continues, seemingly unabated. I have enormous respect for the men and women of CBP who manage U.S. borders, and believe its new commissioner is committed to improving the trade enforcement and trade facilitation functions of CBP. When U.S. producers spend the time and resources to submit to CBP evidence of AD/ CVD evasion, CBP should be held accountable to acting on that evidence and communicating its actions to U.S. industry in a timely manner. It is not held accountable now to the degree it should be. I grow concerned that U.S. producers are spending too much time and resources trying to indentify unfair trade and help government agencies enforce the trade laws. American industry needs to be free to do what it does best, which is to innovate and produce goods that are competitive in free and fair markets. The bill I am introducing today, with my friend and colleague, Senator Snowe from Maine, will go a long way toward empowering the Federal Government to do a better job to combat the trade cheats and enforce U.S. trade laws. I'd like to highlight just a few of the main provisions. First, the ENFORCE Act will expand the U.S. Department of Commerce's authority to investigate circumvention to include misrepresented merchandise that might evade AD/CVD orders. As the agency tasked with investigating allegations of dumping and harmful government subsidization, Commerce has the industry and product expertise to investigate this type of AD/CVD circumvention. This bill will not diminish CBP's role; rather, it will bolster greater cooperation and information sharing between the two agencies to combat the unfair trade practices that hurt U.S. industry and its ability to create jobs. Second, the bill will create a process by which U.S. industry can submit to CBP a formal petition containing allegations of AD/CVD evasion, and CBP must reach a conclusive determination within a set time period. If it cannot, then the petition is transferred to the Department of Commerce for separate circumvention proceedings. The ENFORCE Act will require a greater level of responsiveness and accountability to U.S. producers while providing for increased collaboration between these two government agencies to improve enforcement of U.S. trade laws. Third, the bill will enhance information among the federal agencies once an importer is suspected of evading an AD/CVD order. Many of the same schemes importers employ to evade an AD/CVD order, like mislabeling, often shirk other regimes put in place to ensure that products are safe for consumption by American families. Enhanced information sharing will provide greater protection against imports that may cause harm to U.S. consumers. This bill presents a commonsense strategy to combat trade cheating and the evasion of antidumping and countervailing duty collection. Enforcing U.S. trade laws and combating unfair trade practices must be a central pillar of an economic and trade policy that is designed to promote economic growth and job expansion. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate and with my friends in the House of Representatives to build support for this initiative and to take action on behalf of American producers. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Please.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague. I especially appreciate his kind words about a piece of legislation Senator Gregg and I sat for the better part of 2 years working on. I think everyone appreciates colleagues supporting their legislation. I appreciate the Senator's kind words. I think he is right with respect to the relief, and colleagues will see that, whether it is the Heritage organization or the Brookings Institution or the various analyses that have been done by other groups. But I think it is especially important, even apart from our piece of legislation, that we get at the central question the Senator's talking about, which is, the current tax system is broken. It is broken, and we are not going to get the country where we need to go by just kind of tinkering here and tinkering there. I wish to give a couple examples because I think the central question is, Are we going to make a break with a broken system and look forward or are we going to do what has been done year after year after year, which is to just to tinker with a broken system and cause more problems? Here is the heart of it. What we are seeing today is that every few years there are thousands of changes in tax law. So that means all the small businesses--and you were a small business leader before you came to the Senate--all those small businesses, trying to compete in the tough global market, incredibly competitive markets, do not even have any certainty and predictability of what is ahead. They are not in a position to be able to know what the Federal Government and particularly the IRS is going do in terms of taxes, and that drains additional chances for them to make changes in their production, in their workplace, productivity areas. It defies common sense. So the fact that there are these thousands of changes every few years, in my view, is very antibusiness, and particularly antismall business. Then, the second point that the Senator touched on deals with individuals. The reality is, today, the current tax system is so complicated that most Americans do not even know when a tax break has been extended to them. The Senator and I have talked about it. It seems to me Senator Begich made the central point here. In the stimulus legislation, in the Recovery Act, there were $300 billion worth of tax cuts put into that legislation--$300 billion worth of tax cuts. If we left today and walked the streets in Anchorage or Portland or Gresham or wherever and asked people about the stimulus legislation, people would know virtually nothing about any tax incentives.

Mr. WYDEN. The other aspect of the Recovery Act, I think, that reaffirms this point with respect to the complexity is the Internal Revenue Service puts out what they call their annual ``oops'' list. This is the list of the 10 most common mistakes made by taxpayers when filing. The ``oops'' list released this past March included, for example, one of the principal credits in the Recovery Act because people simply were unable to figure out how to make it work on their 1040EZ forms. So the fact is, the Tax Code today is anything but an easy system. It is quite the opposite. To further support the point with respect to the complexity, this year individuals and businesses are going to spend 10.6 billion hours to comply with the code. If the tax compliance sector were an industry, it would be one of the Nation's largest, requiring a full-time effort of 3.8 million people to get done that 7.6 billion hours. The cost of compliance is jaw-dropping, $200 billion a year, 15 percent of all tax revenue the IRS collects each year. So the point of this is, we are at a fork in the road. We can either look to the kind of approach that a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, and a number of Democrats talked about one-quarter century ago and move in and drain the swamp, Democrats and Republicans together, taking on these special interest groups that have hijacked the Tax Code or the Congress can continue, as Senator Begich has said, to keep fiddling with one provision or another, making the Tax Code even more complicated, running what amounts to a full employment program for tax preparers or we can take steps that will make the code fairer and more progrowth. I also think it is worth noting that in the last round of tinkering, 2001 and 2003, for much of that period we had stagnant economic growth. So we were not doing what the country needed in terms of fairness for the middle class, nor was the country doing what was essential in terms of promoting more high-skill, high-wage jobs. You and I know, for example, if you take away the tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, you can use that money to lower the cost to manufacture in this country. I see Senator Casey. He comes from the State of Pennsylvania. He has done terrific work because I have heard him on the floor talking about the importance of manufacturing. This is one of the issues relating to the question of tax reform. Right now there are tax breaks in the code that reward companies for closing U.S. operations and moving them overseas. Why would not Democrats and Republicans want to go to a more simple system, as Senator Begich is talking about? That would be in the interest of fairness for all but also one that is likely to create more good-paying manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania and other parts of the country, by taking away the tax break for shipping the jobs overseas and use those dollars to hold down costs for manufacturing red, white, and blue here in the United States. So I am very much appreciate Senator Begich taking this time. He has been awfully kind with us. I appreciate the kind words about the bill and having him on it. But I especially appreciate him outlining what this problem is all about in terms of starting--with getting beyond the tinkering and the complexity to real reform that works for all Americans. I thank my friend.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking a huge toll on our servicemembers and their families. To date, 123 Oregonians have died in those wars, leaving behind grieving friends and families. I'll never forget the pain I've heard in the voices of the Oregon parents I've spoken to after they've lost a son or daughter to war. These parents are often called ``Gold Star parents'' because, by tradition, they display a Gold Star flag to let the world know of their sacrifice. Our nation can't lift the burden of their grief. No one can. However, our nation does commit to recognize the immense sacrifice of Gold Star parents by giving them certain benefits. One of those benefits is a 10-point hiring preference for unmarried Gold Star mothers when they apply for jobs with the federal government. But I was surprised to learn that this preference cannot be given to Gold Star fathers. This inequity is a relic from the past; an example of the law has not kept up with the times. We can now see that all unmarried Gold Star mothers and fathers deserve to have the federal government recognize their sacrifice equally. That is why I am introducing a bill to update the law. I learned of this disparity from my friend Steve Ellis of Baker City, Oregon. Steve lost his beloved daughter, Army Corporal Jessica Ann Ellis, when she was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad in 2008. Although Steve is a Gold Star father, he would still not be eligible for the benefit under my proposed change because he is married. But he didn't point out this inequity in the law for his own benefit. He did it for future Gold Star fathers. He saw an inequity in the law, and felt it was his duty to try and get it fixed for other Gold Star fathers. So today I introduce the Jessica Ann Ellis Gold Star Fathers Act as a small legislative fix that will make a big change to federal veterans' preference laws through true equality. This bill will give any unmarried Gold Star parent, regardless of gender, a 10-point hiring preference when they apply for federal jobs. It will also give the benefit to any unmarried parent of a totally and permanently disabled servicemember. Gold Star mothers and fathers deserve equal recognition for the loss of a child who bravely made the ultimate sacrifice for his or her country. The Jessica Ann Ellis Gold Star Fathers Act will give them that. This bill is supported by the American Gold Star Mothers organization, and is cosponsored by Senator Akaka, Senator Voinovich, Senator Collins, Senator Landrieu and Senator Lieberman. I hope it can be passed quickly. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Drew Johnston, the Wayne Morse fellow in my Senate office, be granted floor privileges during the debate on the DISCLOSE Act.