Elizabeth Warren

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, today the Senate passed the Drug Quality and Security Act. I am proud to have worked together with Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Alexander, and all of the Senators on the HELP Committee from both sides of the aisle over several months to develop this law, which will create commonsense oversight of the pharmaceutical compounding industry and the pharmaceutical supply chain. Some politicians use the word ``regulation'' as if it were a curse. Certainly no one wants bad regulations or over regulation, but the impact of failing to regulate when public safety is at risk can be dangerous and even deadly. We have an example just how deadly right in front of us--and an example of what happens when Congress fails to regulate. It starts with compounding pharmacies. Compounding pharmacies serve individual patients who need specialized drugs. Without these customized products, some of our most vulnerable patients would not be able to get the precisely formulated medications they need. But customers have no way to evaluate the safety or purity or cleanliness of the compounded medications they receive. That is what regulations are for. For too long, bad actors in this industry have taken advantage of lax State enforcement and confusion about Federal regulations. The consequences of too little regulation and too little enforcement were brought into sharp focus last year when a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts, the New England Compounding Center, was identified as the source of a widespread fungal meningitis outbreak that sickened 751 people and killed 64. I wish NECC were an isolated case, but companies like it have engaged in shoddy practices for years practices that have caused sickness and injuries and even death. There have been many attempts to fix the law and require FDA oversight in this area. In 2007 Senator Kennedy worked with Senator Roberts to develop bipartisan legislation that would have addressed this issue. If that effort had succeeded, we might have been able to spare many people great suffering. Sixty-four people from just one incident would probably be alive today. But the industry lobbyists beat back their efforts. The result? People got sick and people died. This issue is of particular importance to Massachusetts, and I am proud to have worked with my colleagues on the HELP Committee throughout my first year in the Senate to shape earlier versions of this legislation. Throughout the bipartisan development process and the public hearings and votes in the HELP Committee, I pushed for a bill that would subject compounding pharmacies to strong FDA oversight. Those efforts, and negotiations with the House of Representatives, have produced the Drug Quality and Security Act. The bill strengthens current law and establishes tough, new regulations that will keep us all safer. The compounding provisions of this bill are not the final word in what is needed. I believe the FDA should have more authority to inspect the records of compounding pharmacies, and we have included in the bill a GAO study that will assess the impact and effectiveness of this new law and tell us if more work is needed. But this bill is big step forward in making people safer, so I support it strongly. This legislation has another feature that will help make drugs safer. It creates an important new oversight system to ensure we have a secure supply chain for our pharmaceutical products. Today, we can track a gallon of milk in the grocery store all the way back to its producer, but we can't verify the origins of a prescription drug on the shelves of our pharmacies. Counterfeit or illegally imported drugs can be integrated into the supply chain, and currently there is no detection mechanism. This bill ensures that we can trace a particular drug from its manufacturer all the way to the pharmacy. It will allow consumers to buy prescription medications with greater confidence that the drugs are safe, legal, and free of counterfeit or substandard ingredients. It will allow patients to have greater confidence that the pills in the bottle from the pharmacy are exactly what their doctors have ordered-- nothing more and nothing less. I commend my colleagues for stepping up to the challenge and showing that it is possible for Congress to do what is right--pass commonsense reforms that protect patients and consumers from harm. This is one of the basic functions of government: making sure that markets work by ensuring that no one cuts corners that the customer can't see or that put someone's family at risk. When all the manufacturers have to follow the same standards of cleanliness, when all of them have to account for where they got the chemicals they used in their products, the playing field is level and the customer is free to make good, independent decisions. This is how government should work--through actions to improve public health and public safety through smart, fair, and reasonable regulations that will improve the lives of all Americans. I hope that the Drug Quality and Security Act will do just that. I am proud to support it.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the retirement crisis in this country--a crisis that has received far too little attention and far too little response from Washington. I have spent most of my career studying the economic pressures on middle-class families--families who worked hard, who played by the rules, but who still found themselves just hanging on by their fingernails. Starting in the 1970s, even as workers became more productive, their wages flattened, while core expenses such as housing and health care and sending their kids to college kept going up. Working families did not ask for a bailout. Instead, they rolled up their sleeves. They sent both parents into the workforce. But that meant higher childcare costs, a second car, and higher taxes. So they tightened their belts more, cutting spending wherever they could. Adjusted for inflation, families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases. When that still was not enough to cover rising costs, they took on debt--credit card debt, college debt, debt just to pay for the necessities. As families became increasingly desperate, unscrupulous financial institutions were all too happy to chain them to financial products that got them into even more trouble--products where fine print and legalese covered the true costs of credit. These trends are not new. There have been warning signs for years about what is happening to our middle class. One major consequence of these increasing pressures on working people--a consequence that receives far too little attention--is that the dream of a secure retirement is slowly slipping away. A generation ago, middle-class families were able to put away enough money during their working years to make it through their later years with dignity. On average, they saved about 11 percent of their take- home pay while working. Many paid off their homes, got rid of all their debts, and retired with strong pensions from their employers. And when pensions, savings, and investments fell short, they could rely on Social Security to make up the difference. That was the story a generation ago. Since that time the retirement landscape has shifted dramatically against our families. Among working families on the verge of retirement, about a third have no retirement savings of any kind and another third have total savings that are less than a year's annual income. Many seniors have seen their housing wealth shrink as well. According to AARP, in 2012, one out of every seven older homers was paying down a mortgage that was higher than the value of their house. And just as they need to rely more than ever on pensions, employers are withdrawing from their traditional role in helping provide a secure retirement. Two decades ago, more than a third of all private sector workers--35 percent--had traditional defined benefit pensions--pensions that guaranteed a certain monthly payment that retirees knew they could depend on. Today that number has been cut in half. Only 18 percent of private sector workers have defined benefit pensions. Employers have replaced guaranteed retirement income with savings plans, such as 401(k) plans, that leave the retiree at the mercy of a market that rises and falls and sometimes at the mercy of dangerous investment products. These plans often fall short of what retirees need and nearly half of all American workers do not even have access to those limited plans. This leaves more than 44 million workers without any retirement assistance from their employers. Add all of this up--the dramatic decline in individual savings and the dramatic decline of guaranteed retirement benefits and employer support in return for a lifetime of work--and we are left with a retirement crisis, a crisis that is as real and as frightening as any policy problem facing the United States today. With less savings and weaker private retirement protection, retirees depend more than ever on the safety and reliability of Social Security. Social Security works. No one runs out of benefits and the payments do not rise or fall with the stock market. Two-thirds of seniors rely on it for the majority of their income in retirement, and for 14 million seniors--14 million--this is the safety net that keeps them out of poverty. God bless Social Security. And yet even Social Security has been under attack. Monthly payments are modest, averaging about $1,250, and over time those benefits are shrinking in value. This puts a terrible squeeze on seniors. With tens of millions of people more financially stressed as they approach retirement, with more and more people left out of the private retirement security system, and with the economic security of our families unraveling, Social Security is rapidly becoming the only-- only--lifeline that millions of seniors have to keep their heads above water. And yet instead of taking on the retirement crisis, instead of strengthening Social Security, some in Washington are fighting to cut benefits. Just this morning the Washington Post ran an editorial mocking the idea of a looming retirement crisis. To make sure no one missed the point, they even put the words ``retirement crisis'' in quotation marks. No retirement crisis? Tell that to the millions of Americans who are facing retirement without a pension. Tell that to the millions of Americans who have nothing to fall back on except Social Security. There is a $6.6 trillion gap between what Americans under 65 are currently saving and what they will need to maintain their standard of living when they hit retirement. Mr. President, $6.6 trillion--and that assumes that Social Security benefits are not cut. Make no mistake, there is a crisis. The call to cut Social Security has an uglier side to it too. The Washington Post framed the choice as more children in poverty versus more seniors in poverty. The suggestion that we have become a country where those living in poverty fight each other for a handful of crumbs tossed off the tables of the very wealthy is fundamentally wrong. This is about our values, and our values tell us that we do not build a future by deciding first who among the vulnerable will be left to starve. Look at the basic facts. Today Social Security has a $2.7 trillion surplus. If we do nothing, Social Security will be safe for the next 20 years and even after that will continue to pay most benefits. With some modest adjustments, we can keep the system solvent for many more years--and we could even increase benefits. The tools to help us build a future are available to us now. We do not start the debate by deciding who gets kicked to the curb. We are Americans. We start the debate by figuring out how to create better efficiencies, how to make small changes that will make the system fairer, how to grow the pool of those who contribute, and how to rebuild the system that every single one of us can rely on to make sure there is a baseline in retirement that no one falls below. We do not build a future for our children by cutting basic retirement benefits for their grandparents. No. We build a future for our kids by strengthening our economy, by investing in education and infrastructure and research, by rebuilding a strong and robust middle class in which every kid gets a chance and the most vulnerable have a strong safety net. The most recent discussion about cutting benefits has focused on something called the chained CPI. Supporters of the chained CPI say it is a more accurate way of measuring the cost-of-living increases for seniors. That statement is simply not true. Chained CPI falls far short of the actual increases in costs that seniors face. Pure and simple, chained CPI is just a fancy way to say cut benefits. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has developed a measure of the real impact of inflation on seniors. It is called the CPI-E. If we adopt it today, it would generally increase the benefits for our retirees, not cut them. Social Security is not the answer for all of our retirement problems. We need to find a way to tackle the financial squeeze that is crushing our families. We need to help families start saving again. We need to make sure more workers have access to better pensions. But in the meantime, so long as those problems continue to exist and as long as we are in the midst of a real and growing retirement crisis, a crisis that is shaking the foundations of what was once a vibrant and secure middle class, the absolute last thing we want to do is cut Social Security benefits. The absolute last thing we should do in 2013, at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors, is allow the program to be dismantled inch by inch. Over the past generation, working families have been hacked at, chipped, and hammered. If we want a real middle class, a middle class that continues to serve as the backbone of our country, then we must take the retirement crisis seriously. Seniors have worked their entire lives and have paid into this system. But right now more people than ever are on the edge of financial disaster once they retire. The numbers continue to get worse. That is why we should be talking about expanding Social Security benefits, not cutting them. Senator Harkin from Iowa, Senator Begich from Alaska, Senator Sanders from Vermont, and others have been pushing hard in that direction. Social Security is incredibly effective. It is incredibly popular. The calls for strengthening it are growing louder day by day. The conversation about retirement and Social Security benefits is not a conversation just about math. At its core this is a conversation about our values. It is a conversation about who we are as a country and who we are as a people. I believe we honor our promises. We make good on a system that millions of people paid into faithfully throughout their working years. We support the right of every person to retire with dignity. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. WARREN

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

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``The Role of Manufacturing Hubs in a 21st Century Innovation Economy.''

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013.''

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 9:30 a.m. in room 428A of the Russell Senate Office building to conduct a roundtable entitled ``Serving Our Service Members: A Review of Programs for Veteran Entrepreneurs.''

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 2 p.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Judicial Nominations.''

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 10 a.m.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, it hasn't been even a month since the end of the Republican shutdown of the government, and they are already back at trying to paralyze the government again. Yesterday, the Republicans blocked an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Nina Pillard to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This filibuster comes just 1 week after Republicans filibustered the nomination of Patricia Millett to the DC Circuit, and less than 1 year after Republicans filibustered Caitlin Halligan, who eventually just gave up and withdrew her nomination. Republicans now hold the dubious distinction of having filibustered all three women that President Obama nominated to the DC Circuit. Collectively, these women have diverse experiences in private practice, in government, and in public interest law. Between them, they have argued an amazing 45 cases before the Supreme Court and have participated in many more. All three have the support of a majority of Senators. So why have they been filibustered? The reason is simple. They are caught in a fight over the future of our courts--a fight over whether the courts will be a neutral forum that decides every dispute fairly or whether the courts will be stacked in favor of the wealthy and the powerful. Every day in Congress we deal with the influence of powerful groups and their armies of lobbyists. But in our democracy, when we write laws, sometimes we can push back on that power. In our democracy we have tools that can be used in the legislative process--tools such as open debate, public opinion, and political accountability, tools that can help the people win these fights. I saw it happen up close in the 2008 financial crisis when we were able to get a strong consumer financial protection bureau despite the efforts of the large financial institutions to kill it. But the story doesn't end when Congress passes a law. Powerful interests don't just give up. They shift their fight to the courts because they know that if they can weaken or overturn a law in court, they turn defeat into victory. If they can break the courts by putting enough sympathetic judges in lifetime positions, a friendly judicial system will give them the chance to undermine any laws they don't like. That is already happening in the Supreme Court. Three well-respected legal scholars, including Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, a distinguished judge and conservative Reagan appointee, recently examined almost 20,000 Supreme Court cases from the last 65 years. The researchers concluded that the five conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are in the top 10 most procorporate justices in more than half a century. Justices Alito and Roberts are number one and number two. Take a look at the win rate of the national Chamber of Commerce in cases before the Supreme Court. According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, the national Chamber moved from a 43-percent win rate during the last 5 terms of the Burger court, to a 56-percent win rate under the Rehnquist court, to a 70-percent rate under the Roberts court. Follow this procorporate trend to its logical conclusion, and pretty soon you will have a Supreme Court that is a wholly owned subsidiary of big business. The powerful interests that work to rig the Supreme Court also want to rig the lower courts. The DC Circuit is a particular target because that court has the power to overturn agency regulations. If a business doesn't like it when the agencies implement the will of Congress, they try to undermine those agencies through the DC Circuit. In the next 5 years, the DC Circuit will decide some of the most important cases of our time--including cases which will decide whether Wall Street reform will have real bite or whether it will just be toothless. Swaps dealers, the securities industry, the Business Roundtable, and the Chamber of Commerce are all lining up to challenge the new rules that agencies have written to try to put some teeth into Wall Street reform and other laws. These big-industry players want business-friendly judges to help bail them out. So let's be clear. Nine of the 14 judges on the DC Circuit who currently hear cases were appointed by Republican Presidents. The President with the most appointees on that court right now is Ronald Reagan. This lopsided court has been busy striking down environmental regulations that stop companies from spewing mercury into the air we breathe, striking down investor protections that hold corporate boards accountable, striking down a requirement for employers to provide access to birth control under ObamaCare. Each of these regulations exists because Congress has passed laws telling the agencies to write them. It is true that sometimes an agency may get it wrong, but these days the DC Circuit seems to be finding more and more ways to help bail out the businesses that never wanted to be regulated in the first place. Republicans have noticed what is going on with this lopsided court. They would like to keep things the way they are, and they have not been subtle about it. Many Republicans have talked openly of their opposition to any new judges to fill the three vacancies on this court precisely because the new nominees will give the court more balance and fairness. Republicans may prefer a rigged court that gives their corporate friends and their armies of lobbyists and lawyers a second chance to undercut the will of Congress, but that is not the job of judges. Judges aren't supposed to make law. Judges aren't supposed to tilt politically one way or the other. Republicans may not like Wall Street reform. They may not like ObamaCare. But Congress passed those laws. President Obama signed those laws. President Obama ran for reelection on those laws, while his opponent pledged to repeal them--and his opponent lost by nearly 5 million votes. It is not up to judges to overturn those laws or their associated regulations just because they don't fit the judges' policy preferences. There are three vacancies on the DC Circuit, and the President has nominated three impressive people to fill those vacancies--including Patricia Millett and Nina Pillard. These nominees are not ideological. They have extraordinary legal resumes and have received bipartisan support from top litigators around the country. They are among the top legal minds of this generation. This is how the President plans to push back against efforts to tilt our judicial system: by nominating judges who will be judges--judges who will be fair, judges who will be evenhanded, judges who will have the diversity of professional experience to understand and consider all sides of an issue. I understand that Republicans may prefer to keep the DC Circuit exactly as it is. But article II, section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates judges, with the advice and consent of the Senate. There is no clause that says, except when that President is a Democrat. Democrats allowed President George W. Bush to put four very conservative judges on the DC Circuit. All four are still serving, and one is Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. There are three vacancies in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The President of the United States has nominated judges to fill those vacancies. That is his job, and it is the job of the Senate to confirm highly qualified, independent judges. That is how our system works. That is what the Constitution demands. Republicans these days do not seem to like that. They keep looking for ways to keep this President from doing his job. So far they have shut down the government, they have filibustered people he has nominated to fill his administration, and they are now filibustering judges to block him from filling any of the vacancies with highly qualified people. We need to call out these filibusters for what they are--naked attempts to nullify the results of the last Presidential election, to force us to govern as though President Obama had not won the 2012 election. President Obama did win the 2012 election--by 5 million votes. He has done what the Constitution requires him to do--nominated highly qualified people to fill open vacancies on the Federal bench. If Republicans continue to filibuster these highly qualified nominees for no reason other than to nullify the President's constitutional authority, then Senators not only have the right to change the filibuster rules, Senators have a duty to change the filibuster rules. We cannot turn our back on the Constitution. We cannot abdicate our oath of office. We have a responsibility to protect and defend our democracy, and that includes protecting the neutrality of our courts and preserving the constitutional power of the President to nominate highly qualified people to court vacancies.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business.

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

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. I ask the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 227, S. 1557.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar Nos. 239 and 240, which are post office naming bills en bloc.

Ms. WARREN. I ask unanimous consent the bills be read a third time and passed en bloc and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. WARREN

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

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 290, which was submitted earlier today.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Ms. WARREN

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

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, November 13, 2013, and that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 3204, the pharmaceutical drug compounding bill, postcloture; further, that all time during adjournment, recess, and morning business count postcloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3204; and, finally, that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

Ms. WARREN

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

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. I would tell the senior Senator from Maine, my plan had been to speak for less than 10 minutes. But if that does not work, I certainly will yield to the Senator from Maine and do what she requests.

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from Maine. I will do my very best. I rise to speak about the importance of passing the Employment Non- Discrimination Act, a bill I am proud to cosponsor and to support. It has taken us far too long to arrive at this day. For nearly 40 years, Members of Congress have worked to pass legislation that would protect LGBT Americans from discrimination in the workplace. Much has changed since Bella Abzug introduced the Equality Act of 1974. Equal marriage is now the law in 14 States--21 States and the District of Columbia have enacted laws to protect against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Sixteen States and the District of Columbia also protect against gender identity discrimination. The Supreme Court has rejected DOMA, a law that legalized discrimination against same-sex spouses by calling that law exactly what it was: unconstitutional. In the private sector, a majority of Fortune 500 companies have adopted policies to protect workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Polling data shows that a majority of small businesses have similar policies in place. By nearly every measure, we have made progress in a long march toward equality. Yet in the face of all of this progress, nearly one-half century since Congress first enacted title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, we still have not extended these basic Federal protections to LGBT Americans. The failure to treat all our citizens with the same dignity is shameful. In America, equal means equal. Many have tried hard to reach this day, and our legislators from Massachusetts have long been leaders in this fight. Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Barney Frank both spent decades working on this issue. Senator Paul Tsongas from Massachusetts introduced the first Senate bill to prohibit employment discrimination against LGBT Americans all the way back in 1979. Progress has been slow. The last time the full Senate voted on ENDA was 1 year ago, when a version of the law championed by Senator Kennedy failed to pass by one single vote, 49-50, back in 1996. In 2007, the House passed a version of ENDA introduced by Congressman Frank, but the bill made no progress in the Senate. Today, there are 55 cosponsors of ENDA in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, representing the broad majority of support for the bill and signaling the tremendous progress that has been made. It is all the more shameful that it has taken us this long to arrive at this day because Americans believe in equality. According to one survey, some 80 percent of Americans believe it is already illegal to discriminate against workers based on their sexual orientation, gender, or identity. Unfortunately, however, this is one rare instance where the American people are giving Congress way too much credit, because the truth is we haven't acted yet. The consequences of congressional inaction remain all too real for millions of LGBT Americans. Despite the successful efforts in many States to pass nondiscrimination measures, Americans living in over half the country can still be discriminated against in the workplace based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It happens. Between 15 and 43 percent of LGBT individuals have reported experiencing discrimination or harassment in the workplace. A quarter of transgender Americans have reported being fired from a job due to their gender identity, and a whopping 90 percent have reported experiencing harassment and mistreatment. There has been a lot of progress toward a more inclusive nation, but for LGBT workers a law to stop employment discrimination can't come fast enough. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act pending in the Senate will protect LGBT individuals in the workplace, update the law to reflect what the vast majority of Americans already believe to be the law, and help fulfill our constitutional responsibility to protect equality in our Nation. ENDA doesn't provide any special rights to any particular group of Americans. It does not compel any religious organization to change its views. It just creates a level playing field for LGBT workers. It makes sure all workers are judged by the work they do, not by who they are or who they love. America is ready for this day. An overwhelming majority of voters, both Democrats and Republicans, support the enactment of this law. They know it reflects the values of our Nation. America's businesses are ready too. Recent polling shows that a large majority of small businesses support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. As for big businesses, 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies have already implemented policies prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace. Raytheon, one of the Nation's top defense contractors and a proud Massachusetts-based company, bars LGBT discrimination. One executive at Raytheon is quoted as saying the organization's ``culture of inclusion absolutely gives us a recruiting edge'' when it comes to hiring the best and the brightest. Shortly before his death in March 2009, Senator Kennedy joined with Senators Merkley, Collins, and Snowe in what would be his final attempt to push this bipartisan legislation over the finish line. At the time Senator Kennedy eloquently explained his continuing support for ENDA by noting that ``the promise of America will never be fulfilled as long as justice is denied to even one among us.'' Those words were true in 1974 when Bella Abzug introduced the Equality Act. Those words were true when the Senate came within one vote of passing ENDA in 1996, those words were true when Senator Kennedy offered them in 2009, and those words are true today. The promise of America will never be fulfilled so long as justice is denied to even one among us. We deal with a lot of different kinds of legislation in the Senate. This week we have a chance to vote on a law that is a measure of who we are as a people and what kind of a world we want to build. I believe in a world where equal means equal, and that is why I will be voting to outlaw employment discrimination against my neighbors and my friends. Senator Kennedy, Senator Tsongas, and Congresswoman Abzug are no longer with us, but, as so many others, they fought hard to get us here--to get us one step closer to equality for all of us. It has taken us far too long to arrive at this day, but we are here now, and we are not going back. I thank the Senator from Maine for giving me this time.

Ms. WARREN

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