Thank you, Madam President. Madam President, I rise today to talk about something that we don’t hear enough about on the Senate floor these days: jobs. During the 2012 election, the monthly jobs numbers were even more closely watched and analyzed than the daily polls, but ever since, it’s as if Congress has forgotten that there are still 12 million Americans looking for work, and from my home state of Delaware alone, 32,000 Delawareans out of a job.
Sure, we’re eager to hear if the unemployment numbers are nudged up or down a tenth of a percent, but maybe Washington is all too willing to put the unemployed on the back burner. We’re adding nearly 200,000 jobs a month now, according to the most recent jobs report, and that’s certainly progress, but one of the things I found most chilling was analysis that said that at this pace it will be 2017 before our nation gets close to full employment again. Is that acceptable to you? That’s certainly not acceptable to me. When is Washington — when is Congress — going to get back to working on behalf of those still looking for work?
The jobs numbers that are typically reported mask an even deeper, more concerning structural problem in our economy as well. Almost 40 percent of those currently unemployed, about 4.3 million Americans, are described as the long-term unemployed. These are folks who have been out of work six months or more. Short-term unemployment has dropped, but long-term unemployment remains persistently high and troubling. The longer a worker is unemployed, the more difficult it becomes to find a job, whether it’s because there is a stigma attached to being unemployed or because their skills need to be updated or because we need something to help lift their spirits and make them successful in job interviews.
Across all these different reasons, in my view, we need stronger, more engaged, more agile interventions by the federal government, by state and local governments, in our economy and in support for those seeking work to help them find employment. I think we need to act swiftly on measures to improve skills training, job placement, and collaboration with state and local labor agencies. The fact is, the longer we wait to deal with long-term employment, the tougher it will be to help these folks get back to work. Yet, many of us here in Congress apparently can’t or won’t focus on unemployment, long-term or short term, much less on other measures to stimulate our economy. Is it any wonder the American people think Congress isn’t even trying anymore?
Here in the Senate, we know that while deeply challenged by filibusters and ideological fights and caucus politics, we are still managing to get big things done. It would be an overstatement to say we’re making it all work, that it’s easy, but thanks to a contingent of Republicans and Democrats here who are working in good faith together, we have been able to make some meaningful bipartisan progress. The Senate passed a bipartisan farm bill that would have taken steps to modernize our nation’s agriculture system, would support 16 million jobs, and actually reduce the deficit by $24 billion. What a remarkable trifecta of accomplishments, supporting one of the world’s most cutting-edge agricultural economies, supporting significant employment and job creation, and significantly cutting our deficit. What’s not to love, Madam President, in that farm bill? Well, the House drafted a farm bill that eliminates our hard-fought bipartisan compromises and has effectively doomed the bill.
Similarly, the Senate here passed a bipartisan Water Resources Development Act to modernize America’s water infrastructure all over the country, including flood protection, water supply, and shipping channels. It got 83 votes here out of 100 in the Senate. It’s being slow-walked in the House over ideological objections about how to structure the bill.
After a historic committee markup, after the Congressional Budget Office said it would reduce the deficit by $150 billion in the first decade and $700 billion in the second, this Senate passed an overwhelmingly bipartisan immigration reform bill – I think one of the biggest accomplishments of this Congress. This Senate passed an overwhelmingly bipartisan immigration reform bill only for it to languish stubbornly in the partisan Hunger Games that is today’s House of Representatives. The headline in politico from today reads, “Immigration reform heads for slow death.”
Americans are frustrated with this, Madam President, and so am I. The House of Representatives has sadly become wholly dysfunctional, paralyzed by partisan civil war over the fundamental question of whether government should be an instrument of good in people’s lives. That’s the key here. Sadly, the fighting within the Republican Party is dividing that caucus internally. On the one hand, you have genuinely principled Republican lawmakers who believe in this legislative process, who are committed to working collaboratively on the challenges our nation faces. These folks have worked with me and others and cosponsored many bills that I have introduced and others have introduced to try to make a difference here. On the other hand, you’ve got an anti-government, frankly anti-Obama faction that took over the House in 2010. Their numbers are small, but their voices are loud, and it is, I think, their core belief that Congress and the federal government cannot and should not legislate – that government has no meaningful or constructive role to play in our society. I worry that that belief informs their tactics of stall and delay, investigate and repeal.
The Huffington Post reported this week that this Congress, in particular this House, has had only 15 bills signed into law so far. Fifteen. You have to go back a long time to find a Congress that has passed fewer pieces of legislation between House and Senate than this one, the 113th Congress. Democrats and many Republican lawmakers look at this as an embarrassment, at a time of enormous challenges overseas and at home, for us to take so few actions together. But the Tea Party and some conservative ideologues look at it as an accomplishment, those who say that any compromise is a four-letter word, especially if the alternative is broad or progressive legislation.
So what we have is a fight between folks who would, for example, trim the scope and funding for the federal Department of Education and folks who fundamentally think there shouldn’t be a Department of Education. That’s a fight in which I think the American people don’t win. An opposition party is a great thing, a necessary thing for our democracy, but this opposition party within the opposition party is crippling this Senate, this House, this Congress. By my count, it’s been 90 weeks since a Republican filibuster blocked a jobs bill that was designed to keep teachers, police officers, and first responders on the job. It’s been 87 weeks since a filibuster blocked a bill to put Americans to work through investments in infrastructure and 51 weeks since a Republican filibuster blocked a bill to give tax breaks to companies that bring jobs home and end a tax deduction for companies that move jobs overseas. And frankly, just 42 weeks ago, a Republican filibuster in this chamber blocked a bill to help 20,000 veterans find new jobs.
In the other chamber, it’s no better. The House of Representatives has now voted 37 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times did the math. The House has spent 15% of its time voting to repeal so-called Obamacare. In May, the Congressional Budget Office, which is the arbiter of what is or isn’t necessary, the scorekeeper, actually said the House has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act so many times, it will no longer issue new scores as the House attempts over and over again to achieve what seems to be its most basic purpose, to repeal. That’s how much time and energy this House has wasted on this particular project that could be better invested, finding ways to implement this bill more responsibly.
How much time do we waste here in this chamber, Madam President, just running out the clock, waiting for 30 hours for cloture to ripen because we can’t get simple agreements to move forward? I know this isn’t what our side or our leadership wants. I suspect it’s not what most senators of either party want, and it is certainly not what our constituents want. What should be taking days is taking weeks. What should take weeks is taking months or even years. In my view, Madam President, we’re not here to run out the clock. We’re here to make a difference, or at least that’s why our constituents sent us here.
Ideological obstruction has rendered this Washington, this Congress so ineffective, so inert, that when it comes to helping people get back to work in Delaware, my colleagues, Senator Carper and Congressman Carney, and I have taken an unusual action for members of Congress. We have started hosting job fairs. We have used the power of the office to convene when we can’t use the power of the office to legislate. We have had actually 13 job fairs up and down our state in all three of our counties in Delaware and watched as hundreds of folks have come and have had the opportunity to apply for and pursue new employment. Congress, in my view, should be taking a clue from that effort. We should recommit ourselves to helping our innovative small businesses grow, to helping open new markets for American goods, to helping Americans find good jobs, and to supporting those who haven’t been quite so lucky yet.
I think, Madam President, we need an agenda, an agenda that focuses on five areas, where investment now will lead to new jobs, not just for today or tomorrow but long into the future. First should be education. We have to do more, as I said before, to help the long-term unemployed get professional skills to thrive in this job market, and we have to do more to prepare young people for the challenges of the modern economy. I have a bill, the American Dream Accounts Act, cosponsored by Senator Rubio and others, that would help get our at-risk kids through school and into college.
We should also support innovative cutting edge research, and I’ve got a bill that would make the R&D tax credit permanent and open it up to startups. It’s called the Startup Innovation Credit Act, which has been cosponsored by a wide range of senators – Enzi and Rubio, Blunt and Moran, Stabenow, Kaine, and Schumer – a truly bipartisan bill. And I’m proud to be working with Senator Alexander of Tennessee on hopefully strengthening and reauthorizing the America Competes Act.
A third area we should be focusing on is tied to this. We have to do more to harness the resurgence of American manufacturing. There are a dozen smart bills, many with bipartisan support, that have been introduced, taken up, and passed here in the Senate that are currently languishing in the House. We should work to make a difference for America’s manufacturers.
Fourth, we have to grow our economy by growing our markets, our opportunities around the world. As the chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I’ve worked across the aisle with Senators Durbin and Boozman to introduce a bill to triple exports to Africa over ten years.
Fifth and last, an area I thought all of us would be able to come together on is investing in infrastructure. The BUILD Act, introduced in the last Congress, which I hope we will move to here, would create a national infrastructure financing vehicle—an infrastructure bank to help bring private funds into vital infrastructure projects. It’s had bipartisan support in the past from the Chamber of Commerce to the AFL-CIO. And it is my hope that we can take it up and use it as a vehicle to help the 12 million people who are looking for work find the jobs they need.
Madam President, I have a simple question today. When is Washington, when is Congress going to get back to work on behalf of those still looking for jobs? How much longer will we wait, how much more clock will we run out, how much more time will we waste? It’s my prayer that this chamber, this country finds a way to work together to get over this partisanship that has paralyzed our political process. In close, I just want to say a word of thanks to colleagues I’ve seen who have come and joined me in the chamber, Senator McCain and Senator Flake of Arizona. They are exemplars of the folks who have worked across the aisle to find solutions to some of the big problems facing us. They worked tirelessly with Democratic colleagues to put together the architecture of the bipartisan immigration bill that was just passed through this chamber in recent weeks. It is my hope that others in the other chamber will see that spirit and take up this opportunity to take up and pass legislation to put America on a track towards growth. There are 12 million reasons for us to do that, 12 million Americans looking for help getting back to work. Thank you and, Madam President, with that, I yield the floor.