Floor Speech: Delaware doesn’t want a shutdown

Mr. President, today is October 1. Today is the day that has long been known as the day when the Affordable Care Act will first come into force and exchanges across the country will begin to be open to citizens of all different backgrounds and walks of life for them to seek affordable, accessible insurance on these exchanges, the next step in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. On one level, it is a good day, because tens of millions of Americans are today gaining access to quality affordable care. I am told that since midnight, nearly 3 million people visited healthcare.gov, 80,000 or more have called a hotline, and 60,000 have requested live chats for applications, and enrollment in these marketplaces is moving forward at a record pace. So, on some level, this is an important day, because millions of Americans across dozens of States are getting access to quality affordable health care.

On the other hand, as the Presiding Officer well knows, this is an embarrassing, difficult, and disappointing day. The Federal Government of the United States is shut down. As of midnight last night, the President, the Office of Management and Budget, directed all the different executive agencies and offices to begin shutting down. As a result, 800,000 Federal employees are spending today at home–not helping small businesses with loans from the SBA; not helping move forward grants that invest in improving our infrastructure; not moving forward federally funded research that might find a cure for cancer or for MS or for autism; not helping applicants get college loans; not helping disabled veterans get access to the benefits they earned through their service to our country. We could go on and on about all the different ways these Federal employees–these public servants–are today not able to help our constituents, our fellow citizens.

I have gotten a fair number of contacts today–phone calls to my office, e-mails to my office, folks connecting with me on Facebook or through Twitter, or directly or indirectly, to convey how frustrated and upset they are.

I want to try to put all of this in some context for the folks who might be watching. What is it we are fighting over? As best I can understand, a few Members of this body and a few Members of the House of Representatives have shut this government down in an effort to try to stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. That is what this is all about. They have refused to take up and pass a bill that would fund the continuation of the U.S. Federal Government. In so doing, they are doing about $10 billion a week in damage to our economy. They are doing all of that damage I referred to in terms of hundreds of thousands of Federal employees not able to help improve our communities or keep us safe or move our country forward.

So why are we doing this? I think it has been said for many years that the definition of ”insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Well, the House of Representatives has tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act I think 42 times now.

As best I understand, this bill, which was passed by both Chambers and signed into law and then challenged at length in the Supreme Court and upheld and then was the central issue of the last Presidential election, which was not particularly close, this law of the land, which is moving forward in its implementation today, will not be stopped by shutting down the Federal Government.

This is a strategy that never really had a serious chance of success. Despite very long, quasi-filibuster speeches on this floor, despite all sorts of public pronouncements, this strategy has no chance actually of working. So what is the point? Why is this Federal Government shut down? It seems to me that it is simply a demonstration of a temper tantrum, a fit by a small number of folks who promised people back home that they will not allow this government to go forward with the Affordable Care Act.

I think what we should be doing instead is working together across the aisle to improve the Affordable Care Act. It is not perfect. Of course it has blemishes. There will be hiccups and there will be inconsistencies and issues that need to be worked out as this law is implemented. We ought to be working together across the aisle, the Senate and House together, to make sure it is done in an affordable, sustainable, and positive way rather than a small minority digging in their heels and imposing all of this wreckage for their own partisan goal.

Let me share some of the thoughts I have gotten from folks at home who are not exactly happy about our having a Federal Government shutdown today.

First, Ray White of Ellendale, DE, wrote:

I am a veteran and a US government employee. The furlough and sequester we already went through back in August of this year cost me 20 percent of my paycheck for over a month, causing my bills to get out of control. I would like to know how to make ends meet when I have no money to pay my bills, and lawmakers in the Capitol want to put me out of work again.

To Ray and your family, I am sorry. I am sorry for the fact that we have a few folks in the House of Representatives who will not take up a bill to keep our government open. As the Senator from Minnesota recently related, if the Speaker of the House would just let that bill get to the floor, it would pass. There are more than enough Democrats and Republicans in the House to pass that bill if the House would just take it up. I don’t think there is any question who caused this shutdown and why.

CWO2 Christopher Slicer of Newark wrote me to say:

As a federal technician and Army National Guardsman, I find it ridiculous that those we have elected as our representatives cannot do their jobs. If I wasn’t doing my job, I would be fired or reprimanded. There is no excuse. I don’t care which party it is for not passing whatever it is that needs to be done to have a budget. For our government to shut down shows how incompetent our government is to the world and worse its own citizens. There are thousands of us federal employees who have had to endure furloughs already, and you are telling me that we may have more.

Well, to CWO Christopher Slicer, I apologize that this Congress is unable to come together across this partisan divide and that we have another needless, manufactured crisis that just a few irresponsible Members insisted on to make a partisan point.

I think CWO Christopher Slicer makes a particularly important point: that this government shutdown shows our weaknesses in our inability to get together across this partisan divide not just to our citizens but to the world. At a time of real instability and real threat to our national security around the world, I think this government shutdown is not just harmful to our communities, our families, and our economy, but to our country and its standing in the world.

Last I will read, if I might, a note from Laurie Tonkay of Dover. Laurie wrote me to say:

It seems like we just got through the government furloughs and now there is a good chance you’re going to shut down the government.

This came yesterday.

My husband is employed with the Civil Service on Dover Air Force Base. This makes it difficult for ordinary families to make ends meet. I am getting discouraged with the way things are being done in Washington these days. America is in debt because we overspend, then you make your average hard-working employees pay the price for it repeatedly.

She concludes:

Morale is low, and frankly, I have lost confidence in the bureaucracy. I wonder if things would be different if this were an election year. Would you shut the government down? I think not. Show you care and get something done now.

Well, to Laurie, I am sorry for the impact this shutdown has had on you and your family. But it is the result of a few irresponsible Members of the House of Representatives. If the Speaker would just put on the floor for a vote what has been passed here in the Senate, we would have a government reopened today and we could get back to the business of this country. We could get back to conference on the budget and make progress on investing in making our communities safer, our families stronger, our schools and our students better educated, and doing the investment in our infrastructure and research we need to move our economy forward.

Let me conclude by sharing this. I have a number of wonderful folks on my staff who work in my offices in Delaware and in Washington whose real focus is constituent service. If folks call my office and they have a problem or an issue at home that we need to help with, they do an amazing job.

One young man, Brendan Mackie, recently joined my staff. He is a two-tour veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He works tirelessly to make sure the veterans who contact my office get the help they need.

A staff sergeant recently contacted us. He was wounded in Baghdad in 2007 by an IED. He lost the documentation for his Purple Heart. Well, Brendan dove right in and did all sorts of work–collected sworn statements and medical records, submitted everything to the relevant Army review board–and has managed to get his Purple Heart reissued.

That is the kind of case work my folks do day in and day out, making sure that whether it is accessing veterans’ benefits or disability benefits, Social Security, or medals earned in service to this Nation in combat, the men and women of Delaware who contact my office and rely on me and their services for great constituent support can get that help. Sadly, Brendan is home today and not able to serve the people of Delaware, not able to do his job.

If I might, I would close by saying this: This is the latest in a series of manufactured crises, of completely senseless, self-inflicted wounds. It is up to the Speaker of the House and to the folks in the House of Representatives to take up and pass the bill we sent them days ago that would allow this government to reopen and allow the leaders of this Chamber and the other Chamber to move forward on dealing with the real issues facing our country.

I yield the floor.

Floor Colloquy: Senator Coons calls on colleagues to prevent government shutdown

I wish to speak for a moment about manufacturing. As you know, I am passionate about manufacturing, about the good-quality jobs manufacturing brings to our communities.

What I am also passionate about is that this body needs to stop manufacturing crises.

What we just heard in the last few minutes was an exchange between my friend, the Senator from Tennessee, and two of his colleagues, the Senators from Texas and Utah, that summarized that what has happened in this Chamber today is the extension of a manufactured crisis, a purely artificial extension that is continuing, as the Senator from Illinois said in great detail and with great insight, to put at risk our recovering economy, our men- and women-at-arms, and our nation’s standing in the world. This is a wholly manufactured crisis without purpose.

It seems to me in the three years I have been here in the Senate–it feels an awful lot like Groundhog Day. I was sitting in that very chair presiding over this body as we were closing in on a government shutdown when I had only been here for a few months.

I have never forgotten getting a message from a constituent at home. Her husband was at that very moment serving our nation flying Medevac missions in Afghanistan. I got a simple note:

“Is it possible that because you all can’t do your jobs that my husband and I won’t be getting a paycheck next week while he does his job for our nation overseas?”

We have, in the three years I have been here, seen needless fights, a near default on our nation’s debt, a near defunding of our federal government’s operation.

Today we see not a difference of meaning but a difference purely of substance and style–purely of superficial style.

As the Senator from Tennessee pointed out, the objection to the majority leader’s request that we proceed now to a vote was purely for the convenience of two Senators who have sent out a lot of press releases and who want more attention. We can’t continue to play chicken with the American people, the American economy, and continuing the services of the federal government.

I know my colleague, the Senator from Louisiana, who is one of the leaders from the Appropriations Committee, is here to offer some insight and comments about the value of appropriations, about the great work our chair Senator Mikulski has led us in this year. 

There are so many other ways that this manufactured crisis is just the latest in a series of disappointing failures to lead by a few of our colleagues. The chair has allowed us to go through subcommittee markups and full committee markups on 11 appropriations subcommittee bills. If those bills could be taken up and passed on this floor, we could fix a lot of the things that challenge our nation.

I yield the floor to the Senator from Louisiana so she might inform this body about some of the important work that she, in her subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee, on which I am honored to serve, has been able to do this year. 

Senator Landrieu: I thank the Senator for yielding for a question. I appreciate his leadership as an appropriator.

Senator Mikulski was on the floor earlier today, the leader of our committee and the debate about how much to spend and what we should spend our money on. Does the Senator understand that that could be done and it is done in the appropriations process? And if we could just get past this manufactured crisis we could actually accomplish what many Senators want to do, which is to discuss the level of spending? We can’t even get there because we are stuck in a manufactured crisis by the Senator from Texas.

Is that the sense of my colleague as to where we are?

Senator Coons: That is absolutely my understanding. My friend the Senator from Louisiana knows better than anyone that the role of the Appropriations Committee and its subcommittees is to perform oversight, to weed through programs in the federal government, and to strengthen and support those that are effective and making a difference, but to narrow or shut down or trim those that aren’t. If we continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, from short-term continuing resolution to continuing resolution, we will never get that good work done.

Madam President, I welcome any further comments my colleague would like to make about what the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Appropriations Committee has made possible, and why that matters, what difference that makes to the people of Louisiana and of our country.

Senator Coons: Madam President, I want to thank the Senator from Louisiana for her leadership of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

We just heard a detailed description of how the Senator has worked in a bipartisan, thoughtful, and in a detailed and decent way–in a way that crafted a bill where there was compromise, where there was give and take, and where ultimately the bill that has moved through that subcommittee and full committee and should be ready for action on this floor meets the real needs of our nation, of our homeland.

That bill provides resources and support whether for the State of Colorado, the State of Minnesota, the State of Delaware, or all over this country. And shutting the government down over a needless manufactured crisis between now and Monday is the height of irresponsibility.

Madam President, if I might, I will now yield for the Senator from Colorado.

Senator Bennet: I am sorry the Senator from Delaware has left the floor for a moment, because he has been holding it down and I wanted to ask him a question about his previous work. He was a county executive in Delaware before he was here. I was a superintendent of schools. I worked for the mayor. Senator Klobuchar, who is here from Minnesota, was a district attorney. I think every one of us is completely perplexed by the hostage taking that is going on around this place.

I ask the Senator from Delaware, he was the county executive of a county in Delaware?

Senator Coons: I was.

Senator Bennet: I say through the Chair, does the Senator think that any county executive or mayor or local official in the Senator’s State wouldn’t be run out of town if they threatened the credit rating of their community for politics?

Senator Coons: Absolutely. I might say to my friend from Colorado, I had direct experience with this. In the State of Delaware, folks expect us to balance our budgets and pass them on time, to deliver good services, but also to defend our credit ratings. The city and county and state in which I lived and served all enjoyed AAA credit ratings. The folks in my communities understood that meant we could borrow money for building sewers, building roads, and building schools less expensively and sustain the quality of our community. Our business leaders and civic leaders understood that to put that at risk was reckless and irresponsible. 

Yet for a manufactured crisis by a few Senators, we are facing the shutdown of this federal government a few days from now–and, I am afraid, just a few weeks later the possible default on the sovereign debt of the United States. No responsible elected official where I am from would do that.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges colleagues to focus on jobs, not manufactured crises

Mr. President, here we are again. On Monday, September 30, five days from now at midnight, absent some agreement and cooperation between the parties in the Chambers here in the Congress, the entire federal government will begin shutting down. Here we are again, another day, another fiscal crisis, another politically manufactured crisis–another politically manufactured crisis that is threatening to tear at the economic fabric of our whole country. 

It would be hard to believe if it were not totally, completely believable. I have been in the Senate now just under three years but this is my third of these crises. I was actually up in the chair presiding that night back in 2011, when we narrowly averted a shutdown, just minutes before funding expired. I was here with all the other senators on New Year’s Eve this past year where we stopped just short of going over the fiscal cliff. 

Here we are again. From shutdown to default, from the debt ceiling to the fiscal cliff, now back to threatened shutdown and another default crisis weeks away and with, of course, unemployment still standing above 7 percent–7.3 percent.

In my home state, Delawareans don’t understand how we keep ending back up in this place. We have a saying in Delaware that our politics are dominated by what we call the Delaware way, which means doing what is right even when it is hard. It means coming together to make tough choices, Republicans and Democrats listening to each other and finding principled compromise.

It means being civil and playing by the rules, putting what is good for our people ahead of what is good for our politics. It does not look to me as if we have been able to muster much of that Delaware way here in Washington.

Last week the Senate considered the bipartisan Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill. Energy efficiency is about as commonsense and nonpartisan as you can get. It is not about fossil fuels or renewable energy, it is about making smarter choices and reducing our energy consumption.

The bill had support on both sides of the aisle. It was supported by business and labor and the environmental community, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. A very broad range of folks and organizations all over our country endorsed that bill. 

I myself did work in energy efficiency when I was in the private sector at a manufacturing company and then again when I led Delaware’s largest county as county executive. I saw the real impact energy-efficiency technologies and strategies did have on the bottom line, for the private sector and public sector, for families and businesses, and it is significant.

There is so much opportunity to make a real difference for our economy, for our planet, for our communities in energy efficiency. That Shaheen-Portman bill gave us a chance to tap into it. It would have given millions more Americans a chance to benefit and was scored at creating 136,000 new jobs–but we blew it. 

Instead of debating energy policy, taking up and amending and reforming and passing that bipartisan energy efficiency bill, the Senate was then dragged down into a petty partisan political battle over the Affordable Care Act, a law that, by the way, was debated in both Chambers and passed, litigated before the Supreme Court and upheld, was central to the last presidential election and was sustained.

I am not going to debate the merits of the Affordable Care Act at enormous length again. It is law. It needs to be modified. It needs to be amended so it can work more smoothly and more effectively. But, frankly, the law needs to be implemented. Every minute this Chamber spends reliving the settled debates of the past is a minute we are ignoring the 11 million Americans out of work, the 31,000 Delawareans currently looking for a job.

Each minute this Chamber spends on a futile effort to strip middle-class Americans of their access to affordable health care is a minute we are ignoring so many challenges: infrastructure, a generation of students ill-prepared for the challenges of the future, communities ripped apart by tragic, senseless gun violence–there are so many other challenges and tasks before us. It is insanely frustrating.

Is this what we signed up for? Is this why all of us worked as hard as we did to get here, knocked on doors and campaigned across our states for months and months? Is this it? Is this governing?

If Congress spent half as much time on manufacturing policy and on manufacturing jobs as we seem to spend on manufacturing political crises, our country would be in far better shape. It cannot pass laws, but Congress has become very good at manufacturing crises.

I am not running for president and I don’t have to impress the Tea Party so maybe I am missing something here. But we do have to be better than this. We just have to. There is too much at stake for our states, for our country, for our families, for the economy, for the world.

This morning the Steering and Outreach Committee had a dozen economists come in and offer their insights on what would happen if the government really does shut down five days from now. If we do, then, default on our national debt the next month, what would happen to the 11 million Americans still looking for jobs? What would happen to our resurgent American manufacturing industry and the half million jobs that have been created there? Their answers were not encouraging–in fact, depressing, really.

What was clear is that these political showdowns in this Chamber exact a real cost on our economy. They hurt the ability of business owners to plan ahead. They inject incredible, unneeded uncertainty into our markets. They generally erode our nation’s credibility and leadership on the world stage. But we keep ending up right here.

One of my constituents, John Henderson from Frederica, DE, wrote me last week and said:

“The strength of our economic recovery is on the line and government’s ability to make people’s lives better is in jeopardy. Congress needs to confront our problems responsibly, but when some lawmakers dig in their heels and threaten to seriously damage America if every one of their demands isn’t met, our Government can’t function. This isn’t the time for a game of chicken. It’s time to govern.”

John, you are right. Mr. President, he is right. This gridlock, this repeated manufactured crisis environment is embarrassing.

I am on the Budget Committee, and under the leadership of our Chair, Senator Murray, we passed a budget earlier this year. Not only did the Senate budget responsibly reduce the deficit, not only did it fairly replace the sequester, but it actually invested in economic growth. We took it up here on the Senate floor and passed it here, too, so not just out of committee but out of the Senate. We stayed up all night voting on amendment after amendment, for hour after hour, and in the end it is one of the most functional things we have done this year. The Senate passes a budget, the House passes a budget, and then we come together to reconcile the differences. That is how it has been done for 200 years. And this year, finally, after years of criticism that we hadn’t passed a budget, we had our chance to return to regular order.

So there we are, ready to go, budget passed–and nothing. House Republicans will not even come to the table and a few Senate Republicans are blocking the door. They literally will not even come to the table to negotiate and resolve our budget differences and lay the groundwork for moving forward. It is insanely frustrating. 

Einstein once said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. He was not wrong. I believe at this point the House has repealed the Affordable Care Act 42 times. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

I am on the Appropriations Committee and, under the able leadership of our Chair Senator Mikulski the committee has passed 11 appropriations bills. The House Appropriations Committee has passed 10 of theirs. We took up one of these vital appropriations bills that allows the Senate to work its will and to form and shape federal programs and federal spending. Earlier this summer we took up one of these appropriations bills, the bill to fund the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. But Republicans on this floor were so afraid of returning to regular order, of having a responsible, reasonable, regular working process to move forward on spending on this government and our economy, it was blocked. It was blocked, prevented from even being debated.

I will ask again: Is this working for anybody?

Back in June of this year the Senate passed a bipartisan farm bill. Great work was done by Senator Stabenow, Chair of the Agriculture Committee, along with her ranking member and senators from both side of the aisle. The Agriculture Committee did significant work to reform American farm policy, such as moving away from commodity subsidies and toward crop insurance. That alone would have saved taxpayers $23 billion. We all hear that is important. We need to reduce our spending and make our programs more effective. This was a great bipartisan bill. It would have modernized our agricultural policies and strengthened programs that help farmers, ranchers, and small business owners, and created jobs.

House Republicans will not negotiate with us on that bill either. They passed a bill that guts the nutrition assistance program, food stamps–cuts it by $40 billion, but will not work with us on a full farm bill. The current law also expires at the end of the month. If we do not pass a modernizing farm bill by the end of this year, our nation’s agriculture policies will revert to those of the 1940s.

If it sounds familiar, it is because we are in the exact same position on the farm bill as last year. Is this working for anybody? It is certainly not working for America. 

Delawareans, whom I hear all the time, are enormously frustrated. I hope we are able to reach a deal and I hope we are able to keep the government running. I hope we come back next week and refocus on our economy and refocus all this energy on manufacturing and jobs and on manufacturing jobs, not on manufacturing crises; helping American businesses grow and helping our private sector create jobs.

Americans deserve better than this. They deserve better.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges colleagues not to let politics halt progress on energy efficiency

I’d like to associate myself with the remarks of the Budget Committee chair. As a member of the Budget Committee, I join her in expressing her strong view that this country does not need another shutdown or pointless fiscal cliff but needs us to listen and work together in this chamber and the House of Representatives and move forward on the agenda that all of our constituents want us to proceed on.

Mr. President, I rise today specifically to speak to the bill that is on the floor that has been the subject of debate and discussion, 1392, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013.

This is a broadly bipartisan bill. Its two primary authors, my colleagues from New Hampshire and Ohio, have worked tirelessly to make sure it respects the priorities of members of both parties. Its passage by a vote of 19-3 out of the Energy Committee, on which I serve speaks to its support across partisan lines.

Yet sadly, now that it’s on the floor, a few Republicans have decided they want to use it to carry out their own narrow or partisan political agendas. Rather than showing the American people that we are still capable of coming together across our differences of region and party to pass this commonsense bipartisan legislation, they would rather confirm the frustration and even disgust so many of our constituents feel about this body.

We were all home this last month. We all heard from our constituents. And I don’t know about my colleagues but what I heard from Delawareans about what they want, what they deserve, is not more displays of the selfish partisanship that frustrates them, but rather, that we can listen to each other and work together on bipartisan bills that moves this country forward.

Energy efficiency, the topic of this bill, the topic we should be moving forward on today, its only agenda is creating a stable, dynamic and prosperous future. And the Shaheen-Portman bill really has been written with only that goal as its north star.

It’s not about who’s right or who’s wrong, or about whether climate change is real or not, or about whose science you are going to choose to believe today.

It is something that fundamentally makes sense. It allows us to bridge competing interests and concerns because it promotes energy independence, it helps our environment, and it promotes American jobs – jobs today and jobs tomorrow.

When we need new equipment for our buildings – whether it’s Dupont’s Tyvek wrapping or Dow’s foam spray insulation, both made here in America – we create good manufacturing jobs in our country.

When we install the new energy efficient equipment in our homes and buildings, we hire Americans to do that work – sheet metal workers, electricians, and laborers.

When we set new goals for efficiency, as this bill does, we incentivize the kind of research and innovation that will drive job creation well into the future.

It’s simple, Mr. President, there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to get this done.

I come to this debate today as someone who’s seen energy efficiency’s power up close in the private sector and public sector in my work in Delaware.

When I was in the private sector, more than 15 years ago, I came to understand that power when our then-governor appointed me to chair the conservation and efficiency working group of her Energy Taskforce.

Over two years of meetings, I grew to more deeply appreciate how powerful energy efficiency can be for the commercial and industrial balance sheet of our country. It later translated into my work as county executive of New Castle County, Delaware, where I led a countywide effort to make our buildings more energy efficient.

We had old and energy wasteful buildings and we knew that by investing in energy efficiency upgrades, we could save taxpayer money and put Delawareans to work.

We started with our City/County Headquarters, a building constructed in the 1970s, almost designed to be monumentally energy inefficient. As we audited it, the auditor was stunned at how energy-inefficient it was: high ceilings, bad insulation, poorly sealed windows.

So we overhauled. We upgraded the lights. Put in new energy management systems. Replaced the boilers and chillers and cooling towers and got that building up to energy star standards. Did a host of other things on a constrained budget.

It was a resounding and lasting success. With improvements just to that one small building, the county saves $350,000 a year, and it will pay for itself over 15 years. And because of that success, the county has gone on to do retrofits to 20 more buildings, in total, providing work for more than 150 Delawareans and reducing emissions by 12 million pounds of carbon dioxide a year – the equivalent of taking a thousand cars off the road.

Those jobs, they can’t be offshored. These are jobs for electricians, labors and sheet metal workers. These  are good quality building trades jobs. They are also sustainable because as each contractor learns how to do an energy efficiency retrofit in one building, they can go on and do it for more.

Once folks understood the impact, once they saw the difference we could make in that county, it became an issue that transcended partisanship or political loyalties, and that should have been the case here, if we had a healthy and functioning Senate, because this issue is no more partisan across the United States than it was in our county. It saved us money. It helped our environment. It put Delawareans to work. And the same is true for the Shaheen-Portman bill that should be moving forward today.

Earlier this year, I had chance to visit Dover Air force base, our largest air force facility in Delaware, and see what the U.S. military is doing to use less energy and employ alternative energy solutions. They have made dramatic progress, looking across every corner of that base to reduce their energy use and to be more efficient in how they transport material for the United States Air Force.

These are real ideas and real technology-based solutions that could be applied nationally. There are companies up and down our state in the private sector that have applied the same approach, the same initiative this bill would take, and seen real savings.

PPG, Kraft, others have all realized savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars that add to their balance sheet and their bottom line. This bill, Mr. President, has been scored as creating 136,000 new jobs by 2025, saving consumers $13 billion, and nearly three billion megawatt hours by 2030. This is exactly the sort of bill we should be moving to, exactly the sort of bill we should be coming together to pass. Instead, sadly, what I’m hearing is that it is likely that the partisanship of this chamber is going to defeat our opportunity to take up and consider this important balanced and bipartisan bill.

Americans are looking to us to take action to create jobs, save them money and build a better future for our country. This bill genuinely gives us a chance to do all of those things.

I am a proud cosponsor of this bill. I had hoped to have a chance to debate, discuss and vote on many amendments directly relevant to this bill that deal with energy efficiency and would strengthen it.

Instead, it seems we are again mired in partisanship as folks here seek to add to this bill amendments utterly irrelevant to the core of what should be the focus today – helping to create high-quality jobs for Americans, improve our environment and add to our nation’s bottom line on this commonsense matter. It is my hope, Mr. President, that we can get past the partisanship and back to the real work our constituents expect and demand of us in the weeks ahead.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons speaks about financial and personnel crises in American courts

Madam President, I am confident the Presiding Officer is familiar with the phrase, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote that from his jail cell in Birmingham. “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

I rise to talk about justice and the budgetary choices Congress is making that impact the ability of the American people to access the justice promised them by our Constitution.

Our federal courts translate laws into justice and effective courts require fair judges, well-trained lawyers, and efficient clerks. As the Presiding Officer well knows, the fewer judges and clerks we have and the reduced resources in time-saving technology, the fewer cases can be handled at a time, and the longer cases will take to process. “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

Of course, staffing the courts costs money, but when we compare it to the rest of the federal government, this whole branch is a relative bargain. For every $100 spent by our federal government, just 19 cents goes to the entire federal court system. We actually spend more every month on the ongoing conduct of operations in Afghanistan than we do in an entire year on the whole federal court system. It is, relatively speaking, a bargain.

With caseloads growing and budgets shrinking, though, the federal courts have been cutting back where they could for years now, methodically looking for ways to cut costs, reduce overhead, lower personnel, and generally be more efficient. They are both metaphorically and literally looking under every cushion for coins, looking for ways to cut costs, reduce overhead, lower their personnel costs, whatever they can do to keep up.

Then came the sequester. Of course, when it was first conceived, the sequester was designed to be so reckless, so dangerous that it would drive Congress back to the negotiating table — House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats – to confront our nation’s annual deficits and craft a bipartisan agreement. But, sadly, it failed. Congress as a whole failed, and the across-the-board spending cuts engineered in the sequester went into effect.

It has been almost 7 months since they came into effect and, in that time, I have heard from hundreds of Delawareans, as I am sure all the Members have heard from their constituents, directly impacted by the sequester. I have spoken with dumbfounded employees at Dover Air Force Base — more than 1,000 hard-working Delawareans, many of them veterans who can’t believe that they individually are paying the price because Congress, House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, can’t craft a responsible deal.

Kevin from Magnolia asked me: Why are my family and I being punished with a 20-percent pay cut this quarter? Bryan from Houston — both towns in Delaware — said he was tired of being the one to suffer the consequences because, in his view, Congress can’t get the budgetary job done.

My heart goes out to Kevin and Bryan and every Delawarean who has called my office, written to me, and talked to me about the sequester. I agree with them. It needs to be replaced responsibly and urgently. As a member of the Budget Committee, I have worked with my colleagues to craft a budget that would replace the sequester in a way that is in keeping with our core values and the priority of investing in America’s future.

Not many people, though, are talking about how the sequester is impacting our courts. We hear about how sequester is affecting defense. We hear about how it is affecting research, and infrastructure, but our courts have often gone without consideration. There is no natural constituency, bluntly, that feels slighted; the number of furloughed employees is relatively small and there is no real lobby in Washington for the health of our courts.

But the sequester’s impact on the federal courts affects all of us — every single American. The sequester is slowing the pace, increasing the cost, and eroding the quality of the delivery of justice in this country.

At the end of our last session, I chaired a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Bankruptcy and the Courts that looked at how the sequester is impacting the public defender service in our Nation’s courts. These courts have been forced to cut past the fat and well into muscle and soon into bone.

The Judiciary has looked at a variety of measures to address this new budgetary reality and very few of them come without significant pain to the businesses, individuals, and communities that rely on our courts. One proposal — to simply not schedule civil jury trials in September — would effectively impose a 30-day uncertainty tax on everyone. A judge in Nebraska has threatened to dismiss low-priority immigration status crimes because of a lack of adequate capacity. In New York, deep furlough cuts to the public defender’s office caused the delay of the criminal trial for Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and former Al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith.

In my home State of Delaware, sequester has meant lengthy employee furloughs at the clerk’s office of the bankruptcy court, reduced investments in IT, and postponed essential upgrades. Simply put, the financial state of our federal courts erodes our fundamental constitutional rights. Individuals depend on the courts to be there when they need them, to seek relief from discrimination, to resolve commercial disputes, to allow parties to stop fighting and get to work growing the economy or to guarantee fairness and efficiency in criminal proceedings.

The reality is our federal courts were already stretched thin before this sequester.

Chief Justice Roberts leads the Judiciary Conference of the United States. The Judicial Conference was created by Congress to administer the federal court system and work with Congress to ensure appropriations keep up with the needs of our courts. The Judicial Conference is and always has been nonpartisan.

Earlier this year, the Judiciary Conference sent Chairman Leahy and me a letter recommending that in order for the courts to fulfill their missions, we must add federal judges to the bench. In the last two decades, since the last comprehensive judgeship bill — 23 years, to be precise —Article III district courts have seen their caseloads grow nearly 40 percent. Yet the number of judges has grown by four. Today, judges in the Eastern District of California, long recognized as one of the most overburdened in the nation, face over 1,000 weighted case filings per judge. In the District of Columbia, case filings were over 1,500 per judge. The Judicial Conference generally believes that additional judgeships are needed when there are more than 500 per judge. So even before the sequester, our courts weren’t keeping up with their caseloads.

Heeding the recommendations we received last month, Chairman Leahy and I introduced the Federal Judgeship Act of 2013, which will create 91 new federal judgeships, 2 federal circuits, and 32 judicial districts across 21 states. This bill would provide much needed relief to our overburdened courts, ensuring they are better prepared to administer justice quickly and efficiently.

Again, this proposal, this bill, is in direct response to the analytical work of the nonpartisan Judicial Conference. This change is long overdue. Congress has not comprehensively addressed judicial staffing levels since 1990 — 23 years ago — and the trial court weighted filings per judgeship have risen from 386 back then to 520 today. Those national figures actually mask even more dramatic circumstances faced by the most burdened districts in Texas, Delaware, and California.

Yesterday, I chaired a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Bankruptcy and the Courts to consider this Act and, during this hearing, District Court Judge Sue Robinson of Delaware testified on the need for more judgeships. She explained that “despite all the additional technologies we have, and an excellent staff, there is nothing more I can do at this point with respect to getting my cases resolved timely.” At that hearing, I appreciated and was encouraged by the statement of my colleague from Alabama that, in fact, the District of Delaware deserves another judge due to its incredible caseload. I would argue, though, and the evidence suggests, that the need is not confined to my State but to districts all across the country. We need to take on the whole problem, not just a small piece of it. Nobody wants to be in a courtroom, but when you need to be in court it is because something significant has happened in your life and you don’t want a judge rushing to move on to the next thing because of a crushing caseload. You don’t want clerks so awash in paperwork that yours gets lost. 

In conclusion, we need to help our judges deliver justice by replacing the sequester with a responsible, balanced approach that restores the funding taken from our courts and allows us to add the judgeships we need to keep pace with demand.

Dr. King was right: Justice too long delayed is indeed justice denied. By delaying the delivery of justice, the sequester is denying justice to too many Americans. We don’t need more delays; we need more judges, and we need to act together to get it done now.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons makes the case for his amendments to energy efficiency bill

Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013, S. 1392 or more commonly referred to here by the names of its lead cosponsors, Shaheen-Portman.

This is a bill that allows us to turn back to the issue so many Americans have been asking us to focus on: jobs, competitiveness, manufacturing, the steps we can take to put our country back on the right path for our future.

This bill is essentially about energy efficiency and all the different ways energy efficiency, used wisely, can strengthen America. An America that uses less energy is an America that is taking less from the Earth, an America less reliant on other nations for the fuel that powers our lives and livelihoods, an America whose people won’t need to mortgage their future in order to cool their homes.

An America that uses less energy is an America that will never again wait in long gas lines; that in the summers won’t have to sweat through brownouts and in the winters won’t have to make the tragic choice between feeding their families and keeping them warm.

There have been some tough economic times for our nation in recent years. And while I haven’t been in Washington all that long, I get the sense the climate here around the budget and our fiscal issues has almost never been as toxic and difficult to navigate as it is right now. Of course, the reality is broadly, across the whole federal budget, we do need to tighten our belts and we are going to have to prioritize investments that are the most important to America’s future. But energy efficiency is entirely about America’s future. It is exactly the sort of area where we can reach a bipartisan agreement on an important path forward together.

Energy efficiency is entirely about America’s future. There is no winning in the fight for energy efficiency. There is only progress. There is doing better, conserving energy, and saving money. The pennies we invest today in energy efficiency will save our governments, our businesses, and our families dollars down the road.

So how do we do it? How do we build our more energy-efficient future when cost efficiency is ruling the day here in this Chamber and in this Congress? It starts with this wise, balanced, and bipartisan bill we are considering today, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of this valuable bill, and I applaud the tireless work of my friends, Senators Shaheen of New Hampshire and Portman of Ohio, in crafting the bill, focusing this bill, and then ultimately getting it to the floor. I am also grateful to the leadership of Senator Wyden, the chairman of the Energy Committee, and Senator Murkowski, his ranking Republican, in ably advancing it through the committee, where it passed by a vote of 19 to 3, and in getting it to the floor today.

I am grateful to Senators Wyden and Murkowski for the bipartisan energy they have crafted on the committee and for the positive tone they have set. I have greatly enjoyed my years of service on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and appreciate their work that has allowed Senators Shaheen and Portman and many of the other cosponsors of this bill to see it on the floor here today.

We are at a critical moment. If America is going to lead, we have to work together to set a long-term strategy that moves us toward an efficient, clean energy-competitive economy. This bill helps us do that.

It looks as though we are going to have a few more days to talk about the full scope of this bill because, unfortunately, there have been other amendments offered — amendments that aren’t directly germane to this bill. And as has sadly, so often been the case in the months gone by, we have had a grinding halt to the opportunity to move forward on this broad, bipartisan bill that enjoys support from Republicans and Democrats, that has an opportunity to be passed through the other Chamber as well as this, and that could do great work for America.

It is my hope that next week when we return, this Chamber will take up, consider, and pass this bill; that we will consider dozens of amendments germane to this bill, relevant to this bill that will bring other good ideas about energy efficiency to the floor, and that we will strengthen it and pass it.

This bill has been scored as having a very real prospect of creating 136,000 jobs in the next dozen years, by 2025. Imagine getting back to considering bills that actually help create jobs. There is a list of more than 250 corporations, nonprofits, and associations from all different sectors of the American society and economy that have endorsed this bill. It has a broad range of provisions that deal with energy efficiency codes and voluntarily improving them, skills and training, improving manufacturing, improving the energy efficiency of the U.S. Government, the single biggest purchaser and user of energy in our country — indeed, probably in the world. It achieves huge targets, great objectives, saving nearly 3 billion megawatt hours in energy by 2030, and saving consumers more than $13 billion a year by 2030. These are great and robust goals, and I am truly hopeful we will turn to this bill in earnest next week and take up and consider some of the range of amendments that have been offered.

I wish to now briefly review three of the amendments I have introduced for consideration as part of Shaheen-Portman.

I know one of the best things about how the senators and the committee leaders have crafted this bill is that it is open to consideration of a broad range of ideas. All three of these amendments are directly related to energy efficiency. Not all three of them may end up being part of this bill, and I understand, but I am grateful for a few moments of my colleagues’ attention to bring them up and discuss their benefit, value, and relevance.

The first is 1842. It allows for the reauthorization of valuable energy programs that have been at the heart of the federal government’s energy efficiency strategy for a long time; the Weatherization Assistance Program and the State Energy Program. Both are programs in place for decades and that work daily in each and every one of our states, helping to reduce energy usage and reduce energy costs.

In states such as your own, Mr. President, the State of Massachusetts, where the winters can be cold and long and energy expensive, programs at the state level and weatherization assistance programs can make a real difference in the lives of consumers. These programs link national, state, and local interests in a critical way. They create highly effective public and private partnerships that have delivered real results. In fact, studies have shown that the Weatherization Assistance Program returns more than $2.50 in household savings for every $1 invested. The program serves over 7 million families in its existence, including more than 1 million in the last 4 years. The results are equally strong for the State Energy Program, where every federal dollar invested has an energy cost savings of more than $7 a year and nearly $11 in non-federal dollars is leveraged for every federal dollar spent.

These are highly effective programs, but both of their authorizations have expired, so we need to reauthorize these programs so we can help Americans save energy and save other energy costs.

Earlier this year I partnered with Senators Collins of Maine and Reed of Rhode Island to introduce the Weatherization Enhancement and Local Energy Efficiency and Investment in Accountability Act. That is a mouthful, but it has a wide base of support, including from the Alliance to Save Energy, the Community Action Foundation, the National Association of State Energy Officials, Habitat For Humanity, building suppliers such as Masco Corporation, business groups such as the Business Council For Sustainable Energy, environmental groups such as the NRDC, and many more.

I have introduced that legislation as an amendment. To summarize what it does, it reauthorizes these two critical energy programs for five more years, the State Energy Program and the Weatherization Assistance Program. But it doesn’t just reauthorize them, it modernizes them. It enhances them with new ideas and ultimately works to ensure their long-term viability.

We call for a complementary, competitive innovation program as well as call for setting baseline standards. This amendment actually reduces the funding levels to where they were 6 years ago, in order to attract bipartisan support and to be more fiscally responsible. This amendment says that the new minimum efficiency standards the Department of Energy is working on must be in place by October of 2015, and it creates a complementary competitive grant program to allow NGOs to compete for their piece of the funding. Overall, we want to bring in new partners, new approaches, new technologies, and new ideas to ensure that more homes can be weatherized, more families have their heating bills reduced, and more energy saved with limited federal funding. I urge the support of my colleagues for this first amendment, No. 1842, about the Weatherization Assistance Program.

Let me now turn to something that I think is just common sense, where I hope the federal government, one of the largest users of energy in the world, will take advantage of a contracting tool to achieve energy savings and cost savings in ways that both the private sector and local government have as well. I am talking about Energy Savings Performance Contracts, and I had personal experience with them when I was in the private sector with a manufacturing company in Delaware and when I was a county executive. We used this tool, this technique, in both of those contexts to finance very expensive capital investments in chillers and boilers and motors in elevators and lights and in energy efficiency retrofits throughout our buildings. But they were not paid for upfront by either the manufacturing company I worked for or the county which I ran as county executive; they were financed off of dedicated future energy savings. So these capital improvements were installed at the cost of a private company, not the government, not the manufacturer upfront, and then paid for over a long time by the energy cost savings that the increased efficiency achieved.

That may seem complicated, but it is well known, well demonstrated and used widely across this country and is something the federal government should make better use of. As I mentioned, by contract, the company is paid for its upfront capital investments in these higher efficiency systems through future savings that result from decreased utility costs. If state, local, and federal facilities are currently taking advantage of these, if they are well known and well demonstrated, why isn’t the federal government making broader use of them? Partly because of contracting and budgeting challenges, and it is partly because there is not enough push, enough energy behind the use of these ESPCs.

They also have a secondary benefit of creating lots of private sector jobs, jobs that cannot be outsourced, jobs that require local workers. Because what we are truly talking about are sheet metal workers and electricians, folks who are installing things and taking things out, laborers and mechanics. These are great jobs and at no cost to the taxpayer.

Estimates are that there is more than $20 billion available to the federal government through the use of performance contracts, savings that we know we can achieve, and at no cost to the taxpayer.

In December of 2011, President Obama announced a federal commitment to enter into Energy Savings Performance Contracts equal to $2 billion over two years. But what happens when that window ends? Now that we are in 2013 and about to hit the end of that window, there will be no authority to continue to encourage the use of ESPCs in federal facilities. In the current fiscal climate, performance contracts offer the federal government the best method for upgrading aging facilities and reducing energy costs.

Earlier this summer I introduced the Energy Savings Through Public-Private Partnership Act to push the federal government in the right direction by encouraging increased utilization of these contracts. I introduced that as an amendment to the Shaheen-Portman act. As I mentioned, it creates a new goal for the federal government, to be specific, a goal to enter into $1 billion a year in energy savings contracts over the next five years — $5 billion in savings at no cost to the taxpayer.

It encourages more performance contracting by requiring that federal facilities managers “shall consider” implementing identified energy and water conservation measures. It increases energy savings transparency by requiring the online publication of energy and water conservation measures, and it requires government energy managers to publicly explain why they chose not to use NSPC if they do not. It ensures greater accountability by requiring the administration to report to Congress on the status of the annual performance contracting goal each year.

In previous hearings, I have asked the Secretary of Energy and others involved in the federal performance system why this is not more actively used. The explanations have more to do with the complications of bureaucracy adrift in inaction than why it cannot be done. Positive responses from the President and from departments and from facility managers strongly suggest that this amendment, this bipartisan amendment, could be considered as a part of S. 1492.

Let me last turn to one I have worked hardest on and am most excited about, amendment No. 1841, the Master Limited Partnership Parity Act. This one has the potential to change the long-term playing field for energy financing in the United States. Access to low-cost financing will determine our nation’s energy future. It will determine how and when and which energy sources emerge as central players in the American energy marketplace in the long term, and I think it is up to us to ensure our vast national supply of clean renewable power as well as energy efficiency are vital parts of that overall equation.

What am I talking about? What is a master limited partnership? It is a business structure that is taxed as a partnership but whose ownership interests are traded like corporate stocks on a market. It is a tax-advantaged capital formation vehicle. They have been around more than 30 years. There are more than 100 of them with a market cap over $40 billion, and they have been overwhelmingly used by oil and gas and pipeline interests. Oddly, by statute, MLPs are only available to investors in energy portfolios for oil, natural gas, coal extraction, and pipeline projects — nonrenewable energy. As I mentioned, these projects get access to capital at a lower cost and are more liquid than traditional financing approaches to energy projects, making them highly attractive to private sector investment.

Investors in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, however, have been explicitly prevented from forming MLPs, starving a growing portion of America’s domestic energy sector of the capital it needs to grow. I introduced the bipartisan Master Limited Partnership Parity Act to include renewable energy and energy efficiency projects among all those other areas of energy for which MLPs could be formed, and I am grateful for the tireless partnership of my lead cosponsor, Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas and for the courage and energy Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has brought to advocating for this bill as a cosponsor and for the early support of Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. The four of us have now over two Congresses worked tirelessly on this bill.

It has a corollary in the House that also has a strong bipartisan group of cosponsors. I recently testified about this bill, as has Senator Moran, both at the Senate Energy Committee and Finance Committee, and I have been grateful for the interest of Chairman Ron Wyden and an array of other senators from both parties.

As I mentioned, this MLP Parity Act has the opportunity, the possibility of being the “all of the above” energy strategy that is so often talked about and to be the capital-financing piece of this, a strategy that does not pick winners and losers but allows the markets to decide where to invest in the long term. It has generated a great deal of interest and support. It has hundreds of supporters coming from the private sector, from think tanks, from nonprofits, and from advocacy groups.

It could not be simpler. It is a very short bill, just a few hundred words. Instead of barring renewable projects and energy efficiency projects from being able to organize as Master Limited Partnerships, it embraces them. It would bring new low-cost capital into the energy market and help more renewable energy and energy efficiency projects to get off the ground, increase domestic energy production, and increase our nation’s energy security.

I urge support for this amendment, which is a separate piece of legislation being offered as an amendment to this bill. All three of these amendments are good ideas. As we proceed next week, I may or may not call them up as amendments to this bill to be considered on the floor, but the last, the Master Limited Partnership Parity Act in particular, is a public policy idea worthy of consideration by this body at some point in the months and years ahead.

Let me, in closing, simply say I am grateful we have had the opportunity to return to a vigorous debate about a bipartisan bill that has the very real prospect of saving energy, of creating jobs, of investing in manufacturing and in skills and of growing the economy of the United States in a way that reduces our energy use, makes us less reliant on foreign energy sources, makes less of an impact on our environment, and gives us more hope for the future — a brighter and more optimistic future.

I can think of no better signal this Senate and this Congress can send to the people of the United States than that we take up, consider, and pass many of the bipartisan amendments that have been discussed here today and then finally pass the Shaheen-Portman bill and send it to the House for consideration, passage, and ultimately signature into law.

The people of my home state ask me all the time when will we get back to listening to each other, working together, and passing real bipartisan bills that can help create jobs. This bill will accomplish those goals.

It is my prayer, my hope, we will do that vital work next week when we return.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges confirmation of Samantha Power as U.N. Ambassador

Madam President, this week, our Senate will consider the nomination of Samantha Power to serve as our next Ambassador to the United Nations. In fact, I hope we will be taking it up later today. This is a critical position on our President’s national security and foreign policy team, and I believe Ms. Power’s experience, values, and wise approach to foreign policy will make her a terrific Ambassador.

Throughout her career, she’s displayed a passion for human rights and worked tirelessly to prevent atrocities abroad. From her early days as a journalist to her work in the White House, she’s shown a pragmatic idealism and deep and nuanced understanding of the foreign policy and security challenges we face in this country and around the globe. 

Ours is a complex time and a complex world. And the fabric of global stability is woven of many threads—of democracy, good governance, economic development, health, education, national security, and of course diplomacy. The global challenges of our generation require leaders, leaders capable of seeing each of these threads and appreciating how they connect and how we can weave them together to make a stronger, more vibrant world.

As the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, I’m excited to work with an Ambassador Power to strengthen our friendships and strategic partnerships on that vital continent

And on Israel, it’s clear she believes in our nation’s unbreakable bond with the Jewish state. She’s shown this in her words and actions—especially when she played an under-reported and underappreciated role defending Israel at the U.N. during the Palestinian statehood vote.

Madam President, in closing, it’s clear that in Samantha Power we have a nominee with a keen intellect and a grasp of the complex foreign policy challenges that we face in the world today. She combines a dedication to American values and principles with a pragmatism that will serve us well at the U.N.

I’m proud to vote for her confirmation and urge my colleagues to do the same. 

Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for investment in infrastructure and housing

Madam President, President Obama today is in the Midwest talking to folks about how important it is that Congress returns its focus to our nation’s economic recovery, and I couldn’t agree more. Flustered by filibusters and paralyzed by politics, Washington has gotten off track, and it’s time that that changes. The Senate this week has an opportunity to pass an appropriations bill, and I’m grateful for the leadership of Senator Murray of Washington and the ranking member Senator Collins of Maine in bringing this appropriations bill to the floor.

Now, I’m still pretty new here, relatively speaking, but I’m told it wasn’t an unusual or shocking occurrence back in the day for the two parties to come together to negotiate and pass a bipartisan spending bill. The bill that is in front of us would fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and while I think to most people these agencies aren’t especially related to their daily lives, both are actually fundamentally about investing in our nation and its critical infrastructure. The roads we drive on, the homes we live in, the trains and planes that we ride on, the ports our goods are shipped through. This bill is about infrastructure, Madam President, and we know that when we invest in America’s infrastructure, we’re actually investing in America’s communities and in America’s future.

This bill is about building the infrastructure for the long-term strength and stability of our communities and our country. It is about putting Americans back to work doing it. This bill will put Americans back to work on a wide range of major transportation projects in communities across our country. The programs in this bill have meant an enormous amount to my home state of Delaware, as I know they have to yours, and they can continue to have an important, positive impact on communities all across our nation—but only if we can come together and fund them.

The Tiger Grants program helps state and local governments to pay for new highways and bridges, public transit projects, railways and port infrastructure. It is a competitive, highly sought-after program. For the current fiscal year, the Department of Transportation received nearly 600 applications from across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. $9 billion in requests for just $470 million in available funds. That competition, Madam President, helped focus these resources where they were best leveraged, where they have had the greatest impact, and in my view, our communities need these funds and they need this bill to make this program possible. 

Tiger Grants in Delaware made possible the building of the Newark Regional Transportation Center, which will support 350 high-skill, high-wage construction jobs a year while it’s being built. This new center will give folks in New Castle County new options for public transportation, cutting down on the number of cars on I-95 and our local roads and strengthening the community. Tiger Grants are a core part of our nation’s infrastructure strategy, and they will be at risk if we don’t move this bill forward.

The new Bridges in Critical Corridors program is another critical part of our infrastructure strategy, and I commend Senator Murray for her efforts to ensure that our nation’s bridges are safe. At home in Delaware, one out of five bridges are deemed structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Let me repeat that, Madam President. One out of five of bridges in my little home state of Delaware are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. They may have major defects and need major repairs or may have been built so long ago that they’re not up to current code. Either way, I think you would agree this nation, our constituents, and our communities, need our bridges to work, and work safely.

We also need and rely on our highways. The federal-aid highway program uses the highway trust fund to help state and local governments to plan, to build and to repair our nation’s needed roadways. It is a true federal-state-local partnership and has helped ensure consistent quality and safety standards on highways across our country for nearly a century. I shouldn’t have to explain in this body why having functional roads is important to businesses, to families, or even to the public safety, but I’ll say this – there are more vehicles on the roads year over year than ever before, and part of our responsibility is to make sure those roads work, and work safely.

Another part of our responsibility is to offer our citizens other options to reduce the traffic burden on those roads. This bill also contains two new programs to do just that that I think are worth briefly highlighting. The “New Starts” transit program supports projects to provide new or expanded public transportation services and the Passenger Rail Grants, of particular interest to me, are focused more narrowly on inner city passenger rail services designed to reduce traffic congestion.

How are we going to move this country forward, Madam President, if we can’t move around within this country? As a Congress, we have to do more to strengthen our nation’s infrastructure, and that is a big part of what this bill does.

Now, I recently joined the Appropriations Committee after the passing of a great senior senator, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, who was for many, many years a great and tireless champion of Amtrak. He fought harder than anybody to build Amtrak into what it is today because he saw that with our population steadily growing, we needed to be prepared and to provide reliable, safe, affordable transportation, in particular here in the eastern region. At Senator Lautenberg’s funeral, Vice President Biden said that, and I quote — “If it wasn’t for Frank, Amtrak wouldn’t be what it is today.” He’s right. And of course, our vice president famously rode Amtrak down to Washington every morning and home to Delaware every night that he served as a senator, as I do now. I took the 6:25 down, and I hope, god willing, to be on the 7:00 home. We’ll see. 

Amtrak, Madam President, in this region in particular, isn’t a luxury. It’s a fundamental and critical part of the economy, not just in my home state of Delaware and at least a dozen states on the Atlantic seaboard, but across the country for communities that rely on passenger rail to connect with the nation’s major economic centers. Senator Lautenberg once said if we shut down the Northeast Corridor rail service, you would have to build seven new lanes on I-95 just to carry all the travelers that use these trains every day.

In the last fiscal year, Amtrak achieved a new milestone of 31.2 million riders. In fact, they had record ridership nine out of the last ten years. And Amtrak had an on-time performance. How could we possibly afford to replace this vital service with, as Senator Lautenberg suggested, seven new lanes of interstate running up the entire length of the East Coast? 

Now is not the time, in my view, given all these standards of progress that they have met, to gut Amtrak, as our counterparts in the House seem determined to do. Now is the time to help Amtrak build on its steady gains and continue to grow. Amtrak is a vital part of hundreds of communities across this country, so, in my view, to invest in Amtrak is to invest in those communities and their future.

The other major portion of this bill that we consider today is housing. This is the transportation and housing appropriation bill. As our economy continues to recover, people in communities all across our country are looking to us to help them grow. Housing infrastructure is just as important a part of the foundation of our country and our communities as is transportation.

In low-income neighborhoods, restoring community infrastructure is the foundation for future economic growth. That’s why this bill’s strong investment in CDBG, the Community Development Block Grant Program—one of HUD’s longest running and, in many ways, most successful programs—is so critical. Madam President, as you know, I served as a county executive before joining you here in the United States Senate, and in that role, our local government made efficient, focused, targeted use of CDBG grants to provide housing assistance for low-income seniors, for the disabled, for communities across our county in New Castle County, Delaware. CDBG grants are high-yield investments that work all over this country, that are controlled in many ways at the local level and that enable communities to rehabilitate buildings, streets and sewer systems that literally lay the groundwork for new business growth in vibrant, revitalized communities.

As the hardest hit Americans work tirelessly to get back to work and back on their feet, housing programs also included in this vital bill ensure that they can keep a roof over their heads and that they have the possibility of safe, clean, sanitary and affordable housing in their future.

In Delaware, nearly 4,000 people were homeless in our small state at least once last year, and more than 200 of them were veterans. All over this country, Madam President, I know you and many of our colleagues are concerned about the number of our veterans who fought for us overseas and now face and endure homelessness here at home. For those who have felt the despair, loss, and loneliness of homelessness, and those who live with the fear that they will one day experience it as well, the housing programs funded in this bill are a lifeline, and I would like to particularly thank Senator Murray for her leadership in ensuring that we end the scourge of veteran homelessness in our country.

Homeless Assistance Grants, another key provision in this bill, helped Delaware organizations and organizations all over this country to offer permanent and transitional housing to once-homeless persons while providing services, including job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and childcare. And the HOME Investment Partnerships Program helps to expand the supply and affordability of housing to low-income families and individuals, many of whom, as I mentioned, are elderly or disabled. In my home state of Delaware, a recent grant from the Project Rental Assistance Demonstration Program will create and sustain 170 units of affordable housing over five years for persons with disabilities.

For millions of Americans, and for thousands of Delaware families, the key to a better home lies in good counseling, in homeownership, and in these sorts of investments in a stable, affordable housing market.

Elisa, one of my constituents from Middletown, did not believe she would ever be able to purchase a home for herself and her two children, but a federally funded class called Preparing for Homeownership helped her navigate the housing market and find a home that she could really afford. She is now spending less on her three-bedroom home than she had in her two-bedroom rental, and her children have a backyard of their own for the first time.

If we want families to succeed, if we want children to focus in school, if we want to create communities with safety and stability, moving towards sustainable homeownership is a vital investment by this country in creating and sustaining quality communities. Dedicated organizations like NCALL and Interfaith Community Housing in Delaware have leveraged federal funds such as these to help with mortgages, loan modifications and private capital to put more than 1,000 families each year in Delaware into better housing. Their services include workshops, as I mentioned, foreclosure prevention services and counseling.

Another constituent, Eva from Rehoboth, was in danger of losing her home. When she met with a foreclosure prevention counselor to discuss her personal situation, the counselor helped her to develop a plan to stabilize her finances and to modify her mortgage into a more affordable interest rate. Because of a counseling program funded by this bill, Eva avoided foreclosure and was able to save her home. 

The National Foreclosure Mitigation Program, administered through NeighborWorks, has helped hundreds of households in Delaware to avoid the pain, the loss, and the dislocation of foreclosure. Last year, counselors from NCALL, from First State and from YWCA conducted more than 5,000 homeownership counseling and education activities, including one-on-one counseling appointments, workshops and homebuyer fairs. Funding from this program would allow them to reach even more Delawareans in need in the year ahead.

Madam President, we may have made some progress as a chamber just last week in getting through the executive branch nominations that had been the subject of a number of filibusters and quite a bit of contention, and I was pleased that this bill earned six Republican votes in the Appropriations Committee when taken up and considered. Surely, it can earn enough votes in this full Senate to move forward to debate, to consideration, and I hope to final passage.

It is the challenge of this chamber to listen to each other, to work together, and to provide the vital investments in infrastructure and in housing that ensure a steady recovery and a brighter future. Senator Lautenberg once said that his career in business taught him that if you want to be successful tomorrow, you have to lay the foundation today. That is exactly what this bill does. That’s what we’re voting on, the foundation of tomorrow’s success for America’s families and communities. I earnestly hope we’ll come together to pass this bill to create jobs and to invest in our country’s future, and with that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges support for immigration reform bill

Thank you, Madam President. Yesterday we received some very positive news from the Congressional Budget Office about the expected economic impact of this bill that’s being debated on the floor today, and I think it’s worth repeating. It’s been discussed and debated, but I think it is worth repeating. For the benefit of those that are watching and for the benefit of those of us that are crafting a path forward here, the CBO report details how successful reforms to our immigration system called for in this bill will, in fact, boost our economy—not only in the next ten years, but in the ten years to follow.

Specifically, it details how immigration reform will cut the deficit by nearly $200 billion over the next decade, and then $700 billion in the following decade. CBO projects—over 20 years—nearly a trillion dollars in savings.

Now, while economic growth and deficit reduction are both great things, important for our country, what is particularly interesting and valuable about this bill is that the growth in jobs, according to CBO, will be experienced by Americans all across the country and all along the labor spectrum. The CBO report is consistent with a statement last month from the Social Security Administration that this bill would create over three million jobs in the next ten years. Simply put, Madam President, this is a jobs bill.

The immigration bill before us creates jobs in a number of different ways that I think are worth taking a minute and looking at. First, the bill creates jobs by making needed investments, as you’ve heard at great length today, in border security. The brave men and women who defend our country’s borders will get the support they need to reduce illegal immigration and save lives. Many of these men and women, in fact, will have served honorably previously in our armed forces abroad, and this bill provides a specific opportunity at which our heroes will excel. It also creates jobs by creating and enhancing immigration programs that encourage investment in American companies and in American workers. The permanent authorization of such demonstrated programs as EB-5 and the new Invest Visa, which build upon years of demonstrated success in creating American jobs through targeted investment of foreign capital, is another benefit of this bill.

In the last Congress, I worked with a bipartisan group, Senator Warner, Senator Rubio, and Senator Moran in crafting something called the Start-Up visa, and I’m thrilled that this includes the INVEST visa, quite similar to the Start-Up visa idea, that encourages foreign nationals, with capital, who are entrepreneurs to come to the United States and invest in job growth in our country. New companies create new jobs and the contributions of immigrant entrepreneurs are well known in every corner of this country, including my own home state of Delaware. By encouraging, rather than limiting, immigrant entrepreneurs, this bill will ensure the American Dream remains alive and well for future generations.

This bill would also create jobs in the short-term and the long-term by encouraging companies to invest and grow here in the United States, rather than abroad. It balances the need to attract and retain high-skilled foreign-born individuals, many of whom are currently trained in American universities at public expense, while also ensuring that companies recruit Americans for open positions in high-skilled jobs, typically those that focus in the engineering and science, math and technology areas. The reforms in this bill to our employment-based visa system are long overdue. These reforms do a wide range of things. They clear backlogs. They eliminate per-country caps. They permit so-called dual intent for students. All of these I think are positive for improving the quality and employability of the American workforce. I think we should get this done.

At the same time, the bill makes an important contribution to the health and welfare of American workers by cracking down on unauthorized, illegal employment and bringing workers out of the shadows and into our open economy. I’m particularly happy that this bill includes clear guidance that immigrants authorized to work in this country are able to provide services in all parts of the economy by accessing appropriate licensure standards. This provision will ensure that once legally authorized to work, immigrants who abide by the same laws and safety measures as Americans will be able to bring their full skills and talents into our economy.

For the long-term health of our economy, this bill also contains an important investment in the training of our children. I had the pleasure of working with Senators Hatch, Rubio and Klobuchar on a STEM Fund concept in our immigration innovation bill, and I’m glad to see the inclusion of that STEM Education Fund that will improve the science, technology, engineering, and math education of U.S. national children in schools across this country. At a time when we have to make difficult decisions about how best to cut the deficit and grow the economy, this bill is perhaps the best chance we’ve got at making significant bipartisan progress, while also making our country fairer, more just and more secure.

If I might for another few minutes, Madam President, I’d like to also talk about what it means to make our immigration system more just. America’s earned its place in the world in part because of the immigrants that have come before us, bringing their culture, their passion, their ideas and their skills to our shores. And when I ask Americans what they expect of our immigration system, as we try to fix this badly broken system, they say they want a system that keeps us safe from foreign threats, from terrorism and dangerous individuals. They want a system that protects the American work force and that grows our economy. They want a system that’s fair and transparent and that reflects our most basic values.

It’s clear to me, as it is I suspect to you, Madam President, and many of our colleagues, that our current immigration system just isn’t consistent with our most sacred values. We are failing to resolve legal disputes through a judicial process worthy of our world-renowned justice system, and we are failing to safeguard taxpayer dollars, which we are needlessly wasting with a slow and inefficient, poorly managed immigration legal system. Our immigration system jeopardizes our values and mistreats those who would adopt them as their own. So I think we must act.

Fortunately, this bill before us today better aligns our immigration system with our most basic values. It’s not perfect, but it is a vital and needed step forward. It makes critical progress, for example, in the treatment of children who are forced into our immigration courts. Under our current system, children as young as 8 years old, often with limited English language skills, are forced to stand in front of immigration judges and argue whether they have some basis to remain in our country. These children aren’t represented by counsel, the proceeding is adversarial, the judge is an employee of the same agency as the prosecutor, and this, in my view, doesn’t look anything like America. And in some essential ways, it must change.

By expanding access to representation for children, this bill will not only seek better justice for immigrant children but also help administer cases in a more efficient manner. And in our immigration courts, where immigrants are regularly brought before judges without information central to their own cases, this bill will ensure immigrants have access to their own case files before they appear in court. In our own civil and criminal court systems, this sort of basic information exchange is the bare minimum. This is an improvement that reflects our values by letting people understand the consequences before them when they step into a courtroom.

It’s also a commonsense way to save money by expediting immigration proceedings where dockets are currently backlogged, not just weeks and months, but years. And while immigration courts deal with mounting backlogs, many immigrants remain in detention at enormous cost to taxpayers.

Finally, this bill also proposes a rational detention policy that keeps immigrants who pose a real threat to society in detention, while recognizing the value, the capability of modern technology to provide alternatives to detention when the only concern is appearing for a hearing. Our values tell us that individuals who pose no threat to society don’t belong in protracted detention and technology has allowed us to exercise better alternatives. By addressing the backlog of cases through improvements to the court system and by taking steps towards a more rational detention policy, I believe this bill in its current form will save money while reflecting our shared values.

I do want to draw my colleagues’ attention to one amendment that raises concerns for me on this exact point. It’s number 1203, and Senator Inhofe is the lead sponsor. It would, in my view, essentially require mandatory indefinite detention of those who are currently detained in the American immigration system, for which we can find no country that would accept them. But it offers no pathway, no alternative, no discretion for an immigration judge to choose to use technology to allow immigrants out of detention, while ensuring that they pose no threat to security for our communities. I think this takes away necessary opportunities for immigration judges to exercise discretion as to who belongs in detention for very long periods of time at great public expense. It is my hope my colleagues will act to defeat this amendment.

In closing, Madam President, in my view, it’s critical for the future of our country that we address all of these issues now, and I look forward to the passage of this legislation. When our laws are so inconsistent with our basic values, we should act without delay. And when we have, right in front of us, an opportunity to reduce the deficit and to grow jobs, to make this country safer, stronger, fairer and more prosperous, we should act in a bipartisan and progressive way. With that, thank you, and I yield the floor.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges colleagues to reform America’s broken immigration system

Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the bill that will soon be before us, a bill that will allow us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to tackle the complex challenges facing us in comprehensive immigration reform. Immigrants have always played a central role in America’s history in our economy, in our culture, in our success as a nation. Their importance cannot be overstated. But the system that makes it possible for immigrants to come here and contribute that role is clearly in need of fundamental repair. America’s immigration system today is badly out of sync with our values, and I believe it’s up to us, in the current Congress, to fix it.

The earnest work of the group of eight senators — the so-called ‘Gang of Eight’ — has given us, in my view, a once-in-a-generation opportunity that we must embrace. We cannot squander this moment and allow partisan politics, fear mongering and mischaracterization of the underlying bill to get in the way of what we must accomplish in order to mend the rich fabric of our country and create a predictable pathway for legal immigration going forward.

So, Mr. President, I rise today to reflect on this historic opportunity to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that will make our country stronger, safer and more vibrant for generations to come. The legislation soon to be before this chamber has earned such strong support in large part because it started as a bipartisan effort, with senators from both sides of the aisle and from different regions of the country drawing upon years of their own experience to produce a first draft that confronted a wide array of problems with our badly broken current immigration system. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a strong start. And I’m extraordinarily grateful to the group of these eight senators who put so much time and effort into laying that groundwork.

But in the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley then led a markup, probably the first in my nearly three years here as a senator, a full, robust and historically open markup that achieved its goal of making the bill that comes before us now stronger. They led an open and transparent process. They posted every proposed amendment online before the markup began so that each one could be thoughtfully considered by senators, their staff and outside groups concerned about the bill. The markup lasted five full days across three weeks during which each senator was permitted an unlimited opportunity to speak and offer amendments. This is the regular order of which so many more seasoned senators speak with fondness, something really more characteristic of the Senate’s past than its present.

It led ultimately on the Judiciary Committee to 37 hours of markup debate. A great many of the amendments offered were accepted. Democratic amendments and Republican amendments. More than 300 amendments were filed. More than 200 amendments, if you consider first and second degree, were taken up, considered and disposed of. More than 100 offered by Democrats and by Republicans and ultimately 136 of these amendments were adopted, all but three on a bipartisan basis. The bill was, as you know, ultimately reported out of Committee with a healthy bipartisan vote of 13-5.

Mr. President, I am a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I too, like all of my colleagues, proposed amendments, studied my colleagues’ amendments, debated those amendments and ultimately I voted for this bill. I am proud of what the Committee has accomplished. I’m proud that the bill is coming before us today and it is stronger than the original bill exactly because of the hard work done by the Judiciary Committee and the great leadership of our chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. It is stronger on border security. It is stronger when it comes to efficiency and using         taxpayer dollars well. And it is stronger when it comes to fundamental fairness.

First, on border security, even the first draft of this bill offered by the bipartisan gang of eight contained historic levels of investment in improving border security. The bill’s provisions to require control over the southern border and to mandate employment verification nationwide were already groundbreaking before the markup in Judiciary Committee began. Still, amendments were adopted in Committee that strengthened these measures even further.

And despite the protestations of some that this was a partisan or lopsided markup, let me just briefly detail some that were adopted that I think strengthened this provision of the bill. Senator Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the ranking member, offered an amendment that expands the bill’s border security goals and metrics to cover the entire southern border so that all border communities will benefit from the enhanced security investments made by the bill, not just those that are considered high risk.

Senator Hatch, Republican of Utah, offered an amendment that will mandate biometric exit processing at airports beginning at the 10 largest international airports in the United States and soon thereafter 20 additional airports. The committee also adopted amendments to strengthen background check requirements in the bill, an amendment by Senator Flake of Arizona required those in RPI status to undergo additional security screenings when they apply to renew their status.

An amendment offered by Senator Graham requires additional national security screenings for applicants from countries or regions that pose a national security threat to the United States or that harbor groups deemed to pose a national security threat.

Mr. President, some in this chamber have claimed this bill does not do enough to strengthen the security of our borders. That is simply and clearly not the case. This bill will make our country safer and I believe it will make our country stronger. In terms of efficiency, something we talk about a great deal in the budget climate today, the amendments considered during markup also resulted in substantive changes to the efficiency of our immigration system and the implementation of the changes demanded by this bill.

Already the bill as drafted makes important steps to clear the long backlogs of immigrants waiting for green cards who have already been approved by the Department of Homeland Security. Removing the senseless current per-country caps is one part of the solution I’m proud to see in this bill. One of my adopted amendments will streamline, for example, discovery procedures in immigration court to cut down on the needless cost of responding to each and every discovery request currently done through the less efficient Freedom of Information Act rather than a discovery process more typical in court proceedings.

Senator Grassley offered amendments that require audits of the comprehensive immigration reform trust fund established by the bill and of all entities that receive grants under this bill; these amendments will ensure the significant cost of enhanced border security is spent efficiently and appropriately.

Senators Leahy and Cornyn offered an amendment that gives the Department of Homeland Security flexibility with respect to the fence strategy fund to leverage the best technology at our disposal to achieve that task. The amendment also requires consultation with relevant stakeholders and respect for state and local laws in the implementation of fencing projects.

Democrats and Republicans, coming together, working together, made this bill stronger. We did it in the Judiciary Committee, and we can do it here on the floor of the Senate. Last, Mr. President, America’s immigration system should reflect America’s fundamental values, and right now, in my view, it clearly does not. This bill does make our immigration detention and court systems fairer and more humane, but it does not fix all of the unfairness in our current system. Indeed, there are some painful sacrifices we’ve had to make in this bill, especially when it comes to families being united, families with their siblings or the recognition of mixed status LGBT families in our country who receive no federal protections under this bill.

The Judiciary Committee did make progress in making the bill fairer on some fronts. An amendment from Senator Blumenthal will allow DREAMers serving in the United States military to apply for citizenship on the same terms of those under current law. The committee also adopted an amendment, which I cosponsored with Senator Lee, to ensure individuals are notified when their name receives a nonconfirmation determination or further action notice in the E-Verify system, a protection for vital privacy concerns.

Two of Senator Franken’s amendments will make the E-Verify system fairer for small business by ensuring they won’t be penalized excessively for innocent noncompliance. They will also provide incentive to keep the error rate as low as possible. What we have now before us is a bill that’s been thoroughly vetted, substantially amended and supported by the broadest coalition ever before seen in comprehensive immigration reform efforts. This bill strengthens border security, this bill creates a path to legal status, it strikes the right balance to encourage those here who are undocumented to come out of the shadows, comply with law, pay a fine, pay taxes, and become full participating participants in our national society and restore the primacy of the rule of law.

This bill makes advancements in worker protection. Through enhancement employment verification, we strike at one of the most pervasive problems for American labor– the widespread hiring of undocumented labor at substandard wages and working conditions, and this bill will have immediate and significant benefits for our economy. We should always remember immigration has been and will continue to be a real boon, a lifeblood to our nation’s economy along all points of the labor spectrum.

In addition to bringing millions out of the shadows and welcoming them as full participants in our society and economy, this bill will go a long way towards fixing our current backwards-looking policies toward high-skilled immigrants who want to remain in the United States after receiving their advanced educations here.

Mr. President, in conclusion, I’m proud of what this bill means for our country and what it has shown about our ability in the Senate to work together to advance meaningful changes to improve our nation. There are no perfect laws, but considering just how broken our immigration system is now, it is unquestionably a giant leap forward. I’m confident, if we can continue to work together on the floor here, as we did in the Judiciary Committee, we’ll be able to find more common ground and continue to strengthen this bill in the upcoming weeks. We can make the most of this historic opportunity and finally build a modern immigration system that reflects America’s values and makes our country stronger.

Thank you.

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