Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls on Republicans to end obstruction of highly qualified judicial nominee

Madam President, today this body will have the chance to vote on the nomination of the highly qualified Sri Srinivasan for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. I’m a member of the Judiciary Committee and had the honor — the privilege — of chairing Mr. Srinivasan’s confirmation hearing, and I can say — without question — that he has the background, the skills, and perhaps most importantly, the temperament to serve as a circuit court judge. He is one of the single most qualified judicial nominees I’ve seen in my years in this body, and he deserves better than the games that have been played with this confirmation. He already has bipartisan support. Now let’s work together and give him a strong bipartisan vote.

The Constitution of the United States gives the Senate the responsibility to advise and consent to the President’s nominations for important posts, like the bench of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

And it’s certainly our responsibility to vet candidates — nominees — who come over from the President. We should not serve simply as a rubber stamp, but neither should we be a firewall, unreasonably blocking qualified nominees from service at the highest levels of our government.

Our nation’s courts should be above politics, and when the President submits a highly qualified candidate who is of good character and sound legal mind — as Sri Srinivasan most certainly is — then absent exceptional circumstances, that candidate should be entitled to a vote. 

To this point in President Obama’s administration – nearly 1600 days in, the Senate has failed to live up to its responsibility and to confirm any nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is often called the second most important in the nation, because like the Supreme Court, it handles cases that impact Americans all over the country from all walks of life. 

It regularly hears cases that range very broadly from terrorism and detention to the scope of federal agency power – and yet, is critically understaffed. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has not seen a nominee confirmed since President George W. Bush’s fourth nominee to that court was confirmed in 2006 — seven years ago.

Republicans in this chamber filibustered President Obama’s nominee, Caitlin Halligan, until she ultimately — after hundreds and hundreds of days, across several Congresses — gave up and withdrew. Her opponents said that the caseload of the D.C. Circuit was too low – that it did not deserve another judge. But such concerns about caseload didn’t prevent the Republican-led Senate from confirming two nominees to the tenth seat on the D.C. Circuit and one to the eleventh. 

Mr. Srinivasan stands nominated not for the tenth or eleventh seat, but for the eighth. 

Madam President, we need to confirm Mr. Srinivasan and we need to act quickly on the President’s next nominee to that court, and the one after that.

We have a chance to start fresh with Mr. Srinivasan, who would serve equally well and ably on the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals as might Ms. Halligan.

Mr. Srinivasan has a sharp legal mind. He served in the Solicitor General’s office for both Republican and Democratic administrations, and has earned the bipartisan support of his colleagues.

Twelve former solicitors general — 12 former solicitors general — and principal deputy solicitors general wrote a letter supporting his nomination. Six Republicans. Six Democrats.

The letter, which is signed by conservative legal luminaries such as Paul Clement and Ted Olson, notes Mr. Srinivasan is, “one of the best appellate lawyers in the country.” They commented further in the letter that he has an “unsurpassed” work ethic and that he is, I quote, “extremely well prepared to take on the intellectual rigors of serving as a judge on the D.C. Circuit.”

My point then, Madam President, is this. Sri is a capable — in fact, a highly accomplished attorney — with the character and demeanor to serve admirably on the bench, which has sat without a nominee from the Obama administration for the entire time that our current president has served.

Sri Srinivasan has earned bipartisan support. Now — today — let’s give him a bipartisan vote.

Floor Speech: Welcoming Rabbi Beals as Guest Chaplain

Thank you Leader Reid, and thank you for the opportunity to briefly recognize and celebrate this morning’s Chaplain. Rabbi Michael Beals has served our community in Wilmington, Delaware, and our country admirably, and with a strength of faith and foundation that you heard in this morning’s prayer. He is joined by his wife, Elissa, a caring veterinarian, his daughter, Ariella, whose Bat Mitzvah was just celebrated, and his daughter, Shira, and many, many other family and friends. He has a wonderful and accomplished education, being ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, also having studied at the American University, the University of California – Berkley, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In addition to his remarkable education, he is someone who is profoundly grounded in the calling — in the challenge — of rebuilding. As you heard in his reflection — his prayer — this morning, he is someone who cares deeply for the widow; the orphan; the stranger, and is true to the Biblical calling of us to be witnesses to our communities wherever we might be found. I am grateful to the chance to add his voice to the many who have brought this Senate into session, year in, year out, over the centuries, and I’m grateful for his friendship and his leadership in my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons discusses impact of climate change on Delaware

Mr. President, today is Earth Day, so I wanted to come to the floor and reflect on some of the changes our Earth is experiencing and to talk at some length about how those changes are affecting my home State of Delaware and how the Delaware community is studying, planning, and preparing to deal with these important changes.

The recent National Climate Assessment has said that the last decade in the United States was the hottest on record, and that the last year was the hottest year ever recorded through the U.S. Government. We are waking up to fewer mornings with frost on our windshields, to less snow cover, to warmer oceans and freshwater sources, to more frequent and intense storms, to heat waves, to floods and droughts.

These many changes are affecting human health, agriculture, transportation, our water supply, our ecosystem, wildlife, and many other aspects of our daily lives and our American heritage. On top of all of this, we are seeing higher water levels in our oceans and estuaries, including in and around my home State of Delaware.

Sea level rises essentially for two different reasons. First, as the planet’s ice sheets are melting, they are adding to the amount of water in the ocean. But second, saltwater actually expands as it warms. So as the planet’s average temperature rises, so does the level of its saltwater seas.

The fact that Earth’s oceans are rising each year is not new information. It has been rising for as long as we have been keeping track. What is jarring, though, is that the rate of rise is increasing steadily and significantly.

When the data was tracked between 1870 and 1930, sea level was rising at a rate of just under 4 inches per hundred years. Over the next 60 years, the sea level rose at a doubled rate of 8 inches per hundred years. And then just over the last 20 years, sea level has been rising at a rate of more than 12 inches per hundred years.

The water is rising. For those of us from coastal States, in particular for those in Delaware, it is rising fast. At just 60 feet, Delaware actually has the lowest mean elevation of any State in the United States, already making it more susceptible to sea level rise. But here is the thing. We also have another challenge in that the land itself is also sinking. There is a documented vertical movement of the Earth’s crust underneath the MidAtlantic coast referred to as subsidence. It has been happening in Delaware since the last ice age, at a pace of roughly 2 millimeters every year. I know 2 millimeters does not sound like much, but it adds up to another 4 inches per century.

In total, that means you have got, between the water rising and the land sinking, making climate change and sea level rise specifically a very real issue for my State and for many other coastal States. An array of scientists of many different disciplines and backgrounds has studied this in and outside of the U.S. Government. They have developed three models for future scenarios.

In the most conservative model, by the year 2100, the sea level in Delaware will rise above half a meter or about a foot and a half. In another middle range model, the water in Delaware will rise by a full meter. In the most troubling model, it will rise 1.5 meters or about 5 feet between now and the end of this century. Unfortunately, at present, the scientific consensus, their shared estimate, is this is the most likely model.

Well, let’s try to make that real, as we have in Delaware through a whole series of planning exercises to engage our coastal communities. Here is what these different projections look like in Bowers Beach, DE. It only takes half a meter of sea level rise, shown here, before much of this community close to Dover Air Force Base in Kent County, DE, is underwater a half a meter, the most conservative scenario. By the end of the century, the majority of this community is underwater. At a meter and a half–the most likely scenario in current estimates–the town is virtually gone.

Here is another chart which we shared with our communities in Delaware of sea level rise. It is a look at South Wilmington. The city of Wilmington, where I live, is very close to the Delaware River. It has a whole lot of low-lying areas, this part of the largest city in our State.

As water rises in the Atlantic, it also rises up the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River and the Christina River which runs through most of New Castle County and through this part of Wilmington. The water rises through the Peterson Wildlife Refuge as well. The impacts are devastating.

We are talking about water every day more than half a foot higher than Delaware experienced during Superstorm Sandy. You can see from the conservative to the moderate to the most likely scenario, it floods, it impacts, and it eliminates, wipes out, puts underwater most of South Wilmington.

The calculation of whether we are going to be hit with half a meter, a full meter or a meter and a half of sea level rise comes down to a question of the rate of acceleration of climate change globally. It is also implicated in the question of whether we should be trying to slow the rate at which climate change is affecting our planet and maybe even have some hope of turning the tide. This is the part of climate change policy known as mitigation. Priority one in this strategy is reducing, cutting the emissions we are pumping into our atmosphere that are driving this change. To do it, we need to diversify our energy sources, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Clean energy technology, energy efficiency programs, public transportation, recycling, and many others could help cut down on these emissions. But it will require a global and coordinated effort to avoid or minimize these projected devastating local impacts.

The second part of climate change policy is adaptation. It is based on accepting the reality our climate is changing and that it will have real effects on our planet and our communities. The truth is, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, if we shut down our current powerplants, stopped driving our current automobiles, stopped drilling, using gas-powered equipment on our farms or trains or ships, the amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere would still take decades to dissipate.

Changes in the world’s climate are at this point inevitable. It is already happening and affecting our communities. We can expect these impacts to intensify and accelerate as the climate continues to change. In my view, we need to accept these facts and modify our behavior to prevent these effects from becoming cumulatively catastrophic. We can make better choices now to prevent a disaster later.

In Delaware, for example, we have had two laws on the books for decades that helped us to adapt. The first law, championed in 1971 by then-Republican Governor Russ Peterson, was called the Coastal Zone Act and prohibited future industrial development on a vital swath of coastal land, allowing the State and Federal Government to preserve it and to reduce the impacts of flooding and coastal erosion on these vital wetland areas.

The second law empowered our State to protect and replenish the State’s beaches, including beaches on the Delaware Bay which are so often overlooked. This has allowed the State to build a series of berm-and-dune systems that protect infrastructure and prevent private property from being washed away. Instead of running away from the science, Delaware’s leaders have embraced it. The State agency that manages environmental issues for Delaware is known as DNREC. Under Secretary Collin O’Mara’s able leadership, it has taken the lead on a governmentwide project to assess our State’s vul ner a bil ity to sea level rise and to recommend actions for adaptation.

In fact, Delaware’s Sea Level Rise Advisory Committee, whose report I have here, spent 18 months looking at 79 different Statewide resources, vital entities: roads and bridges, fire stations, schools, tourist hotspots, wetlands, and, of course, our people, their homes, their businesses, and layered them on various maps as I have shown, which demonstrated how far the water would reach at different projected sea levels.

If sea level gets to 1.5 meters, we lose more than 10 percent of our State, the water claims 20,000 residential properties, and significant percentages of the State parks and wetlands, farms, highways, industrial sites, rail lines. In Delaware we could lose 21 miles of rail lines to flooding, effectively shutting down Amtrak’s Northeast corridor. The vital Port of Wilmington would be rendered useless in its current footprint. Nearly all the State’s acreage of protected wetlands would be inundated, destroyed. Nearly three-quarters of the State’s dams, dikes, and levies that we use to hold back the bay would be flooded. It would be simply devastating to our State.

So to those who say: Oh, a few feet of water rising over a century is a modest amount, something we can plan for, something we do not need to be alarmed about, I think this detailed and thorough study demonstrates the devastating consequences to my home State, a State that would lose 11 percent of its territory in the worst-case scenario.

Our own Secretary of Natural Resources Collin O’Mara said:

We are looking at big risks for human health and safety, and not just at the Delaware Bay beaches. We have big concerns about south Wilmington, Delaware City and New Castle. It’s more complex than just the bay beaches or a community here or there.

I believe he is right. So once again, if we remember, we have two basic approaches–adaptation and mitigation. Once Delaware compiled its 200-page vulnerability assessment on sea level rise, the committee got to work on an adaptation strategy to protect our State. They came up with more than 60 options and released them publicly, hosting a whole series of townhall meetings to solicit public opinion before the State decides which strategy to implement.

The committee is also now working on a broader vulnerability assessment to examine the full range of impacts from climate change–even beyond sea level rise–changing temperatures, extreme weather, and changes in precipitation. These are impacts which will affect even more of our neighbors.

Climate change will affect the distribution, abundance and behavior of wildlife, as well as the diversity, structure, and function of our complex ecosystems. We are already seeing changes in natural patterns. Many commercial and recreational fish stocks along the east coast have moved northward 25 to 200 miles over the last 40 years as ocean temperatures have steadily but modestly increased, deeply impacting our fishing industries and our fishing-reliant communities.

Scientists expect migratory species to be strongly affected by climate change since animal migration is closely connected to climatic factors, and migratory species use multiple habitats and resources during their migrations. These changes are impacting the multibillion-dollar waterfowl hunting industry vital to my State. It is an important economic driver to Delaware and a vital part of our heritage.

According to the draft National Climate Assessment released in February, our farmers are expected to adapt relatively well to the changing climate over the next 25 years. However, later, as temperatures increase and precipitation extremes become more intense, crop yields and production of livestock and poultry are expected to decline. More extreme weather events, including droughts and heavy downpours, will further reduce yields, damage soil, stress irrigation water supplies, and increase production costs.

I am proud of my State. I am proud Delaware was the first State to assess its vulnerability and the vulnerability of specific resources in as comprehensive a way as it has. We are determined to confront these changes to our planet head on, protect our own communities, and to protect the way of life we have built. It is an approach which many other States should replicate.

The private sector has a vital role to play, and they are not waiting around for action in this Chamber by the Federal Government. We are already seeing a lot of our companies taking steps on their own to be more sustainable. I see this all the time at home when I visit companies in Delaware, such as Phillips, Kraft, DuPont, Perdue, and Mountaire. This Chamber may still be debating climate change, whether it is real, and what if anything we should do. These companies in communities in our State are reducing their water use, reducing power consumption, slimming their footprint, and finding ways to be energy efficient. They are doing this not only because it is good for the planet, but because it is good for the bottom line. They have learned in measurable ways that reducing their operating costs is good for business and good for the planet.

Frankly, there is only so much the Federal Government can do as far as adapting to climate change. It still plays a very important role, which States and the private sector alone cannot. The Federal Government can ensure States have accurate data on climate trends over the long term on which to base its assessments and calculations; invest in tidal gauges that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, maintains off all of our coasts, which are critical to monitoring sea level rise; and support the satellites overhead which track changing weather patterns.

The Federal Government facilitates technology transfer and information sharing provides technical assistance and guidance to States and regions such as ours and initiates collaboration and coordination among partners, which is essential. From the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, to the CDC’s grant program to help State and local health departments assess risks the Federal Government is doing a lot. Given the scope and the dire consequences, we need to do more.

This President and this administration understand, but what role can and should Congress play? In my view we need to also lead in the area of mitigation, to support the executive branch as they continue to help States with adaptation. We need to invest wisely in our efforts to combat and prepare for climate change.

I have been a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for more than 2 years. We have seen some ambitious plans to do our part in mitigation, many of which I have supported. One proposal was from Senator Bingaman, former chair of the Energy Committee in the last Congress, to adopt a clean energy standard.

It would have set a national goal for clean energy usage and establish a transparent framework that lets resources compete based on how clean they are, and then move out of the way and let the market and American ingenuity determine the best path forward. Sadly, this plan failed to attract any bipartisan support and did not make it out of committee.

Although I am an idealist, I am also a pragmatist. I can read the politics of this Chamber. They are deeply divided on this issue at a time when we need to be coming together. Fortunately, there is bipartisan support for some steps to improve our Nation’s energy efficiency. We could take up and pass the bipartisan bill recently introduced by Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman to increase the use of energy-efficient technologies in residential, commercial, and industrial sectors.

We could level the playing field for financing to help new clean energy technologies get off the ground by giving them access to the same tax advantages currently utilized only by fossil fuel projects. The bipartisan Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act–which I will reintroduce later this week with a bipartisan group of my colleagues, Senators Moran, Stabenow, and Murkowski–would level the playing field for renewables and give these new technologies a fighting chance in the emerging energy market.

As we take these sorts of steps and others, we must also be mindful of the need to reduce our Nation’s dangerous deficits. We also need to ensure we are not taking away the tools we desperately need to prepare for these changes to our planet. This means sustained support for scientific research and protecting the programs which are channeling this vital data to our States.

The bottom line in my view is the climate has already changed. We know this. With this knowledge comes the responsibility to reduce our emissions in order to mitigate the impacts and to prepare for and take action with regard to these coming changes.

Climate change is happening. It is happening right now. While it may have local impacts, it has global causes. We ignore these at our peril. I believe we have a responsibility: a responsibility to God’s creation, a responsibility to each other, a responsibility to our home States, and to future generations. We need to do our very best to slow this process, to help this planet, our only home, to survive.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for protecting our local poultry industry

Madam President, seeing the press of business here, I will be brief, but I wanted to take the opportunity to rise today and simply speak to the importance of the poultry industry, something that spreads across the Delmarva Peninsula, is central to the state of Maryland and the state of Delaware and many other states in our country.

With the sequester having kicked in, many of us who are from states that have livestock or poultry processing are aware of the impending and significant negative impact on our home states and our economies, on people’s employment and on their opportunity to continue to support their families. And so I wanted to briefly speak in support of what I know are Senator Mikulski’s tireless effort to ensure that the 6,200 meat and poultry processing plants in this country do not get needlessly shut down.

In the last quarter of the last calendar year alone, 2.2 billion chickens and turkeys were inspected by the meat inspectors of the Food Safety Inspection Service, and this poultry industry, which is nationwide, provides vital employment to the people of Delaware, of Maryland and many other states. Secretary Vilsack of the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that furloughs, if implemented, of these safety inspectors could cost $10 billion a year in losses and $400 million a year in lost wages just for those directly employed.

The private sector grows and the private sector has opportunity when federal inspectors are a part of the total ecosystem of poultry in this country. We raise great turkeys, we raise great chickens in this country. We have the world leading poultry industry, but the Food Safety and Inspection Service is a vital part of it.

So I commend Senator Mikulski for her tireless effort to make sure that we find some responsible way through the sequester to ensure it doesn’t needlessly harm and put out of work the tens of thousands of Delawareans and Marylanders who rely on this vital industry for their opportunities going forward.

Thank you, Madam President.

I yield the floor.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls on colleagues to find a balanced compromise to avert the sequester

What’s become painfully clear to me this week is that folks here in the United States Congress, folks here in the Senate, aren’t listening to each other anymore, and as we lurch towards our latest fiscal crisis — the looming sequester that takes effect tomorrow — I rise today to speak directly to the folks I work for, my constituents. My fellow Delawareans.  I’d like to continue a conversation that I’ve been having with my neighbors at the train station, in the Acme, outside church, and on the sidelines of my kids’ sporting events consistently since coming here to serve as Delaware’s junior senator.

And I’m focused a bit by a Facebook message I got from Sandi, a neighbor, this morning. It is fairly pointed. She writes, “In 2011 when we spoke, you assured me the sequester was so draconian it would never happen. I feel betrayed by Congress, the Senate, and all of Washington. I trusted you would hold up our end of the deal and now we go to sequestration.  Disappointed is an understatement for how I feel.  Why can’t you get anything done down there?”

To Sandi, to the non-profits in Delaware whose funding is about to get cut, to the civilian workers at Dover Air Force Base who are facing furloughs, to the educators throughout the state who may be laid off and the student who may well be crammed into more crowded classrooms, to the parents of children who won’t receive the vaccines that they need, to all my neighbors who will be abruptly impacted by what Washington has failed to do this week to deal with this sequester… on behalf of the United States Senate, I am frustrated. I am at my wits end. I am embarrassed by our dysfunction here.  I am sorry.

This is simply not how your government is supposed to work.  Our country, as we all know, has a real long-term problem: a national debt now approaching $17 trillion, annual deficits for years of $1 trillion dollars, literally adding to the problem each day we don’t act together.  And while the solution to this problem is not easy, it is relatively obvious.  Including interest savings, I do want to say this at the outset — including interest savings, we have already saved a little less than $2.5 trillion dollars since 2010, but it’s easy to miss since we’ve done it piecemeal through reductions in continuing resolutions, through Budget Control Act, through the recent fiscal cliff deal, I know the general impression all of us get at home is that we lurch from crisis to crisis, and it’s unclear that we’ve made any progress at all, but we have already locked in nearly $2.5 trillion in savings.   

As a member of the Budget Committee, we got to hear from the Simpson-Bowles Commission, the Domenici-Rivlin Commission, a whole series of prominent economists who broadly agreed we need $4 trillion in savings to get our deficits under control and to stabilize our debt as a percentage of our economy. Well, we’ve made about $2.5 trillion in progress. That leaves us about $1.5 trillion, maybe even $2 trillion to go to achieve that target, depending on how you count.  More than 70 percent of the savings we’ve already enacted have come from cuts — overwhelmingly cuts to domestic spending that is critical to the future of our economy.

So I think it’s important as we go forward that we achieve some balance in the remaining component.  This chamber will have to pass a budget resolution this year. That’s what we’re already working towards in the Budget Committee, a meeting of which I just came from.

We must cut spending. We must, in my view, raise revenue and we must reform our entitlement programs.

All of these have some role to play in dealing with these long-term issues. None of these things, though, can solve the problem on their own, and this has been clear for the three years that I have been serving here. Our problem has been we have the vocal part of one party who largely wouldn’t entertain raising any revenue, and the vocal part of another party who largely wouldn’t consider reforming our entitlement programs. And so we’ve lurched from crisis to crisis as we try to force each other to do it on the backs of one piece of our large federal budget.    

To my conservative neighbors or those in the other party: I’m sorry — the numbers — we just can’t do this through cuts in discretionary, non-defense programs alone or through entitlement reforms alone.  We can’t responsibly deal with this deficit and debt just with those two areas. In the last two years, we’ve already made more than $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending cuts. And on the trajectory we’re on now, in the next decade, the percentage these programs make of our total federal government will drop to levels not seen since Dwight Eisenhower was president.  Even as our revenues today are at their lowest as a percentage of our economy in 50 years.

Federal spending done right in the right sectors fuels our long-term competitiveness. I’m talking about investments in education and infrastructure and R&D and basic science and curing diseases and in speeding commerce. They are key to our future. One of our core areas of focus ought to be on how do we create jobs on a pro-growth agenda for our country and by simply focusing on hacking off the domestic discretionary piece of our federal budget, it’s like trying to lift an airplane that’s trying to have, trying to get lift by cutting off one of its engines.  We need to sustain investment in some of these critical areas of the federal budget.

But equally, I’ll say, to my liberal neighbors — to folks in my party — we can’t solve this budget problem just by raising taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. The math just doesn’t work. There’s not enough we can raise there to deal with the whole challenge. And remember, the fiscal cliff deal that we just passed within the last few weeks will bring in another $600 billion in revenue over the next ten years, so we are making progress. We also can’t do it if we simply ignore the poor fiscal health of our long-term entitlement programs either. Last year, Medicare and Medicaid programs, plus interest on the debt, made up almost 30 cents of every dollar the federal government spent. In two decades on our current trajectory, it may be 50 cents of every dollar.

Demographics and steadily rising costs of health care will keep driving this, and we must deal with it. Unless we change course, putting all these things together, productive expenditures that grow our economy — medical research, R&D — will be crowded out.  Progressive priorities like Head Start, low-income housing assistance, breast and cervical cancer screenings — the things that help care for the least among us or that help make us healthier, will be gone.

So in my view, why not take this moment when we still have a Democrat in the White House and Democrats in control of this chamber to make tough choices — while we have historically low interest rates — and fight to preserve the legacy of the earned benefits — Medicare, Medicaid and the vital entitlement programs we treasure. In my view, we can’t simply hope that the cost of our entitlement programs comes down, and we can’t simply tax our way to economic health.  Anyone who tells you that either of these is enough is just wrong.

Spending has to be cut. Entitlements have to be reformed. Revenue needs to be raised. They’re all a part of the problem and they should all be part of the solution.

Somehow, though, when we actually do manage briefly to have a substantive debate on these questions, we tend to spend all of our time focusing on the smallest facet of the federal budget: discretionary spending, but almost no time discussing these others — the rest of the equation — the big drivers. This place has become somewhat of an alternative reality, where if we dig in real hard and people get really scared and we use fancy words like sequester or fiscal cliff, we can ignore the facts.

There’s no question — we do have to reduce spending. But the sequester is the worst way to do it.  When conceived, the sequester was such a bad idea that both sides were supposed to be motivated to move heaven and earth to prevent it from taking effect. That’s how terrible it is as policy. Yet, here we are.

I’m dumbfounded.

It’s not like we haven’t had plenty of time to make this better. Eighteen months by my count.

Why are people talking now in the press here on Capitol Hill about whether Boehner will lose his speakership or whether the first person to suggest the sequester worked in the White House or in the Capitol, whether the Republicans have more to gain by the sequester kicking in or Democrats?  How much time have we been spending here to fix blame rather than fix the problem. “Who owns the sequester” seems to be the fight of the day here. “Who cares,” is my question.  There are no winners in this fight. And I think the question of how we reduce our deficits, stabilize our economy, prioritize spending that will grow jobs, this debate can either dominate the next ten years as we lurch every three months from crisis to crisis or we can address the broader, bigger question and fix it.  And lay a groundwork for health, for growth, for recovery.

Again, the math is not that hard. The politics are.  We here in Congress, with the Executive Branch have largely created this problem, and now we need to solve it. Tomorrow, leaders from this Chamber and the House will go to the White House to meet with President Obama about how to address the sequester on the very day it takes effect.

On behalf of my constituents, on behalf of the teachers, the police officers, the non-profits, the personnel at Dover Air Force Base, the kids, their parents, my neighbors — on behalf of my state — I urge our leaders to embrace this moment and to work not only to avert not only this short-term sequesters — not just this $85 billion in cuts — but to resume their work on the “grand bargain.”

We need a big deal. We need it to be balanced. We need it to be fair.

Spending. Entitlements. Revenue. They all need to be on the table and they all have to be part of the equation.

My question for everyone, everyone, both parties, both chambers, who go to this important meeting at the White House tomorrow: how much more time do we have to fight and not to act? To attack and not compromise, to spin rather than solve? 

Based on the e-mails, the calls, and the contacts I’ve gotten from my constituents — from my neighbors — the time to step up and address this larger problem is now. The sequester, while savage, is not the underlying problem. It’s our unwillingness to come together across parties and chambers and deal with the underlying challenges of our budget. It is my hope, my prayer, that we will take this moment and act.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons reintroduced the Startup Innovation Credit Act

Madam President, each and every day the folks I represent in Delaware ask me why doesn’t the Senate, why doesn’t the Congress focus on jobs? Focus on getting our economy moving again? Instead of what seemed to be endless partisan struggles over secondary issues.

What I wanted to speak to today was a bipartisan bill, which I am introducing, which focuses on how to help create innovation-focused jobs again in the United States.

As you know all too well, Madam President, our economic recovery has been slower than we would hope. Although it has been steady, there are still far too many Americans out of work in my home state of Delaware, more than 30,000, but we are building our way back.

The task before us is to think not just about an immediate economic crisis but to take a breath, I think, and, instead, focus strategically on the long-term future, to take account of what kind of an economy we want to build for our children and our grandchildren for the America of today and tomorrow.

The engine of our nation’s greatest economic successes has always been innovation. From the light bulb to the search engine, American inventors and innovators, those who have taken risks and started companies, have created jobs by the thousands and changed lives by the millions. Before new ideas scale to market and reach out to change the world, they first have to start in a lab or garage.

I know from my own eight years in the private sector, my work with a materials-based science company in Delaware, the products we take for granted that are today household items in the world marketplace, often started as just the sliver of an idea, an idea that needed refining through determined investment in research and development.

If we want to fuel the next generation of innovation, if we want to lay a strong foundation for job creation through invention, I think we have to start by supporting research and development. Research and development is the lifeblood of great American companies and is what will allow us to continue to make things in this country and to be a leading manufacturer in the world, deserves focused investment.

If you look at it, nearly 70 percent of America’s private sector R&D and about 90 percent of our patents are actually in manufacturing, a sector, I think, that deserves particular attention. Revitalizing American manufacturing will create high-quality, middle-class jobs for the long run, but doing so depends on our ability to take great ideas and turn them into marketable products or improvements in manufacturing processes that can and will result in things being made right here in America. Startups and small businesses all across this country are already taking chances to do just that, and, I think, it is time for all of us here in Congress to take a chance on them.

Last year, I worked in a bipartisan way with Senators Enzi and Rubio, Senator Schumer, and others to introduce a bill that would make startup companies eligible for the existing research and development or R&D tax credit. Today, I am proud to reintroduce that legislation as the Startup Innovation Credit Act of 2013 with our original cosponsors, as well as Senators Blunt, Stabenow, and Moran.

This broad bipartisan support, I think, suggests that this is a bill whose time has come. Although we represent, among the cosponsors, very different parts of our country, very different backgrounds, all of us know that to strengthen our economy we have to support innovation and entrepreneurship. Each of us is committed to fostering the kind of environment that supports the private sector and which turns ideas into innovations, innovations into products, and products into companies that help create good jobs.

Under current policy, one way we do that federally is by supporting research and development through the existing R&D tax credit. Companies that invest in R&D generate new products, which sparks new industries with spillover benefits for all kinds of sectors. That’s why there has long been strong bipartisan support for the existing R&D tax credit. By all accounts it’s working. The R&D has helped tens of thousands of American companies succeed and create jobs.

But there is a critical gap in the existing R&D credit. It isn’t available to startups, because they are not yet profitable, and thus they don’t have an income tax liability against which to take a credit. In fact, more than half the R&D credit last year was taken by companies with revenue over $1 billion, well-established, profitable companies. There is nothing wrong with that; it’s just not targeting these tax expenditures toward the sector of our economy that is taking the greatest risk and in some ways has the greatest potential.

This gaping hole in our policy around R&D can be fixed, I think, with a relatively simple tweak. I have been working on finding this solution since I first came here. In fact, the very first bill I introduced included an expanded version of the R&D credit.

Today, we take another step toward seeing this solution implemented with the reintroduction of this bipartisan Startup Innovation Credit Act. It says that in order to spur research and development, we should allow companies to claim the R&D tax credit against their employment taxes, against their W-2 instead of their income tax liability. That opens this credit to new companies who don’t yet have an income tax liability.

There are lots of companies we could point to. Let me pick one example, DeNovix, a small company based in my home state of Delaware is developing instrumentation for bioresearch with a team that includes molecular biologists and engineering professionals.

The managing director of DeNovix, Fred Kielhorn, said the legislation we are introducing would help that company to offset some of the costs of bringing new, innovative, technology-based products to market and for that this bill earned his strong support.

He is just one of many. There is a remarkable list of outside groups, companies, and organizations that have supported it. I will mention a few: Silicon Valley Leadership Group; Revolution, led by Steve Case, founder of AOL; the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce; the Association for Manufacturing Technology; the American Small Manufacturers Coalition; and BIO, a national organization that supports companies doing research and development in the biotechnology space.

Supporting small innovative companies in critical early stages of the research and development, in my view, could unleash untold innovations spur growth, and create new jobs for America for the long run. At its heart, today’s legislation is a jobs bill.

Between 1980 and 2005, all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms five years old or less, all of them, about 40 million jobs over those 25 years. This credit is specifically designed toward those new, young, risk-taking firms. It does not pick winners and losers, it doesn’t focus on a specific area of the economy or technology, but instead supports all private sector investments, judgments, and decisions that prioritize investment in research and development. Cash in the pocket of small startup companies, which can make a real difference, especially with financing and credit so hard to come by.

It was once said the states are the laboratory of democracy. In fact, that is where this idea has come from. Credits just like this have been done before in Iowa, Arizona, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and they have been game changers, helping companies get off the ground and keep their doors open during those demanding first years where they invest and spend so much on hiring and growth.

We know this can work. We also know more than half our current Fortune 500 companies were launched during a recession or a bear market. The next great American company that may redefine whole categories that may be known worldwide for its products, its services, may be starting right now in a garage or lab somewhere in this great country. It is an exciting prospect.

In fact, we are depending on our inventors, our innovators, and our small business owners to help innovate our way to a stronger economy and fuel a new generation of job creation. Let’s give them the support they need and they deserve at a time when they need it the most.

I am grateful for all the cosponsors of this bipartisan legislation in this Chamber and as well to Congressman Gerlach of Pennsylvania and Congressman Kind of Wisconsin, who will introduce the House version of this legislation next week.

Rather than shutting our startups out of the R&D tax credit, let’s open the doors to these innovators and see what they can do. I am confident they will surprise us yet again with how high they can reach and just how far they can go. I think this is a wise investment in opening the doors of innovation, invention, and job creation for our future.

Thank you.

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Floor Colloquy: Senator Coons joins bipartisan call to boost U.S. competitiveness through immigration reform

Mr. President, for decades, the United States enjoyed the commanding advantage of being home to all the world’s top universities, particularly in science and technology, engineering and math in the so-called STEM fields and we were the best place for the graduates of those universities and their advanced science programs to stay and launch a new business, but today that field has changed. And our competitors are vying to provide more supportive environments for innovators, inventions, and start-up companies. There has been a sea change in the field of opportunity back home for those foreign nationals who in increasing numbers are educated in the United States and whom we then force to return to the nation of origin.

So even though many of the most talented young people from around the globe still pour into the United States to obtain their masters or doctoral degrees in STEM, now more than ever they are not just tempted to take their education home with them and start businesses elsewhere, they are attracted by their home countries and forced by our outdated immigration system. What an unwise way to compete in the global economy. Our outdated immigration system hasn’t adapted to the modern world.

Half of all masters and doctoral degrees in STEM fields in American universities are today earned by foreign-born students who then face an uncertain, expensive and unwieldy path to pursuing their dreams in the United States. Our country is hemorrhaging innovations and the inventors who make them, and the jobs that come with them, because America’s immigration laws have failed to keep up with the demands of the modern age. We cannot afford to keep educating the world’s brightest students at our leading universities, which I’ll remind you are subsidized by U.S. tax dollars and American charitable giving, and then telling them they cannot repay those investments by contributing to the U.S. workforce. It’s both bad policy and bad business.

That’s why I’ve been working on this issue, since I arrived to the Senate, introducing three bills and called for the creation of a new class of green cards for immigrants who have earned and advanced STEM degree from an American university. I was especially glad to see that the bipartisan framework released yesterday, by Senators McCain, Schumer, Rubio, and others, which moves us towards comprehensive immigration reform – embraces this vital core premise. 

I also welcome President Obama’s contributions to this discussion and look forward to hearing what he has to say today in Las Vegas. There is indeed broad bipartisan agreement that it’s long past time to reform our immigration system to make room for foreign-born, American-educated experts who want to apply their skills, start businesses, and raise their families here. At the same time, we have to dramatically improve STEM education available to American citizens, to fill this dramatic gap in these fields.

As Senator Hatch said just a few minutes ago, if you take the example of computer science, by 2020 the U.S. economy will need 120,000 men and women who fill these jobs. Yet just 40,000 graduates with degrees in computer science will be Americans. How to fill that gap?    

The bipartisan legislation we introduce today tackles both sides of this problem by reforming our outdated immigration system to allow highly skilled engineers and researchers to stay here rather than leaving and taking their jobs and future opportunities with them and by funneling the hundreds of millions of dollars of fees these experts pay for their green cards back into improving U.S.-based STEM education. It’s a win-win. The Immigration Innovation Act of 2013 will open the door, will recapture unused green cards, and will move away from the outdated model of country caps and overall caps. To better compete with countries like our neighbors to the north in Canada where these caps don’t exist. Microsoft is eager to open a new, massive development facility at our expansive loss. 

One of the most important parts of this legislation, as I mentioned, is that we’re using fees from these newly expanded H-1B visas and green cards to fund state initiatives on STEM. This will keep America at the cutting edge of science and technology and fuel economic growth for this country and generations to come. While each of the coauthors of this legislation have made substantial contributions, I’m especially grateful to Senator Hatch for his leadership.

__________________

I join the Senator from Florida in thanking and recognizing the junior Senator from Florida, Senator Rubio, for his great work on the issues of job creation and innovation through Startup 2.0 and other bills we have worked on together, but also through the comprehensive framework that was released yesterday. The framework released by Senator Schumer and McCain, Senator Rubio, and others, takes the right approach to ensuring that the United States has a modern, efficient, effective and compassionate immigration system.

I was glad to see it addressed as family-based immigration challenges, including creating an expedited path to citizenship for young people brought here as children through no fault of their own, people we rightly call ‘Dreamers.’ While the Immigration Innovation Act we are introducing today recognizes the vital and critical contributions that immigrants have made and will continue to make in highly technical fields, we also must recognize the essential contributions that immigrants make along the entire labor spectrum across the whole breadth of this country, to building this country up in the past and to giving it a brighter future.

As you heard from Senator Klobuchar before, if Team U.S.A. is to play competitively globally, we need the best and brightest contributors to our future. Why would we educate the best inventors and innovators in the world and send many of them back to compete with us from other countries rather than embracing them here and allowing them to invent, to invest, and create companies and jobs here in the United States?

While I am eager to move ahead on family-focused reform, I am equally eager to have us move ahead with reform for STEM degree holders. Comprehensive immigration reform is a necessity for the hard-working people of Delaware and around the country. For those who want nothing more than to play by the rules, build a better life for their children, and contribute to the American Dream.

That is, Mr. President, what any of us would want, the chance to work hard, to see our children grow up happy and healthy with the education and opportunities that make their dreams come true and to contribute to a stronger America. That’s why I am committed to a comprehensive overhaul of our immigration system, one that supports children and families, as well as our economy and our vital technology sector and that welcomes immigrants into the rich fabric of this country, as the United States has done since our founding.

As someone who trained in chemistry, as someone who worked for a high-technology materials-based science company, as someone who met just yesterday with a Delaware company complaining of the challenges that visa caps and limits place on their ability to do research and development and to compete in the global economy, I just want to say I’m grateful for the leadership Senator Hatch and Senator Klobuchar and Senator Rubio have shown in crafting this piece, this vital piece of the total picture of comprehensive immigration reform.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

I rise today as not just the senator from Delaware but also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee to speak to the topic before us of the Convention and whether or not the United States should ratify a Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Our country has long been a global leader in recognizing and protecting the basic rights, the human rights of all people, including those with disabilities and of working hard to be at the forefront of a global movement to improve access to the basic and essential aspects of productive daily life for those with disabilities. Now today we have the opportunity to help extend those rights, the same rights that disabled Americans have to other people around the world. If we have that opportunity, Mr. President, to promote freedom and human rights, why wouldn’t we ensure these protections that apply to Americans, apply to them abroad as well and to others? Some of the nearly one billion fellow citizens of the world who live with disabilities.

This treaty that’s before us today was adopted by the United Nations in 2006 with 153 nations as signatories, and so far 116 as ratifying parties. And it has been six long years that the United States has not joined as a ratifying party. This treaty has passed with strong bipartisan support through the Foreign Relations Committee in a vote we took back in July after hearings, and it’s been nearly six months since that vote. And yet this treaty sadly faces opposition here on the floor of the United States Senate.

This Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was negotiated during the Bush Administration and it enjoys strong bipartisan support and I am proud to join Senators McCain, Barrasso, Moran, Durbin, Harkin, Udall and many others who’ve been advocating for its passage since March.

It would, as has been said, not require any changes to U.S. law and would have no impact on our federal budget. It would instead promote U.S. business interests by creating a level playing field for U.S. companies by equalizing accessibility requirements that foreign businesses must meet, and it would create new markets for innovative U.S. businesses with expertise in standards and technologies that help ease the lives of those with disabilities. And it would, at least as importantly, promote access, mobility, and inclusion for disabled Americans abroad, especially wounded veterans.

And last, but not least, it would protect the rights of families to homeschool their children if they choose to do so, a topic on which my office received many concerned calls from constituents. We heard directly from the Justice Department during our hearing on the Foreign Relations Committee on this Convention that ratification of this treaty will not in any way erode the rights of parents with disabled children to educate their children at home if they so choose.

In short, Mr. President, ratification only benefits the United States and protects Americans. The world has long looked to us as a global leader, as a moral compass, as a defender of freedom and human rights, and in my view, we owe a great debt to many who have served in this chamber before us, Mr. President, including principally among them Senator Bob Dole, who, along with many others, led the initial fight for the ratification of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The least we can do to people with disabilities all around the world is to step up to the plate, to ratify this Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities without delay. And it is my hope that this Senate, in a bipartisan way, can come together in the spirit of unity to protect dignity and human rights for all. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting for the ratification of this most important treaty.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for VAWA reauthorization on 18th anniversary of enactment

I rise today in honor of the 18th anniversary of the signing of the Violence Against Women Act into law.

And as my good friend and colleague, the Senator from California, has just reminded all of us, it is my home state senator, now our vice president, Joe Biden, whose leadership in getting the Violence Against Women Act signed into law in the first place moved us in this country towards a society that is more just, that is more safe, that is more welcoming, and it is in my view incredibly discouraging that we are fighting today here in the Congress a battle that he made such great early progress on and that should have been won decades ago.

Why must we fight, Madam President, in 2012 such a protracted legislative battle to maintain, strengthen and secure the rights of more than half the population of this country, and to extend the lifesaving programs supported by VAWA to those who need them of every background all across our country.

It’s cannot be that it’s because those who oppose VAWA’s reauthorization believe that violence against women is no longer a threat. In my home county, New Castle County, Delaware, earlier this year a man was arrested after a horrifying assault on his ex-girlfriend committed in front of all five of her children.

The victim’s teenage son called 911 in a panic, terrified. This incident, one of, sadly, many in my home community is just another stark example of how domestic violence continues to hurt and harm not just its victims but entire families, not just the women or occasionally men who are the victims of domestic violence but the children who witness it and whose lives are changed by it.

In a world where this sort of violence, Madam President, continues to happen in all our communities we still need the Violence Against Women Act. And we need it to be reauthorized, we need it to be reauthorized and strengthened, we need it to be reauthorized, strengthened, and broadened. It has been a full year, Madam President, since VAWA expired. And still we do not have a reauthorization signed into law.

Reauthorization is a real opportunity one built into the initial act that requires us as a body, the House and Senate together, to sit down and sift through the data and to examine how these programs can be better, stronger, more efficient, more effective. Every five years we have to take a hard look at where we’re failing and where we’re succeeding in this important work against domestic violence, a scourge that lives in the dark throughout our community.

Here in the Senate, we’ve done that work. The House sadly has not. And in my view, we must not let them be a roadblock in the critical progress we’ve been called upon to make.

This is our time to make the necessary changes to improve VAWA and to reauthorize it and we will not back down.

In this year’s reauthorization we had a number of critical changes, positive changes, and two that are particularly important to me. First, ensuring every victim of abuse in this country is able to count on the law to protect them regardless of who they are, where they live or whom they love. And second, ensuring that we reduce bureaucracies and strengthen accountability to ensure taxpayer dollars authorized through VAWA are spent wisely and responsibly and effectively.

The Senate reauthorization moves us forward by adding protections for victims of domestic violence regardless of their sexual orientation. The reality is, Madam President, as we learned in reexamining VAWA in the experience of the last five years, sadly the reality is lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans experienced domestic violence at the same percentage as relationships in the general population, a shocking 25 to 35 percent of all relationships. Yet nearly half of LGBTQ victims are turned away from domestic violence shelters and a quarter are unjustly arrested as if they were the perpetrators. The Senate reauthorization makes plain that discrimination is not the policy of these United States. It says no program funded by federal VAWA dollars can turn away a domestic violence victim because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity, whether the victim is gay or straight, American Indian, white, black or Latino, in my view, Madam President, and in the view of so many in this chamber, they deserve protection from abuse and justice for their abusers.     

There are two other important changes in this VAWA reauthorization as passed through the Senate. Both of which help ensure we bring perpetrators to justice no matter who their victims are or where their crimes are committed. These provisions support victims of crimes committed on tribal lands and help law enforcement to secure needed testimony from victims who are unwilling to come forward due to reasonable fears of deportation. So in total, all three of these important changes to the substance and scope of VAWA I think strengthen it, I think carry forward its initial spirit and I think are completely appropriate things for this Senate and the House to do in our every five year reconsideration and reauthorization of VAWA.

It is important to remember, Madam President, that VAWA goes beyond against basic justice for our fellow citizens. It supports the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes. Delaying this reauthorization means denying essential tools to law enforcement officers in my home state of Delaware, in your home state of North Carolina and all across our country. As someone who used to be directly responsible for a county police department that worked in close partnership with all the different elements, all the different nonprofit groups and civic and community groups, all the elements from corrections to law enforcement to advocates to providers of services that are brought together in a positive and cohesive way by VAWA. I know how important this is to a holistic approach to combating domestic violence.

If we are to tackle a problem this large, this pervasive, this dangerous, we need well-trained and dedicated law enforcement officers. We also need support from a whole community to provide the whole broad range of services that can continue to make progress in pressing back on this evil in our country.

In Delaware, that’s exactly what we’ve done. In Delaware, VAWA has fostered a community of those dedicated to reducing violence, allowing each group to reinforce the other and adding value that individual programs alone could not create. VAWA touches on everything from transitional housing to national hotlines, from the safe exchange of children, to increased awareness on college campuses, from law enforcement grants in rural communities to sexual assault service programs in urban communities not only for women, for men, for children, for whole families and whole communities.

VAWA is an important piece of legislation. And that it sits unauthorized in the other chamber of this

Congress is to me a great shame and a great tragedy. We must not allow this anniversary of its initial signing into law to pass without redoubling our efforts and redoubling our commitment. My colleagues who oppose this reauthorization put all this progress at risk. Their insistence on excluding some of our friends and neighbors, just because of their background or their sexual orientation, is unconscionable. We will keep fighting to secure VAWA reauthorization this year because the safety of our communities depends on it and simple justice calls for it.

Thank you, Madam President.

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Floor Speech: Disclosure of corporate money and sup

Mr. President, I rise today to join the chorus of voices from our caucus who have tonight spoken to the value, to the importance of transparency in elections. Transparency, as we all know, is critical for free and fair elections and for democracy to function, because the people of this country–the voters, the constituents, those whom we serve and those who hire and fire all who serve them at Federal and State and local offices–need to know who they represent, who is funding their campaigns, what goals they will pursue in office, and whether the ends serve their interests. Tonight, as the Presiding Officer knows all too well, colleagues have joined to speak in support of the DISCLOSE Act–a bill that would make important progress toward clearing away the clouds that have been laid on the face of the American body public because of the decision of Citizens United.

The integrity and the fairness of our elections is at the very heart of American democracy. It is in some ways the proudest legacy of our Founding Fathers and, in my view, a beacon to the rest of the world. A difficult, a regular part of modern electioneering, of modern campaigns, is campaign ads. In fact, many of us spend a huge amount of our time raising the money and delivering the content to connect with our constituents through television. I am blessed to represent a small state–roughly 800,000 souls–so we actually get to campaign door to door, to go door-knocking, to meet people in person in my State. But, still, television ads play a very important part. In other larger States, folks will often never even meet in person the candidates for offices in the House and in the Senate or for President, and television ads there dominate the whole campaign election process. No one likes campaign ads, but they are a part of our politics, and an effective and, sadly, a powerful part as well.

For most of our modern political history, voters at least knew who the ads were coming from–the candidates and the parties that supported them–and could make judgments accordingly. If someone thought an add was too nasty, they could vote against the candidate who ran it. That is the whole point, forcing us as candidates to own our ads, to say, “I am Chris Coons and I approved this ad.” We all know as candidates who have stood before our electorate how it feels to put our personal name, our face, to an ad that might be hitting a little too hard, and that pulls us back from sometimes overreaching.

But what we are here to talk about tonight is the whole new world that has been unleashed by a Supreme Court decision. In my view, the basic right of every American to free and fair elections has been compromised by a new flood of tens of hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy individuals, from corporations, from shadowy national special interest groups, since the Supreme Court, through Citizens United, opened these floodgates to unlimited secret campaign activities, threatening to overwhelm the fundamental trust of our constituents and the transparency so essential to our democracy.

As a lawyer, Citizens United was one of the most surprising Supreme Court decisions of my life, because it radically upended settled constitutional understanding as well as bipartisan agreement that had been reached here in the Senate regarding appropriate limitations on corporate speech. When the McCain-Feingold law passed in 2002, 6 years prior, it showed a strong bipartisan intent to rein in corporate spending, to rein in and manage spending by interests of all kinds in politics. That is why I was shocked when, in the opinion in Citizens United, it was joined by the so-called “originalist” or “strict constructionist” members of the Court. The originalist mode of interpretation of the Constitution attacks every question by asking a common question: Would the Framers have thought the action or law being challenged before the Supreme Court is constitutional?

That is why, if one had asked me in 2008, looking at Citizens United and at the issues presented to the Court, whether an originalist interpreting the first amendment would have found the corporate electioneering regulations this body had adopted in McCain-Feingold to be valid, it seems to me there was only one possible answer, and that was yes.

Our Founding Fathers recognized corporations are creatures not endowed, as the rest of us are, with inalienable rights. They are, rather, fictional, legal creatures–creatures of legislative grace. Were this not the case, the corporation by the name of Citizens United–the corporation that was at issue in this decision–wouldn’t have stopped at simply making a movie attacking Hillary Clinton, but would have actually cast a vote against Hillary Clinton. Of course, it couldn’t. Corporations don’t have bad hair days; corporations don’t have tasteless ties; corporations don’t have moods and opinions. Corporations are not people. They exist as people only in legal fiction.

I would note the first amendment states: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” If freedom of speech included fictional entities, nonhuman entities such as corporations, there would have been no reason to separately affirm that the press also enjoyed that freedom granted to real, living, breathing individuals. In my view, then, Citizens United was wrongly decided.

As shown through a long line of legislative and judicial interpretation, a view of corporations as having first amendment rights that are limited, and can and should be limited more than can be limited for real, living, breathing individuals, has remained the dominant one throughout our modern history.

In 1907, the Tillman Act prohibited campaign contributions by corporations. In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act prohibited expenditures and the application of this law further. It was upheld by the Court in 1957 in U.S. v. Automobile Workers. When the Supreme Court first made the leap from the expenditure/contribution distinction in Buckley v. Valeo in 1971, even then it left intact the longstanding distinction between the first amendment rights of living, breathing individuals and corporations–legal fictional entities.

In the 1982 case of FEC v. National Right to Work Committee, Justice Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous Court that it was proper to treat corporations more restrictively than people. Oh, how I wish that were the majority opinion of the Court today.

The further analysis in 1986 in FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, though striking down restrictions on speech by a pro-life organization, actually underscored the original understanding that when the Constitution protects corporate speech, it only does so as a proxy for the underlying free speech rights of real, living, breathing individuals. In that case, a nonprofit organized and funded specifically for the purpose of bringing about a political goal–pro-life policies–was seen as having free speech rights only because of the rights of those individuals who funded it and organized it. When we talk about a corporation’s first amendment rights, then, we should be using shorthand for the first amendment rights of those who are its shareholders or who own it or who control it.

The corporate/individual distinction was even again affirmed as recently as 1990 in the Austin case.

The constitutional history of limitations on corporate speech was so clear that the Supreme Court had upheld the McCain-Feingold Act in 2003, just 6 years before they struck it down. What possibly could have changed in those intervening years that would be so convincing to an originalist mindset? I don’t know. In my view, this decision did not make sense. But I do know that campaign finance, which was a bipartisan issue in this Chamber in 2003, where Senator Feingold and Senator McCain, a Democrat and a Republican, led a strong bipartisan coalition to rein in the negative influence of special interest money–that has changed. That has shifted to today, sadly, a starkly partisan issue.

As we have seen today, Senator after Senator of the other party has risen to speak about lots of issues, but none has addressed head-on why disclosure is no longer in the best interests of our citizens, why transparency is no longer essential to democracy. Yet Democrat after Democrat, Senator after Senator from my side of the aisle, has risen to stand firmly with those organized by Senator Whitehouse who has led so ably this discourse on the floor today, who view the DISCLOSE Act not as curing the errors of Citizens United but as striking one important blow, to ripping the cover off the millions of dollars in secret contributions that today I think threaten to swamp our electoral ship.

If the Citizens United case has tilted elections toward those with the money to buy them, the DISCLOSE Act is to me an opportunity to level the playing field a little bit. Instead of with money, it arms voters with information.

The DISCLOSE Act does just what its name suggests: It requires disclosure. It requires any covered organization, including unions, corporations, and super PACs, which spends $10,000 or more on certain campaign activities to promptly file a report with the FEC–to file a report with the Federal Election Commission–within 24 hours. This brings some measure of fairness and transparency back to our elections so voters can make informed decisions instead of simply being pushed and prodded and ultimately duped by a flood of negative ads.

I am confident it does not restrict or limit free speech of any kind. This bill simply allows voters–those who are in the driver’s seat or should be in our system, those who hire and fire us–to see who is spending money to influence their decision at the ballot box.

The DISCLOSE Act imposes the minimum possible burden on organizations spending vast amounts of money on elections, while still requiring the kind of prompt and timely disclosure voters deserve and expect in this electronic, in this digital age, where the ads that flood the airwaves, that push for a decision, happen so close to an election that it is important to have disclosure real time.

We voted on the DISCLOSE Act earlier tonight, but my colleagues across the aisle lined up in lockstep against it. Sadly, every Member of the other party voted against it. What is so wrong with voters having information about who is trying to influence their vote? Why is this basic information so important to hide from the American people? Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be expedited, should be swift, should be available so voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate.

I could not agree more. I agreed when the esteemed Republican leader said those exact words in 1997, and I agree with them today. “Disclosure” he said, “is the best disinfectant.” 

Earlier today I had the honor of presiding, as you do now, Mr. President, and I got to listen to the Republican minority leader speak against disclosure. There are many other issues to which we can and should turn. There are many other important issues before our country, and he raised them all in turn. But the thing I had the hardest time with was his leading the other caucus, one after the other, to speak against, to vote against disclosure–something he himself, the Republican leader, spoke so forcefully in favor of as recently as 1997: “Disclosure is the best disinfectant.” Back then, the talking points for the other caucus were: Spend all you want. There should be no limits on campaign contributions as long as there is disclosure. Disclosure will keep things open and fair.

Sadly, today, even that small measure of rationality has been openly abandoned. Voters in my home State do not want secret spending clouding the legitimacy of our elections. They want to exercise this most basic American right out in the sunshine–with knowledge, with information about who backs whom–just as, I believe, our Founders intended.

Let’s face it, folks. These super PACs are not raising hundreds of millions of dollars to run campaign ads that are updates on the latest sports scores; that are filled with YouTube videos of sneezing pandas or yawning kittens. These super PACs are gearing up to run the most negative possible campaign ads–the sorts of ads that can change hearts and minds because they have no accountability, because they have no one’s name at the bottom line, because they feel free and are free to make the nastiest and most unfounded personal attacks.

Four years ago, at this point in the campaign cycle, just 9 percent–9 percent–of the political ads on TV were negative, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which has scored ads by their negativity or positivity. Just 9 percent.

What do you think that number is this year? At this stage, this still early stage in campaigning, 70 percent. Seventy percent of the ads have been negative, and it is only July. It is not even August.

At the same point in 2008, 3 percent for the ads came from outside groups like super PACs. This year, 60 percent have been paid by outside groups. Campaigns themselves have inevitably, as a result, taken on a more negative tone, a more caustic aspect. There is no doubt in my mind that the primary mission of most super PACs is to fund the sorts of ads that destroy candidates and campaigns, that tear them down, that contribute to the steady pollution and degradation of our political discourse. They are raising money to buy television ads that assault the fame and destroy the candidates they do not like.

This same study from the Wesleyan Media Project bears that out. It found that 86 percent of the ads the super PACs and interest groups have run during this cycle have been negative. Is there any wonder then that our campaigns, our politics, our culture has become more steadily divisive and on this floor more consistently divided?

There are no centrist super PACs. There are no (c)(4)s that are determined to fund a message about bringing America together. These super PACs are designed to divide us, and they are doing a great job.

At the end of the day, one of the questions we have to have for the citizens of America is, what does this mean for you? What does it mean to have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into negative ads, driving the outcome of elections at the State and Federal level that simply divide us? It means more partisanship. It means more rancor. It means less progress. It means fewer problems solved.

If the intentions of these super PACs, of these special (c)(4)s, were so positive, then why would they need to hide whom they were supporting? Why would they need to conceal the purposes of the ads they support?

Let me, if I might for a few moments, respond to some things I heard earlier today from Republicans while I was presiding and while I was watching in my office.

One of my Republican colleagues earlier today claimed the DISCLOSE Act does not apply to labor unions and suggested that this was a big wet kiss to organized labor from my side of the aisle. This suggestion was made by several in leadership. It is a ludicrous claim. Every provision in the DISCLOSE Act applies equally to covered organizations, corporations, business associations, membership organizations, and unions.

Why have a $10,000 threshold? To reduce the burden on all membership organizations of all kinds; the $10,000 threshold is enough to cover 93 percent of the money raised by these super PACs and thus does not needlessly burden national membership organizations, with thousands of members who contribute $25 or $50 or $100.

It is these handful of folks, who are contributing huge amounts of money, whose contributions we hope to expose to the sunshine, to make positive contributions to allowing voters to know who is contributing to whom and why.

One other thought I want to add to tonight’s debate is, as the Africa Subcommittee chair on the Foreign Relations Committee, I often have the opportunity to hear from and meet with legislators and heads of state from Africa who come to meet with us here in Washington. They come to the United States to listen to us and to hear from us how our democracy functions, because for much of the world we are considered the gold standard of how to run free, fair, and open elections, of how to deliberate as an open and positive body, of how to be accountable to and serve the people of the United States.

We already have some challenges making progress, listening to each other, and getting past the partisan divide. But if we already have challenges, if the folks listening wonder whether the Senate of the United States listens to our citizens enough, just wait until another billion dollars of secretive special interest money pours into our campaigns.

In my view, one of the things we can hold up to the rest of the world is that we have clean, fair elections. This decision by this Supreme Court, in Citizens United, threatens that at its very core. This flood of money suggests that what is our greatest accomplishment in many ways as a nation is at very real risk. We cannot, in my view, lose the moral high ground of being a country that has fought so hard for so long to be a place where every person–every real person–has an equal vote and an equal right to be heard.

The unfortunate reality is we are not going to be able to amend the Constitution to repeal the Citizens United decision this year. I wish we could. But it is not going to happen on that timeline. As we saw earlier today, this Senate is apparently not even willing to require the slightest bit of transparency and accountability by passing the DISCLOSE Act, as we should. Maybe we will get the votes tomorrow. Maybe after listening to this tonight, after hearing from us, our constituents will be moved to contact other Members of this body.

But I am concerned. I am concerned that the Congress is not going to be able to stem the massive influx of cash into our elections this year or this cycle. It may, in fact, be too late for that. There is a reason campaigns and super PACs fund these negative ads. They work. They are designed to go around your head and target your heart. They move you to vote on what you are afraid of, not what you aspire to. And they can be so highly effective.

I do not like negative ads. The Presiding Officer does not like negative ads. Our citizens and our constituents do not like negative ads. We still have a choice, though. We may not yet be able to amend the Constitution. We may not be able to persuade the other side to pass the DISCLOSE Act this time. But we can allow ourselves instead to say, we will not listen to these craven, destructive ads. We can change the channel. We can ignore the ads. We can learn about candidates and their records. We can vote from a place of power instead of fear. Each and every one of us, each and every citizen, can be more powerful than the Supreme Court, can be more powerful than the billionaires and corporations who are trying to sway our votes by deciding to be better with our politics, by deciding to listen past the smear campaigns and the negative attacks.

It is my hope we will be able someday to pass the DISCLOSE Act and to amend the Constitution. But until then, I am left with this: With the encouragement of my colleagues, with confidence in our citizens, and with optimism that somehow through this smear campaign of super PAC ads the truth of the American system will still be shown to the world.

Thank you. With that, I yield the floor.