Floor Colloquy: Senators Coons, Alexander discuss new bill to keep foreign-born U.S. grad students here to create jobs

Senator Coons: Thank you so much, Senator Alexander. I can’t think, Mr. President, of a better person to partner with, to seek advice, guidance, and leadership from on the issue of stem education and immigration reform than Senator Alexander, a national leader on education policy. Like me, Senator Alexander is the son of a former classroom teacher, but he also served as the U.S. Secretary of Education and president of a prominent university, University of Tennessee.

So he knows firsthand the challenges of the opportunity lost when tens of thousands of foreign nationals who come here and seek the opportunity to get STEM masters and doctoral degrees in some of our strongest and best universities, are then forced to return home to their nations of origin rather than being able to stay here if they choose, to create jobs, to grow businesses and to contribute to our country and our economy.

And as someone who before running for public office worked with a highly innovative materials-based science company that employed over 1,000 researchers, I too have a sense of what a great contribution immigrants have always made to this country, but particularly in these areas of innovation and how they can contribute to our competitiveness.

Senator Alexander’s closing comment about the America COMPETES Act is where we started this conversation. I came to this Senate knowing that my predecessor from Delaware, Senator Kaufman, had been a strong supporter of the America COMPETES Act. One of the few engineers to serve in the modern Senate and I was happy to take up the cause and to press for its reauthorization in the waning days of the 111th Congress.

I met with Senator Alexander last year and we talked about this as one of the most promising unfinished pieces of business in that critical report, Rising Above The Gathering Storm and in that vital piece of legislation, the America COMPETES Act.

As Senator Alexander referenced, the America COMPETES Act was passed with strong bipartisan support. It was the sort of thing that was focused on moving America forward by identifying strong ideas that had support across the whole country and a lot of different sectors and from both parties. And it’s my hope that this is the beginning of building a strong bipartisan coalition on moving forward on immigration reform.

Let me talk for a minute, if I could, Mr. President, about our history and tradition of immigrants contributing to our country being a strong part of job creation and growth here, and in particular immigrants who come to this country to be educated in STEM disciplines, science, technology, engineering and math.

If you think about it for most of the last century we had some of the strongest universities in the world. For much of the last 50 years, anyone who came here from a foreign land to get a doctorate in a STEM discipline, if they chose to go home, they were going home to a country that really wasn’t a competitive environment. The United States, because of our advantages and workforce and infrastructure and our legal system, our entrepreneurial culture, our capital markets, we were the world leaders in all sorts of technology, innovation and competitiveness. That’s no longer the case. We still have the strongest universities in the world – 35 out of top 50 – but today those 17,000 STEM doctoral and masters graduates Senator Alexander referred to, when we force them to go home to their country of origin rather than allowing them to compete for those jobs here and contribute to the American economy, they’re finding open arms.

So nations like India and China, who are vigorous competitors in the global economy, they’re providing the capital markets, the infrastructure and the workforce, the resources to take advantage of those opportunities. We need an immigration system that responds to the modern economy and the opportunities of a highly competitive modern world. Rather than hemorrhaging these highly skilled folks and having them return home, we should give them the opportunity to participate in being job creators here. 

The numbers bear this out, Mr. President. If you take a look at the Fortune 500 companies, today more than 40% of them were founded by immigrants or their children. Folks who have come to this country, recently, from other parts of the world have established companies that employ more than 10 million people worldwide and have combined revenues of more than $4 trillion, a figure greater than the G.D.P. of every country in the world except for the U.S., China and Japan. Immigrant-founded start-up companies created 450,000 jobs in the United States in the last decade and generated more than $50 billion in sales.

Let me give you one example that’s meant a lot to me: I’ve become friends, recently, with the C.E.O. of Bloom Energy. His name is KR Sridhar. In his native India, he got his undergraduate degree. He came to the United States to get his doctorate in mechanical engineering and went on to be a researcher at NASA’s Ames Center and made a critical invention in solid oxide fuel cells.

He runs a company, Bloom Energy, that has already created a thousand jobs. Just last week, the Governor of Delaware and my senior Senator Tom Carper, and I joined many others at the site of a shuttered former Chrysler plant for the groundbreaking of a new manufacturing facility that Bloom Energy will make possible.

Why would we want a capable, bright contributor to our economy like KR to be forced to go home to his country of India, rather than welcoming him here and giving him the chance to participate, contribute and potentially become not just an American business leader but American citizen?

So we need to make it easier for the next generation of inventors and innovators to create jobs here. This bill, as Senator Alexander has laid out, is relatively simple. It creates a new class of visas for foreign students to pursue STEM masters and doctoral degree programs and allows us to continue a conversation about how do we recognize the long-standing central contribution to our economy, or culture and our country of immigrants.

I believe there’s other areas of immigration reform that have to be on the table that we have to move forward on. I am eager to move forward on family-focused reform and other areas, as well where I’m a cosponsor of other immigration bills.

But my hope is that this legislation will get the attention it deserves, will get the broad support from members of both sides of the aisle that it deserves and that it will form part of a compromise that will address the needs of all the stakeholders in immigration reform in a responsible and balanced manner.

This legislation is not the end of the road but it is a critical step forward in making sure that we continue a bipartisan, thoughtful and constructive dialogue on how do we deal with an immigration system that’s broken and that doesn’t make America as competitive as it could be.

I want to close by thanking Senator Alexander for his leadership on this, for allowing me to work with him and produce a bill that is streamlined, that is simple, that is accessible and can contribute to making America a land that continues to welcome and celebrate the real job creators: inventors and innovators from all parts of the world.

Senator Alexander.

Senator Alexander: Senator Coons is one of the most eloquent speakers that we have in the Senate. He did a beautiful job explaining the bill and I hope it attracts from both Democrats and Republicans. He mentioned the fact there are other immigration issues, and there are. There are a number of ones that I would like to work on. And get something done on. I was here when we tried a comprehensive immigration plan a few years ago. It had strong bipartisan support, but one of the lessons we learned, I think, in that effort was that we don’t do comprehensive well here in the Senate.

Sometimes it’s better to go step by step. That’s been true for a long time. We remember Henry Clay as the Great Compromiser but Henry Clay’s greatest compromise wasn’t passed by Henry Clay. He failed. And it nearly ruined his health and he went to Massachusetts to recover from it. And a senator named Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois, the home of our assistant Democratic leader, came to the floor and introduced the Clay compromise section by section, and each section passed with a different coalition – with Senator Sam Houston being the only senator who voted for each one of them.

So my hope is that with the broad support that we have for this very simple idea, pin a green card on the lapel of a gifted graduate of an advanced program in science, technology, engineering, and math, allow them to stay here and create jobs here instead of forcing them to go home, I hope that we have such strong support for this idea, that we can go ahead and pass it and then we can follow that up with the other necessary steps that we need to do on immigration and hopefully we can do that with a coalition that represents Democrats and Republicans, as well.

So this is a great idea, and somebody might say why don’t they just do it the way we’re doing it now. Right now it’s H1B visas. As everyone knows, who is an employer, they’re complicated, they’re burdensome, there is not enough of them. This is simple. It’s a new visa, you get it if you’re admitted, you get to stay 12 months while you look for a job, you get a job, you get a green card and there’s no cap on the number.

That’s the idea and I thank Senator Coons for his leadership. I look forward to turning this good idea, this piece of unfinished business in the bipartisan America COMPETES Act, into law.

Senator Coons: Thank you, Senator Alexander. I might in closing say the economics of this legislation are simple but as Senator Alexander and I recognized, any step towards immigration reform is complicated. Making it easier for foreign-born American-educated innovators to stay in the United States is just one aspect of many of the urgently needed steps to reform our outdated immigration system.

I see Senator Durbin has come to the floor. I’m proud to cosponsor with him the DREAM Act, I also support the Uniting American Families Act. There are other pieces of legislation essential to allow to us to recognize and strengthen the role that immigrants play in the fabric of our country, but I think this opportunity today to move forward a bipartisan bill that focuses on this one area without caps, with a new class of immigration visa, is an important contribution to moving this discussion forward for all of us.

I want to thank Senator Alexander for his leadership.

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Floor Speech: A research and development tax credit for innovative small businesses

Mr. President, last week President Obama unveiled his Startup America Legislative Agenda. It marked the one-year anniversary of his Startup America initiative, an ambitious, impressive, energetic national effort led by, among others, legendary innovator and entrepreneur Steve Case, the founder of AOL.

It was a strategy that focused on how the federal government can best help young companies and, in particular, entrepreneurs, all over this country get into the game of starting and growing businesses.

It’s smart and it’s important. Entrepreneurs are driving our economic recovery and will drive our economic recovery into the future. They are taking the risk personally to turn their ideas into startup companies in fields from biotech and clean energy to manufacturing. Among these innovators could be the next American giant, a General Electric or a DuPont, but in order for these startup companies to grow, we have to support them in their critical early stages.

So Mr. President, today I take that as our challenge.

Whenever I visit a factory in Delaware, or meet with a young owner of a company he’s just started, I ask the same question: how can we best help you to grow?

Small business, it’s often said, is the engine of job creation in this country. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, small firms created 65 percent of the new jobs in this country. But I want us to particularly focus on those small businesses that have enormous potential, so called “gazelle” startups — those that grow not from five to 10 or five to 20 employees, but from five to 50 to 500 to 5,000.

Whether it’s Facebook or other startups that have gone from literally bench-top or dorm rooms to being employers of thousands or tens of thousands, our economy has grown dramatically because of these rapidly growing innovative startups. Typically, they are startups that focus on a disruptive technology or product, something that fundamentally changes a whole sector of our marketplace. And they have the most promising potential for job creation. Between 1980 and 2005, most of the net new jobs in America were created by firms that were five years old or less – that’s about 40 million jobs over those 25 years. 

This summer, I hosted in Delaware a series of roundtables with business owners. The focus of these conversations was on how we can help their businesses grow and grow quickly. A lot of these businesses were young, innovative companies. They have a great idea and a good start on their research, but I often found, particularly in this economy they are struggling to capitalize on their innovations.

Innovation is the spark that drives and sustains entrepreneurship — particularly entrepreneurship in disruptive technologies — but it is research and development that drives that innovation. The government only has so many tools we can use to help promote innovation, and today I want to talk about a piece of the tax code that is one of the most powerful tools in our toolbox.

Thirty years ago, Congress created the Research and Development Tax Credit (or the R&D Tax Credit) to help incentivize companies to invest in innovation — to invest in the people who are doing the research and the development that drives innovation. In fact, 70 percent of R&D qualified expenses today are for wages. So in many ways, it is an innovative jobs credit.

It has helped tens of thousands of companies and has been extremely successful at getting companies to invest in innovation. It has one key weakness – it expires. It expires all too often. It has, in fact, expired eight times and been extended 13 times, and it has most recently expired in December of last year.

The first bill I introduced as a Senator last April was entitled the Job Creation Through Innovation Act, and it did two things. First and most importantly it made the R&D tax credit permanent — important, in my view, to sustain and extend this successful program.

But there’s another issue we still need to address to make the R&D tax credit relevant to these early stage, innovative high-growth companies. Right now, these tax benefits are available only to more established companies that are already turning a profit. You have to have a tax liability on your profits for that credit to be of any value to you.

That’s a roadblock in the way of success for startups and small businesses in Delaware and around the country, and a place where I think we can and should come together across the aisle to address this gap in the R&D tax credit program. It is the small, early startups that most need a cash infusion to support their confidence, their stability and their innovation. We can and should take this tax credit and retool it in a way that makes it more relevant and more effective.

If entrepreneurs are the ones taking risks in this economy and creating jobs, they should be the ones we support in this tough economy through our tax code. As I said before, history shows it’s those young companies that are creating the most jobs the most quickly and that have the best return on tax expenditures.

So here’s what I’ve been working on. As I’ve met with innovative young businesses in Delaware one of the ideas that has come up more than once is to change the R&D tax credit so that it’s accessible not just to big and profitable companies, but by being tradable so that smaller or start-up companies that have no tax liability can take advantage of it. How would that work? Well, it allows startups to sell their tax credit to a larger company, giving them a much-needed infusion of cash. 

Let me give you an example. Elcriton is a small but high-promise, high-potential Delaware company. It has patented strains of bacteria that are designed to consume duckweed, also called “pond scum,” and produce bio butanol — a promising drop in alternative fuel. It’s got tremendous potential. Elcriton today is run by two PhDs who have put together all the money they can raise from family and friends and angel investors and early funds into research and development. But for them to grow, and grow quickly, they need access to more capital to fund more innovation.

Or Evozym. Evozym Biologics also is a two-year-old Delaware company trying to bring-to-market cutting-edge innovations in computing and in the development of proteins from the University of Delaware and the Desert Research Institute. They’re doing incredible things there.

Both of these companies need more funding to invest in R&D and to capitalize on their potential to grow rapidly and grow high quality jobs. If they were already bigger, well-established successful companies, they might well qualify for the existing R&D Tax Credit. But because they’re so small and just getting started, our current tax credit doesn’t help them at all.

Fortunately, Delaware is also home to a few great, well-established companies. Since those companies turn a profit and pay taxes, they could actually utilize a tax credit. So in this case, Elcriton or Evozym would sell their innovation credit to one of the larger, established companies. The bigger company gets the tax credit, the newer company gets the infusion of cash it needs to sustain its innovation. It would be a win-win.

This is just one idea of a number I’ve introduced or that I’ve proposed, that I’ve discussed with Senator Baucus and others on Finance, and I hope that in discussing it today, some of my colleagues here, on both sides of the aisle, and leaders in the business and innovation communities will work with me to further refine it, focus it and make it part of our greater conversation about tax reform and the economic recovery.

We can and should put our heads together here to find common-sense solutions to the problems, challenges and opportunities of innovation and competitiveness. 

We have to give American business the support they need to compete in an increasingly competitive the global economy because in my view, we are falling behind in the race for innovation. In the 1980s, the United States was routinely ranked as a having the best R&D tax incentives and overall support for innovation in the world, but today, some studies have us ranked 17th in the world in supporting and sustaining innovation.

I refuse to let American companies, American inventors and American workers fall behind. With the right resources, American ingenuity will continue to outcompete any country on earth every time. I know it’s possible. I’ve seen it week in and week out as I’ve visited small and medium start-up companies in Delaware. 

Just a few weeks ago, in Bridgeville, Delaware, a town many from here have traveled as they’ve gone to the Delaware beaches, I stopped to visit a small company, Miller Metals, that is proving day in and day out that with investment, with innovation with continuous improvement, they can go head-to-head with Chinese metal fabricators and win. Manufactured in Delaware, competitive in the global marketplace.

Although we really need a full overhaul of our corporate tax structure, making this one small tweak to the R&D tax credit to make it accessible to early stage, innovative companies, will in my view give us a running start into the headwinds of the global economy, and I think we have no more time to waste. 

It is small businesses and innovative strategies that will create the jobs we need to put our neighbors back to work and turn this economy around more quickly. Let’s work together, let’s help them and let’s make progress on this most important proposal, to change the R&D tax credit to make it permanent and make it accessible for early stage companies.

I’m eager to hear what people think about this idea, and hope they’ll connect with me and my office and let me know how to improve on it, how to execute on it and how to deliver this as a new tool in the toolkit of American innovation. 

Floor Speech: Calling for the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act

Mr. President, I rise to speak out on behalf of tens of thousands of Delawareans affected by domestic violence each year, as well as their families, their friends and their allies across our state and across our country.  

Just a few minutes ago, my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee took up the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. It has earned strong bipartisan support through the nearly two decades since its original passage and it was voted out earlier today.

Law enforcement agencies across this country are counting on us to move forward with the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, depending on the training and the resources to advocate for victims and to provide critical and life-saving interventions that it funds.

As I asked for input from Delawareans in the last few weeks, one of the hundreds who took the time to write or call my office in strong support of the reauthorization of VAWA was a former New Castle County police officer. He emailed me to tell me he had seen firsthand that dedicated resources and innovative policing methods made possible by VAWA had made a real difference in combatting these types of crimes and improving the lives of victims.

The Violence Against Women Act, Mr. President, has been extraordinarily effective, with the annual incidence of domestic violence falling by more than 50 percent since it was first passed. Yet we still have so far to go.

Just this week, I heard from hundreds of constituents in Delaware for whom this legislation has a deep and resounding importance. From young women in their 20s to senior citizens, Delawareans from all walks of life have reached out to ask us, as members of the Senate, to take action without delay, to work with our colleagues in the House and to reauthorize this most important bill.

I quote from Paul from Yorklyn, Delaware who wrote to say that as the father of two young daughters, he worries that if the Violence Against Women Act isn’t reauthorized, victims of sexual assault will once again be subject to two traumas: first, horrific attacks and second, trying to pursue justice against their attackers. 

Linda from New Castle, Delaware had the courage to write to me personally and say “first of all, I am a victim and I am not ashamed to say that.” Linda’s willingness to lift the cloud of fear and shame that for so long enveloped victims of domestic and dating violence, first it is brave and important that she was able and willing to do that, but she also highlights the ongoing challenges we face. She described her hesitation to discuss abuse out loud and stressed the importance of talking about these crimes in the open in order to break what she called the “generational curse.”

As a son, as a husband, as a father, I too am deeply concerned about this curse that has moved from generation to generation and has affected families all throughout this country’s history.

Evils like domestic violence thrive in darkness, and the Violence Against Women Act is a spotlight. It deserves to be strengthened and sustained by this Senate today and this year.

The Violence Against Women Act requires reauthorization every five years. This signifies a belief that protecting victims of domestic and dating violence is so important that we must revisit it to make sure we are getting it right.

Each time we go through the process of reauthorizing this bill, we learn more about what’s needed. This time around, the process, I believe has resulted in several critical enhancements.

First by bolstering the tools available to law enforcement. Along with my friend and colleague Senator Blunt, I co-chair the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus, and I am determined to ensure local agencies have the tools they need to support victims and prosecute abusers. This reauthorization will do just that.

Second, our review made clear that perpetrators find their victims throughout our society, without regard for sexual orientation or gender identity.  And so the reauthorization that was passed out of the Judiciary Committee just earlier today addresses that challenge by making this the very first federal grant program to explicitly state grant recipients cannot discriminate on the basis of a victim’s status. Whether they are or are not a member of the LGBT community should be irrelevant to whether they are able to access the vital services funded by VAWA.  

Finally, this reauthorization recognizes our current difficult fiscal situation as a country and promotes accountability to make sure these dollars are well spent. It reduces authorization levels while protecting the programs which have been most successful. This VAWA reauthorization merges 13 existing grant programs into four streamlined and consolidated programs. This will prevent wasted time and effort and make the application and administrative processes more efficient.

I am honored to be joined today in the gallery by an old and dear friend, a former countywide elected official, Paulette Moore, now Vice President of Public Policy for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and I’m grateful to my dear friend Carol Post who leads the Delaware Coalition to End Domestic Violence and my friend Amy Barasch, a tireless advocate in the ongoing efforts to bring to light the challenges of domestic violence in the state of New York. There are folks all across this country who turn to this task week in and week out. It is long and tiring and difficult work, but it is uplifting because it is part of making this a more just, more safe and more secure nation.

It is important for me to note, Mr. President, that unfortunately some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle see the enhancements I just referred to in this reauthorization as a reason to abandon their long-term support for it, even though they have been strong backers of VAWA the past. In fact, the vote we just took in the Judiciary Committee was 10-8. It only narrowly passed. I hope that our friends on the other side of the aisle will review the details of these changes one more time and see their way clear to join us in this effort to strengthen and sustain the Violence Against Women Act. It is and should remain a bipartisan bill and a bipartisan effort.

My predecessor in this seat, our great Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware took an absolutely central leadership role in writing and passing the first Violence Against Women Act in one of the most enduring legacies of his 36-year Senate career representing Delaware and advocating for women all over this country. His efforts broke barriers and laid the groundwork for this current bill but it is up to all of us to keep pushing tirelessly for federal, state and local government to do more to save lives and to serve victims.

I urge my colleagues to come together and promptly pass the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you to the men and women of this country who work so hard to end this terrible scourge of domestic violence in our country.

I yield the floor.

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Statement for the Record: Giving the National Guard a seat at the table

Mr. President, earlier this week, the Senate adopted an amendment to the bill we now consider that would, among other things, give the Chief of the National Guard Bureau a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I was a strong supporter of this amendment, Mr. President, as I was its two legislative predecessors, the Guardians of Freedom Act and the National Guard Empowerment and State-National Defense Integration Act.

Since then, I have actively lobbied my colleagues to support the measures, and I am glad that this week, so many of them came together to support it. With more than 70 cosponsors from across the political spectrum and ultimately, the unanimous consent of this body, the deep bipartisan support shown for the National Guard this week is not only indicative of the immense respect the brave citizen soldiers of this nation have earned, but of the extraordinary potential they have for enhancing our national security.

A National Guard in one form or another has served our nation bravely and honorably for 375 years. Their courage is no less respected; their families no less concerned for their well-being. They have done extraordinary work these last 10 years in Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and in Operation New Dawn. But that is not what this amendment was about. This amendment was not about rewarding what’s been done in the past.

Rather, it was about recognizing what we need to do for our future in order to keep our country safe. That is the key here: bringing to bear every resource we have for the defense of this nation.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are the top military advisors to the President and to the Secretary of Defense. They are responsible for making sure our military is prepared for every threat to our national security, but as those threats tilt toward the asymmetric, so must our military planning. 

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have begun a fundamental transformation of our military, shifting away from a posture designed to counter Soviet aggression in Europe toward a posture that confronts asymmetric threats to American lives and interests.

Writing in a report for the Center for New American Security last year, retired General Gordon Sullivan described the National Guard as at a crossroads: “Down one path lies continued transformation into a 21st-century operational force and progress on the planning, budgetary and management reforms still required to make that aspiration a reality. Down the other path lies regression to a Cold War-style strategic force meant only to be used as a last resort in the event of major war.”

There was a clear choice and this week the Senate made it, taking what I believe is a significant step toward strengthening our national security. 

When national defense solely meant fighting our enemies abroad, the current organizational strategy made sense. But now that we are more likely to have to defend against threats to America’s national security here on American shores at the same time, we need the National Guard to have a seat at the table. We need the National Guard’s resources and capabilities to be a first-line consideration that matches their first-line mandate. 

In my home state of Delaware, the 31st Civil Support Team is the tip of the spear of the military response to a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear attack by terrorists. Following closely behind police, fire and EMS services, our CST would diagnose the threat, inform and update the chain of command, and prepare the affected area to receive a response by larger units, coordinating as far up the chain as U.S. Northern Command.

When the Joint Chiefs sit down to plan for a biological attack on this country, they need someone at the table who fully understands the mission of units like the 31st Civil Support Team, whose members are full-time Guard, but not active duty military.

One area that needs more thought by the Joint Chiefs, and that I hope General McKinley and his successors will help them focus on, is the important role the Guard can play in cyber security, an area where most threats are decidedly asymmetric.

The Delaware Air National Guard’s 166th Network Warfare Squadron is already playing a key role in our nation’s defensive and offensive cyber capability working with U.S. Cyber Command, but its potential as a bridge between the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, between federal and state governments, and between the public and private sectors has barely been considered outside of a few circles. Determining what unique role the Guard can play in cyber security to create a more robust, more flexible defense-in-depth is just one of the new ideas I believe the Chief of the National Guard Bureau can bring to the planning process.

The men and women of the National Guard bring extraordinary capabilities to our armed forces, and because of the action we’ve taken here this week, I know that our military will be better prepared for new and emerging threats to our nation.

Statement for the Record: Clean energy opportunities within the DoD advancing Energy Savings Performance Contracts and vehicle electrification

Mr. President, another amendment that I filed to S. 1867, the Senate’s Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization bill, would have advanced new clean energy opportunities and enjoyed bipartisan support.  The amendment’s cosponsors included Senators Shaheen, Portman, Gillibrand, Merkley, and Kerry.  Unfortunately, we were not able to offer it this week because of a disagreement over scoring.  It was an important opportunity missed so I wanted to take a moment to note what this amendment entailed.

Senate Amendment 1265 would have confronted a critical long-term challenge facing our nation’s military: the spiraling cost of its reliance on petroleum.  As we look for ways to save taxpayer dollars and reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, utilizing more electric vehicles should become a priority for the Defense Department and the entire federal government.

Investment in clean energy technology is an investment in America’s energy security. Liquid petroleum accounts for three-quarters of our armed forces’ energy consumption, and approximately 60 percent of that comes from abroad. The Defense Department has explicitly cited the operational risk inherent to our dependence on foreign oil and has committed itself to aggressively reducing energy consumption.

Senate Amendment 1265 would allow the Defense Department and other federal agencies to purchase electric vehicles and charging infrastructure under Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC). ESPCs themselves aren’t new: the government has used ESPCs for years to pay for energy efficiency upgrades.  It has been enormously successful and costs the government nothing up front.  That’s right, ESPCs are paid for, financed, performed and guaranteed by the private sector with the government paying the back private sector through guaranteed energy savings over time. Our amendment would have made electric vehicles and charging infrastructure eligible for the program.

Mr. President, energy efficiency is about more than turning the lights off when you leave a building.  It is about the appliances you buy, the tools you use, and the vehicles you drive.

The federal government is America’s largest energy consumer and within the government, the Defense Department is the biggest energy consumer. One out of every three vehicles owned by the federal government is owned by the Pentagon, which is why we raised this amendment this week.

Senate Amendment 1265 would have helped increase the share of the government-owned fleet that is cost-efficient, energy-efficient electric vehicles. On top of that, it would not add a dime to the federal deficit.  By buying these vehicles in through ESPCs, the government does not put up any money up front.  Rather, it enters an agreement with a private-sector contractor — a job-creating private-sector contractor — where the agency pays the contractor over an agreed-upon period of time – as many as 25 years.

What they are paying each month, though, is the net savings achieved by using the electric vehicle instead of a conventional vehicle. This is an unconventional, but creative and cost-efficient way to save money, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and even to help support a growing private industry.

This amendment would have simply provided the Defense Department with a new tool for acquiring cost-efficient electric vehicles, which is what they are asking us to do. They want to add electric vehicles to their fleets. The Defense Department has already done extraordinary work in leveraging energy efficiency to reduce its costs and reduce its dependence on foreign oil. We want to help them do more.

This is a challenging economic time for our country, and our military needs every advantage it can get as it confronts dangerous threats to our national and energy security.  By empowering the Pentagon to buy more of these energy-efficient, cost-efficient electric vehicles, we are saving taxpayer dollars and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.  Investment in clean energy technology is an investment in America’s energy security, and energy security is, without a doubt, an increasingly important, and increasingly fragile, aspect of America’s national security.

This is a common-sense policy that unfortunately cannot be considered at this point because of a technicality in how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores ESPCs. It has been going on for 10 years and, as I understand, it has provided endless frustration to my colleagues on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and several other congressional committees, and this problem reaches beyond the electric vehicle option alone. 

A key point to make here is that whenever Congress tells the federal government to become more efficient but does not provide appropriated funding for the purpose, a score is triggered because the government might use ESPCs to meet the mandate.  Effectively, Congress cannot tell the federal government to save money through efficiency.  Further, while ESPCs are scored by the CBO rules, OMB does not score them because the government does not incur any costs through their use.  This specious score has essentially limited our ability to reduce appropriated dollars and achieve energy efficient simultaneously using private sector expertise and funding.

This amendment is something that is important to me, I am hopeful it is something that we will be able to pass down the road. In the meantime, it is an opportunity lost, to help our military prepare for the threats facing our nation.

Floor Speech: Confirming Richard Andrews to U.S. District Court Judge for Delaware

Mr. President, I move now briefly to support the nomination of Richard Andrews, who’s been nominated to be United States District Court Judge for the District of Delaware.

Rich Andrews is an exceptional lawyer, a dedicated public servant and a good man. When the Senate confirms his nomination hopefully later today, Rich will become the fourth active judge serving in the District of Delaware. This will mark the very first time in five years that this very busy court will operate without a vacancy.

For a small district like Delaware, albeit one with such a specialized and complex caseload, even a single vacancy places a significant burden on the court. Mr. Andrews’ nomination has been pending 177 days, and while I am grateful for the consent agreement that I hope will allow his nomination to be considered today, I remain concerned that such a noncontroversial and qualified nominee as Rich could take nearly half a year to reach floor consideration. The judicial vacancy rate hovers near 10%, there are 31 judicial emergencies and it’s my hope that this body will continue to move expeditiously to fill vacancies throughout the country.

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I had the chance to chair the nominations hearing for Rich and to take part in the Committee’s consideration of his nomination. I have reviewed his record, listened to his testimony, met with him personally, conferred with my senior senator, Senator Carper, and as a result of all this, I assure my colleagues, I have every confidence Rich is a qualified judge and will serve Delaware and this nation brilliantly.

During his 30 years of service for Delaware, so far, he has established himself as a talented, dedicated and humble public servant who possesses a strong work ethic and the highest integrity and intellect. He began his service to our state when after graduating from Berkeley law school he came to Delaware as a law clerk for Chief Judge Collins J. Seitz of the Third Circuit. Luckily for us, he never left. 

After completing his clerkship, he joined the U.S. Attorneys’ Office for the District of Delaware where he spent the next 24 years, much of it serving as the First Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Division. He has tried in that role more than 50 felony jury cases and argued 17 cases before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Since leaving the U.S. Attorneys’ office in 2007, he has served as State Prosecutor for the Delaware Department of Justice and leads more than 70 Deputy Attorneys’ General in the Criminal Division and is overseeing tens of thousands of prosecutions each year.

I am confident then, Mr. President, that his experiences as a prosecutor have given him the knowledge, skills, and temperament to join and serve ably on the District of Delaware federal bench.

When I chaired his nominations hearing, I was impressed at his professionalism, his intelligence, and his demeanor. Rich enjoys broad, bipartisan support, having been reported unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee. So I urge all of my colleagues to join me and Senator Carper in supporting Mr. Andrews so he will have the opportunity to continue his selfless service to the people of our state and our nation.

And with that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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Floor Speech: A national infrastructure bank is a creative approach to critical investment

I rise today to speak about one way forward out of it, and I think one of the reasons why there is so much frustration with Congress and the general public is there is broad support for some simple solutions to get Americans back to work, to revive and strengthen our economy that we just seem incapable of reaching across this partisan divide and moving forward.

One of those is an infrastructure bank. I rise today to follow up on a speech I gave yesterday about why investing in American infrastructure means investing in America’s future.

Infrastructure, building roads and bridges, highways and sewer systems, modernizing America’s backbone enjoys very broad support from all across the United States, from all different sectors because Americans understand it will put folks back to work, into building trades industry that have taken the hardest hit in this recession, and in a way that will lay the groundwork for our long-term future competitiveness.

This is smart spending. This is investing in the best tradition of federal, state, local, private partnerships to make America more competitive for the future. Today, I want to talk about one element of the bill, which I hope we will move to later today. The American Infrastructure Financing Authority or known more colloquially as the National Infrastructure Bank.

If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because it has already been introduced, it’s a bipartisan bill, the BUILD Act, championed by Senator Kerry and Senator Hutchison. And of which I am a cosponsor, and one that provides a creative financing vehicle for building infrastructure going forward.

 As you know, Mr. President, before becoming a senator in the election last year, just a year ago yesterday, I served for six years as the county executive of Delaware’s largest county, and one of the things our county was responsible for was running a countywide sewer system. We had 1,800 miles of sanitary sewer, and it was a constant challenge to maintain. That’s a lot of pipe, a lot of pump stations and a lot of sewage backing up in people’s homes in the middle of the night, which led to a lot of aggravated calls from constituents. It was an aging system, like so much of America’s infrastructure, one in which we had underinvested for too long. And from personal experience, I can tell you that the lack of that infrastructure, of adequate sewer capacity, was a major barrier to future growth.

So, too, across states and counties and cities all over this country, where the roads and rail, the ports and the sewer systems aren’t up to current global standards, we can’t expect to grow to meet our global competitors. When we talk about capital infrastructure improvements at the local level in the government I used to be with, it wasn’t some wish list, this wasn’t some future technology, this wasn’t some risky investment. It was triage. It was critically needed investment in pipes in the ground that would protect our water, strengthen our community and grow our economy.

As a nation, the American Society of Civil Engineers has told us we need $2.2 trillion over just the next five years in infrastructure investments to keep America moving forward. We’re talking about fixing unsafe bridges, dealing with clogged highways and rebuilding airports so they can handle larger modern aircraft safely.

That is an enormous scope, Mr. President. $2.2 trillion over just the next five years. We’re already asking so much of the Super Committee in terms of finding dramatic savings, reductions in federal spending.

Where will this level of investment come from to put America back to work?

In my view, we have to get creative. We have to leverage. We have to bring in more resources than are currently on the field. And especially now, especially in this country, I think we have to be smart about how we spend our funds. The Rebuild America Jobs Act, to which I hope we will be moving later this afternoon, would put $50 billion directly into infrastructure but $10 billion as a down payment into making possible this new infrastructure bank. Seed money that makes possible loans and loan guarantees, not grants, for a wide range of infrastructure projects including energy, water and critically needed transportation.

Remember, we need more than $400 billion a year in investment right now just to keep up, but we all know that the constrained budgets of our county, state and local governments can’t get the financing they need. This infrastructure bank would provide the leverage, a vehicle to finance desperately needed projects.

Just a few things about it: It would be for big projects, projects that cost more than $25 million in rural communities, $100 million in the rest of the country. It would only be allowed to finance up to 50% of a project to avoid crowding out private capital, to make sure that private capital has got skin in the game so it’s a viable project. It’s my expectation, in fact, that the infrastructure bank would finance a much smaller piece of most projects, just enough to bring private investment to the table. It would be government owned but independently operated, have its own bipartisan board of directors and function much like the successful Export-Import Bank.  

An infrastructure bank passed by the Senate this week could provide up to $160 billion in direct financial assistance over its first ten years to infrastructure for transportation, and that would be paired with private investment that could double, triple or even quadruple increasing the full impact of this bank.

I said yesterday, Mr. President, that infrastructure is a smart investment for our country, that a national

infrastructure bank, as a part of that strategy, would provide a vehicle for the private sector to get in on this investment as  well and to help us accelerate our move towards the future. This, Mr. President, is smart policy.

It’s a funny thing about infrastructure, how we inevitably take it for granted, whether you are running a state highway system or a county sewer system, you never know how much people miss it until it isn’t working the way they expect. And, unfortunately, in cities, counties, and states across our country today, companies and communities are discovering that our aged infrastructure is imposing costs on us that we just can’t bear.

The American society of civil engineers, which I have referred to before, recently released a study saying that our nation’s deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure alone results in the loss of nearly a million jobs and will suppress our G.D.P. growth by nearly $1 trillion between now and 2020. That’s an enormous loss of future economic activity. In my view, we can’t put this off any further. As a country, we can’t keep swerving to avoid these potholes on the path to prosperity. Eventually we’re going to hit them and eventually they are going to continue to be a drag on our nation. The Rebuild America Jobs Act would fill these potholes, would patch these pipes, would lay the new runways to allow America’s economy to take off.

In my view, this Rebuild America Jobs Act, which would rebuild 150,000 miles of roadway, maintain 4,000 miles of train track, upgrade 150 miles of airport runways, restore critical drinking water and waste water systems, is nothing short of the smart investment we need to be competitive for the future. It would put people back to work, it would steer us on the right road to sustained recovery, and it would fix the problems that lie right in our path as we try to do our jobs, Mr. President, for the folks who hired us to come here and help them get back to work.

We need to act today and it is my hope that my colleagues will join us this afternoon in voting for the motion to proceed to the recovery and Rebuild America Jobs Act. A critical piece of which is this smart infrastructure bank.

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Floor Speech: Voicing support for national infrastructure jobs bill

I rise today because this week, once again, the Senate of the United States has the opportunity to create jobs.

To find a way to work together to make a real difference in the long-term strength of this nation, and to finally punch back against this recession, which has taken so much from the working families of our states.

I rise in support of the Rebuild America Jobs Act, a bill that will invest $60 billion in our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work. Investments in America’s infrastructure are investments in America’s future and they could not come at a more critical time for our country, our communities, or our future.

The rest of the world is pouring money into its infrastructure, because they know that it will not only make it easier for them to recover from this recession, they know it will make them more competitive for their long-term future for their people, for their countries, for their economies. At a time when our competitors are pouring money into fixing, expanding, building their infrastructure, we’ve turned off the spigot.

We are starving, Madam President, our roads and our bridges, our sewers and our water systems, our tunnels, our ports, our runways, our railroad tracks – we’re starving them of the repairs they need to function properly, not just today, but to lay the groundwork for our competitiveness of the next generation of Americans.

China today, one of our greatest economic competitors, is spending 9 percent of G.D.P. on infrastructure. As anyone who has visited China in recent years knows, all across the nation of China, there are gleaming new highway systems, brand-new ports, brand-new airports and runways, brand-new transportation infrastructure that connects newly built cities, leaping from the ground as if by magic, because they’ve invested enormous amounts in a modern infrastructure.

Europe, broadly, is investing 5 percent of G.D.P. in modernizing their infrastructure. In the United States, where modern infrastructure has for a generation made us the envy of the world, we are today investing just 2 percent of our G.D.P. This is foolish.

Few people argue that infrastructure isn’t important, Madam President. In fact, it’s one of the few things that seems to enjoy broad support here in this chamber, in this city, and in this country.

Folks as disparate as the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree, investing in modernizing our infrastructure is critical not just to putting Americans back to work but to get America working for our country’s future. They support both the idea of an infrastructure bank, because they know investing in infrastructure isn’t just about rebuilding our roads, it’s about rebuilding our economy.

When companies make decisions about: where to locate, where to build a new factory, where to expand production, where to lease a new office – infrastructure is always at or near the top of their list. Proximity to a highway means everything if going to run or expand a factory. Being close to a port is critical if your products need to be exported overseas, and access to airport and railways is imperative if you want to do business outside your community or our country.

High-speed internet can be every bit as important as these century-old transportation technologies and can be every bit as important as clean water, modern ports, or new railroads.

Infrastructure is important in every state of our nation, Madam President, and especially so in my coastal state of Delaware. The Port of Wilmington brings four million tons of goods through Delaware each year, providing high-wage, high-skill jobs to the longshoremen and the communities immediately around our port that rely so much on its vital link to the global economy.

Railways allow Amtrak to connect business men and women from New York to our financial services sector, to our legal and banking community in Wilmington, and it’s one of the busiest railroad stations in America.

I-95 connects truckers and corridors up and down the East Coast to our little state. As folks have known, for far too long, one of the worst choke points on I-95 was in our state. I used to get calls all the time, Madam President, in my role as county executive, because folks mistakenly thought it was somehow my role to modernize this highway.

It was John F. Kennedy, who cut the ribbon on this modern interstate highway and we, frankly, have failed to invest in keeping up with the times, in keeping up with the growth in traffic, in keeping up with the tempo of global commerce since then.

Delaware has finally solved these problems, Madam President, with the leadership of the Obama Administration and this chamber, the investments that were made in infrastructure over the last two- years. We finally have solved that choke point on I-95. Today motorists move through at great speed, pay their tolls to Delaware, and are able to get on their way – north and south – and engage in commerce at the speed that the modern economy demands. That’s what we seek here to do nationwide. That’s what the Rebuild America Jobs Act can do.

For the last 25 or 30 years, we’ve been building off the infrastructure built by our parents’ generation hoping a bandage here, an ointment there, a little wire, a little bubblegum would be enough to get us through another year, but that’s not a strategy for laying the groundwork for a great future for our children. It’s not even a strategy for keeping up.

The choke points on America’s roads can’t be allowed to choke America’s economy for the next generation. One-third of our nation’s major roadways are in poor or even mediocre condition, and a quarter of our bridges have been rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

They’ve even faced the human suffering and reputational disaster of having bridges collapse across this country in recent years.

We have failed to invest in our future.

As a country, we can keep swerving to avoid these potholes, but eventually we’re going to hit them. The Rebuild America Jobs Act would fill that pothole, would make smooth the rough places of this nation and accelerate our economic growth for the future.

I’m a cosponsor of the Rebuild America Jobs Act, Madam President, because this bill would fill the pothole we’ve been avoiding for decades. It would rebuild 150,000 miles of American roadways, maintain 4,000 miles of train tracks, upgrade 150 miles of airport runways. It would restore critical drinking water and wastewater systems for our communities and strengthen our energy infrastructure. In short, Madam President, it would make us competitive, I would put people back to work, it would get us on the right road to a sustained recovery. It would put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work in that sector of the economy that took the first and hardest hit from the recession.

More than two million Americans who worked in construction have lost their jobs, since this tragic recession hit, including 8,000 in my home state of Delaware, alone. We’ve got thousands of folks in the skilled building trades ready to go.

They just need us to get over our differences, find a way past these endless, mindless filibusters, and get them to work. This week we have an opportunity to invest in those people and invest in our country.

Infrastructure is such a smart investment, and in this economy and in this competitive global environment, where our allies and competitors are outstripping our investment because they see clearly the road to the future.

We simply cannot afford to continue to refuse to act.

Madam President, it was one year ago today that the people of Delaware elected me to represent them in Washington, and every day since I have wondered when this chamber was finally going to come together across the partisan divide and start moving on jobs.

The persistent partisanship here that has plagued this body is, in my view, not worthy of the very real human needs of the people who sent us here.

Last month, folks in this Congress, mostly from the other party, prevented us from acting on jobs not once, not twice, but several times. I don’t understand the strategy here, but the endless filibusters must stop.

I know there’s debate over how we’re going to pay for this particular proposal to put $60 billion into infrastructure. As Senator Bingaman commented just before me, this is a modest increase in revenue for the very wealthiest Americans that I believe is justified in this critical economic time.

Too many of my neighbors, too many of my constituents are out of work, and, Madam President, I don’t think we have a choice. We need to act. The president is right. We can’t wait to act. The Rebuild America Jobs Act not only invests in jobs today, but in our economy for tomorrow. We can’t wait any longer, Madam President, to fill this pothole.

This bill deserves bipartisan support, and I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for it this week.

With that, I yield the floor.

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Floor Speech: America can’t become a bad investment

Madam President, I rise to follow the comments of my colleague from Colorado in emphasizing the sense of urgency — the sense of frustration and of deep concern that I know many of us feel in the Senate of the United States.

On the Fourth of July, as I went up and down the State of Delaware to different parades and picnics and gatherings, I had the opportunity to meet with and talk to thousands of Delawareans. Over and over I would go up to men who were wearing hats that showed that they served, whether in the Korean War, the Vietnam War or the second World War and thanked them for their service. Repeatedly I would hear the same thing back: “We’ve done our job. We hope you’ll do yours.”

When I was elected in 2010 to serve here in the United States, I heard the same message from the folks across Delaware that I just heard Senator Udall reflect from the people of Colorado: Help the private sector create good jobs, deal with the deficit and debt, and do it in a bipartisan and responsible way. And I am gravely concerned that we are on the verge of the most predictable financial crisis in modern American history as we slowly grind toward the predicted deficit – excuse me, the predicted default on America’s mortgage on August 2nd.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has warned us since the beginning of this year, with the letter that he sent us on January 6 — with repeated testimony before various committees of the Senate. We have gone well past the May 16 deadline and the Department of the Treasury is now using extraordinary measures to prevent us from defaulting on America’s commitments.

I have heard other analogies used, but they are mistaken. This is not about cutting up the credit cards or ending the blank check for our current president. This is about whether we will continue to meet the commitments America has already made. Whether we will continue to make the payments that we’re already committed to — for our troops in the field, for contractors who are providing military supplies and equipment, for our federal workforce, and for all the different programs and benefits the senators spoke before me mentioned. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and others.

We cannot afford the consequences of default. One study says we would lose 640,000 jobs. More than half a million Americans needlessly thrown out of work, just because of a foolish game of chicken. The cost of home mortgages to car loans to increases in the daily cost of living will go up needlessly if we simply fail to uphold the tradition of meeting our commitments as a nation.

I’m here to say today that we cannot afford to have America become a bad investment.

The best thing that we can do going forward is to restore certainty in our markets, to put some confidence back in the American economy, to make certain that the international community continues to regard us as the safest and best investment in the world and the way to do that is to come together in a bipartisan way around a big deal, around $4 trillion in savings at least.

The senator from Colorado went in some detail into the bipartisan debt and deficit commission chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson — the Democrat former chief of staff and the Republican former Senator from Wyoming — and the 11 members of that commission, members of this body — currently serving senators, Republican and Democrat, who came together around a plan that would make $4 trillion in savings over the next decade. I think we should do no less than that. And I think the plan that we should be working on in detail now should include all four major areas where we have to have savings.

Reductions in discretionary domestic spending. Reform to our entitlement programs. Reductions in Pentagon spending, and increases in federal revenue through tax reform. All four of these have to be on the table. In my view, our values ask no less than that.

As we work through a recovery, we need to continue to invest in education, in infrastructure, in innovation; but we also need to responsibly put together a bipartisan path that will take on the sacred cows of this institution and of America’s tax code.

Just three weeks ago we had more than 70 senators cast votes to end the $6 billion in needless annual ethanol subsidies. I hope that was an opening door towards a recognition that on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of this Congress, we need to be willing to make the tough votes, even though they will upset treasured constituencies, even though they will end up causing us potential political harm, to reduce reckless federal spending, whether through the tax code or unsustainable federal programs.

In the end, Mr. President, I simply wanted to come to the floor today and add my voice to many of my colleagues’ on both sides of the aisle who are expressing our grave concern as the clock ticks away and as the hours left to August 2nd shrink, we need to come together.

What Americans have done for generations is sacrificed. What legislators need to do now is compromise. There are, in front of us reasonable, solid, bipartisan proposals that have been available to us since March and that this body and our leadership need to be willing to make responsible compromises to make happen.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Floor Speech: Colloquy warning of inaction on our nation’s debt

Mr. President, the two senators from Colorado have, I think, inspired me to come to the floor and join them in a colloquy about the challenges facing our country. And to the senators from Colorado, I am pleased and impressed with their leadership and have greatly enjoyed serving with them to date.

I agree that the vote on one of our tax expenditures, on the ethanol subsidy, was an encouraging and inspiring moment because we saw both Democrats and Republicans from all over the country casting a vote to end a tax expenditure — a subsidy – that many would argue has outlived its usefulness in the current marketplace.

In my home state, we recently saw the bankruptcy of our second-largest poultry company and they have communicated to me their grave concern about the ethanol subsidy. There are lots of folks on both sides of that particular debate. I think the larger point that is important to get to is certainty in the markets. I spent a number of years in the private sector, in business, before running for and being elected to office, and I know the mantra that Senator Bennet is well-familiar with, Senator Udall is well-familiar with, many of our colleagues from that both parties are well-familiar with — is that certainty is what the markets look for. Certainty is also what the people look for, and I think we have alarmed them — concerned them — by not being able to reach a broad, bipartisan, responsible plan that lays out a framework for how it is we’re going to address both the nation’s record deficits and record debt.

Our debt today, as you know, is roughly $14 trillion. Our deficit has hit an all-time record and we’re working on borrowed time.

I’ve heard some suggest that we need to better understand the situation we’re in. The situation we’re in, I believe, is that we are about to risk defaulting on America’s mortgage. We’ve made commitments as a nation. We’ve expended ourselves at home and abroad in a lot of different ways, and I’m worried that we are on the verge of failing to meet our commitments. Just as America’s households really hesitate before ever defaulting on their mortgage, I think we as a nation — as a people — have to hesitate — have to think deeply about the consequences of it.

I asked the folks who work with me on economic policy to quantify it. They looked at a number of different studies around the country and gave me some just chilling numbers. Should we fail to meet the August 2nd deadline that Secretary Geithner has repeatedly — since January — in writing and in testimony, suggested to us is the absolute last date by which we can reach a bipartisan compromise and a path forward — we’ll lose hundreds of thousands of jobs. One study said 640,000 jobs. The markets may lose as much as 10 percent of their value, which would mean loss of almost $1 trillion of market equity value. That means that pension funds, 401(k)’s, and personal savings would take an enormous hit.

The average homeowner would see an increase in the costs of, whether it’s their credit cards, or mortgages, or car loans. It’s easy to think this is an abstract problem, but in reality, I think the problem that we’re causing — the lack of confidence in the markets — could have a sudden, sharp, grinding effect on our economic world. And that’s because investors act more like animals than they do like machines and when spooked, they act the way herds do and they run off in a certain direction. And my concern is that we are so used as a country to have a Triple A bond rating, to being the world’s reserve currency, to being the gold standard for the most safe and most secure investment.

I am gravely concerned that intransigence — an unwillingness to come to a reasonable compromise — is putting us at real risk of spooking the markets, of harming the average American homeowner, of putting our rating at risk as a country. At the end of the day, I’ve observed some things about how Washington works so far that really worry me.

If I could offer a metaphor, it seems to me there are a lot of sacred cows here. It seems to me that the trillions of dollars that we spend in our tax code through tax loopholes and special tax provisions, and the trillions that we spend through direct spending are broken up into these sacred cows, and I feel as if I’ve gone into dairy. I feel as if I’m surrounded by a whole herd of sacred cows and that what we need is a deliberate and clear-eyed, bipartisan effort to thin the herd here, to make some tough choices.

As I know Senator Bennet said previously, I want to commend the hard work of the gang of six — the so-called “gang of six” — the bipartisan group that came up with both processes and a path forward. The Bowles-Simpson Commission that presented to those of us on the budget committee and to this body, a proposal.

There are paths forward. There are ways to make these tough choices. I hope that before the time runs out that this body will embrace these proposals, make the tough choices and the sacrifices we need to, come to the center, and lay out a path.

I frankly don’t think we’ve got until August 2nd. I think if we’re going to put at risk the markets by injecting uncertainty, I think frankly the timeline may be more like the middle of July. It is my hope, Mr. President, that the senators from Colorado will be joined by senators from both sides of this body and both sides of this Capitol in crafting a responsible bipartisan solution.