Floor Colloquy: Senators Coons, Paul honor the work of Dr. Sandy Greenberg to end blindness by 2020

Senator Coons: Mr. President, I rise today to join with my colleague, Senator Paul, to discuss the life and work of an exceptional American, Dr. Sandy Greenberg, who is here with us today in the Senate Gallery, along with his wife Sue and his sister Brenda even as we speak.

Sandy, in my view, is an honorary Delawarean, because he spends a month every year at one of our most beautiful beaches, Rehoboth Beach. But he is much more than that. A successful businessman and philanthropist, Sandy has a wide variety of interests and life experiences. He has founded and run software and technology companies, he is a pioneer in the use of technology in medicine, and helped bring telemedicine to rural health care facilities as chairman of the Rural Health Care Corporation.

He was appointed by President Clinton to the Board of the National Science Foundation. As a young man he took a break from his studies at Columbia, where he roomed with Art Garfunkel–a well-known musician–to work as a fellow in Lyndon Johnson’s White House.

All of this on its own merits would make for a life well-lived and a substantive, meaningful contribution to our country. But there is one thing I have not yet mentioned. At the young age of 19, Sandy went blind. He lost his sight, and with that all likely hope of the successful completion of his college career or a successful career in life. He was told by the social workers who met with him after glaucoma stole his sight from him that his future would likely consist of assembling screwdriver kits in a sheltered workshop in his hometown in upstate New York.

But it’s because of the kindness and the intervention of his roommates–Art Garfunkel and Jerry Speyer –and others who volunteered—Mike Mukasey — who dedicated countless hours to reading to him, he was able to finish his class work, to be successful in completing his studies at Columbia, and then to go on to Harvard Law School and to Oxford, and then to go further and further.

He has lived his entire adult life and achieved a career most of us can only dream of while also plunged in darkness. His exceptional courage and his perseverance don’t end there. Today he wants to serve others and catalyze a transformative shift in the health of our nation by ending blindness by the end of this decade.

Is this outrageous? Is this audacious? Maybe. But that is what experts said when President Kennedy stood before this Congress–in the same year, 1961, that Sandy lost his sight—stood before this Congress and challenged our nation to put a man on the Moon by the end of that decade. The best and brightest minds, the top scientists and researchers of President Kennedy’s generation rose to that challenge and achieved his impossible dream. Now, for this generation, Sandy and his wife Sue have once again raised our sights and challenged the best scientific and medical researchers in the world to rise to an enormous challenge–a challenge that has been with us from the beginning of mankind.

In the Bible itself we hear of blindness, of people who could not see with their eyes but only their hearts. For millennia, humanity has struggled to understand and to overcome blindness. Yet today we have the scientific tools necessary to reach for a cure–to restore the physical sight so many of us take for granted to those who otherwise live in darkness; to bring to the light the 39 million people in this world who live without sight, many in the world’s poorest countries, at a time when experts already believe 80 percent of blindness can be prevented or cured.

We know we can do it. Just think of what an awe-inspiring accomplishment this would be, what a triumph of the human mind, of individual initiative, of collaborative efforts of the scientific method, of modern technology, and of our investment in the belief that America can and should be a world leader in curing the diseases that have ailed humanity for generations.

Mr. President, a majority of all research scientists in human history are alive today. That remarkable fact alone carries with it great potential. That is why Sandy and his wife Sue created the Prize to End Blindness by 2020, to take advantage of this incredible historic opportunity to bring together scientists and researchers and end blindness by the end of this decade. To inspire them, the Greenbergs have provided a prize of more than $2 million in gold. Why gold? Well, it is a reminder of the color of the beautiful shimmering sunsets Sandy and Susan enjoyed together in the waning days of Sandy’s sightedness, and it is a reminder of the beauty of the challenge of a prize to restore sight to millions who live in blindness.

Mr. President, I am no expert on the health or science of the eye, but we are blessed to have in this Senate two members who are. We had some supportive comments that will be given by Senator Boozman of Arkansas, but I am particularly glad and honored to be joined today by Senator Paul, by Dr. Paul, who is not only a tireless advocate for the people of Kentucky, but who, by professional training and background, is an ophthalmologist.

And I’d like to yield the floor to him at this time.

Senator Paul: Thank you, Senator Coons, for inviting me, both figuratively and literally, across the aisle to join him on this side–I am glad to be here today–and for introducing me to this prize that Sandy Greenberg has brought forward to end blindness.

I am an eye surgeon. I have also done research on glaucoma and have been a longtime member of Lions Club International, whose primary research and primary goal is the prevention of blindness.

One of the heroes to the Lions’ eye movement and to our work worldwide on blindness has been Helen Keller who, at the age of 19 months, lost not only her vision but her hearing. In 1925, she came to the Lions Club International with this mandate–and this is part of her speech from that day:

She wrote: “You have heard how through a little word dropped from the fingers of another, a ray of light from another soul touched the darkness of my mind and I found myself, found the world, found God. It is because my teacher learned about me and broke through the dark, silent imprisonment which held me that I am able to work for myself and for others. It is the caring we want more than the money. The gift without the sympathy and interest of the giver is empty. If you care, if we can make the people of this great country care, the blind will indeed triumph over blindness.

“The opportunity I bring to you, Lions, is this: To foster and sponsor the work of the American Foundation for the Blind. Will you not help me hasten the day when there shall be no preventable blindness; no little deaf, blind child untaught; no blind man or woman unaided?”

There is a long history, both in our country and in other countries around the world, of private philanthropy and these prizes. Going back to the early 18th century, there was a prize for longitude. The Harrisons, father and son, worked for nearly 40 years to develop a clock to precisely measure where they were on the Earth, to measure longitude.

We currently have something called the X Prize, which gave money last year to a company that developed a technology to speed up the cleanup of oil in the ocean after BP’s disaster.

Siemens Foundation gives a $100,000 prize. That was given last year to a 17-year-old girl from California who developed a nanoparticle that, with a chemotherapy agent, goes directly to treat tumors. A prize from Siemens was also given to 15-year-old Benjamin Clark, who won the prize for his work in how stars are born.

I love the idea, and I think it is underappreciated, of private philanthropy. Today, I am happy to be here with you to congratulate Sandy Greenberg for putting forward this prize, and I hope it will bring some results.

I really think there is within our grasp the ability to treat and, hopefully, prevent blindness. Thank you.

Senator Coons: Thank you so much, Senator Paul. For the record, I ask for unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my colleague from Kentucky.

Mr. President, it certainly hasn’t escaped the expert knowledge of my colleagues here today that 2020–the date of the prize of the Sue and Sandy prize we have spoken about–is also the numerical indication of perfect vision. So the 2020 prize, the goal to end blindness by 2020–which is what the Sandy and Sue Greenberg prize is calling us toward–is also a year on the calendar, a year just over 7 years away. In those 7 years, Sandy Greenberg has the courage, the audacity, the strength to believe we can end blindness, working together, end blindness by 2020. It is a goal that could transform our society, our world, and the lives of millions who live in darkness today. We can do it.

At earlier times in our history, as Senator Paul has just reflected, we have come together in response to audacious goals or inspiring prizes to conquer other debilitating diseases. One that Sandy Greenberg shared with me when we sat in person and first talked about this was polio, a crippling disease that struck terror into the hearts of parents every summer.

Dr. Jonas Salk convinced medical researchers at charities like March of Dimes to instead turn their focus from treatment, with devices such as the iron lung, to ending the disease itself. Because of that kind of forward thinking, polio has now been largely eradicated and does not threaten children in the United States, although it remains in a few isolated outposts around the world.

We can see even more cutting-edge examples, right now today, in my home State of Delaware. Just earlier this week, I met with scientific researchers Dr. Kmiec from Delaware State University and the leaders of a company called Orthogenics, who are taking on the audacious goal of ending sickle cell anemia. That particular effort–banishing this disease from bodies around the world through research and development–is something supported by public-private partnership.

In the end, private contributions, extraordinary generosity by Sandy and Sue Greenberg and his family, are critically important.

I happen to believe there is also a vital role for a partnership with the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and others that have the unique ability to bring researchers together, hopefully for efficient and effective advances in medicine.

So as the great disabilities rights advocate, Helen Keller, once said just to continue the citations of the great forerunner: “Alone, we can do little; together, we can do so much.”

Even in this era of austerity, these times of budget crunching and belt-tightening, in my view there are few areas more important for our sustained investment than the development of treatments and cures for a devastating, life-changing health conditions like blindness.

In my view, there is also a pressing economic element to this humanitarian equation. Economists have said that most of the new wealth created in this country in the last century came from biomedical research and its application to fighting, changing the human condition. They have told us that curing and treating ancient diseases and conditions is a lot of what has driven the extraordinary economic growth of this country in the last century.

We know that when we as a nation invest in making possible cutting-edge advances, interconnected networks of learning make possible the next gigantic leap. I am so grateful to Sue and Sandy for making possible this challenge, for putting out this pot of gold to literally lift the sights of teams all over the world, of individuals, of communities of effort. It is an effort that could literally bring sight to the blind.

Senator Paul, any closing thoughts?

Senator Paul: I think what is great about the prize is it didn’t set a short and limited goal. It goes for the whole thing: They want to prevent and cure blindness.

I think we need more big thinking. We need to talk about let’s cure diabetes, let’s cure AIDS. Sometimes it takes an incremental approach. But sometimes it takes a big, grand or bold vision.

You mentioned Dr. Salk. In the early days, with the polio vaccine, some actually died from the vaccine. He had to move forward despite some obstacles and despite some setbacks.

Originally, the whole idea of vaccination came from Dr. Boylston in Boston, preceding the time of our Revolutionary War. There, it was a live vaccine taken from the actual pustules of someone who had smallpox, lanced it, stuck it into the pustules, and then cut into a person who did not have smallpox and gave them the disease. He tried to give them a mild variant of this. For this, Dr. Boylston was hounded through the streets and mobs came to the house. The persons he chose to vaccinate first were his kids. That took a very bold step forward to vaccinate his kids. His kids survived, and the rest is history.

George Washington had his family inoculated. Back at the time of the Revolutionary War, more people died from communicable diseases than died from actual bullets. This was true in most wars up until this century.

I think it takes bold vision, and I think Sandy Greenberg will help to move this along with this prize. I love the idea of incentives. We are a country built on incentives. I don’t think any scientist is going to jump forward and say, I am doing it only for the prize. But prizes don’t hurt, and we should acknowledge that these scientists who can come forward and may come forward with a great cure should be rewarded.

I would like to thank Sandy Greenberg and his family for setting up this prize. I hope that out of this some great good will come for those who have gone blind and for prevention.

Senator Coons: I thank, Senator Paul. I, like you, am confident that some great good will come out of this bold vision, out of this clear initiative.

As we look forward at the health care debates that have raged throughout this chamber and this country in the last few years, I will simply say in closing, as we look to the future of the United States, there is a path forward that says the right way to deal with skyrocketing health care costs and the fiscal challenges they provide is to simply crunch down, to limit, to narrow, to cut off access, and to manage downward.

A competing and I think a more compelling and I think, frankly, a more American view is we should take bold risks. We should innovate. We should dare to speak of curing diseases that are immensely harmful and expenses that are challenges and burdens for our whole country and the world.

This prize–this challenge from Sue and Sandy Greenberg–is something I think should lift the sights of all of us in this country to the very real possibilities of working together to find exceptional cures.

Mr. President, thank you for letting us speak about this extraordinary American, his wife and his family and his quest to end blindness by the end of this decade.

I urge anyone interested in this topic and interested in working with us further to visit the Web site endblindnessby2020.com. I thank Sandy and Sue Greenberg for their courage, their perseverance, and their commitment to bringing light to millions of their fellow men and women around the globe.

Thank you.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for passage of FAST Voting Act to improve access to voting rights

Mr. President, like many millions of Americans, on November 6, just over a month ago on Election Day, I stood at the polls, I cast my vote. Then when I got home, I stayed up late to see the results come in. I was still awake when President Obama delivered his acceptance speech. In those remarks, he said, “I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. And by the way, we have to fix that.”

There is so much we have to fix. It was 11:38 p.m. on the East Coast when the Associated Press first called the election for President Obama, but Andre Murias, an 18-year-old first-time voter in Miami-Dade County, Florida was still on line waiting to cast his ballot. Andre had been on line at South Kendall Community Church for nearly five hours by the time he cast his ballot just before midnight. Five hours.

That’s nothing compared to the seven and eight hours long that many other Floridians waited to cast their ballots during the state’s condensed early-voting period.  “This is a mess,” one voter said. “It’s chaos.”

Rashell Hobbs, another first-time voter, waited five hours in Chesapeake, Virginia.  “This is just horrible,” Rashell said. “There’s no reason it should take this long.”

Voters across the country had other challenges or problems voting. Voters in Pueblo, Colorado, said they checked the box on their touch-screen panel to vote for Mitt Romney, but it kept switching their pick to President Obama. “I wonder whether my vote really counted,” one Colorado voter said.

Other voters in Pennsylvania reported a similar problem, although in that case, it was the President for whom they seemingly were unable to vote.

Poll watchers in Davidson County, Tennessee, could only stand by as would-be voters saw the very, very long line of people waiting to cast their ballots and drove away. Pressed, I’m sure, by commitments of family or work or others, to choose not to spend hours standing in line to exercise that most fundamental of American rights, the franchise, the right to vote. In Philadelphia, longtime registered voters who showed up to cast their ballots discovered their names simply weren’t on the rolls anymore.

Mr. President, in Ohio, in Wisconsin, in South Carolina, New York, Montana, more than a dozen states experienced some kind of basic breakdown in the administration of their elections in 2012.

This is the United States. The right to vote is fundamental to who we are. It is basic to our democracy. It is in our DNA.  We have to get this right.

That’s why I introduced the Fair, Accurate, Secure, and Timely (FAST) Voting Act of 2012. Along with Senators Warner and Whitehouse and I’m grateful that Congressmen Connolly and Langevin in the House introduced it and co-sponsors there.

In my view, long lines are simply another form of disenfranchising voters. Running out of ballots is simply another form of voter suppression. Incomplete and inaccurate voter rolls, disregarded voter registrations, misleading phone calls and mailing pieces, things that make it harder for citizens to vote, are simply a violation of voters’ civil rights. We can and must do better. As widespread as the problem was in 2012, there are also many states that are getting it right, and these states, in my view, continue to be laboratories of democracy from which we should learn.

The FAST Voting Act creates a new competitive federal grant program, roughly modeled on “Race to the Top,” which has encouraged states to pursue reforms in a different field in education. States that demonstrated the most comprehensive and promising reform plan win a greater portion of the grant funding in that model. Instead of spurring reform in the education field, the FAST Voting Act would inspire election reform.

This bill authorizes a federal program that would award grants based on how well states improve access to the ballot, in at least nine different ways. Through flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration; through early voting, at a minimum nine of the ten calendar days preceding an election; through what’s called “no-excuse absentee voting;” assistance to voters who don’t speak English or have disabilities or visual impairments; effective access to voting for members of our armed services; formal training to election officials, including state and county administrators and volunteers; audited and reduced waiting times at the poorest-performing polling stations; and as we learned given that Sandy, Superstorm Sandy, occurred just a few days close to the election, contingency plans for voting in the event of natural or other disaster that compels the delay of an election.

These are the big areas, Mr. President, mentioned in this FAST Voting Act. Making it easier to register, making it easier to vote early, make it easier to vote absentee, shortening lines, better preparing for catastrophes, making it easier for Americans to exercise their right to vote.

I’m working with a host of civil rights and voter protection groups who work day in and day out on strengthening our electoral process. It encourages states and localities to find new, creative and local solutions that other states can learn from.

Mr. President, as you know, in my service prior to coming to this body, I was a County Executive and long active with NACO, the National Association of Counties. Counties have different roles in different states.  There’s more than 3,000 counties that spread across our 50 states, but in most states they are responsible, in part, for administering elections.

Many election officials are county elected officials and many voter boards are parts of county government. One of the things that I think is best about this bill, this FAST Voting Act of 2012, is that rather than mandating some specific response, it encourages and incentivizes state and local officials to put together plans for how to learn from the lessons of 2012, how to learn from the long lines and barriers that were put into place of those who came out to vote and find the best solutions rather than imposing or compelling, incentivizing and leading.  In a way that, I think, state and local officials will respond well to and will accept and celebrate.

There is strong momentum. Although the election is now more than a month behind us, my hope is that we will continue to focus on the challenges of this last election and fix them before the next. The momentum, well, today the Pew Conference on Voting in America is bringing together some of our nation’s foremost experts and scholars.  And for that, we’re grateful to the Pew Charitable Foundation.        

The Judiciary Committee, Mr. President, on which we serve, has a hearing announced this coming week, and I applaud Chairman Leahy and Senator Durbin in highlighting the need to get to the bottom of what happened in 2012 and in championing the need for reform. Other members of this body have introduced bills, a well: Senators Gillibrand and Boxer. And I look forward to learning from them what their proposals are and working more closely with them to harmonize our bills and make sure we have the best approach moving forward.

If I can, Mr. President, I’ll make one last point. In addition to serving on the Judiciary Committee, I’m the chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee. And in that role, I advocate for free and fair elections with African leaders every day. The United States is often cited as their role model. We need to act like it and we need to earn it. What kind of message are we sending to electoral commissions, to heads of state, to members of civil society and advocates for free, fair and open elections in the rest of the world when we so visibly and publicly fail to deliver on that promise here in our own country? What kind of message are we sending to Andre Murias, a first-time voter? What kind of message are we sending to Rashell Hobbs?  What kind of message are we sending to first-time voters about the value of their right to vote for whom so many fought, worked, struggled, sacrificed, even died in the course of our history? What message do we send to them when we allow modern-day barriers to be put in their place?

Voting is a fundamental civil right. And when states prevent their citizens from exercising that right, whether deliberately through law or through regulations or accidentally through lack of preparation or mere incompetence, it is a violation of voters’ civil rights.

The FAST Voting Act, Mr. President, is one critical way we can try to fix our elections and make sure what happened across our country in 2012 never happens again.

Thank you.

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Floor Colloquy: Senators Carper, Coons celebrate Delaware Day

Senator Coons: As anyone who has looked at the beautiful Delaware flag knows – and it flies in our offices and hallways here–it has a date emblazoned on the bottom – December 7, 1787, and that is known as Delaware Day. That is the day when Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

So to celebrate Delaware Day, we do some things together, don’t we, Senator Carper?

Senator Carper:  And we have fun doing them. One of the things we are going to do–a great idea from a brand new senator to Delaware about a year ago—we have a “Taste of Delaware” day. We are doing that this afternoon. It is not something paid for by the federal government but sponsored by our Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, as I recall, and others of its members to really be able to show off some of the finest of our state, and some of them pretty tasty, as it turns out. So we are looking forward to a lot of people coming by and enjoying that.

Senator Coons: We are looking forward to doing that in just a few minutes, actually. We have Dogfish Head beer, we have Grottos pizza, and Capriotti subs, we’ve got dozens of restaurateurs and breweries and wineries from across Delaware – in age-appropriate settings – who will make available some of the finest of what Delaware has to offer. It is my hope that members of staff and our colleagues will join in the celebration of Delaware Day.

One of the questions folks who are listening might have is: What about Delaware are you celebrating? It is, in my experience – and I believe my colleague’s – a state that is not just the First State, because of a wonderful accident of history, where we were the first state to have the vision and the courage to sign the Constitution, to ratify it, but it is also a state that has a nearly unique culture – a culture of respect, of innovation, of education, and of civility. It is a place that has a special, even a unique political culture, one that is at times the polar opposite of what I have seen here – forgive me, Madam President–in the last two years. Delaware, much like New Hampshire, feels and seems like a small town that, through the magic of federalism and the Connecticut Compromise and the Continental Congress, a state with two senators.

One of the things I am proudest of about my state – and Senator Carper knows this well – is a tradition that just celebrated its 200th anniversary. It is the epitome of what we call the Delaware Way. It is a tradition that happens two days after every election. It is called Return Day, and it happens in Georgetown, which is the county seat of our southernmost county, Sussex County. What happens two days after the election, there’s a lot of different pieces to it, but the first thing that happens is we all gather out at the Marvel Nutter Farm and two by two – ark rules – the candidates who ran against each other in the general election get into horse-drawn carriages and ride slowly down the main streets of Georgetown where crowds of thousands come out to see the candidates, who just days before were engaged in vigorous political combat, being polite, being friendly, and waving to the crowds.

What happens after that Senator Carper?

Senator Carper: We have this beautiful center of the town of Georgetown, with all these beautiful old brick buildings, courthouses and other, and as we gather there in the circle of Georgetown the town crier comes out on the balcony of the courthouse and he has on his top hat and his tails and he announces the results of the election two days earlier. This is Thursday after the election. He calls out the results of the election two days earlier just for Sussex County, Delaware, where about a sixth of our state’s population lives. He calls out the results of everything from president, vice president, all the way down to clerk of the peace or sheriff. And when he finishes, we have a couple of short speeches on the platform there in front of thousands of people, maybe a patriotic song or two, and then the leaders of parties, Democrat, Republican, maybe Libertarian chairman, take a hatchet – a pretty big hatchet – and they grab it, each holding on, and they put it down in a glass aquarium half-full of sand. And then someone brings in some buckets of sand, maybe from Rehoboth Beach or Dewey Beach, and they cover up and literally bury the hatchet.

Some of my colleagues from New Jersey said: If we had a ceremony like that in our state, and we buried the hatchet, it probably wouldn’t be in the sand. It would be in the anatomy or some part of the body of our opponents. But we do it in the sand. And then we have maybe a benediction, and we go off and eat, and people open their homes for a reception. So as the day carries on and the sun sets in the west, the travails and the passions from the election begin to dissipate and people start to think and refocus not on how do we beat our opponents’ brains out, but how do we work together to govern our state.

It is a wonderful, wonderful tradition. Senator Coons and I have talked about this before. We think we could use a Return Day for our country. It certainly works in our state. It has a very civilizing effect on all our campaigns.

Senator Coons: Whether it is the reception in the morning, the long carriage ride through the middle of Georgetown, the speeches on the podium, the announcement of the results, the literally burying of the hatchet, or the receptions that go on all afternoon and into the night, the experience of Return Day for me – and I believe for my colleague Senator Carper – has been one of reconciliation, one of moving past the election and then forward toward the challenge of making decisions together for the people we represent.

Everybody shows up–the winners and the losers. It is only the sorest of losers who don’t show up and only the most arrogant of winners who don’t show up. So, frankly, it is almost always everybody. In the elections I have been blessed to stand in and be successful in for the people of Delaware, Return Day is a great end to the campaign season and beginning of our season of service to the people of Delaware.

So as we go from the floor now to the reception in honor of Delaware Day, I want to say how grateful I am to serve with my senior senator, who has always been personally a model of the civility, of graciousness, and of the service that marks the Delaware Way and marks Delaware Day, which we celebrate officially tomorrow, but which we kick off tonight with a reception.

Senator Carper: I would add to that this is a commitment to civility that Senator Coons and I share, and it is also one that our Congressman John Carney certainly warmly embraces, and before him, Mike Castle. If you think of all of those – Castle with a “C”, Carney with a “C”, Coons with a “C”, and Carper with a “C”, people say what is it with the letter “C” and the state of Delaware?

If I can, before we close here, I want to roll back in time about the economy of our state. People say what do you all do there? How do you provide for your living, your income? I would say the economy of our state is pretty much founded on the letter “C.” It includes corn. We started off by growing corn. Chickens, there are a whole of lot of chickens there. For every person in Delaware, there are 300 chickens. For anyone listening and wondering what to have for dinner, chicken would be good. We have chemicals – the DuPont Company.

A poor impoverished French family came to Delaware over 200 years ago and established what I call the DuPont Country Club. They didn’t have many members. They figured they needed to establish some jobs so people could join their country club, so they started a chemical company, and a power company, and now they have quite a successful science company in our state – for over 200 years. We have cars. We have built a lot of cars over the years for GM and Chrysler. We are home to corporations of over half the New York Stock Exchange, half the Fortune 500. Credit card businesses are in our state. The coast of our state is the site of the nation’s summer capital – Rehoboth Beach and a bunch of other places. So the letter “C” has been pretty big.

People say: Well, why do they call you the First State? Well, we are actually the first colony that threw off the yoke of British tyranny on June 15, 1776 and at the same time said to Pennsylvania, take a hike, we want to be a state on our own. And then 225 years from tomorrow, to be exact, we were the first state to ratify the Constitution.

We have the best beaches in the country. Last year I think there were four five-star beaches in America, with two of them in Delaware – Rehoboth and Dewey Beach. We have the best Air Force base, we think, in the world. We were first in PhDs per capita. We have, I think, the finest Judiciary – acknowledged year after year after year as the finest judicial system in the states. We have the best financial controls and cash management system. We have had AAA credit rating since – what was that guy’s name as Governor, Carper or something? We continue to have that kind of credit rating. We are proud of being first.

What is our State motto?  “It is good to be first.” And we attempt to be first in a whole lot of ways. Some things you don’t want to be first in, and we want to be last in those. But we are proud of the things we are first in – first in civility.

As Senator Coons said, this all goes back to Return Day. When you announce your candidacy for election, whether it is for the U.S. Senate or whether it’s sheriff, you know at the end of the campaign – two days after the campaign – you are going to be in Georgetown, Delaware, in a horse-drawn carriage or maybe an antique car with the man or woman you were running against, their family, your family, and surrounded by friends and supporters and thousands of other people. And I think it has a very tempering effect on the nature of our campaigns, a wonderful effect.

That is just one of much that we are proud of in our state. We are lucky to be senators from this state, but this is a state that works and focuses on results. This is a state where we govern from the middle, whether the Governor is DuPont or Castle or Carper or Markell. And whether the Senator is Roth or Carper or Coons or Biden or Kaufman, we govern from the middle. We are a state where Democrats and Republicans actually like each other. We just want to get things done and do what is right for our state.

With that in mind, we hope some of our friends and neighbors can join us later today in the Russell Building up on the third floor. We will make a toast to Delaware and enjoy some sarsaparilla and some other goodies as well.

It is a great joy to serve with my friend.

Senator Coons: I thank my colleague. With that, I yield the floor.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for House to extend tax cuts for middle class families

Madam President, this is a critical moment. Over the next few weeks, serious choices must be made about how our nation spends its money, about our national budget. And at its heart, a budget is a statement of values. A budget shows the world what we care about, what we prioritize, what we invest in, how we intend to build our future. And everyone who comes to this chamber comes with their own values, representing their own state. But each of us also knows we have to find a way to bridge those divides to work together to solve the enormous fiscal challenges that we face as a nation. That means addressing the more than $500 billion in automatic spending cuts, tax increases, and other fiscal changes all scheduled to take place at the beginning of the next year and known collectively as the fiscal cliff.

We find ourselves at the edge of this cliff because of our shared beliefs that deficits matter and that we can’t keep spending money that we don’t have. As it stands today, our deficit and debt are unsustainable. Last year we ran a budget deficit of well over a trillion dollars, and we now have a national debt that exceeds $16 trillion. If we don’t get these numbers under control, interest payments will inevitably skyrocket, taking up a larger and larger percentage of our budget until they crowd out other critical, pro-growth investments in our country’s competitiveness and the essential social safety net that puts a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our country. Madam President, I don’t believe either one of us wants to put those two vital things at risk.

When a budget is so out of balance we have to take a hard look at both the money coming in and the money going out. The only way to get back on track, in my view, is to address both sides of this equation–revenue and spending. We have to find a balanced solution that combines tough spending cuts with reforms to our tax code that bring in more revenue, while also ensuring fairness to taxpayers. There is, Madam President, real momentum, I believe, for this kind of big, balanced, bipartisan solution for the first time in a long time.

We have seen some courageous Republicans in both the House and Senate recently stand up and say that revenue has to be on the table and a few even that an increase in tax rates for the wealthiest Americans may be necessary to get a budget deal that moves us forward. They know what we all know–that, frankly, even the most drastic across-the-board spending cuts, like the kinds contained in the sequester that will kick in in January, won’t save enough to close the budget gap. At the same time, across-the-board, meat ax cuts to domestic programs violate some of our basic American values by failing to protect the most vulnerable in our society, those who, I believe, our values call us to put a circle of protection around, even in this most difficult recovery.

Risking public safety, for example, by cutting funding for cops and firefighters or leaving families out in the cold this winter by cutting heating assistance to low-income seniors–these are not American values. They are not the best way to solve our fiscal challenge. The truth is those programs specifically have already been cut, more than I would ever have liked to have seen. The Budget Control Act passed last year made a dramatic trillion dollars in spending cuts over the coming decade, which fell like an ax on some community-based programs that Delaware families depend and which I used as county executive, in partnership with our community, to fight for the disabled, for affordable housing and for low-income heating assistance programs.

So let’s not watch this moment pass us by. Let’s instead seize the opportunity before us and start finding areas where, across the aisle and between the chambers of the Senate and the House, we can agree. One of those areas of agreement, Madam President, is the need to extend tax cuts for the middle class, for families and small businesses still working their way out of the deep hole of the financial collapse of 2008 and still making their way through this recovery.

No one from either party, the House or Senate, or any state in this country, wants to raise taxes on middle-class families and small businesses. Families like Deborah’s.

Deborah is a single mother in Wilmington, DE–my hometown–who is working a full-time job and a part-time job on top of that just to make ends meet. She wrote to my office, concerned about tax increases and this fiscal cliff. She said “the middle class is the heart and soul of this country–what keeps it going and growing. What else can we be hit with? I know that I cannot take on anything more financially.”

So my first call today, Madam President, is let’s give Deborah and families like hers in Delaware and around the country the certainty, before we end this calendar year, of knowing their taxes will not go up in 26 days when the calendar turns to 2013. One way to do that is for the House to take up and pass legislation this body has already considered and passed in a bipartisan way that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for 98 percent of families and 97 percent of small businesses, while also achieving nearly a trillion dollars in debt and deficit reduction.

This bill extends tax cuts that would otherwise expire for all Americans who earn income and for all small businesses that earn revenue but just on the first $200,000 of individual income or $250,000 in family income.

Tax rates on income over and above $ 1/4 million a year would revert to the levels of the Clinton administration, the time of enormous economic growth and prosperity.

This one step would blunt the impact of the fiscal cliff for the vast majority of Americans and give them the certainty they so badly need. It would also be a serious down payment on meaningful deficit reduction and ensure that our budget more closely reflects our values, our fundamental belief in the American Dream and that if you work hard, you can still get ahead.

Leading Republicans in the House and the Senate, including Senator Snowe and Congressman Cole, have urged the House to move forward and pass this bill to provide badly needed security and certainty to middle-class families before the end of this year. I join their call, but let’s not stop there. Let’s keep going and find additional areas of compromise and constructive common ground. To provide the business community with the certainty they need to plan the deployment and investment of capital so they can get Americans back to work. To provide the market with certainty to sustain this recovery, while continuing to invest in our future. And for families, who need to know their budget future and who need to be able to have confidence to take risks, to invest in growth, to educate their children, to buy a larger home, to take care of their children and their parents. To find the kind of balanced, bipartisan, long-term solution we need is to find a solution to all of these problems.

It’s only by coming together over the next few weeks–not as Republicans and Democrats but as Americans–that we can avoid a fiscal calamity that was entirely predictable, and the result of a decade of unresolved budget fighting in this chamber. For both parties, simply blaming the other side and waiting for the next election to give us a stronger mandate is no longer a tolerable or sustainable path forward. Working together, in my view, Madam President, is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.

Americans have faced tough times before, but our strength has always been our unity and in our ability to come together. It is my hope, my prayer that faced with the challenge of the impending fiscal cliff, we can do it again.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for strong, comprehensive policy to address al Qaeda takeover of Northern Mali

Mr. President, I rise today to address a challenging situation in Mali. Mali is a West African country, a country of nearly half a million square miles. A vast country, that stretches from the Sahara Desert to the Niger River area and is home to roughly 15 million people. Yet it’s not at the top of the list of concerns for many Americans. Mr. President, this spring, back in March, a rogue element in Mali’s security forces launched a coup and forcefully overthrew a long-standing democratically elected government in the nation of Mali, our ally.

This may seem inconsequential to the average American, but it could have big implications for our security, as well as that of our regional and global allies. Because in the power vacuum that was created in that spring coup, al Qaeda saw an opportunity and they stepped in. Three different extremist groups all linked to or controlled by al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, known as AQIM, now control an area the size of Texas in the northern part of Mali. They succeeded in fracturing a formerly stable democracy and contributing to broad security, political and humanitarian crises that I believe have grave implications for the Sahel region and for America’s interests.

To put it simply, Mr. President, this matters. Mali, a relatively strong democracy for more than two decades and an ally of the United States, is now embroiled in turmoil. The United States in partnership with the international community must show leadership in helping it rebuild its democracy and restore its territorial integrity by reclaiming northern Mali from terrorists and extremists.

So this morning as the chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, on which we serve, Mr. President, I chaired a hearing to assess developments and the path forward for U.S. policy in Mali. What I heard from our experts, from the Department of Defense, from the State Department, from USAID, as well as a range of outside experts and one witness who testified from Bamako, the capital of Mali, was of real concern to me. Northern Mali today is the largest terrorist controlled area in the world. In the north, extremists have imposed a harsh and strict version of Sharia, or Islamic law, and committed gross violations of human rights.

Many folks have heard of Timbuktu, but don’t know that it’s an ancient city in northern Mali. A site where these Islamic extremists have behaved much as the Taliban did in Afghanistan before 9/11, destroying sacred, religious, and historic artifacts in Timbuktu, imposing a harsh version of Sharia that has meant amputations, stonings, violations of women’s rights, of free speech and religious free exercise rights, fundamentally changing the tolerant and inclusive history of Mali and creating with it a humanitarian crisis as more than 400,000 Malians have fled, either internally displaced within Mali or going into neighboring countries as refugees.

With growing ties between these terrorists and Nigeria, Libya and throughout the region, AQIM, we believe, may now use its safe haven in northern Mali to plan for regional or transnational terrorist attacks. And just as we should not have ignored developments in Afghanistan, which seemed a remote and troubled country when the Taliban took it over more than a dozen years ago, so, too, we would ignore the chaos in northern Mali at our peril.

In fact, Secretary Clinton has recently said that Mali has now become a “powder keg” of potential instability in the region and beyond.  The top American military commander in Africa, General Carter Ham, said publicly just this week that al Qaeda is operating terrorist training camps in northern Mali and providing arms, explosives and financing to other terrorist groups in the region.

So I believe it’s critical that the United States have a strong and comprehensive policy to deal with this threat. I’m concerned that the current U.S. approach may not be forward leaning enough to address all three crises – security, political and humanitarian – in a coordinated, comprehensive and effective way, at the same time. Given the compelling U.S. interest in stability and security and good governance in Mali, we must ensure we don’t miss the bigger picture of what this situation means for the future of Mali, to our allies, and to our security.

The U.N. Security Council is now considering what they call a concept of operations for an African-led military operation. The U.S. can and should play a more active role in supporting this and preventing the country from becoming a permanent home for extremists and a safe haven for terrorists. An active role, Mr. President, does not mean putting American boots on the ground. Instead, we can provide operational support for a regionally-led, multilateral, African-led force being organized by ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, and the African Union.

In the weeks ahead, the U.N. Security Council will likely vote on a resolution authorizing this coalition to lead a military intervention to dislodge the terrorists in the north. We’ve seen models like this work, in Cote d’Ivoire and Somalia, so there’s reason to believe in the potential of a regional military solution to the security crisis in the north. However, even if this intervention works, it will take time to train and equip and assemble the regional force and to develop the appropriate plans for what happens during and after a military intervention. And, frankly, Mr. President, security and stability can’t be restored to Mali with military action alone.

The current crisis is as much about governance as it is about security. A stronger Malian democracy is the best way to ensure security and societal gains in the short-term and the long-term. But democracy doesn’t just begin or end with an election. One of the reasons Mali’s democracy crumbled so quickly was that Malians did not feel connected to or represented by or well served by their government. Voter turnout in the last few elections was lower and lower, with the government viewed as corrupt, social services not benefiting the relatively sparsely populated north, and institutions nationwide that were weak. The political and security challenges in Mali are two sides of the same coin. They’re not separate issues.

So I will urge that we break down silos between departments and agencies in our government and take a comprehensive view. If we focus on the political only and insist on Mali moving forward briskly with an election, even when the security situation will prevent most northern Malians from meaningfully participating, I think we risk unintentionally strengthening the hand of those who want to ensure that Mali’s regional divide is permanent and hand a symbolic victory to al Qaeda. On the other hand, if we rush forward with a security solution, with a regional military intervention before it’s adequately planned for, before they are responsibly trained and equipped, we risk defeat on that front as well.

I think we can and should do better. We can work closely with our allies, with regional partners, and the international community to address all the security, political and humanitarian crises unfolding in Mali. Effective, inclusive elections early next year should be one goal, but not the only one. We also have to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis of the 400,000 displaced persons and refugees and the more than 4.5 million people in need of emergency food aid in the region, and the security crisis of terrorists controlling an area this large.

To bring long-term peace and stability to Mali and to ensure northern Mali doesn’t slide into being the base of operations for the next al Qaeda attack on our allies, our interests abroad or even the United States, we can’t afford to ignore any of the pieces of this complex puzzle. Mr. President, the United States simply cannot afford, despite the many distractions and other priorities facing us, to ignore Mali.

And I pledge to work in great partnership with my colleagues here in the Senate and my friends on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ensure an effective engagement by the United States in this important area.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges colleagues to stand with Syrian people

Madam President, I rise today to speak in favor of the amendment number 3262, which I am honored to cosponsor with Senator McCain and Senator Levin. I want to first start by thanking them for their disciplined, diligent and very strong leadership of this year’s NDAA process. This is an authorization bill taken up and considered by this Senate for 52 years, and despite a lot of challenges here, a lot of difficulties we have getting to bills, getting past objections, getting to reasonable processes and amendments, these two fine gentlemen have led admirably in a very difficult environment.

This amendment does what I think we need to do next, to put before the Senate in an appropriate classified setting, useful information about the possibilities before us and before our allies in a very difficult, very complex region that is, as Senator Paul has noted, currently undergoing dramatic conflict.

Let me speak to a few points that persuaded me to join Senator McCain and Senator Levin in cosponsoring this amendment. First, despite the comments from my colleague from Kentucky, these plans will be delivered to the Senate in classified form. They will not be accessible to the general public. They will not be broadcast to our opponents or those who might seek to learn about America’s plans. They will only be delivered in classified form. Second and I think most importantly, it is explicit in this amendment that nothing in this section shall be construed as a declaration of war or an authorization for the use of force.

Senator Paul’s oft-repeated concerns that we are rushing headlong into over-engagement in a civil war best left to the people of Syria is reflected clearly and in plain language in that provision within this amendment.

Earlier today, Madam President, we took up and voted on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and I spoke to this issue there as well. Despite the plain language of that Convention that would prevent it from having any of the noxious impacts on families in the United States, despite the plain language of that Convention and the various restrictions and reservations that were added to it, it would have no impact on homeschooling, no impact on reproductive rights in the United States, no impact on any of the variety of things that were cast about on the floor of the Senate today.

So, too, here we should not allow, despite this plain language, senators to mislead our colleagues into thinking that somehow secretly embedded within this is an authorization for the use of force.

So what is this?

This is asking that the United States, in consultation between the Department of Defense and this Senate, make reasonable assessments of what our path forward in dealing with the tragic situation in Syria might be. This amendment is clear that it will not consider ground troops being deployed onto Syrian territory, that it will only look at means that might be used by the United States or allies to stop Assad’s reckless, relentless, criminal use of air power to murder his own civilians, his own citizens.

I have been heartbroken, Madam President, as I have read account after account of jets and helicopters being used to strafe bread lines, being used to bomb hospitals, being used to bomb schools and of the thousands of innocents who have died. The Syrian civil war is a very complex conflict. And Senator Paul asked what I think really is the central question. He said how can we be confident that the opposition will be tolerant, inclusive, peaceful? That it won’t prosecute or persecute Christians? That it will be an ally to Israel and not impose the sorts of threats and difficulties that he cited from Libya, from Egypt and other countries.  

That is exactly the core question at issue for us going forward. Should the United States stand on the sidelines as Bashar al-Assad massacres tens of thousands more of his civilians? Or should we consider what ways we can be involved? Through ways of providing humanitarian assistance, through supporting our regional allies of Turkey and Jordan, through multilateral engagement, through supporting Turkey’s request to NATO for defensive material or through proactively engaging to better learn and better understand what the opposition on the ground is inclined to do. And to set clear standards for how if they demonstrate they are reliable partners in pursuing peace, if they commit themselves, the elements of the national coalition and the Free Syrian Army. If they clearly commit themselves to being of exactly the sort Senator Paul would hope: tolerant, inclusive, pro-democracy, why would we stand on the sidelines of history and allow Islamic extremists to instead write the future of the Syrian people?

For these and many other reasons, Madam President, I am grateful for the opportunity to join with Senator McCain and Senator Levin in cosponsoring this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons addresses the issues of homeschooling in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Thank you so much, Senator Kerry, for your chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee and your very real leadership on this important issue — and to Senator Lugar — the two of you, in combination, I think, have led very strongly on this important issue.

Let me just briefly add two points to the chorus on this floor today. First, to the senators who’ve spoken pointedly about their fears — their concerns — about homeschooling. I listened while presiding, Mr. President, while Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma spoke passionately about his youngest daughter who homeschools her kids, and about their fears that somehow this Convention would hand the power to an unelected group of international bureaucrats to direct the schooling of children in Oklahoma.

I heard Senator Lee of Utah add to that negative chorus a question. He said: I have justifiable doubts that a U.N. committee in Geneva can judge the best interests of children in Utah. I agree. And this Convention does nothing to empower an international convention of bureaucrats to direct the schooling of children in Delaware, in West Virginia, in Indiana, or in Massachusetts.

And I am frankly upset, Mr. President, that they have succeeded in scaring the parents who homeschool their children all over this country. My own office has gotten dozens of calls and letters demanding that I vote against this Convention as a matter of international law, and, as a matter of U.S. law, this Convention does nothing — does nothing — to change the homeschooling of children in America.

Rather, it does something positive. The Americans with Disabilities Act, led so brilliantly in its ratification by Senator Tom Harkin, who will speak shortly, and where Senator Robert Dole was a central architect of its passage in this chamber, stands as one of the greatest accomplishments in this country in our steady progress towards freedom and inclusion.

This Convention, ratified by this Senate, would allow our voice to be heard internationally for all over the world. A billion citizens of this world live with disabilities every day. And, Mr. President, our voice deserves to be heard when we open the Senate every day, we say the Pledge of Allegiance. And at the end of it, we hold up to our world our standard — liberty and justice for all.

In this country, the Americans with Disabilities Act says we have accomplished real progress towards liberty for the disabled and justice for all. By ratifying this Convention, our voice would be heard on these vital issues all over the world. It is a voice that deserves to be heard. I urge my colleagues to ratify the Convention.

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

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Statement for the Record: Helping states improve their elections with Fast Voting Act

Mr. COONS: Mr. President, like so many Americans, I stayed up late last Tuesday night to watch the election returns come in.

It was 11:38 pm on the East Coast when the Associated Press called the election for President Obama, but at that late hour, Andre Murias — an 18-year-old first-time voter in Miami-Dade County, Florida — was still waiting in line to cast his ballot. Andre had been in line at the South Kendall Community Church for nearly five hours by the time he voted, just before midnight. Five hours – that is appalling. Yet, some Florida voters waited even longer – as much as seven or eight hours – during the state’s condensed early-voting period.

Rashell Hobbs, another first-time voter, waited for five hours in Chesapeake, Virginia. “This is just horrible,” Rashell said. “There is no reason it should take this long.”

Rashell, I agree.

Voting machine irregularities were experienced in states across the country by voters of both political parties. In Colorado, voters said they checked the box on the touchscreen panel to vote for Mitt Romney, but that the machine kept switching their pick to President Obama, while in Pennsylvania, voters reported the same problem in reverse, that their selection of President Obama was registered as a vote for Governor Romney.

And it wasn’t just new technology that caused issues. Poll-watchers in Davidson County, Tennessee, could only stand by as would-be voters saw the long line of people waiting to cast their ballots and drove away. In Philadelphia, long-time registered voters who showed up to cast their ballots discovered their names simply weren’t on the rolls any more.

More than a dozen states, including Ohio, Wisconsin, South Carolina, New York and Montana, experienced some kind of breakdown in the administration of their elections.

This is the United States of America. The right to vote is in our DNA.  We have to get this right.

That is why today, I’m introducing the Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely Voting Act of 2012 — the FAST Voting Act.

Making it harder for citizens to vote is a violation of voters’ civil rights. Long lines are a form of voter disenfranchisement. Running out of ballots is a form of voter suppression. The fact is, access is denied when registration is cut off months before the election and where early vote and vote-by-mail options are not widely available.  This particularly matters for the men and women of our armed services, who are currently stationed overseas and have no choice but to vote by mail. 

As widespread as the problem is, there are states that are getting it right. These states continue to be laboratories of democracy, and we need to learn from them.

The FAST Voting Act creates a competitive grant program in the model of Race to the Top, which has encouraged states to aggressively pursue education reform. The states that demonstrated the most comprehensive and promising reform plans win a greater portion of the grant funding.

Instead of spurring education reform, the FAST Voting Act would inspire election reform.

This bill authorizes a federal program that would award grants based on how well states improve access to the ballot in at least nine ways: flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration; early voting, at a minimum of 9 of the 10 calendar days preceding an election; no-excuse absentee voting; assistance to voters who do not speak English as a primary language or who have disabilities, including visual impairment; effective access to voting for members of the armed services; formal training of election officials, including State and county administrators and volunteers; audited and reduced waiting times at the poorest performing polling stations; contingency plans for voting in the event of a natural or other disaster, such as Superstorm Sandy, which impacted voting in New York and New Jersey, and would have only needed to take a slight turn to dramatically impact my home state of Delaware.

The stakes are high, and the importance of achieving these electoral reforms is paramount. When tens of thousands – or even hundreds of thousands – of Americans have their right to vote denied or compromised, we have to take action.

The implications of these voting irregularities are felt far beyond our shores. I am the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, and I worked and studied in South Africa during its apartheid regime. One of the most inspiring sights I have ever seen was during the first ever free and fair election in that nation, when South Africans stood in line for up to two days to cast their votes. Members of our subcommittee meet regularly with African heads of state, and all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, stress with these leaders the vital importance of free and fair elections. So when we still have substantial voting issues in our own elections, that is a cause for deep concern.

We have the opportunity to send a message to first time voters here at home, as well as those fighting for democracy overseas, that every vote counts and every voter will be counted.

When states prevent their citizens from exercising their fundamental right of ballot access — whether deliberately through the law or regulations, or accidentally because of incompetence or lack of preparedness — it is a violation of voters’ civil rights.

The FAST Voting Act is one way to try to fix our elections and make sure what happened across our country last week does not happen again. I look forward to working with my colleagues of both parties to move this important solution forward.

Thank you.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls on colleagues to reauthorize key provision of Africa trade law

Mr. President, I rise today to speak both in favor of the passage of the bill, Senate bill 3326, and to speak against the Coburn Amendment. I first want to thank Leader Reid and Senator McConnell, as well as Senators Baucus and Hatch, for working together diligently to find a path forward for passing this bill. And I want to recognize Senator Coburn and Senator Menendez for being willing to work with us to get to today.

I say with some regret that I stand to speak against the Coburn Amendment, because I respect and recognize Senator Coburn’s determination to hold this body accountable, to find pathways forward to deal with our record deficit and debt. And in that broader objective, I look forward to working with him on finding responsible pay-fors in future bills and in finding ways that we can steadily partner to reduce the deficit and to find and root out waste and abuse in federal spending. But I have to say, that in this particular case on this amendment on this day, if we change the pay-for, we kill the bill.

We have heard clearly from Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Camp and from his ranking minority, Congressman Levin, that they will not take up this bill if amended in this form, if broken and reassembled, if sent over in any other way. The pressure of today, and the pressure of the value, the importance of this bill is what I choose to speak to.

I may at some point reserve time to speak to other issues embedded in the amendment, but I first wanted to speak to the underlying bill. I am the chairman of the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and it is in some ways my special honor and challenge to help this body grasp why the African Growth and Opportunity Act is important for us to reauthorize today.

Specifically, what I’m speaking to is the third-party fabric provision, which expires in September. This Chamber is about to go out of session later today and every day that we delay in the reauthorization of this critical provision costs jobs, costs opportunity, and costs our future.

Let speak to that for a few minutes, if I might, Mr. President. Creating American jobs and fueling our economic recovery is my top priority and I know it is for many members of this body. That’s why I’m here to talk about one of the things we can do to strengthen our economic security. And it may surprise you, but the truth is, one of the best ways to look for that future opportunity is one that was considered among the least likely just a few years ago in sub-Saharan Africa.

Access to emerging markets is critical to America’s health and growth and increased political stability, rising wages, and an emerging middle class across Africa makes the most promising continent for countries willing to invest in a long-term partnership with the United States. In AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and its Third Country Fabric Provision, the U.S. has seized this opportunity to pursue broad and mutually beneficial economic relationships that give American consumers and businesses economic security by allowing eligible countries to export apparel from Africa that’s more affordable to the American consumer, and in so doing, create jobs in Africa that otherwise would be elsewhere in the world.

Mr. President, this key provision, as I’ve said, expires in September, and our delay in moving forward with reauthorization that has earned strong bipartisan support is already disrupting production for American apparel companies along with the supply chain their customers depend on. In my view, we cannot wait to take action. America can’t afford to turn its back on African markets and Congress can’t afford to turn its back on extending this provision. Every three years, since 2000, Congress has unanimously passed the reauthorization of this provision without controversy. And it is in my view time to do so again. I respect Senator Coburn’s concern that we must change business as usual in this chamber but the timing of this amendment and the timing of this concern is, to me, not wise.

Today, Secretary Clinton is in the middle of a continent-wide tour of African countries. She is engaging with countries for strong emerging middle classes, offer us great opportunity, future economic partnership, and very real political partnership – from Ghana to Ethiopia to Tanzania to a half dozen other countries – some of the fastest growing economies in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa.

The seven countries that are the fastest-growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa are home to 350 million potential consumers of our products. And, in my view, that’s why I’m urging my colleagues to vote against the Coburn Amendment and to allow us to pass this critically important bill today. Failing to do so, in my view, is bad both for Africa and for America. Reauthorizing this provision supports the poorest African workers, the vast majority of them women, and Senator Isakson, who is my capable and talented ranking minority on the African Affairs Subcommittee, joined with Congressman Smith and Congresswoman Bass, who are our counterparts in the House, in hosting a meeting three months and six months ago with roughly 35 ambassadors from all over the continent who pleaded with us to reauthorize this critical provision.      

The economic benefits of a strong middle class in Africa are obvious. A pool of new consumers hungry for American products, potential partners for us and countries with flourishing middle classes are more likely to have strong democratic institutions, good governance, and low corruption. They are more likely to be stable and bulwarks against emerging sources of instability in Africa, a region I think is vital to our future.

In short then, Mr. President, reauthorizing this provision and continuing our strong bipartisan support of tradition for AGOA is where the United States can continue to differentiate itself from competitors like China, which recently surpassed the U.S. as Africa’s number one trading partner. The U.S. has exports to sub-Saharan Africa that exceeded $21 billion last year, growing at a pace that exceeds our exports to the rest of the world. Africans want to partner with us, they want to work with us, and they seek opportunity. The sort of bipartisanship that in the past that has allowed AGOA third country fabric provision to be reauthorized without controversy is one that I think we should embrace again today. Let’s end the delays and reauthorize this provision.

Mr. President, I yield three minutes of my time if I might, to the senator from Georgia who would like to speak to the issue of the value of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. 

__________________________________________________________________

         

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Oklahoma for his remarks, if I might just conclude my comments on this amendment by speaking in a little detail to the amendment and its substance. The senator from Oklahoma essentially directs the administration to find $192 million in reductions in spending in the following agencies: the Department of Commerce, the Small Business Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Trade and Development Agency. In my role as the chair of the African  Affairs Subcommittee, we recently held a hearing on expanding U.S. trade opportunities in Africa for exactly the reasons that I elucidated previously, that there is enormous growth, there are great opportunities across the continent.

Our competitors from all over the world, not just China, but Brazil and Russia and other European countries are expanding their investment and their seizure of these opportunities in a way that we are not. The structure of this amendment would simply declare that there’s $200 million of waste and duplication at several important trade agencies and direct the administration to slash their budgets for that amount and then hope for the best. That is what Senator Coburn’s proposed offset would do. These are agencies that promote and finance U.S. exports and help small and large U.S. businesses export and compete in a global market.

And in my view, exports particularly to this market mean jobs. So I am not convinced that now is the time to blindly slash our ability to export. I think we should instead be encouraging exports. And in the context of the federal budget, $192 million is a very, very small amount of money. I look forward to working with Senator Coburn to find other places where we can find reductions of this size. But this amendment, at this time on this day, would kill the broader and more important objective of reauthorizing the African Growth and Opportunity Act Third Party Fabric Provision, of moving forward with relevant Burma sanctions and of moving forward with an important technical fix to CAFTA. This is a carefully crafted compromise bill that the House will enact once we enact it.

I urge my colleagues to vote against the Coburn Amendment and to move forward with passage of this vital bill. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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Statement for the Record: Unveiling a bill to create R&D tax credit for startups

MR. PRESIDENT, to fuel American economic growth and job creation, we have to make sure our tax policy is as smart as the innovators who power our economy.

American ingenuity has always been at the core of our economic success. Behind nearly every game-changing innovation, from the light bulb to the search engine, has been critical research and development that transforms an idea into a market-ready product. The challenges of the global economy may be new, but the solution is the same – supporting and sustaining American innovators.

That’s why I joined with my friend and colleague, the Senator from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, to draft legislation that gives innovative startup companies the opportunity to take advantage of the successful Research and Development Tax Credit, which would support their efforts to invest in innovation and create jobs.

Senator Enzi and I are proud to be joined by Senator Schumer of New York and Senator Rubio of Florida in introducing the Startup Innovation Credit Act of 2012, which allows qualifying companies to claim the R&D Tax Credit against their employment taxes instead of their income taxes, thereby opening the credit to new companies who don’t yet have an income tax liability. We are also grateful to our colleagues in the House, who are working to introduce a bipartisan companion bill this week.

Over the past three decades, the research and development tax credit has helped tens of thousands of successful American companies create jobs by incentivizing investment in innovation. But with America’s global manufacturing competitiveness at stake, it’s time Congress shows the same type of support for entrepreneurs and young companies.

Small and startup businesses are driving our nation’s economic recovery and creating jobs by taking risks to turn their ideas into marketable products. Over the past few decades, firms that were younger than five years old were responsible for the overwhelming majority of new jobs in this country.

The tax code is a powerful tool in the government’s toolbox, but tax credits can’t help emerging companies that don’t yet have tax liabilities. That takes the R&D tax credit off the table for countless promising startups and small businesses. 

Over the last two years, I’ve talked with dozens of business leaders and experts in tax policy to refine an idea to create a new small business innovation credit that would help those young companies. My commitment to this concept has only strengthened since I introduced a version of it in my very first bill as a Senator, the Job Creation Through Innovation Act. This work continued, along with Senator Rubio, in the subsequent AGREE Act and Startup Act 2.0.

The reason I am so doggedly pursuing this idea is because it is critical for young, innovative companies in my home state of Delaware. Take, for example, DeNovix, a small company based in Wilmington. With just six employees, they design, manufacture and sell laboratory equipment that helps scientists innovate and achieve results. As a brand-new company, all of DeNovix’ products are in the research and development phase. So at this point, they can’t take advantage of the R&D Tax Credit. A new, innovative company, shut out of support they need at the time they need it most. That seems counterproductive for our economy. So let’s fix it. Under the Startup Innovation Credit Act of 2012, DeNovix and companies like them across Delaware and across the country could grow and create jobs with the help of the R&D tax credit.

We can’t let tough economic times slow down the power of American ingenuity, especially when history has taught us that now is exactly the time we need to be investing in our innovators. More than half of our Fortune 500 companies were launched during a recession or bear market, so a small business founded this year could become the next General Electric or DuPont if it gets the support it needs.

America’s researchers, business leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs are already working to help create jobs and ensure American competitiveness in the global economy. We just have to support and sustain their hard work, and we cannot take the rest of the year off just because there’s an election coming up. Even in this difficult, partisan atmosphere, we have to find ways to work together and get things done.

Innovation will drive American economic competitiveness for generations to come, and our job is to help our innovators and entrepreneurs do their jobs. I urge my colleagues to join Senators Enzi, Schumer, Rubio and I in strong support of the Startup Innovation Credit Act of 2012.

Thank you.

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