Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges support for legislation to strengthen nation’s cybersecurity

Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the issue of cybersecurity, one where there’s been a dozen speeches given earlier today and one where I am concerned there’s not enough determination, there’s not enough will on the part of this body to work together, to listen to each other, to cross the small differences that remain between camps and competing theories of a bill that we should take up, and I’m here to urge our colleagues in this body to address what we’ve been told is one of the greatest security threats facing our country: to bear down, to file amendments, to clear amendments, to listen to other members and to be willing do the job for which we were hired, which is to pass tough, broad, bipartisan legislation to protect this country we love.

In my short 20 months in the Senate, Mr. President, I have increasingly become more and more persuaded that we face a constant, steadily rising, increasingly dangerous threat that foreign nations,  foreign actors, whether they be terrorists or enemies of the United States, are not just studying the possibility of someday attacking the critical infrastructure of the United States, they’re not just writing position papers, they are not just theorizing about it, they’re not just training in some camp in an obscure country; they are today actively engaged in thousands of efforts to compromise the critical infrastructure of this country.

How members of this body can ignore the importance of this threat when the majority leader and the Republican leader have twice, in my short time here, closed the Senate and urged every one of us to go to a secure, classified briefing where we have heard from a dozen four-star generals and leaders of three-letter agencies who have told us in great detail about how grave this threat is, why in the face of repeated and publicly cited assertions by secretaries of Defense, by heads of the NSA, leaders of our Homeland Security Agency and leaders who are responsible for our first responder community, from the federal to the state, to the local level, from the private sector to this government have said over and over, this is a very real, very present threat –how we can ignore that threat today is beyond me.

The bill which is before us is S. 3414. This is a compromise bill. And in a series of meetings with other members of this body, I have been struck to hear others say, we need more time, we need to study this further, we need to pass the narrow portions on information-sharing, which are easy and everyone can now agree on, and we need not pass a broader, or stronger bipartisan bill that deals with infrastructure.

As you know well, Mr. President, for years critical committees in this body have been working on this issue. Senators Lieberman and Collins, the chair and the ranking on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, have been engaged in working their way through these difficult issues for years. And the relevant committees from Energy to Commerce to Intelligence have been engaged in hearings and in study and in legislating for years before I became a senator.

In the last few months, there’s been some important and strong work to build a bipartisan consensus around the bill that is before us today. I, like you, I believe, Mr. President, had some real concerns about the information-sharing portions of the bill, Title 7, which have to do with permitting private companies to share information with each other about the threats of attacks.

One of our big problems right now we’re told is that companies of all different sectors of our economy hesitate to share publicly or to share with our national security infrastructure information that’s critical to knowing when we’re being attacked, how we’re being attacked, and how that attack might spread. So Title 7 of this bill gives them liability protection to encourage the broad and regular sharing of that information. But those of us who are concerned about the balance between privacy and security, about protecting civil liberties and whether or not we’ve gone too far in seeking security at the expense of liberty, offered a whole series of revisions and changes to this bill, changes which have been accepted.

So, too, in a different section of the bill, Title 1, that has to deal with critical infrastructure — folks from the private sector raised alarms and concerns months ago that this bill was too prescriptive, too heavy handed, and was involved too much in regulation and demanding certain actions by the private sector. Those concerns, too, have been addressed, I think, in a broad way. And I have been impressed with how many changes Senators Lieberman and Collins have been willing to accept.

 Out of a broad working group of more than a dozen senators of both parties who over the last few months have come forward with suggestions that have made that portion of the bill truly voluntary for the private sector in a way that balances the role of civilian agencies with parts of our national security apparatus in a way that provides enough liability protection but not too much and in a way that allows the private sector to have a leading role in setting standards.

My point then, Mr. President, is to say to my colleagues in this body that when they say we need more time to study, I say, we need to come to this bill, we need to come to the floor, we need our colleagues to be clear: what are your remaining concerns?

In a meeting last Friday with several senators and representatives of industry, I had read every word of Title 7 and urged them to be concrete with us about what their concerns were and I left unsatisfied. I left concerned that some were simply scaring the private sector, some were simply scaring our citizens into thinking this bill is not ready. So for those who still have concerns — and there may very well be broad and legitimate concerns about this bill and about its direction — let’s take these two days.

I understand that more than 90 amendments have been filed. I think it is the challenge before us to make the amendments germane, narrowly focused and relevant to improve the bill rather than distracting us into issues that are more partisan or more tied to the campaign and to focus on the work that is left before us.

Mr. President, if I could, I am gravely concerned about those who would urge us to split off the portion of the bill on information sharing and ignore the portion of the bill that has to do with protecting our critical infrastructure.

As speaker after speaker has come to the floor today and made clear, our electricity grid is at risk, our dams and power plants are at risk, our highways and our financial system are risk. There are all sorts of areas in the United States where there have been real cyber-attacks, online attacks in other countries that have demonstrated the devastating potential power of our opponents and enemies around the world.

In the face of the cautionary notes we’ve heard from leaders of this body and around the country and in face of that very strong reality, why we wouldn’t pass a broad and tough bill that facilitates information-sharing and protects our critical infrastructure and strikes a fair balance in the middle is beyond me.

It is not that this body has been too busy. It is not that we are exhausted by having passed too many broad and strong bipartisan bills. We’ve gotten good work done this session. There are things from the farm bill to the transportation bill where this body has shown an ability to listen to each other across the differences of party and region and craft strong, balanced, bipartisan bills. It is on this topic — on cybersecurity — that we have heard over and over there is no more pressing challenge. Why if our adversaries are not going to be taking the month of August off, why if our adversaries are not going to cease from now until November to attack us, would we not bear down and focus on getting the done the work before us as the United States Senate?

We are called at times: the world’s greatest deliberative body. And I’ll say to you — as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee — that in other parts of the world there are folks who are striving towards democracy who question whether this is the model they should follow. Why not, in the remaining days before we all go to some recess, why not bear down, do our homework, do our reading, be forthcoming with clear and concise concerns, and hammer out our differences?  

Mr. President, I extend an invitation to any of my colleagues, to any industry group, to any group of concerned citizens. I am happy to meet with anyone to hear their concerns to try and do my level best to convey them: to the bill managers, to the leaders who have done such a remarkable job of hearing and accepting compromise provisions of this bill – on privacy, on the role of the private sector, on making voluntary what was mandatory, on striking a fair balance. I urge our colleagues to take this moment seriously, to not allow the days to slip, the month to pass, and the moment to pass us by.

How will we answer our constituents, our communities, and our families following an attack that has been so frequently predicted, and do we not believe that we will end up regulating in a more heavy-handed, more reactionary, more ill-informed way after a successful, massive attack than now when we have the time to listen to each other and craft a balanced and responsible and bipartisan bill?

Mr. President, I will close with this: I am convinced this is the gravest threat facing our country today. Graver than that of terrorism from overseas.  In fact, General Keith Alexander of the NSA has clarified just in the last few days to a group of us how grave a threat this is. I renew my offer to any member of this chamber. Come and meet with me. Come and meet with Senators Lieberman and Collins. Come and meet with the leaders of the relevant committees. Take up your cause and give an amendment that is narrow and focused and relevant and let us hammer out a better defense for this nation.

There are those who question the purpose and purposefulness of this body. It has no greater purpose than finding a bipartisan way to craft a strong and vibrant solution to a clear and growing national threat.

Just a few weeks ago I had the honor of sitting for lunch with Senator Daniel Inouye. He is the one member of this body to have earned the Congressional Medal of Honor in combat. I asked his advice, as the most senior member of my party: What issue, Senator Inouye, I asked of him, do you think I should be focused on? What is the thing you urge me, a freshman, to invest my time and effort into?

His answer was simple, his answer was profound and his answer I hope will be heard by this body. He said to me, “I was the only senator who was at Pearl Harbor. Our next Pearl Harbor will come from a cyber-attack, for which we are today unprepared.”

Let us do our duty. Let us listen to each other, come together, hammer out a strong and bipartisan bill, and honor the service and sacrifice of that greatest generation both in this chamber and our country and do our duty.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons talks about the importance of open markets between U.S. and Africa

I appreciate the opportunity to briefly contribute what I can to this debate. One of the great honors, as you know, Mr. President, of being a freshman is the opportunity to preside. I had the opportunity to preside when the Republican leader came to the floor and spoke to Burma sanctions. I just wanted to say to the Republican leader that, because of that speech, I familiarized myself with the issue of Burma sanctions that he spoke to earlier.

I do think it’s important that we move to it. I do think it’s important to move forward on it, but the Republican leader made a comment earlier that he doesn’t much understand the other part of the bill, which is AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act. I choose to stand briefly and speak to that, if I might, because I am the chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Isakson and I joined with Congresswoman Bass and Congresswoman Smith in twice receiving dozens of ambassadors from across the continent three months ago and nine months ago as they expressed their grave concern about the thousands of mostly women all across the continent who are losing their jobs as we delay.

The AGOA reauthorization expires in September, and I am grateful to Chairman Baucus for his vigorous pursuit of renewal in a timely fashion. AGOA needs to be renewed promptly. Not in September. In part I believe, of why the Administration has insisted on holding together Burma sanctions and this AGOA reauthorization is because of the urgency of getting AGOA reauthorized. It dates back to the Clinton Administration. It was first signed into law a dozen years ago. It has, I think, real importance for our view in Africa for how the United States is viewed in Africa, for our bilateral relation with more than a dozen countries. I would be happy to answer questions about it.

But we have three different issues here. The concerns that the senator from Oklahoma has raised about the pay-for and I respect his concerns about budget and budgetary discipline in dealing with our deficit. The concerns the Republican leader has raised about Burma and about sanctions and about our ongoing role as a global leader in pressing for the liberation of people and process in Burma and the concerns that I and many other senators have shared about timely reauthorization of the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

Unfortunately, the three of them intersect in a way that today is preventing us from moving forward. It is my hope that the Republican leader, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the senator from Oklahoma and I could sit down and craft some responsible compromise that allows this to move forward, because if my understanding is correct, it is the senator from Oklahoma’s concerns that are preventing us from moving forward at this point and it is the Administration’s concerns that are preventing breaking apart the Burma sanctions and AGOA sanctions and there is a third provision relating to CAFTA, if I’m not mistaken. If we could but work together in a way that finds a responsible path forward, it is still I think possible. There is bipartisan support in the House for the passage of this package.

In fact, I believe they were prepared to pass it by unanimous consent earlier this week and only hesitated to proceed because they heard there was a hold here in the Senate. I’d like to work together in a way that can demonstrate to the people of Burma, to the people of Africa, to the people around the world that this greatest deliberative body on earth can still work out issues of this scale in a timely fashion, and so I offer my willingness to work together to find a path forward either tonight or in the week ahead.

Thank you. I yield the floor.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons talks about strengthened privacy provisions in cybersecurity legislation

Madam President, I am honored to be able to join the senator from Minnesota in speaking today in support of all the members of this body voting to proceed to the consideration of the important cybersecurity bill to which he and Senator Durbin have just spoken.

Today, Madam President, we have an opportunity to celebrate progress. Very real, very concrete and very important progress in the legislative effort to make America both more secure and yet retain our core Constitutional freedoms, the protections of privacy that Americans have held dear from the very beginning of this republic.

Madam President, as I said before on this floor, taking action to protect our nation from the very real and urgent threat of cyber-attack is of paramount importance, something so urgent that it deserves our undivided attention, but so is protecting the privacy rights of law-abiding American citizens.

As we work together towards this commonsense compromise piece of legislation that the Senate should consider in coming days, I fought hard along with several colleagues to ensure we maintain the right balance between privacy and security. That balance, Madam President, is essential. Compromising our liberty would be just as dangerous as compromising our safety.

But thanks to the hard work of so many of my colleagues, in particular Senator Durbin, Senator Franken, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Merkley, Senator Sanders and others, we found that appropriate balance in this legislation that’s before us.

The changes we have made to the original text and to the House-passed version have significantly strengthened privacy rights. That’s why I say, Madam President, we can celebrate real progress here today. I long thought that it was the privacy issues that would be the rock on which this ship would founder, that the critical and unaddressed privacy issues in CISPA and SECURE IT, just spoken to by Senator Franken, would be issues that would prevent me from supporting cybersecurity legislation in this session of the Congress, but we have made remarkable progress.

Let me, if I can, briefly review a few of the areas where that progress has been made. We made sure that companies cannot pry into the private online activities of everyday Americans in the name of national security. I want to mention just one more improvement. In addition to those mentioned by Senator Franken just before me concerning legal immunities contained in this bill, this bill appropriately gives companies the authority to share cyber threat-related information with each other and the government, without which we can’t know what the rapidly emerging significant national cyber threats really are, and it also gives them immunity from suit if they do so.

If companies share with each other real-time cyber threat information, they cannot be sued, but prior versions of this bill might have provided bad actors with immunity against all privacy laws. So instead, we added tough provisions to ensure if a company acts recklessly or willfully to violate the law and the online privacy of its customers, they will be held accountable.

This legislation now, in my view, strikes an appropriate balance between empowering companies and providing them certainty as well as maintaining the privacy rights of Americans and their customers. In this new, better, stronger legislation, it’s no longer the case that companies can share your data and violate your privacy, just because you interact with them online. If that had remained in this bill, Madam President, I would have expected millions of Americans to mobilize to stop this legislation. But we are here today as a group of senators to announce that real progress has been made and that we are comfortable with and support this legislation from a privacy perspective.

I urge my colleagues when we take up this vote later this afternoon to vote to proceed to the bill and to allow us a full and robust debate on this cybersecurity legislation.

Getting to this new and improved legislation was a team effort and special credit is due to Senators Lieberman and Collins for leading the way, for being willing to find common ground on challenging issues. There was also a great deal of hard work done by my senior Senator Tom Carper and Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller who chair relevant committees and were also essential to making such great progress.

Madam President, one of the aspects of cybersecurity and the threat to our country that keeps me up at night is that it is constantly evolving. Our enemies are smart, they are capable and they are fast.  And that means our cyber defenses have to be flexible, adaptable and regularly evaluated in order to keep up. One good thing about the House version of this legislation is that it includes a sunset provision requiring that in five years this body once again must take a hard and serious look at cybersecurity threats and update or change our defense as needed and ensure the privacy protections have been fully observed.

That’s not just good strategy, Madam President, it’s good sense. Think about the capabilities of your computer, your cell phone, five years ago compared to today. The pace of change is faster online than ever before. And we need the kind of legislative process that allows us to review our work and ensure that we not only stay ahead of the curve in defending our country, but that we continue to strike the right balance between privacy and security.

That’s why, Madam President, like Senator Franken before me, I intend to introduce an amendment on the floor, which I hope will earn consideration by this body and the support of my colleagues, to take the sunset provision of our House counterparts and match that here in the Senate in this bill. It is the right thing to do, to help keep us safe and help our military leaders and cybersecurity experts stay one step ahead of those who would wish us harm.

I want to thank Senator Whitehouse who has been an important part of two different teams working on this bill. Senators Kyl and Whitehouse led a team that worked hard on critical infrastructure but I want to thank Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut, who participated in the privacy side work and the critical infrastructure work. Now we’re speaking to Title 7, the information sharing provision of the bill and the dramatic and real progress that has been made in addressing the balance between security and privacy. There has also been great progress made in my view in addressing the issues of critical infrastructure and I’d like to invite Senator Blumenthal, who has contributed so well to both efforts, to address the chamber at this time.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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Opening Statement: Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on trade with Africa

I am pleased to convene today’s hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee entitled “Economic Statecraft: Increasing American Jobs through Greater U.S.-Africa Trade and Investment.”  I would like to welcome our distinguished witnesses, as well as my partners on the Africa Subcommittee, Senator Isakson, Senator Durbin, and others who have joined us today.

Before we begin, I would like to reflect on yesterday’s passing of President John Atta Mills of Ghana.  Senator Isakson and I had the pleasure of meeting President Mills last year, and there is no question that the people of Ghana have lost a great leader and dedicated public servant.  President Mills worked to promote economic growth and strengthen democratic institutions, and his leadership and commitment to his people will be deeply missed.

Today’s hearing is the second in a series exploring Africa’s vast economic potential and considering U.S. policy to increase regional investment and trade.  At this hearing, we will consider legislation I have joined Senator Durbin in introducing  – the “Increasing American Jobs through Greater Exports to Africa Act” – which aims to increase U.S. exports to Africa by over 200 percent in the next decade (chart). 

Sub-Saharan Africa is a region of endless opportunity and economic potential.  In the past ten years, it has been home to six of the ten fastest growing economies in the world (chart), and that number is projected to reach seven by 2015 (chart). 

As I mentioned at the last hearing, trade between Africa and the rest of the world has tripled since 2001.  During this time, U.S. exports to Africa have increased by more than 200 percent and imports have increase by more than 250 percent (chart).  

Despite this positive trajectory in bilateral trade, the U.S. is losing out to competitors in the African market to countries such as China, which surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009 (chart).  Just last week, China announced it would provide $20 billion in loans to African governments over the next three years to encourage investment in infrastructure and agriculture, which more than doubles the financial commitment China made to Africa in 2009. 

The U.S. must fully capitalize on the exponentially growing number of consumers and market potential in Africa, not only to be a more aggressive competitor with China, but also because it leads to the creation of American jobs and is good for U.S. business.  In order to do this effectively, we must improve coordination between the ten key U.S. government agencies involved in formulating a trade strategy (chart).    

We must also eliminate inconsistencies in the U.S. approach to increasing trade and investment with Africa, such as the recent decision by Commerce to eliminate Foreign Commercial Service Officers in rapidly growing African markets, such as Ghana.  After visiting the officer posted in Accra last year, I was deeply disappointed to learn that this post was not renewed by Commerce despite the decision by other agencies to deepen the U.S. investment in this critical country. 

To explain the tools the administration has at its disposal to increase trade and investment in Africa, we have assembled a strong panel representing three key agencies.  Fred Hochberg, Chairman of the Export-Import Bank, will describe the rapidly increasing scope of Ex-Im loans supporting trade with sub-Saharan Africa (chart), which reached $1.4 billion in the last fiscal year.

Next, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Francisco Sanchez will discuss the role of Commerce in overseeing the Foreign Commercial Service and other programs to support U.S. trade with Africa.  I am particularly interested in resource allocation and the possibility of increasing the number of Foreign Commercial Service Officers on the continent from eight to at least 14 (chart), as proposed by S.2215. 

Finally, Elizabeth Littlefield, President and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), will detail OPIC’s work in Africa promoting economic growth and investment in developing and emerging economies.  Last year, OPIC had a 300% increase in value of deals in sub-Saharan Africa, rounding out a ten-fold increase in OPIC’s investment in the region since 2001 (chart). I look forward to hearing about how OPIC is fulfilling its development mandate and supporting small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa.

On our second panel, we will hear from Dr. Mwangi Kimenyi, Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Growth Initiative in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution; Scott Eisner, Vice President of African Affairs and International Operations for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and Stephen Hayes, President and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa.  I am grateful for their testimony and look forward to learning from their insight and expertise.

First, I would like to turn to Senator Isakson and Senator Durbin for opening remarks.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls for balanced approach to deficit reduction

Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the issues on the floor before the Senate, the vote we will take later today on two competing plans for our path forward.

Mr. President, as you and I and all the members of this chamber know, our national debt and our deficit are enormous, they’re unsustainable. And last week an array of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle came to the floor one after the other to make exactly that point. Members of both parties agree that excessive debt hurts our competitiveness, that it causes interest rates to rise and crowds out critical investments in our country’s future.

My own experience, Mr. President, in the private sector and six years of tough budget balancing as a county executive in my home state of Delaware taught me how important it is to have responsible budget processes in place, to manage your way through difficult financial times, to create opportunity for our communities, while still reducing our deficits and debt.

There is no question, Mr. President, that high debt levels lead to lower growth in the long run and can restrain or starve or strangle the dreams of our communities, our children for our future.

Our deficit and debt is a ticking time bomb and one everyone — Republicans and Democrats, Independents, economists, experts, working families, small business owners, the American people —

know that we want to and we have to deal with. But the key, Mr. President, in my view, is to deal with this problem responsibly and fairly and in a way that reflects America’s values.

Our debt is neither a Republican nor a Democratic problem, but a shared and structural problem. It took both parties to get us into this mess, and it will take both parties working together to dig us out. Each member of this body must take responsibility and look at what’s best for the next generation not just for winning the next election.

For my part, I will continue the fight for balanced and responsible deficit reduction. If the American people can share in sacrifice in our cities, counties and states all over this country, as they’re already doing in my home state of Delaware, then Republicans and Democrats have to show that we too can come together and find a way to compromise.

Mr. President, it’s time we recognize the sobering reality that if we’re going to plug the hole in our national balance sheets, if we’re going to avoid the fate of Europe, and it is a really, really big hole in the bottom of America’s balance sheet, while still continuing to investment in our future and in the strength and promise and opportunity for our communities we have to find, I think, a more responsible and more fair balance between spending cuts and revenue increases. We simply cannot achieve the level of savings we need through spending cuts alone.

Drastic cuts, dramatic cuts, across-the-board cuts violate our very values and will drive down the possibility of recovery and growth in the future. Spending cuts must be a central part of the solution to our budget problem, but the fact is revenue must also play a meaningful role. We need, Mr. President, balance. It’s the only way to provide the economic certainty necessary to sustain a recovery, and in my view, the only way to sustain investments that are critical for our future.

Let’s be clear, Mr. President, about some rhetoric that we’ve heard both out in the country and here in this chamber. The United States doesn’t begrudge success. We as Democrats, we in this chamber don’t resent those who have achieved, who have succeeded. In fact, that’s the engine that for generations has drawn people from around this world to this country and pulled people forward. The hopes and dreams of those who see reason to work in this country because of the promise of opportunity, the very real history of entrepreneurship, of risk taking and the very great rewards this country provides those who succeed beyond their wildest dreams through hard work, through innovation, through creativity. No, we don’t resent or reject wealth and success in this chamber or in this country. In fact we admire it and want to create the groundwork for a whole new generation of Americans to achieve the successes of the last generation. If we’re going to do right by the next generation of Bill Gateses or Warren Buffetts, that requires us to find solutions that makes our tax system fairer and prevent burdening the next generation of Americans with a crushing national debt.

As President Lyndon Johnson said once, “It’s not just enough to open the gates of opportunity. All of our citizens have to have the ability to walk through those gates.” The ability of future Americans to walk through those gates, Mr. President, I believe, requires sustainable investments in our future, in our schools and teachers so our children can compete in the global economy and we can keep improving public education. In infrastructure, so our businesses can move their products and ideas as fast as our competitors can on our roads and rails and broadband. In research and development, so America can continue to be a world leader in innovation and scientific breakthroughs.

Mr. President, we all know that health care costs are among the greatest drivers of our mounting national deficit and debt and we’ve got two paths forward. One where we cut, constrain and reduce our spending. Another where we invest in basic science and research, where we innovate and cure our way out of these challenges. I think this latter way of investing in our schools, infrastructure, our innovation and in finding path-breaking cures is more true to the American Spirit.

Cuts, as you know Mr. President, to essential services and programs are already deep. Although this is not broadly known throughout country sacrifices have already been made here and pennies are already being pinched from programs that, in my view, serve the people who can least afford them.  In my home state of Delaware, due to choices we’ve made here, we’ve already seen cuts to critical programs like heating assistance to low-income families and programs like the Community Development Block Grants and HOME programs that were cut roughly 30% in last year’s budget. Programs that for so long have supported affordable housing for the disabled, for seniors, for the low-income.

We must continue to make cuts across the board to move our way towards a sustainable federal deficit. But cuts alone cannot responsibly make our path forward. We’ve seen proposals in the other chamber that would decimate vital safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid shifting the burden of deficit-reduction to our most vulnerable citizens. We need to bring balance back to how we solve these problems and we need to do it in a way that puts a circle of protection, Mr. President, around those who are most vulnerable in our society. 

In previous generations that served in this chamber, when they came together and reached the resolutions that solved our country’s fiscal problems, in 1983, for example, they put a circle of protection around the most vulnerable Americans. They chose not to slash, or cut, or eliminate those programs that are focused on the most vulnerable in our society: the disabled, low-income seniors, children in the early stages of life. And I think it’s important that we remember those values as we look at the choices we make here today and as we come together in the months leading up to the election and, hopefully after the election to craft a solution to our structural problems.

Today on the floor, Mr. President, the Senate is considering the other piece of the equation from cuts: revenue.

Mr. President, we have a stark choice between us today. We have two plans, a Reid plan and a

Hatch plan. We have a Democrat proposal and a Republican proposal. And let me put this in some context that I think has been missing in some of the speeches I’ve heard on the floor here earlier today.

In both cases, these are plans that make choices about which of our existing tax cuts, which of the existing tax expenditures, we will allow to expire and which we will extend. There’s a lot of talk about the coming “tax-mageddon” about the greatest onetime tax increase in American history. But let’s be clear, what we’re talking about are tax cuts that were enacted in 2001 and 2003 and other tax cuts that were enacted in 2009 and 2010, and whether they should be extended. Or whether these temporary tax cuts should be allowed to be that and expire.

We have two starkly different plans, Mr. President.  In one, the Republican plan, they extend all of the Bush tax cuts even for the highest income earners, even on the marginal rates of the highest-income earners. The Democrat plan extends and does not allow to expire critical tax cuts, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Tuition Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit that 25 million Americans, the working poor, working families with children, rely on to get through this difficult recession.

The Republican plan allows all three of those to expire and thus, to use their language, raises taxes on 25 million of the working poor. It should be an obscenity Mr. President, for there to be people who are working full-time and yet poor in this country. This is the country, as I said before, of opportunity, the place to which millions have come over generations from around the world seeking the opportunity of this country.

Yet today, and especially in this economy, working poor has real meaning as the rate of poverty has raised to alarming levels, one in six Americans is poor today, the highest rate since the 1960’s. The economic inequality and the lack of opportunity and justice for those who are the poorest is at an alarming rate.

We have, as I said before, a structural challenge before us, a deficit and debt we must deal with and so the Democratic plan that is on the floor today — where we will take a vote later today, whether this body wants to proceed to take a deciding vote on it – would allow the marginal tax rates above $200,000 for individuals, $250,000 for couples to return to the Clinton era.

So let’s be clear, because I think this is often lost. Under the Democrats’ tax plan, we would continue tax breaks for all Americans who earn income, for all small businesses that are revenue-earning, but just on the first $200,000 individual income or $250,000 couple income; so even the millionaires and billionaires would continue to get some of the benefit of the tax breaks first enacted in 2001 and 2003. What would be raised is the tax rate on income above $250,000 for couples.  So everyone continues to get some tax advantage, but the excessive, the highest reductions in tax burden on the very wealthiest Americans, we would allow to expire. What’s the impact on our deficit and debt? $850 billion over ten years, which, with the interest savings, is nearly $1 trillion in deficit and debt reduction.

These are significant savings, Mr. President. And if we asked the wealthiest 2% of Americans to take on that burden, to go back to the interest rates on marginal income that they lived through in the Clinton era, what might that do? Significantly reduce our deficit and debt, make it possible for us to sustain the Earned Income Tax Cut, the Tuition Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, and frankly reflect our values.

Mr. President, as I said before, this recession has brought an alarming rise in the rate of poverty. I’m someone who believes that our faith traditions — and we come from a very broad range of faith traditions — speak to us and challenge us to show our values in our budget. As the Vice President, who held the seat that I hold in Delaware before me has so often said, his father and his grandfather once said to him, “show me your budget and I’ll should you your values.”

Psalm 72 teaches us that to defend the cause of the poor, and to give deliverance to the needy, is one of our highest callings. A call that is repeated throughout books of the Torah and the New Testament, in many faith traditions across this country, to reject this deliverance to the needy, to reject the great tradition of a circle of protection, of a prayerful reflection on those who are the neediest in our society and instead say we will extend ad infinitum the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, I think, defies America’s values and defies our greatest tradition of creating and sustaining opportunity while protecting the most vulnerable amongst us.

I think, Mr. President that our belief in the American dream and our commitment to basic fairness and responsible problem-solving calls us forward to vote for the Reid plan today.

This bill is not a substitute for the comprehensive tax reform our nation truly needs, tax reform that simplifies the code, that closes many unsustainable and costly loopholes while lowering rates and broadening the base. No, that’s a task to which we must turn at another time. But in the current political environment, Mr. President, I believe this bill, to which I hope this body will turn, is the best chance we’ve got at retaining these important tax credits and opportunities for the working poor, while bringing some sanity to the rates at the highest end and asking those who have benefited the most to contribute to solving our problems.

Last week I got a letter from Judith in Talleyville, Delaware who wrote my office to say, “Millionaires and billionaires must be asked to pay their fair share to sustain our economic recovery.” Mr. President, Judith puts their finger on the crux of this issue. If we’re going to solve our deficit issue, if we are going to resolve the hole at the bottom of America’s balance sheet in a way that reflects our core values, I think we must move to, we must consider, and we must pass the Reid plan in this Senate this day.

Thank you.

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Floor Colloquy: Senator Coons joins bipartisan senators in discussing urgent need to address cybersecurity

Thank you for helping to contribute to the bipartisan, positive and responsible tone of our deliberation. I want to thank my friend, the senator from Rhode Island, both for today’s colloquy and in pulling together the language and the partners, and Senator Mikulski who started off our conversation today by reminding us as you just commented, Senator Blunt, that it was a terrible storm in this area that knocked out power for a couple of days that gave a bracing reminder to the community around Washington, D.C. just how much we rely in this modern economy of ours on continuous, uninterrupted power. That storm was an act of God. That storm was just a random meteorological event.

But as all of us have spoken — Senator Blumenthal also commented on this — we know as members of the United States Senate that there are daily efforts at attacks on the United States far more devastating, far more far-reaching than that transitory storm. And for us not to act, for us to fail to act in a bipartisan, thoughtful and responsible way would be the worst sort of dereliction of duty.

All of us have been in secure briefings with folks from four-star and three-letter agencies with the most central roles in our intelligence community, in our national security agencies. But this isn’t something that only those of us in the Congress know or only those at the higher reaches of the Executive Branch leadership know. This is now publicly, broadly well known. The water is rising, the storms are coming and we need to incentivize the private sector that is responsible for running most of our essential infrastructure to man the barricades, to fill the sandbags, and to take on the responsibility in a thoughtful, balanced and responsible way of preparing for the wave of highly effective cyber attacks that are currently underway and that will crest soon.

We’ve heard public comments that are remarkable. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dempsey, said an effective cyber attack could literally stop society in its tracks. As Senator Blunt just mentioned, as a county executive, I was responsible for emergency response and all over this country, cities, counties and states are trying to understand how to prepare for the consequences of a cyber attack.

We’re not talking about trying to craft legislation that would deal with every possible cyber harm, every possible cyber crime. We’re talking about those few incidents that would likely be driven by a nation-state or by an incredibly advanced and sophisticated terrorist group that would strike at the very heart of what makes our modern society vibrant and that would have mass casualty consequences, dramatic impact on our economy or wipe out whole sectors for days or weeks, such as a failure of the power grid.

This isn’t exotic. We just had another public hearing on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and were warned yet again of what the Department of Homeland Security documented back in 2007 in their Aurora exercise that our power grid nationally interconnected, vital to the modern economy, is fragile, is vulnerable to cyber attacks.

We’ve seen this unfold overseas. The small Baltic nation of Estonia was the victim of a comprehensive cyber attack. And they saw also in 2007 banks, media outlets, government entities that collapsed. Bank cards, mobile phones, government services over a three-week period completely shut down.

Is there a real threat? Absolutely.

Are we doing enough to face it? I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ve yet done enough.

There’s legislation that’s been brought forward by a whole group of senators, led by Senators Lieberman and Collins, that I hope this body will turn to in the days ahead and find ways to balance. As Senator Blumenthal said previously, we live in a country where we must continue to respect the powerful, passionate commitment to individual privacy and civil liberties. But I think we can, with narrowly targeted, appropriately crafted legislation that incentivizes and encourages the private sector to take on the role, appropriately informed by those throughout federal government, to strengthen their defenses against these coming attacks.

I don’t think we have to make a choice between privacy and security, and I do think we can give the private sector the tools to make our country safe and strong. But those who view new cyber regulations as onerous, as burdensome, as overly expensive for the private sector or as threatening needlessly our privacy have an obligation to come forward with a credible alternative before it is too late.

Today we are, frankly, leaving our country wide open to attack. As we recently heard in a floor speech by both Senator Blumenthal and Senator Whitehouse, when private-sector companies, even the most technically sophisticated, are contacted by our government and told they have been the victim of a successful intrusion and attack, in nearly 90% of the cases they were utterly unaware. We need to strengthen information sharing. We need to develop robust standards of defense. We need to help invest in building up the infrastructure protection of this country. And it is the most vital thing I can think of, Senator Whitehouse, that this county could turn to.

Let me close with this for a moment, if I could. I had a chance to have lunch last week with Senator Daniel Inouye. That was for me a great honor, a chance to sit with him and visit and ask his advice. He made one comment to me in closing. He is the only member of this body who was at Pearl Harbor. He shared with me that in his view, the next Pearl Harbor, the next unexpected massive attack that could really hurt the United States will come from cyber. It is our obligation to take that lesson seriously and to legislate in a bipartisan, thoughtful but swift and effective way

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls on colleagues to pass the Bring Jobs Home Act

I appreciate the opportunity to speak today following the great senator from the state of Colorado. My topic is also manufacturing jobs in the United States. I just want to thank the senator from Colorado for every day coming to the floor and reminding us of the importance of the consequences of choices we make, whether it’s the tax policy choices of failing to extend the production tax credit and the consequences for high-quality manufacturing jobs in the wind industry, or the consequences for manufacturing all across our country, from the great state of New York to the state of Colorado to the state of Delaware.

What we’re on the floor today talking about is the Bring Jobs Home Act, which is just one of many important ways we can and should be fighting for high-quality manufacturing jobs in our home states and across our country.

Madam President, it was a very dark day when the Chrysler plant in Newark, Delaware, where I’m from, shut its doors. Built in the early 1950’s first as a tank plant, then converted to an auto plant, this was a manufacturing facility that had sustained whole communities over several generations with high-quality, high-skilled, highly-paid manufacturing jobs.

In December of 2008, they closed their doors for the very last time, and that plant has now been torn down to the ground. It is an empty hole in the heart of the city of Newark. You would have thought it couldn’t have gotten worse than the day that those thousands of workers filed out of the plant for the

very last time, but it did. Just a few short months later when the General Motors plant just a few miles away in Boxwood shuttered its doors. In just a year Delaware went from having two high-performing high-quality auto plants to none. We lost nearly 3,000 middle-class manufacturing jobs. And this was followed by a whole constellation of other plant closings from Avon which lost hundreds of jobs, to dozens of smaller manufacturers that had supported these auto plants for decades.

I know 3,000 jobs may not sound like a lot in the wreckage of the recession of 2008 to this whole country. But for Delawareans, for our small state and for all the families that were supported for so long, it was huge. I have an idea that I talk about all the time at home in Delaware, which is that we need to get back to ‘made in America and manufactured in Delaware.’

That means something to us, back in 1985 when I was just finishing school, transportation equipment manufacturing, which is the fancy way of saying making cars and all the stuff that goes in them, employed 10,000 people in Delaware. Today it’s well below a tenth of that. ‘Made in America, manufactured in Delaware’ has to mean something for our families, for our communities, for today and for our future.  

Delaware was once a great and strong manufacturing state. As America was once the greatest manufacturing nation on Earth. Some believe those days are behind us, but I do not.

I know my colleague, Debbie Stabenow, of Michigan, the lead sponsor of the bill we’re debating, the Bring Jobs Home Act also does not believe our future as a world class, world leading manufacturer is behind us. I know the people of Michigan, the people of New York and the people of Delaware do not.

I had the great opportunity this morning to visit with two leaders of Delaware-based manufacturers that I just wanted to lift up for a moment today as we talk about the Bring Jobs Home Act.  Marty Miller, C.E.O. of Miller Metal in Bridgeville, Delaware, has benefited from a powerful but little heralded federal program, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership that helps small manufacturers streamline their productions processes, reduce waste and inefficiency, do their ordering and through-put far more effectively and compete head to head around the world successfully.

This Manufacturing Extension Partnership has allowed Marty’s company to grow by 25 jobs in just the last year and to compete head to head with Chinese metal fabricating plants in the global market and win.

I.L.C. Dover has been known to Delawareans for its storied history in our space program. They made all the space suits for NASA but they’ve also made blimps that have hovered over Iraq and Afghanistan and protected our troops with downward looking radar and real time information. They make the escape hoods and the masks that are position around the periphery of this Chamber and throughout this building and the Pentagon.

They have made remarkable high-quality engineered soft goods for decades, and they too, I think, have had a promising future and the opportunity to grow even in this recovery because they too are focused on things ‘Made in America and manufactured in Delaware.’

These two companies, these two men, the organizations that they lead are in my view just an introduction to what can and should be a renaissance, a recovery of manufacturing in the United States. We still produce more in dollar value in manufacturing than any country on earth, but there’s been a downward slope in the number of jobs and in the sense of energy and investment and focus in our policy and our priorities in manufacturing for years.

I think we can become a great manufacturing nation again and our middle class can be stronger than ever but we have to make smarter choices. We have to make smarter choices in our tax code. We have to look at our tax code with an eye towards fairness and investment for the future and not just short-term profitability.

We need common sense and we need in my view to support companies that are creating jobs here and we need to cut our support for companies that instead want to create jobs in China, in India, in Vietnam, in Thailand, by exporting jobs from the United States. As our economy pulls back out of what has been a devastating recession, I can think of no more galling idea than this country incentivizing American companies to ship some of our best jobs overseas. And yet as, you know, madam president, our current tax code allows businesses to duct the cost of moving expenses: permits, license fees, lease brokerage fees, equipment installation costs and other expenses.

You can take this deduction if you’re moving from Bridgeville, Delaware to Birmingham, Alabama. But it also turns out that you can take it if you are moving from Bridgeville to Bangalore or Beijing. Can you think of a worse way to spend taxpayer dollars?

This is a loophole, madam president, so big you can drive a car through it. Right out of the shuttered manufacturing plants of Delaware. Fixing this fundamental injustice in our tax code is the first half of the Bring Jobs Home Act. We say we’re not going to pay any more for companies that send U.S. jobs overseas. We’ve got better ways to invest our tax dollars in rebuilding the base of manufacturing and the high-quality, high-paying jobs that come from it.

The second thing this bill does, instead of incentivizing the outsourcing of American jobs is incentivizing insourcing. We say bring these jobs home. The Bring Jobs Home Act says you can keep the deduction to help pay your moving costs if you’re moving from one facility in the U.S. to another, that’s fine. You can still using the moving cost deduction if you’re moving from a facility abroad back to the United States. That’s better. But this bill takes a further step. We say if you bring jobs home to the U.S., we’ll give you an additional 20% tax credit on the costs associated with moving that production back to the U.S.

The message of this bill is straightforward, madam president. If you’re an American company and you’ve got manufacturing jobs or service jobs that could be done by Americans, we want you to bring those jobs home. And we’re going to help you do it.

For my small state, I want to keep saying every chance I get, what we want is ‘made in America and manufactured in Delaware.’ Lord knows we have the work force. There’s an army of talented Delawareans and Americans ready to go. Ford knows it, Caterpillar knows it, GE knows it, as we heard from Senator Stabenow, that’s why they’ve brought jobs home. They’re opening up new plants in the U.S. and putting Americans back to work.

There is a company in Newark, Delaware called FMC BioPolymer – they make specialty chemicals. They’ve run a factor in Newark, Delaware for 50 years – in fact, exactly 50 years this year. They make a type of cellulose you’d find in everyday products, foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cleaning products. They had outsourced some of their manufacturing to China to save costs. But as you can imagine when you’re working with these sorts of advanced products that go into consumer products, safety is key and for performance and engineering and intellectual property and safety reasons, they brought some of their most critical jobs home. They employ more than a 100 people and contribute more than $20 million to our local economy every year and it’s an important part of our economy.

So for FMC BioPolymer I say thank you for bringing jobs home and strengthening ‘made in America, manufactured in Delaware.’ If big companies and small companies are figuring this out, when will the federal government, when will this Congress figure it out as well?

The best thing we can do for our economy, for millions of talented Americans looking for work, from our returning veterans to those who have searched so hard for work for the last two or three years, we can invest in them. We can pass the Bring Jobs Home Act as a smart choice to invest in American workers and their communities, to invest in their education, their schools and their teachers, to invest in our infrastructure, in our roads, in our power grid to make smarter choices as a country and as a Congress.

There is no better investment I can think than to make this phrase real, to return to made in America and manufactured in the states of every one of the senators of this great body. This is common sense.

Alas, in the United States Senate, common sense these days rarely seems to win the day. I hope those watching, I hope those whom we represent, take this seriously and recognize that the most important question before us, madam president, is what are we  going to do to take the fight in the global economy on behalf of our families, on behalf of our communities, on behalf of our manufacturers and change things in our tax code, in our trade policy, in our intellectual property policy, to make it possible to not just invent things here and make them elsewhere, but to invent them here and make them here?

Madam President, I hope that this body will proceed to vote in favor of the Bringing Jobs Home Act so that for every one of our home states we can make this phrase true, that we want things made in America and manufactured in our home states.

Thank you and with that I yield the floor.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons urges colleagues to pass amendment on studies for poultry insurance programs

Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you to the leaders who have worked so hard on this bipartisan farm bill, especially Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Roberts. Senator Chambliss and I are grateful to have our amendment heard. Poultry is a critical industry in Delaware, in Georgia and many of our states. And between the recession and the volatile cost of chicken feed, there are a rising number of factors that can have a catastrophic impact on local economies that are well beyond the control of our farmers and integrators.

The two studies that we propose in this amendment would explore whether insurance programs might make sense as a tool for helping poultry farmers and integrators continue to thrive during uncertain economic times and would specifically study protection from catastrophic loss from disease outbreaks or bankruptcy of poultry integrators. This amendment is at no additional cost to taxpayers, and I urge my colleagues to join Senator Chambliss and me in supporting it.

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Floor Speech: Senator Coons introduces bill to spark investment in renewable energy projects

Mr. President, when it comes to America’s energy policy, Republicans and Democrats alike have made it clear that they support an all-of-the-above energy strategy.

As you know, Mr. President, from serving on the Energy Committee along with me, there is broad agreement on the need for a comprehensive approach that will develop secure, home-grown, efficient energy sources for our next generation. And I believe an across the board policy that accepts the likely reality of our current dependence on fossil-based fuels going forward, as well as the vitalneed to develop and deploy new, promising clean energy fuels of the future, is essential. Such a policy will provide certainty to our markets, opportunity to our families and companies and communities, and ensure that we’re not, as some would say, picking winners and losers in the energy space.

Yet, there is today an obstacle standing in the way of a truly comprehensive strategy that both parties say they want. It’s a provision in our federal tax code that has its metaphoric thumb on the scale, tipping the balance in favor of traditional fossil fuels. That’s why I am so glad I’ve been able to work with my colleague and friend, Senator Moran of Kansas, to today introduce bipartisan legislation that will level the playing field and bring parity to one piece of federal tax policy relating to energy.

Mr. President, investors in oil, natural gas, coal and pipelines have for nearly 30 years been able to form publicly traded entities called master limited partnerships or MLPs. These partnerships include a pass-through tax structure that avoids double taxation and leaves more cash available todistribute to investors. They have for investors the liquidity and the return that’s commonly associated with equity and the tax advantage that’s associated with partnerships. And they’ve been able to aggregate and deploy a significant amount of private capital in the traditional fossil fuel marketplace—roughly $350 billion today across 100 MLPs. They have access to private capital at a lower cost, something that capital-intensive alternative energy products in the United States badly need now more than ever. As a result, MLPs should be a great source for raising private capital for cleanenergy projects, as well as they have been for fossil fuel projects.

The only problem is, under current law, only fossil fuel-based energy projects can attract this type of energy investment, can take advantage of these so-called MLPs. That’s right, we are currently in our tax policy working against our broadly stated commitment as a country to an all-of-the-above energy policy, with a statute that explicitly excludes clean energy projects from forming these MLPs. This inequity is starving a growing portion of America’s domestic energy sector of the very capital that it needs to build and grow and compete. So, Senator Moran and I along with other colleagues decided to fix it. We came together and said it was time to level the playing field.

Sometimes, when I have the opportunity, I’ve gone for a run here in Washington or even better, in my home state in Delaware, and something any runner can tell you is that going up and down hills is what saps your strength. When a surface is flat, you can go farther, you can go faster, and it’s the same, Mr. President, with our federal tax code.

And when it comes to evening things out, we have two choices. We can either lower everything to a common level by eliminating MLPs, by saying this tax advantage shouldn’t be given to its traditional beneficiaries in gas and oil and coal or we can raise the level of opportunity and attract greater investment by broadening the fields that can take advantage of MLPs to include wind and solar, biomass, geothermal, cellulosic, biodiesel. In my view, the better strategy, the better approach is the bipartisan one that takes our colleagues at their word and says that we intend to stop picking winners and losers and instead really embrace an all-of-the-above energy strategy. Senator Moran and I have chosen this option and believe that rather than eliminating MLPs, bringing everything together and making renewables on a same level playing field with fossil fuels has a better promise for the future of the American energy economy.

This is a relatively straightforward proposal. Our bill, the Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act, will bring new fairness to the tax code in this specific area. It recognizes revenue from projects that sell electricity or fuels produced from clean energy sources as qualifying MLPs. This change will encourage investment in domestic energy resources and could bring substantial new private capital off the sidelines to finance renewable projects ranging from wind and solar to geothermal and cellulosic ethanol just at a time when we so badly need them.

Harnessing the power of the private market is essential if alternative energy projects are to grow and create jobs all across America. Two experts in energy finance, Felix Mormann and Dan Reicher from Stanford’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance wrote an op-ed just this past week in the New York Times endorsing this legislation. They said “if renewable energy is going to become fully competitive and a significant source of energy in the United States, then further technological innovation must be accompanied by financial innovation, so that clean energy sources gain access to the same low-cost capital that traditional energy sources like coal and oil and gas have traditionally enjoyed.”

In a search for common ground on energy policy, this kind of simplefairness is the sort of thing I hope we can all agree on.

That’s why the MLP Parity Act carries the strong support of a wide range of business groups, financial experts and energy organizations. David Crane is the CEO of Fortune 300 company NRG Energy. NRG has generating assets across a wide range of traditional fuel sources and clean and alternative energy sources. Mr. Crane said “the MLP Parity Act is a phenomenal idea. It’s a fairly arcane part of the federal tax code, but it’s worked well and has been extremely beneficial toprivate investment in the oil and gas base. The fact that it doesn’t currently apply to renewables is a silly inequity in our current law.”

We’re also grateful for the support of national organizations like the American Wind Energy Association, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the American Council on Renewable Energy, and many others and thank them for their hard work in promoting this common sense energy future for our country.

I’d also like to specifically thank Dr. Chris Avery and Franz Wuerfmannsdobler who have worked in my office so well in preparing this andmoving this forward as public policy, and I’d like to thank Josh Freed of Third Way for bringing this to our attention and producing one of the first policy papers on how master limited partnerships can be a great financing vehicle for clean energy.

Mr. President, I have no doubt that there is significant, growing opportunity worldwide in alternative fuels. There is a clean energy future coming. The only question is whether American workers, American communities, American companies will benefit from this or will simply be bystanders and watch our competitors pass us by.

I think if we’re going to lead, we have to work together. The private sector can and will provide the financing and the researchers to develop critical innovations and deploy them, but the federal government, the Congress in particular, must set a realistic and positive policy pathway to sustain these innovations and let the market work to its fullest potential.

The Master Limited Partnership’s Parity Act moves us toward that goal. By leveling the playing field for fair competition, this market-driven solution could provide vital and needed support for the kind of comprehensive energy strategy we need to power our country for generations to come.

Some of us who will support this bill also support things like the ITC, the PTC and other clean energy financing vehicles. Others may not. On the specific question of master limited partnerships, the bill that we introduced today simply allows us to come together in a bipartisan way to open it up to all energy sources and to build a sustainable energy financing future on this platform.

Once again, I want to thank my cosponsor, Senator Moran, and I look forward to working with all of my colleagues on the Energy Committee and throughout the Senate and the House to move forward this important legislation.

With that, Mr. President, thank you very much, and I yield the floor.

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Floor Colloquy: Senator Coons and colleagues urge the Senate to pass Startup Act 2.0

Well, thank you Senator Warner. Mr. President, I’m honored to join with the good senator from Kansas, the senator from Missouri, my friend from Virginia in speaking today in a colloquy, a bipartisan colloquy that is also part of a bicameral process that is trying to send a signal to the American people, to our markets, to our competitors that we understand that just because we happen to be in an election year, doesn’t mean our competitors in China and India and Russia and Europe and in other parts of the world—in Africa and in other places where there are emerging markets or places where we have well-developed competitors—they don’t take this year off.

The American people expect that since we’re still drawing a salary, we should be making progress, and we should still be trying to meet the needs of a growing economy that needs to grow faster. And so, as Senator Moran referenced previously, last November, Senator Rubio of Florida and I came together to put a package called the AGREE Act before this Senate.

We were pleased that a number of the provisions in that first AGREE Act actually have subsequently become law. One, to ease the path for IPO’s, initial public offerings, for high-potential, high-growth companies, and another through executive order to strengthen intellectual property protection. And we’re hopeful the Senate will consider another provision that dealt with bonus depreciation, which is another way to help make investments in equipment for small businesses.

And on top of that, Senators Rubio and I have now teamed up with Senator Moran and Senator Warner to take some of the remaining provisions of the AGREE Act and add them in with your Startup Act and now make an improved and broader and stronger Startup 2.0. The pieces that we brought to the party were eliminating the per country caps for employment-based immigrant visas and making permanent the exemption of certain capital gains so investors can provide financial stability to qualified startups.

There are a lot of good ideas in this bill. There’s a lot of different ways in which it tackles the issues that my colleagues have already spoken to. Immigration, retaining high-promise entrepreneurial folks who have come and learned in the United States; moving the inventions and innovations on American college campuses to the marketplace more predictably, more swiftly; providing tax incentives for startup businesses; putting things in the tax code that strengthen our welcoming environment for entrepreneurship; and regulatory relief. Senator Moran really took the lead in making possible a provision in this bill that provides some regulatory relief for startup businesses. In all, these provisions I think make for a terrific package. Thus the moniker 2.0—it’s already attracted some other folks to join us.

Before I hand the floor over to the senator from Missouri, I just want to comment on what I think that means. There are trillions of dollars of capital sitting on the sidelines. American corporations have more money sitting on their balance sheets, not invested in moving our economy forward, than at almost any time in modern history and that’s because they’re not sure that this body, that the Congress of the United States, can tackle the very real financial and competitiveness challenges in front of us. And something about the symbolism of what’s on the floor today—the agriculture bill, the farm bill—and the bill that we took up and passed just a few weeks ago, the transportation bill, I think is at times lost.

The average American sees in the news the fighting, the disagreement, the inability to come together, when in fact two fairly broad, strong, and important bills—the farm bill and the transportation bill—were passed through committee by strong folks, Senator Boxer of California and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, Senator Stabenow of Michigan and Senator Roberts of Kansas. These are folks from both parties with significant differences in their views, but they managed to hammer out these bills—the transportation bill and the farm bill.

And this Startup 2.0, I just want to thank Senators Moran and Warner and Rubio for joining with me and the four of us being able to put this together and put it on the floor today and to the good senator from Missouri, a freshman in the Senate, but a man of great seasoning and experience in the House and in public service, we’re grateful you’ve joined us as a cosponsor of this bill. I welcome you, the senator from Missouri to speak for a few minutes about how you see this contributing to positive progress for our recovery.       

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