Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation to ensure that the women of this country earn equal pay for equal work. I’m grateful to Senator Mikulski and many of our cosponsors for her strong and able leadership of this important bill S. 3220, which we will take up later this afternoon.
The principle of equal pay for equal work is a simple, powerful principle of basic fairness. In this year of 2012, no one should earn less for doing the same job just because of their gender. This legislation is an important step forward. It would plug holes and make critical changes in the law that would ensure the promise of equal pay that was first enshrined in our law decades ago. This legislation would deter wage discrimination by closing loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and barring retaliation against workers who disclose their wages to colleagues. Knowledge is power, Mr. President, and women who don’t know their male coworkers are earning more for doing the same job can’t speak up and demand to be treated fairly.
My wife, Annie, and I are raising three wonderful children, all whom are equally bright and driven and capable. And as any parent knows, one of the things you hear more than any other from your own children is “that’s not fair.” When you pick out one for more entertainment or more opportunity, for more travel or more close family time, the first thing you hear from their sibling, is “but Dad, that’s just not fair.”
As Annie and I raise our wonderful twin boys and our tremendous and talented daughter, we try as best we can to be fair. Yet, I know that my daughter Maggie, like other women and girls all across our country, will earn less than her brothers, even if she chooses the exact same career track.
And, Mr. President, that’s just not fair. That is unacceptable. That violates our bedrock belief as a country in equality of opportunity, and an American Dream that if you work hard, nothing will stand in the way of your success.
I am hopeful that by the time my daughter Maggie enters the workforce we will have reduced or ended the gender pay gap in this country. I believe that by then our nation’s economy will be back to full strength.
But the fact is thousands of families across my home state of Delaware, your state of West Virginia, my neighboring state of Maryland can’t afford to wait for things to get better in the economy and in our legal system. They’re struggling right now to pay their bills every month, and unfair pay discrimination adds to their burdens.
Women in Delaware on average earn 81 cents for every dollar paid to men. Over their lifetime that means they’ll earn nearly half a million dollars, $464,000 less than their male counterparts. Women make up just a shade under half of Delaware’s workforce. Close to 40 percent of married employed mothers are their families’ primary wage earners. When women are paid less than men for doing exactly the same job, it hurts whole families. Over 135,000 children in Delaware live in households that depend on their mothers’ earnings.
I recently heard in my office from one of those mothers, Patricia from Dagsboro, Delaware. She wrote to my office urging me to support the Paycheck Fairness Act. She wrote “without my paycheck, we could not have afforded to pay for some of the college tuition for two of our children. And if I had been paid equally for equal work, experience and education, it is likely neither of them would have had to take out student loans in order to close the gap and make ends meet.” She urged me to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
So, Mr. President, paycheck fairness has wide-ranging consequences from covering the cost of higher education to mortgage payments to everyday bills and consumer spending. Income earned by women is a key driver, a key contributor to our economy.
Some have attributed, even on this floor, the pay gap to differing priorities or to the idea that some women choose to work fewer hours in order to spend more time with their families in order to meet their family-care commitments. But the facts do not bear out this theory.
Women earn less starting the very moment they graduate from school, before they have made any choices about family or work life balances. That shows us that pay discrimination is real, study after study has shown it is pervasive, and in my view and that of many of my colleagues, it needs to finally be stopped.
The gender pay gap persists across all occupations and educational levels, but it is especially hard on minorities and female-headed households, which are much more likely as a consequence to be low-income. The consequences of the gender pay gap remain, even when a woman stops working. Because after a lifetime of lower earnings, the average social security benefit for American women over 65 is about $12,000 compared to $16,000 for men of the same age.
Well, if I might then, Mr. President, say in conclusion, there is not a member of this body who would dispute women are just as educated, just as trained, just as capable as their male colleagues in so many ways across our whole society. There should be then no difference in the equality of the pay that they receive for that work. I support the Paycheck Fairness Act because it will help women fight for the equal pay they’ve earned and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the bipartisan legislation to which the Senate will move to reauthorize the Food and Drug Administration user fees and critical programs to ensure Americans have access to safe and effective medications.
Most of us don’t think about the FDA on a regular basis. In fact, we rarely think about where our medicines come from, the scientists who invented them, the investments required to develop them and the innovative, cutting-edge new treatments that are essential to keeping Americans healthy and safe or the regulators who make sure these pharmaceuticals, devices and treatments work as they’re supposed to. But when the moment comes we face a health crisis and our doctors prescribe us essential medications we want those pharmaceuticals available right away and we want them to work as promised.
One of the constituents who contacted me about PDUFA, Virginia fromNewark, Delaware recently sent a letter to my office. She volunteers with the National Brain Tumor Society and is concerned without reauthorization of this legislation, safe and effective brain tumor therapies will be slower to be developed and available to patients who need them. She wrote: “It’s been too long since any new therapies have become available for brain tumor patients that significantly extend survival. Anyone can be diagnosed with a brain tumor and they are the second leading cause of cancer death in children under 20.”
Well Mr. President, I’m sure, like me, in your office as the Senator from Connecticut you are regularly visited by folks around the country or your state who are deeply concerned about continuing medical progress, discovery and development of the lifesaving treatments that Americans have developed over the last two decades and it’s my hope that the Senate will continue to clear the way.
This is why we need this legislation. This reauthorization helps take care of innovation and safety so consumers and patients don’t have to worry. It permanently authorizes programs that have helped make medicine safer for millions of children, it upgrades the FDA’s tools to police the global supply chain and helps reduce the risk of drugs shortages of the kind that we’ve seen recently that Senator Klobuchar spoke of this afternoon when supplies of critical cancer medications run low.
This is a matter of great urgency. The current FDA authorization will expire in just a few short months and, if we allow that to happen, we put at risk patient access to new medications, as well as America’s ongoing globalleadership in biomedical innovation. Worst of all, failing to reauthorize would cost us thousands of jobs and more pink slips are not what we need as our economic recovery gains strength. If new drug and medical device user fee agreements are not authorized before the current ones expire, the FDA must lay off nearly 2,000 employees. Because that doesn’t happen overnight, layoff notices would start going out as early as July.
The good news is, we’re moving forward with a timely reauthorization to save those jobs, save America’s leading role in innovation, and ensure the FDA continues to make progress. This is an all too rare a display, Mr. President, of bipartisanship across both chambers. This legislation was unanimously approved by the House committee and found strong bipartisan support in the HELP Committee, here in the Senate, ably led by Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Enzi.
Mr. President, there’s a reason members of the House and Senate of both parties are in such strong support of this reauthorization. The American economy’s always been driven by innovation and some of our most extraordinary innovations have come in the biomedical sector.
In the years ahead, it’s my faith, my hope that we will see more and more narrowly targeted drugs created specifically for certain kinds of patients or very specific diseases. In the life cycle of innovation, this is different than the last few decades when blockbuster medications were used and then developed a very wide scale across the country or world. But it is an equally impressive feat of innovation that lies in the years ahead and one that’s only possible because of amazing advances in technology, the mapping of the human genome and the disassociation across many labs and small start-up businesses of the machinery, the mechanics and the capabilities to innovate in the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals. We have to continue to support and encourage this kind of innovation, in order to stay competitive, Mr. President, in the global economy.
The FDA continues at the moment to keep pace with many of our global competitors in terms of their review time for new drug applications, but we are at realrisk of falling behind. One recent example that I paid close attention to, the blood thinning drug Brilinta was manufactured by a company, was developed and discovered by a company in my home state of Delaware, Astra Zeneca. It was finally approved by the FDA in July of 2011. But prior to that approval, 33 other countries, including the E.U. and Canada, had already approved the drug months or years before. This delay in approval in some certain cases can be bad for patients who rely on these medications and bad for the competitiveness of the United States.
So I’m glad that this reauthorization, Mr. President, clears away some of the conflict and the underbrush and will reauthorize and strengthen and streamline the review timeline for new pharmaceuticals. Not only will this provide the kind of predictability and certainty any business needs to succeed, but it helps make sure the FDA’s essential regulatory process keeps pace with scientific innovation.
In my home state of Delaware, there are more than 20,000 jobs that directly rely on biomedical research and innovation, but around the country, it’s more than 4 million indirect and more than 675,000 jobs that directly benefit from this area. It’s also, frankly, one of our strongest export areas of growth for the long term, so we need this reauthorization now.
In my view, moving forward with this legislation also means finding the fine balance between speed and safety, between getting treatments to patients without delay and being certain these new drugs will be effective and safe.
In a recent editorial, The Washington Post noted, “this time around, the balance appears to be tilting slightly toward faster approval. That’s good.” I agree. Safety is paramount, but with today’s technology and the FDA’s century of experience, I think we can move more quickly to put innovative treatments in the hands of patients who desperately need them.
The Prescription Drug User Fee Act originally passed by Congress in1992 and reauthorized every five years since, is what allows the FDA to collect user fees from pharmaceutical manufacturers and provide a stable, consistent funding stream that has steadily decreased drug review times by nearly 60% since it was first enacted. It’s provided access on a faster and more predictable timeline to over 1,500 new medicines since it was first enacted, and deserves to be reauthorized to help expedite approval for breakthrough medications to treat rare and widely experienced diseases.
Mr. President, in closing, the FDA is the oldest comprehensive consumer protection agency in the federal government. Its relevance has not decreased with age. In fact, quite the opposite. As our researchers and scientists have made major breakthroughs in care and technology for treatment, the FDA has continued to serve as the conduit between innovators, physicians and patients.
We face, Mr. President, tremendous hurdles in treating devastating diseases of all kinds and in addition to ancient puzzles, such as cancer, that continue to allude us, there are new challenges cropping up every day. One example would be the need for new drugs to treat increasing cases of bacterial infections greatly resistant to conventional antibiotics, so-called super bugs. That’s why I’ve joined with you and with Senator Corker as a cosponsor of the GAIN Act to spur development of these specific types of drugs. This is one of many examples of the kinds of innovations that will solve the medical mysteries of the 21st century, eases the suffering of millions of Americans, secures high-wage and high-skilled jobs in the biomedical research field and ensure our competitiveness globally. So, Mr. President, let’s continue working in the bipartisan spirit that has carried this reauthorization thus far and proceed to pass it without delay.
I am pleased to chair this hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and would like to welcome my good friend, Senator Isakson, as well as Senator Rubio, Senator Nelson, and our distinguished nominees.
Today we will consider the nominees to be Ambassador to Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, and The Gambia, as well as the U.S. Representative to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture.
Turning first to the nomination of David Lane as the nominee to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, I want to highlight the crucial role that those agencies play in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. The World Food Program provides life-saving nutrition in Somalia, Sudan, Niger, and many other conflict and famine zones. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is an important complement to our own government’s Feed the Future program and other initiatives to improve agricultural productivity and ensure food security.
We will also today consider nominations for Ambassador to three African countries that are all important to U.S. national interests, including security, trade and investment, health, governance and human rights.
Douglas Griffiths is the nominee for Mozambique, a country that has emerged from a long civil war as a promising democracy with impressive economic growth. Like many African countries, it is rich in natural resources, but suffers from high levels of poverty. The next Ambassador will have a number of challenges in working with the Mozambican government to consolidate its democratic gains, use its resources wisely, and increase its trade with the United States, including through greater use of benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act.
Equatorial Guinea, where Mark Asquino is the Ambassadorial nominee, is an important producer of oil and natural gas, with a GDP of more than $14 billion. But the United States has serious concerns about weak human rights protections, lack of political freedoms, and corruption. President Obiang is Africa’s longest-serving entrenched leader, and opposition political parties regularly complain of political repression.
Our final nominee is Edward Alford as Ambassador to The Gambia, a tiny West African country almost entirely enveloped by Senegal. It has few natural resources and relies on exporting and tourism for revenue. U.S. interests in The Gambia include concerns about drug trafficking, as well as governance and human rights. A number of Senators, including Senators Durbin and Casey, have raised concerns in the past about the lack of press freedom in The Gambia and the death and disappearance of journalists critical of the government. The Gambia is eligible for benefits under the AGOA program, and I encourage the next Ambassador to work closely with the government to increase trade and investment with the United States.
I will now turn it over to Senator Isakson for his opening remarks.
I rise today to share my views on where we are, procedurally, here in the United States Senate on the issue of student loan debt, of the interest rates that we charge those who take out Stafford loans, but also the larger question, of student loan debt and how we make the highway, the pathway to higher education for America’s students clearer, fairer, and more predictable.
Yeats once said: “Education is not the filling of an empty bucket but the lighting of a fire.” Educating our young people is one of the most important things we do as a society. Lighting the fire of curiosity, of imagination, of enthusiasm, of entrepreneurship, of creativity through education, particularly higher education, is one of the things that distinguishes the United States from many other countries around the world.
We’ve long had an enormous advantage in having one of the world’s greatest educational systems, but as you know so well, Mr. President, in your home state of Vermont, in my home state of Delaware, there are so many working families who today deeply question whether their pathway towards higher education for their children will be as predictable, as fair, as straight as it’s been for the generation past.
When I meet with business owners all up and down the state of Delaware, these innovators, these job creators deliver the same message. They have jobs available, they’re ready to hire people who have the education and skills they need to compete and participate in the modern economy. So today, with more than 12.5 million Americans out of work — with more than 30,000 Delawareans in my home state out of work — the question becomes: how do we make higher education, which includes skills training, vocational school, community college, more affordable and more accessible?
One thing we can do, one thing we have to do, is address the staggering debt that lingers with graduates sometimes decades after completing school. We’re faced today, Mr. President, with two problems: one short-term, one longer-term. The short-term problem is without immediate Congressional action, as you well know, student loan interest rates for millions of Americans will double on the 1st of July.
If we allow the rates on federally subsidized Stafford loans to increase from 3.4 to 6.8%, we’ll saddle student borrowers with a future additional $6.3 billion in interest payments. This could impact in my state of Delaware more than 18,000 student borrowers, burdening families who are still struggling to recover from the recession with unexpected additional bills. Lots of people have contacted my office, they’ve called, written, sent me postings on Facebook, they have Tweeted to contact my office and others here about their concerns.
Alexandra, a recent college graduate from Wilmington, Delaware, is one of many who’ve reached out to me. She recently wrote, “I can confidently say that going to a four-year college has prepared me more than I thought I could for success in the job search. Because of this education, however, and its costs, I’m facing $20,000 of debt, with only the potential of a lower-paying job.” Alexandra is deeply concerned about the significant debt she is facing and she urged me to work hard to freeze the interest rates on her student loans rather than letting it double. I agree and fully support our efforts on this floor to fix this short-term problem by freezing interest rates on Stafford loans.
So I’m disappointed that yesterday’s vote — the failure to invoke cloture — the failure to get past a filibuster by the other party has prevented the Senate from moving forward and discussing a possible, realistic solution. It is important for the Congress to confront in rise in interest rates and I hope we can come to a bipartisan consensus. But let’s be clear. Even doing that will not solve a larger long-term problem.
Addressing this rise in interest rates won’t change how much students borrow, numbers that are only steadily growing. Just this week our nation’s cumulative total student loan debt crossed the $1 trillion threshold – one trillion dollars. That is an enormous burden on young people just getting started in life, in their careers. If we are to really address this challenge, we have to help students and their families make smarter decisions about financing their education.
We can empower students to make more informed choices and fully understand the relationship between the debt they take on, their choice of major or studies and their future career path by providing more and earlier and better information about this.
Financial literacy — a clear understanding of how or whether borrowing will help raise their earning potential later — is a key part of the real solution to our country’s ongoing and exploding student loan debt. We can seek creative solutions that look beyond the obvious and really work to make higher education more affordable.
That’s why I’m so glad I’ve been able to work with my friend, Congressman Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on new legislation to encourage private investment in college scholarships on a community basis for future students. Congressman Fattah showed tremendous leadership in crafting a bill and we introduced a new tax credit that will help more kids afford college education. Entitled Communities Committed To College Tax Credit Act of 2012, the bill encourages private donors to support and sustain educational trusts that make higher education possible to all the young people of a chosen community. These private donors, encouraged by a 50 percent tax credit, will help fund need-based college scholarships, fueling a new generation of achievement by making higher education more affordable and reducing the need for student loans.
Equally importantly, in places where these programs are already in place, like Syracuse, it changes expectations when young people from the very beginning of schooling, from the first grade, the second grade, the third grade know that there is some possibility, some savings account, some community program that will fund their higher education, the likelihood that they will finish high school and go on to college increases by four to seven times.
I support Congressman Fattah’s innovative effort to support community trusts that support higher education. That’s one idea for looking beyond the box and working to make higher education more accessible.
Here’s another: The American Dream Accounts Act is a bipartisan, bicameral bill to encourage real partnerships between schools, colleges, nonprofits and businesses to develop secure, web-based individual, portable student accounts that contain information about each student’s academic preparedness and skills. It also directly tackles the issue of student loan debt by working with students on financial literacy from a very young age. Instead of having each of these different resources available as they are now – separately, siloed – it connects them across existing education programs at the state and federal level.
I’m grateful to Senator Bingaman of New Mexico and Senator Rubio of Florida for joining me as original cosponsors here in the Senate. This bill is a potentially powerful step toward helping more students of all income levels and background access, afford and complete a college education. It’s rooted in my own experience with the “I Have A Dream Foundation”, which has helped more than 15,000 young people all over the country to achieve the dream of higher education.
Mr. President, if we want American companies, American workers and American families to compete and win in the global economy, we have to help our students afford higher education. It really is that simple. I look forward to working with my colleagues to find solutions that promote affordable, accessible, higher education because early action, early engagement can help change the future, change the outcomes for our kids, and it possible for them to achieve the American Dream.
It is my hope we can overcome this needless filibuster, yesterday’s setback, and that all of us can come together and achieve what we say we want to do together: a responsible path forward that avoids needless additional burdens on working families trying to finance their children’s education and that we can look seriously at these two proposals I’ve touched on briefly today that will help our students of the future understand and afford higher education to make their American Dream possible.
SENATOR COONS: I rise to address a simple but important issue about what our path forward is to building a stronger and safer America. I was deeply frustrated to hear earlier today that the transportation bill, which was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in this chamber has gone over to the House and they cannot find a way forward to respond to this bill from us or find any clarity or certainty about whether to simply take up debate, amend or consider and enact, hopefully, our bill from the Senate or ask for short-term extensions of 30, 60, or 90 days.
As a former County Executive, when investing in things as important as bridges and highways, roads that make infrastructure, transportation, and a reliable predictable future for our economy possible, nothing is more important than certainty. Financing major highway projects, buying major pieces of equipment, hiring the crews to do the work is exactly the sort of thing where certainty is critical.
I have a simple question to our friends in the other chamber, which is when will they take up this bill that passed this chamber by such an overwhelming margin and when will they take seriously the broad bipartisan input from every imaginable group in support of this? I was active in my previous elected role as county executive with the National Association of Counties, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO have all weighed in. In fact, if I remember correctly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote every single office in the Senate in support of this legislation calling for “specific action that both the Congress and the Administration can take right now to support job growth and economic productivity without adding to the deficit.”
This bill came out of the Committee after remarkable work by Senator Boxer of California and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. Two senators who are widely viewed as being at the opposite ends of our political spectrum in this chamber. Madam President, when I go home to Delaware I hear folks say over and again, why can’t you work together? Why can’t you iron out your differences and put America on a clearer, straighter track towards stronger recovery?
This is exactly the sort of bill that will accomplish that end. A two-year reauthorization, $109 billion bill that in my small state of Delaware would create 6,700 jobs now hangs in the balance. It will expire at the end of this month and rather than take up and consider and hopefully pass this bill, folks in the other chamber and frankly, sadly, largely folks on the other side of the partisan aisle here, are refusing to do so and will instead take a short-term chip shot of an extension.
I simply wanted to say if I might, Madam President, that certainty is something I respect from my years in the private sector. Certainty is something I hear from the other side of the aisle, in the other chamber all the time and this is a moment when certainty can be served by the House taking up and passing the Senate-passed bill.
SENATOR BEGICH: Will my friend from Delaware yield for a question?
SENATOR COONS: Absolutely. I yield to the senator from Alaska.
SENATOR BEGICH: You were a county executive, I was a mayor of a community. We had a deal the real-life aftermath of what happens around here, especially when it comes to extensions and what happens, and I know in my city when I saw these extensions from that end of the table, we always had to stop projects, slow them down, didn’t have the money to finish them, winter shutdown, all it did was add cost, increase the capacity — or decrease the capacity of roads, and literally take projects off the list.
In your community, had you to deal with this probably like I had to, did you have the same kind of impact where you had to tell contractors I’m sorry, we don’t have the money, because the federal government hasn’t done their job they said they would do 20-some times before and never completed it? Is that a similar situation?
SENATOR COONS: Madam President, the senator from Alaska is absolutely right. In my county role, we didn’t do roads, our state does the roads but we do sewers and heavy capital infrastructure like sewers in that in our little county would cost tens of millions of dollars. We’d be on a project, we’d be off a project. We were fortunate in good times we had enough surplus, enough money in reserve we could go ahead and authorize the bond issue and authorize the project. But as the economy turned and as our balance sheet got tougher, we had to wait. We had to put things on hold. We had to put key projects off.
SENATOR COONS: Of all the sectors of our economy that have suffered since the financial collapse of 2008, all the sectors in the entire American economy, at least in my home state, construction was hit the hardest. We already knew that we were far behind in investment. We have got tens of thousands of bridges that are out of compliance with basic engineering standards. Half of our roads are below the standards we would expect for a modern economy.
This is money that can and should be invested in putting people to work, in construction which has suffered from the highest unemployment where it’s got support from the Chamber of Commerce to the
AFL-CIO, where we wrestled through the tough processes here over several weeks, as the senator says, and we have got a strongly bipartisan bill over, sitting, ready to go.
There are other things that we debate in this chamber that maybe will create jobs, maybe won’t, there is no question. Even those who have the strongest concerns about the federal role in our economy can’t disagree that federal highway projects put people to work, strengthen our economy, make us more competitive. This bill is ready to go.
Why you would not take it up and enact it today, I can’t imagine. And to the good senator from Alaska, I might say you may have a somewhat shorter summer season than we do, but if you have got 18,000 jobs at risk, I can only imagine the kinds of calls you’re getting from your home state as I’m getting from my state urging that the House of Representatives take up this strong and bipartisan bill and pass it so we can all move forward and create some real jobs.
SENATOR BEGICH: The last comment I will say, and I’m sure it is more of a question, I’m sure you had the same situation as you just described. Yes, getting those calls, and they are not just people say well, this is a union thing. No, it’s nonunion, chamber, environmentalists, neighborhoods, community councils. It’s everybody you can imagine, because these are real jobs about real people, about real communities. Over there, I think they think it’s some theory that, oh, if they delay it, nothing really will happen. They’re wrong, because you and I have lived on that other side and have had to live with the consequences of inaction.
This is one of those bills you look for, where there is bipartisan support, all the groups that are out there from all walks of life support it, and everyday people understand it. When I was back in Anchorage and I was getting some petroleum, some gas at the gas station, someone would come up, they would ask me, because why? We are just about to start our season in the bidding process because you have got to take 30, 60, 90 days to get the bids out and then you actually construct.
I think they sometimes think over there in the House that it’s some fantasyland that whatever they do has no effect. This does. You say it very clearly. I appreciate you allowing me to ask a few questions and more commentary at times here, but it seems the most ridiculous thing with the American people, Alaskans are telling me every day work together, create a bipartisan legislation, whatever it might be. Here’s one we have done successfully, and now we’re ready, but over there, they are just playing politics. They have now tried twice to do something this week, and they still can’t get it moving.
So I would encourage them on the other side to just move forward on the bipartisan bill that the Senate has passed that I know they were banking on. We wouldn’t pass it. We did it. The American people are waiting for these jobs. The contractor community is ready. The communities are ready. It’s time to move forward. Thanks you for allowing me to ask a few questions and give a little commentary.
SENATOR COONS: Thank you to the senator from Alaska, and thank you, Madam President. As we both know from our former roles, when you have a short-term extension, there are costs. It means that folks who are getting mobilized, getting organized, getting ready, you have to pull them back. When the state coffers, the county coffers, the municipal coffers don’t have the ability to float and put in place for the federal funds that they’re waiting for, it means projects get canceled, people lose their jobs – opportunity and optimism that were moving forward get pulled back.
We have got folks all over this chamber and the other, former governors, former mayors, former county executives, former business leaders who know the importance of a strong and reliable federal partnership in strengthening infrastructure in this country.
I just want to congratulate again Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe for working together so well to craft a tough, strong, capable bipartisan bill. It is my plea that the members of the other chamber would promptly take it up, consider it and pass it so we can get America back to work.
Thank you, Madam President. With that, I yield the floor.
SENATOR COONS: Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with Senator Durbin of Illinois and Senator Boozman of Arkansas for up to 30 minutes. And, as Senator Durbin indicated, we will suspend when Leader Reid arrives.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER: Without objection, it is so ordered.
SENATOR COONS: I want to briefly lay the groundwork for the conversation we are going to have in this colloquy about the Increasing American Jobs Through Greater Exports to Africa Act of 2012, of which Senator Durbin is the lead sponsor and Senator Boozman and I have joined him as original sponsors.
The core question is, what is it about the rapid growth in Africa and the economic opportunity in Africa that should concern Americans, that should concern our constituents at home, and that should occupy our time and attention?
Back on November 1 of last year, the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee delved into this. Senator Durbin, Senator Isakson, and I looked hard at the ongoing developments in Africa. As this first chart suggests, there has been a dramatic change in the amount of exports from China to Africa relative to the exports from the United States to Africa. In fact, since 2000, Chinese exports to Africa have outgrown U.S. exports to Africa by a more than 3-to-1 ratio.
Why does that matter? Why does it matter if American workers and American companies are losing out on a continent that I think many Americans view as having relatively modest opportunity? Frankly, Africa is a continent of enormous opportunity. In fact, out of the 10 fastest growing economies in the last decade, 6 of them were in Sub-Saharan Africa. That is not a widely known fact. So part of why I lay this groundwork to start this colloquy is to help folks who are watching at home and to help our colleagues understand why Senator Durbin has taken the lead in making sure that we focus America’s efforts on strengthening our exports to Africa, a continent of enormous opportunity.
Senator Durbin.
SENATOR DURBIN: I say to my colleague from Delaware that the Commerce Department estimates we can create jobs here in America capitalizing on the opportunities in Africa, and that is a good starting point in the midst of a recession, to know that in Delaware, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Illinois there are jobs to be created, good-paying jobs right here at home, taking advantage of these export markets.
The chart Senator Coons has brought to the floor at this point indicates the dramatic growth that is occurring right now in Africa, and I think it would surprise a lot of people, as he said, who believe this is still a continent which is struggling with age-old problems.
In the past 10 years, 6 of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies were located in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in the next 5 years it is expected that 7 of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies will be in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The bill which we are bringing here is an effort to focus America’s export market on this great continent and this great opportunity, creating jobs at home and a better working relationship with the countries and leaders of Africa.
I went to Ethiopia last year and met with the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. As I have done in the times when I have traveled to other countries, I asked: What has been the impact of China on your country? We stayed and spoke for another 30 minutes as he explained to me the dramatic changes taking place in Ethiopia because of China.
The numbers tell the story. When we look at what China offers to Ethiopia and the continent of Africa, they are offering concessional loans. What it means is, if it is a $100 million project that you need to start in Africa, the Chinese will give you $100 million and say “but you only have to pay back $70 million.” What a great deal that is, a 30-percent discount–with a few conditions: that you use Chinese engineers and Chinese construction companies and half the workers will be coming over to your country from China.
They are building a base of economic support within Africa. Between 2008 and 2010, China provided more to the developing world than the World Bank, loans totaling more than $110 billion. What we are suggesting is that as this is a growing opportunity for exports, we need to grow with it.
I would like to yield to my colleague from Arkansas who has been kind enough to join us in this effort.
SENATOR BOOZMAN: I thank the Senator from Illinois for doing that. It is a pleasure being with him and the Senator from Delaware. I think this is a good example of working together. The name of the game now is jobs, jobs, jobs, and exports mean jobs. The other people being so very helpful to our colleagues–in the House, Congressman Chris Smith, and also Bobby Rush from Illinois. These guys have been very helpful. Then, Don Payne, who is my former ranking member and chairman who recently passed away, I know he would be very pleased with this effort.
I have had the opportunity to travel to Africa on many occasions, being on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and now being in the Senate. It is interesting. You go to these places–the Senator mentioned this–you go to these places and all they want to do is talk about trade. They like American products. They want American products. I was part of the first delegation to visit South Sudan. Here they are, this small, struggling country and again all they want to do is talk about trade.
SENATOR COONS: Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to suspend our colloquy.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER: Without objection, it is so ordered.
……………………
SENATOR DURBIN: At this point, I yield to the Senator from Arkansas, if he would like to conclude his remarks.
SENATOR BOOZMAN: I thank the Senator from Illinois. Again, I was making the point that as we go to these African countries that want American products, whether it is the newest country in Africa, South Sudan, or the older countries, and we need to have the ability to supply them. Both Senators have mentioned China. China is certainly lurking out there. Again, it is not only China; it is India and a number of other countries. The Senator might want to comment on that. Senator Coons.
SENATOR COONS: Senator Boozman is right. There is a real challenge to the United States in Africa, and it is not just a economic challenge. We face competition from China, from Russia, from Brazil, from India, from other rapidly growing countries.
But there is also a values change because, frankly, in countries I visited–and I know both Senators, in their service to the public in the House and Senate, have visited more countries on the continent than I have–but I am concerned that China’s agenda in Africa is sometimes different from ours. It is not a values agenda. They are not there to promote democracy, tolerance, transparency, protection of intellectual property from piracy, from counterfeiting. There are lots of different things we advance in partnership with trade opportunities that are not part of their issues and are not part of what they try to advance. I am impressed Senator Durbin has pulled together an all-of-government strategy for dealing with this opportunity, and I would be interested in hearing more about how the mechanics of this bill would actually work to deploy all the great resources of the American Government.
SENATOR DURBIN: This bill develops a comprehensive strategy to coordinate the agencies of our Government in helping U.S. businesses export to Africa. Currently, the U.S. export promotion and financing regime is a patchwork of overlapping, loosely coordinated, and maybe in some cases wasteful efforts that are difficult for U.S. businesses to navigate and too often unresponsive to the real needs of real businesses.
This bill creates a special Africa export strategy coordinator to ensure this is no longer the case. He will work with the existing export agencies and make sure they are on the same page. The bill establishes a minimum number of commercial Foreign Service officers to be stationed at U.S. embassies in Africa and the multilateral investment banks. These are the men and women who are contacted by American businesses, wanting to do business. They can navigate them through local government requirements as well as some of the other cultural challenges they might face. The bill formalizes and standardizes the training received by economic and commercial officers. It also incrementally increases the amount of money Ex-Im can loan over the next 10 years and creates a standard of accountability for those loans. Remember, this is only an increase in the lending limit, and these loans actually make money for the U.S. Treasury.
Lastly, the legislation gives the Export-Import Bank greater incentive to aggressively counter concessional loans, below-market loans such as the one I mentioned earlier in the case of Ethiopia and China, that countries such as China often use to undercut our bidding in the process.
After the Prime Minister of Ethiopia explained to me how the Chinese were offering these concessional loans, he then said: But, of course, then we turned around with the telecommunications contract and the Chinese won that too. He said they are winning everything. That is not good news for us. We have the capacity to produce goods and provide services competitive with any nation in the world. But once they have basically become a part of the local economy and once they are part of the local culture, it is difficult for our companies to compete. That, I think, is the real challenge we face.
That is what this bill basically does. I think it not only creates an opportunity to create jobs here, but as has been mentioned by Senator Boozman and Senator Coons, these are developing nations which are reaching a level of economic maturity. We want to be not only good trading partners but partners with them in the future, developing not only good markets but good values that are consistent with our view of democracy and the participation of people who live in each of these countries.
I would like to yield at this point to Senator Boozman.
SENATOR BOOZMAN: I agree with the Senator from Illinois. We trade not only goods and services, but we trade ideas. That is so important as we go on. Certainly, Africa is developing a very healthy middle class. This is certainly something new that they have not seen before. Again, they are hungry for American products.
I appreciate the way the legislation was crafted in the sense it is revenue neutral so there is no cost to the taxpayer. What we are trying to do is get a plan together to make it such, particularly our small businesses, so they can compete in this huge continent that has so much going for it. Again, it could be such a great help to a State such as mine. In Arkansas, we are talking about we already export $5.6 billion in merchandise. I think one of the ways we are going to climb out of the economic doldrums we are in and create jobs is going to be through exports, and certainly this gives us an opportunity.
We are almost–we could almost say, using the statistics from the Senator from Illinois; he talked about 7 of the 10 top emerging economies coming out of Africa–we are almost doing a disservice to our small businesses by not going forward with this legislation.
SENATOR COONS: That is right. I am grateful Senator Boozman has been an active participant in helping pull together on this bill what has been a bipartisan consensus in this body and in the House on the importance of improving the access to the export opportunities of Africa for businesses large and small in the United States.
Both of our States are well known for poultry exports. All three of our States also have manufacturing exports, across all the different sectors of our economy. We can’t help but do better if we increase our exports to Africa.
Fifty years ago, 70 percent of all U.S. funds that flowed toward Africa were development or relief assistance from U.S. Government sources. Today that is inverted. Today more than 80 percent of all resources that go to Africa are direct investment by the private sector.
So Senator Durbin has led the effort to create a wise and smart bill that uses that leverage, that makes, as Senator Boozman said, the rapidly growing markets of Africa accessible to our home State businesses, large and small, but also makes a more efficient, more focused use of the dramatic resources of our Federal Government and makes it more accessible.
What is next and where do we go from here?
SENATOR DURBIN: I can tell the Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Arkansas if you ask the average American to give you their image of Africa, it will be an old image. The image of new Africa is a continent that is changing dramatically as those numbers show. Listen to these numbers: In the year 2000, 7 percent of the population of Africa had access to the Internet. In 2009, the number was up to 27 percent. That is almost a fourfold increase in access to the Internet.
There was also a revolution when it comes to mobile telephones. In 1998, there were fewer than 4 million phones on the entire continent. Today there are 500 million. From 4 million to 500 million phones. Most people have this image of a dusty little village in Africa where people live under pretty primitive circumstances, and that is true in many parts of Africa. But 78 percent of Africa’s rural population has access to clean water. Seventy-eight percent has access to clean water. Access to information and the global market are the pillars of building a middle class. In Africa this means a middle class hungry for goods and services, and the United States can use that to our advantage.
I am open-minded about this. I want us to be able to import from Africa as well because that is the nature of a good trade relationship. It cannot be all one-sided. Of course, our first priority is American jobs in Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, and Colorado. But let’s understand as the middle class grows, their productivity will grow too and what they can provide us can make a big difference.
The world banks said recently in a report that Africa could be on the brink of an economic takeoff much like China was 30 years ago and India 20 years ago. So this bill, promoting our trade into Africa, could not come at a better moment.
I wish to yield to Senator Boozman at this point.
SENATOR BOOZMAN: Well, I agree with the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from Delaware. The bottom line is there is a tremendous opportunity for our country. I think that our country, as we do start the trade process, trading ideas along with goods, that, again, we are givers. We can be very proud of the work we have done in Africa. Nobody has done more when we are talking about food. I was one of the cochairs of the malaria caucus. We can be very proud of the work the Congress has done in the last several years. These are things that the Western world can get together and eliminate.
As the continent settles down and develops a middle class, 60 percent of the businesses that do exports are small businesses and certainly we need to get in there. This bill challenges us to increase that by 200 percent and gives us the incentive and a template for how we do that so we can stop this erosion by the Chinese where they are outdoing us by about 3 to 1.
The Senator from Delaware.
SENATOR COONS: Senator Boozman is absolutely right. The significant investments that have been made by the last administration and the current administration, by Congresses controlled by both parties, in relief of the very broad health challenges throughout sub-Saharan Africa have produced dramatic results. It has been both positive results in terms of relieving human misery but also positive results in terms of the view that most Africans have of the United States. This is the continent on the Earth where we are most positively viewed. We need to take that platform and use the tools Senator Durbin is trying to craft through this legislation we support to make sure that businesses large and small all across the United States see this continent clearly as a continent of opportunity, as a continent where we have strong potential partners, and get us back in the race.
Frankly, right now we have a wakeup call. When those of us who have been to Africa repeatedly see it as a continent of great opportunity perceive that we are allowing other countries to rapidly move past us, with Senator Durbin’s leadership with this bill, we can take that opportunity, refocus our resources and make this the decade where the United States and Africa, working in partnership, build and sustain tremendous growth in imports, exports, and trade.
SENATOR DURBIN: I hope we can change a few things in Washington as we look at Africa. I hope the U.S. Commerce Secretary will travel to Africa. That has not happened in years. I would encourage our Secretary to discover the opportunities on this continent for the good of our economy here in the United States.
It is hard to imagine, as well, the Commerce Department is actually cutting its staff in Africa at this point, and the Export-Import Bank doesn’t have an African staff at this point. This can change. The tremendous growth of the African economy and its middle class makes lack of engagement inexcusable. We can reverse it, and this bill is a step in the direction to reverse it.
As Senator Boozman said, it is modest, commonsense, and doesn’t add to the deficit. It thinks of ways to use current resources more effectively. It moves us in that direction with low-cost steps that will actually earn U.S. money while creating U.S. jobs.
I will yield on this issue and allow my colleagues to close if they have closing remarks.
SENATOR BOOZMAN: I thank the Senator. We appreciate his leadership. Perhaps the three of us, and maybe others, can write a note to the Secretary of Commerce and ask him to make a much-needed trip to Africa, to look at this bill and not only do this, but use other ways as a strategy to implement so we can get our small businesses trading more with the continent, again, keeping up with the likes of China, India, and all of the places we mentioned.
I think once it is all over, we will be very proud of our efforts, just as I Am very proud, as was mentioned, of the efforts we have made in feeding the hungry, helping those with HIV, those with malaria, and diseases such as that. It is interesting that it is the place in the world where we have the highest acceptability. The people are very pleased with what the Americans have done there. Our State Department is doing a great job. We are teaching people how to fish rather than feeding them, and that has been very successful.
I appreciate everybody’s efforts and hopefully we can get our colleagues together and get this thing passed.
SENATOR COONS: I thank Senator Boozman and Senator Durbin for the opportunity to join together in this colloquy.
As Senator Boozman referenced, this is another example of how when America leads with its values, America will find success for our workers, our families, our communities at home in terms of increased export opportunities, but also in terms of higher regard for our values, for our priorities throughout the world. When we are willing to take on the challenge of combating terrible diseases such as HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in partnership with research universities, in partnership with African universities, and doctors and health care professionals, we can achieve remarkable results.
When we pull together with Senator Durbin’s leadership on this bill and we pull together all of our government, OPEC, Ex-Im, the Trade Development Administration, the Department of Commerce, the Department of State, and we deploy the strength and the capabilities of America’s entrepreneurs and small businesses, the sky is the limit in terms of the difference we can make for the people of Africa and the people of the United States.
I wish to thank Senator Durbin for his leadership on this important bill. I am grateful for the chance to join him and Senator Boozman in the colloquy today.
SENATOR DURBIN: I thank my colleagues Senator Boozman and Senator Coons.
Mr. President, I ask that this colloquy be brought to an end, and I be recognized individually in morning business.
I am pleased to chair this hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for nominees to serve as Ambassador to the Republic of Uganda, Republic of Benin, and Kingdom of Swaziland. As always, I welcome my good friend and Ranking Member, Senator Isakson, as well as other members of the Foreign Relations Committee. I would also like to welcome our distinguished nominees: Ambassador Scott DeLisi, the nominee for Uganda, Makila James, the nominee for Swaziland, and Michael Raynor, the nominee for Benin. These nominees bring to the table a vast array of experience, and I look forward to hearing their vision for advancing U.S. interests and policy priorities in Africa.
Today, we will speak about three important countries in three very different regions. Uganda, a country I visited more than 25 years ago, is a valued strategic partner of the United States. It is playing a critical role in regional efforts targeting Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army in close coordination with recently-deployed U.S. military advisors in central Africa. Uganda is also a leading contributor to the AMISOM peacekeeping mission in Somalia and has shown longstanding commitment to countering al-Shabaab and other destabilizing forces in the Horn of Africa.
The new U.S. Ambassador to Uganda will have the challenging job of continuing that important strategic partnership, while also urging Uganda to improve systems of governance and adopt democratic reforms. President Museveni has ruled for 26 years, and government security forces have, at times, taken a heavy-handed approach toward political opponents. A deeply troubling bill imposing harsh criminal penalties for homosexuality is currently making its way through the Ugandan Parliament. New discoveries of oil promise to bring new revenue and economic opportunities to Uganda, but also increase the importance and urgency of ensuring transparency and combating corruption.
Swaziland, a tiny country in the midst of South Africa, has a long record of stability and is a top exporter of textiles to the United States under AGOA. Its constitutional monarchy has created tension between the dominant royal family and pro-democracy opposition groups who want the right to form political parties and participate more directly in governance. Swaziland’s HIV/AIDS rate is the highest in the world, with more than a quarter of adults infected. Challenges for the new Ambassador will include working with the government to encourage political freedoms and democratic reform, while also continuing our health sector funding and partnership.
Benin, a country that both Senator Isakson and I visited last year, has made important progress on governance and has had two decades of peaceful and democratic transitions of power. With assistance from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Benin has upgraded and rehabilitated its port and it remains an important producer of cotton. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the important trade in used cars between the Port of Cotonou and Port of Wilmington, making Benin one of the biggest international trading partners for Delaware in Africa. Benin has the potential to be an even more diversified and important trading partner with the United States, and I hope that the new U.S. Ambassador will work with President Yayi and his government to increase transparency, combat corruption, and improve the ease of doing business.
All three of the nominees before us today have had long and distinguished careers with the State Department and bring a wealth of experience to these positions. Ambassador DeLisi has thirty years of experience in the Foreign Service. He is currently serving as Ambassador to Nepal, and previously served as Ambassador to Eritrea and Deputy Chief of Mission to Botswana. Ms. Makila James is also a Senior Foreign Service Officer, currently serving as the Office Director for Caribbean Affairs, having previously served as the Deputy Director in the Office of Southern African Affairs and as the Principal Officer at the Consulate General in Juba. Mr. Michael Raynor is currently serving as the Executive Director of the Bureau of African Affairs, where he oversees the support of U.S. policy goals for the Africa Bureau and its 53 overseas embassies, consulates, and offices. He has served primarily in Africa, including in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Guinea, Djibouti, and Congo (Brazzaville).
I look forward to hearing from them after turning to Senator Isakson for his opening remarks.
Madam President, I am honored to follow my good friend and colleague from the state of Georgia in recognizing the remarkable contributions of Senator Mikulski, now the longest serving woman in the history of the United States Congress.
Today we’ve been joined by many great Marylanders. We’ve had Governor O’Malley, Senator Cardin and former Senator Sarbanes and Senator Mikulski’s own family — her sisters and brother in-law in the gallery. I’m also pleased that we’ve got two of her favorite constituents, my father and my brother, here today as well. They live in Annapolis and they know what I’ve known since childhood when I lived in the suburbs of Baltimore: that Senator Mikulski is a remarkable, tireless, passionate, and effective senator.
Reference has been made to her start as a community organizer — someone who saved Fells Point from a 16-lane superhighway. Someone who wasn’t afraid to get into the gritty issues of a local community, standing up for folks who didn’t have anyone to fight for them. We’ve also heard about her early years as a social worker, helping folks in need understand the programs available to them and then fighting for the programs that should have been available to them.
It’s no surprise to any of us that the district she first represented in the House of Representatives — the 3rd — is known as a steel district, where lots of men and women worked in the Bethlehem steel plant, and it’s no surprise that she’s earned a reputation here in the Senate as a woman of steel who fights for manufacturers, who fights for federal workers, who fights for Western Maryland, who fights for poultry on the peninsula and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, who fights for her constituents day-in and day-out.
It is indeed just that in this Women’s History Month that we would be recognizing Senator Barbara Mikulski who has stood up for Maryland each and every day.
And though, like me, she comes up a little short every time she stands, she stands incredibly tall in the company of senators throughout American history. She is someone whose passion for people, whose determination to continue in the tradition of her father — that fair-deal grocer — who asks every day that simple question: “how can I help?” And then gets busy answering it.
She is a role model for me, for all of us, for my daughter, for my family, for our community. She’s the only senator who I’ve heard say to me — fiercely, before going on a vote on the floor — “to the barricades.” She’s the only person who could say that and mean it.
She’s been at the barricades of justice. She’s been at the barricades of service. She’s been at the barricades of making a difference, and for that, we are all grateful.
I rise today, glad this chamber is focused on job creation, on access to capital, on ways that we can help strengthen the speed and the growth of high-promise, start-up companies and grateful for the input and leadership of the Senator from Louisiana for her hard work on trying to make sure that we pay attention to the matter that is before this body today and making sure that we strike the right balance between continuing to ensure investor protection while also providing relief from regulations that may hold the promise of accelerating capital formation and job growth in this country.
When I go home to Delaware every night and when I attend events across our state every weekend, I most frequently hear from those deeply affected by our too-long recession, from which we are still growing and recovering, families who are still dealing with unemployment, with loss of their homes, or with the threats to loss of their life’s savings, businesses that are facing a credit crunch and struggling to expand or to retain their employment. Americans, I’ve heard over and over, and Delawareans want us to come together and find solutions in this body.
The good news is that today, in a rare bipartisan spirit, that’s exactly what we’re doing. I’m glad we are taking up two different versions of this legislation to create a positive climate for capital formation for early-stage companies that have enormous potential to grow, one of which has passed overwhelmingly in the House and has earned the public support of President Obama. But the other which is, as you’ve heard a number of Democratic Senators speak to today, tries to mirror those same core provisions but insists on investor protection and on ensuring that we don’t overreach in opening up markets in ways that we may regret later.
Sometimes, as you know all too well, Mr. President, sometimes this body deliberates overly long, in fact in my first year and a half here I have been struck at just how long we deliberate before acting and how many measures have sat here on the floor without action that should have been taken up promptly and quickly. In this case, I am concerned about the opposite, that we are rushing through a measure that deserves some careful consideration and review. In any event, making progress in access to capital for entrepreneurs and start-up businesses is something I hope we can all agree on.
In both versions of the bill that we will consider later today or tomorrow, there are great ideas and I continue to believe that ensuring investor protection, market transparency, and the vibrancy of our capital markets through preventing fraud and ensuring clarity about what investors are getting is a fundamental principle all of us should share. Without the right time to consider this legislation, I’m worried about the potential, the potential risks for investors, the potential burdens it may place on business. I’m worried about a proposal around beneficial ownership in one proposal and I’m worried about concerns that may overly open the market to fraudsters and those who would scam investors on the Internet in the other.
There’s much to like about these proposals, though, and let me dedicate the remainder of my time of focusing on two of them.
Two of the strongest proposals that we will consider today or tomorrow address a critical need for our business community, which is access to capital. Capital is what allows businesses to invest in new technology, new facilities, new workers, and in growth. Credit has, as well all know, been far too hard to come by in the last few years but we can and should take action to make it more available to small business owners with high-growth potential.
One option, as we’ve heard a number of Senators address today, is to continue to expand the opportunity for financing from the Export-Import Bank and the other is to make somewhat easier the pathway to an initial public offering. Today’s legislation would ease both processes and that’s the right kind of positive movement that will create opportunity all over the United States and for companies in my home state of Delaware.
First, if I can, the Export-Import Bank has long established its record of promoting exports and job growth. It has provided essential capital to help manufacturers and small businesses all over the company export more American-made goods. The reauthorization measure that we take up hopefully later today has passed unanimously out of the Senate Banking Committee and has already enjoyed broad, bipartisan support.
Last year financing from the Ex-Im Bank supported hundreds of jobs in my home state and thousands more across the country. The Bank supported a dozen companies in Delaware, for example, Air Liquide, which has a proprietary MEDAL membrane, a selectively permeable membrane, that turns landfill gas into usable energy. One example of many innovative, local Delaware companies creating high quality jobs in our communities and able to sell these products by export through Ex-Im Bank financing.
And equally importantly, the Ex-Im Bank hasn’t added a single cent to the deficit. It works to give American businesses a fair shot in the global market. If American businesses and workers are going to be competitive, we have to ensure they have the support they need. Otherwise they’ll continue to lose out.
China already provides three to four times as much export financing as we do to help their exporters. Our companies, our manufacturers, our communities simply ask for a level playing field; and in my view, reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank is vital to these companies and our manufacturing sector.
Given the realities of the global economy, it is not enough for American companies today to just make great products– they also have to be able to sell them to the burgeoning global middle-class. As we all know, 95% of current and future customers and consumers live outside of the United States and reaching those consumers who are hungry for American products is essential to the steady growth of businesses of all sizes. Boosting American exports will be central to creating the kind of growth that will continue to sustain this ongoing economic recovery and allow our businesses to hire new workers.
Financing from Ex-Im can come in at a critical time for businesses in need of capital, but it doesn’t meet the needs of every company.
For some other early-stage companies, Delaware businesses in particular, when they are in need of capital, one solution is to move towards an initial public offering by becoming a publicly traded company.
Today’s legislation also includes an “on-ramp” to ease the path to an IPO. By reducing the regulatory burden on highly innovative companies poised for significant growth, we can encourage job creation on a great scale.
At the moment we’re simply not seeing the rate of IPO’s in our economy that we need to be healthy. 92% of the jobs that a company typical creates over its entire life cycle come after it goes public. In the 1990’s, nearly half of all global IPOs happened in the U.S. – today, that number is less than 10%.
There’s many reasons companies choose not to go public but one of them that I’ve heard cited repeatedly in Delaware and in Washington is regulatory compliance under the Sarbanes-Oxley section 404(b). Now that’s a mouthful, but it essentially requires some auditing, disclosures, some pre-IPO work which while the spirit of the law is the right one, ensuring transparency and investor protection is the right direction.
This particular section has proven in practice to be overly burdensome to businesses with potential to be the greatest job creators. After hearing about this issue many times, I got together last fall with my colleague, Senator Rubio, to craft a solution. We found bipartisan agreement on this and six other issues which we included in our joint legislation, the so-called AGREE Act, which we introduced last November.
That legislation was chock full of job-creating proposals designed to spur ideas and encourage more of our colleagues to come together on this sort of bipartisan jobs legislation we can and should move to. In the case of encouraging IPO’s, that’s exactly what’s happened.
Senator Schumer and Senator Toomey have also picked up this particular proposal and moved further along with it. Then on the House side, my longtime friend and fellow Delawarean Congressman Carney worked with his Republican colleague, Congressman Fincher, to write and pass legislation on this exact issue, which has now come to us as part of this bipartisan jobs package, H.R. 3606.
I want to specifically congratulate Congressman Carney, who with this bill became the first freshman Democrat in the House to pass a major piece of legislation.
As you heard Senator Landrieu speak to just a few moments ago, and as several Senators have stood on the floor and raised today and last week, the question we have to ask is – in providing this relief from Sarbanes-Oxley 404(b), what’s the appropriate level, what’s the appropriate duration, where do we strike the right balance between investor protection and accelerating capital formation and job growth?
Is it at $250 million as we proposed in the AGREE Act, $350 million as the Democratic alternative proposes that’s on the floor today, or $1 billion, as provided in the bill that came over from the House? In my view, and the view of many Democratic Senators, we need to take the time to debate this, discuss it and ensure we are striking the balance. It is worth a few more hours of our time to get this matter right, Mr. President.
Creating a favorable environment for businesses to create jobs can and should be our top priority here in Washington. Since I arrived a year and a half ago, that hasn’t always been the case, but today it can and should be the primary focus of our work. There is no reason we have to rush to pass this today, Mr. President.
We can and should take some time to deliberate, to work through the appropriate process, and it is my hope that we will reauthorize and extend the reach of the Export-Import Bank and move to a consensus bipartisan bill that will strengthen access to capital for entrepreneurs and for early stage companies and that will show all the people of the United States that the House, the Senate, and the President can and will stand together on the side of job creators in this economy.
Mr. President, parents in my home state of Delaware and all across this country worry so much and work so hard for the future of their children – for their health, their safety, their education and their future.
I rise today as a parent of three young children and the son and grandson of classroom teachers to talk about how we can pull together to provide all the tools and resources that parents, teachers, mentors and students need to understand, to afford and to connect with college opportunities in this country.
Why do we need a new solution to this long standing problem of college access? Well let’s just look at some statistics from this recent, tough recession we’re still growing our way out of.
The unemployment rate amongst high school drop-outs was 13%, amongst those who had finished high school 8% and amongst those with a college degree just 4%. That’s an enormous difference, that’s millions of people unemployed because they didn’t finish their high school education and go on to some higher education.
In the new global economy, Americans who do not go on after high school have a million dollars less in lifetime earning potential compared to those who do go to college. That million dollar difference is something which if parents and teachers and students were aware of at the beginning of their education, it might drive them to make very different choices.
And as a Senator, I’ve met with dozens of folks who lead companies, who are innovators and job creators who’ve said they have vacant positions they can’t fill because we’re not graduating enough Americans with advanced degrees and training in critical opportunities – engineering, science, technology and math.
So I think filling the gap of opportunity by connecting students, teachers, parents and mentors and creating a new generation of higher education achievers is something we can and should do to help create a competitive economy and workforce for the future.
That’s why, today, I am introducing the American Dream Accounts Act of 2012. Mr. President, this legislation encourages partnerships between schools, colleges, local non-profits and businesses to develop secure, Web-based individual, portable student accounts that contain information about each student’s academic preparedness, financial literacy, connects them to high-impact mentoring and is tied to a college savings account.
Instead of having each of these difference resources available separately, it connects them, across existing silos and across existing education programs at the state and federal level. And by connecting across these different silos, it deploys a powerful new tool and resource for students, parents, teachers and mentors.
This bill is a modest, but I think powerful, step toward helping more students of all income levels and backgrounds access, afford and complete a college education.
And I’m grateful to Senator Rubio of Florida and Senator Bingaman of New Mexico for joining me as original co-sponsors of this innovative solution.
Mr. President, too many American kids today are cut off from the enormous potential and value of higher education. Today, just about 1 out of 10 children from low-income families will complete a college degree by the time they are 24. And as I’ve already said, the economic consequences of that are one of the main drivers of unemployment and poverty in our modern economy.
But with early action, with early engagement, we can help millions of Americans beat those odds.
Many years ago, early in my career, I had the opportunity to work with something called the national “I Have a Dream” Foundation, founded by Gene Lang, through which my family and I adopted a whole class of elementary school kids from the east side of Wilmington. And all over this country, more than 100 similar groups of motivated individuals and donors have engaged in sponsoring college education opportunities for kids beginning at a very early age.
What I saw first-hand in the dozen years I was actively engaged with the 50 kids in our “I Have a Dream” program, was that young people who come from a community, a family, a school where there is little to no experience of college education get powerful and negative messages from an early age that college is not for them. That it’s not affordable, that it’s not accessible, that it’s not part of the plan for their future.
Similarly, kids who grow up in families where their parents went to school, their teachers went to school – went to college – get constant messages, subtle but powerful messages, about the value and importance of college. Folks who come from those backgrounds hear, whether its college sports, pride in their own graduation, or constant conversations about one’s alma mater, or visits to college campuses, from childhood they hear about college as something that’s just an expected part of life.
Very few of the 50 “Dreamers” my family and I worked with had any expectation of a college education. And the most powerful thing we did was to change that – to open the door to college as possibility from elementary school on.
It showed, and this program has showed, time and time again across the country, that exciting and engaging not just young students but their parents, their teachers and an array of mentors has cumulative, powerful, positive impact.
The American Dream Accounts Act will expand on this idea, and use modern social networking technology to bring together existing programs and deliver ideas that will work for more kids.
And the good news is, by utilizing existing Department of Education funds, this legislation comes at no additional cost to taxpayers
What makes the American Dream Accounts work is their unique ability to harness the power of currently available technology to address some of the biggest challenges in college access.
First, connectivity. The journey from elementary school to finishing high school is long, and the journey from there to higher education is a longer one. So many students in our public schools all over this country disengage or even drop out along the way because they are not connected. They attend large and sometimes anonymous schools. Their parents are stretched too thin in this tough economy, trying to hang on to their jobs and their housing. And frankly, a dedicated cadre of teachers can only do so much.
And these kids, as they become less and less connected to a clear vision of their future, drop out or make choices that make it unlikely they’ll finish high school and go on to college.
American Dream Accounts take advantage of modern technology. They are a Facebook-inspired opportunity to deliver secure, personalized hubs of information that would connect these kids, sustain and support them throughout the entire journey of education.
Second, it connects them with college savings opportunities. Senator Roth of Delaware long served as Chairman of the Finance Committee, and one of the greatest pieces of his legacy is the Roth IRA, helping empower working families to save for retirement. Part of the American Dream Accounts is the idea of connecting young people to college savings accounts. Virtually every state, Mr. President, has college savings programs, yet they’re not accessed by most of the working and middle class of America.
Connecting students to college savings accounts from their earliest age has powerful impact. Studies show that students who know there is a dedicated college savings account in their name are seven times more likely to go to college than their peers without one.
So this legislation would help open an individual savings account for each enrolled student from the beginning of elementary school. It matters less how much money is in the account than that students are aware there is one.
The third piece of this program is early intervention. State and federal governments already spend billions of dollars, Mr. President on higher education – on Pell grants at the federal level and in my state of Delaware, on SEED grants. We provide these millions of dollars in support to afford college, but we don’t tell kids they’re there until they are in high school. Most kids have already made decisions by then that make them ineligible to finish high school or attend college.
So why not tell them earlier? Particularly given the powerful potential impact of that information. By letting children know these opportunities exist from the earliest age, we can change outcomes.
Last is portability. One of the things I saw in my own experience with my own Dreamers in Delaware was how often they moved, and how often overstretched teachers with full classrooms didn’t get any information or background on the student who moved in to their classroom halfway through the year. So instead of being welcomed and engaged in a positive way, they became discipline problems or were difficult to teach to. This robust, online secure account would empower teachers to connect with parents and mentors and understand the students who are before them.
That’s why portability and persistence is an essential feature of American Dream Accounts. This way, no matter what disruptions or challenges a student might face as they travel through education, their American Dream Account would travel with them. Supportive adults — teachers, mentors, guidance counselors — would be able to access this information and kids would get a consistent understanding of value and impact of a future college education.
One of my favorite parts of drafting this legislation was the meetings and conversations we had with those on the front lines of education in Delaware. As a community, I heard over and over again, we’re hungry for innovative solutions. One of the many groups I met with was the Delaware PTA, who said in endorsing the American Dream Accounts Act that it incorporates the school, the parent and students to ensure each child will be closely supported with resources needed to access a post- secondary education.
The fact is, Mr. President, our nation’s long-term economic competitiveness requires a highly trained, highly educated workforce. We can meet that challenge by connecting students with a broad array of higher education options – vocational school, job training, community college or a four-year university.
This legislation will help students identify the type of higher education that’s best for them, the career they most want, and give them the tools to get there.
I have visited schools across Delaware, and one thing is clear. The vision that stays with me from my time at “I Have a Dream” to my service as a Senator is that when you ask a roomful of elementary school kids “what do you dream of being when you grow up,” they all shoot their hands in the air and they all answer that question in the same way, regardless of background or income or community they are in.
Every child begins with dreams of a full positive, educational experience and career. All of our kids start with big dreams, but the numbers show that not all our kids get there.
The American Dream Accounts Act of 2012 is a modest but powerful bill designed to empower students and parents of all backgrounds to achieve those dreams from an early age.
Mr. President, I welcome support from other of my colleagues to make this bill a reality.