The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ECONOMIC STIMULUS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S532-S535 on Jan. 31, 2008.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ECONOMIC STIMULUS
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to speak about our need to move swiftly on the stimulus package. We are responding obviously to a bipartisan package that has come out of the Finance Committee. I believe we should work on a bipartisan basis, because we are in tough economic times, to hurry and get this package done. Doing the right thing means doing the right thing for seniors, for disabled veterans, for consumers, for business. It means getting real dollars pumped back into the economy now and not continuing to play a time-consuming game, going back and forth.
I know the House and the administration rapidly put together a package and it garnered wide bipartisan support, and I applaud their efforts for doing that. Likewise, Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley also initiated quick, bipartisan action in the Senate Finance Committee, and the bill was reported out, and Senator Reid has brought that bill before the full Senate. I urge my colleagues to keep pace with the President's request for timely action and to support sending the Finance Committee bill to the House so we can quickly move to conference and resolve whatever differences there are, so we can move a package to the President's desk we can be proud of.
Our goal is to act on policies that will stimulate the economy now and over the next 12 months. We should not lose sight of that goal. I know many of my colleagues like to talk about other proposals that may be stimulative in the long run, but for me the focus should be--and I think for my colleagues--on that which is truly going to be stimulative over the next 12 months.
The Finance Committee package makes significant improvements to the House bill. I think they are important aspects that strengthen our efforts on stimulus. The Finance Committee bill makes sure that 20 million low-income seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans are eligible for a stimulus rebate--a critical aspect to correct. Now I don't think the House of Representatives intended to leave these folks behind, and I think we can simply send a message to the House and the President that we know they support including these individuals as well.
By making sure that seniors qualify for these payments, in my State, over 800,000 Washingtonians will be helped, and over 93,000 disabled veterans and their families. So we are talking about a large percentage of the population. These people live on fixed incomes, and it is essential we provide them the economic assistance they deserve. I do want to congratulate Senators Lincoln and Snowe for highlighting the fact that the House bill failed to help these individuals--disabled veterans--and worked to correct this in the Finance Committee package.
The Finance Committee package also improves upon the House bill by including a modest temporary extension of the stimulative energy tax credit and investment provisions. Some may ask: Are these energy provisions stimulative? Let me respond clearly: Extending these provisions is critical to the prevention of billions of dollars of investment loss and thousands of jobs lost in 2008. We need to act quickly or we are going to not only lose out on a positive economic stimulus that can be upwards of $20 billion, but people will start cancelling projects that are in critical areas of investment simply because we have not given them the predictability of the Tax Code.
This bill includes a 1-year extension of expiring clean energy and efficiency tax credits that will help consumers and businesses make stimulative investment decisions in 2008, and it happens to address one of the most pressing needs--energy costs--that are causing impact to our economy today. Extending this package of incentives now will enable companies to go forward with more renewable investments in wind and solar which are currently on hold now because they are waiting for the certainty of the Tax Code.
I wish to show my colleagues an example of what uncertainty does for our investment. Historically, the production tax credits have been renewed at various points in time. When Congress has failed to give predictability--and this chart shows the megawatt production, the years we failed to provide certainty--we actually saw a 93-percent drop in 2000. In 2001 when we failed to get certainty again, we saw a 73-
percent drop in production, and in 2004 we saw a 77-percent drop in production again. What this chart shows us is that in 2007, we are off to a great year as it relates to production, and the production tax credit and the alternative energy that we are producing.
As I said, 2000 shows almost $20 billion in stimulation to our economy by our investment in energy. That helps us lower energy costs and certainly puts more production into the mix. But if we fail to give the businesses the predictability we are going to extend these tax credits, those investments aren't going to be made.
The American Wind Energy Association estimates that the extension of the production tax credit will enable $7 billion in capital spending to go forward over the next 12 months, thanks to projects and contracts that will be executed as planned rather than delayed because of uncertainty of the place-in-service date. That is, by saying the projects have to be in place by the end of this year does not give them the predictability of continuing to make the investment. We have been told by just one appliance manufacturer that they will not give the go-
ahead on $30 million in investment in 2008 to put new energy efficiency appliances into production unless the tax credit is extended. That production line won't be cost-effective without it. That is what they tell us.
Also, the extension of the investment tax credit for solar, for example, means that one large grocery store chain in the United States would--if they got the credit--inject an additional $30 million into the economy by following through on their plan to retrofit more stores with solar panels in 2008. Each solar conversion of those stores puts
$2 million into the economy, into manufacturing and installation of those solar panels. The Federal investment credit is key to whether they move forward with their investment, or whether they stop or slow down. Overall, the solar industry estimates that up to 40,000 new jobs will be lost in the next 12 months if we don't extend the investment credit. At this time in our economy, why should we be sacrificing high-
quality jobs because we aren't giving certainty predictability?
Let me give an example. In my own State, someone called our office today who is the president of Wellons, Inc., in Vancouver, WA. For more than 40 years Wellons has been a leader in providing wood-fired energy systems, lumber-dried kilns, and related products to the forest industry. Wellons has four to six projects and maybe many more that are ready to go, and yet a key to all these projects moving forward is certainty about the production tax credit. If the production tax credits aren't extended, these projects can't go forward, and as the president of that organization told my office:
Every project I have hinges on the production tax credit. If they aren't extended, we will start having to lay off some of the 500 employees in the company.
So we have to act quickly. There are many other States that will be impacted besides mine. A report that was released today by Navigant Consulting found that over 100,000 jobs are at risk. In fact, their report shows State by State that due to a lack of production tax credit--Texas, for example, 23,000 jobs could be at stake; Colorado, 10,000 jobs; Illinois, 8,000--and I am not giving the exact number here; I am rounding them up or down--Oregon, 7,000 jobs; Minnesota, 6,000; my home State of Washington, 4,744; and the list goes on. Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma; Pennsylvania will lose 1,500 plus jobs; California, nearly 1,000 jobs; Missouri, nearly 1,000 jobs, and on and down the list.
So the question is whether we are going to act to pass what is a bipartisan Senate bill that improves on the House package--it improves on the House package including seniors, including disabled veterans, in making sure we are clear about who--in fact, that legal citizens get access to these rebate checks, and to make sure we are truly making the best decision about stimulative investment.
Now, I wish that last year we could have had some of these things pass and having some clarity. But it is clear that the House of Representatives and the White House see this differently. So it is very important that we take the opportunity now to get this investment strategy right. Doing these tax credits at the end of this year is not sufficient to keeping investment. If we don't, 2008 is going to look more like 2004. That is that in 2008, people will cancel projects, stop production, we won't have the energy produced in the marketplace.
This is a large opportunity for us. It is a large opportunity to give businesses--and I should say it also gives consumers--an opportunity to get about $500 from a tax rebate for their consumer energy investments into products that will help them keep their energy costs down, and the estimates are that individual consumers, besides the $500 rebate they will get, will probably save between $600 and $800 on energy savings. Those are the kinds of things we want to do. We want to see 2008 look even more aggressive from a stimulative perspective than 2007. We want people to be aggressive in this area because not only will it create jobs, not only will it create economic stimulus now, but it will help consumers on the key impact they are feeling in this economic hardship of high energy costs. The more production you get into place, that production helps us in lowering energy costs. Getting more alternative energy production helps us in impacting the cost of natural gas, because you have an alternative product in the marketplace. It helps us in getting other supply. It certainly is supply that is there for the long run. I don't think anybody thinks we are ever going to change the direction we are currently seeing on high energy costs, so getting the long-term production in place is also a good idea.
But I urge my colleagues to think clearly about this choice we are going to have; that is, to improve upon the, I am sure, unintended consequences the House had in their package by clarifying that seniors and veterans deserve to have these benefits, and that these production tax credits and investments are smart investments to give business predictability and will be stimulative to our economy. Certainly by ignoring that, we are at peril of making our problems worse. So I encourage my colleagues to support this Finance Committee package that has come out in a bipartisan way and move quickly with the House to resolve these issues. It is the quickest path forward to getting a bill to the President and getting checks into consumers' hands.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Florida). The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
Tribute to Rupert Florence Richardson
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to a very important Louisianan, and really a great leader of our Nation, who passed away recently. I come to the floor in her memory, to pause for just a moment and to remember this great lady.
Thursday, January 24, Louisiana and the Nation lost a powerful advocate for justice, equality, and opportunity. Rupert Florence Richardson was truly a heroine of the civil rights movement, who battled throughout her life not only to realize the dream of equal opportunity and a colorblind society, but she fought every day that I knew her for decent jobs, adequate health care, quality health care, and equal opportunities in education for all children.
During more than half a century of work and devotion to the civil rights movement, and to public service generally, Rupert Richardson rose into national prominence as one of the longest serving board members of the NAACP, serving from 1992 to 1995 as national head. Prior to that, she served that prestigious organization for 7 years as vice president and also 16 years as the president of the Louisiana chapter.
Rupert Richardson was a mother, a teacher, a nurse, a sought-after speaker, and a leader always. She had an extraordinary voice and presence, a really big and wonderful heart, she was a great intellect, and she had a passion for people. She was fondly known as the grand dame of the NAACP and was beloved by many in the NAACP civil rights family.
To us at home, you could always see Rupert coming because of her hats of various shapes, sizes and colors--quite decorative--which was her signature trademark. She was a vibrant spirit, always busy, working, and always generous to those around her.
Rupert served many years in Baton Rouge and was no stranger to our Nation's Capital. She was born in Texas and moved to Lake Charles, LA, as an infant. That is where she will be buried tomorrow. For more than 30 years, Rupert served Louisiana in many spheres of influence, and she will be fondly remembered and respectfully remembered. It was truly a life of service. Her family, her friends, her sorority sisters, and particularly the civil rights family in America owe a great deal to this great heroine of civil rights.
I am happy to come to the floor of the Senate to remember Rupert Richardson, to speak of her, and to remind all of us of her great contribution. She will be missed very much.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the economic stimulus package that is now under consideration by the full Senate and specifically to address the crucial issue of how this package affects our senior citizens. I am particularly glad to be delivering these remarks on an occasion when my distinguished colleague from Florida is occupying the chair because I know of the extraordinary efforts he dedicates in this Chamber on behalf of the citizens of his home State of Florida. Like Florida, Rhode Island is a State that has a significant senior population, and so the welfare of those seniors and the effect on them of this economic stimulus is a matter of great concern to both of us.
I want to tell a quick story. Not long ago, at one of the community dinners I give around the State of Rhode Island to get input from people, to have a chance to meet folks in our local communities, to have them have a chance to talk with me, and for me to have a chance to hear their stories, a young man named Travis attended, and he told me a story about his grandmother.
His grandmother is a lovely woman. She lives in Woonsocket, RI. Woonsocket is a historic and beautiful city in Rhode Island but a city that has faced, for a long time, economic challenges. His grandmother is in her nineties, and she still lived in the three-story tenement, on her own, that she had lived in all her life in Woonsocket.
In Rhode Island, there are a lot of buildings where there are three apartments, one on top of the other--three-deckers--and she lived on the top floor of one of those. God bless her, at age 90, she was able to walk up and down those stairs every day, and she did, to go out and do her errands, to visit with her grandson, and to go about her life. She was fit, and she was proud of her independence. It is not easy to go up and down those stairs every day, but she did it. She liked to live alone. She was proud of being independent her whole life and wanted to remain independent.
One day, she went down the stairs from that third-story tenement, and she walked out, as she often did, to visit her pharmacist, to pick up the prescriptions she requires to maintain her health. Everything was just as usual, until she got to the pharmacy. She discovered that this was not a usual day. She was told by the pharmacist that she had fallen into the doughnut hole--the terrible coverage gap in the Part D Medicare prescription drug program. She hadn't seen it coming. She was blindsided, caught completely by surprise. You can imagine what was going through her mind when she was told she couldn't pick up her drugs, that she couldn't afford them.
She went home to that third-floor tenement emptyhanded, without her prescriptions, and she walked back up those stairs. Frightened and alone, not sure what to do, she called Travis. Fortunately, he was able to help. But without any help from her Part D insurance, she couldn't afford to pay both her rent and that medicine.
She was frightened. After years of living on her own, after holding on, really with a lot of courage and a lot of heart and a lot of determination, to that independence that meant so much to her, even if it meant walking up three flights of stairs every day, now she was going to lose that--not because of anything she had done wrong, not because of anything that had changed in her life, but because she had fallen into this trap that was set for her by this Congress when it built that hole into the prescription drug program.
That call from his grandmother shook Travis pretty hard, and that is what brought him into my life. It was one of numerous stories I heard on the campaign trail from families who had to cope suddenly with watching a senior fall into that coverage gap.
On another occasion, I was coming out of a speech I was giving, and a fellow stopped me on the way out and we talked for a while. He said: You know, I really want you to fix this prescription drug thing, and I want to tell you why. He said: I have a brother--this was a gentleman about my age. He said: I have a younger brother, now in his forties. He is severely disabled. He has serious mental challenges. He lives in a group home, and every week I go by and I take him out. I take him on an outing. I take him to the movies, to a ball game, or to walk around the mall, and I do it with $50.
My mother gives me $50 every month to help take care of my brother. He said: She is elderly now. She had taken care of him all his life, but then he had to move into the group home, and now she is elderly herself, and there is not much she can do for her son. She still loves him deeply. She still cares for him very much.
The one last thing she could do for this boy was to give her other son $50 a month out of her very sparse resources to take his brother on these outings.
Now, he said, I have the $50. I am going to take my brother on these outings anyway. That is not the issue. The issue is that my mom just fell in this doughnut hole and, he said, she can't give me that $50 anymore, and it is breaking her heart to know that after all these years of caring for this boy and having this one last thing she could still do for him, she couldn't do it any longer. He said: She feels like a failure. Her heart is broken. Please, you have to do something about this.
That is an indication of how close so many Americans are to the edge, that this mother, whose most important expenditure in her life is to be able to help that son and know she was still doing something for him, and she couldn't make that payment any longer because everything had to go to prescriptions and the basic necessities of just keeping alive.
We have heard a lot of these stories. I know the distinguished Presiding Officer has heard these stories as he goes around Florida.
As an aside, I think it is worth observing while we are here, what a shameful mistake--what a shameful mistake--this Congress made when it had the chance and it had the choice to close this terrible gap in this coverage for seniors and it chose not to. It chose not to so that it could give the wealthy pharmaceutical industry--one of the richest and most successful industries in the country--one of the fattest perks, one of the biggest benefits, one of the biggest insider deals that has ever come through this building--something almost unique in the annals of corporate special favors. What a racket. It gave them the ability to avoid having Medicare and Medicaid negotiate with them over the price of their pharmaceuticals. What a racket. And we did that. The extra cost that puts into that system means you have to maintain that hole and that seniors are going to fall into that trap over and over again.
Well, that is a fight we are going to continue. I know the Senator from Florida feels strongly about it, I feel strongly about it, and many others feel strongly about that. It is wrong to have seniors such as Travis's grandmother or the lady who can't make her $50 contribution to help her son be the ones to lose and an industry making billions, which has everything it needs, win out over them.
So now we have this stimulus package. Our Nation is confronting uncertain economic times, and Congress is working diligently to try to put together a package to prevent us from sliding further into the Bush recession. However, when the initial agreement was announced between the administration and the House of Representatives, I was concerned--
as the Senator from Florida was; we spoke about it--that many seniors, one of the groups who most need our help, were excluded from that deal.
Most seniors, who rely on Social Security benefits and savings, do not pay income taxes, and they would not be eligible for an income tax rebate based on taxable income and delivered through the Internal Revenue Service. It just wouldn't reach them. Indeed, 61 percent of seniors who received Social Security benefits did not pay income taxes in 2006, the last year for which there is data. Sixty-one percent would have gotten nothing under that package.
Well, today, more than 138,000 Rhode Islanders--to the Senator from a great big State such as Florida, that may not seem like a big number, but 138,000 in a State with a population of just 1 million is a lot of people--138,000 Rhode Islanders over the age of 65 receive Social Security benefits.
It is not a big benefit, it is not a generous benefit. It averages
$12,374 a year. Based on the national percentage of recipients who pay income tax, it means more than 84,000 Rhode Islanders would receive nothing under the House proposal, 84,000 Rhode Island seniors, zippo, nothing for them.
Nationwide that number climbs to 21.1 million seniors. More than 20 million seniors would not receive a dime in tax rebates under the House bill. That is not fair. That is not fair.
As long as we are putting funds out in the economy in order to stimulate the economy, we should make sure the program reaches fairly to different segments of the population and certainly not leave out seniors. Extending the rebate plan to seniors will give much-needed breathing room to so many seniors who struggle every day to get by.
But in addition to being more fair, it also makes economic sense. According to the Department of Labor, Americans over 65 are responsible for 14 percent of all consumer spending, and they spend an average of 92 percent of their income every year.
In 2006 alone, they purchased more than $800 billion in consumer goods. So if you are looking to push consumer spending, seniors are a good place. That data suggests any rebate we are able to provide seniors will provide the kind of stimulus our country needs.
Furthermore, older Americans are more likely to spend the money they receive and to spend it on goods and services that will help our economy grow, and they will spend it sooner. They will spend it faster. As we all know, one of the key purposes of this stimulus is to put the stimulus into the economy quickly.
In a Budget Committee hearing a few days ago, I asked Peter Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, which would be a faster stimulus to the economy, Social Security or tax rebates. He testified: Social Security. So if we can help seniors get this through Social Security, better still.
Last week, I wrote the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate about my concerns. I urged them to make seniors a priority in any stimulus package we consider. I am very encouraged and very pleased, standing on the floor right now, that the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by our distinguished colleague from Montana, Senator Max Baucus, has reported out of his committee, in bipartisanship fashion, a bill that would allow most seniors to receive a $500 rebate under the Finance Committee proposal.
Social Security benefits would be considered as income for this limited purpose. Seniors with at least $3,000 in Social Security income, Social Security benefits, but we are treating it this one time as income for 2007, this past year, could claim the $500-per-person rebate simply by filing a tax return.
Now, of course as we know, many seniors do not have enough taxable income to require them to file tax returns. They may not have filed in years and they may not be familiar with the process. So as we go forward, should this proposal become law, I hope it does, we must do all we can to inform seniors about the rebates to which they are entitled and to help them claim these much-needed rebates.
We need to call on our friends who are accountants, social service workers, lawyers in the tax area, who can volunteer their time to work at senior centers in high-rises, work with our seniors to make sure seniors know they can do this and help them fill out this form so they can get this benefit.
So many seniors desperately could use an extra $500. That is nearly a whole year of this gentleman I mentioned, of his mom being able to help her son. Her whole thing every year was $600. It meant the world to her and it was only $600. And she could not do this. But this $500 will make a big difference in these seniors' lives.
So we have to make sure no senior loses out on this money because of misinformation or difficulty in navigating the tax forms. The solution is a strong step forward. I applaud the work of Chairman Baucus and the Republican ranking member of the Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley.
I look forward to continuing our efforts to pass an economic stimulus proposal that meets the pressing needs of America's seniors while accelerating the stimulus the economy needs.
I will close by saying once again how fortunate I feel to be on the floor delivering these remarks at a time when the distinguished Senator, Bill Nelson, for those who cannot see him, of Florida, is in the Presiding Officer's chair. Because again, his strength and determination on issues that affect seniors in Florida is renowned in this Chamber, and I could not hope for a better audience as someone with such care and dedication to American seniors to be here.
I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, it has been a long week, and our list of accomplishments--on paper--are not very much. But, hopefully, we are headed toward a real good week next week.
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