Unanimous Consent Request -- S. Res. 626

Floor Speech

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--S. RES. 626 -- (Senate - September 18, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, we have some startling new figures about how difficult it has become for the middle class to get by. We now have some new numbers, through the Joint Economic Committee and the work of Professor Elizabeth Warren, that in fact the average middle-class family has lost about $2,000 in wages, $2,000 per year, for the last 8 years, and the expenses have now gone up about $4,400 per year. That is a net loss of $6,400 per year. And with family childcare, you add an additional $1,500 per year. This is how much more expensive it was than 8 years ago.

So we are seeing more and more families in debt, more and more families having trouble getting by due to the failed economic policies of this administration, and as we have seen from the events of the past week, the country is facing an enormous financial crisis, probably the largest we have seen since the Great Depression.

Although the administration is still wary to admit this is a recession, we have seen time and time again over the last 8 months more and more jobs lost. Many institutions--some that have been on Wall Street for decades, some for a century--are finding themselves in the same position as many families were when their house was foreclosed on, with nowhere to go, and secretaries with nothing to their name. People had their retirement money in stock in the company. They were depending on that stock for their future but now have nothing to their name. This week we saw things take an even greater turn for the worse.

When Chairman Bernanke was in front of the Joint Economic Committee back in April, days after the Bear Stearns buyout, there was some talk that maybe that would stabilize things. But Wall Street was simply in denial. When you look at this past decade, Mr. President, you can see it was a decade of greed, a decade of risk, and there wasn't much fear in how those deals were made--jumbo mortgages, securities with no backing. Too much, too much, too much.

Look at IndyMac in California, and Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and all of these firms that insisted they were solvent, until the eleventh hour. That practice put everyone's savings at risk.

Next week, in our Joint Economic Committee, we are going to be hearing from Chairman Bernanke and discussing exactly where we go from here. I believe in this country. I believe we will move forward. But I can tell you lax regulation, decaying agencies, and some of the people who were put in charge of them have led us to where we are today.

I saw it firsthand on the Commerce Committee with the Consumer Protection Agency, a shadow of its former self, with 50 percent fewer employees than it had during the Reagan era. Big surprise when these toxic toys started coming in from places such as China. There was no one there to mind the store. There was one guy named Bob in a back room.

When you look at these mortgage instruments, there was no one watching over them, no one to enforce the rules. As a former prosecutor, I know you can have all the laws on the books, but if you don't have people enforcing them and people who are committed to the purpose of making sure that regular people are protected in this economy, it is not going to matter what laws are on the books.

We also had rampant change in some of our regulations--the Enron loophole. We had the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before a joint meeting with our Agriculture Committee, and I asked him if he didn't want some more tools in his arsenal so he could maybe look at what is going on with these trades and the speculation going on with foreign countries. Even if you don't want to use them, I asked him: Don't you want those tools we can give to you? As a prosecutor, I figured I wouldn't use every law that was on the books, but I always wanted more tools to look at things.

He said: No, we are fine the way we are. It was that attitude, Mr. President, that got us where we are today. So we are going to have to change things in this country. We are going to have to get some balance. I believe in vigorous entrepreneurship. My State is home to nine Fortune 500 companies and many thriving small businesses. We believe in entrepreneurship in our State, but we also believe there must be a balance and there must be fairness and somebody minding the store. And that has been lacking over the last 8 years.

We do have an opportunity as we look at how we are going to get this economy moving. I mentioned there was so much greed and not enough fear in the last 8 years. Well, now we stand on the precipice of where we don't have too much fear, but we want to move forward as an economy, and there is one thing we know we can do immediately in the next few days. We can make sure the incentives are in place to keep moving forward with this new green economy to compete with other countries and have the right incentives in place.

I am talking about the extenders for renewable energy that have really led to a boom in my State. We are third in the country with wind energy. Southwestern Minnesota is home to hundreds of large-scale wind turbines, helping to make us a leader in wind power. Along with biofuels, these wind energy farms have spurred a rural economic renaissance in that part of our State.

Let me give a few examples of this and examples of hope for this economy as we go forward and how we can put incentives in place so we can keep going.

I see my friend from Kansas across the aisle, and I know he has a picture of a wind turbine in his front office. We know there is a future for this country with development in this area.

In 1995--and this is just an example from Minnesota--SMI & Hydraulics, Inc. began their business in Porter, MN, primarily as a welding and cylinder repair shop for the local farmers and businesses. Today, SMI & Hydraulics, which manufactures the bases for the wind towers we see all across this country, just recently expanded a facility to 100,000 square feet and created over 100 new jobs in just this little town. It is a barn with these big wind bases that actually come out of it. It is an amazing success story.

Last year, the renewable electricity sector pumped more than $20 billion into the U.S. economy, generating tens of thousands of jobs in construction, transportation, and manufacturing. Throughout the country, renewable energy has led us down a path toward new jobs, lower energy bills, and enhanced economic development. We need to move this country forward.

For me, and the State of Minnesota and so many other areas across this country, the protection tax credit is critical to realizing this goal. The protection tax credit, in combination with strong State renewable electricity standards, has been a major driver of wind power development in Minnesota. That is why I was so concerned we might actually lose it. All the studies show if you let it go, about 8 months before it is forecasted to go off, you have an enormous drop in investment, and that is exactly what we don't need now in this country. We need a plan to go forward.

I personally would like to see it go into effect for 3, 4, or 5 years. I have a bill with Senators SNOWE and CANTWELL to put it in place for 5 years. But if all we can agree on today is to extend it for another 1 year for wind, solar, geothermal, and all kinds of renewable products and wasted energy, that is what we should be doing.

But I will try. We are working on a bipartisan basis with a group of Senators to extend it for at least 3 years for renewable fuel sources. Because as we struggle with this economy we know, as we say in Minnesota, the approach is not just going to be a silver bullet, it is going to be silver buckshot. It is going to involve all kinds of energy production, increased energy production. But it is also going to involve looking at things in a new way. That has been lacking so much, this long-term look at our economy while other countries have leapfrogged us. While we developed the technology for wind and solar, we have been leapfrogged by other countries. Anyone who watched the Olympics in China knows what we are up against on the world stage for competition. They saw not only the athletes from all over the world but they
saw the precision with which the Chinese were able to pull off that opening ceremony in those Olympics.

We have to get our act together. We have to get our act together for our economy and be sensible and not look at 1-day solutions and 1-day spins. We have to have a plan for this economy, and this is a start, but we also have to have some balance in our regulatory system so our economy can function and our businesses can function as they were meant to.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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