Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010--Resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion on the floor of the Senate in the last couple of days about small business legislation and various things dealing with jobs, and clearly we need a lot of jobs in this country. We have gone through a very steep economic decline that has victimized lots of Americans. Because of that, we have a lot of people who are waking up in the mornings without work and wondering what to do next. They feel helpless and hopeless and are trying to get their feet on the ground. But they need some help from this Congress; that is, we do not create jobs, but we do create conditions under which jobs can be created by the private sector.

So I want to talk a little about the issue of what might give the American people some confidence because confidence is everything. If they are confident about the future, it means our economy can expand. If people are not confident about the future, our economy will contract. It is that simple.

There is no question that this country now, having gone through the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, has the largest Federal budget deficits we have ever had. In the last couple of years there have been enormous budget deficits. In fact, the budget was in deficit by $1 trillion by the end of June in this fiscal year.

But our colleagues--some of whom voted for all the war funding over these last years and voted for the big tax cuts to reduce the government's revenue, and all of those issues--are now rushing to the floor with everything but suspenders and proclaiming that now the deficit is a big problem.

Well, I will tell you why it is a big problem. It is a big problem because 10 years ago a lot of folks in here decided to cut the revenue steeply, and cut taxes mostly for wealthy Americans, and cut them in a very significant way. So the government had less revenue. They did that because they believed we had budget surpluses that were going to exist for 10 years.

We had not had a budget surplus for 30 years in this country. We ran deficits for 30 years. Then, all of a sudden, at the end of the Clinton administration, we had a budget surplus of a couple hundred billion dollars. I am pleased about that because I voted for the economic plan that helped create that. We put that in place in the middle 1990s, and we got to a budget surplus.

When that happened, in the year 2000 we had a bunch of folks say, when a new President came into office in 2001: Do you know what? We have a budget surplus. We have a bunch of hotshot economists telling us we are going to have budget surpluses as far as the eye can see. We are going to have budget surpluses for the next 10 years.

Then Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said he could not sleep because he was worried we were going to have surpluses too large and we were going to pay down the Federal debt too quickly. That is right. I know it sounds like a joke, but the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board worried we would pay down our debt too quickly.

So the President came to town in 2001 and said: Let's have very big tax cuts, and I and others said: Let's probably not do that because at this point we don't know what is going to happen for 10 years. We had economists who could not remember their telephone number for 3 hours telling us what was going to happen for 10 years.

So they said: We are going to have 10 years of surpluses. Let's have very big tax cuts. So the President constructed very big tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, and here we are. What happened as a result of that? Well, almost immediately we were in a recession in 2001. Then we had a terrorist attack against this country in September of that year. Then we were at war in Afghanistan and at war in Iraq and in a war against terrorists.

So we sent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad, and we rotated them in and out for 8 years and never paid for a penny of it because the President said: We are going to spend emergency funding, which means we do not pay for it; we just put it on the debt. We did that for a decade.

Now, all of a sudden, all the people who voted for the same things--that is, tax cuts for the wealthy and deciding to send soldiers to war without paying for it--now we hear all this bloviation about how the debt is important. Well, yes, it is important. It was important when they voted to cut taxes for the wealthy as well. It was important when we decided to fight two wars and not pay for a penny of it. The fact is, it is unsustainable now, and we have to find ways to fix it.

It is interesting, yesterday, I came to the Senate floor because one of my colleagues came to the floor and said the priority is to eliminate the estate tax. That is the priority. He did not say that. He said ``eliminate the death tax'' because a clever pollster said: If you say ``death tax,'' it invokes a lot of passion. So we are going to eliminate the death tax--not understanding, apparently, or not caring, perhaps, that there is no such thing as a death tax.

When you die, there is no tax on your death. In fact, had I been on the Senate floor when my colleague mentioned that--I know my colleague is married--so I would have asked: God forbid something should happen to you. But if it did, tell me what would happen to your estate because I know the answer.

The answer is, his spouse would inherit the estate, no matter how large, tax free, because we have a 100-percent spousal exemption. So that Senator's death would have, obviously, been nontaxable.

So where is the death tax? We do not have a death tax. We never had a death tax. We have a tax on inherited wealth. That is what we have. So my colleague said, the most important thing at the moment, while we are deep in debt in the country--and with a growing debt and a need to control the debt--the most important thing at the moment is to get rid of the death tax, which means you want to provide tax breaks for billionaires.

I did not vote for the proposal in 2001 that put us on a course of changing our tax system with very large tax cuts for the wealthy and reducing the estate tax obligation so that it came down to having zero estate taxes in 2010 and then spring back to a higher estate tax in 2011. I did not vote for that. I thought it was about half nutty. But it passed. Enough people thought, apparently, it was OK, so they voted for it.

So now, last year, we had an estate tax that had an exemption of $7 million for husband and wife--$3.5 million each--and a 45-percent rate.

This year, the estate tax went to zero; that is, nobody has to pay any estate tax. So we have had four billionaires die this year. The late George Steinbrenner died, the owner of the Yankees. So his estate will not be taxed--well over $1 billion.

I have said, this is the ``throw mama from the train year.'' You know the movie ``Throw Mama from the Train.'' This is the year--if somebody has to go, I guess, especially billionaires, they get to pay no taxes this year. Then the estate tax is supposed to spring back to a $1 million exemption, husband and wife, and a 55-percent rate.

So my colleague and others now say the highest priority for them is to eliminate the death tax. This year, we will have lost about $15 billion in revenue because there is no estate tax. That is just this year. Over 10 years, it is a very substantial amount.

Who is going to benefit if you eliminate the estate tax? Well, if under last year's law you had to have $7 million in total assets to pay an estate tax, how many people would pay it? Very few, less than 1 percent. In fact, I think it is three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people would ever pay an estate tax. Now we are told the highest priority is to eliminate the estate tax, which means that America's billionaires are going to be given a tax break, and those who want to do it say we want to do that because they should not be taxed twice. Well, they are not taxed twice.

That estate, in most cases, has never borne a tax. Most of it is growth appreciation from stocks or bonds or property and has never borne the tax that most people have to pay.

A lot of people get up in the morning and put on their clothes and go to work, and they work at a manufacturing job all day--although there are fewer these days because we are moving those jobs to China--but they get up and go to work and then they come home and they have withholding on their paychecks and it says they paid taxes. They have to pay taxes for kids to go to school and to build roads and to pay for the police and to pay for the Defense Department and so on--the Centers for Disease Control. They have to bear a burden as an American citizen to help pay for the things we have together.

But if we eliminate the estate tax, we say to, for example, Bill Gates--when Bill Gates expires--that $50-some billion or $60-some billion of yours, most of which has never had any kind of a tax burden at all, we believe it ought to be tax free. That is the highest priority?

I used the word ``nutty'' before. Let me state again that is just nutty. What are you thinking?

Here is something I quoted yesterday from Will Rogers. Will Rogers, 80 years ago, had it right, and it certainly applies to some in this Chamber for sure. Will Rogers said:

The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we'll get around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK.

Well--do you know what?--go back about 18 months and just figure out who got fixed up in this country, who got fixed up OK. Do you think the folks at the top of the economic ladder get fixed up? Yes, yes. In fact, the lowest unemployment rate in America is those at the top of the economic ladder.

There is a pretty low unemployment rate actually in the Senate, now that I think of it. We all get up in the morning and put on a white shirt and a suit and a tie, and we all eat three meals a day.

But the people at the bottom of the economic ladder--those 5 million Americans who have lost the manufacturing jobs, the people who are looking for jobs and cannot find them, when we are 20 million jobs short; the people who have been laid off, professional people who, in many cases, were laid off and have been searching for work for 2 years and cannot find it--they are the people who seem somehow forgotten.

So now we have a priority by some in this Chamber of saying we have to get rid of the death tax--a tax that does not exist. In a bill they filed that would only benefit largely billionaires in this country. It is unbelievable. It is just unbelievable.

I do not know, maybe the people who are out of work need to change their names. There are names that signify wealth, at least it sounds like they are from a family that inherited wealth. But it just seems to me to be something that is pretty much in sync with what Will Rogers said a long time ago in terms of what is happening here. The people at the top get fixed up pretty well, and the rest do not matter much. That is a pretty pathetic set of priorities, in my judgement.

TRIBAL LAW AND ORDER ACT

Mr. President, I want to say a word about a piece of legislation the Senate has passed and the House has passed and ought to make all of us feel as if we have done something very admirable and something that is going to save lives. So let me do that in a very positive way.

The Tribal Law and Order Act, which we passed--I passed, along with a lot of help from the Indian Affairs Committee, and the Senate passed--now the House has passed that legislation. That will now be signed by the President into law.

Why is that important? Well, let me give you an example. On the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation--that straddles North Dakota and South Dakota--the rate of violent crime is not double or triple the national rate of violent crime. That would be pretty tough to live in a neighborhood where you have double or triple the national rate of violent crime. It is eight times the rate of violent crime for the rest of the country.

Live in that circumstance. Be a young child going to school or be an elder trying to get along and live in a neighborhood, live on a reservation, live in a circumstance where the rate of violent crime is eight times the national average. The stories we have heard at the hearings we have held are unbelievable.

On the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation--it is almost the size of the State of Connecticut--they had nine full-time police officers to patrol over two million acres of land. It is not possible to do a good job with so few officers. In one area of that reservation, a violent sexual rape, a crime in progress, a robbery, and a call to the police might get someone there later that day, or it might be the next morning, or days later--nine police officers to patrol that land 24/7. That does not work.

We have passed a piece of legislation that I think is very good, the tribal law and order bill. It is bipartisan. I am proud of that. Senators Jon Kyl and John Barrasso worked with me to get this legislation through the Senate. Let me mention cosponsors Jon Tester, Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Michael Bennet, Jeff Bingaman, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell, Mike Crapo, Al Franken, Tim Johnson, Joe Lieberman, Jeff Merkley, Lisa Murkowski, Patty Murray, Debbie Stabenow, John Thune, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, Ron Wyden--so many. But there are so many who worked so long to try to respond to these problems.

The legislation deals with cross-deputization of law enforcement officers on Indian reservations and those off the reservation. We deal with the tribal court system and a wide range of provisions that we put in this legislation that are going to make a very big difference.

I have said on the floor previously that violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women has reached epidemic levels. We have heard it in the hearings and the testimony. One in three American Indian and Alaska Native women will be the victim of rape during her lifetime--one in three. That is an epidemic of violence.

We held 14 hearings in the Committee on Indian Affairs, which I chair, relating to public safety on Indian lands over the past 3 years. I had staff go across the Nation consulting with tribal governments and local law enforcement. Based on those consultations, we put together a piece of legislation that I think will make a very big difference. It strengthens the tribal justice system. It provides tools to law enforcement officers on the Indian reservations.

It will require the U.S. Attorney's Office to do its job. Violent crimes on Indian reservations are to be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Offices, and in most cases those offices are many, many miles away from a reservation. Crime on Indian reservations becomes just a part of the backwater of work in those offices. We have information that 50 percent of murder cases on Indian reservations are declined for prosecution. They call them declinations. Think of that. In 50 percent of the cases, there is a declination of prosecution for the charge of murder. Nearly three-fourths of the cases for sexual assault are declined to be prosecuted. That is not fair, it is not tolerable, and we shouldn't stand for it.

We had a hearing with Chairman Herman Dillon of the Puyallup Tribe in Washington, who testified about the gang activity crisis on their reservation. There are 28 active gangs on that reservation, with members as young as 8 years old. The gangs are involved in drug trafficking, weapons sales, and turf wars where innocent bystanders are injured. This piece of legislation is going to increase the number of law enforcement personnel on reservations and provide better law enforcement training for those personnel.

I won't go through the stories we have heard, but they are unbelievable. There are a whole lot of victims out there living in Third World conditions on Indian reservations where they have inadequate health care, housing, and education. We have worked on all of those issues.

I am proud to say we passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act earlier this year. It is now signed into law. We did that this year. It is the first time in 17 years that the Congress has dealt with those issues.

Now we have passed the Tribal Law and Order Act. This is the most significant of policy changes and legislation affecting the first Americans that has been passed in decades. I want to say to my Republican and Democratic colleagues who worked with me to accomplish this that I believe lives will be saved because of this legislation. I believe this will make a profound difference across this country in addressing these critical issues.

We have had hearings about Mexican drug cartels now running drugs through Indian reservations. I just described the circumstances of gangs.

There is so much that needs to be done. Finally, at last--at long, long last--we start down the road of improvement by having passed this legislation. I talked to President Obama yesterday and mentioned the passage by the U.S. House of our bill. He campaigned on this issue. It was very strongly supported legislation, and I know he will take great pride in signing it.

Finally, with all of the competition and tension, sometimes, between the House and the Senate, let me say how much I appreciate the work the House of Representatives did on this legislation.

Let me make one final point about Indian policy as I complete my statement. There is one other issue that is out there that I think desperately needs to be resolved, and that is something called the Cobell lawsuit. It has been languishing for 15 years. Last December, there was an agreement reached between the U.S. Government and the Indians in the Cobell case. We were given 30 days in the Congress to approve the settlement, and it has not happened. We must, must, must find a way to make that happen soon.

I showed a picture of a woman living on an Indian reservation with oil wells that were hers that she could see from her house, and she lived in a very small house. Why is that the case? Because she didn't get the money from the oil wells she owned. The U.S. Government created trust accounts for Indians, and manipulated those trusts, stole from those trusts, lost the records from those trusts over 150 years, and that is what resulted in this lawsuit called the Cobell lawsuit. It has gone on for 15 years, and a good many Indians have died while that lawsuit has gone on who should have benefitted from that lawsuit.

There was a settlement agreement reached last December between the parties. We were given 30 days by the Federal court to approve the agreement, and now it is 6 months later and nothing has happened. The first Americans don't deserve this treatment. I hope very soon that the Cobell settlement will be a part of a piece of legislation that is passed by the Senate.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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