Veterans Jobs Corps Act of 2012--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARPER. The message the Senator is conveying today is so important. I hope folks who are unsure about supporting our legislation are listening.

I was briefed earlier today by a large multinational company. One of its divisions is manufacturing, among other things, helicopters. Apparently, within the last 12 months, maybe even 6 months, the plans for developing and manufacturing one such helicopter were hacked and obtained by another nation--presumably the Chinese. So they will develop and will build their version of our helicopters. They won't be built by Americans. They will not provide American jobs. It will not provide revenues to that company or tax revenues to our Treasury; they will really be apprehended, if you will, by another nation. That is the reality of this theft.

So I was reminded just this morning of what the Senator is talking about, what General Alexander says is the largest economic threat in the history of our country, and it is taking place. I was reminded of that this morning, and I just wanted to share that with the Senator.

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Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I am joined on the floor by Senator Whitehouse, so we might take a moment here with the chairman to have a little bit of a colloquy and then head off to another hearing.

While he is here, I wanted to say a special thank-you to Senator Whitehouse for the work he and Jon Kyl, our colleague from Arizona, and Chris Coons, our colleague from Delaware, and others have done in really helping to put the meat on the bones, if you will, of our original legislation. And they have done great work. I really admire them, and I thank all of them.

Over at the other end of the Capital, they have spent a whole lot of time in recent weeks and months on the issue of Fast and Furious, and I wanted to mention that one of the reasons I think the American people are furious with us is we are not moving fast enough to deal with the economy and to create jobs. Yet government doesn't create jobs. Presidents don't create jobs. Governors don't create jobs. As a former Governor, I know this. Members of the Senate don't create jobs. We help create a nurturing environment for jobs and job creation. That includes a lot of things, such as a world-class workforce, access to capital, infrastructure, access to reasonably priced energy and reasonably priced health care. But it also includes, as we go forward in time, the assurance that if a company spends a lot of money--a lot of R&D and investments--and it comes up with a really good idea that has commercial application, that before it can even build that idea, create that idea, or sell that idea in this country and manufacture and sell it around the world, the idea is not going to be stolen--stolen--by someone from another country who will use that idea to make money on their own.

That introduces an uncertainty in this country we have never had to worry about before. We just have not had to worry about that before. But, as General Alexander has said and has been quoted here already today, the greatest economic thievery in our history is underway right now through cyber security. This is as much a jobs issue as it is a security issue. It is an economic security issue, and we have to be mindful of that.

I have spoken to some of our friends over at the chamber of commerce with whom we work on a variety of issues and said to them that we need their involvement and support. We need them to help us get through this. If they have good ideas, if they have read the legislation as it is redrawn and want to share those ideas with us today, Democrats and Republicans, that would be a huge help.

I hope everybody over at the chamber is watching today, and I hope they hear this request for them to be more involved in a constructive way. It is not so much that we need them in the Senate, we need them as a country, and the folks who are their members across the country need them to be involved as well.

This legislation started out as more of a command-and-control deal where our Department of Homeland Security was going to say: These are our standards, and we expect companies and industries in critical areas to comply with these, and that is it.

That is an oversimplification of the original legislation, but we have moved so far away from that, it is amazing. We have moved from a command-and-control system to one where we say to critical industries, sensitive industries: Listen, you figure out amongst yourselves what the best practices and standards ought to be for protecting you and your businesses and your ideas. You figure it out, you share those ideas, develop those ideas, really, in a collaborative way with a council that includes the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security. And then, in an interim process, we refine those ideas, refine those best practices, and refine those standards, which would then be implemented. If companies don't want to comply with them, they do not have to. It is on a voluntary basis. If they do, there are rewards. If they do not, they do not participate in those rewards, including protection from liability.

Sometimes we get stuck on legislation, and we just say: This is it, and we are not going to change it. This is it, and we are not going to let you do that. But here we have changed this legislation dramatically and I think for the better. Some people say we changed it too much in order to get to ``yes.''

The last thing I would say before I yield to Senator Whitehouse is that the legislation before us is not a Democratic idea, nor is it a Republican idea. This is not a conservative idea. This is not a liberal idea. This is a good idea, and this is an idea that has gotten better over time. This is an idea whose time has come. And we need to be mindful of the fury across our country. We need to move faster to take good ideas like this and make them better and to implement them.

With that, I yield to Senator Whitehouse, and again a big thank-you for the great work he and Senators Coons and Kyl have done, as usual.

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