Space Launch Liability Indemnification Extension Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, 4 1/2 years ago the United States went through a terrible recession, what we now know as the great recession. But since that time we have had the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, and our labor force participation rate, which is a fancy way of saying the number of people, the percentage of people who are actually in the workforce looking for work, is much lower than it was at the height of the recession. So even though the unemployment rate is coming down little by little, the main reason that is true is because people, many people, are simply giving up looking for work. Last month alone 345,000 people dropped out of the workforce. Even when we look exclusively at workers between the age of 25 and 54, their participation rate is significantly lower than it was when President Obama took office.

Meanwhile, 4 million people who are still in the workforce have now been jobless for more than 6 months. As I mentioned, if the Obama economic recovery had been as strong as the Reagan recovery in the 1980s, we would currently have millions more private sector jobs. So what is the President's big idea for helping the economy getting back on track? Last night, according to published news reports, he was drinking martinis and plotting his 2014 political strategy with his fellow Democratic Party members.

He apparently told the Democrats present--at least reportedly--that he would continue to go it alone if he could not get bipartisan support for his agenda by issuing more Executive orders. He would do that if Republicans did not cave in and give him every single thing he wants on every issue.

So rather than talking to Republicans in bipartisan discussions about how we can come together on real solutions to the problems that face our economy and people being out of work, the President instead has defaulted in favor of poll-tested ideas and political gimmicks leading into the runup to the 2014 election.

Sipping martinis and plotting politics while millions of Americans are out of work shows how out of touch the President has become, and unfortunately so many of the folks who vote with him on each and every issue that comes before the Senate. But putting last night's party aside for a moment, I would ask my friends across the aisle a few questions about the recent Senate debate about unemployment insurance.

The first question: If extending unemployment insurance benefits for the long-term unemployed is so important, why did the majority leader not schedule a vote last month before those benefits expired on December 28? That is the first question.

Second question: Why would you want to add $6.4 billion to the national debt, when the national debt is already $17.3 trillion? Why would you want to do that if you knew the bill had no chance of passing, because Republicans were not going to agree to a bill that adds to the national debt?

You might ask whether it is hard to find $6.4 billion in an annual spending budget of $3.8 trillion. I will do the math for you. The $6.4 billion is roughly .0017 percent of what the Federal Government spends in a given year. It seems to me that would be relatively easy to do.

In fact, Republicans had amendments that would pay for the 3-month extension as well as restore the pension benefits for the military that were cut in the earlier budget deal. But the majority leader refused to allow an open amendment process that would have allowed a vote on either one of those. I would ask the majority leader, rhetorically--he is not here in the Chamber, but I am sure he has people listening--why is it the majority leader refused to allow any progrowth measures to the final bill? Republicans had a number of amendments that would have improved the education and training component of our unemployment compensation system.

If you look at the three major causes of long-term unemployment, one is education. We need to deal with that. The other is family choices, harder for government to have an influence on. But the third is jobs and the job environment.

But the majority leader blocked every single opportunity to address either education reforms or job training or to deal with progrowth measures which have actually created more jobs so fewer people would have to be on unemployment and more people would be able to find work, as I know they would prefer to do.

So if the majority leader and our Democratic friends who joined in blocking every Republican idea to either pay for it or to help improve job training or to improve the private sector's ability to create jobs and allow people to go to work, I would like to hear the answer to those.

There is a much better way to fuel job creation, reduce unemployment, and promote upward mobility that does not involve playing politics while millions of Americans are looking for work. For starters, let's pick some of the low-hanging fruit. I bet the Presiding Officer, based on some of the remarks I have seen attributed to her, would agree with this one: The Canadian Government has spent years urging President Obama to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would create thousands of well-paying jobs, middle-class jobs right here in the United States. This administration, this President, actually promised Republicans in a meeting he had with them last year that he would make a decision by the end of last year, 2013. We are still waiting for his decision. All we hear is the sound of crickets when it comes to the Keystone XL Pipeline. But this President and this White House, this administration, could effectively create those jobs with the stroke of a pen approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. It does not get much easier than that.

Indeed, even the President's own former National Security Advisor has said publicly he thinks the President ought to do this, because this is not just an economic issue, this is not just a jobs issue. Every barrel of oil we transport on the Keystone XL Pipeline from a friendly country such as Canada means less oil we have to import from volatile regions of the planet such as the Middle East.

But beyond the pipeline issue, which is the lowest of the low-hanging fruit in terms of creating jobs and getting the economy moving again, the Obama administration should generally stop hindering our domestic energy production. We have had a renaissance in energy in America thanks to innovation in the private sector, primarily the now some six-decades-old practice of fracking, which has gotten a bad rap in some corners, but also horizontal drilling, pioneered by none other than George Mitchell of Texas who recently passed on.

This combination of fracking and horizontal drilling has led to a proliferation of domestic energy supply, natural gas and oil right here at home. Again, every barrel, every MCF of gas we produce here domestically means less energy we have to import from abroad.

We all know that nationwide the oil and gas industry represents a rare bright spot in the U.S. economy. According to one study, by 2035, unconventional oil and gas resources alone will be supporting 3.5 million jobs and contributing $475 billion to our economy. Why would not the President and our Democratic friends embrace something like that, that would create so many jobs right here in the United States, instead of playing political games and plotting out the next election?

Yet on top of that, to make matters worse, the administration is proposing a proliferation of new regulations on fracking that occurs on Federal lands. I think my friends who perhaps are not familiar with this process should listen. Fracking has been going on for at least 60 years in Texas under the regulatory authority of the Texas Railroad Commission and local jurisdictions. But if you drill a well and you put the casing in and you cement it properly, there is absolutely zero threat to groundwater or drinking water, because the target of the fracking is deep below the surface. So by using good drilling practices and cementing of the casing, there is virtually zero threat to drinking water and the concerns that many people have expressed but which are not grounded in experience.

Think of it this way: If the Federal Government has made such a hash out of health care after ObamaCare by taking over one-sixth of the economy and our national health care, what I worry about is what they would do if the Federal Government decides to take over regulation of fracking. Because it has been handled appropriately at the State and local level. I am afraid they will make a hash out of that as well.

In addition to the other regulations I am concerned about, the administration has announced new regulations that would impose massive additional costs and deliver very little in the way of economic or environmental gains. More regulations are never a good idea if they put an additional burden on business and produce no tangible benefit to the environment. But they are especially harmful at a time when our economic recovery is so anemic and our economic recovery remains so fragile. We simply need to stop placing additional burden by additional regulations on the vital sectors of our economy that we need in order to grow and prosper and create new jobs, especially when there is no demonstrable environmental benefit.

For that matter, let's eliminate all new regulations that do not pass a simple cost-benefit analysis. One new study shows that the Obama administration has imposed more than $112 billion worth of net regulatory costs on the U.S. economy and added an equivalent of 158 million hours of additional paperwork on American businesses.

My colleagues Senator Portman and Senator Roberts have each sponsored new legislation that would introduce safeguards against unnecessary job-killing regulations. This brings me to ObamaCare. One of the things that organized labor, which was one of the biggest supporters of ObamaCare, has now come back to the White House and complained about is the fact of the incentives for employers to take what was full-time work, a40-hour workweek and make it part-time work.

Indeed, that is because the President's health care law defines full-time employment as a 30-hour workweek, so people even working part time have to be provided full benefits that those on full-time work ordinarily would qualify for.

But as a result, as many of these labor leaders told the President a few short months ago, many Americans have had their full-time jobs reduced from full time to part time. This trend will only get worse as the administration decides to enforce the employer mandates.

If the majority leader would allow, we have two bills on our side of the aisle that would address that. Senator Collins of Maine and Senator Scott of South Carolina have proposed defining full-time employment as a 40-hour workweek that would provide some benefit and some relief to people who have seen their hours cut.

One more example of low-hanging fruit: Republicans and Democrats both agree that education is a critical need to allowing for upward mobility.

With that in mind, we should be doing everything possible to support successful education reform initiatives across the country. Yet the Obama administration has done frequently the opposite. Witness what has happened in Louisiana where the administration is trying to derail Louisiana's school voucher program where parents get to choose where the money goes, not the government.

This is all very easy. Some things would be harder, such as major tax reform, although I would point out that until recently Members of both parties agreed that the goal of tax reform would be to lower marginal rates as we eliminate a lot of the tax expenditures or deductions or subsidies or the like.

We want to adopt those kinds of progrowth tax reforms, but we are never going to make any real progress as long as our friends across the aisle insist on using this to raise more money for the Federal Government to spend and not reduce marginal rates--in other words, to basically undermine the benefit of progrowth tax reform only in order to get an additional $1 trillion or $2 trillion to spend.

The stalemate on tax reform reflects a broader problem in Washington. Despite the long-term unemployment crisis and despite the massive drop of people in the workforce and actually looking for work, the President has still failed to put forth any serious job creation agenda. Sure, he wants the government to take more of your hard-earned tax dollars and spend them, because he thinks the government can do a better job than you can spending your own money, but it hasn't worked. Jobs and the economy remain Americans' top concerns. Yet, unfortunately, the President is already now in full reelection mode, recognizing that in his second term his ability to get things done is going to be highly dependent on the midterm elections in November 2014. Hence, rather than working with Republicans to try to address these problems, there are team meetings at the White House sipping martinis and planning strategy for November 2014.

Americans deserve better. They deserve a comprehensive job creation agenda that includes serious tax reform, serious regulatory reform, and serious health care reform, an agenda that makes it easier for business to hire workers and easier for families to pursue the American dream. We have done our best to propose such an agenda but, unfortunately, we are still waiting for the majority leader and the President to take us up on that offer.

I yield the floor.

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