FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Thank you. Mr. President, recently we have had the opportunity to consider several bills in the Senate to help ease the burdens for our middle-class families and small business owners that they are facing in this recession.

In late June, we brought a bill to the floor that would provide key targeted tax breaks, including a sales tax deductibility for families in my home State, as well as tax breaks to end our dependence on foreign oil.

In July, we introduced a Wall Street reform bill that included the strongest protections for consumers ever enacted and a guarantee that taxpayers would never be on the hook for bailing out Wall Street again.

A few short weeks ago, we worked to extend unemployment benefits to help stimulate economic growth and those who are in desperate need.

Last week, we introduced a bill that would have provided a new small business lending fund to help the backbone of our economy, our small businesses, grow and hire.

It would have jump-started community bank lending and small businesses, while saving taxpayers $1 billion.

All those bills had broad across-the-board support. In fact, outside the Senate, they had a lot of support. The conservative-leaning National Federation of Independent Business voiced their support for the small business lending funds.

Hometown community bankers in my State stood to support Wall Street reform. Economists of all political stripes got behind the long-proven benefits of extending unemployment, and so many others around the country found common cause with the benefits of those critical bills.

These bills would help create jobs, put money back in the pockets of taxpayers and small business owners and ease the difficult choices struggling Americans face every day.

But at every turn in the Senate, we have been opposed by those on the other side of the aisle who seem to have long ago made their own choice about anything and everything that comes to the floor. It was a choice that favored politics over people, Wall Street over Main Street, and the status quo over the struggles our families are facing.

It was a choice to say no, no matter what, no matter when, no matter who was hurt.

I go home to Washington State every weekend and I talk to the people I represent. I try to explain what we are working on.

To be honest, it is hard to understand why, when big banks and Wall Street were on the brink of failure and threatening to blow up our entire economy, Republicans immediately came together to help us step back from the brink then. But now that Wall Street is fine and regular families and communities are struggling, those same Republicans are nowhere to be found. I don't have an answer for our families. Quite honestly, I don't understand it myself.

Today, as we prepare for a final week of votes before we go home to face our constituents, those on the other side of the aisle have one last opportunity to show this is not just a political calculation and that we in this Senate can put people first.

The amendment I have offered, and which we will soon vote on, saves jobs and makes sure our kids are not paying the price for this recession.

It avoids painful cuts to critical services. And, very importantly, it is fully paid for. For every dollar this amendment invests in saving teacher jobs, reducing class sizes, and avoiding cuts to State programs, we have found targeted spending cuts.

This amendment includes help for our States in every corner of this country and will help make sure that our most precious resource--our education system--is protected.

Every day brings more reports about the continuing wave of layoffs affecting our school districts across the country. According to recent estimates, over 130,000 teacher jobs will be lost this fall alone. In my home State, there are nearly 3,000 at risk. That means 3,000 teachers in Washington State who are right now in limbo, who are spending this summer not knowing if they are going to be able to return to a classroom or face a pink slip in the fall.

We have to remember that every time we lose a teacher, it is not only the teacher and economy that suffers, it is the kids in every one of our States.

I received a letter recently from a special education teacher named Connie Compton in Kent, WA, who told the story of recently having to say goodbye to a young, talented, energetic music teacher because of budget cutbacks. She told me how this was just one of six teachers in her school alone who have had to be let go.

In her letter she talked about how it is the kids who only get one shot at a music class or an afterschool program or arts or sports or even subjects such as social studies or history who lose out.

She also talked about whether it is through larger class sizes they are seeing, scaled down services, fewer subjects being offered, or even shortened school weeks in some of our communities, too often it is our most vulnerable who are paying the price for this recession.

My amendment is a fiscally responsible way to make sure our States' schoolchildren and the hard-working teachers who get up every day to improve their lives are not the victims of struggling State budgets.

My amendment provides $10 billion to school districts throughout the country to save the over 130,000 teacher jobs that are at risk, and it does so without adding to the deficit, and with a prohibition on the use of this funding for general expenses.

It is a very targeted and responsible way to help make sure that as our kids head back to school, our teachers are not entering the ranks of the unemployed. It is also a way to make sure we are not paying a lot more in the long run for adults who have been failed by school systems with too few teachers and too many cuts to services.

It is August. Our kids are about to go back to school. We cannot afford for them to go back to huge class sizes where they cannot learn, with fewer subjects being taught, and we certainly cannot afford to wait to address this very immediate problem.

Another immediate problem facing States such as mine is the huge State budget hole left by Federal Medicaid payments promised to States but never delivered. Without this critical Federal funding, these States are now faced with the difficult decision of whether they slash thousands of jobs, raise people's taxes, or stall economic recovery.

The amendment we are about to vote on includes a fully offset $16.1 billion investment to help our States avoid job losses and cuts to Medicaid and tax increases. In my own State, it will help avoid a costly emergency session of our State legislature or across-the-board cuts to jobs and State services and health care for so many who have lost it when they lost their jobs. In fact, according to the Community Health Care Network in my State, without this extension, health care services for tens of thousands of people in my State will be under threat.

Failure to adopt this amendment could also mean layoffs to corrections officers, health care workers, cuts to end-of-life care for low-income people, cuts to State-supported financial aid programs that will deny up to 5,800 full-time students in my State alone an opportunity to go to college and universities next year. It will increase the risk of a double-dip recession and result in reduced consumer spending at a time we can least afford it.

Ultimately, failure to adopt this amendment will lead to more spending, not less, because of an increased demand for unemployment benefits and subsidized health care and food stamps.

The bottom line is that without this amendment, much of the progress States have been making to get back on the right economic track will be endangered. This is no time to risk our recovery by playing politics with help for our hard-working families.

This amendment that we will vote on shortly is the last best chance for teachers and the economic stability of so many of our States. Over the last several weeks, we have tried to work with the other side on every concern they have brought to the table, on every bill we have brought to the floor. We have compromised and we compromised again and then again. Today's amendment is another compromise. It may not include all we would have wanted on this side to save jobs and services in States across our country, but it does include enough to avoid jeopardizing our recovery. We have done all that we can.

Ultimately, this is about where our priorities lie. Are our priorities with hard-working families who every day have to grapple with tough choices about how to afford the things they need? Are they with our home States that are faced with laying off workers or raising taxes? Are they with our teachers who have been left with no choice but to find a new job without this help? Are priorities based on political choices--choices guided by polling or party doctrine, choices made long ago to say no, no matter what?

This amendment, which is critically important, is focused on what we can still do for our constituents and our States, not what we cannot or will not. It is about solving the big problems that are still threatening our recovery. And it is about showing the American people that when commonsense legislation does come before us, we can make commonsense choices.

I urge all of our colleagues to put our families, to put our communities, and our States above partisan politics and work with us to adopt this critical amendment.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we have several Senators coming to the floor, if the Senator from New Hampshire wishes to continue speaking at this time.

Mr. President, I will make a few comments then. We do have several Senators on their way at this time.

I listened with interest to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle come to oppose the amendment that is being offered, and it is surprising to me because, as everyone knows, we are in a very tough economic recovery right now. All of our States, all of our communities, all of our families are struggling to get back on their feet. We have been working for some time now to help get our economy back on track.

As I outlined earlier, we have come forward to the Senate floor a number of times with small business bills and other bills to try to move the economy forward, and we have been blocked every time.

On this amendment, where we have been trying to make sure that 130,000 teachers are not lost--and it is not about the teachers unions; it is about kids in the classroom. This is about the future of the United States of America. Are we going to punish these students and give them less of an education because of the economic time they happen to be in in the first grade or the fifth grade or the eighth grade? That doesn't make sense to me as a mom or as a former teacher or as a Senator. This is about making sure our kids are not hurt in this tough economic recession. It is at a time when the States are struggling with their budgets, and it is at a time when we have told them we are trying to help them fill the gap, a gap they have in Medicaid spending.

We went to our colleagues. They blocked the bills when we brought them because they said they were too big. We made them smaller. They said they were not paid for. We went back and worked hard and brought pay-fors now. Yet with all of this compromise, our Republican colleagues have come to the floor today to say that now they have a new idea why they are opposing it--that we have not allowed States to have flexibility within their funding.

I remind all of us that Medicaid funding for a lengthy amount of time has had strings attached. I would suggest to all of our colleagues that if we just had open-ended funding out to our States, we would not be hearing: Oh, you are sending money to States with strings attached; we would be hearing the opposite: Oh, you are sending our States money without any strings attached.

So I say enough is enough with the politics. Enough is enough with finding excuses. This is about people in our States who are struggling today to get back on their feet. This is a basic measure that we can pass, fully paid for, at a time when our States--not just our States but our children, our families, and our communities need it the most.

I urge our colleagues to work with us, to do what a legislative body does. When you compromise and you compromise and you compromise and you have reached an agreement that makes a difference for people, let's move it forward and start to help our families get back on their feet. That is what this amendment is about, and I hope we get to the 60 votes and then can move, before we all go home for an August recess, to make sure people are breathing a little bit easier--the kids who are going to go off to school and the parents who are worried they are not getting the right kind of education; in our States, the many communities of people who are worried, who are in poverty, who are going to lose their health care; state employees who work in our jails or provide very important functions for our States that we count on. They are invisible. We don't see them all the time. But they make sure our lives are safe, that we can go to work and be cared for. That is what this amendment provides our States with the ability to do.

We all want our economy back on track. We all wish we were not here having to do this. But we are naive if we think our States are at a point where this Federal Government, our United States, can start ignoring them. That is what this amendment is about, and I urge our colleagues to vote yes.

I see my colleague from New York has arrived, and I yield him the remainder of the time.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New York is recognized.

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