Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last night during the President's State of the Union speech, I felt as though I was watching another rerun of one of my favorite movies, ``Groundhog Day'' with Bill Murray. Of course, we all remember that movie. Bill Murray, the principal character, relives exactly the same 24 hours over and over and over again.

Of course, that is what the President's State of the Union reminded me of, because what we heard is a replay of a lot of the ideas we have heard in previous State of the Union speeches. But, unfortunately, the President's speech and his claims in many respects did not reflect reality for most people.

It is apparent the President has not changed in this respect. He still thinks slow economic growth and high unemployment, that the answer to that is more government spending and more government control over the economy. I would say in the debates we have had in this Chamber and elsewhere and that Americans have had throughout the course of our history since our country's founding about the size and the role of the Federal Government, usually we end up debating philosophy, ideology, and theory.

But the last 5 years have given us the proof we need that big government does not work; not to deny that people do not have the best of intentions, but we know promise after promise has been made, whether it is for the trillion-dollar stimulus--what it would do to unemployment. The President later said, in a moment of candor: Well, I guess shovel ready was not all that shovel ready. Nancy Pelosi talked about timely, targeted, and temporary stimulus. Again, this was borrowed money. This is money we did not have which was added to our debt, which simply did not work. Then of course there is the example of ObamaCare. But let's just review. For the last 5 years, the President pushed through this trillion-dollar stimulus, a $1.8 trillion dollar health care law, a $1.7 trillion increase in new taxes, and about one-half trillion dollars in new regulations.

That is what happens, for example, when I go home to Texas. My community bankers and credit unions say: We have hired new people, but the people we have hired are the ones to fill out the paperwork that is required by the new regulations that are the result of Dodd-Frank.

This is another example of where Wall Street perhaps was the target but Main Street was the collateral damage. So all these new regulations have a cost to them because businesses, if they are going to be in business, are going to have to hire people to comply with those regulations, but that doesn't help grow the economy. That doesn't help make us more productive, and it doesn't put as many people back to work as we would hope would be going back to work in productive jobs.

Let us consider some of the results of some of these items: the stimulus, the health care bill, the new regulations, and new taxes.

Between 2009 and 2013, we have seen median household income fall by more than $2,500, so that is $2,500 less than an average family has to spend on everything from their food to their heating or air-conditioning bill--$2,500 less.

Then we know that the labor participation rate--that is a fancy name for the percentage of people actually in the workforce--has fallen to a three-decade low. It has fallen by 3 percentage points since 2009, meaning that many fewer people are actually in the workforce looking for work. If they were still in the workforce looking for work, the employment rate would actually be much higher, but they aren't counted once they drop out of the workforce. Then we know that long-term unemployment has increased dramatically as a total share of unemployment.

Of course, all of this happened after the recession was over. The technical definition of a recession, I believe, is two consecutive terms of negative economic growth. But amazingly a poll conducted only last week reflected that 74 percent of the respondents thought we were still in a recession. Whether it is a technical recession, people still feel as if we are in one. That is a remarkable number, an unfortunate but yet scathing indictment of the President's economic policies which have not delivered what he had hoped and had promised to deliver.

What is the big idea that the President has to solve this problem or to address these concerns of average hard-working American families? The big idea is let's raise the minimum wage. Superficially, I admit raising the minimum wage has some appeal, but the fact is, when employers have to pay more for their workers, overall that is less money to hire new people. One study estimated that raising the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour--that is less than the $10.10 the President has proposed--would destroy no fewer than 468,000 jobs. Think about it. There is some money with which to hire people, but rather than hire more people, the government sets the wages, meaning they can't hire these other people. That is how it has an either/or effect in terms of jobs. One study calculated that raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour could potentially destroy as many as 2.3 million jobs.

The President chose to ignore this reality last night in his speech. He was eloquent, as always, and gives a great speech. But he said once again--or reiterated once again--if he can't get what he wants from Congress, he is prepared to go it alone.

Last night he said he was going to issue an executive order giving a 40-percent pay raise to Federal contractors, even though the White House cannot tell us how many workers would actually be affected because they don't know.

But who will end up paying more? The Federal Government.

We are talking about raising spending by the Federal Government by 40 percent for these Federal contractors. Somebody has to pay that money, so it is either going to be the taxpayers or it is going to be added to our deficits and debt.

I don't want to be a wet blanket, so let me end on a more positive note, something we could actually do together that would actually make a difference on those long-term unemployed, on people stuck in jobs that are dead end or which they are frustrated with because they are not able to earn the income they want for their family and to live their dream.

One of the debates we should have had earlier but for the majority leader denying us an opportunity to offer any amendments, debate, and vote on the unemployment insurance extension--but I believe we will see that again--is how could we help people learn the skills they need to qualify for the good, high-paying jobs that exist. But there is not enough trained workforce with the skills they need in order to pay for those good, high-paying jobs.

We know there are a lot of workforce training initiatives. Our friend and colleague from Oklahoma tells us there are some 40 different worker training programs, and he has proposed they ought to be consolidated and perhaps streamlined so more of that money could be focused on giving people the education and the tools they need in order to qualify for these good jobs.

I saw a glimpse of what could happen, and thankfully is happening back in Houston, TX, at San Jacinto College, where I had the opportunity to meet some of these inspiring Texans, people who are pursuing their dream.

I met an Iraq war veteran named Jordan Chauvette, who went back to school with the help of the Hazlewood Act. The Hazlewood Act is a State law that provides tuition benefits to veterans and their families. His goal was to learn the skills he would need in order to live a better life and earn a better income for his wife and family.

He recently graduated from San Jacinto College and now is working at an engineering and construction company based in the city of La Porte. If I might interject, one of the reasons there is so much construction, manufacturing--an economic boom taking place in this part of our State--is because of the shale gas revolution. This is one of the brightest spots in our economy, our energy sector, domestic production producing cleaner natural gas. The President talked about that a little bit last night. It is creating these manufacturing jobs because natural gas happens to be feedstock necessary for the petrochemical industry.

Many of the jobs that exist that need these technical skills are the sorts of jobs these young men and women are training for at San Jacinto College. Everything is connected to everything else, but this is how domestic energy production--some of which the President talked about last night--is so important in terms of bringing that manufacturing back on shore. Then we need to have the job training in order to teach people the skills they need in order to qualify for these good, high-paying jobs.

Let's look at the case of Deanna Harper, who received a cosmetology degree from San Jacinto and then went back to

school and earned a degree in something called process technology. I don't pretend to understand everything that process technology involves, but all I know is she is a wife, a mother, and she is earning a six-figure salary working in the energy industry. It is a terrific story.

I remember a few years ago in Amarillo, TX, meeting a young Hispanic woman, a single mother, who had been working as a prison guard--a dangerous, tough job. But thanks to the degree she received from Amarillo College, she was able to go to work on the B-22 Osprey assembly line making in excess of, I believe, $25 an hour and with a great career ahead of her.

What it took was the opportunity for her to go back to school, learn those skills, match those skills with the job, and lift herself up by her own bootstraps.

So many other Texans--Jordan, Deanna, and this young woman I mentioned from Amarillo--have benefited from the recent surge of private investment into petrochemicals and manufacturing, which I mentioned a moment ago. The skills they acquired and the job training they had at San Jacinto prepared them not only for a good job but for an upwardly mobile career in a fast-growing industry.

At a time of stubbornly high national unemployment and people giving up and dropping out of the workforce, we should be doing everything we possibly can to ensure that such jobs and careers are available to all Americans who want them. In that sense we should be doing everything possible to bring this sort of example to Washington, DC, and to spread it nationally.

The truth is there are stories such as this occurring everywhere, but there is more we could do. Certainly, one is take up one of the suggestions of our friend from Oklahoma when he talks about the duplication, the waste, the inefficiency built into our job-training programs--to make them more efficient, to deliver it more streamlined, and to deliver better value to the people who need that training so they can qualify for these kinds of good, high-paying jobs.

That is a much better idea than the Federal Government trying to make a political fix by fixing wages between an employer and a worker that artificially elevates those wages beyond what the market will bear and, in the process, limit the number of new people whom that employer can hire.

These are only some of the ideas I think any reasonable person would say are not completely over the top, are not a crazy ideas, that kind of make sense. But that is exactly the sort of debate we are not having as a result of the restrictive way under which the majority leader is letting us take up consideration of some of this legislation such as the unemployment insurance bill.

Soon, I predict, he will bring a minimum-wage increase bill to the floor. The question is, Is he going to allow amendments from this side of the aisle and the Democratic side of the aisle too? When he cuts off amendments from the floor of the Senate, it doesn't only hurt the minority. We don't like it, but it doesn't only hurt us. It hurts our friends on the other side of the aisle because they are not allowed to offer their constructive suggestions for what could improve the legislation. I thought that is why we are in the Senate, to try to produce the best product we can for the American people.

We don't do it by writing bills in the majority leader's conference room, bringing them out here, and then trying to shove them on through. That is why we have the debate, the checks, the balances, and the deliberative process we have in the Senate. That is what we have not been having.

I wished to raise a few examples of what we could be doing that would be enormously constructive and would help a lot of these struggling workers during a time of high unemployment and low labor participation to help them get back on track.

I came away from that experience at San Jacinto College rejuvenated and encouraged that there is a lot we can do. We do know that people don't want to collect unemployment--maybe some do, but most people, the vast majority of people, want a job.

Again, to repeat what the President talked about last night, he talked about the dignity of work. That is what the vast majority of people want; they want a good job. If we give them the opportunity to learn the skills and we give them a growing economy that is creating jobs, not fewer jobs, then they will be able to find that. I came away even more committed to adopting progrowth economic policies that will make it easier for all Americans to find work when they finish school.

I close on this note. The press leading into the President's speech last night sounded as if it was going to be a whole lot more like he was going to go it alone. But he did at least offer an olive branch of trying to do things more constructively in the legislative branch, recognizing that our Constitution doesn't authorize the executive to do this all by himself. That is what checks and balances are all about, and that is what doesn't happen when he tries to ``go it alone.'' There is danger in trying to go it alone when things are poorly thought out and rammed through without adequate legislation.

But there is one area where that President can use that phone and pen he talked about. He could use that pen to sign the authorization for the Keystone XL Pipeline and connect the pipeline to Canadian oil reserves that would extend from Canada all the way through the United States down to Port Arthur, TX, into what we call the Golden Triangle, where we have a lot of refineries that would turn that crude oil into jet fuel and gasoline.

In the process a lot of jobs would be created.

For those of my friends who say: Oh my gosh, we can't build another pipeline, I would invite them to go on Google or Bing or any other search engine and just type in oil and gas pipelines and see what they get. You will be astonished at the number of pipelines that crisscross this country and that safely transmit their product without our even knowing about it, by and large.

I realize occasionally there are accidents, and those are to be deplored and regretted, and we should try to prevent those. But the idea should not be to cut our nose off to spite our face and deny ourselves this safe source of energy from a friendly country such as Canada, so we don't have to get it from dangerous volatile regions of the world and also take with it the jobs that are created as a result of this great renaissance in American and North American energy.

So I would say to the President, in conclusion, after listening to him last night, and really trying to listen to his words: Look at the States that actually are the successful laboratories of democracy. That is the phrase Louis Brandeis coined. That is the great thing about our Federal system, where we have 50 States that are sovereign. They conduct their own business, subject to those matters that are delegated to the Federal Government under the Constitution. But the States are a great place to see what works and what doesn't work. I might add that the two lowest unemployment rates in the United States are Bismark, ND, and Midland, TX, and not unrelated to the shale gas renaissance I mentioned a moment ago.

We should look at what works, from the Tax Code--making it less burdensome, more logical and more conducive to economic growth--to how we address the unkept promises of things such as ObamaCare, which has created uncertainty, increased cost, and caused a lot of disruption in the lives of Americans, and replacing it with patient-centered reforms that actually reduce the cost, expand quality coverage, and improve access to care.

I believe that is the kind of debate we should be having, and that is the type of agenda the American people are asking for and the type of agenda they deserve.

Mr. President, I yield floor.

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