Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations The Right To Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Utah for their leadership on this important issue. Although we may disagree on some elements, they have really poured their hearts and souls into this debate, which is one of the most important ones we have faced.

Thank you for your leadership on that.

ISSUES BEFORE THE SENATE

I would like to at this point kind of reflect on where we are in the Senate at this moment where we have three major issues facing us and say a word about each. I will address some aspects of the trade bill and questions about our national security that have been raised by the extension of FISA.

Before I get into those elements, in respect to the Presiding Officer of the Senate from the great State of West Virginia, I would like to reflect for a moment on McColloch's leap.

Samuel McColloch was a major during the Revolutionary War, and he was given the assignment of keeping the western border frontier of the United States safe, which at that time focused on Fort Henry in what is now Wheeling, WV. Major McColloch had this famous moment when he was turned away from the gates of Fort Henry and had to ride away with the Native Americans--the Indians--in hot pursuit. He rode up the side of this hill or mountain, and as he reached the top there were more Native Americans or Indians waiting for him. He was surrounded, in a desperate situation. As the story or legend goes, at that point, Major McColloch went to the edge and, on his horse, with his rifle in hand, leapt off the side of this mountain or hill. The Native Americans rushed to look down, feeling that he must have died, and looked down, as the legend goes, to see him ride away on his white horse. They say he made this 300-foot leap on a horse. I don't know if he did or didn't, but that is how the story goes.

What does that have to do with what we are facing here in the Senate? It is personal, but I used to drive Route 40 in those days between St. Louis and Washington, DC, when I went to college here at Georgetown. I had a 1962 red Volkswagen, and I used to drive it back and forth. No. 1, it was a long trip. It was a long trip because there were not many opportunities to avoid cities. You went right through the middle of Indianapolis, right through the middle of Columbus, and right through the middle of Wheeling, WV. On the famous hill or mountain of McColloch's leap, traffic would slow to a crawl--so slow that although I never stopped, I was able to read the sign above McColloch's leap because I was stuck in traffic and it was right in front of me.

I always thought about that--well, someday I will go back and take a closer look at it. Well, I did get back to Wheeling and found out that the old Route 40 has changed a lot, and it doesn't go through Wheeling, WV. I don't get to see that sign on the side of the building, ``Marsh Wheeling Stogies,'' and all the places that used to be there, because of the interstates.

There are amazing interstate opportunities now around Wheeling, WV; around Columbus, OH; around Indianapolis; around St. Louis; around Chicago, and it calls to mind one of the issues we are facing here at the close of this session: Why do we have such a great Interstate Highway System? Three words: Dwight David Eisenhower, the President of the United States, the successful general who led the D-day invasion and our conquest in World War II. When he was President, he envisioned the creation of an interstate highway system in America. Where did he get the idea? From Germany. He looked at their highway system and realized what an asset it was to that nation at war, that they could move people and supplies in such an efficient manner on the autobahns. He had a vision that the same thing would be available for America. He called it the Interstate Highway System. He created it in the 1950s.

Virtually everyone in America today would concede it was a brilliant idea. It has created a backbone for commerce in America. In my State of Illinois, having an interstate near your town or passing through your town is really the best thing you could have for your economy except for one other thing--having the intersection of interstates nearby. Then you know what is going to happen. There is going to be a lot of retail, a lot of commerce, a lot of business opportunities.

So here we have this Interstate Highway System which for almost 60 years has proven to be such a great success in America.

Why do I dwell on this issue in the closing moments--we hope--of this session? There are Members of the Senate who have announced publicly that they want to put an end to this. They have said that from their political point of view, we have to put an end to this Federal, national highway transportation system.

They believe it should all be done by States and the localities. They think whatever we have done is fine, but from this point forward, the Federal Government should have no role, no voice. We should not collect the Federal gas tax and put it into the construction of highways and bridges and mass transit across America.

That is their position. You would dismiss it as just a marginal political position, but it turns out they have power within the Republican Party. Add to that group those who believe we should not be collecting revenue--any more revenue--for the Federal highway trust fund. It explains where we are today.

Because of the opposition of these two groups within the Republican Party, those who want to do away with the Federal highway program and those who are unwilling to talk about any revenue for the program, today we are going to be asked for the 33rd short-term extension of surface transportation programs. Just to put this in perspective, we used to pass laws that reauthorized the Federal highway trust fund, Federal transportation trust fund for 5 and 6 years. That makes sense, doesn't it? If you are going to build a highway, it takes some time. It took a long time in Wheeling, WV, and Chicago and St. Louis. You need more than just a few months' commitment, you need several years of commitment to make an investment that pays off for America.

So we used to pass these transportation bills when I was in the House, even in the Senate. It was the easiest political lift that we were assigned. Why was it so easy? Because Members of Congress could not wait to go home and announce that Federal highway funds were going to come back home and make a difference. I was one of them. I do not know how many shovels I have collected over the years from groundbreakings for highways or scissors for ribbon cutting. We do a lot of that as politicians.

This Federal highway trust fund was a mother lode of public relations opportunities for Members of the House and Senate. Why? Because in my State 75 to 80 percent of all the money spent in Illinois on highway construction comes from Washington.

So if we can pass this bill, we can point to projects that make a difference. When I was a Congressman, there was a stretch of interstate called the Central Illinois Expressway that starts on the eastern border of my State at Danville and goes all the way across Central Illinois to Quincy, which has dramatically improved the economy of that region--dramatically.

I was happy to--every time we would complete a segment--be there for a photo and a press release. But then the argument started that maybe we should not do this and maybe we cannot afford to ask those who burn gasoline to pay a tax to build new highways and to repair the old ones.

Now we are stuck in this situation where we cannot pass a Federal highway bill. Madam President, 32 times now--32 times--we have given short-term extensions of surface transportation programs. This one is almost laughable. Listen to this: We are going to extend the Federal highway trust fund for 60 days. What can you build in 60 days? Well, you can fill a pothole--maybe quite a few of them, as a matter of fact. But if you are going to repair a bridge, 60 days does not really give you much to work with. If you are going to build a new highway, that is out of the question.

So what we are doing, limping along, extending the Federal highway trust fund for 60 days, 6 months, sadly, is ignoring the obvious. There are darn few things you can point to with certainty that the government can do to help build the American economy, but one, I am sure, is infrastructure, which used to be a bipartisan issue. Democrats and Republicans alike agreed: build the infrastructure for business to keep businesses, to attract businesses, and to create opportunities for jobs in America--not anymore.

Under the Republican leadership of the House and the Senate, they have refused to even schedule a hearing for a markup for the Federal highway trust fund. Nope, not going to do it. They want to extend this Federal highway trust fund for 60 days. They, I guess, believe that if you fill enough potholes you can build a highway. I don't think so. They think America can patch its way to prosperity. I don't think so.

I think we have to look at the obvious. If we are committed to this country, to its future, to building the economy and creating jobs and keeping them, if we want our children and grandchildren to have infrastructure that builds competition into the 21st century, you cannot do it with a 60-day highway bill. It cannot be done. I had a long discussion with my Democratic caucus over the last several weeks and told them I think we are making a serious mistake. I think this ``go along, get along, 60 days, we are living for a week for Memorial Day'' attitude has to come to an end.

I think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate has to stand and accept responsibility. That means passing a Federal highway bill, a Federal transportation bill. It is not just highways and bridges, as critically important as they are; it includes mass transit.

In the State I represent, Illinois, downstate we love our highways. You get up to the Chicago metropolitan area, we love our highways still, but without mass transit we could not move all the people we need to move to keep the economy humming in the Chicagoland area. Twenty percent of this Federal Transportation bill goes to mass transit. Now, I am all for it. I support that; more people in trains, more people in buses, fewer people on the highways, less congestion.

I think we ought to look at the big picture, too, even beyond the Federal Transportation bill. Can you imagine when that tragedy occurred on Amtrak just a little over a week ago--I believe eight people lost their lives and hundreds were injured--that the very next day, the next day, the House of Representatives held a hearing and decided to cut the appropriations for Amtrak. It is a classic case of ``what are they thinking?'' We want Amtrak to be safe, reliable, efficient. The people of America have told us they want it to grow.

If you want to ride an Amtrak train in my State, coming into Chicago or going out of Chicago, you better get a reservation because those cars on Amtrak trains are packed. Sadly, most Amtrak rolling stock is about 30 years old, and we are not investing in Amtrak for our future. Where I live, Amtrak makes a big difference. Without Amtrak service out of Chicago, headed downstate in Illinois, I can tell you a lot of university presidents will tell you they will not have enough students.

The students come from Chicago down to Champaign-Urbana to the University of Illinois; to Charleston, at Eastern Illinois University; Carbondale for Southern Illinois. They take that west side of our State run on Amtrak down to Quincy University in Western Illinois, Knox College.

Over and over again, Amtrak service is a critical part of our State and its economy. Yet those in leadership on the Republican side don't believe in it. They want to see it go away, just like they want to see the Interstate Highway System come to an end. I think they are wrong. I think they are shortsighted. I think the public of this country has to speak up.

So I guess I am serving notice here. This 60-day extension will go through. I understand that. But from this point forward, it is not going to be automatic anymore. It is not going to be: Well, we will do another 60 days and then we will do maybe 180 days. No. I think we need to have a moment in the Senate and in the House where this convenient extension, at the expense of America's future, comes to an end. It is time for the Republican Speaker and the Republican majority leader to lead, to call together their committees and to pass Federal highway trust fund.

They have 60 days--60 days from the end of this month to get it done. That is enough. I hope they do it. Because if they don't, many of us are not going to stand by again and say: Let's just let this new approach of patchwork America become the symbol of our future.

The second issue which we still have not resolved, is what to do about the PATRIOT Act. It was 9/11/2001. I was in a meeting just off the Senate floor. We had just seen, on a small television in our room, the second plane crash into the New York Trade Towers. It was pretty clear at that moment this was not just an accident. This was done by design.

It was not 15 minutes later that somebody broke into the room and said: Leave immediately. Get out. There is another plane on the way. We evacuated the United States Capitol Building. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Tourists everywhere ran out those doors and stood out on the grass and looked at one another and said: Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do? It had never happened before.

Because of that experience and the tragedy of losing 3,000 American lives, we came together as a nation and said: We are going to stop this from happening again. We passed something called the PATRIOT Act, which empowered our government to go further than it had ever gone to keep us safe. We put a sunset on it. That was a wise idea. We said: It is not permanent law. It is going to be reviewed in a matter of 2 or 3 years because we are acting now with this emotional feeling about what has happened to America. We think we are doing the right thing, but we want to reflect on it and revisit it on a regular basis.

Why? Because we are dedicated to the safety of this country, No. 1--security and safety--but we are also dedicated to the rights of American citizens, our rights to privacy. So we wanted to strike the right balance. We thought we did, but we would return to it. Now, we are returning again.

Here is the basic question we face; that is, what will be the reach of our Federal Government in gathering information to keep us safe? Specifically, in this case, we are talking about telephone records, not the substance of your phone conversations but your records. Whom did you call? How long did the call last? Whom did that person call? How long did the call last? Maybe two or three generations of telephone information.

``Bulk collection'' is the term that is used. It means, basically, that if you suspect someone in my home downstate area code of 217 in Illinois, if you suspected someone in that area code of being involved in terrorism or connected with a terrorist, the Federal Government would have the power to reach in and gather all of that phone information from area code 217.

You might say to yourself: Well, why would they want to take all of it? They certainly have a name or telephone number of the suspect. No, bulk collection suggests gathering all of that information. Many of us have questioned over the years whether that is needed or if it was too far.

I have offered amendments in the past which were unsuccessful because we did not know details about what the government was doing, and I could not disclose it. It was classified at that time, how much we were gathering, how often we were gathering. So over the years, my amendments would not succeed, but the cause continued to grow, to the point where we now have a USA FREEDOM Act, which says, basically, the Federal Government can reach into area code 217 to go after a suspect, that suspect's phone records, and the people that suspect may be in touch with.

So we are more or less localizing it, particularizing it, going to an individual rather than collecting all of this information, bulk collection. This is what USA FREEDOM Act does. It limits government reach. Now, we do not want to limit it to the point where it endangers us. So we went and asked the professional, the intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice: Is this new version of the law enough to keep America safe?

They came back to us and they said yes. As a result, we have a bipartisan bill, which has passed the House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans, supported by Speaker Boehner, the Republican leader, passed overwhelmingly the USA FREEDOM Act, and it has now come over the Senate. Why do we have to take this up now? Because at the end of May, the authority of the Federal Government to collect information on telephone records expires. The sunset I talked about recurs.

So we have an obligation to do something before the end of May. I believe we should call up the USA FREEDOM Act that passed in the House of Representatives and pass it here. We are told by the President, the Attorney General, the head of our intelligence agencies that this is enough authority to keep us safe and not go too far. I failed to add, a recent court case in the State of New York found that this bulk collection of telephone records was illegal. So we clearly have to act and do something. We can, but it is tied up in knots. This morning, the majority leader came to the floor and took exception to some Members of his own party as well as my party and our position supporting the USA FREEDOM Act.

I hope that he will give us a chance to pass that, and I hope there is a bipartisan majority to pass it.

The last issue which I wish to address is the trade bill that is pending. It is a controversial measure. I will not go into any depth. I can't add a great deal to what has been said by so many people on the floor about this legislation. But the currency question raises an interesting question for us. There are ways to have unfair trade practices that are not very obvious, and there are some that are. One of the obvious ways to deal unfairly in trade is to dump a product in another country.

What does that mean? It means if you are going to create and fabricate a ton of steel in Brazil and then sell it in the United States for less than your cost of production, you are dumping it. That is exactly what happened to us about 12 years ago. Brazil, Japan, and Russia decided to dump steel in the United States.

Why would any country want to sell steel at lower than the cost of production. They are going to lose money on it, right? They saw that in the short term, but in the long term they knew what would happen. U.S. steel producers couldn't compete. They couldn't sell at that price. So they kept dumping steel in the United States until more and more steel companies in America went out of business.

Oh, they filed their grievances for unfair trade practices, and therein lies the problem. Those grievances--those complaints--went to the International Trade Commission, which sat down to study the issue and make a decision on the issue. By the time they made a decision and found out that yes, there was dumping on, and yes, it was unfair to the United States, all of the U.S. steel companies that were affected had lost and gone out of business.

So when you have a trade agreement, it isn't just a matter of having provisions. They need to be enforceable in a timely fashion or we will lose business and we will lose jobs in America.

We have two other issues before us now. One of them relates to currency. You can price a product by the value of your currency against another country's currency. China and Japan have developed quite a reputation in the world for their currency manipulation to make sure they always had an advantage over the United States, no matter how good we were.

So currency is an important issue that has been brought up in an amendment today, and it is an indication to everyone who follows this debate of the complexity of the debate on trade.

There is a second issue that was brought up by Senator Wyden of Oregon, who is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and that is the whole issue of what to do when you have a dispute with another country about a provision of law.

Here is an illustration. Australia passed a law, which required warnings on their tobacco packaging so that people in Australia understood the health risk of using tobacco. That is not uncommon. We do it in the United States. But Philip Morris, an international company that had offices in Hong Kong, protested to Australia that these labels, which discouraged people from buying their tobacco products, would cost them business. And they used this investor trade dispute mechanism, which meant they didn't have to go through the courts of Australia. They went through this basic mechanism, this tribunal created by the trade agreement. The net result of it was that Australia faced this prospect: Either to remove the law requiring labeling or to pay Philip Morris for the effectiveness of that labeling on their profits.

The argument for this separate tribunal is that you cannot always trust the courts of the country. I heard that from my friend from Oregon. But also, when you take this out of the court system and let it be decided by corporate leaders, it really puts you at risk.

What is going to happen when some company protests in America about our environmental laws, about our banning toxic chemicals, about our tobacco warnings? That means in addition to going through the courts of the United States, it may also go through a tribunal. I worry about that. Again, that is an aspect of trade which most people don't think about, but it could affect each and every one of us very personally.

We are likely to finish this session this weekend, I hope, and we have three important issues. We are probably going to extend the highway trust fund for 60 days--and I hope that comes very soon.

I see my friend from Tennessee on the floor. I want to say a word congratulating him for his leadership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and bringing about an extraordinary bill which passed on the floor of the Senate related to the negotiations with Iran. It is one of the highlights, I might say to my friend from Tennessee, of what we have achieved this year. I thank him for that.

I don't know if he serves on any appropriate committee, but if he could take his skill and wisdom to create a bipartisan highway trust fund bill, we need it, and I hope we can do it.

Secondly, I hope we can pass the USA FREEDOM Act. It is the right thing to do, striking a balance between security in America and privacy.

Finally, we are likely to complete this part of the trade debate. I hope we have a fulsome debate on the amendments, which raise some important issues, two of which I have spoken to this morning. It is important that we do this business and we do it right. A lot of people are counting on us.

I yield the floor.

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