November 19, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S10615 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without 

objection, it is so ordered. 

f 

THE ECONOMY 

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, next 

week Americans across our country are 

going to be celebrating Thanksgiving. 

It is a time that we reflect and give 

thanks for our families and friends and 

all that we have. But far too many of 

our families across my State and 

across this country have far less than 

they did just a year ago. They lost 

their homes, their cars, their health 

care, their 401(k)s, and their jobs. Just 

this month, we learned that this country has lost a total of 1.2 million jobs 

this year. Over half of that decrease 

came in the last 3 months alone. 

Across this country, people are hurting, and some of the hardest hit have 

been our veterans from the wars in Iraq 

and Afghanistan. Thousands of our veterans are still recovering from physical 

or psychological injuries that make it 

very hard for them to pay their bills or 

to find a job, and too many find themselves sliding quickly into bankruptcy 

or foreclosure. Yesterday, in fact, the 

New York Times reported that advocacy groups have seen a huge increase 

in the number of veterans asking for financial help over the last year. 

Americans made it very clear on 

election day that they want a new direction in this country. They want action that will help pull us out of this 

economic crisis. President-elect Obama 

has already announced that his first 

priority will be an economic recovery 

plan that invests in our country’s infrastructure. As chair of the Appropriations Transportation and Housing Subcommittee, I stand ready to help with 

that. But, as the latest jobless reports 

show, we can’t afford to wait even until 

January, when we have a new President, to start providing the help Americans need today. That is why I have 

come to the floor. We need to take action that will create jobs, diversify and 

modernize our economy, and help our 

families cope with this economic downturn. 

This week, Senator BYRD and our 

majority leader, Senator REID, proposed an economic stimulus bill that 

would do just that. Their bill is targeted at the biggest needs in our country today. It will create more than 

635,000 jobs by investing in infrastructure and green energy development, 

and it would help our most vulnerable 

citizens put food on the table and keep 

a roof over their heads. 

Congress can make a real difference 

for millions of families across our 

country. If there was a mandate given 

on November 4, it was for Government 

to work for the people once again. 

America’s working families want a 

government that will turn our economy around and end this war, and they 

want true progress on health care and 

on education. That is our mandate. We 

have an awful lot of work to do, and we 

need a bipartisan effort to do it. But we 

cannot just sit around waiting until we 

have a new administration and a new 

Congress. Americans are hurting 

today. 

We have the ability in this Congress 

to come together across party lines and 

pass a bill that will put Americans 

back to work and stabilize our communities across this country. I wish to 

take a couple of minutes this morning 

to outline how that package will help 

get our country moving again and help 

those most in need. 

First of all, it is critically important 

that we help families who have already 

lost their jobs and are drawing unemployment today. Especially with employers cutting jobs each month, there 

are hundreds of thousands of Americans who need help for basic needs 

while they look for work. This package 

reaches out to those families by extending unemployment benefits by 7 

weeks across the country and 13 weeks 

in States where the jobless rate is the 

highest. It also brings relief to communities, since every dollar of unemployment benefits generates $1.64 in additional economic activity. This helps 

everyone. 

This bill also provides help for the 

millions of families who are struggling 

today to find safe and secure housing. 

Across the country, public housing is 

badly in need of repair and improvement. This bill will allow communities 

to rehabilitate vacant public housing 

units, improve energy efficiency, and 

jump-start construction of new 

projects that will serve those tenants. 

It will also help address a growing 

problem in our community: renters 

who lost their homes because their 

landlords were foreclosed on. This bill 

will help protect these innocent victims of the foreclosure crisis and help 

them find immediate shelter and longterm housing. 

One reason we need this bill badly is 

because it offers help to those who need 

it most, those who have lost their jobs 

and homes who are struggling to find 

housing today. But this bill will also 

help our communities and jump-start 

our economy by creating more than 

635,000 jobs, investing in new technology and repairing our infrastructure. For example, this package would 

make investments in highway and 

bridge construction in every single 

State—all 50 States—by providing $10 

billion to help fund projects that are 

ready to go today. We know that for 

every $1 billion we spend on highways, 

we create more than 34,500 good jobs. 

So this package will create more than 

345,000 jobs. 

Additionally, it is important to note 

there are no earmarks in this bill, no 

special projects as part of the highway 

funding in this bill. All highway dollars 

will be spent according to the formula 

that has been established for the Surface Transportation Program in our 

SAFETEA–LU highway bonds. States 

would have to put this money to work 

in 180 days. 

We also know that roads are not the 

only area where communities need 

transportation dollars. Cities across 

our country are struggling to repair 

and expand their bus and rail systems 

as demand for mass transit and public 

transportation is skyrocketing. So this 

bill will improve and expand masstransit systems so that millions of 

commuters can get to work smoothly 

and on time. It will help repair and improve our Nation’s airports. It will 

make needed investments in our Nation’s ferry transportation system and 

modernize our Nation’s shipyards to 

make them competitive and efficient. 

While creating these jobs will help 

get our economy going again, we also 

need to work to make sure our workers 

are prepared to compete for the jobs of 

the future. So this package does that 

by helping 160,000 dislocated workers 

and youth get education, training, 

counseling, and job assistance. This is 

particularly important for young people who are disengaged from school and 

for disadvantaged teenagers who are 

often hurt the most when our unemployment rates are high. It is critical 

that we enable these young people to 

get work experience now because if 

they lose out, they are less likely to 

move successfully into a career later. 

We know teens without jobs are more 

likely to turn to crime or join gangs 

which cost our communities millions 

in law enforcement and lost productivity. Not only will the programs this 

bill supports pay off as the economy 

picks up over time, they will help stimulate the economy in the short term 

too, because, you know, teens spend 

immediately all the money they make. 

So that will help everyone. 

This package also recognizes that we 

need to start investing in new and 

healthy industries that will help create 

new, good-paying jobs and help 

strengthen our economy for the long 

term. I think one of the most promising fields is green technology. That is 

why this package would invest almost 

$7 billion in research and development 

that would help us create new energy 

sources and improved energy efficiency. 

Not only is the research and development absolutely vital in order to create the technology and the new jobs 

that come with it, but research and development and clean technologies are 

critical if we are going to become energy independent. 

So these are parts of the package 

which I believe will be a shot in the 

arm, that will help our economy for 

many years to come. 

Before I finish today, I do want to address the provisions in this bill that 

would help the country’s struggling 

auto industry. I want the auto industry 

to remain viable and continue to support the millions of jobs across this 

country which depend on its success. 

But I cannot support any more funds 

without concrete assurance the automakers have a strategy to restructure 

and become viable, competitive companies. The auto industries cannot continue to follow a failed business model 

and then come here and ask for help. 


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S10616 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE November 19, 2008 

I supported the $25 billion with 

strong restructuring language for the 

auto industry in the continuing resolution we passed a month ago. I will need 

to be convinced that adding funding 

will not only save jobs but the industry 

leaders will take seriously the issue of 

restructuring and work to reinvigorate 

an industry that continues to teeter on 

the brink of failure. 

I am also, I have to say, very concerned about the blame being laid at 

the feet of the hard-working men and 

women in this industry. The auto industry’s current financial industry crisis is the result of many financial factors, not the result of the cost of employee health care and negotiated contract benefits upon which numerous 

working families and retirees depend. 

If the Federal Government, funded by 

working and taxpaying families, is expected to explore financial aid to ailing 

corporations, then I expect to hear 

about sacrifices industry management 

will make during these tough times. I 

am very hopeful we can do that. 

A month ago this Congress came together and passed a bill to help restore 

stability in our financial markets. 

Well, we need this bill to provide stability for our communities and for our 

working families at home. We need it 

to help the most vulnerable among us 

to keep food on their table and a roof 

over their head. 

We need it to help unemployed workers pay the bills while they start another job search. We need it so that we 

can create jobs, invest in our communities, and support new developments 

in sustainable and emerging industries. 

We can start solving this economic 

crisis now. We can provide our families 

with the help they need for the holidays and before this economic situation gets worse. I hope our colleagues 

will join together, work across party 

lines, pass this stimulus bill, and offer 

hope this year to millions of struggling 

families across this country. 

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The 

clerk will call the roll. 

The legislative clerk proceeded to 

call the roll. 

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask 

unanimous consent that the order for 

the quorum call be rescinded. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. 

MENENDEZ). Without objection, it is so 

ordered. 

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask 

unanimous consent to speak in morning business. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without 

objection, it is so ordered. 

f 

TRIBUTE TO STUDS TERKEL 

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want 

to take a few minutes to say thank you 

and farewell to a Chicago legend and a 

national treasure. 

Studs Terkel—author, actor, television pioneer, civil rights champion, 

law school graduate, social historian, 

jazz critic, disc jockey, champion of 

little guys and all the underdogs in 

America—died quietly in his Chicago 

North Side home on October 31. Studs 

was 96 years old. 

His interviews over 50 years with the 

celebrated and the uncelebrated made 

him famous around the world. But 

there was no place on Earth where he 

was better known or loved than in Chicago, his adopted hometown. 

When he turned 95 in 2007, Chicago 

threw a party, complete with a skywriting plane that proclaimed: ‘‘Happy 

Birthday, Studs.’’ No last name was 

needed. 

What was remarkable, however, is 

not how many Chicagoans knew him by 

his first name, but how many 

Chicagoans Studs knew by their first 

names. 

After Studs died, a British journalist 

recalled a day he spent with Studs 

more than a decade ago when Studs 

was still doing his syndicated radio 

program 5 days a week at WFMT in 

downtown Chicago. This person wrote: 

The journey to and from [Stud’s] office was 

through a subterranean labyrinth of corridors and shopping arcades linking the 

WFMT building with the tower containing 

the luncheon club. Beside the elevator door 

was an Irish attendant he knew, and they 

burst into song. Then there was an extraordinary ritual, involving an employee at 

Johnny’s Shoe Shine. ‘‘Another day!’’ bellowed Terkel from quite a distance. ‘‘Another triumph!’’ boomed back the reply. 

Forget Sinatra. Chicago was Studs 

Terkel’s kind of town. He loved Chicago because, in his words, ‘‘Chicago is 

the country. It is America; it is a metaphor for everything.’’ 

Elizabeth Taylor, the Chicago 

Tribune’s literary editor and one of his 

good friends, said Studs Terkel ‘‘was 

Chicago and everything good about the 

literary world—make that the world in 

general.’’ I agree. 

The last time I saw him was about 2 

months ago at a bookstore in Chicago. 

Studs was signing copies of his second 

to last book, a wonderful memoir 

called ‘‘Touch and Go.’’ He wore his 

trademark red-checkered shirt. The 

bookstore was packed with people. 

Studs was nearly deaf by then, but if 

he looked straight at you, he could tell 

what you were saying. But that is what 

he was doing—still listening, listening, 

listening to everyone who approached 

him. 

It was a slow moving line as we waited to have our books autographed. I 

waited more than an hour to say hello 

and get my book signed, but I am glad 

I did. 

‘‘Calling [Studs Terkel] a ‘writer and 

broadcaster’ would be like calling 

Louis Armstrong a ‘trumpeter’ or the 

Empire State Building an ‘office 

block.’ Strictly and sparsely speaking, 

it is true.’’ So read his obituary in London’s Guardian newspaper. 

On radio, TV, and more than a dozen 

books, Studs Terkel interviewed some 

of the most famous of the 20th century—Simone de Beauvoir, Margot 

Fonteyn, Arthur Miller, John Kenneth 

Galbraith, Tennessee Williams, Margaret Mead, Leonard Bernstein, Louis 

Armstrong, Buster Keaton, Marlon 

Brando, Bob Dylan, Aaron Copeland, 

Zero Mostel, Mahalia Jackson, James 

Baldwin, and the list goes on and on. 

He interviewed a 90-year-old 

Bertrand Russell in a village in North 

Wales during the 1962 Cuban missile 

crisis and almost erased the tape of 

their conversation because he was pretty clumsy with his tape recorder. Studs 

never overcame that ineptitude. He 

said it was actually an asset because it 

made the people he interviewed want 

to help him. 

But it was Studs Terkel’s interviews 

with ordinary Americans, not celebrities, that set him apart. What guided 

his work? Studs said: ‘‘The principle is 

that ordinary people have extraordinary thoughts—I’ve always believed 

that—and that ordinary people can 

speak poetically.’’ 

Accepting an honorary National 

Book Award medal in 1997, he said: 

When the Chinese Wall was built, where 

did the masons go for lunch? When Caesar 

conquered Gaul, was there not even a cook in 

the army? And here’s the big one, when the 

Armada sank, you read that King Philip 

wept. Were there no other tears? 

That’s what I believe oral history is about. 

It’s about those who shed those other tears, 

who on rare occasions of triumph laughed 

that other laugh. 

By talking and listening to ordinary 

Americans, Studs Terkel harvested 

what the Economist magazine called 

‘‘not only the most complete American 

history of this century, but the most 

compassionate.’’ 

‘‘De Tocqueville with a tape recorder,’’ is what the Times of London 

called him. 

Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry 

at Harvard, told the L.A. Times: 

I think he was the most extraordinary social observer this country has ever produced. 

Said his son Dan, Studs ‘‘led a long, 

full, eventful, sometimes tempestuous 

but very satisfying life.’’ 

He was born in the Bronx on May 16, 

1912, a month after the Titanic sank. 

He used to like to say: ‘‘I came up 

when she’d gone down.’’ 

His real name was Louis. He took the 

name ‘‘Studs’’ in the twenties, after 

Studs Lonigan, the protagonist of 

James T. Farrell’s 1930s novels about 

an Irish kid from Chicago’s South Side. 

His father Samuel was a tailor. His 

mother Anna was a seamstress who 

moved to America from Poland. 

The Terkel family moved to Chicago 

in 1922 after his father suffered a heart 

ailment. They ran a rooming house at 

Wells and Grand. 

It was there in a small park nearby 

formally known as Washington Square 

but better known as Bughouse 

Square—a place, Studs said, ‘‘where 

free speech is the power and the 

glory’’—where he first met the workers 

and activists who would shape his view 

of the world and fill up his books and 

tapes. 

He graduated from the University of 

Chicago with degrees in philosophy and 


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