Dick Durbin: “I am going to give a brief statement about corporate inversion, but before I do I wish to respond to the Senator from…”

“I am going to give a brief statement about corporate inversion, but before I do I wish to respond to the Senator from Texas, who is my friend, and we have served together for many years. He has taken the floor for a period of time and spoken about some of the problems facing this Nation at home and abroad and has been largely been critical of the President in both categories. I didn't arrive early enough to hear his parade of horribles when it came to domestic policy; I just caught the end of it when he suggested there was something wrong with this President because America's labor force, its workforce, is shrinking. People are giving up looking for work. Well, that is a serious concern, and we ought to ask a question: Why are they giving up looking for work? It turns out it has, perhaps, something to do with the policy of our government, but it also has something to do with the life expectancy of Americans. I am a little older than the Presiding Officer, and I just barely missed what we call baby boomers. Baby boomers are those born after World War II when the returning soldiers and their wives and spouses sat down and said: We are going to build a family. And they did. A lot of kids were born in America. It was called a baby boom. Guess what. Baby boomers are facing retirement age. The workforce is shrinking because they are retiring. I would like to blame Barack Obama for that, but I think maybe that is a stretch. I don't think you can blame him for the baby boom.…”