[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 107 (Thursday, July 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4384-S4392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TERRORISM RISK INSURANCE PROGRAM AUTHORIZATION ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, the Senator from Minnesota was going to
be recognized first. She is not in the Chamber, so I will go first and
then we will get back in order.
I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
FOREIGN POLICY
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, now that the results are in, I think it
is time to talk again--as we did 5 years ago--about what is happening
on what I consider to be the greatest failed foreign policy we have
experienced.
When we look around the world and we see what happened and what is
going on now--and this may be a narrow opinion--it is a result of the
apology tour President Obama took immediately after becoming President
of the United States.
I remember standing at this podium at that time and saying you don't
go to the Muslim world and say: I will not make a speech until we have
the Muslim Brotherhood coming with their required numbers. That was not
good. This is a deviation from what we always stood for and that was
certainly a slap in the face of our best friends in the Middle East,
Israel.
Two weeks ago, three Israeli teenagers were found dead in shallow
graves in a West Bank village, and it was such a tragedy, and, of
course, reciprocity has taken place since then. Hamas has launched over
365 rockets indiscriminately into the Israeli civilian population. I
have to say that when I look at some of the things we have worked on
together with Israel--for example, the iron dome has performed very
well during that period of time. Also, I will say that Prime Minister
Netanyahu responded with some 700 or so airstrikes primarily using F-
16s and doing it very well. This started 5 years ago, and we have had
unrest in that area ever since then.
The Israeli Defense Minister said this week: ``We are preparing for a
battle
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against Hamas which will not end within a few days.''
Obviously, I strongly support our greatest ally in the Middle East,
and so often we do what we can to directly and indirectly continue that
support. There has been unrest in Israel for the past 5 or 6 years.
We sent letters to the President some time ago regarding Iraq in
2013. We said when you leave Iraq, be sure to leave the intelligence
and the logistics. You cannot just walk out. Yes, we have great trained
fighters in the Iraqi security force, but they cannot be totally on
their own. They needed to have ISR support. ISR is intelligence and
reconnaissance. We have to learn a lesson from this so we don't make
the same mistake in Afghanistan. But nonetheless, we did. So now Al
Qaeda-inspired terrorists have returned and have overtaken key cities.
ISIS is the most terrifying terrorist group out there. They have
taken over towns such as Mosul, Tikrit, Ramadi, and Fallujah.
I have a guy who works for me as a field representative in my State
of Oklahoma. His name is Brian Hackler. Prior to the time he came to
work for me, he was in the Marines. He was actually deployed twice to
Fallujah. If you will remember, Fallujah was the closest thing we had
to door-to-door combat like we had in World War II, and we lost a lot
of lives.
When I called him, he had not yet heard that we lost Fallujah after
they took it over. He actually physically cried. He said, the blood,
the sweat, and the tears of all of my friends. He said, we had that
secured, and we have now lost it.
We are doing everything we can now to rectify that situation. I am
glad the Obama administration is doing what we asked them to do 2 years
ago. While we will lose lives, hopefully we can keep the terrorists
from having a safe haven in that area.
I am very much concerned about what has happened in Iraq. While the
President continues his assessments, it leads me to wonder what the
people in our embassy have been doing over there. We are empowering
Russia and Iran to lead and become key influences in the region.
Iran reportedly has two battalions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps, the IRGC, in Iraq. It is kind of funny. Right now a lot of
people are saying Iran is our friend. Let's keep in mind that our
intelligence determined quite a number of years ago that Iran will have
the weapon and the delivery system for that weapon by 2015. Well, 2015
is on us now, so I think if anyone out there is naive enough to think
we can depend on Iran to help our situation, they are sadly mistaken.
We have a very serious problem now in Iraq. While the United States
has most recently provided some equipment intelligence, this is what we
should have been doing and preparing for 2 years ago. Since January,
Prime Minister Maliki has asked for help, and the President waited
until it became a dire crisis.
Then there is Afghanistan. We know what is happening in Afghanistan.
Currently the Presidential election in Afghanistan has taken place. The
primary took place and the runoff took place, but the problem is it is
obviously a sham. The election is not an honest, transparent election.
I believe there is no greater threat that can be imposed on us than by
allowing the people of Afghanistan to look at an election and find out
it is a rigged election.
I will give an example. While we have not taken sides in this country
between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, I personally would fall
down on the side of Abdullah. It seems as though all of the real
problems in that election ended up benefiting Ghani as opposed to
Abdullah.
For example, in one province--it was Wardak Province--17,000 votes
were cast in April. Now the runoff came along and 170,000 votes were
cast. If you stop to think about it, that is mathematically impossible,
so we know that is rigged. While everyone agrees that Ghani's support
is in the rural areas, I would defy anyone to come down to the Senate
floor and point out an election that has ever taken place where you
have a much larger percentage of rural votes as opposed to urban votes.
There is a logical reason--rural voters have to walk a long way to get
to the polls and some voters can't get there as easily.
The results of the runoff: There was a 75-percent turnout from the
rural areas as opposed to a 24-percent turnout in the urban areas. That
couldn't happen. We have to have an audit. I think everybody agrees we
have to have an audit, but it has to be a thorough and transparent
audit. We have to be sure the Afghan people, when they determine the
outcome of this election, know it was a legitimate election so they can
rejoice in it.
I think most everyone knows a few hours ago Abdullah declared victory
in spite of the fact that the first count I described showed him as
losing.
We have this problem right now. It is a problem I hang on President
Obama and his administration because we told them in advance what
needed to be done to avoid this type of situation from happening.
We are now looking at a situation there that is one where we can act
now and preclude something from happening there and is happening as we
speak in Iraq.
Remember what took place in terms of the five Taliban terrorists who
were released. We thought--and I felt all the time--that was a very
controversial issue. A lot of people wanted to close Gitmo, and I have
strong feelings against that. We need to have that facility and that
resource, which I will explain in a moment.
When the President turned the five Taliban leaders loose--these were
the most brutal and heinous of all the terrorists who were in Gitmo.
There were five of them. When they found out, they were celebrating.
One of the terrorists released was referred to as the toughest of all
of them. One of the top people who was on the other side of the Taliban
said in response to the release of the terrorists that this is the
Taliban rejoicing that the President has turned loose five of the
terrorists who were incarcerated in Gitmo. They said it is like putting
10,000 Taliban fighters into battle on the side of jihad. Now the
Taliban have the right to lead them into the final moments before
victory in Afghanistan.
We all knew the President should not have done it. Anticipating that
the President was going to do this, the last bill we passed before the
current one, which is on here, we put language in there anticipating
that the President, in order to reach his goal and ultimately close
Gitmo, might take some of the worst individuals and turn them loose. We
put language in there from section 1035(d) of the Defense Authorization
Act. He said the President had to notify us 30 days in advance if he
was going to release or make any transfers from Gitmo. He blatantly
broke that law and did not do it. Everyone was on our side in terms of
why we should not let this, what they referred to as the ``Taliban
dream team,'' be turned loose. Right now, supposedly, there is some
kind of a deal made where they are in Qatar for a period of a year, but
even if they were able to enforce that--stop and think about the theory
behind this. The President is saying in essence we are going to turn
you guys loose but you have to promise not to kill Americans for a
period of a year. Because it says for 1 year they have to remain under
some level of control by a country that hasn't even told us how they
are going to do that. Consequently, I have no doubt they are free to go
anywhere they want.
We had reviews conducted by the Department of Defense, Department of
State, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the National
Intelligence, and all the rest of them saying these five people are too
dangerous to release. Leon Panetta, who was the Secretary of Defense at
that time, made the same statement. He said these people are too
dangerous, as did General Dunford. By the way, General Dunford, who is
the commander in Afghanistan, was not even notified in advance this was
going to take place.
So we have all of these circumstances that are going on right now. We
have the law that was broken. My feeling has always been, as we are
getting down midway into the President's second term, looking at what
he is going to have for a legacy, one of his desired legacies would be
to close Gitmo. He has talked about that for a long period of time. I
think the American people have now caught on, because there is a poll
on June 13 by Gallup that shows 66 percent of Americans oppose the
closing of Gitmo. So this has changed now.
[[Page S4386]]
Why is it important? There is no place else anywhere in the world
where we can put these enemy combatants. These guys are not criminals;
they are enemy combatants. They are terrorists. And when the President
came up with the original idea of putting them into our prison system,
we had to go and make sure everyone was aware they are terrorists and
not criminals. By definition, they teach other people to be terrorists.
If there is anything we don't want in our prison system, it is for all
of those criminals to learn how to become terrorists.
We have had Gitmo since 1903. It is one of the few good deals we have
wherein we pay a little over $4,000 a year for that facility. We should
stop and see the advantages we have in Gitmo as opposed to putting them
someplace else where they can either get out through jail breaks, as
has been happening, or if they were to be intermingled in the United
States with our prison population.
One of the places, incidentally, that the President first wanted to
send the Gitmo inmates was to Fort Sill in my State of Oklahoma. I went
to Fort Sill and they said, We don't have the capability here to get
this done. So what we want to do is--in fact, the lady who runs the
facility at Fort Sill said, I don't know what it is that individuals
don't understand. She said she had three deployments to Gitmo. It is
the perfect institution for these people. They are well taken care of.
The Red Cross and everyone who goes down there says, Yes, the health
facilities are better than they have ever had before, the food is the
best they have ever had. So it is a facility we need to continue to
use.
Benghazi
Lastly, before I completely run out of time, I want to jump ahead a
little bit and mention Benghazi. I think it is important for us to
understand there are four people in our system who advise the President
of the United States. We have the CIA Director who, at the time this
happened in Benghazi, was John--anyway, the CIA Director; the Director
of National Intelligence, that was James Clapper; the Secretary of
Defense, who was Leon Panetta; and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Dempsey. All of those people said they knew
unequivocally, in Benghazi, when they bombed the annex, it was an
organized terrorist activity. I think right now people are realizing
that was the real issue. It is not who is responsible for it; it is the
fact that we knew it was going to happen. Our Ambassador, who was
killed, gave us ample warning for well over a month and a half before
it took place that it was going to take place.
So I think we understand now why Gitmo is important and we understand
the whole reason this is taking place. I am certainly hoping we can
stick together and make sure we don't end up losing one of the most
valuable facilities we have in this day of terrorists by having to
close it down.
We have a serious problem. I think if there is anything we should
learn from this, it is, No. 1, we have a valuable institution called
Gitmo. No. 2, what is important is that we don't let happen this year
what happened last year. Last year we didn't get the NDAA bill until
December. If we had gone to December 31, there would not have been
hazard pay and a number of bad things would have happened, but we ended
up finally at the last minute getting it done. I have talked to both
the majority and minority leaders about the advisability of bringing
the NDAA to the floor of the Senate, and consequently we now have
invited Members to send their amendments down. We have almost 100
amendments already on the floor. So I am hoping during the next week,
we can come down with a specific date--hopefully before the August
recess--where we can bring up the NDAA and let the people know who go
over there risking their lives that we are going to be here to support
them. We are going to be putting together an NDAA bill.
I know my time has expired. I will not suggest the absence of a
quorum quite yet because no one has arrived.
Going back to Benghazi, everybody had the information on Benghazi. I
neglected to mention we also had General Hamm come in and testify
before us, again, that he was one of several who was fully aware of
what happened.
With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Minnesota Flooding
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the Senate floor today to
speak about the recent heavy rain storms in Minnesota that have caused
significant flooding in our State. This was not a one-day disaster.
This was not a sudden flash flood such as we saw in Duluth a few years
ago or a tornado coming in. This was, in fact, a disaster that occurred
over a series of weeks where we had rainfall after rainfall after
rainfall. From International Falls on the Canadian border down to
Luverne, MN, on the Iowa border, torrential rains have washed out
roads, bridges, and culverts, damaged infrastructure and caused
significant crop damage. In some of our counties, 40 percent of the
farmlands are under water.
These storms have led to states of emergency being declared for 51 of
Minnesota's 87 counties. We have not seen anything like this for a
while. It tended to be, in the past, that we had a corner of our State
that would see trouble, but here we have 51 of Minnesota's 87 counties
being declared a state of emergency.
Over the past few weeks I have visited many of these affected areas
and seen the damage firsthand.
The city of Norwood Young America saw nearly 9 inches of rain in one
night that caused more than $1 million in damage to its wastewater
treatment facility. I saw how water-covered roads strained rural
communities, how washed-out rail beds have caused another setback for
our already-strained rail system, and how closed township bridges have
further delayed shipments of agricultural products.
In southwest Minnesota, along with Senator Franken and Governor
Dayton, I met with farmers who were among those hardest hit by the
storms. Up until a month ago, the same crop and pasture land in
southern Minnesota that is now completely under water had been under
drought conditions since 2011. And now not only are these farmers
dealing with damage to crops, buildings, and fences due to the
flooding, they also experienced losses in the past from a devastating
hail storm.
In Rock County in southwestern Minnesota initial estimates indicate
100,000 acres of corn and soybeans are damaged, and the official U.S.
Department of Agriculture number will likely be even greater. The
extent of the crop damage is really not yet known. Excessive moisture
can kill crops altogether or stunt their growth or put them at risk of
diseases at lower yields. This disaster has repercussions that will be
felt for months to come.
I talked with farmers in Luverne and in Mankato who are worried about
how they will recover these losses and make ends meet. Farmers who were
trying to finish planting now may have no hope of getting a crop into
their flooded fields at all this summer, and those who did get a crop
in are now watching their fields fill with water.
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials are still assessing the
damage, and crop insurance adjusters are out in full force so that
accurate reports can be filed with county FSA offices. This is a
critical step to ensure that farmers and ranchers are not left out of
the disaster assistance process.
Farmers operate at the mercy of the weather. Listening to stories of
the great financial risk these small business owners face every single
day--our State is a State of many small farms--it makes me proud of the
work we did in the Senate and the work I did as a member of the Senate
Agriculture Committee and conference committee to fight for permanent
disaster programs with mandatory funding in the farm bill that we
reauthorized earlier this year. If that were not in place, these
farmers and, as a result, our food supply would be facing--Minnesota
being one of the top agricultural producers in the country--a very
uncertain future. These programs, in addition to the farm bill's
improvements to crop insurance, will help provide a safety net for the
farmers and the ranchers affected by the flood.
[[Page S4387]]
Last week Secretary Vilsack visited our State. He was up in the
Moorhead area, and Senator Hoeven, Senator Heitkamp, Congressman
Peterson, and I met with him about some conservation issues up there
with flooding. They are one of the areas of the State that have some
flooding, but not as much right now; they usually have the most
flooding. But when he was there he committed to me that the Farm
Service Agency will do everything they can to provide any necessary
resources and support for our farmers and ranchers.
Just yesterday the Minnesota FSA executive director informed me that
she has directed county FSA offices to immediately begin holding
community meetings to ensure that farmers and ranchers impacted by
these floodwaters have the information they need. Because here we have
a new farm bill, and while it is very similar to the last one, there
are new rules in place. They have to make critical decisions about if
they replant, if they can get emergency loans; what they should plant,
if their fields have been devastated, including cover crop; and what is
going to be happening in the next few months. They need the
information.
Floods have a devastating impact not only on farmers but also on
families and small businesses. The damage that these storms caused will
not be undone overnight. There is still a lot of hard work ahead of us,
and the long cleanup process has already begun. But we have already
seen a swift and efficient response on the part of State and local
officials. And in our State, FEMA may be a four-letter word, but it is
a good four-letter word. When we saw what had happened in Grand Forks,
the Nation was riveted many, many years ago by the flooding in North
Dakota and Minnesota. That has recovered. Those are booming areas now.
Fargo-Moorhead also experienced significant funding, and FEMA was
involved and helped us there. We appreciate the work they are doing in
assessing the damage now and the help we know will be coming.
It is critical that the Federal Government do its part to ensure that
the resources these families, businesses, and communities need are
there to get them back on their feet. Two weeks ago I spoke directly
with the President in the White House about the flood damage across the
State, and he assured me there would be an immediate Federal response.
That is why the action by Governor Dayton yesterday to formally
request that the President issue a major disaster declaration was so
important. That is why we sent a letter to the President--our entire
congressional delegation; all of the eight House Members and the two
Senators--urging swift approval of this request.
Although work to assess the damage remains ongoing, so far nearly $11
million in eligible damages has been documented in just eight counties.
That is just eight counties. One county alone, we know, has $9 million
in damage. This is well above the $7.5 million threshold that Minnesota
has to meet to get the 75-percent Federal match for those counties that
have $3.50 per capita damage. So we imagine that a lot of these
counties will be getting Federal help for infrastructure damage at that
75-percent mark.
Believe me when I say Minnesotans just are not sitting around waiting
for help. The hard work of assessing the damage continues this week and
is even expected to extend into the following week. Even though the
damage across the State has reached a level high enough to trigger
eligibility, each county is doing its damage assessment.
In some States, as I say, they have had problems with FEMA, but in
our State for the most part we have been happy with the work they have
done. In my time as a Senator, I have seen the 35W bridge collapse, I
have seen the Federal Government step in with inordinate help to get
that bridge rebuilt in less than a year.
I saw a tornado come into Wadena, MN, and literally pick up a high
school like it was in the ``Wizard of Oz,'' the bleachers landing a
mile away. In that town--because of Federal assistance in alerting
those citizens about how to use their emergency systems--because of an
alarm system and a siren that worked, despite the fact that their high
school looked like a bomb had hit it, a major, large high school--not
one person was killed. There was a high school lifeguard watching over
40 little kids at a swimming pool. The sirens went off. The parents got
there within 10 minutes and had them all gone, and the few kids that
were left ran over with the lifeguard, who had the presence of mind to
stay in a neighbor's basement who they did not even know. Not one
person died because that siren system worked, because people had
practiced, because they knew what to do, and because we had the
emergency system in place.
That high school is now rebuilt. Along with that high school being
rebuilt, there is a beautiful new company that was rebuilt that is in
the farming area, in the farm financing area. Their company was
devastated. They did not have a basement. All they had was one safe
that the man had bought, and he had joked that it was big enough to
hold a few employees. That day when that tornado hit, there were four
employees on duty. They went into that safe. That was the only thing
that remained of that business. When that man rebuilt, he bought a big
enough safe for all 20 of his employees--a true story.
But this is how Minnesota responds to disasters. Few things are more
humbling than standing in those kinds of wreckages. Natural disasters
are humbling because they remind us that nature is still more powerful
than all the technology we have. But they are also humbling because
they bring out the best in our communities. From what I have seen in
our State--from those emergency responders diving into the Mississippi
River over and over to look for survivors in the 35W bridge disaster or
what I saw in Fargo-Moorhead, where a man was volunteering to give out
food and lunches at the emergency center and I said to him: Oh, thank
you for volunteering. What brings you here? He said: I lost my entire
house. I said: And you came to volunteer? He said: It is the best thing
I could do with my time--those are the things that I remember.
What I remember from these floods across the State--where, again,
despite this incredible damage not one person died in our State from
this flooding--I remember, again, those first responders and the normal
citizens who just got up and helped their neighbors.
We saw this spirit of solidarity when a 911 call came in from a woman
who was driving home to Anoka, MN, from Sioux Falls, SD, when her car
spun out of control and was swept away. Water was inching up to the
windows.
State Trooper Brian Beuning pushed through the rushing water when she
called for help. He got her out of the car and held on to her until
help arrived. The car ended up in a field a quarter of a mile away. A
boat tried to rescue them, but the current was too swift. Finally, two
firefighters from Luverne, MN, tied themselves to a semitruck and got
the woman and the trooper to safety. Rather than running from disaster,
those first responders bravely ran toward it; and that is my State for
you.
In the face of ice storms, historic floods, tornadoes, even the
collapse of that bridge, Minnesota does not fall apart. Minnesota comes
together. When disaster hits our State, we hit the ground running and
do not stop until we have the resources in place to ensure our
communities are made whole. That means local and State help, but that
also means Federal help.
Thank you.
I yield the floor.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
allowed for the next 30 minutes to engage in a colloquy between myself,
Senator McCain, and Senator Barrasso.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mr. Hoeven, Mr. McCain, and Mr. Barrasso pertaining
to the introduction of S. 2592 are printed in today's Record under
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
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Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, what is the parliamentary situation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is S. 2363, the
sportsmen's bill.
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 5
minutes as if in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Preserving an Open Internet
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, last week I chaired a field hearing of
the Senate Judiciary Committee in Burlington, VT, on an issue of
critical importance: preserving an open Internet. Our committee heard
testimony about the need for concrete, fundamental protections to
ensure that the Internet is not abused by those who control how we
connect to the Internet.
The timing of the hearing was not a coincidence. I convened it during
a week when Americans were gathering to celebrate what our Founders put
in motion more than 200 years ago. While no one then could have
imagined how important the Internet would become, the sentiment and
priorities expressed at the hearing would have made our Founders proud.
We heard from hard-working business owners and consumers about the role
of the Internet in enhancing free expression, and also as a free and
open marketplace where competition drives innovation.
I brought the Judiciary Committee to Burlington to show the Federal
Communications Commission and Congress that the decisions we make on
this issue will have deep and wide impact far outside of the Nation's
capital, and in the economies of our local communities.
Witnesses at this field hearing warned of how the FCC's proposed
approach to new Net neutrality rules would actually harm small
businesses, community institutions, and consumers--the people we have
in every one of our States whom we represent. I will give an example.
Cabot Orton, the proprietor of the Vermont Country Store, testified
that they started off as just a local general store in Vermont and now
have an e-commerce site that accounts for 40 percent of their overall
revenue. One-third of their 450 employees support those Internet
transactions. These are a lot of people hired in our little State of
Vermont because they have open access to the Internet.
Mr. Orton was clear about his concerns. He said:
We're not asking for special treatment, incentives or
subsidies. All the small business community asks is simply to
preserve and protect Internet commerce as it exists today,
which has served all businesses remarkably well.
I have to agree with him.
Another Vermont small business owner, Lisa Groeneveld, explained that
her company Logic Supply spent money building a quality product, not
purchasing preferential Internet access. She said that ``without an
Open and Fair Internet based on the equal access, our business wouldn't
even exist today.'' This successful company is an amazing example of
how the Internet can help grow small businesses in Vermont.
Both of these witnesses testified that the success they have achieved
with their online businesses would have been difficult to accomplish if
the Internet had been a pay-to-play world when they initially launched
their sites.
Think of all the companies, whether in Vermont, Massachusetts, or any
other State, next year or the year after that want to launch online if
suddenly the rules were different for them than for a company that has
a lot of money.
We heard other perspectives too. Vermont's State librarian, Martha
Reid, testified about the need to ensure equal access for those who
rely on public libraries for their Internet access, which includes many
people in rural areas.
Vermonters know of my love for the library I frequented growing up,
the Kellogg Hubbard Library. I received my first library card there, in
Montpelier, when I was 4. I went there to learn, not just to read.
Ms. Reid testified that ``all Americans--including the most
disenfranchised citizens, those who would have no way to access the
Internet without the library--need to be able to use Internet resources
on an equal footing.''
Ms. Reid's testimony was supported by former FCC Commissioner Michael
Copps, who explained that ``an Internet controlled and managed for the
benefit of the `haves' discriminates against our rights not just as
consumers but, more importantly, as citizens.''
The testimony from these individuals offers a relevant selection of
the real-world experiences that have to be heard by the FCC and
Congress as this debate continues. That is why I took the hearing 500
miles from the Senate--so they could be heard.
I don't want to see an Internet that is divided into the haves and
have-nots. I agree with the Vermonters who testified: I don't want to
see an Internet where those who can afford to pay muffle the voices of
those who cannot.
An online world that is split into fast lanes and slow lanes, where
pay-to-play deals dictate who can reach consumers, runs counter to
everything on which the Internet was founded.
Last month I joined Congresswoman Doris Matsui to introduce the
Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act that requires the FCC to ban
online pay-to-play deals. Open Internet principles are the bill of
rights for the online world. We must get this right. If we fail to get
it right, I guarantee that we will not get another chance and we will
not have these companies growing and starting up throughout all our
States.
I see the distinguished Senator from Montana here. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Constitutional Amendment
Mr. TESTER. Madam President, back in 2012 the people of Montana stood
up against the influence of corporations and big money in elections. By
a 3-to-1 margin, they called on their congressional delegation to
introduce a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's
Citizens United decision. That ruling paved the way for more secret
money in politics. It allowed corporations to make contributions to
political campaigns on the grounds that corporations should have the
same right to freedom of speech as any individual.
In response to the overwhelming vote by the people of Montana, I
proudly introduced this amendment, which affirms what we all know:
Corporations are not people, and they do not have the same rights as
you or I.
Two years later Americans are realizing that Montanans were pretty
forward-looking. That is because in Montana we value independence. We
value our individual rights. And we don't think a faceless entity
should be able to tell us what to do. We don't like it when secretive,
shadowy groups try to tell us how to vote, and we don't like it when
corporations dictate our health care decisions. But that is exactly
what happened with last week's Hobby Lobby decision. The Supreme Court
decided corporations can limit their employees' health care options,
thereby restricting our individual freedoms. That is un-American.
Affording corporations the same constitutional rights to speech--and
now to religion--that Montanans and all American people cherish is the
exact opposite of what our Founding Fathers envisioned. This is not
freedom. It is a slippery slope to granting large corporations greater
power over everyday Americans' lives.
With the Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court found that
corporations can hold religious-based objections to providing insurance
coverage for certain medical care. The corporations do not have
religions; people do. The First Amendment was meant to protect
individuals' religious freedoms, not those of corporations. Now, the
religious beliefs of corporations will dictate the health care options
of people. It starts with contraceptive care, but where does it end?
It is clear that the Supreme Court is putting the rights of
corporations over the rights of people. So much for treating all
Americans equally. If you are a corporation with money, you could
influence our elections to a far greater extent than ever before. Now,
if you have a corporation, you can influence our access to health care
too.
Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent:
The decision would deny legions of women who do not hold
their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive coverage.
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Let me say that again. These are Justice Ginsburg's words:
The decision would deny legions of women who do not hold
their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive care.
Where will this end?
Being a woman cannot be a preexisting condition. Contraception is
basic health care, and 99 percent of American women currently use or
have used birth control at some point in their lives. But now a
manless, faceless corporation can stand between women and their access
to this basic care, all because an activist Supreme Court thinks
corporations have the same rights as people.
This Supreme Court continues to redefine individual rights as
corporate rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion. We have to
ask ourselves, where will this end? It seems as if anything is possible
when it comes to this Supreme Court, where five men can determine a
woman's health care. But it doesn't need to be this way. My
constitutional amendment makes it 100 percent clear that the rights
enshrined in our Constitution are meant for the American people--real
folks who work day in and day out to put food on the table--not
corporate entities.
My amendment also allows the American people to once again regulate
corporations through the representatives they elect in State and
Federal government.
I encourage all my colleagues to join me and Senators Murphy, Begich,
Walsh, Markey, and Whitehouse in supporting this commonsense step. But
it is going to take a comprehensive approach to make sure real people,
not corporations, are in charge. Whether it is elections or health
care, people should be free to make their own choices without the undue
influence of corporate entities.
Montanans voted in 2012 to limit constitutional rights to individual
people, but it was 100 years earlier that we also voted to limit
corporate influence in elections after wealthy mining companies bought
influence and even paid for a U.S. Senate seat. We recognized the
negative impact wealthy corporations were having on our electoral
process. But this Supreme Court, using its Citizens United decision as
justification, overturned our century-old law just 2 years ago,
creating the same kind of election-spending free-for-all in Montana
that we are witnessing nationwide.
Before the Hobby Lobby decision, the fight against corporate
influence was mainly about making sure real people and their ideas were
in charge of elections. But now it is no longer just about a democracy;
it is about keeping corporations out of our private lives, out of our
bedrooms, and out of our religious decisions. It is an even bigger
fight now.
If you don't want to find out where corporate influence and the
Supreme Court will go next, I would encourage you to join me and fight
back with smart, responsible measures that will put real people back in
charge of our lives. Our democracy has been under attack before but
never to this extent.
Mr. President, I yield the floor. I would suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Executive Power
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, the great pamphleteer of the American
Revolution, Thomas Paine, famously characterized our Nation at its
founding by asserting that in America the law is king. This sentiment
has undergirded centuries of our Nation's political culture: The rule
of law protects us from arbitrary government actions. It is what
guarantees our liberties, it is what fosters our prosperity and our
flourishing as a free people, and it is a source of our Republic's
legitimacy. For as the Declaration of Independence teaches, governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
For these reasons, when drafting the Constitution, the Framers
obligated the President to take care that our laws be faithfully
executed, but they were careful not to give the President the authority
to make or change the law on his own.
Our Nation's Founders knew, in the sage words of Montesquieu, that
``in all tyrannical governments . . . the right both of making and of
enforcing the laws is vested in one and the same man, or . . . body of
men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no
public liberty.''
To safeguard our liberties as the Constitution requires, the
Constitution vests Federal legislative powers in the Congress--the
House of Representatives and the Senate--which were designed to engage
in a particularly thorough and deliberative legislative process. By
ratifying the Constitution, the American people established this system
as the supreme law of the land applying to all of us--including the
President.
Despite these Constitutional foundations, President Obama has simply
decided that he ``won't take no for an answer'' when Congress refuses
to go along with his far left agenda. In direct opposition to our
centuries-old system of legislation and the binding authority of the
Constitution, the President has audaciously declared that ``when
Congress won't act, I will.'' And he has followed up these threats with
a variety of unilateral executive actions, many of which are flatly
inconsistent with the law and the Constitution.
Over the past weeks and months I have come to the Senate floor to
speak out about a series of specific instances that exemplified the
brazen lawlessness of this administration. This pervasive and
illegitimate outreach has come in many different forms. We have seen
the President regulate contrary to the plain text of the law, simply
ignoring the clear commands of duly enacted Federal statutes. For
example, a hallmark of the President's so-called pen-and-phone strategy
has been an Executive order forcing contractors to raise their minimum
wage. He issued this directive despite the fact that a Federal statute
already governs the minimum wage for Federal contractors.
Although a different statute gives the President some discretion in
the area of Federal procurement, its plain language demands, as courts
of law have upheld, that there be a sufficient nexus between the
President's orders and the statute's stated goal of efficiency and
economy in Federal procurement. President Obama's order increasing
contractors' labor costs by hiking their minimum wage is thus wholly
inconsistent with the law.
We have seen the Obama administration seek to rewrite existing law
and thereby usurp Congress's legislative authority through the use of
conditioned waivers. Consider how the Department of Education has
issued waivers of No Child Left Behind's requirements to 43 of the 50
States and the District of Columbia.
Even when Democrats had large majorities in both the House of
Representatives and the Senate, President Obama refused to pursue
legislative reauthorization of the statute to set realistic goals going
forward. Apparently, he wanted to avoid spending his energies and
political capital on a legislative process that might expose divisions
within his own party or force him to compromise.
The President chose simply to establish an entirely different set of
education policies by attaching his own conditions to the waivers that
States need to receive Federal money. His administration has not been
shy about enforcing conditions that bear little resemblance to
provisions of the law itself.
The State of Washington learned this recently when it became the
first to lose its waiver and much of its Federal funding primarily
because it did not meet the administration's mandate for teacher and
principal evaluation--a mandate that has no grounding in the actual
statute.
We have seen President Obama and his subordinates stretch what lawful
authorities the executive branch does have beyond recognition to
advance its preferred policies. Take, for example, the Nation's drug
laws, an area in which the Obama administration decided it disagrees
with the criminal statutes on the books and wants to implement a
different policy. The President has demonstrated an eagerness to do so
unilaterally, no matter the governing Federal law, and no matter the
broad and bipartisan support for sentencing reform in Congress. The
administration's new clemency push for drug
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offenders seeks to employ the President's specific constitutional
power--one limited to relieve individual instances of injustice--to
provide relief to large swaths of criminals who fit a few broad
criteria. The President has also directed major changes over which
Federal drug crimes are charged and at what level to do this. His
administration has cited prosecutorial discretion--a limited authority
derived from the power to adapt enforcement for an individual's
specific circumstances--to implement what are, in fact, broad standards
affecting thousands upon thousands of prosecutions.
Given the scope of these actions, compared to the Executive's
narrowly tailored authorities, the administration's invocation of
prosecutorial discretion and the clemency power have become transparent
excuses to justify flouting existing Federal law.
We have seen President Obama claim the power to gut the law by
unilaterally creating gaping enforcement carve-outs, thereby
effectively rewriting policy set by legislation. Take immigration, an
area in which many of us--myself included--support reform but which is
currently governed by existing law. For years the Obama administration
has advanced a growing number of enforcement carve-outs for
increasingly expansive classes of illegal immigrants. First, it
exempted those brought here as children, then veterans, then their
families. Now the administration is contemplating excluding from the
application of duly enacted immigration law anyone who has not
committed serious felonies. While nearly everyone agrees that violent
criminals should be our highest priority, the administration has gone
much further and essentially declared its intention to make current
immigration law a dead letter in virtually every other case.
We have seen the Obama administration openly ignore its statutory
obligations without meaningful justification. Consider the President's
decision to release the top five Taliban leaders in U.S. custody
without notifying Congress, as required by Federal law. The
administration's excuses for delaying notification could not stand up
to scrutiny under the President's own rationales. Indeed, the
administration's own statements demonstrate that it deliberately
withheld advance notification of the release from Congress for the
illegitimate purpose of minimizing congressional opposition.
We have seen some of the Obama administration's worst abuses of
executive power in creating and implementing its signature legislative
programs. In Dodd-Frank, for example, the administration created a new
agency with unprecedented and unchecked power--no meaningful
administrative controls on its power, no congressional control over its
budget, and no effective judicial review of its far-reaching decisions.
And of course, any discussion of executive overreach by this
administration must include ObamaCare. Back when the administration was
writing that 2,000-plus page monstrosity, the bill's proponents argued
that its length and complexity were necessary evils--that its many
intricate parts were essential to achieving the bill's promised
objectives.
The individual mandate, the employer mandate, the minimum coverage
requirements, the cuts to Medicare Advantage, and the limits for
subsidies to State-run exchanges--we were promised these provisions and
others were both critical and carefully timed to expand coverage and
rein in costs. Yet, when the time came to implement the law, the
administration's tune changed. To justify violating a number of clear
statutory mandates, the administration has mustered a weak and
unconvincing hodgepodge of legal acrobatics--all for the purpose of
allowing the administration to avoid enforcing the central provisions
of its own signature law.
Consider some of these particularly egregious justifications:
claiming that limited transition authority exercised by one agency
justified another agency exerting that power even more broadly; or
asserting that subjective impressions of excessive cost could justify a
hardship exemption, when the statute specifically defines excessive
costs in objective terms; or defining explicit, carefully timed
deadlines written into the law by Congress, the timing of which is
supposed to anchor the whole statutory scheme; or abusing a small pilot
program to mitigate the law's vast cuts to Medicare Advantage; or
simply ignoring a critical provision limiting how billions of dollars
in tax subsidies are to be spent.
These are only a few examples of this administration's lawlessness in
implementing ObamaCare. I could continue on about the significant legal
concerns surrounding this administration's abusive handling of high-
risk pools, its dubious actions involving the small business exchange,
its sweetheart deals granting unauthorized exemptions for labor unions,
and many other similarly problematic actions.
But the point is clear: Time and again, the Obama administration has
flouted its constitutional responsibilities, exceeded its legitimate
authority, ignored duly enacted law, and sought to escape any
accountability for its unilateralism.
Today I have simply scratched the surface of the Obama
administration's legally dubious actions. I could also discuss the way
the administration is manipulating the Endangered Species Act to assert
control over private property, or the EPA's many abuses: its existing
source rule, its cross-State air pollution rule, its waters of the
United States rule, and its CAFE standards. Or I could catalog the
illegal actions of the President's appointees to the National Labor
Relations Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Federal
Communications Commission.
In each of these areas, the Obama administration's executive
overreach simply cannot stand--and it won't. The President is rightly
facing increased scrutiny and criticism in a range of areas for his
illegitimate approach. Over the past two weeks, the Supreme Court
strongly rebuked the President's lawlessness in three key cases.
The Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA case involves one of the most
controversial issues debated today: regulating carbon dioxide emissions
in an effort to stop global warming. Americans and their elected
representatives have been seriously debating whether and how to pursue
that, just as we should when weighty matters of national policy are
considered. Congress has considered various pieces of legislation over
the years to grant Federal authority to regulate carbon dioxide
emissions, most notably President Obama's 2009 cap-and-trade bill. Each
time we have considered such legislation, the majority of us have made
the careful choice that the purported benefits are not worth the
undeniably massive costs: hundreds of thousands of jobs destroyed and
gas and electricity prices sent soaring.
President Obama, though, told us again that he ``won't take no for an
answer''--or, in other words, that he refuses to accept that the
Constitution delegates to the people's representatives in Congress--and
not to him alone--the power to make or change the law. Defying Congress
and the law, he claimed authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate
carbon emissions from powerplants. But the Clean Air Act plainly does
not provide him that authority.
In attempting to provide a shred of legal justification for its
actions, the Obama administration took a detailed provision of the law,
complete with precise numerical thresholds, and unilaterally rewrote it
through regulation to claim power Congress never, in fact, gave.
The Supreme Court rightly struck down the administration's abuse of
authority in this instance, as it has done in past cases. But,
unfortunately, such regulatory overreach has become so common in the
Obama administration that Federal bureaucrats have become experts in
manufacturing supposed legal authority out of thin air. And the courts
are simply unable to keep up with the explosion of executive overreach
by President Obama's administration.
Perhaps the most extreme example of such executive abuse was at issue
in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case. Under the auspices of ObamaCare,
the Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation
requiring employers to pay for a full complement of birth control
methods for every employee. The Obama administration applied this
mandate to almost all employers--even those who run small, closely-held
businesses and whose deeply-held religious beliefs conflict with the
mandate.
[[Page S4391]]
Some media outlets have focused on the conflict between this latest
ObamaCare abuse and the principles enshrined in the First Amendment's
protection of the free exercise of religion. Others have focused on the
Obama administration's argument that corporations are not people--as if
the particular form of how individuals organize themselves to do
business somehow allows the Federal Government to trample their
religious liberties.
But in all of the sound and the fury, a central point has been lost:
The Hobby Lobby case was actually about a direct threat to the
separation of powers. It pitted the Obama administration's unilateral
mandate against a law passed by Congress.
In issuing this regulation, the Obama administration completely
disregarded a duly enacted Federal statute, the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act, which specifically bars such government infringement
on Americans' right to exercise their religious beliefs. The ObamaCare
contraception mandate flies in the face of the law's requirement that
the government not substantially burden the exercise of religion unless
it is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government
purpose. I know. I was the prime sponsor of that bill in the Senate,
and I got my friend Senator Kennedy to go along with me. The President
said it was one of the most important bills in history, that religious
freedom may be the most important of all of our freedoms.
As a lead author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it has
been particularly frustrating to see the Justices of the Supreme Court
wrongly criticized for supposedly limiting access to birth control. In
reality, all the Court did was hold the Obama administration
accountable to the law--specifically, a law that passed Congress with
near unanimity and was signed by President Clinton, who lauded the law.
I was there. I was on the south lawn when he signed that. So were many
others.
In the NLRB v. Noel Canning case, by contrast, the administration
violated one of the Constitution's central checks on Presidential
power, the requirement that nominations of principal officers receive
the advice and consent of the Senate except during the recess of the
Senate.
Concern about Executive appointment abuse was on the minds of our
Fathers when they devised the Senate's role in the process. Their fears
were strikingly similar to what President Obama has sought to make
reality: a radical set of National Labor Relations Board appointees who
promised to tip the balance of the Board toward an extreme and divisive
agenda and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director nominee
endowed with unprecedented power--no checks on his removal, no
congressional control over his budget, and no effective judicial review
of his actions.
But President Obama again proclaimed he would not take no for an
answer and claimed the power to use the recess appointment power to
install these four nominees, even though the Senate had completely
different rules. But even the Department of Justice admitted that a 3-
day adjournment was too short to give the President lawful authority to
bypass the Senate.
Instead, the President audaciously claimed the power to decide that,
in his opinion, our so-called pro forma sessions during this period did
not count as sessions of the Senate, even though they had always
counted, and the Senate should decide its own rules, and that has
always been the rule around here.
Not only, as Hamilton explained in Federalist 69, did the Framers
specifically deny our President the King's power to deem the
legislature out of session, but during these sessions the Senate was
fully capable of engaging in its business. In fact, during similar
sessions the previous fall, the Senate had twice passed legislation
that President Obama himself signed.
So extreme were the administration's arguments that the Supreme Court
unanimously held President Obama's actions unconstitutional. In doing
so, the Court confirmed that the Constitution does not create in the
President an endlessly flexible power to bypass Congress when he
happens to disagree with us--as if our advice-and-consent role were
merely an inconvenience to be avoided, rather than the organizing
principle of how the constitutional process is designed to work.
Taken together, these three cases represent a resounding victory for
the rule of law and the Constitution over the President's
unilateralism, and they are far from unique examples. The Court has
ruled unanimously, by a vote of 9 to 0, against the Obama
administration 20 times--20 times, 9 to zip. These include many
significant cases, such as the Hosanna-Tabor case, in which the Obama
administration tried to control a religious organization's hiring of
its ministers; the Sackett case, in which the Obama administration
tried to take away the lawful right to challenge unlawful EPA fines of
up to $75,000 a day on a poor couple who were just trying to improve
their property; and the Arizona case, in which the Obama administration
tried to displace State law with mere Federal enforcement priorities.
But instead of taking these rebukes to heart, the President has
doubled down on his go-it-alone attitude. He has vowed more Executive
orders of questionable legality, he has reaffirmed his commitment to an
extreme anti-energy agenda and a willingness to abuse his legal
authorities to unleash an onslaught of new regulations, and he has used
the mistrust he created by refusing to enforce existing immigration law
to justify further nonenforcement.
President Obama's shameful defiance in the face of the Supreme
Court's rulings means our fight against his lawless overreach has only
just begun. While we should applaud the Court's recent decisions, we
should also realize the limits of courtroom litigation to check
executive branch abuse. Indeed, the Obama administration has gone to
great lengths to shield its lawlessness from judicial review by
surreptitiously crafting many of such actions to prevent any plaintiff
from having legal standing to launch a challenge in court, by
aggressively challenging the legitimacy of suits that have been filed,
by significantly curtailing the availability of judicial review, and by
brazenly packing the DC Circuit--the Nation's most important court for
most regulatory cases--with compliant judges.
The Speaker of the House has announced plans to vote on a measure to
authorize a lawsuit against President Obama for his unfaithful
execution of the law. While I support the legislative branch using
every tool at our disposal to hold this President accountable to his
constitutional obligations, we should also be mindful of our decades-
long fight to limit the judicial power to its proper role under the
Constitution. We should not seek to replace one constitutional
travesty--the lawlessness of this President--with another by breaking
down the structural limits on the judicial power. On the other hand,
the House may very well succeed because of the actions of this
President because something has to be done to curtail these
inappropriate, unilateral, illegal actions.
In the end, we cannot rely on the courts alone. With such a powerful
and aggressive President, all of us must stand and fight back against
this executive lawlessness. I urge all my colleagues--both Democratic
and Republican--to use the rightful and legitimate constitutional
authorities the Framers gave us to stand and resist the President's
recklessness.
But whether blinded by partisan loyalty to the President or too
inexperienced to understand this body from any other perspective than
having a like-minded Senate majority and President, my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle have allowed--even facilitated--this
administration's attempts to break down the constitutional checks on
Executive power.
I urge them to change course. That is the tradition of some of the
greatest Senators on both sides of the aisle--of Mike Mansfield, Howard
Baker, and Robert Byrd. That is the purpose of the Constitution's
division of powers, for as Madison counseled in Federalist 51,
``. . . the great security against a gradual concentration of the
several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who
administer each department the necessary constitutional means and
personal motives to resist encroachment of the others.''
If this body is to maintain a meaningful role in preserving liberty
and prosperity, we must dutifully fulfill
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our constitutional obligation of checking the President's unlawful
attempts to assert illegitimate power.
I began my service here in 1977. Bob Byrd was the newly elected
majority leader. R.C. Byrd was one of the alltime procedural experts in
this body. He was a very strong personality. He would not be putting up
with what this President is doing. He would not be putting up with the
usurpation of the Senate's power or of the legislature's power, the
Congress's power.
I call on my Democratic friends on the other side to start standing
up. If they do not start standing up, I think the people are going to
hold them accountable because these are separated powers and the
legislative body is supposed to handle these matters and not some
President unilaterally changing the law at his whimsy.
With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
____________________