[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 114 (Monday, July 21, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4650-S4656]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LEGISLATIVE SESSION
______
BRING JOBS HOME ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will resume legislative session.
The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to S. 2569. Is that
pending?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct; the motion is pending.
Cloture Motion
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a cloture motion on that matter at
the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to report the motion.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
proceed to calendar No. 453, S. 2569, a bill to provide an
incentive for businesses to bring jobs back to America.
Harry Reid, John E. Walsh, Debbie Stabenow, Amy
Klobuchar, Patty Murray, Bernard Sanders, Tom Harkin,
Richard J. Durbin, Tom Udall, Robert P. Casey, Jr.,
Christopher Murphy, Tammy Baldwin, Jon Tester, Mark
Begich, Sheldon Whitehouse, Carl Levin, Christopher A.
Coons.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory
quorum under rule XXII be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from California.
Infrastructure
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I am very proud to be on the floor this
evening with colleagues for whom I have a great deal of respect. We
have been working so hard across party lines to call the Nation's
attention to the problems we are facing funding our transportation
system. We all know there are many things in the world we cannot
control and many things that are causing tremendous frustration.
I went home this weekend and my constituents came up to me and said:
Senator, we cannot even look at our television sets with the tragedies
that are unfolding. They feel, as I do and I know our President does,
that the tragedies we are witnessing have been born out of historic
animosities, and it is very difficult. If we could wave our wand and
make things better in all of these areas, we would do so. We will try,
and we will push. We are having a meeting with the Foreign Relations
Committee, and we are going to move to speak sanity to the world. There
is a crisis we can avert and there is a problem we can solve, and that
is fixing the highway trust fund shortfall.
For those who don't know, the highway trust fund was created by
President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. He created the trust fund, and it
was a brilliant move because he realized and said that we are
developing an Interstate Highway System. He said, this is one country,
and we have to be united, a physically united country, so we can move
goods and people and make this country work. Since then, we have always
had bipartisan support for the trust fund.
Why is it in trouble? The trust fund is in trouble because the
Federal tax gas receipts have not kept pace with inflation and the
rising cost of keeping highways and bridges safe. Some of our bridges
are well over 50 years old. I have lived a while, and I can tell you
that when you get a little older, you need a little attention, and the
fact is our infrastructure is aging and we have to pay attention to it.
This is not the time to walk away from this crisis.
Some may wonder why Senator Boxer is showing a photo of a football
stadium. This is actually a picture of one of the Super Bowls. There
are 100,000 people in this photograph. Do you know there are 700,000
unemployed construction workers? They would fill seven of these
stadiums. The good news is there used to be 2 million unemployed
construction workers at the height of the recession. We have gotten it
down to 700,000, but we still cannot afford this.
What is the economic impact of the failure to act? It is pretty
simple--millions of jobs. Because you have the construction jobs, and
then you have all the benefits to communities when we have the workers
around there--whether it is our cities, being able to have restaurants
that are filled, and all the kinds of things which happen when you put
people to work in a community.
Millions of jobs and thousands of businesses depend on the highway
trust fund and those businesses and those workers are counting on us.
You may say: Is there really a problem? Well, 70,000 of our bridges are
structurally deficient. Keep these numbers in mind in case you are
asked about it at a party--70,000 bridges are deficient and 700,000
construction workers are unemployed and 50 percent of our highways are
in less than good condition.
Is this a frivolous issue we are talking about here? The 2012 Urban
Mobility Report from Texas A&M said the financial cost of traffic
congestion in 2011 was $121 billion, or about $818 per commuter. Of
that total, about $27 billion was wasted time and diesel fuel from
trucks moving goods on the system.
A 2013 survey by the National Association of Manufacturers says 65
percent answered that our infrastructure is insufficient.
I will tell you some of the ideas to fix it. I am not just out here
saying words. I have ideas on how to fix it. One of the ideas was put
forth by Senators Murphy and Corker. We will hear from Senator Corker
in a moment.
One of their suggestions was to modify the gas tax to meet current
needs, and that is pretty straightforward. We have been doing this
forever. It is very simple and supported by the Chamber of Commerce and
supported by just about everybody.
There is another way to do it that was thought of by the Republican
Governor of Virginia. I support this. Let me be clear, I will support
all of these measures.
The second suggestion is to replace the existing cents-per-gallon gas
tax with a fee on the wholesale price of gasoline from the refinery. I
like that because it is a broader way to pay for it.
I drive an electric hybrid, and as a result, I don't fill my car very
often. In 2 years we filled it up 4 times. I am not paying my fair
share. This would be a more broad-based fee.
The third suggestion is repatriation, which is a very interesting
concept, and I know Senator Paul supports it. It is complicated in
terms of the way it scores, but the fact is it would bring in $23
billion over the first couple of years, and it would give a break to
some of our businesses.
So many of my colleagues spent so much time on this. I will not go on
except to read the names of the supporters of this legislation.
The supporters of the proposal that Senators Murphy and Corker have
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proposed are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AAA, the American Trucking
Association. This is huge.
Also, we have received letters from so many people.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a letter I received
today from Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and 11 of his
predecessors who served 7 Republican and Democratic Presidents--
Johnson, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and
Obama--printed in the Record. They all wrote an open letter saying that
we need to pass a long-term transportation bill.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Public Affairs,
July 21, 2014]
Open Letter From Secretary Foxx and 11 Former DOT Secretaries Urging
Congress To Address Long-Term Transportation Needs
(By Ryan Daniels)
Washington.--As Congress considers legislation to avoid a
shortfall of the Highway Trust Fund, Transportation Secretary
Anthony Foxx and 11 of his predecessors offered the following
open letter to Congress. In addition to Secretary Foxx,
Secretaries Ray LaHood, Mary Peters, Norman Mineta, Rodney
Slater, Frederico Pena, Samuel Skinner, Andrew Card, James
Burnley, Elizabeth Dole, William Coleman and Alan Boyd all
signed the letter. Their message: Congress' work doesn't end
with the bill under consideration. Transportation in America
still needs a much larger, longer-term investment. The text
of the letter is below:
This week, it appears that Congress will act to stave off
the looming insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund The bill, if
passed, should extend surface transportation funding until
next May.
We are hopeful that Congress appears willing to avert the
immediate crisis. But we want to be clear: This bill will not
``fix'' America's transportation system. For that, we need a
much larger and longer-term investment. On this, all twelve
of us agree.
Taken together, we have led the U.S. Department of
Transportation for over 35 years. One of us was there on day
one, at its founding. We've served seven presidents, both
Republicans and Democrats, including Lyndon Johnson, Gerald
Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George
W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Suffice it to say, we've been around the block. We probably
helped pave it. So it is with some knowledge and experience
that we can write: Never in our nation's history has
America's transportation system been on a more unsustainable
course.
In recent years, Congress has largely funded transportation
in fits and starts. Federal funding bills once sustained our
transportation system for up to six years, but over the past
five years, Congress has passed 27 short-term measures.
Today, we are more than a decade past the last six-year
funding measure.
This is no way to run a railroad, fill a pothole, or repair
a bridge. In fact, the unpredictability about when, or if,
funding will come has caused states to delay or cancel
projects altogether.
The result has been an enormous infrastructure deficit--a
nationwide backlog of repairing and rebuilding. Right now,
there are so many structurally deficient bridges in America
that, if you lined them up end-to-end, they'd stretch from
Boston to Miami. What's worse, the American people are paying
for this inaction in a number of ways.
Bad roads, for example, are costing individual drivers
hundreds of dollars a year due to side effects like extra
wear-and-tear on their vehicles and time spent in traffic.
Simply put, the United States of America is in a united
state of disrepair, a crisis made worse by the fact that,
over the next generation, more will be demanded of our
transportation system than ever before. By 2050, this country
will be home to up to 100 million new people. And we'll have
to move 14 billion additional tons of freight, almost twice
what we move now.
Without increasing investment in transportation, we won't
be able to meet these challenges. According to the American
Society of Civil Engineers, we need to invest $1.8 trillion
by 2020 just to bring our surface transportation
infrastructure to an adequate level.
So, what America needs is to break this cycle of governing
crisis-to-crisis, only to enact a stopgap measure at the last
moment. We need to make a commitment to the American people
and the American economy.
There is hope on this front. Some leaders in Washington,
including those at the U.S. Department of Transportation, are
stepping forward with ideas for paying for our roads, rails,
and transit systems for the long-term.
While we--the twelve transportation secretaries--may differ
on the details of these proposals, there is one essential
goal with which all twelve of us agree: We cannot continue
funding our transportation with measures that are short-term
and short of the funding we need.
On this, we are of one mind. And Congress should be, too.
Adequately funding our transportation system won't be an
easy task for our nation's lawmakers. But that doesn't mean
it's impossible. Consensus has been brokered before.
Until recently, Congress understood that, as America grows,
so must our investments in transportation. And for more than
half a century, they voted for that principle--and increased
funding--with broad, bipartisan majorities in both houses.
We believe they can, and should, do so again.
Mrs. BOXER. We did it in the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Senator Carper and I led the charge with Senators Vitter and Barrasso.
We did our job. We were able to come together with Senator Sessions,
Senator Vitter, Senator Whitehouse, and Senator Sanders--left to
right--in our committee. They came together to agree on a 6-year bill.
So what is the problem? It is ridiculous. Unfortunately, the House--
and this is not good--decided to kick the can down the road--I know it
is a cliche, but it is true--until the end of May. Do you know what it
means? It means we will not do anything until then, and it will be
right up against the new construction season. Nobody will enter into a
long-term contract between now and then. And so we are hoping we can
change the way the House and the Finance Committee thought about it,
and my colleagues have been leading on this issue.
I am on the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment that would say: Instead of
funding this highway bill through next year, get our work done this
year. Who is supporting getting it done this year? The U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association,
National Association of Manufacturers, Associated General Contractors,
American Trucking Associations, International Union of Operating
Engineers, and LiUNA.
If anybody knows politics, they know these groups hardly ever agree
on a darn thing, and they agree we should act this year.
I am proud of my friend here, for whom I will yield shortly.
I support their efforts wholeheartedly and will do everything I can
to ensure we don't just do smoke-and-mirrors. Explain to me when you do
the smoke-and-mirrors--taking the pension and controlling how people
get coverage through their pensions--how that has anything to do with
transportation.
The gas tax? Yes. A tax on oil? Yes.
Let's think about this. Let's step to the plate and do what is right.
I am very proud to be in concert with my friend, and I yield the
floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I thank the leader for her comments and
her ability to build consensus around the reauthorization as she did in
the committee.
This is the fifth time since 2008--I have been here since January of
2007--that we have done a temporary extension. It is an absolute
embarrassment. Not only do we not get the benefit of the economic
growth that would come from people knowing there is a program in place
where they can enter into long-term contracts and they can buy
construction equipment, in addition to that, this is a tremendous
problem of absolutely being generational theft.
I will get to those comments, and I thank the Senator from Delaware
for his leadership and for being here on the floor. I will be fairly
brief and will yield the floor for him.
I think if every Senator were asked if they were opposed to using
budget gimmicks, they would say yes. I am sure the Presiding Officer
would say the same. They say the budget should not be used as an offset
to pay for spending. Time and time again, Congress avoids the tough
decision and instead throws our kids under the bus so we can tell
people back home that the legislation was passed and paid for. I have
long been against the disgraceful practice of spending money today and
paying for it in the future. It is shameful, it is irresponsible, and
it is generational theft. Yet here we are this week looking for a way
to pass a bill that would pay for spending that is already happening by
using a blatant budget scheme called pension smoothing.
Pension smoothing is one of the worst kinds of budget gimmicks. Not
[[Page S4652]]
only does it allow Congress to spend money today and pay through
savings accrued in the future, but the gimmick actually loses money.
Let me say that one more time. The gimmick actually loses money and
drives our Nation deeper into debt.
Pension smoothing is Congress cooking the books. It shifts tax
revenue that Treasury would collect in the future to the present. It
starts losing money when the smoothing ends and continues beyond the
10-year window--combining a highway trust fund bailout that spends 10
years of revenue in 10 months. Let me say that one more time. What we
are going to be voting on this week spends 10 years' worth of revenue
in 10 months.
I just want to say that my friends, my Republican friends--all of
us--had problems when the President was trying to pass this health care
bill because he used 6 years' worth of costs and 10 years' worth of
revenues, which is orders of magnitude better than what is getting
ready to happen in this bill this week--again, 10 months' worth of
spending, 10 years' worth of revenues.
Pension smoothing also increases the chances that taxpayers will be
on the hook for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation bailout
sometime in the future because it weakens the corporate pension system.
So here we are weakening our balance sheet and simultaneously weakening
the PBGC. The PBGC deficit already exceeds $30 billion. At the expense
of taxpayers and workers who rely on pension plans, this budget scheme
benefits big businesses while allowing Congress to avoid real spending
decisions.
I understand the conventional wisdom is that in the haste to leave
town this August, enough Senators will be here to support the House
bill with the pension smoothing gimmick included and not even try to do
better. That is the conventional wisdom. I also understand that some
will try to scare Members into voting for the House bill by claiming
the House cannot pass anything except this short-term patch endorsed by
the President with $11 billion in gimmicks to extend the highway
funding until June. Although 367 House Members voted for this rushed
package, it is the responsibility of the Senate to weigh in and offer
an alternative.
As I have done in previous years, I will continue to oppose these
short-term patches to the highway trust fund that allow Congress to
avoid doing its job in passing a long-term, sustainable solution to
reform and pay for the program. At the very least we should cut the
gimmicks in this bill by $3 billion and do away with pension smoothing.
I rarely use exhibits, but this is the gimmick of all gimmicks. Look
at what happens when we use it to pay for a short-term bill: We collect
the money during the window that it is counted, and then from then on
we are losing money. This is a double loser.
It is amazing that we could even come up with these kinds of schemes
to pay for an already insolvent program, and we do it by putting our
country further in debt in the future and, candidly, weakening our
corporate pension system.
I am pleased there is bipartisan momentum to change this. I hope my
colleagues will support the amendment Senators Carper, Boxer, and I are
offering that would reject the budget gimmicks in this bill and force
Congress to stop shirking its responsibility so we can work toward
passing a long-term transportation bill.
There is going to be a push by some to say that we shouldn't take up
anything the rest of this year. I would think every Member of this
Congress who realizes we have allowed ourselves to get into the jam we
are in would want to show the responsibility of actually dealing with
this this year. We have a number of Members who are retiring. Many of
them spent a lot of time on issues such as this. I would like to see
them have the opportunity to come up with a long-term solution. I would
imagine that if we did that, the House would want to support a more
fiscally conservative alternative, which is what our amendment
achieves.
I hope we will all back our words with actions and reject this
irresponsible pay-for once and for all and do something far more
responsible.
Before I yield the floor, I want to say I really appreciate Senator
Carper's continual effort as a former Governor to try to do those
things that are common sense, that are pragmatic, and that make our
country stronger along the way.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, before the Senator from Tennessee leaves,
I wish to thank him very much for joining Senator Boxer and me in this
Senate to create a dynamic that will enable us to do our job. He shows
time and again the courage to keep out of step when everybody else is
marching to the wrong tune. So does Barbara Boxer. She has shown
extraordinary leadership in the Environment and Public Works Committee,
on which I serve. I serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on
Transportation and Infrastructure. She and Senator Vitter and Senator
Barrasso, with a little help from me, were able to guide through
committee and report a secure transportation bill--a plan for the
transportation for our country, including roads, highways, bridges,
transit systems--and report it out of committee without amendment,
without a dissenting vote, and bring it to the floor of the Senate.
If it were that easy, we wouldn't all be here tonight. There is other
legislation, companion legislation that came out of the commerce
committee for, among other things, freight railroads, passenger
railroads. They have jurisdiction over aviation as well. The banking
committee has jurisdiction over transit systems. So there is a shared
responsibility here, and there is a shared responsibility to figure out
how to pay for all of this. How do we pay for this?
We are spending somewhere around $17 billion, $18 billion a year for
the Federal share for transportation projects. That is roughly about
half of what we are spending if we add in State and local monies during
the course of the year. We have run out of money. We literally run out
of money next month for the Federal Government to do its share.
So what do we do? Well, I will tell my colleagues what we do. We are
not going to continue to put it on our credit card, and we are not
going to keep turning to countries such as China and saying: How about
loaning us some more money so we can replenish the general fund, which
will replenish the transportation trust fund.
Why do we want to be beholden to China? I don't think we want to be
in that situation.
What we need to do is summon the courage to do what people sent us to
do, and that is to make tough decisions.
Senator Corker is--I call him a recovering mayor from Chattanooga. I
was the Governor for some years in Delaware. We are a bunch of former
Governors and mayors here and some county executives, and we bring
those experiences with us. When we are in our State or our city or our
county and we are trying to plan and fund and permit contracts for
roads, highways, and bridges or transit projects, it takes a long time.
People are watching and wondering, why do we need a 6-year bill or why
do we need predictability and certainty that the money is going to be
there for these projects? It is because they take a long time. It is
not uncommon to spend years planning a project.
The problem is, as the Senator from Tennessee said, five times we
have done stop-and-go. I think it has actually been 11 times in the
last 5 years that we have done stop-and-go funding and we haven't
provided the certainty and predictability that State and local
governments are begging for and that transportation authorities around
the country are pleading for. The road contractors and folks who build
these systems and transit systems, the folks who work on them, the
labor unions--everybody is pleading with us to do our job. And what we
have done--the House, God bless them, reported out a bill that was,
unfortunately, a straight party-line vote. They reported out a bill
that funds the transportation trust fund to allow projects to be built
through May 31 of next year.
Some people say: Well, that is fine.
That is not fine. It is not 6 years, and, frankly, Senator Boxer
called it kicking the can down the road. We have done that again and
again--11 times over the last 5 years. There is a good chance that when
we get to next
[[Page S4653]]
May 31, we will say: Well, it is too hard to make these tough decisions
as to how we are going to pay for this stuff, and we will kick the can
down the road again, providing more uncertainty, more unpredictability.
It is wasteful. It is inefficient. It is foolish. We look impotent.
It is not the way for us to do business.
What Senator Corker and I and a number of others who are going to be
joining us in this cause will call for doing is pretty simple. Instead
of providing $11 billion for the transportation trust fund from what I
will call a bunch of different sources of revenue--some of them more
equal than others but some of them pretty questionable; but in some
cases we are stealing revenues over the next 10 years for stuff that
has nothing to do with transportation projects and using that money to
fund transportation projects for, I don't know, 7, 8, 9, 10 months
instead of actually doing what we have done for years--have a user-pay
system where those who use our roads, highways, and transit systems pay
for them. That is what we ought to be doing. But the problem with what
the House has suggested we do is we will never--maybe never--get back
to providing the certainty and predictability we need. We continue to
drive up costs and say to all of the folks who are ordering us to do
our job: Well, we don't have the courage to do it now. Maybe we will
have it next year.
I think that will be a huge mistake.
I like to think of our Nation's economy as a car at the bottom of a
steep hill, and 5 years ago our Nation's economy was at the bottom of
the steep hill. We could have literally dropped off a cliff. Between
July 1 and December 31, 2008, we lost 2.5 million jobs. In the first 6
months of 2009 we lost 2.5 million jobs. Literally the week Barack
Obama and Joe Biden were sworn in as President and Vice President, we
had 628,000 people file for unemployment insurance. In 1 week 628,000
filed for unemployment insurance. We know that anytime that number is
over 400,000 people filing for unemployment insurance in a week, we are
losing jobs in the economy. And that number stayed over 600,000 for too
long. But it started to drop, and it dropped down to 550,000, then
500,000, eventually 450,000, and then 400,000, and a year or so ago we
got under 400,000, and that number now is about 300,000. We are adding
jobs.
Some would say: Well, they are not the kinds of jobs we want or need.
But some are--a lot of them. Almost any job is better than nothing. And
some of these jobs are very good and pay a fair amount of money. Here
is where we were.
We were that car at the bottom of a very steep hill 5 years ago and
trying to climb up the hill. It was slow going. We kept going. We kept
going. We have added jobs; sometimes, some months, 50,000, some months
100,000. Now we are up to over 250,000 new jobs a month. But that car--
if you will, we are that car--is climbing that hill. We are making it
to the top. We are at the crest of the hill. As we look at it we can
say it is downhill now.
As we add more and more jobs every month, we have the option of doing
two things: One, we can mash down on the accelerator, kick it into high
gear, kick this economy into high gear, where it needs to go or we can
start tapping on the brakes--start tapping on the brakes, slow things
down, introduce uncertainty, lack of predictability. What we offer in
our amendment, Senator Corker and Senator Boxer and myself and others,
is a better likelihood that we are going to be pushing down on the
accelerator next year.
We are not going to just put hundreds of thousands of people to work
across our country building roads, highways, bridges and transit
centers, but we are actually going to make our transportation system
more efficient, which in the long haul is most important, to move
product, whether it is from one coast to the other, north to south or
just around our States. That is the key. How do we do this in a more
efficient way? How do we make our economy work better? So this works at
couple of different levels.
If we say we are going to kick the can down the road into next year
and we will fund these programs until May 31, I do not know what is
going to give us the courage next May 31 to fund a 6-year
transportation program. As Senator Corker said, we have seven or eight
people who are leaving at the end of this year. They are not running
for reelection. They are retiring. They want to leave, saying: We did
this on our watch. It was our job to get this done and we did. That is
exactly why people send us in the first place, to make those kinds of
decisions.
This is not something Democrats can do by ourselves. This is not
something Republicans can do by themselves. What I am very proud of, in
both committees, is that the Democrats and Republicans voted for it--
the Finance Committee voted for a similar proposal, not quite a
majority but a very respectable showing. We have been working and
gaining support literally by the day for what we are going to do.
Senator Boxer ran through some of the folks, some of the
organizations that are supporting this, a lot of State and local
governments, State departments of transportation, folks who build
roads, folks who run the roadbuilding companies, folks who do the
actual labor for these projects, the American Trucking Associations,
AAA, you name it. There is a huge bunch of people out there who want us
to do our job. They do not want us to wait until some other time. They
want us to do it now. We can do that.
We are not here tonight to say this is how we are going to fund a 6-
year plan. There are a lot of good ideas, and Senator Boxer ran through
some of those. The idea is to create a situation where we are going to
be compelled and we will actually figure out, of all those options--and
there may be some other ones--how do we get this done. The idea that we
continue to borrow money, to borrow money over the next 10 years--
revenue streams have nothing to do with transportation, nothing to do
with transportation. If we pretend that is going to fund our
transportation budget for 5 or 6 months, that is just laughing stock.
We look so foolish doing that. It is also highly inefficient, as I
said.
I wish I could remember exactly what Mark Twain once said--maybe the
Presiding Officer can help me on this later--but he once said something
like this: Do the right thing. You will please your friends and amaze
your enemies--something along those lines. For the record we will
correct it. But please your friends and amaze or confound your enemies.
Why do we not try that for a change. That would be a great way to
finish this year.
I again thank Senator Boxer. I thank Senator Corker for joining me in
what I think is a noble mission. I never take anything for granted, but
I think if we work it hard enough, we may surprise some people in a
good way.
I see my friend from Texas--whose mother was born in Wilmington, DE,
1 of 17 children--is rising for recognition.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Venezuela
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the ongoing crisis in
Venezuela. With so many crises happening around the globe these days,
political turmoil in Venezuela has slipped from the headlines and
sometimes seems easy to forget. The situation commands our attention.
In Venezuela the protests against oppression go on, with 6,369 recorded
rallies this year, the most in over a decade.
When Hugo Chavez's death was confirmed 15 months ago, there were
hopes that his hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro would prove more
moderate and friendly to the United States. These hopes quickly proved
groundless, as Maduro doubled down on his predecessor's disastrous
socialist economic policies and his close partnership with Castro's
Cuba, not to mention Khamenei's Iran.
Earlier this year, as Venezuela endured shortages of basic goods from
baby formula to caskets, from beginning of life to end and everything
in between, while an increasingly authoritarian regime trampled their
constitutional rights, the people finally took to the streets to
protest Maduro's corrupt and unjust rule. Demanding freedom, they
marched peaceably while Maduro's Cuban-trained militia tried to incite
violence.
Following the wide-ranging protests of February 12, 2014, Maduro's
regime claimed that opposition leaders were
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personally responsible for the violence that Maduro's regime had
deliberately provoked. Six days later, the leader of the Voluntad
Popular Party Leopoldo Lopez demonstrated his respect for rule of law
when he voluntarily surrendered to the authorities.
He could have stayed in hiding, he could have gone into exile, but he
believes it is only through taking action that change can come to
Venezuela. Here is Mr. Lopez. As he surrendered to the authorities to
be thrown in prison, hundreds of thousands of supporters accompanied
him to the police van. Mr. Lopez has been held in the Ramo Verde
military prison ever since. In early June a judge ordered him held for
trial, which will begin this week.
His wife Lilian Tintori is in Washington today to draw attention to
his case. She spoke powerfully at the National Press Club about how she
and her children have missed their dad, have missed Leopoldo while he
has been in prison, but they know their daddy is doing what he must to
fight for the men and women of Venezuela.
Maduro's so-called evidence against Mr. Lopez includes the claim that
he was somehow sending secret subliminal messages inciting violence,
when he in fact explicitly called on his followers to protest
peacefully. Let me repeat that. Mr. Lopez explicitly asked his
followers to protest peacefully against the oppressive regime of
Maduro. What does Maduro say? That apparently Leopoldo has the power to
subliminally suggest violence when his words say, ``Don't engage in
violence.''
This would be comical and absurd were it not the basis for an
indictment that Maduro is seeking to lock Leopoldo up for 10 years in
prison for daring to speak out against oppression. It is important to
understand the trial scheduled this week is no trial in the ordinary
term. There will be no jury. There will be no evidence for the
defense--not for lack of trying. Mr. Lopez is denied any opportunity to
refute these bogus charges about his supposed subliminal powers because
Mr. Lopez's defense team asked to submit the testimony of 60 witnesses.
The trial court denied all 60, said no witnesses will be allowed for
the defense. Mr. Lopez's team asked to submit 13 videos. The trial
court denied all 13. Mr. Lopez's defense team asked to submit the
testimony of 12 experts. The trial court denied all 12. So in this so-
called trial, which is nothing but a sham, the defense will have no
evidence because the trial court has already decided they will allow no
evidence in support of someone speaking for freedom, someone speaking
for the people. The evidence will be kept out of this show trial.
That is not an unusual path. Dictators, totalitarian regimes from
Stalin to Castro throughout the ages have engaged in the same show
trials that they use to brutally silence any who would dare to speak
out against them. The undeniable fact is that Nicolas Maduro has no
interest in justice in this case or in the nation of Venezuela.
The official charges are public incitement, property damage, and
criminal conspiracy, but Mr. Lopez's real crime is quite simply the
exercise of his rights provided by article 57 of the Constitution of
Venezuela, which states:
Everyone has the right to express freely his or her
thoughts, ideas or opinions orally, in writing or by any
other form of expression, and to use for such purpose any
means of communication and diffusion, and no censorship shall
be established.
That is what the Constitution of Venezuela says, but Nicolas Maduro
says Leopoldo Lopez goes to prison and wants him to stay there for 10
years because he spoke out and spoke the truth. Mr. Lopez freely
expressed his criticism of Maduro's failed leadership, and for that he
has been unceremoniously thrown in jail and faces a sham trial that
could rob his 4-year-old daughter and his 1-year-old son of having a
daddy for the next 10 years.
As his wife Lilian wrote today in the Washington Post:
No one should doubt why Leopoldo is in prison: Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro is afraid of him, and he has great
reason to be. Chavez did not deliver and Maduro has not
delivered on their promises, and they have systematically
dismantled our fundamental freedoms--free speech, freedom of
association, freedom of the press and freedom to vote for
candidates of our choosing.
The most basic foundational human rights, and for advocating for
those Leopoldo Lopez is in prison.
Every American should take an interest in Mr. Lopez's fate. Not only
is he a good friend to our country, having attended both Kenyon College
and Harvard, he also advocates the sort of political and economic
reforms that would return Venezuela to its historic place as a close
partner to the United States, a development that would be of great
advantage in our hemisphere.
Mr. Lopez's case also reminds us of the precious freedoms we enjoy in
the United States that can all too quickly be taken away.
Article 57 should have particular resonance for us as our right to
free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the government for a redress of grievances.
There is a reason the Framers chose this subject for the First
Amendment in the Bill of Rights, because upon these rights all of our
liberties are built. No freedom is more vital to true democracy than
the freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience
and the freedom to speak as we choose without government censors, for
when these freedoms are restricted citizens lose their ability to
express their opposition to the government.
As Venezuela shows us, this process can take place slowly, over time,
but the eventual result is that a citizen who speaks out is silenced
and punished.
I have to say Leopoldo Lopez's situation is one that has resonance in
my family. Fifty-seven years ago my father was in a prison in another
Latin American country, the country of Cuba. My dad was 17 when he was
imprisoned and tortured in a Cuban jail. Leopoldo is 43, the very same
age I am today.
Leopoldo Lopez's case is, unfortunately, not an isolated case in
Maduro's Venezuela. Forty-six people have been killed, thousands have
been detained, and more than 100 are still in prison.
His fellow opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, recently
discovered that she too had been charged last month with incitement to
violence related to the February protests. She had never been informed
there was a criminal case against her and now she faces potentially 6
years in prison as well.
Maduro's actions are those of a dictator who knows he is deeply
unpopular, that his policies are a dismal failure, and that to survive
he has to silence the voices of those who oppose him and offer a viable
alternative, who oppose him and offer freedom.
The people of Venezuela showed in February that they are ready for a
change from the long slog into totalitarian socialism that was begun by
Chavez and is being continued by Maduro. Now Maduro is trying to use a
cloud of censorship to isolate Venezuelans from each other and from the
rest of the world. We should not look the other way.
Again, from Lillian's Washington Post op-ed today:
We need to send a message to the government that it cannot
trample on the rights of its people with impunity.
Accordingly, I call on President Maduro to release my husband
and the more than 100 political prisoners being held in
Venezuela. But my actions alone are not enough. My husband
needs the support of all countries that stand for freedom.
In this, the United States should lead the way. America should speak
with a clarion voice: Free Leopoldo Lopez. As the hashtag #SOSVenezuela
has rocketed around the globe, it shows the power of speaking the
truth: Free Leopoldo Lopez.
The United States should do everything it can to shine the bright
light of truth and freedom on this repression by highlighting Leopoldo
Lopez's case.
President Obama should stand and lead, demanding the freedom of
Leopoldo Lopez.
Secretary Kerry should stand and lead, demanding the freedom of
Leopoldo Lopez.
Every Member of this body should join in bipartisan unison demanding
the freedom of Leopoldo Lopez.
We should not and cannot let this unjust persecution pass unnoticed
but, rather, we should help the people of
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Venezuela choose a different path, a path of freedom, a path of
prosperity, and a path of friendship that will return this one-time
enemy, the nation of Venezuela, to its traditional role of America's
partner and friend. All of us should join in demanding and working for
the freedom of Leopoldo Lopez.
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. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Tragedy in Eastern Ukraine
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to address the horrific series of
events which have occurred in Eastern Ukraine within the last week. The
shooting down of a civilian Malaysian airliner and the killing of 298
innocent people is an unspeakable tragedy and one that, frankly, speaks
out for us to address in terms of the responsibility.
In this situation in Eastern Ukraine there are armed thugs who are in
control of the territory where this plane was shot down. They have been
armed, financed, and inspired by Vladimir Putin and the Russians. That
is the grim reality. All signs point to the fact that Putin, the
Russians, and their supporters in Eastern Ukraine are responsible for
this terrible tragedy--the loss of 298 lives.
I was in Ukraine a few weeks ago with Senator McCain and others, and
it was at a time when Crimea was about to fall. It was clear then the
Ukrainians did not have the capacity to stop this effort by Putin to
take over territory--and he did. Then that wasn't enough. He had to
reach into Eastern Ukraine for even more territory, stirring up
problems, creating havoc, and, sadly, bloodshed in the process.
It is bad enough the Ukrainian citizens themselves were victims, but
now 298 innocent people on a civilian airliner were shot down over this
territory. As I have said, the evidence points directly to Moscow and
its complicity in this horrible event.
This is a photo which has been distributed showing pro-Russian
separatists holding up some of the personal effects of the victims of
the Malaysian airline flight that was shot down. What is happening
there since the crash is also nothing short of horrific.
At this moment in time in virtually any other place in the world,
save perhaps North Korea, international inspectors would be on the
scene determining the cause of that plane's crash and, of equal or even
greater importance, making certain the recovery effort of the victims
of this crash was done by the standards of civilized nations. But the
Eastern Ukrainian separatists, inspired by Putin and Moscow, have
refused to allow these people in.
What we are hearing in reports is horrible. The corpses of these
victims are being taken and placed in refrigerator cars on trains.
Imagine the anguish of the families associated with those victims as
they hear this--a loved one shot out of the sky in a civilian airliner
apparently because of some folly by Eastern Ukrainian, Russian-inspired
thugs and now they cannot even recover the remains of the people they
love--let alone a serious objective investigation about the cause of
that crash.
It is hard to imagine that Vladimir Putin could let it reach this
point and harder still to imagine that he doesn't own up to his
responsibility. It is horrifying that we have reached this point where
this terribly tragic scene goes from bad to worse as Putin's thugs go
through the personal effects of the people who were shot down.
There is a list of those who were lost. I know the Presiding Officer
from the State of Indiana has a particular attachment to one of the
victims--this one--Karlijn Keijzer, a student at Indiana University.
This was well publicized in the Midwest--that we lost this beautiful
woman, a victim of this tragic crash.
There were more--297 more--who died. They included Quinn Lucas
Schansman, a 19-year-old U.S.-Dutch citizen who was born in the United
States but whose family moved back to the Netherlands when he was
young. He was on his way to visit his grandfather in Indonesia.
This is Joep Lange, a renowned Dutch AIDS researcher traveling with
his partner to the International AIDS conference in Australia.
I mentioned Karlijn Keijzer, doctoral student at Indiana University
in Bloomington. She was going on vacation with her boyfriend when this
plane was shot down.
Sister Philomene Tiernan was a 77-year-old Roman Catholic nun who was
returning to her school in Australia where she had taught thousands of
students over her 30-year vocation.
Andrei Anghel, 24, was a Canadian medical student going on vacation
with his girlfriend.
Sri Siti Amirah, an 83-year-old, was step-grandmother of Malaysia's
prime minister. She was heading to Indonesia to celebrate the end of
Ramadan.
Shazana Salleh, 31 years old, was a flight attendant on the plane.
Her father told the media this was her dream, to be a flight attendant.
And this heartbreaking photo is of Shuba Jaya, 38 years old, Paul
Goes, and their 1-year-old daughter Kaela. Shuba was a Malaysian
actress, her husband a Dutch businessman. They were returning to
Malaysia from Holland after showing their daughter to her husband's
parents.
These victims of Mr. Putin's recklessness and their grieving families
deserve more than the tragic and revolting actions occurring now in
Eastern Ukraine. The Russian people--not the leadership but the people
of Russia--deserve better.
The Russian people have a proud history of accomplishment in so many
different fields. But President Putin has created a climate of fear in
his country, where those who dissent to his policies will be punished.
His use of Soviet-style propaganda and intimidation, shutting down of
independent media and voices, and his strong-arming of other peaceful
nations are, sadly, an insult to the great achievements and legacy of
the Russian people.
I hope Mr. Putin still sees the importance of being a responsible
world leader. There is little evidence of it in recent weeks. He can
start almost immediately by calling off his shameful proxies who are so
disrespecting the victims and their families at this crash site--the
site for which he is most certainly responsible.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims.
To our Dutch friends who suffered such an overwhelming loss of life
in this crash, I express my deepest condolences. And to the people of
Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, and everywhere else facing Russian
bullying, we stand with you in your desire for democracy and peaceful
relations with the West and Russia.
Earlier this evening we considered three nominations and two passed
by voice vote. One of those passed by voice vote was Michael Lawson of
California for the rank of Ambassador during his tenure of service as
representative of the United States of America on the Council of the
International Civil Aviation Organization.
The reason I bring that to the attention of the Senate is he was
nominated last September and reported out of the Foreign Relations
Committee in May. Mr. Lawson has been sitting on the calendar. There
was no objection to him. No one had any objection to him, but he was
sitting on the calendar because of objection on the Republican side of
the aisle. Why was his name called today? Because of this tragedy--
because this tragedy pointed out the fact that the United States would
not have its representative before this important organization which
investigates these airline crashes.
It has reached a point where almost 30 Ambassadors to organizations
and nations are being held up on the floor of the Senate over and over
until something happens--an upheaval, a tragedy--and then they are
brought for a vote.
The United States of America is a better nation than that. We
shouldn't be holding up in the Senate these fine men and women who are
willing to serve our Nation. I urge my colleagues to reconsider this
approach. Let us release these ambassadorial appointments by President
Obama. For those that are controversial, so be it; let's hold them. But
the vast majority of these are not controversial. Let's give them a
chance to serve our Nation.
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