[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 116 (Wednesday, July 23, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4728-S4756]
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 Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Madam President, I am pleased that today we 
were able to put aside the partisan politics and vote for what was 
right for the American people. I hope my colleagues will also vote for 
the final bill. We must protect American jobs and eliminate tax 
loopholes for corporations that move jobs overseas. Creating and 
supporting well-paying American jobs should be our top priority.
  The debate about jobs in America and New Mexico is not about 
politics; it is about people. This past weekend I visited with some New 
Mexicans who are facing a very real and personal

[[Page S4729]]

challenge as far as their future and their livelihood.
  In Questa, NM, miners have worked for nearly a century. But that mine 
is now closing--less than 2 weeks from today--and 300 people will lose 
their jobs. For the workers, for their families, and for local 
businesses, it is a hard time, with tough questions and uncertain 
answers.
  Just this past Sunday I met with the miners to talk with them and, 
most importantly, to listen about what has happened in Questa and the 
future of a great community.
  This is about more than Chevron Corporation's decision to close the 
mine; it is about workers who feel they were kept in the dark, who 
worry that help will be too little and too late. My office is working 
closely with the community for trade adjustment assistance to get the 
training and help they will need.
  Folks there are struggling, but they are committed to mapping out a 
new future for Questa, a post-mining economy, including ecotourism and 
renewable energy.
  Families have lived and worked in Questa for generations. They know 
hard work, grit, and determination. No one needs to tell them about 
that. They helped build our country. They support their community, and 
they follow the rules. They ask for one thing in return: a fair 
chance--that is all, just a fair chance.
  Let's be clear. For the Supreme Court, for those who seem to be 
confused on this point, these miners are people, their families are 
people. Corporations are not people. Super PACs buying our elections--
they are not people. They are special interests with a lot of money and 
a lot of demands, such as special tax breaks--tax breaks that make no 
sense to real people with real problems who are looking for real jobs.
  We need to be doing all we can to create jobs, to keep building our 
economy. The Bring Jobs Home Act would help--a tax policy that brings 
jobs home, not one that rewards sending them away. Almost 2.5 million 
jobs have gone over the past 10 years, shipped overseas and paid for by 
the American taxpayers, by families such as those in Questa footing the 
bill.
  The Bring Jobs Home Act would do two important things: First, it 
would end the tax loophole for outsourcing jobs. If corporations want 
to send a job overseas, they can do so but at their own expense, not at 
the expense of the American taxpayers. Second, it would create the 
right incentives, giving a tax credit for companies that bring jobs 
back home. This is a pretty simple idea. Let's reward what helps and 
stop rewarding what doesn't.
  The Bring Jobs Home Act will do something else too. For the middle 
class in this country, for workers and families, it will say: We hear 
you. Your voice matters too. And all the super PAC dollars can't change 
that.
  We can create jobs right here at home. We can keep growing our 
economy and help communities with a tax policy that builds them up and 
invests in the future. That is something to fight for. That is the kind 
of fairness folks want and deserve in Questa, in my State and in our 
country.
  The mine will close in Questa. We can't change that. We can't bring 
it back. Some folks say that it will feel like a death the day that 
door closes, that it almost feels like a funeral, as if a part of them 
dies with the mine. And I am sure it does. It has been the lifeblood of 
the community for so many years and for so many generations of 
families. But folks there said something else too: When bad things 
happen, friends and family show up to do what they can to help.
  We need to start showing up for the American worker, for the middle 
class, for towns all across our Nation where the factory closed, where 
the jobs went away. The Bring Jobs Home Act is a start to create jobs, 
to build our economy here at home, and to help communities in a world 
that is changing awfully fast. It is a step in the right direction, and 
I urge my colleagues to support it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I thank my colleague from New Mexico 
for his compelling remarks about the importance of passing the Bring 
Jobs Home Act.
  I am here to echo the need to pass this critical legislation, and I 
am certainly pleased we had such a strong vote to end debate on this 
legislation. I hope we can now come to some agreement and get the same 
kind of support for moving the bill forward. I am an original cosponsor 
of this commonsense bill.
  As Senator Udall said, this legislation would end incentives for 
companies to send American jobs overseas, and it would instead 
encourage companies to move jobs back to the United States.
  Believe it or not, when a company moves jobs offshore, it can write 
off those expenses on its taxes. That doesn't make sense. The Bring 
Jobs Home Act would stop forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for 
companies when they ship jobs overseas. In addition, to encourage 
companies to move production back to the United States, the bill 
provides a tax credit for the costs associated with bringing jobs back 
home.
  Not only is this legislation the right thing to do, but it also comes 
at a critical time as our economy struggles to recover. In New 
Hampshire and across the country--as Senator Udall pointed out, in New 
Mexico with the closing of the mine and in that community--we are still 
feeling the effects of the great recession. Millions of Americans lost 
their jobs, and too many middle-class families are still struggling to 
make ends meet.
  But sadly, even before the recession hit, the American middle class 
was finding it hard to pay their bills, to pay their mortgage, to find 
the good jobs that allowed them to have opportunities. A big reason for 
that was the loss of so many good-paying American jobs that supported 
the middle class. Too many of those jobs were shipped overseas. Over 
the last decade, 2.4 million jobs were shipped overseas, and those 2.4 
million families supported by those jobs had to find other ways to 
support themselves, and often they were in jobs that didn't pay as 
well.
  Well, it doesn't have to be this way. In fact, many companies are now 
looking to move jobs back to the United States. As production costs 
rise overseas, these companies want the advantages provided by our 
American workers--the most productive workers in the world--and the 
ease of doing business in the United States.
  I have heard from several companies that have already moved jobs back 
to the United States, and there are many more that are hoping to bring 
jobs back home if we have the right policies in place.
  Let me give an example. Last year I met with Doug Clark, who is the 
CEO of a footwear manufacturing company, New England Footwear. When we 
think footwear manufacturing or shoe factory jobs, we don't think the 
United States anymore because while there are still some very good 
companies that manufacture footwear here, most of those jobs were sent 
offshore a long time ago.
  I know that story very well because my father was in shoe 
manufacturing. The whole time I was growing up, I watched him struggle 
with the loss of those shoe manufacturing jobs that were being sent 
overseas and imports coming in to take the place of shoes made here in 
America and the jobs that workers here in America held.
  Today about 99 percent of shoes sold in the United States are made 
abroad. But New England Footwear executives, who have years of 
experience in the shoe industry, are looking to bring those jobs back 
home--back to New Hampshire. The company currently manufactures in 
China, but as costs rise there, Doug believes he can bring higher 
paying jobs to the United States thanks to innovative technology that 
reduces manufacturing costs.
  New England Footwear isn't alone. A Boston Consulting Group survey 
from last September showed that more than half of large U.S.-based 
manufacturers are planning or considering right now bringing production 
lines back to the United States from China. That is up 17 percent from 
just 2 years ago--17 percent. That is a big increase, a lot of jobs. 
The Boston Consulting Group projected that production reshored from 
China and higher exports due to improved U.S. competitiveness in 
manufacturing could create 2.5 to 5 million American factory and 
related service jobs by 2020. So by 2020 we could replace more than the 
jobs we lost in the

[[Page S4730]]

last decade. That is the kind of behavior we should be encouraging. 
That is exactly what the bill before us does.
  We know it will work because a 2012 MIT forum on supply chain 
management found that providing tax credits for bringing American jobs 
back to the United States would be one of the most effective ways to 
accelerate that process, along with other commonsense measures such as 
enacting tax reform, which we all agree we have to do, providing 
research and development incentives, ensuring a highly educated 
workforce, and improving American infrastructure. Again, these are all 
challenges which I think the majority of us in this body understand 
have to be done.

  I am very glad the Senate moved to this bill because our priority in 
Washington must be creating jobs and restoring the American middle 
class. Over the past few decades too many Americans have seen their 
jobs disappear or their incomes fall. The Bring Jobs Home Act is an 
opportunity to support those families by creating good-paying jobs in 
the United States and by helping our economy regain its competitive 
edge.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             The HUMANE Act

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, in recent days I have come to the floor 
several times to talk about the humanitarian crisis on our southwestern 
border where a veritable flood of unaccompanied children, from Central 
America mainly, is appearing on our border and turning themselves in to 
the Border Patrol because they realize that ultimately they will be 
released to a relative in the United States with a notice to appear at 
a future court date. The vast majority of them will fail to appear for 
that court date and successfully end up staying in the United States, 
notwithstanding the fact that it does not comply with our law.
  But in recent days a curious division has emerged from our colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle on a fundamental issue that I want to 
highlight. On the one hand, more and more Democrats are calling on 
Congress to reform this 2008 law that inadvertently has become a magnet 
for illegal immigration by Central American minors. On the other hand, 
Senate Democratic leadership is refusing to consider any such reforms. 
They just want the cash. They wanted the money the President has asked 
for. So they are asking Congress to simply throw more money at the 
problem. The figure they have now settled on is $2.7 billion. The 
Associated Press has called this ``problematic.''
  If you have a humanitarian crisis and you need more money to deal 
with it, we all understand that. But if you are unwilling to take the 
step to fix the basic problem that has created the crisis, that strikes 
me as problematic, as the Associated Press says.
  What is President Obama's position? Well, I am afraid the President 
has shown a complete lack of leadership on something that he himself 
has called a humanitarian crisis. But there have been prominent members 
of his administration who have publicly expressed support for the type 
of reforms contained in the HUMANE Act, which is a bipartisan, 
bicameral piece of legislation I have introduced with my colleague 
Henry Cuellar from Laredo, TX.
  For example, you will see on this chart Secretary of Homeland 
Security Jeh Johnson has said the administration wants to change the 
2008 law at the center of the crisis so that U.S. authorities can 
``treat unaccompanied kids from Central America the same way as it does 
from a contiguous country''--in other words, from Mexico.
  White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, you can see on this next 
chart, has confirmed that the administration would support ``changing 
the 2008 law'' if it is necessary to resolve the crisis, as Secretary 
of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson says it is.
  As tens of thousands of children continue to flood across our border, 
such changes are absolutely necessary. In fact, the cartels, the 
criminal organizations that are smuggling children into the United 
States, discovered this flaw and they have changed their business model 
to exploit it, because they are making money off of it.
  The HUMANE Act, which we have offered as a solution is not the only 
solution. If other people have good ideas, we would love to hear them, 
but doing nothing is not an option.
  The HUMANE Act would equalize the treatment of all unaccompanied 
minor children, regardless of where they come from. Treat them all the 
same. If it is good enough for children coming from Mexico unattended 
by parents, then it ought to be good enough for others.
  All of our colleagues essentially voted for that proposition in 2008 
with that law. This proposal we have would also expedite the removal 
process for those without a valid claim for legal status. In other 
words, there are claims for legal status in the United States that some 
of these children might qualify for. We do not touch any of those 
preexisting laws. In other words, if you are a victim of human 
trafficking, for example, you can qualify for something called a T visa 
while you cooperate with a law enforcement investigation.
  If you have a credible fear of persecution in your home country based 
on certain other criteria, you could qualify for asylum or as a 
refugee. But finally, we would end the policy of catch and release by 
which these children or other immigrants are not detained pending a 
hearing in front of a judge. We know from experience, given the surge 
of Brazilians who came in 2005 and 2006, that additional detention and 
speedy hearings and reprocessing back to the home country are essential 
to deter people from coming in the first place.
  The HUMANE ACT would bring order and clarity to a situation currently 
marked by chaos and confusion. You would think that Members of 
Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, would want to bring some 
clarity and end the chaos and confusion. But so far we have not seen 
that sort of bipartisan desire to embrace a solution. So I am happy to 
note that a number of Democrats do agree with us about the need to 
reform the 2008 law and establish an expedited removal process.
  For example, Senator McCaskill, the senior Senator from Missouri, has 
reportedly said: I think we should have the same law on the books for 
Central America as we have for Canada and Mexico.
  That is precisely the point. She and I agree with each other 100 
percent on that. That is what the HUMANE Act would do.
  Meanwhile, the senior Senator from Delaware, Mr. Carper--the chairman 
of the Homeland Security Committee, someone with a lot of knowledge 
about this, and somebody who I know has been in close consultation with 
Secretary Johnson--has argued that any supplemental funding should be 
paired with significant policy changes, saying, ``the two should go 
together.'' I agree with Senator Carper.
  So if the administration agrees with prominent Senate Democrats, as 
Jeh Johnson has said they do, and as Josh Earnest has said they do, if 
the administration agrees with these prominent Senate Democrats about 
the urgency of passing something like the HUMANE Act, and if plenty of 
Senate Republicans agree as well, why are we not having a vote? What is 
the holdup?
  Well, as usual, the majority leader seems to be more concerned about 
good politics than good policy. He, incredibly to most ears, certainly 
to mine, declared that the border was ``secure'' a couple of days ago. 
I was shocked to hear him say that. In the midst of a humanitarian 
crisis, he says the border is ``secure.'' With 414,000 detained coming 
across the border last year alone from 100 different countries, the 
majority leader says the border is ``secure.''
  Here is what he said on Monday. He said: We need to get resources to 
our Border Patrol agents and others who are caring for these children.
  This is at the same time he said the border is ``secure.'' I do not 
quite understand that tension between his positions. But this is what 
he said. He said: ``We need judges to hear those kids' cases and decide 
whether they need protection or need to be sent back home.'' So here is 
my confusion. The majority leader has said he understands what needs to 
happen. The press

[[Page S4731]]

secretary for the President says he understands what needs to happen. 
Secretary Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, says he knows 
what needs to happen. Prominent Democrats such as the Senator from 
Missouri and the Senator from Delaware say they understand what needs 
to happen. Yet nothing is happening.
  The HUMANE Act, which would do everything the majority leader 
mentioned, is a bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation that would 
alleviate a national emergency and a humanitarian crisis. It has 
received support across the political and ideological spectrum.
  I would add that some on the left and some on the right have 
criticized it. Some have not bothered to read it or understand it. But 
if you are being criticized on both sides of the extremes, then you 
must be doing something that is actually doable and may be at least 80 
percent part of the solution.
  So I would urge the majority leader, the majority whip, the chairman 
of the Judiciary Committee, to heed the message conveyed by Secretary 
Johnson. I would urge all of us, particularly at a time of humanitarian 
crisis, to forget the politics and let's solve the problem. We have an 
opportunity to address a genuine crisis. I urge them to remember, as 
Mr. Charles Lane of the Washington Post has written recently:

       The rule of law is one of the benefits immigrants seek in 
     the United States. Step one in dealing with the border crisis 
     should be to reestablish it.

  Those are wise words.
  In contrast, if we simply write the administration a blank check for 
$2.7 billion without fixing the problem, we will find ourselves back 
here again and again as the numbers escalate from the 57,000 so far 
since October to the projected 90,000 the administration says could 
come across this year alone to the 145,000 who are projected to come 
next year.
  I am, frankly, flabbergasted. Why can't we do this? Why can't we do 
it? Democrats agree with the need. Republicans agree there is a need. 
There is an escalating crisis on the border that is not going to go 
away with the change of the news cycle. We have the ability to deal 
with it so we should.
  I actually agree with this statement by Senator Reid: We need to get 
the resources to our Border Patrol agents and others who are caring for 
these children. We need judges to hear these kids' cases and decide 
whether they need protection or need to be sent back home.
  I agree with the majority leader when he said that. So let's do it.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Health Care

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today because 
Democrats in Washington continue to put out misleading information 
about the President's health care law.
  Last week the Senator from Connecticut came to the floor and said 
Republicans have, in his words, gone silent when it comes to talking 
about the health care law. He claimed there was a quiet acceptance that 
the law is working.
  Well, I just want to correct the record and make it perfectly clear 
Republicans have not gone quiet because the health care law is not 
working.
  The American people are not going quiet either. They are not going 
quiet when it comes to talking about the devastating side effects they 
are feeling from the health care law.
  I hear it from people when I go home to Wyoming every weekend. I 
heard it last weekend. I heard it last night on a telephone townhall 
meeting, and when I travel I hear about it--even just passing through 
the airport in Denver on the way home, which I do each week.
  As chairman of the Republican policy committee, one of my 
responsibilities is to study how policies that come out of Washington--
like the President's health care law--affect people all across America, 
including States such as Colorado, where I change planes each week.
  Last week the Denver Post had an op-ed written by Dr. Cyndi Tucker, 
an obstetrician/gynecologist who practices medicine in Thornton, CO, 
outside Denver. Her op-ed was published in the Denver Post, which is, 
of course, the statewide newspaper in Colorado.
  The headline on the column in the Denver Post was: ``Red tape isn't 
health care reform.''
  Now, remember the amount of regulations ObamaCare has created is a 
redtape tower of paper over 7 feet tall. Dr. Cyndi Tucker, from one of 
the suburbs of Colorado, wants us to know about the health care law 
from her perspective as a practicing Colorado physician. What she has 
to say is that the prognosis isn't good. She writes:

       At my practice, I've found that the ACA disrupts the 
     doctor-patient relationship by drowning us both in paperwork.
       ObamaCare authors--and the politicians . . . who voted for 
     it--promised that it would provide quality, affordable health 
     care to Coloradans. Yet it does exactly the opposite. For 
     doctors, it makes health care more and more complex, more 
     expensive, and increasingly more impersonal.

  Not more personal, which is what we want as doctors, as somebody who 
practiced medicine for 25 years. She says it makes it more impersonal.

       And for patients, it makes finding a cheap health plan or 
     finding a doctor more difficult--not less difficult as the 
     President promised, not cheaper, but more difficult, as the 
     doctor points out. For me, that is a very damaging and maybe 
     even life-threatening side effect of the President's 
     health care law.

  President Obama was in Colorado earlier this month. This week he is 
doing the same thing in Seattle and California. Instead of meeting with 
more campaign donors--which is what the President is doing--the 
President should meet with doctors and patients--and, specifically, 
doctors such as this obstetrician-gynecologist in Colorado. He should 
sit down with some of the women who are patients of this doctor. I 
think they would like to ask the President about these devastating side 
effects of his health care law and explain to him about how it is 
hurting them and hurting their families.
  The disruptive impact the law is having on care is drowning patients 
and doctors in red tape. But that is not the only side effect of the 
law that is hurting American families. A recent Gallup poll earlier 
this month found that only 8 percent of Americans are spending less 
money on health care than they did a year ago.
  President Obama promised the American people they would save $2,500 a 
year per family under his health care law. Nancy Pelosi, the former 
Speaker of the House, was on ``Meet the Press'' at one point and said 
that everyone's rates would go down.
  Well, Democrats in the Senate who voted for the law promised the same 
thing, and it just didn't happen. People are paying more all across 
America. People are paying more in Washington State and in California, 
where the President is visiting. Why is he there? He is meeting with 
campaign donors. He is collecting campaign money.
  People are paying more all across the country. They are paying more 
for health care insurance in Wyoming. People are paying more in 
Colorado, where the doctor who wrote in the Denver Post is and where 
she sees patients.
  There is a recent study that found health insurance premiums for an 
average 40-year-old woman in Colorado are 20 percent higher this year 
than last year. That was before she was forced on to the ObamaCare 
exchange.
  President Obama says Democrats who voted for the law should 
``forcefully defend and be proud'' of the health care law. When he was 
in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, did President Obama forcefully 
defend these premium increases because of the law? When he is traveling 
this week, is the President going to forcefully defend patients and 
doctors experiencing the exact opposite of what the Democrats promised? 
Are Democrats in the Senate proud that only 8 percent of Americans are 
spending less on health care this year than they did before? Costs are 
going up so fast that last month State regulators in Colorado decided 
to add another tax on every insurance policy in the State in order--get 
this--to bail out the State ObamaCare exchange. They added an extra tax 
on every insurance policy in the State in order to bail out the State 
ObamaCare exchange.

[[Page S4732]]

  Now, that is not just on people buying the policy in the exchange. 
They are charging this new tax on every person in Colorado who buys 
health insurance just to cover those who buy it through the exchange. 
Well, that is a very expensive side effect for the families of Colorado 
as a result of the President's health care law.
  So this health care law is bad for patients, bad for providers, the 
nurses, and the doctors who take care of those patients, and it is 
terrible for taxpayers. Every Democrat in the Senate voted for this 
health care law. Where are the Democrats willing to forcefully defend 
these costly and damaging side effects of their health care law?
  People in Colorado and all across America received letters telling 
them their plans were being cancelled because of the law. People lost 
access to their doctors, like this OB/GYN physician who wrote her op-ed 
editorial for the Denver Post.
  She says she has had to stop seeing Medicare patients because of the 
new redtape in the health care law. So people in Colorado lost their 
right to choose the health plan that works for them and their families.
  Republicans are not going to quietly accept the terrible side effects 
of the President's health care law. We are going to keep coming to the 
floor. We are going to keep standing for American families who are 
being hurt by this law. We are going to keep offering new solutions--
real solutions--for better health care without all of these tragic side 
effects.
  That means patient-centered reforms that get people the care they 
need from a doctor they choose at lower costs. It means giving people 
choices, not Washington mandates. It means allowing people to buy 
health insurance that works for them and their families because they 
know what is best for them.
  Democrats who voted for this health care law have failed to answer 
the real concern of the American people, which was affordable quality 
care.
  American families will not go quiet about the harm Democrats have 
done to them with this health care law.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and 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. CARPER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Tenth Anniversary of the 9/11 Commission

  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I rise to commemorate the 10th 
anniversary of the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist 
Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 
9/11 Commission Report.
  As the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental 
Affairs Committee--a committee on which I proudly serve with the 
Presiding Officer--I can tell my colleagues that this report has been 
and continues to be incredibly important to the work we do in the 
committee that Dr. Coburn and I are privileged to lead in this 
Congress.
  Nearly 13 years ago, as we will recall, our Nation suffered the most 
devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. Almost every 
American alive will remember where they were on the day the Twin Towers 
collapsed, when the Pentagon was hit, and when they saw the wreckage in 
the fields of Shanksville, PA.
  We asked ourselves at that time, Why would anybody want to do this? 
How did this happen? What could have been done to prevent this tragedy?
  In the months after this horrific attack, Congress and the President 
endeavored to answer these questions. Together they established an 
entity we call the 9/11 Commission.
  Led by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean--our neighbor across the 
Delaware River--a Republican, and by former Indiana Congressman Lee 
Hamilton, a Democrat--one of my mentors in the House of 
Representatives--the Commission was charged with preparing a full and 
complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding these horrific 
attacks and recommending ways to make our Nation more secure.
  This proved to be no small task. The Commission interviewed more than 
1,200 people in 10 countries, including every single relevant senior 
national security official from not one but two administrations, and 
reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents. Despite the 
political tensions and partisan climate that engulfed our Nation at the 
time, the Commission put aside their own political differences and 
issued their final report 10 years ago today.
  The 592-page report contained a full accounting of what happened 
before and after the attacks and included no less than 41 
recommendations on how we could prevent another tragedy such as the one 
visited upon us on September 11. The report went on to sell more than 1 
million copies and it was at the top of the national best seller list--
numerous national best seller lists. Imagine that, a report--a Federal 
report--a best seller. It was a remarkable achievement, not only 
because of the depth and breadth of the Commissioners' findings but 
because all 10 Commissioners--5 Democrats and 5 Republicans--came to 
agreement on every single word of this report. Around here some days we 
can't agree if it is Wednesday, much less agree on every single word of 
a 592-page report.
  In the months and years following the report's release, Democrats and 
Republicans in Congress worked together with the Bush administration to 
enact not one but two major laws to implement the report's 
recommendations. These laws were championed in part by our good friends 
Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine, both of whom 
served as chair and as ranking member of the committee I now chair.
  Among other things, these two historic bills created a new Director 
of National Intelligence to coordinate and oversee all information 
sharing and intelligence activities. These laws implemented a passenger 
prescreening system that has helped to ensure that terrorists aren't 
able to fly on aircraft, while also establishing a fully staffed 
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
  When we think about all of these accomplishments and more, I think it 
is safe to say that the 9/11 Commission report has proven to be one of 
the most important and influential efforts of its kind in recent 
history. We as a nation owe a real debt of gratitude to the 
Commissioners for their determined and clear-eyed approach to improving 
the security of our Nation.
  We might ask ourselves: How did they do this? The Commission's 
leadership--Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton--wrote in their own 
words on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks about why the 
Commission was so special and so effective. Here is what they had to 
say:

       First, because of the great damage and trauma the 9/11 
     attacks produced, the American public demanded action and had 
     high expectations for measures and reforms that would improve 
     the nation's security.
       Importantly, the statutory mandate for the Commission was 
     limited, precise, and clear--the Commission was authorized to 
     investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the 
     attacks and to make recommendations to keep our country safe;
       The Commission had an extraordinary non-partisan staff--

  They truly did have an excellent staff--

     the members of which possessed deep expertise and conducted 
     their work with thoroughness and professionalism; the 
     Commissioners--

  Many of them I am privileged to know--

     had deep experience in government and political credibility 
     with different constituencies;
       The final report was unanimous and bipartisan; families of 
     the victims of 9/11 provided solid and sophisticated support 
     throughout the life of the Commission and in the years since; 
     and following the Commission, the Commissioners and staff 
     continued to work closely with Congress and the executive 
     branch to implement and monitor reform.

  That is what they had to say.
  In other words, they had the will to act. They had the authority and 
the responsibility to act. They had the support of great staff and of 
the Americans most directly affected by the tragedy; that is, the 
families who were affected. They had extraordinary leadership from 
Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, both of whom put aside partisan 
differences and built a trusting relationship for the betterment of our 
Nation.
  Once, after having a hearing in Dirkson 342, where our committee 
meets now and where they were testifying before us, the Chair and Vice

[[Page S4733]]

Chair, Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, and I asked them: In a 
day and age when it is hard for us to agree on much of anything around 
here, how were you able to agree, the two of you and your Commission, 
on the entire almost 600 pages of this report?
  I will never forget what they both said.
  They said: Well, we didn't really know each other, but we were thrust 
into this and asked to serve in this capacity, and we got to know each 
other.
  They said: We got to know each other very well, and out of all the 
time we spent together grew a trust that was almost without bounds and 
a very strong friendship--a real bond.
  Sometimes we think about why we are so dysfunctional here. That is, 
in my judgment, a very big part of what is missing--a lack of trust and 
understanding of one another and having those kinds of personal 
friendships that go across all kinds of boundaries.
  After 10 years, I still marvel at the trust developed between the 
Commissioners, and especially the Chairman and Vice Chairman. Perhaps 
most importantly, no other large-scale, 9/11-type attack on U.S. soil 
has occurred over these past 13 years. The improvements made to our 
intelligence, our law enforcement, and our security agencies as a 
result of the 9/11 Commission's work have undoubtedly contributed to 
that good fortune.
  The response to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013--just 
last year--was a shining example of how the investments we have made as 
a nation in training and equipment for our first responders have made 
us more capable, more resilient, and more secure than ever. But that 
attack itself showed us we cannot grow complacent. We must maintain our 
resolve and our commitment to the security of our Nation.
  The Boston bombing, new threats to aviation, foreign fighters in 
Syria coming home--these are all stark reminders that we continue to 
face persistent and evolving terrorist threats.
  Of course, one of the biggest threats our country faces is in 
cyberspace. That is why Dr. Coburn, our staffs, members of our 
committee, and I worked so hard to move three bipartisan cyber bills 
out of the committee this year and they now await action by the full 
Senate in this Chamber. These are just a few of the challenges our 
Nation continues to face.
  We know there is still work to be done to fully implement the 
Commission's recommendations. So today, as we commemorate the release 
of this report, I think we would be wise to revisit and attempt to 
recapture the spirit of unity that made this bipartisan achievement 
possible by the 9/11 Commission.
  As we seek to confront and to overcome the challenges before us on 
this day, we would be wise to consider again the example set by 
Governor Kean, Congressman Lee Hamilton, and the other eight 
Commissioners, and we should be inspired by their example.
  The people we are privileged to represent across the Nation are 
pleading with us to set aside what separates us--pleading with us--
remembering what binds us together and do the hard work we need to do 
to keep our homeland secure in an evermore turbulent world.
  Let me close by thanking once again the 9/11 Commissioners not only 
for their important work that they did all those years ago but for the 
enduring example they set for us a decade ago. Let's be inspired by 
them. Our country and its people are counting on us on so many 
different fronts. Let's not let them down.
  I note the absence of a quorum. Thanks so much.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted 
to speak immediately following the remarks of the distinguished Senator 
from Pennsylvania.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I would like to thank the Senator from 
Utah because I got here late and I am intruding on his time, but he has 
been kind enough to patiently wait for me to make a few points. So I 
will try to be brief, but I think it is really important that we 
address this issue, which is a very serious problem happening in 
America.
  We see increasing numbers of what we call corporate inversions--
American corporations establishing their headquarters overseas--
typically through the mechanism of purchasing a company overseas and 
establishing that as the headquarters.
  First of all, I just hate to see any American company choosing to not 
be an American company. It is very offensive to me at a deep level, 
most especially if it were to be a Pennsylvania company--but any 
company. Secondly, whatever little shred of faith any Americans have in 
our tax system is further undermined by seeing this. And, most 
importantly over time, this dynamic that is happening, if unaddressed, 
I think poses a very serious risk that we are going to lose jobs, we 
are going to lose corporate headquarters and all of the very 
substantial and good-paying jobs that are always associated with an 
American corporate headquarters, from senior executives, to secretarial 
folks, to the janitorial staff, and everyone in between. There are a 
lot of jobs that go along with where people decide to establish their 
corporate headquarters, and I want it to be in America. That is my 
goal. That is my motivation.
  So it is useful to start with posing the question: Why is this 
happening, that American companies that have subsidiaries overseas are 
deciding they had better be headquartered somewhere other than America?
  I will tell you why it is happening. There is no mystery here. It is 
happening because we have a Tax Code that is driving them to do this. 
We have chosen to inflict on our workers and our businesses the highest 
marginalized tax rate in the industrial world, so we are systematically 
less competitive than any of our trading partners, the nations against 
which we compete.
  In addition to having such a high marginal rate, we have chosen, 
quite foolishly, in my view, to adopt a system of taxation with respect 
to overseas subsidiaries that no one else in the world--virtually no 
one else in the world--adopts.
  Let me drill down a little bit into this. Specifically, the 
difference between a high marginal rate and a low rate is pretty 
obvious. We have the highest. Other countries have much lower rates. 
Increasingly, they are reducing their rates. We used to be in the 
middle of the pack. Twenty years ago the American business tax rate was 
about the same as most of our trading partners and competitors. Today 
it is much higher. We stand pretty much alone with a very high rate. 
That is obvious. That is pretty straightforward.
  The other piece, though, is how we deal with the tax--with the income 
of subsidiaries. That is very different. Here is what happens. 
Basically imagine that an American company has a subsidiary in Ireland. 
That subsidiary makes some profits. The profits are taxed by the Irish 
Government. They happen to use a 12\1/2\-percent tax rate, because they 
want to attract business. It is working, by the way, for them.
  But be that as it may, the first layer of tax an American subsidiary 
operating in Ireland pays is the tax to the Irish Government, 12\1/2\ 
percent. Then here is what we do in America: We say, now if you want to 
bring that money home to America and invest it in America and build a 
new factory in Pennsylvania or in Delaware and hire lots of workers, if 
you want to bring the money home to do that, well, we have a punishment 
in store for you. We are going to look at our rate, which is among the 
very highest in the world at 35 percent. We will give you credit for 
the 12\1/2\-percent that you paid to the Irish Government. We will soak 
you for another 23 percent. That is the price we will charge you for 
investing in America. That is what we do. That is what our current tax 
system does.
  Now what if this Irish company, this subsidiary operating in Ireland, 
what if instead it was owned by a company that is headquartered in 
Sweden or Switzerland or any other number of

[[Page S4734]]

European countries? Do you know what they do? What they do is say: 
Well, after you have paid your tax to the Irish Government, if you then 
want to bring it home to one of those countries, there is almost no 
additional charge. There is a very nominal toll, if you will, on 
bringing that money back to those countries.
  What is the effect of this? The effect of this is that we put our 
multinational companies at a huge competitive disadvantage. It is an 
unsustainable competitive disadvantage. The other effect is that we end 
up trapping money overseas that would be invested in America but is 
not.
  So what is the rational response of the corporate management and the 
board of directors of a business which has this Irish subsidiary that 
has made this money, it has paid its tax to the Irish Government? 
Unfortunately, the response typically is: Well, I cannot defend to my 
shareholders why I should bring that money home and get whacked another 
23 percent. So instead, I would rather not do this, but I am forced to 
look at investing somewhere else in the world where I will not have to 
pay this tax. This is what I am being told--this is what is happening. 
The way to avoid all of this is to be headquartered somewhere other 
than America.
  This is terrible. This is outrageous. We are doing this to ourselves. 
It is madness.
  I have to say, I am very disappointed with how we are responding in 
this body. We know this is a problem. This is very real. It is growing. 
We are not taking it seriously. What we are going to vote on later this 
week, I think, or whenever the vote comes up, is not a serious attempt 
to solve this problem. It is a completely political show vote, the 
Walsh-Stabenow bill. It will do nothing to stop these ongoing 
inversions. It does nothing about the fundamental underlying cause that 
is driving these inversions. It does nothing to encourage the 
repatriation of all of this money.
  By the way, it is attached to a vehicle that is unconstitutional. We 
cannot originate a tax bill in the Senate. The Constitution forbids 
that. So if you are even pretending to be serious about tax reform, you 
take up a House-passed vehicle so it is at least constitutionally 
possible. Our Democratic friends chose not to even bother with that 
formality, so blatant is the fact that this is not a serious 
discussion. That is a shame. We ought to be having a serious discussion 
about this.
  There is a more serious alternative bill that some of our friends on 
the other side are advocates for. That is a bill that basically would 
make it harder for you to achieve the inversion a company is attempting 
to achieve. It would require the number of foreign shareholders be 
quite high at the end of the transaction in order to qualify for it. So 
it sounds on the surface like: Oh, that might work and make it harder 
to do this.
  But the problem still goes to it does not deal with the underlying 
fundamental driver of this problem, which is a Tax Code that makes it 
uncompetitive to be American. So if the Levin bill, which is the one I 
am referring to, were to be adopted, which I certainly hope it would 
not be, it continues to make it untenable for shareholders of a 
business to justify being headquartered in America. We will continue to 
see increasing numbers of startups and spinoff and growth overseas 
where the governments choose not to punish their businesses the way we 
punish ours.
  I think the answer is to deal with the underlying cause, not the 
reaction to that underlying cause. I do not want to see any more of 
these inversions.
  We are going to do that by lowering the marginal corporate tax rates 
so there is not a huge advantage in being anywhere else other than 
America, and to adopt a territorial system, a system where once a 
company pays the tax it owes to the country in which it is located, we 
do not punish them for bringing that money home and investing it in 
America. That is the answer. That is the solution. This is no great 
mystery. The rest of the world has figured this out. They are ahead of 
us on this.

  If we would get serious about this very real problem and we made 
these reforms, what would the net result be? Up to maybe over $1 
trillion of money that is trapped overseas would be invested back in 
America. Can you imagine what that would do to our economic growth 
almost immediately--the surge in job creation, the surge in expansion 
of existing businesses.
  You know, we have this tremendous renaissance in manufacturing that 
we are on the edge of, because we have such low-cost energy. It is an 
enormous advantage we have. We could release this pent-up demand and 
take advantage of this enormous opportunity if we had a Tax Code that 
made it rational.
  I am standing here very frustrated, because I am watching us eke out 
this miserable sort of 1, maybe if we are lucky, 2-percent economic 
growth. Employment levels are way too low. Workforce participation is 
nowhere near where it should be. I know we could be booming. We could 
be growing at 4 percent. We could be creating many hundreds of 
thousands of new jobs every month. We could be bringing people back in 
the workforce. We could have the kind of strong economic expansion we 
have always had in the past after a severe recession.
  But we are not getting there right now. It is partly because we have 
a Tax Code that is hampering us. It is driving up transactions that 
none of us want to see. So I hope after we get through the political 
exercise we are going to go through this week, we will get serious 
about solving the underlying problem: lowering the marginal rate so we 
do not stand out as the worst place in the world to establish a 
business, and moving to a territorial-based system so that we stop 
punishing businesses that want to invest in America. That is my hope. I 
hope we will get to this soon, because, unfortunately, we are seeing 
the unfortunate consequences of this bad policy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am pleased to be in the same Senate with 
this wonderful Senator from Pennsylvania who does a very good job on 
the Senate Finance Committee and is, frankly, one of the brighter 
lights in the Senate. I appreciate him. I appreciate his efforts. I 
appreciate his leadership. I appreciate what he just got through 
saying.
  Mr. President, soon we will begin debate on the so-called Bring Jobs 
Home Act. There are a number of serious problems facing our country. 
For example, our national debt currently exceeds $17.5 trillion. That 
is trillion with a T. Our economy continues to struggle. In fact, the 
economy shrunk last quarter. We have an entitlement crisis that 
threatens to swallow our government and take the country down with it.
  Of course, as has been widely discussed, we are seeing a parade of 
U.S. multinationals opting to move their legal domiciles to countries 
outside of our country, outside of the United States. During these 
difficult times what we are hearing from my friends on the other side 
of the aisle is not very good.
  What are we hearing from these friends on the other side of the 
aisle? We are hearing talk about ``economic patriotism.'' I did not 
make up that term. It is the latest catchphrase coming from the Obama 
administration as they try to malign business models and investments 
they do not like during an election year.
  Last week I received a letter from the Treasury Secretary calling for 
``a new sense of economic patriotism'' as the administration pushed for 
legislation that would punitively and retroactively seek to limit 
corporate inversions. The President has repeated the line in some of 
his recent speeches. Of course, ``economic patriotism'' is not a new 
catchphrase. It was trotted out by the President during the 2012 
election campaign. Now it appears to be making a comeback. Not 
surprisingly, this comeback is taking place in the midst of another 
election year. Apparently, as part of this recycled campaign, we are 
going to have to once again debate and vote on the Bring Jobs Home Act, 
the same bill the Senate rejected during the last election cycle.
  If enacted, this legislation would deny the deduction for ordinary 
and necessary business expenses to the extent that such expenses were 
incurred for offshore outsourcing. That is, to the extent an employer 
incurred costs in relocating a business unit from somewhere inside the 
United States to somewhere outside the United States,

[[Page S4735]]

the employer would be disallowed a deduction for any of the associated 
business expenses. Wow. How antibusiness can you be? There are other 
ways of solving this problem.
  The bill would also create a new tax credit for insourcing. That is, 
if a company relocated a business unit from outside the United States 
to inside the United States, the business would be allowed a tax credit 
equal to 20 percent of the costs associated with that relocation. As I 
said, this is a recycled bill.
  The political talking points surrounding the bill are also recycled. 
This bill and the related talking points are based on the oft-repeated 
lie that there are special incentives or loopholes in the Tax Code that 
encourage businesses to move jobs overseas. No such loopholes exist.
  As the Joint Committee on Taxation noted in its recent analysis of 
this bill:

       Under present law, there are no targeted tax credits or 
     disallowances of deductions related to relocating business 
     units inside or outside the United States. Deductions 
     generally are allowed for all ordinary and necessary expenses 
     paid or incurred by the taxpayer during the taxable year in 
     carrying on any trade or business. These ordinary and 
     necessary expenses may include expenditures for the 
     relocation of a business unit.

  The truth could not be plainer. Yet the supporters of this bill still 
talk as though this legislation will end some kind of special tax 
treatment or deduction for companies that outsource. There is no 
special treatment. Under our Tax Code, relocation expenses are treated 
the same whether a company is relocating from a high-tax State in the 
United States to a lower tax State or if a company relocates some 
operations offshore.
  As the nonpartisan congressional scorekeeper has made clear, there 
are no targeted tax benefits related to relocating business units 
outside of the United States. No credits. None. Zero.
  As the Joint Committee on Taxation said:

       There has always been a deduction allowed for a business's 
     ordinary and necessary expenses. Expenses associated with 
     moving have always been regarded as deductible business 
     expenses.

  That being the case, allowing a deduction for these expenses is not 
all that remarkable. It is the general rule. Disallowing or putting 
exceptions on this deduction, on the other hand, would be an 
extraordinary deviation from long-standing tax policy and would 
needlessly add yet another level of complexity to our already overly 
complex Tax Code.
  Still, let's pretend for a moment this deviation is, in terms of tax 
policy, justified. It is not, but there is no harm in pretending, I 
guess. Even if we were justified, in terms of policy, the revenue 
generated by this proposal is minuscule.
  According to JCT, the Joint Committee on Taxation, preventing 
businesses from deducting expenses relating to outsourcing would raise 
about $140 million over 10 years. That is about $14 million a year--not 
$14 billion with a ``b,'' but $14 million with an ``m.''
  To put the puny amount of this proposal in context, we should compare 
this revenue number against the volume of business U.S. companies 
conduct overseas.
  According to the latest available IRS statistics of income, in 2010 
U.S. companies conducted about $1.085 trillion in business abroad, and 
that is probably low, given the sluggishness of the economy at that 
time. On an annualized basis, the Bring Jobs Home Act would curtail 
deductions representing about $40 million in expenses.
  That represents four-thousandths of 1 percent of all overseas 
business conducted by American companies. Let me repeat that, four-
thousandths of 1 percent--hardly perceptible.
  As I said, we are talking about minuscule sums here. We are also 
talking about politics as usual in the Senate. Instead of facing these 
problems and facing them realistically, some prefer to play politics 
with it, and it is total BS.
  Yet over the last few years we have heard countless claims from my 
friends on the other side of the aisle that ``closing loopholes for 
businesses that move jobs overseas'' will pay for all kinds of things.
  Earlier this month, for example, President Obama claimed that part of 
his infrastructure plan could be paid for by making sure corporations 
shipping jobs overseas ``pay their fair share of taxes.''
  Well, if this bill is representative of this particular effort, the 
President doesn't plan on paying for very much. I would bet the $14 
million wouldn't even be enough to pay for a single high-speed rail car 
or a round of IRS bonuses. It is amazing to me what people will do for 
political advantage that is shameless. They should be ashamed.
  Of course, all of this discussion only focuses on one section of the 
bill. When you add in the other part of the bill--the 20 percent credit 
for expenses associated with insourcing--the Bring Jobs Home Act 
actually loses revenue--loses revenue--adding $214 million to the 
deficit over 10 years.
  So why are we debating this bill? It is obviously not about raising 
revenue to pay for anything. It is clearly not about impacting business 
economic decisionmaking, and it is not about improving or simplifying 
our Tax Code.
  Instead, this bill is about politics, pure and simple. It was all 
about politics the last time we debated this bill in 2012, and it is 
about politics this time around.
  I, for one, am getting sick of it. I am so sick of this body not 
doing its job.
  The Democrats, both in the Senate and the White House, think they 
gain some traction by talking about ``economic patriotism'' and trying 
to paint Republicans as the party of outsourcing. Give me a break. The 
bill is yet another election-year gimmick, pure and simple, and they 
ought to be ashamed.
  Quite frankly, the American people are tired of gimmicks.
  What they want are serious solutions to the problems ailing our 
country. Sadly, they are not getting that from the Senate majority 
leadership these days.
  If we are serious about bringing jobs home, we should try working on 
legislation that will actually make the United States a better place to 
do business. Let's make our country more attractive to do business.
  We should try working on legislation that will actually grow our 
economy. But we don't do much of that in the Senate these days. In 
fact, we don't do much of anything in the Senate these days other than 
to continue to overbalance the Federal courts with this 
administration's suggestions.
  Yes, we don't do much of that in the Senate these days. Instead, what 
we are seeing is an endless series of showboats designed to highlight 
whatever Democratic campaign theme is popular that week.
  We have seen votes designed to highlight the supposed ``war on 
women.'' We have seen votes designed to make it appear the Republicans 
are indifferent to the plight of the middle class. Give me a break. Now 
we are seeing votes designed to demonize Republicans for their supposed 
lack of ``economic patriotism.''
  What a fraud. When does it end? From the looks of things, not any 
time soon.

  I suspect as we debate the so-called Bring Jobs Home Act, the 
Republicans will offer a number of amendments that, unlike this bill, 
will actually create jobs in the United States. I plan to offer some 
amendments along those lines, and I am sure many of my colleagues will 
do the same.
  This will be an opportunity to show whether the Senate Democratic 
leadership is serious about creating jobs and helping American workers 
and businesses as they claim to be. If, in fact, that is the aim of 
this legislation, then we should have a full and fair debate on it, 
including an open amendment process that will allow the Senate to 
explore alternative approaches and to discuss different ideas and how 
best to create jobs in this country. But I wouldn't hold my breath, 
watching how this Senate is being run these days.
  Let's talk about actually fixing our Tax Code. Let's talk about 
growing our economy. Let's talk about real solutions to the real 
problems facing our Nation.
  I hope that is the kind of conversation we will have on this bill. Of 
course, I am not naive. I know how the Senate operates these days. I 
have come to the floor numerous times--only yesterday, in fact--to 
lament the deterioration of this body under the current leadership. I 
am not under any illusions that things are simply going to change 
overnight.

[[Page S4736]]

  I might add that the Senate leadership--these are friends of mine. I 
am just disappointed in the way they are running the place, and I think 
my disappointments are correct and accurate. But make no mistake, 
things need to change. For the good of our country, things need to be 
done differently around here.
  Like I said, the American people are tired of political gimmicks. 
They are tired of the endless campaign. They want to see the Senate act 
in a way that will produce results.
  Sadly, with this legislation before us this week, it looks as if we 
are in for yet another round of partisan gamesmanship.
  We can do things differently and, once again, I hope we will. But as 
I have said many times before, I am not going to hold my breath. I just 
wish we could get together and work in the best interests of not only 
this body but our country.
  I don't see the leadership at the White House either, nor do I think 
Secretary Lew's letter on this issue was a justifiable letter. In fact, 
I think it was pathetic, and I am very disappointed in him as a person 
and as a leader in this country for that letter.
  Of course, I wrote one back to him, certainly, expressing my 
viewpoint.


                         U.N. Disability Treaty

  Yesterday the Foreign Relations Committee voted 12 to 6 again to 
report the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
  This was similar to the committee vote 2 years ago. On December 4, 
2012, the Senate voted 61 to 38 on the treaty, less than the two-thirds 
the Constitution requires for ratification.
  I expect a similar result if the Senate takes up the treaty again. 
Yesterday afternoon the senior Senator from Iowa--a friend of mine, and 
a person for whom I have a lot of regard--spoke on the floor about the 
treaty, and as he has done many times, urged its ratification. I don't 
doubt his sincerity at all, and I admire him personally for the long 
service he has given to this country.
  He called the concern that this treaty would undermine American 
sovereignty and self-government imaginary, hypothetical, and unreal. In 
fact he said:

       Anyone who is hiding behind that issue does not want to 
     vote for this treaty for some other reason. But it can't be 
     the reason of sovereignty.

  I will not speculate about what the Senator from Iowa meant by some 
other reason. He and I have worked hard together to promote the rights 
and opportunities of all persons with disabilities. I feel deeply about 
that issue. I feel as deeply as he does.
  We were partners in the development and passage of both the original 
Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and the ADA Amendments Act in 
2008.
  I take a back seat to no one when it comes to legislation to help 
persons with disabilities.
  But since I gave a speech on the floor 1 year ago explaining my 
concerns about this treaty's effect on American sovereignty and self-
government, I have to respond to the charges by my friend from Iowa. I 
can only speak for myself, of course, but I am not hiding behind 
anything, including the sovereignty issue.
  That issue is neither imaginary nor hypothetical, and it is certainly 
not cover for some hidden, unexpressed reason for opposing this treaty.
  As I explained on July 10, 2013, this is a treaty not with other 
nations but instead with the United Nations itself. Ratifying it would 
create obligations across at least 25 different areas of social, 
economic, cultural and even political life. Article 8, for example, 
would even regulate the United States to ``raise awareness throughout 
society, including at the family level, regarding persons with 
disabilities.''
  If this is all the treaty did, if it simply stated obligations, I 
might support it. It would then be generally similar to the treaty 
regarding child labor the Senate ratified in 1999. That treaty states 
that ratifying nations shall ``take immediate and effective measures to 
secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child 
labor.''
  But these two treaties are radically different and the difference is 
the very reason why the disability treaty threatens American 
sovereignty and self-government and the child labor treaty does not.
  The difference between these treaties is who has authority to 
determine whether ratifying nations are in compliance. The child labor 
treaty leaves that up to the ratifying nations themselves.
  The disability treaty, however, gives authority to determine whether 
ratifying nations were meeting their treaty obligations to the United 
Nations. That is considerably different and very dangerous. Each nation 
must submit compliance reports to a U.N. committee of experts which 
uses its own criteria and standards to determine compliance and makes 
whatever recommendations it chooses.

  Treaty advocates say this U.N. committee will not have actual legal 
authority to require changes to domestic laws and that even if it did, 
we would not have to change a thing.
  I have three responses to that. First, as I explained in my speech 
last year, American sovereignty and self-government are not so narrow 
they can only be undermined by the United Nations literally assuming 
legal and political control of our country. America is a republic under 
a written constitution, and in this system of government the people 
must have the last word on everything because the people are sovereign 
over everything.
  The American people and their elected representatives, not a U.N. 
committee, must have the last word not only on our laws and regulations 
but also on our priorities, our values, and our standards.
  Ratifying this treaty would endorse a formal, ongoing role for the 
United Nations in evaluating virtually every aspect of American life. 
It would say that the U.N.--not the American people--has the last word 
about whether the United States is meeting its obligations in these 
many areas.
  That undermines American sovereignty and self-government. The United 
Nations hardly needs a legally binding treaty to opine on aspects of 
American life and public policy. It does so all the time. Ratifying 
this treaty, however, would formally endorse the right of the United 
Nations to do so and, even worse, subject ourselves to their 
evaluation. That is serious. We should think twice before we allow 
something like that to happen.

  Second, we may already have the world's most expansive disability 
laws and regulations--and I know because I helped bring them about--but 
this treaty goes far beyond that.
  The U.N. Web site says this treaty legally binds any nation ratifying 
it to adhere to its principles, and the treaty spells out what that 
adherence will require. Ratifying nations agree to enact, modify, or 
abolish laws and regulations at all levels of government--federal, 
state, and local--that are inconsistent with the treaty's principles, 
but the treaty also requires evaluating and changing any social customs 
and cultural practices that are inconsistent with those principles. 
Anyone who has followed the United Nations knows that a U.N. committee 
is not likely to look as favorably on American customs and practices as 
it might on our laws and regulations.
  Third, even though the U.N. disability treaty appears to have been 
modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act, it utilizes a very 
different concept of disability.
  For more than four decades, American laws in this area have defined a 
disability as an impairment that substantially limits a major life 
activity. The disability treaty, however, states that ``disability is 
an evolving concept'' involving barriers that hinder ``full and 
effective participation on an equal basis with others.'' In other 
words, the U.N. committee would use a subjective fluid concept of 
disability to evaluate compliance with the treaty of U.S. laws that 
utilize an objective, functional definition of ``disability.''
  I am pleased to note that, even without U.S. ratification, no less 
than 34 nations have ratified the U.N. disability treaty since it was 
sent to the Senate on May 17, 2012--15 of them since I last spoke here 
on the treaty a year ago.
  Yesterday the senior Senator from Iowa asked for someone to explain 
to him why the disability treaty before us today raises concerns about 
sovereignty but the 1999 child labor treaty did not. Well, I think I 
have done that here today. The disability treaty gives

[[Page S4737]]

the last word on whether a nation is in compliance to the U.N.; the 
child labor treaty leaves that entirely up to each nation.
  I understand Senators have different understandings or concepts about 
such things as American sovereignty and self-government, but it is 
wrong to say that if I take a different view on that than the senior 
Senator from Iowa, I must somehow be hiding my real reason for opposing 
this treaty. In our system of government, legislation and treaties are 
profoundly different ways of addressing public policy issues with 
profoundly different effects on sovereignty and self-government.
  I will continue to be a champion for disability legislation, but I 
cannot support this disability treaty. I will support those who have 
disabilities, who have difficult times, as I did back then.
  Frankly, I still remember my great friend from Iowa and myself 
walking off the floor to a whole reception room filled with persons 
with disabilities, all of whom were crying and happy that we had done 
this in America.
  America leads the world in our quest toward disabilities issues. In 
all honesty, I don't want to lose our sovereignty in this issue, nor do 
I want to turn over our rights and our own self-interests to the United 
Nations, as good as it may be from time to time. But I have also seen 
where it hasn't been so good from time to time as well.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
the Bring Jobs Home Act, which is the bill that would stop big 
corporations from getting a tax break for sending jobs overseas while 
rewarding businesses that invest in bringing jobs here, back home.
  I thank my colleagues Senator Walsh and Senator Stabenow for leading 
the way on this important legislation, and I am glad we now have the 
opportunity to debate it. I hope our Republican colleagues will take a 
serious look at the Bring Jobs Home Act and work with us in the coming 
weeks and months on other efforts to create jobs and long-term economic 
growth.
  Our economy has changed a lot over the last few decades. Prices have 
risen for everything from college tuition to health care, and the 
shifting realities of the global economy have really made it harder to 
find the kinds of jobs on which workers used to raise their families.
  As we all remember, for far too many families the financial crisis 
and the recession that began in December of 2007 was the last straw. It 
pulled the rug out from under workers and small businesses across the 
country. We have come a long way since then, but it is clear there is 
much more we need to do to create jobs and broad-based economic growth 
so that hard-working families in our country get a fair shot.
  At a time when too many families are still struggling to make ends 
meet, there is absolutely no reason taxpayer dollars should go toward 
helping big corporations send jobs overseas. That is why I was very 
proud today to vote in support of the Bring Jobs Home Act.
  I think most Americans would agree they don't want their taxpayer 
dollars spent on helping corporations outsource jobs. It really should 
be a no-brainer.
  Unfortunately, over the last few years we have spent far too much 
time avoiding crises rather than legislation like the Bring Jobs Home 
Act that would help our workers and businesses. Government shutdowns, 
default threats, and last-minute deals took up a lot of oxygen here in 
Washington, DC, and made workers and families really question whether 
their government could get anything done.
  So when Chairman Ryan and I were able to reach a 2-year bipartisan 
budget agreement, I was hopeful we would be able to move beyond the 
cycle of governing by crisis, and I hoped we could build on that 
bipartisan foundation established in that 2-year budget deal and work 
across the aisle to create jobs and grow our economy. The Bring Jobs 
Home Act is exactly the kind of legislation I wanted to see us debate 
and work together on.
  While we all know Republicans and Democrats have very different views 
on the best ways to encourage economic growth, we have taken some 
bipartisan steps that show we should be able to work together on this 
and other job-creating legislation. The Workforce Innovation and 
Opportunity Act, which Senator Isakson from Georgia and I were able to 
work together to finish, is a great example. That bipartisan 
legislation shows what is possible when Members from different parties 
and different States and different Chambers come together to get things 
done for the American economy. I have heard from countless businesses 
and families in my home State of Washington who have told me how much 
they rely on effective workforce programs. So I was really thrilled 
yesterday to stand next to President Obama as he signed more than a 
decade of hard work and negotiation into law when he signed that 
legislation.
  I am glad we were able to go beyond governing by crisis and reach a 
bipartisan agreement to thoroughly and responsibly improve our 
workforce development system. We need to do the same thing--go beyond 
simply avoiding crises when it comes to commonsense steps such as the 
Bring Jobs Home Act.
  I would also note that this is true for the highway trust fund. I 
hope we will be able to not only avoid a construction shutdown short-
term but that we will work together to strengthen our transportation 
infrastructure in a comprehensive way.
  Construction workers and businesses absolutely deserve the certainty 
of knowing we are going to avoid the shortfall in the highway trust 
fund and keep our critical transportation projects moving forward. But 
they actually deserve more than that. They, along with every other 
American family and business that uses our roads and bridges, deserve a 
long-term solution--one that not only shores up the highway trust fund 
but also provides a plan for smart investments throughout our entire 
transportation system.
  My colleagues Senator Wyden and Senator Boxer have been leading the 
way on avoiding this unnecessary crisis and addressing our 
transportation infrastructure challenges not just for next year but for 
years to come, and I thank both of them for their efforts.
  I know conventional wisdom is that Congress will not be able to get 
anything done from now until November, but I don't see any reason at 
all why that ought to be the case. Families and communities rightly 
want us to solve problems. Just avoiding crises isn't enough.
  I am very hopeful that in the coming weeks and months we can not only 
avoid a construction shutdown but also lay the groundwork for smart 
investments in our country's roads and bridges and waterways.
  I am glad my Republican colleagues are making it clear that they 
don't want another fight over keeping the government open. I think we 
should build on that by working together to replace more of the harmful 
sequestration cuts we are going to face in 2016.
  Instead of simply avoiding self-inflicted wounds to jobs and the 
economy, we should be taking important steps, such as the Bring Jobs 
Home Act, that encourage our companies to invest and hire right here at 
home.
  Of course, there is much more to do as well, and I never meant to 
suggest that any of this would be easy. As we all know, compromise is 
not easy. But legislation such as the bipartisan Budget Act and the 
Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act show us that when both sides 
are ready to come to the table and make tough choices, we can make real 
progress.
  We have a lot of work to do over the next weeks and into the fall, 
and I hope we will take the bipartisan path that leads us to real 
solutions and goes beyond just simply avoiding the next crisis. That is 
what our constituents rightly expect, it is what they deserve, and it 
is what I hope we can all work together on to deliver.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Veterans' Affairs

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as chairman of the Senate Committee on

[[Page S4738]]

Veterans' Affairs, I want to take a few minutes to update Members of 
the Senate as to where we are on some very important issues that impact 
veterans all over this country.
  The first point I want to make is some good news. The committee had a 
hearing yesterday to hear testimony regarding the confirmation of 
Robert McDonald to be the new Secretary of the VA. I think I can speak 
for the whole committee in saying we were very impressed by what we 
heard from Mr. McDonald both in terms of his passion for the needs of 
veterans and also his administrative knowledge, his management skills, 
as the former head of one of the large corporations in America. I think 
he left us with a very strong impression. The result was that today, a 
few hours ago, by a unanimous vote, the Senate committee voted to 
confirm Robert McDonald as our new Secretary of the VA, and I hope very 
much his nomination will get to the floor as soon as possible. I think 
that is good news because the VA needs stable leadership. Sloan Gibson, 
who has been Acting Secretary, is doing an excellent job. He has 
already accomplished a lot. But it is important that we have a new 
permanent Secretary on board, and I hope the Members here see fit to 
confirm him as soon as we possibly can.
  On an additional issue, I think as all Members of the Senate know, 
about a month or so ago we voted by a vote of 93 to 3, almost 
unanimously, to make sure the veterans of our country get quality 
health care in a timely manner, that we bring a new level of 
accountability to the VA, and I am very proud of the support that 
legislation, which was introduced by me and Senator John McCain, 
received. I thank again Senator McCain for his very strong efforts to 
make that happen and for his continued support of the veterans 
community.
  Senator McCain made a statement the other day--I think it was 
yesterday--published in CQ, which I personally could not agree with 
more. He spoke in terms of the conference committee that we are in 
right now trying to merge the Senate bill and the House bill and come 
up with something that can pass in both bodies. He said and I quote: 
``We've got to sit down and get this done, because we cannot go out for 
recess in August without having acted on this bill.''
  I think he is exactly right.
  Let me, picking up on that theme, relay to my colleagues what the 
VFW, which is having their annual convention in St. Louis, said:

       The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is 
     demanding that Congress immediately pass a compromise bill to 
     help fix the Department Of Veterans Affairs before they 
     adjourn for five weeks at the end of the month. ``Pass a bill 
     or don't come back from recess,'' said VFW National Commander 
     William A. Thien of Georgetown, IN. ``America's veterans are 
     tired of waiting--on secret waiting lists at the VA and on 
     their elected officials to do their jobs.''

  I could not agree with the VFW more on that issue.
  There was a bill a month ago that passed here. The CBO said that bill 
would cost $35 billion, and we voted for that for emergency funding 
because the Members here understood that taking care of veterans is a 
cost of war as much as spending money on tanks and guns and missiles--
$35 billion in emergency funding. The House passed its bill which was 
later assessed by the CBO at $44 billion. But here is the good news--
and without divulging the kinds of negotiations we are having with 
Chairman Miller in the House--and Chairman Miller is a serious man. I 
think he wants to get a bill passed. I don't want to go into all the 
details here, but I think it is fair to say the cost of that bill will 
be significantly less than what the CBO originally estimated.

  A few minutes ago I and others received a letter from the major 
veterans organizations on an issue of important consequence. Again, 
without going into great detail about the nature of the negotiations 
which the House and Senate are having on the veterans bill, I think it 
is fair to say one of the stumbling blocks is that I agree and the 
House agrees it is imperative we pass funding to make sure that 
veterans who are in long waiting lines right now get the quality care 
they need now, and that means if the VA cannot accommodate them in a 
timely manner, they will go out to private doctors, community health 
centers, or whatever, and the VA will pay that bill. That is what we 
have to do because it is unacceptable that veterans remain on long 
waiting periods and not get health care. There is a general agreement 
on that. There is debate about how much that is going to cost over a 2-
year period, but I think we can reach some resolution.
  Here is where the difference of opinion lies--without divulging 
anything, and this has been in the newspapers--Sloan Gibson, the Acting 
Secretary, came before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee last week 
and he made it very clear that while we have to deal with the emergency 
of long waiting periods and get people the contracted care they need, 
simultaneously, we must make sure the VA has the doctors, the nurses, 
the medical personnel, the IT, and the space they need in order to deal 
with this crisis so that 2 years from now we are not back in the same 
position we are, and he came forward with a proposal that, in fact, 
costs $17.6 billion. I think we can lower that amount of money, because 
some of that request is not going to be spent this year or even next 
year.
  But the issue here is we have to strengthen the VA, their capacity, 
so that veterans do not remain on long waiting periods and that we can 
get them the quality and timely care they need.
  Now, what I wanted to mention was an hour or so ago I received and 
Chairman Miller, who is chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' 
Affairs, got the letter, Richard Burr, who is the ranking member on the 
Senate committee, Mike Michaud, the ranking member at the House--we 
received a letter from a variety of veterans organizations, virtually 
every major veterans organization, and they are the Disabled American 
Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the VFW, the Paralyzed Veterans 
of America, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Iraq and Afghanistan 
Veterans of America, the Military Officers Association of America, the 
U.S. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officers Association, and many other 
organizations.
  I want to take a moment to read what they say, because this is 
terribly important. What they are saying in essence is yes, we need 
emergency funding to make sure that veterans tomorrow get the health 
care they need from the private sector or anyplace else, but we also 
need to strengthen the VA so that over the years they can provide the 
quality and timely care veterans are entitled to. I am going to read 
this letter because it is important that Members of the Senate and the 
House understand where the major veterans organizations are coming 
from.

       Last week Acting Secretary Sloan Gibson appeared before the 
     Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee to discuss the progress 
     made by the Department of Veterans Affairs over the past two 
     months to address the health care access crisis for thousands 
     of veterans. Secretary Gibson testified that after re-
     examining VA's resource needs in light of the revelations 
     about secret waiting lists and hidden demand, VA required 
     supplemental resources totaling $17.6 billion for the 
     remainder of this fiscal year through the end of FY 2017.
       As the leaders of organizations representing millions of 
     veterans, we agree with Secretary Gibson that there is a need 
     to provide VA with additional resources now to ensure that 
     veterans can access the health care they have earned either 
     from VA providers or through non-VA purchased care. We urge 
     Congress to expeditiously approve supplemental funding that 
     fully addresses the critical needs outlined by Secretary 
     Gibson either prior to, or at the same time as, any 
     compromise legislation that may be reported out of the House-
     Senate Conference Committee. Whether it costs $17 billion or 
     $50 billion over the next three years, Congress has a sacred 
     obligation to provide VA with the funds it requires to meet 
     both immediate needs through non-VA care and future needs by 
     expanding VA's internal capacity.

  And I continue. Again, this is a letter from almost every major 
veterans organization:
  Last month, we wrote to you--
  They wrote to the chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs 
Committees--

     we wrote to you to outline the principles and priorities 
     essential to addressing the access crisis, a copy of which is 
     attached. The first priority ``must be to ensure that all 
     veterans currently waiting for treatment must be provided 
     access to timely, convenient health care as quickly as 
     medically indicated.'' Second, when VA is unable to provide 
     that care directly, ``VA must be involved in the timely 
     coordination of and fully responsible for prompt payment for 
     all authorized non-VA care.'' Third, Congress must provide 
     supplemental funding for this year and additional

[[Page S4739]]

     funding for next year to pay for the temporary expansion of 
     non-VA purchased care. Finally, whatever actions VA or 
     Congress takes to address the current access crisis must also 
     ``protect, preserve and strengthen the VA health care system 
     so that it remains capable of providing a full continuum of 
     high-quality, timely health care to all enrolled veterans.''

  I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                    July 23, 2014.
     Chairman Bernie Sanders,
     Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Washington, DC.
     Ranking Member Richard Burr,
     Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Washington, DC.
     Chairman Jeff Miller,
     House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Washington, DC.
     Ranking Member Mike Michaud,
     House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Washington, DC.
       Chairman Sanders, Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Burr, 
     Ranking Member Michaud: Last week, Acting Secretary Sloan 
     Gibson appeared before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee 
     to discuss the progress made by the Department of Veterans 
     Affairs (VA) over the past two months to address the health 
     care access crisis for thousands of veterans. Secretary 
     Gibson testified that after re-examining VA's resource needs 
     in light of the revelations about secret waiting lists and 
     hidden demand, VA required supplemental resources totaling 
     $17.6 billion for the remainder of this fiscal year through 
     the end of FY 2017.
       As the leaders of organizations representing millions of 
     veterans, we agree with Secretary Gibson that there is a need 
     to provide VA with additional resources now to ensure that 
     veterans can access the health care they have earned, either 
     from VA providers or through non-VA purchased care. We urge 
     Congress to expeditiously approve supplemental funding that 
     fully addresses the critical needs outlined by Secretary 
     Gibson either prior to, or at the same time as, any 
     compromise legislation that may be reported out of the House-
     Senate Conference Committee. Whether it costs $17 billion or 
     $50 billion over the next three years, Congress has a sacred 
     obligation to provide VA with the funds it requires to meet 
     both immediate needs through non-VA care and future needs by 
     expanding VA's internal capacity.
       Last month, we wrote to you to outlining the principles and 
     priorities essential to addressing the access crisis, a copy 
     of which is attached. The first priority ``. . . must be to 
     ensure that all veterans currently waiting for treatment must 
     be provided access to timely, convenient health care as 
     quickly as medically indicated.'' Second, when VA is unable 
     to provide that care directly, ``. . . VA must be involved in 
     the timely coordination of and fully responsible for prompt 
     payment for all authorized non-VA care.'' Third, Congress 
     must provide supplemental funding for this year and 
     additional funding for next year to pay for the temporary 
     expansion of non-VA purchased care. Finally, whatever actions 
     VA or Congress takes to address the current access crisis 
     must also ``. . . protect, preserve and strengthen the VA 
     health care system so that it remains capable of providing a 
     full continuum of high-quality, timely health care to all 
     enrolled veterans.''
       In his testimony to the Senate, Secretary Gibson stated 
     that the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has already 
     reached out to over 160,000 veterans to get them off wait 
     lists and into clinics. He said that VHA accomplished this by 
     adding more clinic hours, aggressively recruiting to fill 
     physician vacancies, deploying mobile medical units, using 
     temporary staffing resources, and expanding the use of 
     private sector care. Gibson also testified that VHA made over 
     543,000 referrals for veterans to receive non-VA care in the 
     private sector--91,000 more than in the comparable period a 
     year ago. In a subsequent press release, VA stated that it 
     had reduced the New Enrollee Appointment Report (NEAR) from 
     its peak of 46,000 on June 1, 2014 to 2,000 as of July 1, 
     2014, and that there was also a reduction of over 17,000 
     veterans on the Electronic Waiting List since May 15, 2014. 
     We appreciate this progress, but more must be done to ensure 
     that every enrolled veteran has access to timely care.
       The majority of the supplemental funding required by VA, 
     approximately $8.1 billion, would be used to expand access to 
     VA health care over the next three fiscal years by hiring up 
     to 10,000 new clinical staff, including 1,500 new doctors, 
     nurses and other direct care providers. That funding would 
     also be used to cover the cost of expanded non-VA purchased 
     care, with the focus shifting over the three years from non-
     VA purchased care to VA-provided care as internal capacity 
     increased. The next biggest portion would be $6 billion for 
     VA's physical infrastructure, which according to Secretary 
     Gibson would include 77 lease projects for outpatient clinics 
     that would add about two million square feet, as well as 
     eight major construction projects and 700 minor construction 
     and non-recurring maintenance projects that together could 
     add roughly four million appointment slots at VA facilities. 
     The remainder of the funding would go to IT enhancements, 
     including scheduling, purchased care and project coordination 
     systems, as well as a modest increase of $400 million for 
     additional VBA staff to address the claims and appeals 
     backlogs.
       In reviewing the additional resource requirements 
     identified by Secretary Gibson, the undersigned find them to 
     be commensurate with the historical funding shortfalls 
     identified in recent years by many of our organizations, 
     including The Independent Budget (IB), which is authored and 
     endorsed by many of our organizations. For example, in the 
     prior ten VA budgets, the amount of funding for medical care 
     requested by the Administration and ultimately provided to VA 
     by Congress was more than $7.8 billion less than what was 
     recommended by the IB. Over just the past five years, the IB 
     recommended $4 billion more than VA requested or Congress 
     approved and for next year, FY 2015, the IB has recommended 
     over $2 billion more than VA requested. Further corroboration 
     of the shortfall in VA's medical care funding came two weeks 
     ago from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which issued 
     a revised report on H.R. 3230 estimating that, ``. . . under 
     current law for 2015 and CBO's baseline projections for 2016, 
     VA's appropriations for health care are not projected to keep 
     pace with growth in the patient population or growth in per 
     capita spending for health care--meaning that waiting times 
     will tend to increase . . .''
       Similarly, over the past decade the amount of funding 
     requested by VA for major and minor construction, and the 
     final amount appropriated by Congress, has been more than $9 
     billion less than what the IB estimated was needed to allow 
     VA sufficient space to deliver timely, high-quality care. 
     Over the past five years alone, that shortfall is more than 
     $6.6 billion and for next year the VA budget request is more 
     than $2.5 billion less than the IB recommendation. Funding 
     for nonrecurring maintenance (NRM) has also been woefully 
     inadequate. Importantly, the IB recommendations closely 
     mirror VA's Strategic Capital Investment Plan (SCIP), which 
     VA uses to determine infrastructure needs. According to SCIP, 
     VA should invest between $56 to $69 billion in facility 
     improvements over the next ten years, which would require 
     somewhere between $5 to $7 billion annually. However, the 
     Administration's budget requests over the past four years 
     have averaged less than $2 billion annually for major and 
     minor construction and for NRM, and Congress has not 
     significantly increased those funding requests in the final 
     appropriations.
       Taking into account the progress achieved by VA over the 
     past two months, and considering the funding shortfalls our 
     organizations have identified over the past decade and in 
     next year's budget, the undersigned believe that Congress 
     must quickly approve supplemental funding that fully meets 
     the critical needs identified by Secretary Gibson, and which 
     fulfills the principles and priorities we laid out a month 
     ago. Such an approach would be a reasonable and practical way 
     to expand access now, while building internal capacity to 
     avoid future access crises in the future. In contrast to the 
     legislative proposals in the Conference Committee which would 
     require months to promulgate new regulations, establish new 
     procedures and set up new offices, the VA proposal could have 
     an immediate impact on increasing access to care for veterans 
     today by building upon VA's ongoing expanded access 
     initiatives and sustaining them over the next three years. 
     Furthermore, by investing in new staff and treatment space, 
     VA would be able to continue providing this expanded level of 
     care, even while increasing its use of purchased care when 
     and where it is needed.
       In our jointly signed letter last month, we applauded both 
     the House and Senate for working expeditiously and in a 
     bipartisan manner to move legislation designed to address the 
     access crisis, and we understand you are continuing to work 
     towards a compromise bill. As leaders of the nation's major 
     veterans organization, we now ask that you work in the same 
     bipartisan spirit to provide VA supplemental funding 
     addressing the needs outlined by Secretary Gibson to the 
     floor as quickly as feasible, approve it and send it to the 
     President so that he can enact it to help ensure that no 
     veteran waits too long to get the care they earned through 
     their service. We look forward to your response.
           Respectfully,
         Garry J. Augustine, Executive Director, Washington 
           Headquarters, DAV (Disabled American Veterans); Homer 
           S. Townsend, Jr., Executive Director, Paralyzed 
           Veterans of America; Tom Tarantino, Chief Policy 
           Officer, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America; 
           Robert E. Wallace, Executive Director, Veterans of 
           Foreign Wars of the United States; Rick Weidman, 
           Executive Director for Policy and Government Affairs, 
           Vietnam Veterans of America; VADM Norbert R. Ryan, Jr., 
           USN (Ret.), President, Military Officers Association of 
           America; Randy Reid, Executive Director, U.S. Coast 
           Guard Chief Petty Officers Association; James T. 
           Currie, Ph.D., Colonel, USA (Ret.), Executive Director, 
           Commissioned Officers Association of the U.S. Public 
           Health Service; Robert L. Frank, Chief Executive 
           Officer, Air Force Sergeants Association; VADM John 
           Totushek, USN (Ret.), Executive Director, Association 
           of the U.S. Navy (AUSN); Herb Rosenbleeth, National 
           Executive Director, Jewish War Veterans of the USA; 
           Heather L. Ansley,

[[Page S4740]]

           Esq., MSW, Vice President, VetsFirst, a Program of 
           United Spinal Association; CW4 (Ret.) Jack Du Teil, 
           Executive Director, United States Army Warrant Officers 
           Association; John R. Davis, Director, Legislative 
           Programs, Fleet Reserve Association; Robert Certain, 
           Executive Director, Military Chaplain Association of 
           the United States; Michael A. Blum, National Executive 
           Director, Marine Corps League.

  Mr. SANDERS. Essentially what the letter goes on to talk about is 
that many of these organizations have been looking at this issue for 
years, and in their independent budget have noted that the VA needs 
more space, because you have many hospitals where there are not enough 
examination rooms and that slows down the ability of doctors and nurses 
to treat patients, and we need more doctors and nurses. So for many of 
these organizations this is not new news. They have known it for years.
  Here is where we are. The good news is that I think we can bring 
forth a bill which deals with emergency contracted-out care for 
veterans today on long waiting periods. I think we can deal with the 
issue that Senator McCain feels very strongly about and that is making 
sure that veterans who live 40 miles or more away from a VA facility 
will be able to go to the private physician of their choice, and I 
think we can also strengthen the VA in terms of doctors and nurses and 
information technology and space so that we don't keep running into 
this problem year after year. It is going to take the VA time in order 
to bring in the doctors and nurses and do the construction. I don't 
want to get into the details of the discussions we are having with the 
House, but I did want to make veterans, and, in fact, Members of 
Congress aware of where I believe we are at this moment.

  With that, I will yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to address the legislation we are 
debating, the Bring Jobs Home Act, but before I do so, I wish to note 
how much I appreciate the leadership of the Senator from Vermont in 
fighting for quality care and quality programs for our U.S. veterans. 
This is incredibly important. Our sons and daughters and husbands and 
wives are coming home from Iraq and now from Afghanistan. They have 
stood for us and we need to stand for them. Bernie Sanders is leading 
that effort, and I appreciate him for doing so.
  I wish to address the legislation we are debating, the Bring Jobs 
Home Act. Earlier today the Senate voted on whether to debate this 
legislation to help bring manufacturing jobs back to America--to 
onshore these jobs. I was very heartened to see a 93-to-7 overwhelming 
bipartisan majority say: Yes, let's turn to this bill and work on 
increasing manufacturing jobs in America. This is a much better result 
than we had just 2 years ago when some of my colleagues combined to 
thwart the ability to close debate on the motion to proceed and we were 
unable to get on to this bill.
  We are in an economy where jobs have been returning, but quality 
living-wage jobs remain elusive. Indeed, 60 percent of the jobs we lost 
in 2008 and 2009 were living-wage jobs, and of the jobs we are getting 
back, only 40 percent of those are living-wage jobs. The difference 
between those two numbers means that millions of families who had a 
strong foundation just a few years ago, while they may have employment 
today, do not have a strong foundation because they are chasing part-
time jobs, minimum-wage jobs, near-minimum-wage jobs, and jobs with low 
to no benefits, and that is not a foundation on which a family can 
thrive.
  This bill is important. The Bring Jobs Home Act does two simple 
things: It closes tax loopholes that ask the American people--
currently--to subsidize the costs for corporations to ship jobs 
overseas; second, it creates a new tax incentive to encourage companies 
to bring jobs home with a tax credit that covers 20 percent of the 
costs of relocating those jobs back to the United States.
  I am an original cosponsor of this legislation because this is an 
item of huge importance to my home State of Oregon. Manufacturing is a 
tremendous driver of Oregon's economy. In fact, if we look across the 
Nation and we look at what share of the State economy is driven by 
manufacturing, Oregon is often first or second. Manufacturing matters a 
great deal. When manufacturing thrives, the Oregon economy is going to 
do well, and when it dies, the Oregon economy is not going to do well.
  If we look at this from yet another perspective, we can see that 
States have been losing manufacturing jobs over the last 10-plus years 
in sizeable numbers. In the period of about 2001 to 2011, that 10-year 
period, we lost approximately 5 million manufacturing jobs. To put it 
differently, we lost 50,000 factories. Well, what would we do today to 
have those 5 million living-wage, family-wage, good-paying jobs? One is 
we should pass this bill and to quit subsidizing the export of our jobs 
overseas.
  These tax breaks, which were put through by powerful special 
interests for the benefit of a few multinationals, have done enormous 
damage to the United States of America and to our families, and this is 
our chance to reverse that.
  One study--the Economic Policy Institute study of 2012--looked at the 
number of jobs that were created in this dynamic between additional 
sales overseas versus additional imports. Those additional imports, of 
course, reflected jobs lost. In their estimate, Oregon gained about 
9,100 jobs from additional exports and we lost about 59,000 jobs. That 
differential of 50,000 jobs has an enormous impact on the State of 
Oregon. We can put it this way: It is about 2 to 3 percent of the 
number of jobs in our State economy, so it is an issue which really 
hits home.
  I know Oregon is not alone. For every single State--West and East, 
urban and rural, and, yes, Democrat and Republican--this has been the 
story in which jobs lost have exceeded jobs gained. That is why I 
strongly hope this body of folks--representing the West and East and 
North and South and urban and rural, the blue and red--can come 
together to get this job done for the American people.
  Think about it this way for a moment. Under our current Tax Code, we 
are asking working families who are paying income taxes to subsidize 
the exportation of their own jobs. That makes no sense. If you went out 
on the street in Eugene or Pendleton or Medford--cities across my 
State--and asked people what they think about that, you would probably 
hear a common theme. One person might say: That is absurd. Another 
person might say: That goes against our own economic self-interest. A 
third person might simply say: That is wrong and it hurts families. All 
of them would be right. Let's right this wrong, this inflicted wound on 
living-wage jobs and on our families.
  Over the last few years we have started to see a bit of improvement 
in that manufacturing jobs have started to grow. But we need to nurture 
that trend. We need to encourage that direction. I know that for the 
Oregon families who are at the heart of the manufacturing economy, 
whether or not their jobs stay here in the United States of America 
means everything. It will affect the quality of life they will have as 
adults, and it also affects the quality they will bring to their jobs 
as parents and raising their children to seize opportunities of the 
future.

  Let's continue to work together to keep jobs here in Oregon and here 
in America. Let's take on this issue of offshoring that has deeply 
affected millions of Americans. This is a problem that is within our 
power to fix, and we are now on the bill that starts us down the path 
of fixing it. Let's not get stalled. Let's make sure we have the 
majority to close debate, to get to a final vote.
  If anyone has anything to say and you don't feel you have had time to 
say it, come and say it tonight, say it tomorrow, say it tomorrow 
evening, but get down here and make your notions known so that you 
don't have to say that you need more time when it comes time to shut 
down debate and actually vote on this bill.
  Paralysis has been the practice that has so hurt this Chamber's 
ability to address major issues affecting America, and that is not 
right.
  I encourage my colleagues, whatever you have to say, come down here 
and say it. Don't once again obstruct the ability of this Chamber to 
take on a major issue affecting families across this land.

[[Page S4741]]

  I thank the Presiding Officer for the time and opportunity to speak 
on this bill. I know the Presiding Officer has been championing a whole 
collection of bills designed to nurture manufacturing. That collection 
of bills could do great work and would be a logical additional step as 
we take on these provisions to stop offshoring and increase onshoring.
  We should turn to some of the other bills the Senator from Delaware 
has put together. One of the bills he has put together is a bill I 
sponsored. It is called the Build Act. I have gone on a manufacturing 
tour in my State of Oregon and visited a large number of manufacturers, 
and the common issue I hear from those who are managing the factory 
floor or from the CEOs is this: We need more folks coming out of high 
schools and community colleges who have both the aptitude for using 
tools and the desire to use tools.
  It used to be, when I was growing up--this simply came because we had 
a habit of building things in our garages. Our garages were full of 
tools in a working-class community. My garage is still full of tools, 
but I can tell you that my children are not likely to find themselves 
out in the garage making things because that is not the culture today. 
If they are going to learn the joy of making things, they are going to 
have to have the opportunity of shop classes. It has a fancy name now--
``career technical education.'' I think ``shop classes'' gives a better 
visual impression--metal shop and woodshop and bringing items home 
where you can say, hey, I made this dustpan or this carving or this 
mask.
  I have been to some shop classes in Oregon where the students are not 
making the simple things that I made. They are making some of the most 
incredibly gorgeous furniture you have ever seen, with sophisticated 
skills in using tools. We need more of those shop classes to help feed 
and nurture the manufacturing economy. It is a win-win for our 
children, it is a win-win for our economy, and it is a win-win in terms 
of creating living-wage jobs that are a strong foundation for families 
to thrive.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor and note 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. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Order of Business

  Under the previous order, the time until 4:30 p.m. will be controlled 
by the Republicans.


                          LNG Export Approval

  Mr. HOEVEN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I come to the floor to offer a compromise on the LNG export issue. I 
will put up my first chart. I think this is both a solution and a 
compromise to LNG exporting.
  The reality is we need to be able to construct LNG export facilities. 
There has been debate in this body as to how that approval process 
should work. Some want to take the Department of Energy completely out 
of the process and just allow companies to build LNG facilities--let 
the market work--and that is actually an approach I advocate and I have 
joined with others on that type of legislation. That legislation has 
bipartisan support. I think we could get it to the floor and we would 
have more than the 60 votes it needs to pass. Others have advocated a 
more cautious approach, which is essentially continuing the current 
state of play wherein DOE can take years before they make a decision on 
these LNG export terminals. So what I offer today is the LNG Certainty 
Act, which I believe is a compromise between those two points of view. 
It would provide for an expedited process but would do it in a way 
where we keep the Department of Energy in the equation.
  Why is it so important that we act now? This is a bill that is very 
much about jobs. Right now we are on a motion to go to a bill that 
purportedly would create jobs. I don't think that bill will create 
jobs; I think it will create more regulation and more costs for 
companies that are trying to create jobs. So instead why don't we bring 
up some of these energy bills that will not only create jobs but 
accomplish much more as well, such as economic growth--economic growth 
that will generate revenues to reduce the deficit and the debt without 
raising taxes or increasing regulatory burdens? Why not pass some of 
these energy bills that will provide better environmental stewardship? 
LNG production certainly would provide job growth, economic growth but 
also better environmental stewardship, and it will also help provide 
national security--national security for us and for our allies. That is 
a very big reason it is so important that we act now.
  We have a President who is talking about what Vladimir Putin and 
Russia should do and what they shouldn't do. He is talking about it, 
but we need to go beyond talk to action. What is that action? We need 
to impose stronger sanctions on Russia. I think there is broad 
bipartisan support in this Senate to impose stronger sanctions on 
Russia, but for those sanctions to be truly effective, we need the 
European Union to join with us in imposing those sanctions. We can have 
a meaningful impact on what Putin and Russia do, but we have to act and 
we have to get the European Union to act with us.
  So why aren't they acting with us? The reality is Vladimir Putin has 
them over a barrel--literally. European countries are dependent on 
Russia for their energy. So they are very reluctant to impose sanctions 
when they have to get their energy from Russia.
  Here is a graph that shows how much all of these different European 
countries get in terms of their energy, their natural gas from Europe. 
We can see in some cases it is 100 percent, 60 percent, 50 percent. For 
some obviously it is less. But for many European countries, they are 
dependent on Russia for this natural gas.
  Here is the pipeline network coming in from Russia. Here we see 
Russia and all of these pipelines coming into Europe through the 
Ukraine supplying natural gas. Obviously, these countries are very 
worried about imposing sanctions which, of course, would create 
difficulty for them from an economic perspective as well as Russia, but 
they are very concerned about energy supply. That is why we have to act 
and we have to act now to make sure they have another supply of energy 
so they can join with us in meaningful sanctions against Russia.
  So how does the LNG Certainty Act work? Quite simply, it provides 
that the Department of Energy must make a decision on whether to 
approve an LNG export application within 45 days of that company 
completing its preliminary application to the FERC--the Federal Energy 
Regulatory Commission. So understand, right now companies have to apply 
to both the Department of Energy and to the FERC--the Federal Energy 
Regulatory Commission. They have to apply to both in order to get 
approval to build an LNG facility.

  When we talk to these companies we learn that the FERC has a fairly 
rational process that they know they can step through in an orderly 
fashion. It is pretty dependable, pretty certain. It takes a certain 
amount of time, covers all the bases, but they know they can get 
through it. The DOE--the Department of Energy--on the other hand, 
doesn't have any specific timeframes or criteria on how or whether they 
will give approval to these companies, so it creates uncertainty and it 
creates real delay.
  As I said, some people want to take the Department of Energy out of 
the equation completely; others want to continue just as it is. That is 
why this act truly is a compromise in that we keep the Department of 
Energy in the mix, but we require that within 45 days after the 
preliminary application to the FERC is approved, which takes about 6 
months, up to as much as 1 year--within 45 days after that preliminary 
application is filed with the FERC, the DOE then has 45 days to make a 
decision. So we still have whatever safeguards some people feel need to 
be in there, as far as the DOE. The DOE is still in there. They still 
have that safeguard, but we have a reasonably expedited process and a 
reasonably certain process for these companies that are applying to try 
to get approval.
  Right now we have on the order of 13 different companies--1 has 
conditional approval but 13 different companies--

[[Page S4742]]

seeking approval to build LNG facilities. Many of these companies have 
been waiting for over 1 year--some 1 to 2 years--and they are not even 
through the Department of Energy process yet. So while we need to start 
moving natural gas to Europe, since Europe needs that source of supply 
so they can stand with us in sanctions against Russia, these 
applications continue to sit in limbo. How does that possibly make 
sense? Why aren't we acting? Why is it adequate or satisfactory for the 
President to just talk about what should be done instead of doing 
something? This is action we can and must take.
  I will give my colleagues an example of a project showing what we are 
talking about. I am showing my colleagues 13 different projects that 
are in limbo.
  Here is one right here where we take a specific example. This is the 
Golden Pass project. It is a project ExxonMobil wants to build. They 
are ready to invest $10 billion--$10 billion--today and save these 
taxes to build an export facility that will move liquefied natural gas 
from this country to Europe. Why would we want to sit and hold them up?
  Here you see a timeline. They have been in this process already for 
more than 1 year. It looks to me as though they do not even figure they 
are halfway done yet, and there is no certainty from the Department of 
Energy when they will be done. Yet here is a $10 billion project that 
is sponsored by a company--ExxonMobil--that certainly has the ability 
to build it, that will take LNG, liquefied natural gas, to Europe.
  What is the rationale for holding them up, for just making them wait? 
Aren't we moving to a so-called jobs bill? How many jobs do you think 
will be created in building a $10 billion facility? A lot of jobs.
  This is just 1 example of the more than 13 I just showed that are 
sitting in limbo.
  That is exactly why I have joined with Senator McCain, Senator 
Murkowski, and Senator Barrasso and we proposed the North Atlantic 
Energy Security Act. The whole focus of this act was to streamline oil 
and gas production, to build the gathering systems we need, move it to 
these LNG facilities, and give companies the approval and the authority 
to build those LNG facilities so they can move that gas to our allies.
  All of these steps create jobs. They all create jobs. We create jobs 
in all of these steps: producing more gas, building the gathering 
systems, and building the LNG facilities. But instead of doing this--in 
this picture we have an oil well, which is flaring off gas, meaning 
burning it off. This picture is an example in my State of North Dakota 
where we are flaring off $1.5 million worth of gas a day. So instead of 
just burning up that gas, we would actually have a market for it, so we 
can capture it, move it to the LNG facilities, and export it to our 
allies, not only strengthening our national security and their national 
security but creating a market for our gas.
  Right now we produce 30 trillion cubic feet of gas a year in this 
country, and we use 26 trillion. So gas is flared off instead of 
captured and sent to market.
  If we want to talk about job creation, if we want to talk about 
economic growth, if we want to talk about environmental stewardship, if 
we want to talk about working with our allies to actually do something 
in response to Russian aggression, do we want to actually do something 
or just keep talking about it?
  So while we are considering jobs bills, why don't we consider this 
jobs bill? Why don't we consider the LNG Certainty Act. The reason I 
have introduced this compromise bill is so we can do this: move natural 
gas from the United States, through facilities, to our allies to deter 
Russian aggression. It is that simple. That is what it is all about.
  That is why, again, I joined with Senators McCain, Murkowski, and 
Barrasso to introduce the North Atlantic Energy Security Act. But if 
that is too heavy a lift--if that is too heavy a lift--then let's take 
up the LNG Certainty Act and just approve the ability to build these 
facilities. Let's at least take that first step.
  There are other bills we can take up as well that are true job 
creators, real job creators, where we empower companies across this 
great Nation, large and small, to create jobs, to create more energy, 
to create better environmental stewardship, and to strengthen national 
security--energy bills that myself and others have introduced: the LNG 
Certainty Act which I am talking about right now, the North Atlantic 
Energy Security Act which I have referenced as well, Keystone--the 
Keystone XL Pipeline. Why aren't we building that right now to make 
sure, with Canada, we produce more oil than we consume so we can tell 
the Middle East we do not need any oil, we have it covered or the 
Domestic Energy and Jobs Act, which is a whole series of bills that 
have been passed in the House that I have introduced in the Senate that 
would cut the regulatory burden, increase the amount of energy we 
produce in this country both onshore and offshore or the Empower States 
Act, where we give States the ability to take a primary role in 
regulating hydraulic fracturing so we have the certainty to continue 
the investment that is producing an energy renaissance in this country.
  All of these acts have been filed. All of these acts create jobs. Why 
are they being held up so we can consider a bill that increases 
regulation, increases taxes on companies in the country, and will have 
the impact of reducing jobs and reducing economic growth rather than 
accomplishing all of the things we are talking about--not just jobs, 
not just economic growth but national security and actually working 
with our allies to accomplish something instead of just talking about 
it, making Putin tow the line rather than just telling him he should.
  With that, I know my colleagues are here to propose additional job-
creating ideas as well, and at this time I yield for the outstanding 
Senator from the State of Georgia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from the Dakotas for 
yielding the floor to me. Before he leaves, I wish to say something 
about what the Senator just said. In fact, I was sitting here listening 
to him. I am going to prove I was actually listening to his speech. I 
don't think we always do--sometimes I think we don't--but I did that 
because he was right on target.
  But my thought process went back to the 1970s. In the 1970s, OPEC and 
the Arab oil embargo basically held the United States of America 
hostage. I remember lines where we would wait for an hour and a half to 
get $10 worth of gasoline because we had a limited supply.
  Now we sit here in a country, some 40 years later, that has unlimited 
resources available to us if we will just take the political moves and 
the regulatory moves and the practical moves to exhibit our power and 
extract those resources.
  For example, the Keystone Pipeline that the Senator talked about--not 
a single molecule of carbon will be generated by bringing that 
petroleum underground through a pipeline from Canada to Houston. We 
will refine it more soundly and more environmentally than the Chinese 
would or anybody else would, and then we will have an almost infinite 
supply to take care of our own country internally and also use it as a 
part of our soft power around the world.
  The Senator is absolutely correct about Germany and about the Ukraine 
and about Russia. If we become the surrogate and we replace Russia in 
terms of supply of natural gas to that part of the world, we take away 
the only asset Russia has. As Senator McCain has so often said, Russia 
has relegated itself to being a gas station with a flag. If we become 
the competitive gas station down the line, we can lower our price by 
nine-tenths of a cent, we can sell more gas than they can, and we can 
use the soft power of our natural resources to bring back what we need 
in terms of peace and stability in that part of the world. The 
byproduct of doing that is not just energy security, it is not just 
better diplomatic and international policy, but it is jobs for 
Americans--jobs to build the pipeline, jobs to operate the pipeline, 
jobs to extract or frack the natural gas out of Haynesville and 
Marcellus.
  We are sitting on a ham sandwich, starving to death as a country with 
our assets because governmental policy will not let us do some of what 
we ought to do.
  So I came to the floor to talk a little bit about job creating and 
bringing

[[Page S4743]]

jobs home. The bringing jobs home bill is a $214 million bill, which is 
a rounding error in terms of the way we do business around here, and 
will do nothing except penalize companies for doing what they have to 
do and offer a reward that is not a carrot at all to bring jobs back.
  I thank the Senator from the Dakotas for his speech and for his 
continuing and persistent emphasis on our energy and our energy power 
and our energy independence. It is voices such as his that need to be 
heard more and more in this Chamber so we can create jobs for the 
American people and solve the economic problems we have.
  I commend the Senator from South Dakota--thank you--from North 
Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Yes, sir.
  Mr. ISAKSON. I apologize. I am a southerner, so I slipped up on that.
  Mr. HOEVEN. I thank the good Senator and I appreciate it very much.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise to talk for a minute about the 
issue of the day that is before us, the bring jobs home bill. I 
appreciate any effort to bring jobs home and to create new jobs at 
home, but I want to talk about how we are making a false promise and 
giving idle hope to people about bringing jobs back because we are not 
doing the things we should be doing.

  If you ask me to make my choice, what should we do in the Senate, on 
the floor of the Senate, in this body as legislators to create as many 
jobs as we can as fast as we can, a tax credit for bringing jobs home 
will not do it and a tax penalty for taking jobs overseas will not do 
it, but approving the Keystone Pipeline will do it and giving the 
President of the United States trade promotion authority will do it. 
Both of those are pending on the floor of the Senate right now before 
us. We could take them up tomorrow. If we did, we could make a massive 
impact on job creation in America and further empower our economy.
  I happen to be the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee's 
subcommittee on trade. We have two major trade agreements pending in 
the United States of America that we are a part of current 
negotiations--one of them is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one is the 
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, called TTIP.
  Those two trade agreements are free-trade agreements with our biggest 
trading partners--Asia and Europe and Scandinavia--but the Asians and 
the Scandinavians both ask me, when I talk to them in meetings 
discussing trade: When are you going to give your President trade 
promotion authority? Because we know until the U.S. Congress gives the 
President that authority, you are not serious about negotiating trade 
deals.
  I first came to the Congress of the United States in 1999, 1 year 
after we gave President Bill Clinton trade promotion authority. Then we 
had a plethora of free-trade agreements that passed at that time 
because of the negotiation power we gave the President. Trade promotion 
authority just means we give the President the authority to negotiate 
the trade agreement, and then the Senate gets an up-or-down vote on the 
agreement. But we do not get to vote on amendment after amendment after 
amendment, we get a vote on the totality of the agreement. In other 
words, we give sincerity to our foreign trading partners that what we 
say is what we mean and that we are going to give our President the 
authority to negotiate those deals, and we will make them subject to 
our ratification in the Senate. Trade promotion authority is important 
for America, for jobs, for our economy, and it is, quite frankly, 
important for bringing jobs home to the United States of America.
  The Keystone Pipeline, which I mentioned a minute ago in talking 
about Senator Hoeven's remarks, is a job creator. The unions are for 
it. Business is for it. Most Americans are for it. It only takes the 
signature of the President to let it go. The State Department has 
signed off on it. There is only one reason, I suppose, we are not 
building the Keystone Pipeline; that is, because of environmental fear 
of the Keystone Pipeline generating some kind of an environmental 
problem.
  Think about it for a second. If we do not put it in a pipe and bring 
it underground, we can put it on a truck that burns gasoline or diesel 
fuel and bring it to Texas and create a whole lot of carbon molecules. 
We are trying to reduce carbon in the air, so building a pipeline is 
environmentally friendly. It is safer than putting it on the roads or 
railcars or trucks or tractors. It is the way to do it. I do not 
understand why the President will not do it. But I think we need to 
continue to talk about it because the energy independence Senator 
Hoeven talked about is exactly what America is on the cusp of having. 
We suffered when we were energy dependent in the 1970s and 1980s. We 
paid a big price for it. We paid the price of inflation, reduced 
authority around the world, and we lost our position and stature in 
business. We now have a chance to secure it not just for this decade 
but for this century in the United States of America, and I hope the 
President will reconsider his unwillingness to sign the Keystone 
Pipeline and do so.
  On the jobs issue and on the inversion issue, which has brought about 
this entire discussion--and for those who might be listening and 
watching, inversion is where American corporations decide to acquire a 
foreign company and invert to where their headquarters are in the 
foreign country rather than in the United States of America to take 
advantage of a better corporate tax rate.
  We have now the highest corporate tax rate in the world--the highest 
in the world. Japan, which used to be up there above us or right with 
us, has now lowered theirs. Canada has lowered theirs. Ireland has 
lowered theirs.

  Jobs are going offshore because the cost of taxes is lower, because 
it is a tax code that promotes growth, promotes business, and promotes 
development.
  We need a progrowth tax policy in the United States. We need a 
simpler tax code. We need a fairer rate of taxation. We need to get rid 
of corporate welfare. A lot of my friends on the other side are always 
talking about corporate welfare. They are right. We did it on ethanol 
subsidies when we were subsidizing people to make ethanol. That was an 
intent, through a tax incentive, to cause something we thought would be 
the right thing to happen for the environment, which did not work. 
Those are the types of things we ought to stop doing--those types of 
corporate welfare. But what we should do is give a progrowth tax code 
to the American businesspeople, whether they are C corps or S corps--
and I am going to talk about that for a second--so they know what kind 
of tax rate they can count on, they know it is simple, they know it is 
fair, and they know it is predictable for the future.
  I find it interesting, when the old Soviet Union fell, when the 
Soviet satellite states such as Estonia and Latvia became independent 
countries, if you go back and study that--and that was not too long 
ago--if you go back and study what they did to separate themselves from 
the Soviet Union--take Estonia, for example. The new President of 
Estonia, after they became independent, did three things. He gave the 
state-owned apartments to each person who rented them and let them own 
them as a home and then created a housing market instantaneously.
  That was No. 1. No. 2, they cut the tax rate from 50 percent to 25 
percent and revenues went up and not down, because people thought 25 
percent was a fair rate and they did not cheat--because there was a lot 
of cheating going on under the 50-percent rate. Then on the corporate 
taxes in Estonia, they went to businesses and said: We are not going to 
tax your profits as long as you reinvest those profits in jobs or in 
research and development. The rest of it will be taxes. So they 
incentivized research and development. They incentivized employment. 
They made corporate Estonia feel as though they had a fair tax system.
  What happened? If you fly into a town in Estonia today, it is similar 
to flying into Dallas or Atlanta. There are cranes everywhere. There is 
economic development and improvement everywhere. Why? Because they have 
what people perceive to be a fair code. They do not have a junk code. 
They have a good tax code, and they incentivize people to do business 
and make money.
  You raise revenue in America by raising prosperity, not by raising 
rates of taxation. We have proved that every time we have lowered the 
capital gains tax. Every year following the lowering of the capital 
gains tax, revenues from capital gains went up and not down.

[[Page S4744]]

  Why? Because people who had a mature investment were incentivized to 
pay the lower tax rate, sell the investment, and reinvest in a 
maturing, developing investment rather than just hold onto it because 
they did not want to pay what they considered was a confiscatory tax. 
Tax policy drives economic decisions. There is not one of us in this 
room who does not make decisions every single day on our own personal 
finances where we do not consider--in some part or in whole--the tax 
consequence of it.
  That is why you have a tax code. But we all look at fair and 
equitable corporate tax relief. We ought to do it for S corporations 
and for C corporations. I want to talk about that part for just a 
minute. C corporations are the major corporations and dividend-paying 
companies in America. Their tax rate is 35 percent. S corporations are 
corporations where they file as partners. The profits of the company 
flow through on what is known as a K-1 statement. It flows through as 
ordinary income.
  Today the ordinary income tax rates for people making more than 
$450,000 can go up to 39 percent. It is already higher than the 35 
percent C corporations have. If we lower the C corporation rate from 35 
to 28 percent through comprehensive tax reform, then there will be a 
big disparity between the S corporations and the C corporations. The S 
corporations employ a lot of Americans. They are the mom and pop Main 
Street businesses. They are 72 percent of the jobs that are created in 
America. So we ought to take the whole enchilada. We ought to reform 
both the corporate tax rate, the C corporation rate, the S corporation 
rate, and the individual tax rate and modernize them together and make 
them fair, equitable, less complex, and more productive.
  If we incentivized American business to invest and to grow, we will 
raise revenues, we will raise prosperity, and we will raise hope. If we 
continue to pass bills that say: If you doing something, we are going 
to tax you or if you do something, we are going to give you a benefit--
if we think that is going to cause people to bring jobs back to the 
United States of America, we are dead wrong.
  What would cause them to bring jobs back to America is a fair tax 
code and to take our strong investments and our strong assets, such as 
petroleum and liquid natural gas, which we were talking about, and use 
them to our advantage through the soft power of economic power. So my 
message today is very simple. If you want to create jobs, build the 
Keystone Pipeline and give the President Trade Promotion Authority and 
do it now.
  If you want to really stop corporate inversions, just modernize the 
American Tax Code like every other country in the world has done. There 
are a lot of people who are talking about offshore profits who are 
stranded in the Cayman Islands in these secret bank accounts because 
they do not come back to America. We created the Cayman Islands secret 
bank accounts when we passed a tax code that was confiscatory in 
nature.
  When it is better off for your company and your stockholders to keep 
the money you make offshore--somewhere else offshore--so it is not 
subject the second time to taxes, we created those Cayman Islands tax 
havens. We will do it again if we do not get our Tax Code fixed. So my 
message is simple: Build Keystone, explore our natural resources, give 
the President Trade Promotion Authority, and make a fair equitable 
change in S corporations, our C corporations, and our individual rate. 
Let's incentivize prosperity and hope and not penalize and punish 
Americans for doing business.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.


                      Lawful Ivory Protection Act

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Georgia 
on his remarks. As usual, they are eloquent and elucidate the issue 
beautifully. I am glad I had a chance to hear them.
  I come to the floor to speak about an effort to expand regulations 
that will have a damaging effect on thousands of Americans. For those 
who are concerned this administration is trying to take away our guns, 
this regulation could actually do that. If this regulation is approved, 
when you decide to sell a gun, to sell a guitar or anything else that 
contains African elephant ivory, the government would actually take 
them away, even if you inherited the item or bought the item at a time 
when the sale of ivory was not illegal.
  In February the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a plan to 
prohibit the interstate commerce of African elephant ivory. This was 
part of President Obama's National Strategy for Combating Wildlife 
Trade. The plan is intended to stop the poaching of African elephants 
and to help preserve that species. But the impact will be something 
very different.
  The impact of this plan will be to change a policy that has been in 
place since 1990, which prevents the importation of ivory for 
commercial purposes, with the exception of antiques. But it did not 
restrict interstate or intrastate commerce of legal ivory.
  Now, let me be clear. I support stopping poachers. I support the 
preservation of these magnificent, regal animals, the elephant. I 
strongly support stopping the trade of illegal ivory. But what I do not 
support is treating Tennessee musicians, Tennessee antique shops, and 
Tennessee firearms sellers like illegal ivory smugglers for selling 
legal ivory products, many of which are decades old, if not over 100 
years old.
  Banning the buying and selling of products with ivory found in 
legally produced guitars, legally produced pianos, legally produced 
firearms, could prohibit musicians from buying or selling instruments 
that contain ivory, prevent firearms and family heirlooms containing 
ivory from being sold, and pose a significant threat to antique 
businesses.
  Even though the ban has not yet gone into effect, the confusion and 
uncertainty created by the Fish and Wildlife Service's action to ban 
the interstate commerce of ivory and any item that contains ivory are 
already having a significant impact on businesses and families alike. 
Let me give you the example of John Case, who owns and operates a small 
antique family business with four employees in Knoxville, TN, near my 
home. He says he could see his business devastated by this proposed 
regulation. This is what John Case says:

       The impact of President Obama's Executive Order expanding 
     the buying and selling of antique ivory and other endangered 
     species has been significant on our auction and appraisal 
     business. If one looks at the number of antique objects we 
     have sold and are selling at auction just for 2014, the total 
     exceeds $156,000. This amount is more than 11 percent of our 
     revenues for 2013 and does not include the number of antique 
     objects we turned away from selling because of these new 
     regulations and the loss of appraisals of those objects.

  John Case continues:

       This would easily total an additional $25,000 in revenues. 
     This total loss in revenues of $181,000 equates to one full 
     time salaried employee in addition to hours for part time 
     employees.

  Here is one more example of a new regulation, which on a small 
business will equate to the loss of a job of one full-time salaried 
employee, in addition to hours for part-time employees. We wonder why 
the economic recovery has been worse than the great recession? You 
cannot be pro-jobs if you are antibusiness and if you keep dumping this 
big wet blanket of regulations on every effort an entrepreneur has to 
create a new job. Americans who create jobs--one told me the other day 
in Tennessee: I'm sorry to say that I'm beginning to look at a new 
employee as a liability instead of an asset. He said: I hate that. I 
want the employee to be an asset. But when I look at the employee, I 
think about what new costs does that employee bring to my business 
because of government regulations, because of ObamaCare, because of 
this or that. Now, in John Case's case, it is about legal ivory.

  Mr. Case goes on to say:

       Further, the loss of revenues for our business is 
     significant, as it encompasses a wide range of antique 
     objects, including 18th and 19th century American portraits 
     on ivory, music boxes and furniture with ivory inlay, silver 
     tea services with ivory insulators, weapons with ivory grips 
     and inlay. If these new regulations go into full effect, I 
     anticipate the reduction of staff and intern programs.

  That is fewer jobs.

       The impact of these new regulations has a significant 
     impact on our customers as well.

  According to Mr. Case:

       I just fielded calls this past week of two local consignors 
     who had holdings of antique

[[Page S4745]]

     ivory with values exceeding $200,000. For one of those 
     consignors, his antique ivory was by far the most available 
     personal property he owned. It had been inherited from his 
     grandfather. For many of my consignors such as these 
     gentlemen, they will see a complete devaluing of one of their 
     greatest personal assets.

  Mr. Case is not alone. The music industry--and we have a lot of that 
in Tennessee, in Nashville and in Memphis and East Tennessee as well--
is concerned. The National Association of Music Manufacturers, whose 
mission is to promote the pleasures and benefits of making music, says, 
of the proposed regulation:

       [The] Problem with the Fish and Wildlife Service's plan is 
     many post-1914 instruments containing ivory are still in use. 
     Many famous artists perform with vintage guitars, violin bows 
     or pianos which contain small amounts of ivory. It is worth 
     noting that the music products industry had generally stopped 
     using ivory by the mid-1970s. A ban on the interstate sale of 
     items containing ivory would prohibit musicians from buying 
     or selling instruments. Replacing ivory with other materials 
     could adversely affect the total quality of those 
     instruments.

  Instruments are not bought because they contain ivory but because of 
their playing characteristics. The proposed ban has already resulted in 
anecdotal reports of Fish and Wildlife Service agents investigating 
piano transportation companies to see if any instruments are containing 
ivory--even though these companies do not own the instruments.
  Here is another example from the National Rifle Association about the 
proposed ban of legal ivory:

       The effects of the ivory ban would be disastrous for 
     American firearms owners and sportsmen, as well as anyone 
     else who currently owns ivory. This means that shotguns that 
     have an ivory bead or inlay, handguns with ivory grips, or 
     even cleaning tools containing ivory, would be illegal to 
     sell.

  My office has heard from businesses and individuals from all 
different sectors of our economy. The examples go on and on about this 
misguided policy. Let me repeat. I support stopping poachers. I support 
preserving these magnificent, regal animals, the elephant. I strongly 
support stopping the trade of illegal ivory. What I do not support is 
treating Tennessee musicians, antique owners, and gun owners like 
illegal ivory smugglers if they sell products that contain legal ivory.
  I call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to abandon their current 
efforts and take a more commonsense approach, an approach that will 
preserve elephants, while not turning law-abiding citizens and 
businesses into criminals. In the absence of a more commonsense 
approach, I have introduced legislation, S. 2587, the Lawful Ivory 
Protection Act of 2014, to stop this misguided policy from going 
forward. My bill simply stops the Fish and Wildlife Service from 
continuing down this unwise path.
  It keeps in place the same regulation that prohibited the illegal 
ivory trade regulation before February 25, which is the date the Fish 
and Wildlife Service began rolling out new regulations to ban the 
interstate commerce of ivory and any item that contains ivory. I urge 
my colleagues to take a look at this issue, and cosponsor my bill, S. 
2587, the Lawful Ivory Protection Act of 2014, to stop the 
administration from taking away our legal guns, from taking away our 
legal guitars, and from taking away our legal items which contain legal 
ivory if we try to sell them.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown.) The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Refugee Crisis

  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, when Congress unanimously passed the 
bipartisan William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection 
Reauthorization Act back in 2008 to strengthen Federal trafficking laws 
and ensure that unaccompanied and undocumented children receive humane 
treatment, it was welcomed by the Bush administration as a priority 
issue in preventing the trafficking of persons around the world.
  At the time Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission 
president Richard Land said that:

       It shows a broad coalition all the way from the left to the 
     right and in between when it comes to significant human 
     rights issues.

  The law itself was named for William Wilberforce, an evangelical 
Christian who led the effort in Britain's Parliament to end the slave 
trade in Britain in the 19th century. But now, 6 years later, too many 
of my Republican colleagues are calling to roll back the very 
protections that just a few years ago were rightfully lauded as a 
tremendous victory for human rights.
  Many of us believe the current Central American refugee crisis 
requires an immediate and compassionate response. Yet the proposals put 
forth by Senate Republicans have been to reverse critical child refugee 
protections, and deport DREAMers who have absolutely nothing to do with 
this current crisis.
  The proposal introduced by my colleague from Texas, Senator Cornyn, 
and similar proposals from my Republican colleagues would weaken the 
2008 trafficking law and implement expedited deportation that denies 
children the chance to go through an orderly process to determine if 
they need protection--and it applies to all unaccompanied children who 
cross the border. I believe we are a better nation than that.
  My Republican colleagues keep saying they want a humane process, but 
these proposals would trade the safety of children for expediency and 
eliminate the very protections unanimously set forth by Congress back 
in 2008.
  As a father, I have to say I believe this debate can't just be about 
the efficiency with which we can deport refugees. It should take into 
account the situation these boys and girls are seeking to escape in the 
first place.
  Both the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and the Refugee 
and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services in two separate 
reviews recently found that approximately 60 percent of unaccompanied 
children from Central America suffered or faced harms that indicated a 
potential or actual need for international protection.
  To understand how these proposals could adversely harm the children 
involved, one can read a recent article in the New York Times by Julia 
Preston. It tells the story of Andrea, a young woman from Honduras who 
was forced by her own family--associates with the Mexican drug cartel--
into prostitution at age 13, if you can imagine that. After 2 years she 
ran away, hoping to seek safety in the United States. She tried twice 
to flee abuse, crossing the Rio Grande, and was apprehended by the 
Border Patrol in both attempts.
  When agents questioned her, Andrea did not tell them why she fled. 
She said:

       I was just trying to protect myself . . . I was just afraid 
     of everything, after all those things those guys had been 
     doing to my body.

  Andrea, a victim of sex trafficking, was sent back into harm's way to 
live with relatives in Mexico.
  Andrea is not alone. Many more children could also be sent back into 
a dangerous environment if proposals to overturn the 2008 Trafficking 
Victims Protection Reauthorization Act are passed.
  Unaccompanied children such as Andrea need a safe place to talk about 
violence and abuse. A Border Patrol station holding cell is no place 
for an interview that literally will impact the rest of their lives, 
especially while they are still recovering from a dangerous journey. 
Subjecting Central American children to this screening process would be 
a retreat from our Nation's commitment as a humanitarian leader, and, 
frankly, undercuts our American values of putting children ahead of 
politics.
  A coalition of more than 100 nongovernmental organizations--such as 
First Focus, Women's Refugee Commission, and the American Immigration 
Lawyers Association--all wrote a letter to President Obama earlier this 
month to share their thoughts on this humanitarian crisis. They wrote:

       Congress gave consideration to the unique circumstances of 
     children when it enacted the [Trafficking Victims Protection 
     Reauthorization Act].

  Undermining due process and protection under the law is not the right 
answer, and certainly will not appease the criticisms of those who have 
been calling for more punitive and aggressive enforcement.

[[Page S4746]]

  Yesterday, in an open letter to Congress, the Evangelical Immigration 
Table warned against weakening the protections afforded by the 
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, stating that the 
law:

       . . . ensures that victims of trafficking are not only 
     identified and screened properly but that traffickers are 
     penalized and brought to justice.

  I have also heard from the Southern Baptist Convention, the U.S. 
Catholic Conference of Bishops, anti-trafficking groups, and children's 
lawyers who have all sent the same message to us: Don't weaken this 
anti-trafficking law. Congress should focus on strengthening safeguards 
for children rather than weakening their protections.
  Last week one of my colleagues from Texas proposed that the only way 
to stop the rise of unaccompanied children is to punish DREAMers and 
introduce legislation to defund the Deferred Action for Childhood 
Arrivals Program--or DACA, as it is called. DACA has helped more than 
550,000 undocumented students across the country who came to the United 
States as children to have an opportunity to pursue a higher education. 
DREAMers in the DACA Program are not the cause of the current Central 
American refugee crisis. And the notion that any legislation to address 
this issue must also end DACA is, frankly, out of touch. DREAMers are 
bright, they are hard-working, and most of them don't know how to be 
anything but an American.
  I have met many DREAMers from New Mexico. I have heard their stories. 
I have read their letters. They have never given up on this country, 
and, frankly, I am not giving up on them.
  Last year I had the pleasure of meeting a young woman named Laura in 
Las Cruces, NM. She arrived in the United States from Mexico when she 
was 7 years old. She learned English. She earned good grades in school. 
It wasn't actually until she was 13 years old that she even found out 
she was undocumented.
  She said:

       I couldn't believe it. All my dreams, all my hard work, it 
     felt like it was all for nothing. . . . Don't leave anyone 
     behind on the American dream.

  Laura wants to be a doctor.
  There is the story from a young woman named Yuri. Her family 
immigrated to the United States from Mexico when she was 2 years old 
back in 1996. While in high school in Albuquerque, NM, Yuri volunteered 
in her community, graduated in the top 10 percent of her class. She 
even received the 2013 Sandia Laboratory scholarship. Recently, she was 
approved for DACA and is currently a student at the University of New 
Mexico.
  There are literally countless stories just like these of young people 
who love this country and have only known it as their home. We are not 
going to let Republicans use this current humanitarian crisis as an 
opportunity to punish DREAMers.
  I am happy to end President Obama's deferred action program, but we 
will only do that by passing the DREAM Act as part of comprehensive 
immigration reform.
  If we really want to help solve this crisis and make our policies 
crystal clear, it is all the more reason to pass the Senate's 
bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill.
  The reality is, our Nation is facing a refugee crisis at our southern 
border. Children from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have fled to 
the United States and to other neighboring Central American countries 
to escape unimaginable violence, corruption, extreme poverty, and 
instability in their home countries. In some cases, these children are 
literally fleeing for their lives. Many of these children are turning 
themselves in to Border Patrol agents.

  This little boy's name is Alejandro. He is 8 years old. He traveled 
alone from Honduras, with nothing but his birth certificate in his 
pocket. I thought about that. I can't imagine my 7-year-old traveling 
across Washington, DC, or Albuquerque, NM, or any major metropolitan 
city in the United States by himself.
  It took him 3 weeks to make that dangerous journey from Central 
America to the banks of the Rio Grande. After being asked where his 
parents were, Alejandro said they were in San Antonio. He came to the 
United States because he wanted to reunite with his family. He didn't 
run, he didn't hide when an agent approached him. Alejandro wanted to 
turn himself in--just as many mothers and children have done over the 
course of the last year. Yet we have heard this week calls from some 
who would militarize our border and send in the National Guard.
  I would say we need more resources for our Border Patrol agents. They 
have been taxed. They have certainly been putting in long hours since 
these numbers started to crest. But I don't think sending soldiers to 
meet people like Alejandro is the right solution to this crisis. The 
notion that lax border policies are somehow responsible for this latest 
crisis is not just a myth, it is a willful misrepresentation driven by 
politicians who would rather create a political issue than solve a real 
problem.
  In a recent interview when asked to discuss whether sending in the 
National Guard would be an appropriate response to these problems at 
the core of the current crisis, Steven Blum--who was the former Chief 
of the National Guard Bureau under President George W. Bush--told the 
Washington Post:

       There may be many other organizations that might more 
     appropriately be called upon. If you're talking about search 
     and rescue, maintaining the rule of law or restoring 
     conditions back to normal after a natural disaster or 
     catastrophe, the Guard is superbly suited to that. I'm not so 
     sure that what we're dealing with in scope and causation 
     right now would make it the ideal choice.

  That is a very polite statement. The fact is there are more Border 
Patrol agents today and more technology and resources at the border 
than any time in our Nation's entire history, and our Border Patrol is 
better prepared to deal with this issue than the National Guard.
  Border Patrol apprehensions are today less than one-third of what 
they were at their peak, and this is because we have worked so hard and 
so effectively to secure the border. Those of us who represent border 
communities understand the challenges we face, but there are solutions 
before us that are pragmatic and bipartisan; that uphold our American 
values; that don't compromise them. Republican leaders should demand 
that their colleagues in the House of Representatives act to fix our 
broken immigration system. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill more 
than a year ago now, and passing that bill would make our immigration 
policies crystal clear to the world.

  Additionally, passing the Senate's supplemental funding bill to 
address this crisis sends a clear signal that we are aggressively 
stemming the flow of children and families from Central America while 
continuing to treat those refugee children humanely under the law. This 
situation is an emergency and frankly we need emergency funding.
  Passing the emergency supplemental would allow the Departments Of 
Homeland Security and Justice to deploy additional enforcement 
resources, including immigration judges, Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement attorneys, asylum officers, as well as expand the use of 
the alternatives to detention program. We are not arguing that every 
child should stay. Many, in fact, will be returned, but it will be 
after a Department of Justice judge has evaluated his or her case for 
asylum.
  The supplemental would also help governments in Central America 
better control their borders and address the root causes of migration, 
including criminal gangs causing and profiting from this refugee 
crisis. A number of us today met with the Ambassadors from Honduras, 
Guatemala, and El Salvador, and it was very clear what was driving 
these issues. Without getting to those root causes, we won't be able to 
solve this crisis permanently.
  The supplemental would provide much needed resources for U.S. Health 
and Human Services to ensure that these children receive medical 
screenings, housing, and counseling. Yet, instead of supporting this 
funding which seeks to meet these challenges head-on and protects these 
children, Republicans want to use the crisis to eliminate crucial child 
protection, punish some of our Nation's brightest students, and promote 
their border-enforcement-only agenda.
  Before I close and hand the floor off to some of my colleagues, I 
would like to highlight some of the humanitarian work that is being 
done in my home

[[Page S4747]]

State of New Mexico to address this crisis by telling the story of 
Project Oak Tree volunteer Orlando Antonio Jimenez.
  Project Oak Tree is a short-term-stay shelter for Central American 
undocumented immigrants in Las Cruces run by the Catholic Diocese of 
Las Cruces. The shelter opened earlier this month after DHS established 
a temporary facility for undocumented parents and their children at 
FLETC--the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center campus--in Artesia, 
NM.
  Orlando signed up to volunteer for Project Oak Tree on day one. He 
said he saw the immediate need to assist families facing this 
humanitarian crisis and he didn't think twice. He said his Christian 
values and belief in doing the right thing drove him to volunteer.
  Orlando gets the opportunity to speak to almost every single person 
who arrives at Project Oak Tree and said that almost all of the stories 
he hears from mothers have some element of fear for their safety if 
they were to go back home. Orlando said he will never again say the 
words ``I am starving'' when he is hungry because he knows now what 
starving really means. He says that this experience has changed his 
life forever and that he will continue to help as much as he can.
  I am grateful for Orlando's work in our community and for the many 
others in New Mexico who have stepped in and shown compassion and done 
all they can to help. Now it is Congress's turn to help. It is our turn 
to be part of the solution to this refugee crisis.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I also rise on the floor together with my 
colleagues from New Mexico and Florida to talk about the refugee crisis 
at our Nation's border. I appreciate Senator Heinrich's leadership on 
this issue and his comments, and I am looking forward to hearing from 
Senator Nelson as well.
  I would like to share a little bit of a personal story and amplify a 
few comments I made on the floor last Thursday about this challenge. I 
feel very personally connected to this issue and to the children who 
are coming to the border, children such as Alejandro, whose picture was 
such a stark reminder that we are dealing with little kids.
  In 1980 and 1981, I was a student in law school, and I decided that I 
didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I needed to figure it 
out. So what I did was I took a year off from law school and went to 
work with Jesuit missionaries in the town of El Progreso, Honduras. El 
Progreso, Honduras, was at that point a small community at the edge of 
banana plantations in a large agricultural valley in that country. I 
worked there as the principal of a school that taught kids to be 
plumbers and carpenters. I was dealing with youngsters in that 
neighborhood. Well, today El Progreso is in the epicenter of this 
problem. There have been many hundreds of kids from El Progreso who 
have come to the border this year.
  San Pedro Sula--a nearby large city--is thought to be the murder 
capital of Honduras, which is now the murder capital of the world.
  When I was in Honduras in 1980 and 1981, it was not an overly violent 
place. It was under military dictatorship. There were problems and 
challenges, and there was poverty, but refugees were coming into 
Honduras back then from El Salvador and Guatemala. They weren't leaving 
because there wasn't the everyday violence we see today. Honduras was a 
great ally of the United States, a great partner. Honduras was one of 
the original countries to which we sent Peace Corps volunteers, and I 
could see their influence all around the country.

  But Honduras is a very different nation today. Honduras is now the 
murder capital of the world, has the highest homicide rate, which is 
about 40 times the homicide rate of the United States. This area, El 
Progreso and San Pedro Sula, is the epicenter of that. The United 
States had to pull Peace Corps volunteers out of the country a few 
years ago because it got too violent. The friends I have stayed in 
touch with over the years have informed me about what has been 
happening in their neighborhoods as the violence has increased.
  We had a hearing last week where we had witnesses before us in the 
Foreign Relations Committee. We asked: Why are the kids leaving 
Honduras? Is it because their parents don't love them?
  I mean, you think about family members. What would it take for a 
family to let a child take a trip of the kind Alejandro took? I can 
tell you from living in Honduras that parents love their kids just as 
much as people love their kids here in the United States. They are no 
different. To send your child thousands of miles--you would only do it 
for the most extreme reasons, and living in the murder capital of the 
world is that extreme reason. These kids are fleeing to the border 
because they are not safe.
  What is the cause of the violence? I talked about this a little bit 
last week. The violence in Honduras, which is the murder capital of the 
world; El Salvador, which has the fourth highest homicide rate in the 
world; and Guatemala, which has the fifth highest homicide rate in the 
world--the violence is overwhelmingly driven by the drug trade. That 
was the evidence from our hearing last week as well.
  Drug cartels have moved into Honduras and into these Central American 
countries. They get drugs from South America. They are shipping them to 
the United States because of the U.S. demand for illegal drugs, 
especially cocaine. The drug rate in Honduras is not about Hondurans 
using drugs. Hondurans don't use drugs to any significant degree at 
all. It is the illegal demand for drugs by people in the United States, 
largely, and the dollars we are sending down to buy drugs that have 
turned Honduras--that have turned San Pedro Sula and El Progreso into a 
massive drug cartel area where the combination of dollars and violence 
and fights between drug cartels puts little kids in harm's way. And 
then the gangs want them to join--we want to be the most powerful gangs 
because we want the money, and the way we do that is we recruit more 
kids.
  So the root of this problem--the root of these refugees--is violence 
in their neighborhoods that is created by a drug trade that is driven 
by, sadly, U.S. demand for illegal drugs. That is what is happening. 
That is what is happening.
  It has been heartbreaking to see a country that I care about and love 
and people whom I care about and love live in what is now the murder 
capital of the world largely because of the demand for illegal drugs 
coming from this Nation. So we are going to blame these kids? We are 
going to call them names or stand out in protest against them? Why? 
Because they live in a violent neighborhood? Because they want a better 
future? Because they look at the United States and think we may be a 
better and safer place for them? We shouldn't be blaming them. We 
shouldn't be blaming them because they are doing what any of us would 
do if we lived in a neighborhood where the violence was this extreme. 
If you have no other way to protect yourself, you are going to leave. 
We leave neighborhoods and we leave situations that are this bad.
  The good news is--and Senator Heinrich has laid this out--we don't 
have to stand by and say there is nothing we can do. There are 
solutions. We had a meeting with the three Ambassadors today, and the 
Foreign Relations Committee is going to have a meeting with the three 
Presidents of these Nations tomorrow, and we are going to talk about 
solutions. Let me run through six things we can do, and I will talk 
briefly about some of them. My colleagues have already dealt with some 
of them, and Senator Nelson will, but first let's start off with, how 
about not blaming the kids, No. 1. Let's not blame the kids. Let's not 
pretend they are crooks or criminals. Might there be some who are 
coming across the border who have criminal records? Sure. We can do a 
criminal record check and we can figure that out, and if that is the 
case, then we can deal with that. But these kids are leaving to stay 
alive.
  My wife is a juvenile court judge. She used to say: I sometimes put a 
kid in jail to keep him alive.
  The need to remain alive sometimes leads you to do extreme things, 
even to travel thousands of miles to come to a country where you think 
you might be more safe.
  Let's begin by not blaming these kids. That is No. 1.

[[Page S4748]]

  No. 2, we do need to implement the law. Senator Heinrich talked about 
this law which was passed by a unanimous Congress, which was signed by 
President Bush, which was named after William Wilberforce. Do you know 
who William Wilberforce was? William Wilberforce was a great 
abolitionist English preacher who had interaction with the slave trade 
when he was in England and then came to realize that the slave trade 
was wrong and that religions had promoted the slave trade. He turned 
his life around and became a crusader against human trafficking, a 
crusader against the slave trade. That is what this law is that was put 
in place.

  Let's not willy-nilly change the law. Let's implement the law. The 
law was a good law. In order to implement the law, we do need funding. 
Senator Heinrich talked about the supplemental request that would be 
before the Senate. We have had some good discussions about it. I think 
we have put it in a place where it is now solid. We do need to support 
that supplemental request so that there will be ample services where 
these children can be evaluated. If they qualify for asylum, they 
should be able to stay, just as other refugees stay. If they have 
committed criminal activities, they can be sent back in order to 
enforce the law. It seems that is what folks are always saying around 
here--we should enforce the immigration laws. Let's enforce the William 
Wilberforce law and make sure there are funds in place to do it.
  The third thing we should do is get our priorities right about how we 
spend money. We are spending the money the wrong way in Central 
America. It is kind of amazing what we are doing. You would think we 
ought to be investing a little bit in the security of Central America 
just as we invest in rebuilding infrastructure in Afghanistan, just as 
we invest in things all around the world, and we should especially be 
doing it in Central America because it is the U.S. demand for illegal 
drugs that is creating the conditions of violence there. Doesn't that 
create some obligation to take a little bit of responsibility for 
helping Central American nations with security?
  Well, we do spend money on the security in Central American nations, 
but the money has been dwindling every year--dropping, dropping, 
dropping. For 2015 the President's budget submission for the Central 
American Regional Security Initiative was $130 million, which is about 
$40 million each for the three countries. Compare that to what we will 
spend on border security in 2015, which is $17 billion. So $130 million 
for regional security in the nations these refugees are coming from and 
we are spending $17 billion on the border.
  Instead of having to catch all these kids as they are coming across 
the border and spend time and expense on the legal processes, wouldn't 
it be a little better to try to take some of that money and spend more 
in Central America to help these three nations have stronger police 
forces, stronger judiciary systems? If we could deal with and reduce 
violence in the neighborhoods--and we have to do it in partnership with 
these nations. They have responsibilities as well. If we could do that, 
we could dramatically reduce the number of kids who are coming to the 
border. We are spending money the wrong way.
  I am happy this supplemental has some significant funding to increase 
our security efforts in Central America. That is very critical. We have 
to work with the Central American governments to prosecute the coyotes. 
The coyotes are the smugglers who bring these kids to the border, and 
they often perpetrate violence and tell these kids: Hey, look, we can 
get you to the border, and you can stay forever. They will spin false 
messages about American law, and they do it because they are making 
money off these poor families.
  Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western 
Hemisphere. For a parent to pay $4,000 or $5,000 to one of these 
smugglers for their kids to come here--that is usually more than their 
combined assets. They have to gather up money from all kinds of places 
to be able to do it. We need to prosecute the coyotes and these 
smugglers in Central America, and our effort is going to help these 
countries do that.

  We need to make sure these countries spread the message that once the 
kids get here, they are not going to come and stay automatically. That 
work is being done, but more can be done.
  I think probably the most important thing we can do here is to spend 
more money helping to solve the cause of the violence and the drug 
cartels in Central America. If we do that, we will see the number of 
kids who are fleeing neighborhoods such as the ones I lived in 
dramatically reduced.
  The fourth thing we can do--and Senator Nelson is going to talk about 
this, so I will not get into it--is interdict more drugs. If you want 
to do something tough, why send the National Guard to the border? These 
kids are not sneaking across the border. They are turning themselves in 
to the first person they see. They know if they see someone with a U.S. 
uniform on, they won't be killed. They feel safe. We don't need more 
National Guard at the border because the kids are already turning 
themselves in. But if you want to be tough, how about more funds for 
the American military so they can interdict more drugs before they get 
to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador? Senator Nelson will go over 
that.
  Fifth, we need to do immigration reform, and Senator Heinrich 
mentioned that. We passed immigration reform in this Chamber 13 months 
ago. There were all kinds of stories about it. There has been no action 
in the House--not even bills out of committee, much less from the House 
floor--on immigration reform.
  This morning the ambassadors told us the uncertain status of whether 
there is going to be immigration reform is an issue. What is going to 
happen? Something passed, but maybe it won't pass in the other House. 
When there is uncertainty, it enables these coyotes to go in and kind 
of market and say something is going to happen. They will say: We can 
get you to the United States, and you can stay.
  The faster we pass immigration reform and create certainty, the 
easier it will be to deliver a message that everybody in Central 
America will understand about what our rules are and what they are not 
and who is allowed to come in and who is not.
  Finally--and this is the hardest one of all--we have to figure out 
better strategies to reduce the illegal use of drugs, especially 
cocaine, in the United States. As long as there is this massive demand 
for illegal drugs such as cocaine in countries such as Honduras that 
have poor budgets, there will be powerful drug cartels that will use 
them as staging grounds to try to supply the United States drug demand.
  We sometimes hear people talk about drug and cocaine use as a 
victimless crime. They say: It is a victimless crime; I am not hurting 
anybody. I may use drugs, but I am not hurting anybody.
  This is not a victimless crime. The ones who are using recreational, 
illegal drugs transited through the Americas are the ones who are 
creating victims. They are creating the murder capital of the world, 
and they are the reason kids are fleeing their homes and trying to find 
safety in the arms of a Border Patrol agent on the border of the United 
States.
  We need new strategies to tackle a huge and overwhelming demand for 
illegal drugs in the United States. Two weeks ago the President's drug 
control policy key administrator, Michael Botticelli, went to Roanoke, 
VA, to roll out the national drug control strategy. He chose Roanoke 
because Virginia, like a lot of States, has had significant problems--
whether it is heroin or prescription drugs. He also chose Roanoke 
because it has been a place where there have been strong efforts to 
come together to tackle illegal drug use.
  Last Friday I went to Roanoke and spoke at a drug court graduation--
people who were addicted to drugs but worked with social workers and 
folks from local courts to break the bonds of that addiction, the bonds 
that, just as they are addicted to them, also put people in chains in 
countries such as Honduras by turning their neighborhoods into violent 
drug-controlled shooting galleries.
  We have to be creative and strategic in dealing with the demands for 
illegal drugs. It is sad that these kids are fleeing their country 
because of the violence that in some ways has its roots here. The drug 
demand in this country

[[Page S4749]]

is at the origin of the violence that is chasing these kids out of 
their neighborhoods, and that gives us a moral responsibility to try 
and tackle this problem and solve it.
  I thank my colleagues for their strong support for the supplemental 
appropriation we will take up. I look forward to working with them. We 
can solve this problem. We can solve it if we do the right things.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I say to my colleagues that this is a very 
substantive discussion. This Senator is enormously impressed with the 
quality of the commentary from the two who have preceded me and those 
who will follow. We are addressing the treatment of this issue in a 
comprehensive way.
  I was so glad the Senator from Virginia mentioned the initial 
legislation from years ago protecting children once they reached the 
border is named after William Wilberforce, a Parliamentarian in England 
in the late 1700s and early 1800s whose sole mission--it took him 20 
years as a politician and a member of Parliament--changed the course of 
history because he singlehandedly, through his legislative efforts, 
abolished the English slave trade, and it changed the course of the 
history of the world.
  When we think of that kind of quality of parliamentary endeavor, it 
is time for the Senate to rise to this occasion in what is considered a 
humanitarian crisis but is so complicated as to the reason it is 
causing hundreds and thousands of children to appear at our border.
  Right off the bat this law says we are going to treat these children 
in a humanitarian way. They are going to get medical treatment and a 
safe place to stay.
  When Senator Heinrich showed the picture of the little boy named 
Alejandro--doesn't your heart go out to him? Taking care of a little 
boy like that is at the heart of America. We don't want all of these 
children coming to our border, begging for entrance.
  Listen to these Senators as they dissect the problem of what we 
should do to eliminate the problem in the first place.
  I want to take one snippet of what Senator Kaine said. Why is 
Honduras the murder capital of the world? Why are the other two Central 
American countries--El Salvador and Guatemala--ranked so high as murder 
capitals of the world? Why is it that next door in Nicaragua and Belize 
their children are not coming to our border in great numbers? The same 
thing is true with Costa Rica and Panama. Why those three countries? 
Because the drug lords producing the drugs in South America are sending 
huge shipments by boat--2 and 3 tons of cocaine per boat--through the 
Caribbean to the East or the Pacific to the West. Where are they going? 
They are going to those three countries.
  Basically, most of those drug shipments are getting through. Once 
they get to those Central American countries--since the economic power 
is among the drug dealers and the drug lords--they can buy off 
everybody else. If you don't do what they say, you are dead.
  When a young man gets close to becoming a teenager, his parents are 
confronted with a situation of either joining one of these criminal 
gangs, which is interrelated with the drug lords, or they have to 
accept the fact that they are going to be attending their child's 
funeral because he will be killed if he doesn't join them.
  The third choice they have comes from what they hear from these 
coyotes when they say: You are going to have free entrance into the 
United States.
  What do you think a parent is going to do? Because the big shipments 
of drugs--primarily by boat to the east and the west--has corrupted the 
whole system in those three Central American countries, what should the 
United States be doing?
  We have had very successful drug interdiction programs in the past. 
We have been very successful at it. We now have a four-star Marine 
general--General Kelly, who is the head of the United States Southern 
Command--who has a task force in Key West, the Joint Interagency Task 
Force South, watching their radar and aerial surveillance but doesn't 
have the assets to go after 75 percent of those drug shipments. If we 
would give General Kelly and the joint task force the additional Navy 
assets--that is Navy boats with helicopters or Coast Guard cutters with 
helicopters--to interdict those shipments instead of letting 75 percent 
of them go, we would get to the root cause of the whole problem of why 
the children are showing up on our border.
  The big shipments of drugs have completely corrupted the societies of 
those three countries, leading to all of the ramifications of the 
children and others going north.
  Once those big shipments of 2 or 3 tons of cocaine in a boat land in 
one of those Central American countries, they break them up into small 
packages. It is then transported by individuals, and it is very hard to 
interdict those drug shipments as they go north through the rest of 
Central America, Mexico, and to the border. The place to get them is 
when they are the large shipments. There are many more of these 
shipments coming by boat than on airplanes. As a result, what we see is 
this crisis.
  I will close by saying my wife Grace and I have been involved through 
a Christian charity in trying to help some of the poor villagers have 
hope, particularly in Honduras in this case. I am not going to say the 
name of the village because I don't want to alert the bad guys that 
this is a little village where they are getting attention, an 
education, nourishment, and some health care. More than that, they are 
getting the love of Americans. So it is a painful personal picture for 
us to see what has happened to that little country.

  Finally, the President's request of over $3 billion does not include, 
as we learned in an all-Senators meeting last week with three or four 
cabinet secretaries and other agencies represented, funds for 
additional Coast Guard cutters or Navy ships or the movement of those 
Coast Guard cutters or Navy ships with their helicopters from other 
places. I hope, by the effort Senator Heinrich has exerted today, with 
many of us coming here and speaking about this, that we are going to 
start to get this message through as to what needs to be done to 
address this crisis.
  Mr. President, it is a privilege for me to share my heart, and I 
yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleagues sitting here 
before me, especially Senator Heinrich, who invited us to partner in 
this dialogue today. I wish right now just to express my frustration. 
We see on our television sets and we hear throughout the American 
landscape rhetoric, posturing, and demagoguery that does not reflect 
the truth of who we are as a nation, and it obscures the facts of what 
is happening on our southern border right now as a country. We have 
thousands upon thousands of children in the most vulnerable and 
innocent stage of their lives showing up at our border. I hear ugly 
rhetoric about just turning them around and sending them back--rhetoric 
that does not reflect who we are as a nation, the history of our 
communities or the laws of this land.
  If I may, for a brief time I wish to speak just to reflect on the 
fact of why these children are showing up. Why are they coming to our 
borders? As the senior Senator from New Jersey has said clearly: This 
is not a case of ordinary people seeking better economic opportunities. 
If this was just about poverty, then we would see people coming from 
all the nations in that area. To be specific, El Salvador's poverty 
rate is 34.5 percent. Belize's poverty rate is actually higher at 41.3 
percent. To make a journey from a country with a lower poverty rate to 
a country with a higher poverty rate, because that is where many of 
these refugees are going--to Belize--begs a closer examination of the 
true drivers of this migration, because it is not poverty. It is not 
people simplistically looking for economic opportunity. We are seeing 
countries in addition to America facing the same problem: Children from 
these three nations escaping severe persecution, sexual assault, rape, 
violence, and murder are not just coming to the borders of the United 
States to escape this persecution but going to other nations in that 
area.

[[Page S4750]]

  For example, combined, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and 
Belize documented a 435-percent increase in the number of asylum 
applications logged by individuals from El Salvador, Honduras, and 
Guatemala. In this area of our globe, where there is such violence and 
persecution in these three countries, it is driving people out not just 
to the United States, as some people allege because of the policy of 
the Obama administration; these are people escaping persecution to 
countries all throughout the region. This is about violence. This is 
about heinous crimes. This is about a drug war. This is about cartels 
carrying out the most egregious of human acts, evidencing the depravity 
and the evil that so cuts at the conscience of humanity, so that people 
are escaping to wherever they can go.
  We in the United States have a long and noble history that when there 
are places on our globe that face this level of crisis, we respond, and 
we are a part of an international community where our peer nations have 
shown that history as well. Here in North America, we know allies such 
as Canada have done incredible deeds when there is crisis, violence, 
war, and persecution--mass rapes going on. There have been responses 
from our northern neighbor.
  In 1972 when Uganda's President Idi Amin announced the Ugandan Asians 
were to be expelled, Canada set up a refugee office and, by the end of 
1973, more than 7,000 Uganda Asians arrived in Canada.
  Germany, for example, right now currently is accepting 20,000 Syrian 
refugees. As I speak right now, Jordan and Lebanon are host to over 2 
million Syrian refugees, and we as a nation are encouraging our allies 
in the Middle East to be there for those refugees when they come to 
those borders. That is the international community. In America, we set 
the standard. We are the leaders globally for compassion, for humanity, 
for charity. I am proud that this tradition, which is two centuries old 
in America, can continue under Democrats and Republicans. It has not 
been a partisan football.
  In 2008, under the Bush administration, in the face of Burma's 
humanitarian crisis, this country, with the courage of its compassion, 
resettled thousands of Burmese refugees, admitting as many as 18,000 of 
them. President Bush signed the legislation to ease the restrictions 
that prevented ethnic minorities involved in that struggle against the 
Burmese regime--eased restrictions for them entering the United States. 
President Bush spoke eloquently during that time about American 
compassion. He spoke about American heritage and American tradition. He 
said, quite poignantly, I thank those of you Americans and those around 
the country--all of us--who have opened up our arms and said: ``Welcome 
to America. How can we help you settle in?''
  This is who we are as a nation. And when we have children--
innocents--escaping violence and terror and crimes against humanity, 
where we as a nation are not even fully relieved of culpability for 
what is going on and when our Nation's drug consumption is helping to 
drive that violence, we have a responsibility. That is who we are. That 
is our truth. We know this. We are a nation of people who came from 
persecution, who came from famine, who came from religious war. We are 
a nation settled by those who were yearning to be free.
  Now, I know the Statue of Liberty well because New Jersey has its 
back. When I travel around the State, I often get a great view of her 
noble torch. I know it is not down along our southern border, but the 
ideals of the Statue of Liberty still hold true:

       Give me your tired, your poor,
       Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
       The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
       Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
       I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

  I am grateful and support Senator Mikulski's leadership and the push 
to address this crisis by stepping up as a nation, by following the 
letter of the law and providing due process for these young people who 
have come to our borders, so that we can evaluate them and see those 
who have a justifiable claim for asylum and to see that we honor our 
tradition and our law and give them a place in our country that is safe 
and secure from the terror and the violence that is going on in those 
three countries. It cannot be acceptable that we use our resources now 
simply to expedite the return of thousands of children into that 
conflict zone, which is more dangerous now than at the height of 
civilian dangers during the Iraq war.
  We must as Americans follow that great tradition. We must as 
Americans now do the right thing by innocent children: evaluate them 
with our resources, expedite the judicial process to understand clearly 
who is meritorious of asylum. And we should invest our resources in 
making sure the conflicts in those nations are abated so this crisis 
ends.
  I say clearly: In America we stand for something now as we have time 
and time again. We must garner our resources and, most importantly, our 
compassion, which is the truth of who we say we are, and make sure we 
take care of these vulnerable children and make sure we don't turn them 
around into a dangerous situation. It is time we show internationally 
that when there is crisis, America stands and shows leadership and does 
the right thing.
  With that, I yield the floor for the senior Senator from New Jersey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, first of all, let me say I am really 
moved by Senator Booker's passion, Senator Nelson's clarity of thought, 
and by my other colleagues who have joined us. I am compelled to join 
them because we do have a crisis, but we also have, in my mind, a clear 
moral and legal compass we need to follow.
  We have a refugee crisis on our southern border, which I argue 
requires an emergency response domestically and the urgent 
recalibration of our foreign policy. Why do I say that? Because, as I 
have argued for several years in the Foreign Relations Committee, the 
continuous cuts we have had in the programs that are in our national 
interests, in our national security, were going to bring us a day in 
which we would rue the consequences of those cuts.
  So here we are with Honduras having the No. 1 murder rate per capita 
in the world, and the other two Central American countries from which 
these children are fleeing in the top five in the world. As Senator 
Nelson spoke so eloquently, there is the whole question of the 
narcotics trafficking taking place, using this as a via to the United 
States where the demand is, and the total inability of these countries 
to deal with entities that have more money and very often have more 
firepower than any of the national governments that are engaged. Then 
add to that the dynamic and explosive growth of gangs. I am talking 
about gangs armed and fueled with money in a symbiotic relationship 
with the drug traffickers. That creates a challenge. In one of these 
countries it went from 600 to 40,000 members of a gang. This isn't 
about some far-off place; this is right here in our own front yard, in 
our hemisphere, a very relatively short distance. Unless we deal with 
the root causes of these problems, there will be no resources or any 
change in law that is going to ultimately meet the challenge of those 
who flee because to stay is to die.
  So that is the challenge we have before us. We have to deal with that 
challenge on our southern border, and our distinguished chair of the 
Appropriations Committee has fashioned a package I think is balanced 
and seeks to do that. But as we deal with this refugee crisis, in my 
view, it is equally important that we not rush to change our laws in a 
way that strips children of the very rights for which we have been 
known as a country. I am not even talking about the 2008 law; I am 
talking about the very essence of our immigration law for decades that 
has asylum as a fundamental pillar.
  It is imperative to understand this is a desperate effort by 
desperate parents to do what any parent would do to protect their child 
from violence and the threat of death. Imagine the circumstances a 
parent must be in to send an 8-year-old on a treacherous journey of 
2,000 miles where all things can happen to them in the hope--in the 
hope--they can arrive and make a claim for asylum, but not knowing 
whether their child will actually be able to arrive alive. That is some 
dramatic choice,

[[Page S4751]]

but those are choices facing these parents.

  These children are facing tremendous threats: towns and schools 
controlled by narcotic traffickers, gangs threatening to kill them, 
rapes and manufacturers.
  In the Foreign Relations Committee recently, we held a hearing and I 
noted a piece that was written in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize-
winning author Sonia Nazario, who testified before the committee. This 
was to give the Senate the sense of what we are talking about.
  A young boy named Christian Omar Reyes, a sixth grader--his father 
was murdered by gangs while working as a security guard. Three people 
he knows have been murdered this year. Four others were gunned down on 
a corner near his house in the first 2 weeks of this year. A girl his 
age was beaten, had a hole cut in her throat, her body left in a ravine 
across from his house. Christian said: It is time to flee.
  Carlos Baquedana, a 14-year-old who worked in a dump picking scrap 
metal when he was a boy, making a dollar or two a day, when he was 9 
years old, barely escaped two drug traffickers who were trying to rape 
him. When he was 10, the drug traffickers pressured him to try drugs 
and join a gang or die. He has known eight people who were murdered--
three killed in front of him. In one case he watched as two hit-men 
brazenly shot two young brothers execution style. Going to school is 
even too dangerous for him now.
  These stories are, unfortunately, not unique. They are tragic stories 
of life-changing experiences that too many children face in Central 
America every day--children such as Christian and Carlos whose stories 
are unknown but no less tragic.
  Let me take a moment to repeat that I strongly oppose changing 
existing law. The answer is not to repeal the law that keeps these 
children safe and gives them an opportunity--that is all the law gives 
them, an opportunity--to determine whether their status here can be 
adjusted under asylum. The answer is not to deny these children their 
day in court and send them back to very probable death. But those who 
want to repeal the 2008 law would be doing exactly that.
  If we provide the funding the government needs, the administration 
has the authority to deal with the crisis in a safe and humane way 
without turning our back on the rule of law that we take pride in as a 
nation.
  Antitrafficking organizations have explained to me that this 
trafficking law was designed by both Republicans and Democrats in broad 
bipartisan efforts to give special protections to children who cannot 
adequately represent themselves and who often do not self-identify as 
victims of abuse, crime or human trafficking.
  Congress sought to provide special protections for those who have 
fled thousands of miles in recognition of the fact that a larger 
percentage of these children may have very compelling and legitimate 
claims.
  Unfortunately, the Border Patrol's cursory review of Mexican 
children's claims often results in a failure to identify children who 
are at risk of persecution or trafficking, according to the U.N. 
Commissioner for Refugees. Extending this type of superficial screening 
to Central American children would certainly mean serious abuse or 
death upon their return.
  We can keep this important antitrafficking law and at the same time 
address the situation on the border. Let me explain how the 
administration already--already--has the authority to control this 
crisis.
  Critics have complained that the 2008 trafficking law requires 
children to be released into the community, but what the law actually 
says is that children need to be held in the manner that is in the 
``best interests of the child.'' In this situation, where we are 
dealing with an influx of thousands of children, it is clearly in the 
best interests of these children to hold them in a safe and clean 
shelter rather than returning them to face possible death or quickly 
releasing them into the hands of a sponsor who may not be properly 
vetted. Failure to properly screen these children could result in 
children being returned to their very traffickers.

  Critics have also complained that deportation hearings do not take 
place for years after the children arrive and that this creates an 
incentive for children to come to the United States. But the law allows 
the Justice Department to hold hearings much more quickly--without 
denying due process--by moving recently arriving children and families 
to the front of the line for hearings before a judge.
  As the Justice Department testified last week before the 
Appropriations Committee hearing, that is exactly what they are doing--
surging resources and expediting full hearings.
  This expedited process that still protects due process would send a 
signal to the parents in Central America that children without valid 
claims--and there will be a significant universe that will not have a 
valid claim and will be deported--will not be able to stay in the 
United States. But at the same time we protect the rights of legitimate 
refugees and trafficking victims.
  So while not every single child apprehended at the border will have a 
valid claim to stay in the country, and many will be deported, we have 
a moral and a legal obligation to keep them safe until their status is 
resolved.
  The answer is not to repeal the law that protects them but to enforce 
it and to provide the administration with the resources it requested to 
address both the domestic and international aspects of this crisis.
  This problem was not created overnight, and it will not be solved 
overnight. But the solution is not to abandon our values and the rule 
of law that we uphold as an example to other nations so every child 
will be safe wherever they may live. If we do this now, I can tell you, 
I do not know how we will have any authority to look at any other 
country in the world and say to them: You must accept refugees from 
Syria, you must accept refugees from Congo, the Dominican Republic, you 
must accept refugees from Haiti. The list goes on and on.
  There is a reason this law was passed. It was passed to say if you 
are fleeing 2,000 miles to try to come to the United States, there may 
be a greater probability that you have a real case to be made for 
asylum because you have a credible fear for the loss of your life.
  As I hear those who advocate for the rule of law, I say you are 
right. The rule of law means you do not undermine the law or change it 
when you do not want to ultimately live under it. You obey it. You obey 
it.
  If you flee 2,000 miles because you were told by the gangs to join or 
die or if you were raped and you flee 2,000 miles never to experience 
that tragic and traumatic set of circumstances again, you have a very 
compelling case.
  So let me close by saying the fact is there are some who are 
exploiting this issue for political gain, some who could not even see 
their way to cast a vote or to allow a vote on the type of 
comprehensive immigration reform the Senate passed on a broad, 
bipartisan basis in which both border control and human trafficking and 
all of these other issues we are now facing would have had the 
resources and would be addressed.
  I also find it incredible to see the Governor of Texas saying he is 
going to send the National Guard to the border. What is the National 
Guard going to do in what is otherwise a Federal law enforcement 
obligation with Border Patrol agents who ultimately are obviously 
interdicting these young people but they are actually turning 
themselves over to them. What is the National Guard, with rifles, going 
to do at the Texas border that the Border Patrol cannot do themselves?
  This supplemental bill is almost entirely for enforcement of the law. 
I know Republicans have been saying for years they want more money for 
enforcement of immigration law. Well, folks, here it is. Here it is. I 
cannot believe with the resources that are going to the very States 
that say they face a challenge, there will be those who will vote 
against it. I cannot believe that just because the President is 
proposing it, they cannot ultimately find their way to vote for the 
money that is going to go largely to the States that face the most 
critical challenge at this time.
  So that is what our immigration debate has come to. We began this 
Congress with an overwhelming bipartisan vote in favor of commonsense 
immigration reform, and here we are unwilling to even provide something 
I have never

[[Page S4752]]

voted for but will--strictly enforcement funding. We have Republicans 
calling for DREAMers to be deported as part of this bill in the House 
of Representatives and a rollback of legislation to protect small 
children from human trafficking. That is what we have come to.
  Rolling back this law, which passed with broad bipartisan support in 
both Houses of the Congress and was signed by a Republican President, 
is not something I can personally accept, and I will use the procedures 
of the Senate--I hope with others who feel the same--if that is the 
choice that has to come before us, not to permit that to happen.
  The President has the authority to control this crisis already. Let's 
give him the resources to do the job, and let us, in the process of 
doing that, not create a dark day in our Nation's history which we will 
regret for years to come.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise as the chair of the 
Appropriations Committee that will be proposing the emergency 
supplemental bill. This bill will be introduced tonight, and I want to 
briefly describe it.
  First of all, what does the emergency supplemental bill do? It deals 
with three crises; one, it will fight wildfires with additional 
resources as to what is going on in our own country; second, it will 
help Israel be able to continue to man its Iron Dome antiballistic 
missile system, as has been under siege by Hamas rockets; and, third, 
it will help be a downpayment on resolving the crisis of the children 
arriving at the border.
  To be specific, it will fight wildfires to the tune of $615 million. 
Right now there are 127 wildfires burning in our Western States, 
covering four or more States.
  Second, it will strengthen Israel's Iron Dome and add $225 million to 
replenish the antimissile defense system, saving lives by shooting down 
Hamas rockets, helping our essential ally Israel.
  Third, it will deal with the crisis of our children arriving at the 
border, and that will be $2.7 billion--$1 billion less than what the 
President asked for. It will care for the children. It will provide 
food, shelter, and other needs. It will resolve children's asylum 
status, and it will have enforcement money to break up organized crime 
cartels, the traffickers, and the smugglers.
  The total for all three of those will be $3.57 billion.
  I agree with President Obama. This is an emergency supplemental. 
These funds are designated as emergency spending because they meet the 
criteria set in the Budget Control Act of 2011 that the needs must be 
urgent, temporary, unforeseen, and prevent loss of life. That is 
exactly what we are facing.
  What does it mean to designate the funds as emergency spending? It 
means no offsets. So we do not take existing funds where we are either 
defending the Nation or helping America's families to pay for the 
spending in this bill.
  The needs are urgent.
  Firefighting needs are needed now. The Forest Service will run out of 
money in August. Fires are burning Oregon, Washington, and other 
States. We need to be able to provide the support to fight those fires 
and help our neighbors in our Western States.
  Iron Dome. The funding is needed now to replenish a key part of the 
missile defense system, replace Iron Dome artillery. Israel has already 
used a great deal of its assets dealing with the more than 2,000 Hamas 
rockets aimed at Israel. Israel has the right to self-defense. We are 
helping them have what they need to intercept 90 percent of the 
rockets.
  Funds to deal with unaccompanied children crossing our border are 
needed now. If we do not do this, the Department of Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement will run out of money in August, and the Department 
of Homeland Security Border Patrol will run out in early September. It 
does not mean that our Border Patrol agents or ICE agents will stop 
working, but it will mean the Department of Homeland Security will have 
to take money from other Homeland Security needs to keep these agencies 
doing their jobs.
  Also, Health and Human Services will run out of money to house 
children in August. It means that children will stay longer at the 
border. They will be in inappropriate holding cells. It also means 
Border Patrol agents will be taking care of them, rather than child 
welfare social workers. If you want to use Border Patrol agents to take 
care of children, that is one thing. I think they should be defending 
our border and we should have social workers taking care of the 
children.
  Our approach is sensible. It meets human needs. While we acknowledge 
a tight budget situation, we fund only that which is needed in calendar 
year 2014. This is very important. It funds only what is needed in 
calendar year 2014. It defers $1 billion of the President's request 
until 2015, subject to Congressional action that the need be validated. 
We hope by 2015 the surge will have diminished because of the 
prevention and intervention issues we are dealing with. But make no 
mistake, the funds we say we need we really do need.
  This bill defers funds until next year, because I am deeply concerned 
if we do not follow the Senate number, the House will make draconian 
cuts that impact the care of the children, and also being penny wise 
and pound foolish, they are going to stop our ability to go after the 
smugglers and the coyotes. So we do not want to go after the children, 
we want to go after those people who are exploiting the children and 
trying to recruit them into despicable activities.
  We also do not want radical riders that will weaken our refugee and 
human trafficking laws or accelerate deportation of children without 
due process under existing law. We do not want a backdoor version of 
bad immigration reform.
  This bill is only a money bill. It does not include immigration 
legislation. How that will be addressed on the Senate floor will be 
decided by the leadership on both sides. The challenges to this request 
are many. We have made changes to the President's request. We have 
included more money for immigration judges and more money for 
additional legal representation for children so we can determine their 
legal status and determine whether they have the right to seek asylum 
status.
  We also have robust enforcement against gangs and organized crime. 
Seven organized crime syndicates are operating in these three Central 
American countries now. We are talking about more guns at the border. 
We need more law enforcement and the help of the United States going 
after the real bums and scums, which is these drug dealers who recruit 
these children, murder children before other children's eyes.

  You know what. We also know that when we work in a crisis and we do 
urgent supplemental efforts, we sometimes waste money. We can only look 
at some of the other agencies where we have done this. This bill 
includes strong oversight from the inspectors general to make sure the 
taxpayers' money is well spent, to protect our border, protect the 
children, and go after smugglers, coyotes, and human traffickers.
  The best way to make sure the surge of children is slowed is not by 
rewriting refugee and human trafficking laws, it is by making it harder 
on these crooks and criminals.
  I am going to conclude by saying this: We already have 60,000 
children at the border. This crisis is not at our border, however. The 
crisis is in their home countries: Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala.
  These children are truly fleeing violence. I have been down to the 
border. I have talked to these children, listened to children who faced 
sexual assault, the recruitment into human trafficking, gang 
intimidation, persecution, threats of grisly physical actions directed 
against them.
  What is happening in these countries? When you listen to the cries of 
the children, I can tell you, in these countries there is a war on 
children. We cannot turn our backs on these children who are seeking 
refuge. We need to pass this supplemental and we need to deal with the 
violence that is coming out of Central America; that if we do not deal 
with it there, it is not that the children will come to our borders, it 
is that the violence and the gangs will come to our borders.

[[Page S4753]]

  I hope when the leader introduces the bill later on this evening we 
can proceed and debate this with due diligence. I look forward to 
chairing the committee as we go through this process.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a 
presentation and colloquy with my fellow Republican colleagues for up 
to 25 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Corker, Mr. Graham, Mr. Rubio, and Mr. McCain 
pertaining to the introduction of S. 2650 are printed in today's Record 
under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. CORKER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2262

  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor with a number of my 
colleagues to ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by 
the majority leader, after consultation with the Republican leader, the 
Senate resume consideration of S. 2262, which is the Shaheen-Portman 
energy efficiency bill; that the motion to commit be withdrawn; that 
amendments Nos. 3023 and 3025 be withdrawn; that the pending substitute 
amendment be agreed to; that there be no other amendments, points of 
order, or motions in order to the bill other than budget points of 
order and the applicable motions to waive; that there be up to 4 hours 
of debate on the bill equally divided between the two leaders or their 
designees; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate 
proceed to vote on passage of the bill, as amended; that the bill be 
subject to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold; that if the bill is passed, 
the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 371, S. 2282, 
which is the passage of the Keystone Pipeline, at a time to be 
determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the 
Republican leader, but no later than Thursday, July 31, 2014; that 
there be no amendments, points of order, or motions in order to the 
bill other than budget points of order and the applicable motions to 
waive; that there be up to 4 hours of debate on the bill equally 
divided between the two leaders or their designees; that upon the use 
or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the 
bill; finally, that the bill be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote 
threshold.
  What I am basically asking is that we get a vote on Shaheen-Portman 
and if that moves, that we then get a vote on the Keystone Pipeline--
something our colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been talking 
about for months.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would propose to the Senator from New 
Hampshire an alternative. Before I do that, I would say the biggest 
problem we have is the inability of the Senate to process amendments in 
the normal order. I believe the Senator from New Hampshire is 
sympathetic to that.
  If we could just have an opportunity to offer and vote on amendments, 
I have every confidence this piece of legislation would have been long 
passed. But somehow we are stuck. And it is not just the minority party 
that is limited on opportunities to offer ideas to help improve 
legislation and to get votes. It is even our friends who are in the 
majority. I can only imagine what it is like to feel like: I am in the 
majority, and I can't even get votes on my amendments or my legislation 
passed.
  So I ask unanimous consent that the only amendments in order to S. 
2262 be five amendments from the Republican side related to energy 
policy, each with a 60-vote threshold on adoption of each amendment. I 
further ask that following the disposition of these five amendments, 
the bill be read a third time and the Senate proceed to vote on passage 
of the bill, as amended, if amended.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection of the Senator from Rhode Island 
is heard.
  The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I came to the floor to speak on these two 
commonsense pieces of legislation.
  My dear friends Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman--Democrat and 
Republican--have worked so hard in a bipartisan way, which we don't 
always see anymore on the floor here or over on the House side. It is a 
shame. People tell me about how things used to be. I have been here not 
quite 4 years, and I haven't seen it yet. I am still waiting for it to 
happen. But we have a bill, the Shaheen-Portman bill. It is basically a 
bill that creates jobs, saves money, makes significant strides toward a 
more energy-efficient nation, which we should be.
  I am from an energy-producing State, the great State of West 
Virginia. My dear friend Senator Heitkamp is from the great State of 
North Dakota, which is a tremendous energy-producing State. We believe 
in energy policies. We believe we should be using everything we have to 
make sure we have the economic engine so we can compete globally and in 
a very competitive way.
  With that being said, this is the low-hanging fruit. This is truly 
low-hanging fruit. And we all agree--why shouldn't we pass a piece of 
legislation that basically we all benefit--all 50 States will benefit. 
The bill will put us on a path toward a more sustainable future. It has 
broad support, as we can see. And our colleague Senator Cornyn from 
Texas will tell you that if it got voted on, it would pass 
overwhelmingly. Now, that is hard for me, coming from West Virginia 
where there is a lot of common sense.
  People say: Well, if it would pass, why don't you just vote on it and 
pass it?
  That is what I am saying. It is a shame that politics has trumped 
good policy in this body and in this city, and we have to get back to 
some order of common sense.
  I am a tremendous supporter of this piece of legislation. I thank 
Senator Shaheen for all the hard work she has done. She has not given 
up. She will not give up. And that is what it takes--the tenacity to 
make sure a good piece of legislation which not only helps the great 
people of New Hampshire, it helps all of us. That is what I am looking 
forward to.
  Then we look at the Keystone Pipeline. I have never seen a piece of 
legislation that makes more sense than this piece of legislation, the 
Keystone Pipeline. When I first heard about this, people said: Senator 
Manchin, what do you think about this?
  The only thing I can say is that in West Virginia we would rather buy 
from our friends than our enemies. So we are going to buy the oil. The 
oil is going to be sold somewhere in the world. Why shouldn't we have 
access to that? Why shouldn't we have control of that? Why shouldn't we 
benefit from the jobs? We are talking 20,000 direct jobs during 
construction, 118,000 indirect and spinoff jobs after construction, 
contributing $20 billion of economic stimulus to the United States. 
Every State, including my State of West Virginia--new Hampshire, North 
Dakota, Rhode Island--we are all going to benefit.
  It is something we find almost reprehensible, for us not to be able 
to vote on legislation. And I understand the amendment process. I 
understand all of that. But when we have very clearly defined pieces of 
legislation that really create good policy for all of America, that is 
something for which sometimes maybe we push the politics aside, we vote 
on the policies and the contents of these other pieces of legislation, 
which I know West Virginia would be happy for me to vote on, and I will 
be in very much support of these two pieces.
  With that, I thank Senator Shaheen for her hard work. I thank her for 
her not-give-up attitude, that New Hampshire commitment she has. She is 
going to work and fight. We are going to be right behind her and work 
with our bipartisan friends on the other side. Senator Portman has 
committed the same way. So we hope we can get something reasonably 
done.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I am standing with my good friend from 
the

[[Page S4754]]

great State of West Virginia, certainly a tremendous legislator and 
former Governor and someone who knows how to get things done, Senator 
Shaheen.
  I know what is happening. I think I have learned at least that much 
since I have been here, about the rules and how things work. But I also 
see this body through the eyes of an American citizen.
  I see two pieces of legislation--one the Keystone Pipeline. The vast 
majority of people in this country support moving forward with the 
Keystone Pipeline. It is a critical piece of North American 
infrastructure. It was critical in the last discussion we had about the 
disruption and about the horrible conditions in the Middle East. If we 
haven't learned the lesson, we need to build out our resources right 
here among our friendly allies in the form of Canada and use our own 
resources here and then have the ability to use that new energy 
development for soft power, to actually begin to have a meaningful 
geopolitical discussion that doesn't involve an addiction to foreign 
oil.
  So we think about Keystone Pipeline, and we think about the 
relationship we have with Canada and the jobs that could be created, 
but mainly we think about developing the infrastructure that is 
absolutely essential to the development of our country and the 
development of our energy resources.
  We can talk about fuel sources--and that is what my great friend from 
West Virginia just talked about, having a policy that truly includes 
all of the above--all of the above, not picking and choosing. Let the 
market decide. Let's make sure that it is diverse, that we have every 
opportunity to develop everything we are going to develop. But we have 
to move that energy, and the Keystone Pipeline is example 1.
  A lot of the disagreement about the Keystone Pipeline has nothing to 
do with the pipeline itself. It has to do with the oil sands 
development up in Canada.
  When we pick and choose winners and decide we are not going to vote 
on something, the American people just shake their head and say this 
makes so much sense, so why isn't the Congress voting.
  Then let's take the second part of a solid energy policy--``all of 
the above'' but also conservation, also energy efficiency, also making 
the best use in a great American tradition, a conservative American 
tradition of making sure we have the best energy efficiency in the 
world and having a piece of legislation that guarantees that and 
creates jobs as a result and saves money for schools and saves money 
for businesses.
  All of this makes so much sense, and the American public knows it 
makes sense. Yet this body cannot find a way forward to take a vote. 
How frustrating is that?
  It is frustrating for us here in this body, but it is more 
frustrating for the American public that watches this display of 
inability to move forward on critical pieces of public policy that 
would make a difference not only for our future but the future of the 
young people here whom I see every day, the future of the young people 
in my State, knowing that we need to absolutely have an energy policy 
that works for the future, that is diverse, that recognizes the 
importance of energy efficiency, and that moves energy.
  We know we have a huge number of people in this body who support the 
Keystone Pipeline. Do we have 60 votes? We will find out. Let's take a 
vote. We know there is tremendous bipartisan support not only for 
Keystone but for energy efficiency, for the Shaheen-Portman bill. Let's 
take a vote. Let's actually demonstrate to the American public that we 
can move forward on what are literally no-brainers, things that 
absolutely make sense. And those of us who support the Keystone 
Pipeline, we will find out. We will find out if we can pass it.
  Think about this: We have a bill here that mandates we approve that 
little bit of crossing into the United States of America, which is the 
only way the Federal Government really gets involved in it, is because 
it is coming from a foreign country--approves that. Maybe we win, maybe 
we lose, but we will know where we are. The administration has taken 6 
years to evaluate the Keystone Pipeline--longer than it took us to 
fight World War II. There is something dramatically wrong with that. So 
frustration builds. We know we need to move on the Keystone Pipeline. 
We need to have a strong vote. Let's take that vote. Let's take the 
vote on Shaheen-Portman.

  It is a critical piece of legislation--well-thought-out--and comes 
right out of committee where lots of amendments were offered, where 
there was the ability to have a dialogue. It comes about the right way 
with the bill sponsors standing on the floor answering questions and 
debating what the bill does. Yet because of this impasse--because of 
whatever happens behind closed doors that the American public doesn't 
see--they only look at what they see happening in the debate here and 
wonder why.
  I support Senator Shaheen in her efforts to promote this bill. This 
will not be the first time we have come and asked this. We will 
continue to do everything we can to move a vote forward on Shaheen-
Portman, to move a vote forward on the Keystone Pipeline, and start 
getting the work done for the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Before my colleague leaves I wish to thank Senator 
Heitkamp for her support, not just for Shaheen-Portman but for a 
resolution to getting a vote on our energy efficiency legislation that 
I have worked on for 3\1/2\ years with our colleague Senator Rob 
Portman from Ohio but also for the impasse that would break around the 
vote for the Keystone Pipeline as well. Pairing the two would allow us 
to see where we stand on both of these issues.
  I appreciate my colleague from West Virginia, Senator Manchin, coming 
to the floor because he and Senator Heitkamp have talked about the fact 
that we have to look at a variety of areas of energy if we are going to 
address our future energy needs in this country. There is new urgency 
to energy efficiency right now. A recent study just came out that shows 
the United States ranks 13th out of the world's largest 16 economies in 
energy efficiency. So that study analyzed the world's largest economies 
that cover more than 81 percent of the global gross domestic product 
and posts 71 percent of the global electricity. What it found is we are 
severely lagging behind other countries in our use of energy 
efficiency. This legislation, the Energy Efficiency and Industrial 
Competitiveness Act, also known as Shaheen-Portman, is a way for us to 
address the deficit we currently have in this country.
  We have heard from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient 
Economy that by 2030 this legislation would create 192,000 domestic 
jobs. That is nothing to sneeze at, at a time when our economy is still 
recovering from the recession. It would save consumers and businesses 
$16 billion a year--again, real savings in a way that is important to 
consumers and businesses. It would reduce carbon pollution at a time 
when we know pollution is affecting our environment and we are seeing a 
record number of disasters. It would be the equivalent of taking 22 
million cars off the road. Our legislation does this without any 
mandates, without raising the deficit. In fact, we see a very small 
savings of about $12 million in the legislation.
  It addresses the building sector where we use about 40 percent of our 
energy. It addresses the industrial manufacturing sector that consumes 
more energy than any other sector of our domestic economy, and it 
addresses the Federal Government where we use more energy than any 
other entity in our economy; 93 percent of the energy is used by our 
military. Clearly, energy efficiency is something that would benefit 
all of us.
  There are 10 bipartisan amendments that have been incorporated into 
this legislation. It is the product of 3\1/2\ years of work. It has 
been endorsed by hundreds--literally hundreds and hundreds of business 
groups, of businesses, organizations, everything from the Natural 
Resources Defense Council to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National 
Association of Manufacturers, the International Union of Painters.
  This is legislation that makes sense. We just heard Senator Cornyn on 
the floor saying he thought there was support to get this legislation 
done. I think we need to figure out how we can

[[Page S4755]]

come together. We don't have much time left before we go out in August 
to go back to our home States. This would be a great bipartisan effort 
to go out on at the end of July, to be able to go home and say to 
people across this country that we worked out a deal that passed this 
energy efficiency legislation, that we got a vote on the Keystone 
Pipeline--let the chips fall where they may--that we addressed one of 
the biggest challenges facing this country, which is energy, and what 
we are going to do about our energy future.
  I certainly hope that in the remaining time between now and the 
beginning of August we can come together, find some sort of resolution 
to address this issue and get this legislation done. We know the House 
has said they are willing to take it up. They are interested in seeing 
some action on energy efficiency. Now is an opportune time to do that.
  I am disappointed by today's objections, but as Senator Heitkamp said 
so well, we are not going to give up. We are going to continue to try 
and move this issue and do what is in the best interests of the people 
of this country.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise tonight to ask unanimous consent, 
first of all, to speak as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection.


                         Traumatic Brain Injury

  Mr. CASEY. Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to highlight an important 
piece of legislation that was just voted out of the Committee on 
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions--known by the acronym HELP. We 
voted out of committee today S. 2539, the Traumatic Brain Injury 
Reauthorization Act of 2014. Senator Hatch and I introduced S. 2539 to 
reauthorize existing programs to support States' efforts to help 
individuals live with traumatic brain injury and of course to help 
their families.
  TBIs range from mild concussions to devastating life-altering 
injuries that collectively represent a significant public health 
challenge. It is the signature injury, unfortunately, of the conflicts 
of the last decade, whether it is Iraq or Afghanistan.
  It is also an injury that occurs approximately 2.5 million times in 
the United States each year. Over 50,000 people die of traumatic brain 
injuries every year. Traumatic brain injury is implicated in nearly 
one-third of all injury-related deaths.
  Children--just imagine this number--ages 0 to 4 and teens ages 15 to 
19 are at the greatest risk for traumatic brain injury. Among all 
children in an average year, 62,000 will sustain brain injuries that 
require hospitalization and 564,000 will be seen in hospital emergency 
rooms. Clearly, we must continue to improve our response to traumatic 
brain injury, which includes prevention, timely and accurate diagnosis, 
and treatment.
  The bill passed today out of the HELP Committee would make modest but 
important improvements to the TBI Act that is in place already. We ask 
that the Department of Health and Human Services develop a traumatic 
brain injury coordination plan to ensure that Federal activities at HHS 
and other Federal agencies are being coordinated for maximum efficiency 
and effectiveness.
  We also ask for a review of the scientific evidence on brain injury 
and in particular brain injury management in children, with a special 
emphasis on evaluating scientific evidence behind the ``return to 
school'' and ``return to play'' policies. This of course is very 
important.
  As public awareness of the seriousness of traumatic brain injuries 
increases, parents, schools, and coaches are struggling to develop 
appropriate responses. A lot of attention thus far has been focused on 
the ``return to play'' policies, trying to ensure that children don't 
return to sports until they have healed from a previous concussion, but 
there is much less attention on the so-called return to school policies 
and how we can take steps to ensure that children with a concussion or 
a more serious brain injury can return to the classroom and continue 
learning safely and effectively.
  It is my hope that this bill, S. 2539, will help focus future 
research efforts and guide Federal and State agencies looking to 
develop policies in this area. Along with a lot of the members of the 
HELP Committee, I am pleased the committee voted today to move forward 
S. 2539, and I hope the rest of the Senate will join Senator Hatch and 
me in passing this legislation as quickly as possible.
  In conclusion, it has been a great honor to work with Senator Hatch 
on this legislation as it is when we work together on a whole series of 
important matters in the Senate.


                       2014 Kids Count Data Book

  Mr. President, I have brief comments on an important set of data that 
has just been released. I will highlight very briefly the 2014 Kids 
Count Data Book, something a lot of child advocates and families are 
aware of. This is an annual report, and I want to highlight the fact 
that the 2014 report is now on the record.
  This Kids Count Data Book was just published by the Annie E. Casey 
Foundation for this year. The Kids Count Data Book looks at every State 
to measure child well-being in States and across the country 
considering factors such as economic well-being, health, education, 
family, and community. Within each of these categories the report 
highlights four important metrics and notes whether we have improved 
from the year 2008 to 2012.
  Nationally, 10 of the 16 metrics showed improvement. That is good 
news. Five metrics worsened. Of course we don't like hearing that, but 
it is important to measure when we are going in the wrong direction. 
And one of the metrics remained unchanged. So we are happy the 
improvement number is 16 metrics and the worsening metric number is 5, 
but we still have a long way to go to improve in each of these areas.
  The report also ranks States based upon their overall results. 
Pennsylvania is ranked 16th in the Nation. I wish we were in the top 
10. I wish we were in the top five and even No. 1. So we have some work 
to do in Pennsylvania. In some areas Pennsylvania is doing well 
compared to the national average. For example, we have a lower rate of 
children without health insurance. That is certainly good news, with 
still more to do on that. Teen birth rates in Pennsylvania continue to 
be below the national average. Pennsylvania has a slightly higher 
percentage of children attending preschool. That is good news. We have 
a lot more to do on that, both in Pennsylvania and across the Nation. 
Finally, Pennsylvania students continue to have higher proficiency 
rates in reading and math skills when compared to the national rate, 
but there is still more work to do there as well.
  The report also highlights areas where we need to improve both in 
Pennsylvania and nationally. Far too many children in the United States 
of America are living in poverty with parents who often lack secure 
employment. Too many teens are not in school and also not working, 
which dramatically worsens their ability to grow into economically 
self-sufficient adults.
  I would encourage my colleagues to review the 2014 Kids Count Data 
Book which is available on the Web site of the Annie E. Casey 
Foundation. We should all consider what we can do in the Senate and in 
the other body to improve our children's lives and our future.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to speak about amendments I have 
filed to the Bring Jobs Home Act.
  My first amendment, the United States Job Creation and International 
Tax Reform Act, would truly incentivize American companies to create 
jobs in the United States, while at the same time leveling the playing 
field for U.S. companies in the global marketplace. We can do this by 
reforming the rules for taxing the global operations of American 
companies and making America a more attractive location to base a 
business that serves customers around the world.
  Our current Tax Code does just the opposite, but the base bill we are 
debating today wouldn't change that. Instead, it would discourage 
global businesses from locating their headquarters in the United States 
and make it harder for U.S.-based companies to expand.
  Instead of messaging that we should bring jobs home, we need to 
reform our

[[Page S4756]]

outdated international Tax Code. Let's just do it. Many of the United 
States' major trading partners have moved to what are called 
territorial tax systems. Those types of tax systems tax the income 
generated within their borders and exempt foreign earnings from tax. 
The United States, on the other hand, taxes the worldwide income of 
U.S. companies and provides deferral of U.S. tax until the foreign 
earnings are brought home. Deferring these taxes incentivizes companies 
to leave their money abroad. Because the United States has one of the 
highest corporate tax rates in the world, companies don't bring those 
earnings back home and instead reinvest outside of the United States.
  This is having a real impact on jobs. Thirty-six percent of the 
Fortune Global 500 companies were headquartered in the United States in 
2000; in 2009 that number dropped to 28 percent. Clearly, America is 
losing ground, but the base bill we are considering won't change that.
  My amendment would help to right the ship by pulling our 
international tax rules into the 21st century. This bill would give 
U.S. companies real incentives to create jobs in the United States in 
order to win globally. I hope as we talk about jobs this week, we will 
have a chance to consider the amendment.
  My second amendment, the Small Business Fairness in Health Care Act, 
would remove the ObamaCare disincentive for small businesses to add 
jobs. Small businesses are the drivers of the economy in Wyoming and 
across the Nation, but the bill before us is not focused on removing 
the burdens that current laws have placed on our Main Street 
businesses.
  A recent survey by the National Small Business Association found that 
because of the President's health care law 34 percent of small 
businesses report holding off on hiring a new employee and another 12 
percent report they had to lay off an employee in the last year.
  My amendment is a great step to help address those issues. It would 
remove the ObamaCare mandate that businesses with 50 employees provide 
health insurance. This would allow small companies with 49 employees to 
add jobs without the fear of the employer mandate. My amendment would 
also clarify that 40 hours, not 30 hours, is full-time so that folks 
who have jobs aren't limited to 29 hours of work per week.
  These aren't the only ideas we should debate when we talk about 
creating jobs in the United States. We should be fighting the 
administration's war on coal, an industry that supported over 700,000 
good-paying jobs in 2010. The EPA recently issued new regulations that 
try to force a backdoor cap and tax proposal on Americans that Congress 
has already rejected. We need to reject that idea again. Instead of 
running from coal, America needs to run on coal.
  We should debate the merits of the Keystone Pipeline and insist that 
the President approve this project which has been pending for more than 
5 years and would create more than 40,000 jobs. The State Department 
has done five reviews of the project and determined that the pipeline 
would cause no significant environmental impacts. So let's create those 
jobs. What are we waiting for?
  Mr. CASEY. I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________