[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 146 (Wednesday, December 3, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6278-S6292]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




NOMINATION OF GERALD J. PAPPERT TO BE UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE FOR 
                  THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Gerald J. 
Pappert, of Pennsylvania, to be United States District Judge for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 5:30 
p.m. will be equally divided in the usual form.
  The Senator from Virginia.


              Authorization for the Use of Military Force

  Mr. KAINE. Madam President, next Monday will mark 4 months since the 
President commenced military action in Syria and Iraq against ISIL. As 
of December 2, Operation Inherent Resolve, which the administration 
calls a war on ISIL, has involved more than 1,100 coalition airstrikes 
in Iraq and Syria, the vast majority carried out by American air men 
and women. The President has authorized currently 1,400 U.S. ground 
troops who are deployed in Iraq to train and advise regional forces. 
The President has authorized an additional 1,500 U.S. troops to serve 
in that train-and-advise capacity. This past Monday, 250 paratroopers 
from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC, were sent to Iraq. 
The total cost of the operation thus far to U.S. taxpayers is in excess 
of $1 billion.
  There have been three deaths of Americans serving in Operation 
Inherent Resolve. On October 1, Marine Cpl Jordan Spears of Memphis, 
TN, was lost at sea while conducting flight operations over the Persian 
Gulf. On October 23, Marine LCpl Sean Neal of Riverside, CA, died in 
Iraq. On December 1, Air Force Capt. William Dubois of Newcastle, CO, 
died in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
  Senator King and I visited Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in October to 
see the Combined Air Operations Center in action, and I saw many 
Virginians there working with colleagues from all service branches and 
many other coalition nations in directing the air strike campaign.
  Let's not make any mistake about this--America is at war. The number 
of air and ground troops deployed is steadily creeping upwards every 
day. Our troops are dying. And the fiscal cost to American taxpayers is 
growing every day.
  But this is a most unusual war. While all the activities of war are 
occurring, there is a strange conspiracy of silence about it in the 
White House and in the Halls of Congress.
  The President has not offered any proposed authorization for the war, 
despite his suggestions that one is needed. Congress has not debated 
on, taken committee action on, or voted on the ongoing war. The House 
is contemplating adjourning for the holidays on December 11, without 
saying anything about an ongoing war. And because neither the President 
nor Congress has undertaken the necessary public debate over the war, 
the American public has not had the chance to be fully educated about 
what is at stake and why it is in our international interest to ask our 
troops to risk their lives thousands of miles away.
  We owe it to our troops serving abroad--troops who are engaged in war 
even as we think about recessing and leaving Washington on December 11 
for the holidays--to do our job and to have a debate and vote about the 
war that our Constitution demands.
  Let me make an earnest request to our President and to my colleagues 
in Congress.
  To the President: I have previously taken the floor to strongly argue 
that the President needs new legal authority to conduct the war on 
ISIL.
  When the President spoke to the Nation on September 10, he said that 
he would ``welcome'' a congressional authorization. And on November 5, 
he affirmatively asserted that a new congressional authorization was 
needed and that he would ``engage'' Congress

[[Page S6279]]

in passing one. But to this date, 4 months after the initiation of war, 
the administration has not even been willing to present a draft 
authorization of the mission to Congress.
  In testimony yesterday at the Armed Services Committee, no DOD 
witness could recall a single other instance in which a President told 
Congress of the need for a war but failed to present a proposed 
authorization spelling out the dimensions of the military mission.
  Instead, the President has persisted in a war that is not within the 
scope of his Article II powers, that is not authorized by any treaty 
obligation, that is not justified under either of the congressional 
authorizations passed in 2001 or 2002. The President's unilateral 
action has even extended beyond the 60- and 90-day timing requirements 
created by the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

  The President's willingness to push a war without engaging Congress 
has even violated his own solemn and wise pronouncement of just 1 year 
ago:

       I believe our democracy is stronger when the President acts 
     with the support of Congress. This is especially true after a 
     decade that put more and more war-making powers in the hands 
     of the President--while sidelining the people's 
     representatives from the critical decisions about when we use 
     force.

  So I request our President: Make good on your promise to engage 
Congress. Do what other Presidents have done--demand that we debate and 
vote on an authorization, and that we do it now.
  The votes are here in this body to support the President. I am a 
supporter of the need for military action against ISIL, and I know that 
is a position held by a strong majority of the Senate and a strong 
majority of the House. There is no reason for the President to not 
demand that we actually have that debate and have that vote.
  To my congressional colleagues, I have a similar request. Let's not 
leave this Capitol without a debate and a vote on this war on ISIL. We 
have gone 4 months without any meaningful action about this war.
  First, we were told that Congress would get to it after the midterm 
elections, and so we recessed for 7 weeks in the middle of a war 
without saying one thing--shirking our constitutional duties. Now many 
are saying we need to delay until after New Year's before having any 
meaningful discussion of this war. So the unilateral war would extend 
to at least 5 months--and, in all likelihood, longer--before Congress 
gets around to any meaningful discussion of the ISIL threat and what we 
should do to counter it.
  Giving this President--giving any President--a green light to wage 
unilateral war for 5 or 6 months without any meaningful debate or 
authorization would be deeply destructive of the legitimacy of the 
legislative branch of our government; it would be deeply disrespectful 
of our citizens; and it would be especially disrespectful of the troops 
who are risking their lives every day while we do nothing.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.


                          Power to Declare War

  Mr. KING. Madam President, Senator Kaine has spoken eloquently about 
events of today. I wish to speak for a few moments about events of 200-
plus years ago.
  On Tuesday, August 17, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in 
Philadelphia, the delegates debated the question of war. They debated 
it passionately and with a sense of history and human nature. They 
understood the propensity of the Executive--any Executive throughout 
history, a prince, a king, a potentate, a sultan--to lead their country 
into war for good reasons or no good reasons. They understood that this 
was a basic question before the body--before the Constitutional 
Convention, and I would assert that the Framers knew what they were 
doing.
  Interestingly, in the first draft of the Constitution, the clause in 
article I, section 8 that says the Congress shall have the power to 
declare war, said: The Congress shall have the power to make war. That 
was the first draft.
  The debate was about whether Congress could effectively make and 
execute war. They wisely, I believe, realized that was impractical, 
given the nature of Congress and the large number of representatives, 
and the exigencies of war. So they left the power to the Commander in 
Chief, to the Chief Executive. They also recognized the Chief 
Executive's inherent power to repel an attack on this country. But in 
all other cases what the Constitution says is very clear. Article 1, 
section 8, says the Congress shall declare war. There was some 
discussion about this. Some people said, well, we don't want to tie the 
hands of the Executive, but others made it more clear.

  Madison's notes are a fascinating source of information about the 
history of the Constitution. The notes were taken the day of the debate 
on Tuesday, August 17, 1787. Mr. Ellsworth of Connecticut stated that 
``it should be more easy to get out of war than into it.'' He 
understood this principle.
  Pierce Butler of South Carolina said the Executive should have the 
power to repel sudden attacks. That is common sense. But then Elbridge 
Gerry of Massachusetts, I think, put it most succinctly. He said, ``I 
never expected to hear in a Republic a motion to empower the Executive 
alone to declare war.'' That is the fundamental issue that is before us 
today.
  Then George Mason of Virginia later in the debate used a wonderful 
phrase that I think aptly captures what the Framers were after. He 
said: ``I am for flogging rather than facilitating war.'' That is what 
we are supposed to do, is to debate, discuss, and have the people 
engaged in the discussion before this country is committed to war.
  The Constitution in the Preamble makes it very clear that one of the 
fundamental purposes of this government or any government is to provide 
for the common defense. Nobody questions that. Neither Senator Kaine 
nor myself nor anyone else who is talking about this issue questions, 
A, whether we should be debating it and, B, that it is our solemn 
responsibility to provide for the common defense. I happen to think, as 
Senator Kaine does, that the fight against ISIL is worthy of national 
attention, worthy of national effort, and should be debated and 
circumscribed through some form of authorization in this body. There 
has not been a declaration of war by the Congress since 1942.
  I will conclude with the observation that power doesn't spring from 
one branch of our government to the other overnight or in some flash of 
inspiration or change. I would argue more aptly it oozes from one 
branch to the other, not necessarily through Executive usurpation as 
through congressional application. For us to go home, to take a recess, 
to say: We don't really want to be talking about this, we don't want to 
be responsible for this, I think is unfair to the American people. It 
is unfair to the people who are being put into harm's way. It is unfair 
and not responsive to the basic principles of the Constitution.
  We owe it to our country to have this debate, and it is one that I 
believe is important and is constitutionally based. We are very good in 
Congress about not making decisions and then criticizing the Executive 
for what they do. This is an opportunity where we have the power, the 
constitutional power and the constitutional responsibility to discuss, 
debate, and authorize the Executive's actions against this terrible 
foe. I believe it is our responsibility to do so. To not do so is 
simply one more sliding away, one more giving away of our 
constitutional authority to the Executive that I think is in detriment 
not only to the Constitution itself, clearly, but also to the interests 
of the American people.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            Working Together

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, ever since November 4--this last 
election, some 3 or so weeks ago--a number of people have speculated as 
to what a new Republican majority in the Senate will mean for the 
country. We will be working together with our Republican colleagues in 
the House and with the President, who has hopefully heard the message 
the American people sent him on November 4. He was the one who said it 
was his policies that were on the

[[Page S6280]]

ballot. I believe the vote by the American people came through pretty 
loud and clear as to what they thought of those policies. It was pretty 
clear that they want a new direction.
  When people ask me what my constituents expect--my 26.5 million 
constituents in Texas--I tell them they want us to demonstrate that we 
can govern. They want us to demonstrate that we can actually solve some 
of the problems confronting our country. Those problems primarily deal 
with how we unleash the American economy, get it growing again to 
create jobs and opportunity so people can find work, provide for their 
families, and pursue their dreams.
  I believe that is what Senator Schumer was saying the other day at 
the National Press Club. We need to focus on the needs of the middle 
class and the wage earners. They are seeing stagnant wages. While 
health care, energy, and other costs go up, their paychecks are 
shrinking. As a result, they are having to live on less, which is not 
the American dream most people have bargained for.
  The truth is no political party or branch of government can govern on 
its own. The fact is that even though we have a Republican majority in 
the House and Senate, we still have a divided government, with 
President Obama in the White House--and he is not constitutionally 
irrelevant. In fact, he is critical in terms of actually getting things 
done.
  My hope is that we can find issues we can work on together. I believe 
Republicans and Democrats can vote to put legislation on the 
President's desk, but then he has a choice to make--either to sign that 
legislation into law or veto it. We then have a decision to make as to 
whether we want to try--and whether we can--override his veto.
  The truth is none of us can govern on our own. What has been 
troubling to me--since the election--is that President Obama seems to 
think he can govern on his own without regard for the Congress. Now, 
part of the consequences are the debates going on in the House and here 
in the Senate about the appropriate response to what has been widely 
seen as an overreach by the President--particularly when it comes to 
his Executive action on immigration, which circumvented the Congress. 
He acted as though he could do this alone without any consequence.
  We know one thing for sure, and that is the President cannot 
appropriate money, which is why we are now having this discussion. But 
there will be other ramifications and consequences as well. I hope one 
of those consequences is not that we fall back into the dysfunction we 
have experienced over the last few years where we find ourselves 
incapable of working together and getting things done. All we can do is 
all we can do. As a Senate--as a Congress--we can't make the President 
do anything he is bound and determined not to do, but we can do our 
job.
  I and others have said: Well, with a new majority in the Senate, we 
have to show we can govern. The truth is we can't govern by ourselves. 
The President can't govern by himself, and we can't govern by 
ourselves. That is the constitutional separation of powers and the 
division of responsibility that we must embrace together.
  I don't know where the President has gotten this idea that he thinks 
he can govern on his own. For 225 years our constitutional norms have 
said otherwise, and experience has shown otherwise. If we want to make 
real progress on improving our broken immigration system--we actually 
saw a bill passed out of the Senate. The President said he is 
frustrated with the timetable in the House. But there continues to be a 
bipartisan desire, I believe, to fix our broken immigration system.
  If we want to reform our Tax Code, I think that is something we ought 
to be getting to work on. The fact of the matter is we have the highest 
tax rate in the world. That is making America less competitive in terms 
of attracting investment and jobs. It discourages multinational 
corporations headquartered in the United States from bringing back the 
money they have earned overseas because they don't want to have to pay 
taxes twice--for what they have earned on their income overseas and 
then pay double again when they bring that money back home. We ought to 
look at what kind of Tax Code makes sense for us and incentivizes 
investment and job creation in the United States and not be content 
with a system that discourages that.

  I believe there is bipartisan support for doing what we can to shore 
up Medicare and Social Security. We have all seen the numbers--the 
aging baby boomers and more and more people retiring. Unfortunately, 
these young people are being left holding the bag. We are going to be 
OK--people my age and my generation--but future generations will not be 
OK unless we do our job now to deal with Medicare and Social Security 
and make them sustainable into the future.
  What I feel has been most discouraging is health care. Whether you 
supported the Affordable Care Act or were a skeptic, such as I was, I 
think by and large the evidence is that it didn't work the way the 
people who were the biggest cheerleaders thought it would work.
  One little factoid that jumped out at me yesterday in the Wall Street 
Journal is that between 2007 and 2013 the average cost for middle-class 
families for their health care went up 24 percent. That is part of what 
has made this wage stagnation even worse because people are actually 
paying more for items such as health care. If there is one thing we 
ought to all be able to agree on is that what makes health care more 
available and accessible to more people is when it is more affordable. 
Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act did not do that.
  Well, I mentioned my disappointment with some of the President's 
actions--including his Executive action on immigration, which I think 
has made our job harder--not easier. More recently there were stories 
of a pending negotiation on the tax bill that the President said he 
would veto if it got to him. Why didn't the President say: Mr. Majority 
Leader, if this isn't in it, I am going to consider vetoing it? In 
other words, why didn't he use the bully pulpit and the leverage the 
President has to change the package if he didn't like it and make it 
more acceptable? That is the kind of compromise and negotiation that 
needs to occur.
  What happens when you say I want everything my way or I want nothing? 
More often than not, you are going to get nothing. Unfortunately, that 
is what the taxpayers got--a temporary reprieve from the retroactive 
taxes and no real long-term solution which creates an opportunity to 
plan and make investments. That is what encourages job creation and job 
growth and grows the economy. All of this churning and uncertainty is 
the antithesis of what we need when it comes to growing our economy, 
creating jobs, and creating more predictability.
  I know back in 2008 when President Obama was elected, millions of 
Americans thought President Obama would be the kind of President that 
would bring the country together on a number of levels--whether it was 
a matter of race or just getting the government to be responsive to the 
needs of the middle class. Unfortunately, he seems to have developed 
this disdain for the very job he was elected to do. This stuff doesn't 
happen by accident. It happens as a result of hard work. A lot of that 
hard work happens behind closed doors where Members of both parties sit 
around the table and say how can we work this out. When we are doing 
our best work, it does work out, and although it is not perfect, it is 
a vast improvement over the status quo. That is the sort of thing the 
President, unfortunately, seems unwilling or unable to do.
  The Executive action on immigration is perhaps the freshest 
demonstration of the President's contempt for the role of Congress and 
the normal legislative process. What I find hard to understand and 
believe is that for the weeks and months leading up to the 
announcement, the President was repeatedly warned that such a decision 
would provoke a constitutional crisis. And he was repeatedly warned 
that what he was getting ready to do was something he did not have the 
power under the Constitution to do. And not coincidentally, the 
President--I think on 22 different occasions--admitted publicly that he 
didn't have the authority to do what he ultimately decided to do with 
this Executive order, but he did it anyway.

  I can't think of many things he could have done that would be more 
damaging to public confidence and Congress and the Presidency and our 
ideal

[[Page S6281]]

of self-government. If the President says ``I don't have the authority 
to do this without Congress'' but then he proceeds to do it anyway, 
what are we supposed to think?
  As a result of the President's ill-advised action, the coming weeks 
and months threaten to be dominated by a political fight that was 
completely unnecessary. Meanwhile, the bipartisan prospects for 
compromise on everything from immigration to tax reform have been 
significantly reduced.
  The tragedy is that once we get beyond the daily partisan rhetoric, 
there are more areas of bipartisan agreement in this Senate than people 
might think.
  For example, Members of both parties want to vote on the Keystone XL 
Pipeline.
  Members of both parties want to pass commonsense regulatory reform 
that will reduce the burdens on families and businesses.
  Members of both parties want to improve our patent system in order to 
discourage the abuse of costly litigation.
  Members of both parties want to address America's counterproductive 
business tax rate to help boost investment and create jobs here at 
home.
  Members of both parties want to take action to restore the 40-hour 
workweek that was penalized by ObamaCare to get people back on full-
time work and off of part-time work. People would like to work full 
time. And there are Members from both parties who want to repeal the 
law's medical device tax, falling as it does on the gross receipts of 
medical device innovators here in America, causing some of my 
constituents, for example, from Dallas to move their operations to 
Costa Rica and places where this tax won't be collected. Those are the 
sorts of incentives and disincentives that tax policy can have--and in 
this case, very damaging.
  Both parties want an immigration system that puts more emphasis on 
skills and on education. We are a very compassionate country when it 
comes to immigration. We naturalize almost 1 million people a year in 
this country. It is part of what makes our country great. But we ought 
to recognize that we need to use both our heads and our hearts on a lot 
of these issues. It makes sense to me and I think to a lot of other 
people to say: What do these immigrants bring to America that will make 
us better, and not just operate strictly on the basis of compassion, as 
in, what do they need? This seems to be a system that helps us to 
continue to attract the best and the brightest people from around the 
world through a legal immigration system.
  Finally, Members of both parties believe we need a permanent solution 
to our transportation needs in this country. I come from the fast-
growing State of Texas, where we simply don't have enough resources to 
build the mass transits and the highways and deal with the 
transportation needs we have in order to continue to grow our economy 
and create jobs. What we have done, sadly--and both parties are 
complicit in this--is one temporary bandaid after another, making it 
very hard to plan. We have just put patches on it, and then we come 
back and--sort of like the movie ``Groundhog Day'' we do it all over 
again 6 months or a year later.
  None of this is going to be easy. Nobody told us it would be easy, 
but we need to do it anyway. We need to vote, and we need to come up 
with solutions.
  This is only a partial list of some of the bipartisan, smart ideas 
that could become law pretty quickly with the right leadership. I am 
hopeful that after the first of the year in the new Congress, we will 
look for opportunities--and I am confident we will--to work together to 
put legislation on the President's desk to show we can actually 
function and hopefully regain some of the public's lost confidence in 
their government and in self-government itself.
  So the question is, What do we do if the President continues to give 
very little indication that he is going to be a partner in this effort? 
We need to do our job anyway. His initial reaction in 2014 has been to 
flout the will of Congress and the will of the American people. I know 
the temptation is to say we are going to retaliate for the President's 
action which we consider unlawful. I think we need to make a measured 
and prudent and appropriate response. There needs to be consequences 
when one branch usurps its power under the Constitution. But we don't 
need to fall back into the same sort of dysfunction we were in 
previously that got us to where we are today.

  So governing is not about having the executive branch or the 
legislative branch see how much they can get away with on their own. 
That is not our Constitution. That is not our form of government. It is 
about having the two branches working together to try to find common 
ground and proposing and negotiating policies that serve the national 
interests--not the interests of one political party or the other but 
the interests of the country as a whole.
  In January I hope to demonstrate that the newfound confidence voters 
have in Republicans is well-founded, not in the sense that we receive 
any mandate--believe me, I don't believe that for a minute, but I do 
believe people are looking for responsible alternatives to the status 
quo, and I believe sincerely that, working together, Republicans and 
Democrats, the Senate and the House and the President can demonstrate 
that we can actually do our jobs and govern. None of us can do it 
alone. We can and we must demonstrate that we are able to do our job 
and function. But, again, in order to move the country forward, in 
order to find solutions to the problems we have on so many fronts, we 
are going to have to do this together. I only hope the President 
reconsiders his record and his attitude about trying to go it alone 
because we know that is not going to end very well.
  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 bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Tax Extenders

  Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
the tax extenders package the House is likely to vote on today.
  Unfortunately and sadly, it looks as though we have reached another 
low point in the world of dysfunctional Washington politics. The House 
will vote on what is being called a 1-year retroactive extension of 
dozens of expired tax laws. This bill contains everything from the 
research and development tax credit, to the wind production tax credit, 
to the new markets tax credit, and they have let us know that this is 
the best bill they could cobble together. But in reality this is not a 
1-year extension; it is a 3-week extension of expired tax laws until 
the end of this year--3 weeks until the end of this year. On January 1 
all of our tax laws will expire again. No one in the real world would 
ever run an enterprise in this manner.
  It is bad enough that we do extenders for 2 years without making them 
permanent, but to say the best we can do is a 1-year extension and to 
know that really it is only a 3-week extension makes no sense at all. 
If the purpose of this bill is to encourage investments in business or 
our communities, how does a 1-year retroactive bill make any sense at 
all? If the purpose of the bill is to provide greater certainty for 
families and for businesses, how does a 1-year retroactive bill 
accomplish that? Only in the land of flickering lights--in Washington, 
DC--where we are barely keeping the government running, does it make 
sense.

  I thought we had reached a new low 2 years ago when we voted on the 
so-called fiscal cliff deal--when the Bush tax cuts were expiring and 
there was a bipartisan deal that was meant to, among other things, 
avoid the sequester. That bill passed at 2:30 in the morning; then, 90 
days later, the sequester went into effect--the very thing we were 
supposed to be protecting against. That deal is sometimes touted as a 
great act of bipartisanship. The only thing bipartisan about it was the 
confession that the two parties couldn't figure out how to actually get 
our fiscal house in order. Had we known that night that the sequester 
was going to go into effect 90 days later--had we known that that 
night--there is no way there would have been 92 ``yes'' votes for that 
deal. There is

[[Page S6282]]

no way it would have passed. And we are still living with it today.
  Coincidentally, the last time we passed tax extenders, it was part of 
that deal. The fiscal cliff deal at least provided a 2-year extension 
to these temporary tax laws. Here, it turns out we will be lucky if we 
provide 3 weeks of certainty.
  Many of the people I represent say this bill is only marginally 
better than no bill at all, and they reasonably wonder why in the world 
we wouldn't just do another 2-year extension. They prefer more 
certainty than that to plan for their businesses and for their 
communities. Instead of doing the short-term House bill, the Senate 
should instead take up the bipartisan bill the Senate Finance Committee 
reported over 6 months ago. I always hear people in this body lament 
the lack of regular order, and I lament the lack of regular order. This 
bill represented a great attempt at regular order and it got the votes 
of Republicans and Democrats on the Finance Committee. We had a markup, 
and we voted on amendments. Some passed, some didn't. And then we voted 
the bill out to the Senate floor 6 months ago.
  The Ways and Means Committee in the House didn't hold a markup on the 
House bill they are considering today. It is my understanding the House 
will be allowing few, if any, amendments. So why is that bill in any 
way preferable to the Senate bill, where we did the work of 
legislating? Our 2-year bill deserves a vote here on this floor.
  Among dozens of provisions that are important to families and 
businesses in Colorado and across the country, I wanted to highlight 
two today. The first is the credit for wind energy. The wind PTC and 
ITC--the production tax credit and the investment tax credit--have 
always enjoyed broad support from both sides of the aisle, ranging from 
its original cosponsor, Senator Grassley from Iowa, to my friend and 
colleague from Colorado, Mark Udall. And I should say that nobody has 
been a greater champion for wind or more relentless over the years in 
support of the wind industry in Colorado and those high-paying jobs in 
our State than Mark Udall.
  If enacted into law, the Senate version of the PTC and ITC for wind 
will continue to drive job growth in Colorado. We are not talking about 
some fly-by-night experiment here. This isn't some Bolshevik takeover 
of the United States. These are jobs--manufacturing jobs and other 
high-paying jobs--right here in the United States.
  In Colorado, we have 5,000 people working in this industry. In 
Colorado, Vestas, which manufactures wind turbines, employs over 1,400 
workers across 4 factories--from Pueblo all the way up I-25 to Brighton 
and Windsor. These are not just manufacturing and design jobs in urban 
centers, but construction and operations jobs at the actual wind farms.
  I visited one of these turbine farms in Peetz, CO, a couple of years 
ago. It was a little scary because we climbed up--I climbed up--to the 
very top of the wind turbine. I thought we were done climbing, but then 
they opened a hatch in the top of this thing and they said: Senator, it 
is time to go out and see what this looks like, which I did, standing 
on the top of this wind turbine housing in the shoes I wear on the 
floor of the Senate. Even though I was hooked up, it was a little 
scary.
  The guy who took me there was telling me he had been able to come 
back to his home community--a rural community in Colorado--and work in 
this high-paying job because the wind industry was there. This was 
something he never would have imagined as a kid, but now he has real 
opportunity, and there are thousands of people just like him all over 
my State who are concerned the political conversation here has 
decoupled once again from their concerns and has become about the 
internal politics of Washington, DC, and not what is actually going on 
in places such as rural Colorado or in rural places all across the 
United States.
  This industry drives economic growth across our State--from the 
conference rooms of tech startups in Boulder and Denver all the way to 
the 6,000-acre Kit Carson wind power generating site just west of the 
Kansas State line.
  The production tax credit has driven $105 billion in private 
investment. This is actually amazing when you think about it, given the 
fact there has been so much uncertainty associated with it--$105 
billion. It has opened up 550 industrial facilities and provided $180 
million in lease payments to rural farmers, to ranchers, and to 
landowners who host wind farms.
  The mention of those rural farmers and ranchers brings me to the 
second provision of the EXPIRE Act that I would like to highlight: the 
tax incentive for conservation easements.
  Private land conservation is critical in States such as Colorado. 
Healthy grasslands, open landscapes, and abundant wildlife are a 
fundamental part of what is to be in the West and in Colorado. In the 
2014 farm bill, we worked really hard to build a strong conservation 
title.
  The easement incentive in the Senate finance bill is an important 
complement to the work in the farm bill. This incentive accounts for 
the true value of conserved land, which allows family farmers, 
ranchers, and moderate-income landowners to preserve land for our kids 
and for our grandkids to enjoy.
  In Colorado, we have landowners lined up to take advantage of this 
very well-designed program. It opens up conservation opportunities to 
people who might be land rich but cash poor--producers who feed this 
country. This is land we have to keep in production. But when you are 
living in a place where the value isn't calculated properly, and there 
is a high value associated with it and you don't have the money to be 
able to put it into easement, this program can help you do that.
  If we do that, we get to hold on to our farms and ranches in our 
States. But here we are again considering a bill that extends these 
benefits for only 3 weeks. If it is good policy for 3 weeks, why isn't 
it good policy for 2 years? If we pass the House bill, we are telling 
the farmers and ranchers across States such as Colorado that we don't 
value long-term conservation, that we don't take it seriously.
  The loss of this tax incentive would mean less land across the West 
would be protected--again, a voluntary program. This isn't telling 
anybody they have to do anything with their farms and ranches; it is an 
option for them if they want to use it. More wildlife habitat will be 
lost, water quality will suffer, and Colorado's scenic beauty, which is 
critical to our way of life and our economy, will be threatened.
  If we pass the House bill, people's jobs across Colorado will be 
placed at risk. And this is all due to Congress's failure to do its 
job. We can do better than that. We should, at this late hour, 
reconsider this and pass the Senate bill--pass the EXPIRE Act. We 
should pass a bipartisan piece of legislation that came out of the 
Finance Committee through regular order 6 months ago. We have had 
plenty of time to consider that. Then we should come back and we should 
do comprehensive tax reform and give our country a Tax Code that is 
actually worthy of the entrepreneurs who are out there working every 
day to invent our future. The last time the Tax Code--this might be of 
interest to the pages here today--the last time the Tax Code was 
updated in this country, I was in college. I was in college. What are 
the chances that today's Tax Code reflects the American economy as it 
actually is, to say nothing of the global economy as it actually is? 
The chances are zero. This is the work we have been sent here to do. It 
is hard, but that is what we are supposed to be doing here.
  I hope in the new year there is going to be a big change around this 
place, and I hope all of us use that change to the advantage of the 
American people by putting ourselves back to work. They are working 
hard. The least we can do is work together to actually align our 
legislation and our regulation to the world as it actually exists 
rather than one that existed 50 or 100 years ago.
  Madam President, I appreciate the chance to speak today on these 
important issues to Colorado.
  With that, 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. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page S6283]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                     Tribute to Major David Wilson

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, this is a bittersweet moment for me, 
because Maj. David Wilson, who has served in my office in an exemplary 
way in the Air Force Fellowship Program, will be leaving my office this 
week. He has been there for the past year. He has been an incredibly 
valuable member of my staff.
  I would like to encourage my colleagues to join me in thanking my 
military fellow for his exemplary service to the Senate and to wish him 
well in his next endeavor at the Pentagon. Maj. David Wilson has 
dedicated his life to serving our Nation. David was commissioned by the 
U.S. Air Force in 2002 as a graduate of the Air Force Reserve Officer 
Training Corps at Texas Tech University.
  David has served in Texas, Montana, and Germany and has been deployed 
to Kuwait, Cuba, and Liberia. He has served the Air Force in a wide 
range of missions, from personnel and readiness to executive officer 
and deployed squadron commander. While on Active Duty, David has earned 
a master's degree in international relations.
  Major Wilson joined my office as part of the Air Force Legislative 
Fellowship Program. I know my colleagues familiar with that program 
know how valuable it is. It is a year-long program that offers those in 
the military an opportunity to learn about the legislative process 
firsthand. But for me he has been an additional valuable member of my 
staff who has advised me on defense issues. He has been very helpful on 
so many issues.
  My staff and I will truly miss Major Wilson. David hit the ground 
running. When he joined the office, he started contributing 
immediately. He is personable, hard-working, and enthusiastic. He has 
been a key member of the staff, providing me with concise, 
straightforward guidance on some of our most sensitive defense-related 
legislative issues. He has advised me on issues ranging from how to 
best address claims backlogs and other problems at the Veterans' 
Administration to military strategies against Islamic State terrorists.
  I know the Presiding Officer joins me in knowing the complications 
and concerns we get from our veterans community, particularly on delays 
in getting claims heard. I thank Major Wilson for helping us to 
understand how we could better serve our veterans in this country.
  David has drafted innovative legislation to improve the recruitment 
of our Guard and Reserve Forces, which I hope to introduce soon. David 
has worked extremely hard to ensure that Maryland veterans have 
adequate and timely access to the services they need.
  I think our Nation's greatest resource is its young people, 
especially those who have joined our All-Volunteer Force to defend our 
country and our way of life. Many times we take the opportunity to 
thank those who wear the uniform of our Nation for defending our 
principles. We think about what is happening around the world and 
recognize that in the United States we can pray to the God we want 
without fear of intimidation. In other parts of the world they would 
cut your head off for that.
  We can express our opposition to government peacefully. We can have 
an election where the outcomes are in the hands of the voters, and we 
celebrate that. In other countries they lock up people for dreaming 
that. Our military makes sure we preserve those freedoms.
  The Air Force should be proud of the extraordinary talent they have 
in Maj. David Wilson. My staff and I still refer to David as ``Major,'' 
but in fact he has been selected to the rank of lieutenant colonel 2 
years below the promotion zone, which is quite an accomplishment. Fewer 
than 1 percent of the officers up for promotion get promoted 2 years 
early. So this is a rare accomplishment. It is not surprising in this 
instance, given David's drive, ambition, and talent.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in congratulating Major Wilson on his 
graduation and thanking him for his service to our country. I also wish 
to take this opportunity to thank David's wife Susan and daughter Ella 
for sharing him with the Senate. We have been enriched by his presence. 
I know of the late hours he has worked and the sacrifices he has made 
to his family.


                      Millennium Development Goals

  Mr. President, I was pleased to be appointed by the President to be 
one of the two Senate representatives to the United Nations for the 
69th United Nations General Assembly Session. Senator Ron Johnson of 
Wisconsin is the other member. The two of us have visited New York 
together. We have talked about how we can best represent the 
legislative branch of government at the U.S. Mission in New York to 
further the objectives the United States has within the United Nations.
  Just recently I visited New York. I had a chance to meet with Helen 
Clark, who is the U.N. Development Program Director, the former Prime 
Minister of New Zealand, a person who is instrumentally involved in 
dealing with the development programs within the United Nations.

  I mention that because we are now at the conclusion of the 2000 
Millennium Development Goals. I want to mention that for a moment 
because our goals were to reduce poverty, increase the stability of 
governments. As the Presiding Officer knows, yes, these are core U.S. 
principles. The Presiding Officer has been very active in Africa, has 
done an incredible job in Africa in pointing out the need for reducing 
poverty and increasing stability.
  These are our core principles. That is why we do it, our humanitarian 
goals--yes, absolutely, our participation. But it is also important for 
our national security goals. Because if we have nations that are 
prosperous, that include their people in the prosperity of their 
nation, have good governance, it is going to be a more stable 
government and it will help us have partners whom we can rely on to 
help us deal with world stability, rather than have to call upon our 
military to restore order.
  This helps us reduce our need for conflicts around the world. So the 
U.N. programs dealing with the Millennium Development Goals were well 
received when they were conceived a decade ago. There are eight 
specific goals. What is interesting about the eight specific goals is 
they had specific, achievable objectives to achieve by 2015.
  It was basically to reduce poverty and disease by next year, cutting 
in half the number of undernourished individuals on this planet to deal 
with child mortality and maternal health. It was interesting that we 
recognized last decade that we could deal with some simple issues, such 
as dealing with infection at birth, dealing with nutrition, dealing 
with how we deal with an infant being able to breathe properly through 
simple devices and that we could significantly reduce infant mortality 
and we could significantly improve maternal health.
  So we set those goals. We set the goals of improving primary 
education because we knew education was an opportunity for children to 
be able to succeed. Gender equity and equality was a huge issue. 
Secretary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, was our leader on 
this issue globally.
  Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. The United States 
took a leadership role in the PEPFAR Program that made a consequential 
difference in dealing with the spread of HIV/AIDS. Environmental 
sustainability was one of our Millennium Development Goals because we 
recognized that to be perhaps the greatest challenge on how we are 
going to deal with the sustainability of our environment with the 
challenges of global climate change.
  We also recognized that we needed global partners for development. 
These are all part of the Millennium Development Goals. We recognized 
these are not just goals of each nation working together within the 
United Nations to achieve, but it also involves private foundations. It 
involves international organizations, NGOs, all working together in 
order to achieve these objectives.
  Guess what. Now that we are reaching that plateau in 2015, we can 
look back and say we accomplished a great deal for this planet, a 15-
percent reduction in extreme poverty since the Millennium Development 
Goals were established. That is an incredible accomplishment. We now 
have safe drinking water in so many parts of the world that did not 
have safe drinking water when these goals were developed.

[[Page S6284]]

  Gender disparity in education has been dramatically reduced. It has 
been estimated that since the Millennium Development Goals were 
established, we have saved--100 million babies have survived who would 
otherwise not survive. That is an incredible accomplishment we have 
been able to achieve since the development of these goals.
  Yes, there is much more that needs to be done. Every year about 6 
million babies die needlessly at birth. We can do much better and save 
more children. The Ebola crisis in West Africa teaches us that we still 
need to deal with basic health services. In so many countries in the 
world the spread of Ebola was because they were not prepared to deal 
with basic health care needs. They could have dramatically reduced the 
spread of the Ebola virus.
  We still have, unfortunately, widespread corruption affecting our 
Millennium Development Goals in countries around the world. Quite 
frankly, we cannot accomplish what we want in a country--that is, get 
their agriculture sustainable, develop the health clinics they need, 
deal with the gender equity--if they have corrupt government.
  So dealing with the issue of good governance is clearly an area we 
need to improve. We are now talking about the post-2015 development 
goals, Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations is working on 
that. Helen Clark, whom I talked to, is working on that. They have some 
working documents in which they are prepared to come together, as they 
did for the original Millennium Development Goals, which offer again 
additional opportunities.
  We need to build on what we have done and make sure we have 
achievable goals. I want to mention a couple of areas that I hope will 
be included in the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals. First, we 
need to deal with the realities of the current threats we have. The 
Ebola crisis points that out.
  It is interesting that Nigeria had a few cases of Ebola, but they 
were able to eradicate it. One of the reasons they were able to 
eradicate it is because they had a health clinic set up from the PEPFAR 
money that was made available through what we did with HIV/AIDS. The 
point is this: Let's use this opportunity, this crisis of Ebola, to 
make sure we have basic health care services in all our countries so we 
do not have another Ebola-type crisis in the future. That should be 
clearly one of our development goals.

  Let's deal with good governance by having anticorruption guidelines. 
In my work as Chair of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, we have workable 
ways we can deal with corruption in countries and how we can fight 
corruption. Our trade negotiators right now are dealing with countries 
that are developing countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and are 
looking at how we can improve good governance in countries through 
trade legislation. We can be the leader in dealing with good governance 
and anticorruption issues. It should be a Millennium Development Goal 
post-2015.
  We need to have specific targets in educating boys and girls on 
health access and food security, climate change, good governance. The 
United States can be a leader. I do want to point out--and the 
Presiding Officer is very much aware of this--we have taken steps, this 
administration and this Congress, to pave the way for the post-2015 
Millennium Development Goals. For example, we have the Feed the Future 
Initiative, where we help small farmers, particularly women, in dealing 
with sustainable agricultural products.
  We do not just give food to the poor, we are looking at changing the 
economics within the country so they can have sustainable agriculture. 
The Global Development Lab that Administrator Shaw has proposed, again 
the Presiding Officer is one of the leaders on that. But here what we 
are doing is we are taking the USAID development assistance dollars and 
we are leveraging it with work already being done by our academic 
centers in America that are active internationally.
  I am proud of the work Johns Hopkins does globally. I am sure many 
Members of the Senate know of the great work done by their academic 
centers with private companies. Why private companies? Because they get 
markets. They are interested in working with us to help sustainable 
economic progress in other countries, which helps us and allows our 
development assistance to be leveraged and to go further.
  We need to be a leader in the post-2015 goals for millennium 
development within the United Nations.
  I wish to underscore this last point. We need to do this because that 
is who we are--our values. Our values are humanitarian. We believe we 
have a responsibility to help, and that includes globally. But we do it 
because our national security also depends upon it.
  We really understand that our national security is more than our 
soldiers and our weapons. It is very important to those who serve in 
our military. But our diplomacy, development assistance, and having 
stable governments globally help us become a more stable society and 
help us with our own national security.
  I urge my colleagues to be involved with us. I look forward to 
working with Senator Johnson at the United Nations as we pursue many 
different missions. I hope one that we will pursue is the continuation 
of Millennium Development Goals post-2015 to continue to make progress 
in reducing world poverty and hunger.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time in quorum calls 
be equally divided between the Democrats and the Republicans.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. 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. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                    Release of Guantanamo Detainees

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today, along with my colleague 
from New Hampshire, to discuss an issue that has been spoken about on 
this floor over the last several years many times, but it continues to 
be a problem. The Senator from New Hampshire has been very focused, as 
have I, on this issue, which is the release of detainees from 
Guantanamo and the fact that we know that not only are there dangerous 
individuals there who should not be released, but we also know these 
individuals are returning to the fight, and they are scheming and 
planning and intending to do harm to America and Americans. So we wish 
to visit this issue again.
  I wish to start off by saying that it is well-founded in our Nation's 
history that the United States has the authority to hold enemy 
combatants until the end of hostilities in order to prevent their 
return to the battlefield. For the past several years, each National 
Defense Authorization Act that has been signed into law by the 
President has recognized this principle and made clear that any Al 
Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, whether foreign or American, who takes up 
arms against the United States can be held under the law of war.
  Because Congress authorized the use of military force against these 
terrorists shortly after they attacked us on September 11, 2001, 
detention within a military framework is often the best means of 
collecting valuable intelligence to prevent further terrorist attacks, 
while ensuring they remain on the sidelines for the duration of the 
conflict.
  There are fundamental failures of the administration in the war 
against terrorism.
  First, when the President announced the closing of the detention 
facility at Guantanamo in January of 2009, he left our Nation without a 
clear policy for detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists. 
Without such a policy, including one that identifies a facility for 
holding terrorists who are captured outside of Afghanistan, the 
intelligence community's ability to conduct ongoing intelligence 
operations has been severely limited.
  Second and even more alarming is the ill-advised release of these 
Gitmo detainees back to the battlefields from which they came. I would 
suggest to

[[Page S6285]]

the Senator from New Hampshire that we are doing material harm to our 
national security efforts by purging the Guantanamo facility, 
particularly without a long-term plan for guaranteed monitoring, and I 
know she is going to address this issue. In fact, those who remain at 
Guantanamo Bay today are not low-level fighters who were in the wrong 
place at the wrong time; they are some of the most hardened, determined 
extremists we have encountered and remain singularly focused on 
bringing violence to the United States and our allies.
  Shockingly, many of the detainees who are being transferred were 
determined to be too dangerous to transfer by the administration's own 
Guantanamo Review Task Force. Yet many of them are still being 
transferred. I have been to Guantanamo on several different occasions, 
the most recent time being about 3 months ago. I can attest once again 
that these truly are the most hardened and the most dangerous 
terrorists who exist today, particularly who are, obviously, in 
captivity. As we see these individuals on the screen, in their cells, 
we can see in their eyes that criminal activity is occupying 100 
percent of their thoughts and that they truly are determined that they 
are going to, one of these days, get out of that facility and return to 
the battlefield.
  There was one particular anecdote where the leadership at the 
facility and I were engaging in a conversation, and it was close to the 
cell of one of the individuals. All of a sudden we realized that 
individual was telling other cell mates that he was trying to hear what 
was going on in our conversation. It has gotten that sophisticated on 
their part when it comes to trying to figure out ways to communicate 
with the outside the ideas they have about killing and harming 
Americans and planning and scheming to one day, as I said earlier, 
leave that place and reengage in the fight.
  Instead of working with Congress to develop commonsense policies to 
enable our national security personnel to detain and interrogate 
terrorists, this administration is releasing them back with little 
thought to their future actions. In this haphazard fashion, there is no 
uniform procedure for the continued monitoring of these individuals--
individuals, I might add, who have already demonstrated a propensity 
for violence. Each country accepts them on their own terms with varying 
commitments and cooperation, making further monitoring by the 
intelligence community and our partners nearly impossible.
  This is neither a safe nor a sustainable way of ensuring the national 
security of the United States, yet it has become an all too common 
practice in this administration. We know for a fact that a number of 
these former detainees are returning to the battlefield with renewed 
zeal to wage war against our American way of life.
  According to the Director of National Intelligence, an additional 
four former Guantanamo detainees were confirmed to have rejoined the 
fight between July of 2013 and January of 2014, raising the combined 
suspected and confirmed recidivism rate to 29 percent. In addition, 
although the next report has not been released, we know this number 
will increase.
  We constantly face new plots and operatives looking for ways to 
murder Americans, such as the foiled May 2012 AQAP plot that put 
another IED on a United States-bound aircraft. Thankfully, this plot 
and others did not materialize. But we are not going to always be that 
fortunate, especially in the absence of meaningful interrogation of 
terrorists and their imminent return to the battlefield.
  We know that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, today 
represents one of the biggest threats to the United States homeland, as 
well as personnel serving overseas. They are continually plotting 
against our interests and seeking new recruits, especially among our 
own citizens as well as former Guantanamo detainees.
  Explosives experts, such as Ibrahim al-Asiri, continue to roam free, 
posing a tremendous threat to the safety and security of U.S. citizens. 
It is Mr. al-Asiri who is the bomb-making expert who has attempted to 
devise bombs that cannot be detected by the equipment in airports, so 
that they can hopefully place a bomb either inside an individual or on 
an individual who can secure a seat on an airplane without that bomb 
being detected as they go through the various checkpoints at airports 
around the world.
  Additionally, as the Senator from New Hampshire again will allude to, 
this proposed closure of Guantanamo Bay presents significant risks for 
the United States as well as Yemeni efforts to counter AQAP inside of 
Yemen.
  A substantial portion of the detainees remaining in Guantanamo Bay 
are, in fact, Yemeni citizens. Transferring these individuals to a 
country plagued by prison breaks, assassinations, and open warfare at 
this point could prove catastrophic. These detainees would likely 
rejoin several other former Gitmo detainees who have returned to the 
fight in Yemen, further destabilizing the country, and worsening an 
already tenuous security situation.
  The most recent example of a totally failed and dangerous policy on 
the part of this administration is the exchange of the Taliban Five 
back in May. That decision, to release five individuals who now wake up 
every morning thinking of ways to kill and harm Americans, was wrong. 
This administration clearly and callously failed in its obligations of 
notifying Congress. It appears they did not comply with this 
requirement because they knew there would be objections to the release 
of those five individuals from both sides of the aisle here in the 
Senate, as well as across the Capitol on the House side. This 
administration clearly decided they wanted to intentionally release 
these individuals in spite of the fact that we had included language in 
the previous Defense authorization bills requiring specific 
notification to Congress in advance of them doing so.
  In addition to simply violating that notification requirement, the 
administration violated the Antideficiency Act by obligating funds that 
were not legally available. While the President has a habit of ignoring 
laws relating to domestic policies such as health care and immigration, 
this overreach will likely directly threaten the lives of our citizens 
and servicemembers in Afghanistan.
  In the wake of the President's bold defiance of congressional 
oversight, I wrote the White House requesting the declassification of 
the 2009 Guantanamo Bay review task force assessments for the Taliban 
Five. I also requested, on the floor of the Senate, that the 
administration release these files so the American people can know what 
I know, and what the Presiding Officer knows, and decide for themselves 
if that was the right decision.
  Today I renew that request and I call on this administration to 
fulfill its failed promises of transparency and show to the American 
people the very real stakes they are gambling with in their attempts to 
empty Guantanamo.
  Nevertheless, this dangerous trend continues unabated, even amidst 
bipartisan calls for greater oversight after the Taliban Five release.
  In November alone, seven detainees were transferred, three to the 
country of Georgia, two to Slovakia, one to Saudi Arabia, and another 
to Kuwait. Some of these countries have previously had detainees sent 
to them. We have mixed reaction as to the reengagement or the oversight 
that is provided in those countries. Some of those countries have never 
had a detainee they have taken possession of. We have no idea what kind 
of supervision they are going to exercise over these individuals.
  Whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, or in other parts of the Middle 
East, Americans have fought and died in the war against Al Qaeda. Our 
Nation may be weary of war, but threatening elements still remain. 
Those five individuals, the Taliban Five to whom I alluded, are clearly 
threats to the United States. I urge President Obama as well as my 
congressional colleagues and the American people not to abandon the 
gains we have made in this fight against terrorism since 9/11. We must 
remain steadfast in our resolve to defeat extremists who oppose 
freedom, democracy, and our American way of life.
  I look forward in my remaining days here in the Senate to working 
with colleagues such as my friend from New Hampshire and other Members 
of this body as we continue to face this growing threat.
  With that, I yield the floor.

[[Page S6286]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Ms. AYOTTE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. AYOTTE. I thank my colleague from Georgia, Senator Chambliss, for 
his incredible leadership on the Intelligence Committee, on the Armed 
Services Committee, and his deep commitment to ensuring that our 
country remains safe, that our freedoms are protected. I daresay from 
the time I have been in the Senate, Senator Chambliss is one of the 
most knowledgeable people in this body about the threats we face, how 
we address those threats, and how we ensure that America remains safe. 
I thank Senator Chambliss for his incredible leadership in this body, 
not only on the issue of how do we address ensuring that the detainees 
who are held--who are very dangerous--at Guantanamo Bay do not present 
additional threats to our country and to our allies, but on so many 
issues, ensuring that our intelligence officials have strong 
information and oversight to ensure that America remains protected.
  I rise in support of what my colleague from Georgia has just talked 
about. If we look at what is happening around the world, the recent 
developments with ISIS, combined with the continuing threats we face 
here at home from Al Qaeda and its affiliates, it underscores the 
continuing need we have for a military detention facility that is 
outside the United States of America, that prevents enemy combatants 
who are at war with us from returning to the battle, and allows us a 
secure location to gather intelligence, to ensure that when we capture 
a member of Al Qaeda, or when we capture one of its affiliates that is 
in a position where the organization is threatening the United States 
of America that we take the opportunity to ensure there is a full and 
complete interrogation of those terrorists to make sure we know 
everything they know, to ensure we can prevent future attacks, and that 
the United States of America is protected.
  So I would argue, as we look at what is happening around the world, 
the need for this detention facility actually has become more apparent. 
Yet what we have seen with the administration, as Senator Chambliss has 
so eloquently outlined, is there has been a push--there was a political 
promise made in the President's campaign to close Guantanamo Bay. 
Despite having a policy as to how we are going to handle the capture of 
these enemy combatants, one that he worked with Congress on, and how we 
will ensure the full interrogation of those combatants to ensure 
information we need to protect our country, we have seen a rush to 
release people from Guantanamo Bay that has been accelerated recently, 
as my colleague from Georgia talked about, where the Department of 
Defense has announced the transfer of seven detainees fairly recently.
  Some of those detainees were reportedly assessed to be high risk. 
There are also questions about what are the conditions the countries 
that are taking these detainees are going to ensure so they do not 
return to the fight, where we have direct evidence of a 29-percent 
reentry rate with those who have been released from Guantanamo Bay, not 
just under this administration but under prior administrations, who are 
confirmed or suspected of having reengaged in terrorism.
  There is nothing that must appall our troops more than to be on the 
battlefield, or our intelligence officials or our allies, to 
reencounter a terrorist we had safely detained at a detention facility, 
at Guantanamo Bay, and to see that person again and to know they 
continue to be a threat to the United States of America and to our 
interests.
  I would urge, I hope, my colleagues, now more than ever, that it is 
important we have that detention facility there that is safe, secure, 
and we can ensure that those who are captured, who want to do us harm, 
members of Al Qaeda terrorist groups--that we can ensure they cannot 
get back in this battle against us.
  I specifically want to talk about the country of Yemen, because as a 
member of the Armed Services Committee--and Senator Chambliss supported 
this effort--we passed an amendment in the Senate Armed Services 
Committee that would have prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo Bay 
detainees to the country of Yemen until December 31 of 2015. That 
provision was removed during the conference committee. I am being told 
we will not have a chance to debate that issue on the Senate floor or 
to amend the Defense authorization as it comes to the floor because--
this is something that I cannot understand, why this provision was 
removed and why the administration would want the ability to transfer 
Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen.
  Let's talk about what is happening in Yemen. Last May, President 
Obama, in my view unwisely, lifted the moratorium on detainee transfers 
to Yemen. Since that decision was made, between the date of the 
President's and the administration's order that we could potentially 
release detainees to Yemen--let me outline what has happened in Yemen 
since then.
  That country has continued to be a place where there is instability, 
lack of government control, and, in fact, between November 24 and 
December 2 of 2014, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula reportedly 
claimed responsibility for 17 attacks in 8 Yemeni provinces.
  I have a laundry list of very dangerous attacks that have occurred in 
Yemen. One of the most troubling things that has occurred--as we think 
about those who are present at Guantanamo who are very dangerous 
individuals, a number of them are Yemeni. If they were to be 
transferred back to the country of Yemen--for example, in February of 
2014, militants attacked Yemen's main prison, killing 7 and enabling 29 
inmates to escape, including 19 members who were convicted members of 
Al Qaeda.

  So I don't know why the administration would seek to transfer 
Guantanamo detainees to this country, where there have been prison 
breaks and where there have been multiple incidences of violent attacks 
by Al Qaeda. Yet this provision got dropped from the Defense 
authorization even though it had the support of the Senate committee. I 
am very troubled by that.
  I am very troubled we will not have an opportunity to debate that on 
the floor. I would hope the administration would look very closely at 
the record of what has occurred in Yemen since the President has made 
the decision to end the moratorium on transfers to Yemen because it is 
an incredible list of dangerous activities and prison breaks by members 
of Al Qaeda.
  So there is no way if we transfer someone from Gitmo to Yemen there, 
we can guarantee that those individuals will not get back in the fight, 
that they will not escape from any prison we put them in because that 
country cannot secure their security.
  I want to talk about a very important issue as we look at this issue 
of the administration's rush to close Guantanamo; that is, the issue of 
ISIS.
  There have been reports that a certain number of former Guantanamo 
detainees may be fighting with ISIS. We all saw--with horror--the acts 
of ISIS, how brutal they are, and the brutality that they have taken 
out on Americans, including one of my constituents. We all know ISIS is 
a group the President himself has said we need to defeat.
  I have written the President and asked him about these reports. In 
fact, I wrote a letter to President Obama and requested that all 
international transfers be suspended until we could know more about 
potential Guantanamo detainees whom we released who may be getting in 
the fight in support of ISIS. It was recently reported that one former 
Guantanamo detainee has pledged his allegiance to the leader of ISIS 
and is recruiting fighters for ISIS in northern Pakistan.
  If that is true we need to revisit not only ensuring that we aren't 
transferring dangerous detainees from Guantanamo to countries such as 
Yemen--and allowing them to be in a position to get back in the fight--
but that we are also ensuring that we have a moratorium on transfers 
until we understand how many of these detainees may actually be joining 
ISIS and present a threat to us.
  This issue--as we look at the national security challenges we face 
now--we have to reevaluate. I would hope the President would reevaluate 
the campaign promise he made in light of the national security threats 
we face. Now is not the time to be closing

[[Page S6287]]

the facility of Guantanamo when we are presented with so many threats 
around the world--not only from Al Qaeda but from ISIS--and we need a 
secure facility to ensure that those who are there now, who are 
tremendously dangerous individuals, don't get back in the fight to 
continue to harm us and our allies. Also, we need to ensure that if 
future enemy combatants are captured who are members of Al Qaeda or its 
affiliates, that they have a secure place where they can be held and 
fully interrogated.
  I again thank my colleague from Georgia for his leadership on this 
issue and on so many national security issues.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.


                   Prevention and Public Health Fund

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to be joined with my 
distinguished friend and extraordinary colleague Senator Harkin of Iowa 
to support continued funding of the Prevention and Public Health Fund.
  He has been a leader in this area, so I am particularly privileged to 
stand with him on behalf of a fund that is absolutely necessary to 
address prevention of serious and chronic diseases. It is fiscally and 
morally and absolutely essential that we approach health care in this 
way.
  I am going to ask for permission to continue to speak. I am not sure 
what the allotted time is. If there is no objection, I ask unanimous 
consent for the time through 5 o'clock for myself, Senator Harkin, and 
others who may join us in this colloquy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Our Nation currently spends 75 cents of every $1 on 
health care for the treatment of preventable conditions.
  These diseases can be stopped and prevented in people through simple, 
commonsense measures. Yet a meager 3 cents of every $1 goes toward 
those treatments, therapies, and practices that can help prevent the 
diseases that are so wasteful to our economy, to individuals, and their 
livelihoods.
  Our young people are on track to be the first generation of Americans 
to live a shorter, unhealthier life than their parents. The 
responsibility to change the course of this history is in our hands.
  One step this body--led by Senator Harkin--has taken is to establish 
the Prevention and Public Health Fund. It is the only dedicated Federal 
fund for the prevention and improvement of our Nation's public health. 
Prevention is the most effective way to improve the health of Americans 
while reducing health care costs in the United States. This funding 
supports efforts to reduce our Nation's rate of infant death, cancer, 
diabetes, heart disease, and tobacco use. They are the killers and they 
kill unnecessarily and avoidably.
  Sadly, many Connecticut residents suffer from those very same chronic 
diseases I mentioned. Thirty percent of Connecticut residents have high 
blood pressure, 9 percent have diabetes, 21,000 residents of 
Connecticut are diagnosed with cancer annually, and 16 percent still 
use tobacco.
  The Prevention and Public Health Fund invests in a broad range of 
evidence-based activities--not speculative, not abstract, conceptual, 
theoretical--including community and clinical prevention initiatives 
that can help stop all Americans from developing debilitating and 
chronic disease in the future.
  So far grants from this fund were awarded to support four Connecticut 
projects, including mental health and addiction, diabetes management in 
older and disabled adults, and the establishment of an electronic birth 
registration system to improve the ability to track the health and 
well-being of infants. It sounds pretty rudimentary--and it is--using 
technology to track the health and well-being of infants.
  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a hard-hitting 
anti-tobacco media campaign--funded from this fund--focused on the 
destructive health effects of smoking. It is not only effective, but it 
is supported by the efforts that we have advocated on prevention in 
health management.
  Over the next 3 years this campaign is expected to save the country 
$170 million in nonincurred health costs and lowered productivity that 
results from smoking. The CDC has estimated that this campaign will 
assist 50,000 tobacco users to quit smoking.
  I know from my own work in suing the tobacco companies and 
establishing the fund to support exactly these kinds of efforts, that 
millions of Americans across the United States want to quit. They have 
tried repeatedly. Ninety-nine percent of all smokers want to quit and 
also try to quit, but quitting is hard because nicotine is one of the 
most powerfully addictive drugs known to man and cigarettes are a 
powerfully effective nicotine delivery tool.
  These 50,000 tobacco users who quit smoking are better off, not only 
in their health but their pocketbooks. They save countless dollars that 
they would otherwise squander on unhealthy tobacco products. They are 
healthier, their families are happier, and they save themselves from a 
lifetime of addiction and disease. The preventive efforts of the CDC as 
a result of this fund are preventive in stopping young people from 
beginning to smoke as well.
  It is monumental, it is historic, and it is a fund that should be 
fully supported by Congress. The fund accorded the CDC the ability to 
run another tobacco education campaign called ``Tips from Former 
Smokers.''
  According to a recent study, this campaign led 1.64 million Americans 
to attempt to quit smoking. Those who have completely quit smoking as a 
result of the campaign added half a million quality-adjusted life years 
to the population of the United States.
  I know these numbers sound abstract and obtuse. They are real lives, 
and they have been saved from the evils of tobacco addiction and 
smoking, which in turn could cause cancer, heart disease, and all kinds 
of preventive diseases.
  This funding is essential to running the local departments of health 
in many areas of our Nation. Workers at those departments of public 
health are in the forefront of preventing infectious diseases, an issue 
that most recently came into focus as part of the domestic Ebola 
response.
  Without adequate funding for these departments, the people most 
closely tasked and most immediately responsible for providing services 
and information to people in the time of a crisis may be unable to 
respond when communities are most in need.
  We must change the focus of our health care from sickness and disease 
to wellness and prevention.
  We grew up, many of us, with our mothers telling us that an ounce of 
prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is not only an adage that is 
commonly repeated, it is commonly proved in everyday life.
  I strongly encourage my fellow Members to support the Prevention and 
Public Health Fund to help ensure the future well-being of our fellow 
citizens.
  I yield to my colleague Senator Harkin, one of the leaders in this 
effort.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I thank my friend and colleague from Connecticut for his very 
excellent, profound statement and for taking a leadership position on 
this very crucial issue.
  It is obviously well known I am retiring in 3 weeks. The Prevention 
and Public Health Fund of which the Senator spoke so eloquently just 
now is going to continue, and it is going to need people such as the 
Senator from the State of Connecticut to take that kind of leadership 
position.
  I believe people are catching on to it around the country, but there 
are still those who say: People get high blood pressure, they get 
borderline diabetes, they have high cholesterol. These things just sort 
of happen--sort of like they are preordained.
  Chronic diseases are not preordained. As the Senator said, 75 percent 
of the money we spent was accountable for preventable chronic diseases 
and conditions. As the Senator so rightly said, what we need to focus 
on is keeping people healthy, not paying for it later on when they are 
in the hospital. That is something that this Prevention and Public 
Health Fund is making strides on.
  People have perhaps a mistaken idea that health care only occurs in 
the doctor's office or in the exchange between doctor and patient or 
health care provider and patient. But we know that

[[Page S6288]]

 it takes place in all aspects of life--in the workplace, in the 
communities in which we live, in our schools, in our homes. It has to 
be something that is sort of pervasive in our society.

  I say to my friend from Connecticut that I have often said in America 
it is easy to be unhealthy and hard to be healthy. It seems to me that 
ought to be turned around. It ought to be easy to be healthy and harder 
to be unhealthy. That means the simple things in life, such as kids 
walking to school. If they have a school in their neighborhood, they 
should be able to walk to school and back. I often talk about when my 
kids went to school here in Virginia when we moved here from Iowa many 
years ago. We had a high school 1 mile from our house, but the kids 
couldn't walk to school. Why? There was no sidewalk. It was a busy 
street, but there was no sidewalk. Simple things like that.
  Things such as the Senator mentioned, making sure people get their 
checkups every year. The prevention fund does that. It makes sure of 
that. The money we put in the Affordable Care Act provides for annual 
checkups and vaccinations for people with no copays and no deductibles. 
I am told that now over 100 million people have taken advantage of that 
in this country--no copays, no deductibles. They can go in for a free 
check and get their cholesterol checked, a blood pressure screening, 
and all that done on an annual basis.
  We also have to be cognizant that our kids need to have better 
physical opportunities at school and better food at school. With the 
Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 we started to change the way we 
provide foods for our kids--healthy foods, free and fresh fruits and 
vegetables in schools all over America. These are the things that make 
it easier to be healthy--easier to be healthy.
  There are the quitlines the Senator spoke about, which have been 
enormously successful, and the ``Tips from Former Smokers.'' We have 
the data on that from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
So we know they are working.
  So again, I wish to thank the Senator for his focus on this and wish 
him well in the future in being sort of the champion on this because 
there are a lot of pulls around this place. I think everyone here would 
say: Yes, I am for health care; I am for keeping people healthy. We all 
get that. But there are so many pulls around here on how to appropriate 
money and what we do that sometimes this gets lost in the shuffle. So I 
am encouraged and pleased the distinguished Senator from Connecticut 
will be focused on this Prevention and Public Health Fund. It is making 
changes all over this country in profound ways--in profound ways--and 
in our communities.
  Our communities are now getting together. I say to the Presiding 
Officer, the communities in Maine are now getting together and thinking 
about what they can do as a community to provide for more healthy 
activities and encouragement for people in their communities, and they 
are getting grants from the Prevention and Public Health Fund to do 
just that. Communities all over America are beginning to think about 
this and taking action.
  It is simple things sometimes. A small community in Iowa--a very 
small town--had a retirement home for the elderly, but they didn't have 
anyplace for the elderly to exercise. So they built a walking path. 
They put park benches along the way and a couple of little shelters so 
they could come right out the door and walk. I don't know how far it 
is--maybe a mile or two. So it is just simple things like that. Before 
they had no place to go at all to get that kind of exercise.
  So again, this Prevention and Public Health Fund, I hope, will remain 
a priority, and I hope the Senator from Connecticut will continue his 
great leadership in this area. I thank him for that and for his 
excellent statement. If on the outside I can ever be of help in any 
way, let me know. But I know it is in good hands with the Senator from 
Connecticut.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I want, again, to thank my great friend, Senator 
Harkin, for the legacy of public health advocacy that he will leave for 
all of us. I pledge to him that I will carry on, among many others, I 
am sure, that legacy and advocacy.
  The Senator mentioned that it is easy to be unhealthy and harder to 
be healthy. Part of the reason is lack of awareness and education, and 
perhaps, in some instances, even a lack of income and wherewithal. Just 
let me pose the question to him of whether that impression is true.
  Mr. HARKIN. If my friend will yield, I think that is absolutely true. 
First of all, it is true that a lot of times low-income people don't 
have access to a more healthy environment. The food deserts we call 
them in our inner cities, where they do not get the fresh fruits and 
vegetables and items like that. That has to be addressed also, making 
it easier for them to be healthy. Again, it is an awareness.
  I would say to my friend one other thing, and I hope my friend will 
take a look at what is now undergoing a trial period. It is something 
that was put in the last farm bill as a trial period for food stamp 
recipients--people who are on what they call food stamps, which are not 
food stamps anymore, as the Senator knows--to provide incentives for 
low-income people, people who use food stamps, to purchase more fruits 
and vegetables rather than just starches, fats, and sugars. That 
project is ongoing now. So I would say to the Senator that perhaps next 
year he might want to take a look at that with the Secretary of 
Agriculture and see how that project is doing.
  Again, this is just a trial, an experiment, to see what we can do to 
incentivize people who are on food stamps to use them more for more 
healthy foods. But it is that lack of awareness. The Senator is 
absolutely correct.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. My impression also is--and perhaps the Senator has 
some views on this--that, in a way, we have a responsibility in this 
body to create that awareness and to spend the money on what should be 
regarded as an investment. It is spending, and it involves funding. But 
really the way to look at it is as an investment in education, in the 
clinics and the doctors and the services that can make Americans 
healthier and save us dollars over the long term--not only in the money 
spent on truly preventable diseases but also avoiding the suffering and 
the pain that is involved in many of those diseases, whether it is 
cancer or heart disease or diabetes, which are connected to so many 
preventable conditions.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank my friend. I remember Dr. Andrew Weil, who is 
very well known in this country and a good friend of mine, once made 
the statement sometime ago in a hearing that the default state of the 
human body is to be healthy. The body wants to be healthy. After all 
these millennia of changes, the body wants to be healthy. The problem 
is we put all these obstacles in the way.
  I think that is true of people. People want to be healthy. They may 
not know that some of their lifestyle choices, some of what they do is 
provoking their illnesses. So I think it is our job to make people more 
aware of that and to help to provide some assistance, to provide some 
incentives for them to have a more healthy lifestyle.
  I say to my friend from Connecticut, people will be here, I hope, for 
the next highway bill. We haven't been able to get one for a long time. 
I was here for the last one. I had an amendment I thought was going to 
pass. It was simply this: Any time Federal funds are involved in 
communities for streets or roads or highways or bridges or whatever, 
there must be incorporated in the plan provisions for walkways or bike 
paths along the side. I didn't say they had to build them. I just said 
they had to be put in the plans.
  They are doing that in Europe, by the way. Every road, every street 
built has a walkway or a bike path--both for walking or biking.
  Someone here objected to it, and we didn't get it. But I still think 
that would be something, again, to make people more aware. If they are 
incorporated in the plans, they might see it doesn't cost that much 
more to add it on to a road or bridge or whatever--the streets we are 
building in this country. Again, it makes it easier for people to be 
healthy--just a little thing like that. So I hope the Senator would 
take a look at that the next time the highway bill comes up.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I certainly will pledge to do so and 
will

[[Page S6289]]

think of the Senator from Iowa when we do, hopefully, consider the next 
such highway bill. But let me just say, in conclusion, for myself, I 
was not going to mention the ``R'' word--the retirement word--because 
it seems almost impossible to imagine this body without the Senator 
from Iowa not only because of his advocacy of the Prevention and Public 
Health Fund but also his constant reminding us and his unceasing 
advocacy for better public health, for championing the interests of 
ordinary working men and women. So I thank him for that legacy to me 
and for so many others.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator for his kindness.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                  International Disability Rights Day

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I see my friend from Tennessee here on the 
floor, but I want to take a few minutes on another subject.
  Today, December 3, is International Disability Rights Day--
International Disability Rights Day. It is observed around the globe as 
a day to think about, consider, and support more fully inclusion of 
people with disabilities in all aspects of our societies, to provide 
the support and the accommodations for people with disabilities to get 
a good education, to get employment, and to be able to enjoy all 
aspects of life with their families and their friends in all societies 
around the world.
  This date commemorates this fight for equality and opportunity and 
access for people with disabilities all around the globe. In 150 
countries and the European Union, they have ratified the United Nations 
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a day to 
celebrate a future of increased opportunities and inclusion for people 
with disabilities.
  I am proud of the fact that we in America have been the leader in the 
world on disability rights and inclusion. Beginning with IDEA--the 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act--and followed up by the 
Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the 
Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008, we helped set 
the framework for equal opportunity and full participation for 
individuals with disabilities. Most of the world now shares those 
principles, and they have shown their support by signing onto this 
treaty--this convention. But there is a difference between signing on 
to principles and implementing them.

  By ratifying the CRPD, as it is known--the Convention on the Rights 
of Persons with Disabilities--we can play an important role in helping 
other countries actually implement that treaty, that convention, those 
principles.
  Under our system of government, the President of the United States 
has already signed for the United States on this treaty, but under our 
system of government, under our Constitution, that must be ratified by 
a vote in the Senate, a vote requiring two-thirds of those present and 
voting--not two-thirds of the Senate, two-thirds of those present and 
voting. That is what it says in the Constitution.
  As we all know, 2 years ago this month we brought this treaty up for 
a vote in the Senate, and it failed by six votes. I think at that time 
there was a lot of misinformation about it. But under our system, it 
had to go back to the White House, it having died that Congress. It 
came back this Congress under the great leadership of Senator Menendez. 
We had further hearings on it. The bill was reported out of the Foreign 
Relations Committee this summer. Yet we cannot bring it to the floor 
because of some objections by a few on the Republican side--not every 
Republican, just a few.
  I always want to point out that we had courageous Republicans 
supporting this. Ever since the adoption of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act, Senator McCain has been a stalwart supporter of the 
rights of people with disabilities. Senator Barrasso from Wyoming, 
Senator Kirk from Illinois, Senator Ayotte from New Hampshire, Senator 
Murkowski of Alaska, and Senator Collins from Maine have all been 
supporters. That is as it should be. Disability policy has never been a 
partisan issue. In this body, in the 30 years I have served here, it 
has never been a partisan issue.
  I am sorry the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 
seems to be caught up in some kind of partisanship, and that shouldn't 
be. I was hoping we might bring it up for another vote before we left. 
I asked consent to do so, and it was objected to by the junior Senator 
from Utah at that time. So this Congress will adjourn once again 
without ratifying this convention.
  Last evening I was privileged to share an honor by the U.S. 
International Council on Disabilities with Professor Patrick Quinn, a 
citizen of Ireland, who was very instrumental in drafting the 
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the United 
Nations. He pointed out that much of what they did was based on the 
Americans with Disabilities Act and that it would send a bad signal 
around the world if we aren't going to join with the community of 
nations in helping them implement the principles. As I said, we can 
sign on to the principles, but implementing them is quite another 
story. That is where we can be very helpful.
  Some people say that we can do that on our own, that we don't need to 
be a part of this treaty. But we don't have the wherewithal to go to 
every country and do that. We don't have that many personnel. We have 
budget constraints too. But if we join with other nations--and there 
are other nations that are very good at implementing disability policy, 
both in the European Union--and I might mention that great nation of 
Ireland. They have been very good at implementing disability policies. 
We could work with other countries, and when we go to other countries 
to help them implement these principles so that people with 
disabilities can have a fair place in their societies, an equal place 
in their societies, it is better if we speak a common language--not the 
United States going in and telling them ``Here is what you should do'' 
but go into a country with other nations and say ``Here is what we do. 
Here is what we do together. Here is what we can do to help you 
implement the principles on which you signed the treaty.'' It is a 
shame we can't ratify it.
  Again I point out, as I have many times, that it has broad support in 
our society. Think about this. We have a measure coming before the 
Senate--that doesn't go before the House, just the Senate. We have a 
measure that is supported by the following: The U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce--Tom Donahue has been a stalwart supporter of this from the 
very beginning. We have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Business 
Roundtable, led by a former Republican Governor of Michigan, John 
Engler, came out in strong support of this. The veterans groups all 
support this. We have all of the faith-based groups. In fact, on 
November 10 of this year, we received a letter from the National 
Association of Evangelicals supporting this treaty. The high-tech 
industries. All of the disability groups without exception support 
this.
  I must also mention that one of the strong supporters who has poured 
his heart into trying to get this adopted is our former majority leader 
of the Senate, Bob Dole. I would also point out that every former 
Republican leader of the Senate supports this treaty--Bob Dole, Trent 
Lott, and Bill Frist. Every former President of the United States, from 
Jimmy Carter, to George H.W. Bush, to President Clinton, President 
George W. Bush, and President Obama--all support this. So we would 
think this would be a slam dunk, but there are a few who have blocked 
this from coming up. Over 800 disability, civil rights, and faith 
groups, 20 top veterans organizations, and I mentioned the Chamber of 
Commerce and the Business Roundtable--all support this.
  It is sad that on this International Disability Rights Day, I am sad 
to say, it looks as though the clock is running out and we will not 
even vote again on it this year, let alone adopt it.
  Next year I will not be here. I am retiring next year. My friends on 
the Republican side will take over the Senate. I hope they will pick up 
on this and take this treaty--move it through their committee and bring 
it out on the floor. It should not be a partisan issue. If there are 
some things that need to be done with the reservations, understandings, 
and declarations, fine. There were some changes made this last time to 
accommodate the concerns

[[Page S6290]]

of people who were concerned about homeschooling. There is a whole new 
thing that was put in there on homeschooling.
  I am hopeful we will continue our efforts to pass this and to become 
a part of this international effort.
  People wonder: The United States--we are so good on disability 
policy, we can help people with disabilities all around the globe. I 
can't say how many times I have had people who have talked to me in the 
past, young people who are students in universities who got some kind 
of a grant to go overseas to study but can't do it because of 
accessibility issues in other countries. They just can't get around. 
They can't find adequate housing. So it is still part of discrimination 
globally, and, again, we should be a part of it.
  So I take the floor on this International Disability Rights Day to 
ask that this Senate in the future take up the Convention on the Rights 
of Persons with Disabilities, ratify it, and let's become a part of the 
international effort to work with every other country in the world to 
implement the kinds of policies we have in this country that provide 
equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic 
self-sufficiency to people with disabilities--the four great goals of 
the Americans with Disabilities Act. We can do this, we should do it, 
and we should do it with our friends around the globe.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, before I begin my remarks, I wish to 
acknowledge once again my gratitude for Senator Harkin and his 
leadership for these past 2 years that I have had the privilege of 
working with him as ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions Committee and to acknowledge once again that there has been no 
one in this body on either side of the aisle who has been a greater 
champion for Americans with disabilities.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, will the Senator from Tennessee yield?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator for those kind remarks. Let me say 
again what a pleasure it has been to work with the Senator from 
Tennessee for the last few years. In the last couple of years, we 
brought a lot of meaningful legislation through our committee, signed 
by the President. In fact, as my friend from Tennessee pointed out, we 
had 21 bills through our committee signed by the President--the most 
productive committee I think in the entire Congress; I know in the 
Senate.
  So as I retire, the Senator from Tennessee, I hope, will be taking 
over the HELP Committee, and it will be in good hands. The Senator is a 
person of good will and good heart and good mind. After all, he has all 
the background needed--former president of the University of Tennessee, 
former Secretary of Education, former Governor, and, of course, U.S. 
Senator. So the HELP Committee will be in good hands with the Senator 
from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Iowa.


                Inland Waterways Trust Fund Fee Increase

  Mr. President, the House of Representatives is expected to pass 
tonight legislation that should be very good news to Americans who care 
about their jobs and Americans who care about the condition of our 
inland waterway systems.
  Inland waterway systems aren't on the front page of the U.S. 
newspapers until a lock closes or something happens and the cargo can't 
get down the river, and then it is big trouble. Which is the case in 
Tennessee with the Chickamauga Lock, an old lock that the Army Corps of 
Engineers says could close. It is in such bad shape, and if it were to 
close it would throw 150,000 heavy trucks on I-75 and disrupt the 
economy in all of eastern Tennessee. That same picture applies in many 
other parts of our country to these important waterways: The 
Mississippi, the Missouri, the Tennessee, and the Ohio--rivers that 
carry so much of the heavy cargo that provides income and jobs for so 
many American families.
  Tonight the House of Representatives is expected to enact the third 
part of a three-part plan that was envisioned in the American 
Waterworks Act of 2012, which would provide a permanent, long-term 
solution to having the kind of inland waterway system that a great 
country such as the United States deserves. I wish to speak for a 
moment about the effect that has not just on our country but on my home 
State of Tennessee.
  For our country, it would be hard to imagine how we could carry cars 
and coal and agricultural equipment from the great Midwest and the 
South to the rivers to be shipped overseas without the barges that 
carry that equipment, millions of tons of cargo every year, and it is 
usually cheaper and faster than many other forms of transportation. 
That means more jobs and more money in the pockets of Americans who are 
able to work for industries that are competitive.
  The legislation the House is expected to pass will provide $260 
million for inland waterway projects across the country over the next 
10 years. It is important to note that this fee is paid entirely by the 
owners of the big commercial barges that use the locks when they go 
down the rivers, and that none of it would be paid by the fishing boats 
and recreation boats which also use the locks. In other words, the big 
commercial barges are going to pay more to get through the locks 
faster, to save money and to save time, and that is good for the 
fishermen as well, without any cost. This is the third step in the 
American Waterworks Act that was proposed in 2012.
  This step would increase by 9 cents the way the fee is calculated 
that the big barge companies pay to go through the locks. The barge 
companies have volunteered to do this. They have been pleading with the 
U.S. Congress, saying, ``Please raise the fee we pay to go through the 
locks so you can use the Corps of Engineers to replace the locks so we 
can go through faster and cheaper.'' So the House is taking steps to do 
that tonight. The fee will increase from 20 to 29 cents per gallon of 
fuel used and, as I said, $260 million of that over the next 10 years 
will go to help repair these locks.
  The first two steps in the plan of the American Waterworks Act were 
enacted by law earlier this year as part of the Water Resources Reform 
and Development Act. Step 1 was to take the Olmsted lock in Ohio and 
treat it separately, because it was soaking up all the money that might 
be available for all the other locks in the country. Step 2 was to 
create a prioritization of the locks, so we didn't come here every year 
and say my lock is more important than your lock. And, in fact, with 
that, the Chickamauga lock in Tennessee became No. 4. And Step 3 is the 
user fee I talked about earlier.
  What difference does this legislation mean for the State of Tennessee 
and the Chickamauga lock? Well, for years the Chickamauga lock has been 
subject to year-by-year efforts by those of us in Congress to find a 
little money to repair it, to keep it from closing, all knowing full 
well that if we didn't replace it, it would one day soon close. Those 
days are over. This is a long-term solution that says, No. 1, the 
Olmsted lock which has been soaking up the money has been reduced, 
Chickamauga lock is a fourth priority in the government, and now we 
have money paid by the big barge owners that, when combined with the 
annual appropriations, should make it possible to begin to replace 
Chickamauga lock beginning in the year in 2016. That would mean it 
would still take several years to replace the lock. It would mean it 
would still cost about half a billion dollars. But it would mean that 
instead of year-by-year appropriations and guessing games that the Army 
Corps of Engineers can have a long-term plan and begin to do the job, 
and those who are making plans to invest in our part of the region--not 
just in Chattanooga but in eastern Tennessee--can know if they do that, 
the lock would be there to help provide low-cost transportation for 
what they manufacture and what they grow.
  I want to thank a variety of people who have taken great leadership 
in this. The Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, and I have been 
the joint sponsors of this legislation in the Senate. We are very 
hopeful that the House will do its work tonight and the Senate will do 
its work next week and that the bill will go to the President before 
the end of the year and this will be law by the end of the year. So I 
thank him for his leadership.
  I also want to congratulate Congressman Fleischmann of Chattanooga 
who

[[Page S6291]]

rounded up a group of Republican Members to support this effort, and 
Congressman Duncan from Knoxville. Speaker Boehner has been very 
helpful, and Congressman Camp has been very helpful.
  In the Senate I would like to thank Senator Vitter, who is the 
ranking member of the Environment & Public Works Committee for his 
leadership on this effort, and I would like to thank Senator Reid, the 
majority leader, and Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, for 
their cooperation on this.
  Nothing is ever done in the U.S. Congress until it is finally done. 
So this is passing the House tonight and it is expected to pass the 
Senate next week, which is very good news for Americans who depend on 
the inland waterways for their jobs, and in Tennessee where change--
instead of a year-by-year appropriation, it is an effort, it is the 
first chance we have had to have a long-term solution to the 
replacement over the next several years of Chickamauga lock beginning 
as early as the year 2016.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.


                    Kearney and Pappert Nominations

  Mr. CASEY. Thank you, Mr. President. I rise and ask unanimous consent 
to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CASEY. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I rise this evening to talk about two of our judicial nominations who 
are before the Senate today. We have gotten through one vote, and we 
will be having several more on a number of judges. The two I will speak 
about are Mark Kearney and Jerry Pappert, and I know my colleague 
Senator Toomey is with us and I will make some remarks and I will 
obviously be here for his remarks as well.
  First and foremost, I am grateful to be working with Senator Toomey 
on these nominations as we have on others. It is a long and difficult 
process for everyone, ever more so if you are a candidate, someone who 
puts yourself forward to be a U.S. district court judge. We are 
grateful that individuals are willing to do that, but it does not work 
unless we work together here in the Senate, and Senator Toomey and I 
have been working together over several years now. We have got one 
additional nomination after this, we hope, by the end of the year.
  I would like to give a little bit of biographical background on both 
of these nominees. Mark Kearney is currently managing shareholder at 
Elliot Greenleaf & Siedzikowski, where he has worked since 1990. He has 
spent almost a quarter of a century in a firm that does a wide variety 
of legal matters. I know this firm well and I know the work they do on 
litigation and all kinds of complex litigation. Mark has broad and 
diverse experience in that firm. Previously he worked at the Elliot 
Mannino & Flaherty firm, going back and forth in his days at the Elliot 
Greenleaf & Siedzikowski firm.
  After law school he clerked in the Delaware Court of Chancery 
following his legal training. Of course that is a court that has a high 
degree of specialization. A lot of business matters and obviously 
corporate matters come before that very well-known court in Delaware.
  Mark Kearney is also obviously very active in his community and I 
have known him for a couple of decades now. He serves on various 
charitable and civic organizations including director for Legal Aid of 
Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Bar Institute as well, and 
the Montgomery County Bar Foundation.
  Finally, in that vein of service to his community, he has worked as a 
volunteer child advocate of the Montgomery Child Advocacy Project since 
2007 and served as director of that organization from 2009 to 2012. 
Montgomery County is one of our largest counties by way of population, 
just bordering Philadelphia. It is a big county that has challenges as 
any county of its size, and to have a judge--or nominee whom we hope 
will become a judge after our voting--to have spent that time with 
children in an advocacy position is a great testament to Mark's 
commitment.
  So whether you focus on his academic credentials as someone who had a 
wide variety of matters come before him as a lawyer in a big firm, 
whether it is volunteer work and therefore his commitment to service, 
Mark is well prepared and I believe one of the best nominees we have 
put forward for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of 
Pennsylvania.
  I have known him a long time. When I make a decision about whether to 
support a particular candidate for judge of any court, but especially a 
district court judge, I look at their academic training and experience 
and whether it is experience as a lawyer and advocate or in some cases 
a lawyer as well as a judge. You have to make an assessment of 
someone's character, their integrity, their judicial temperament, all 
of those qualities and attributes you would want to find in a judge. On 
all those, Mark Kearney is someone I know personally who possesses 
those attributes and qualifications. But I also know him as someone who 
just by virtue of his record that we can recite here is well prepared 
to serve as a district court judge.
  I would ask my colleagues to give him on this vote all the 
consideration that is warranted.
  Jerry Pappert, more formally Gerald Pappert--I think I am allowed to 
call him Jerry until he becomes a judge--is someone I met in State 
government. I was in an elected position--it is now 18 years ago I was 
elected, and early in my term I was having a meeting with the attorney 
general, Mike Fisher, who is now on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. 
Attorney General Fisher brought his chief of staff, his first deputy, 
as they called it in that department, to a meeting with my chief of 
staff and we sat down at a restaurant to have pizza one night to talk 
about how our offices could work together, even though they don't have 
an overlapping jurisdiction. But it was one of those meetings you never 
forget. It was the first time I met Jerry Pappert. I knew then of his 
commitment to service, because he was serving in the top position in 
the State attorney general's office. Years later he became an attorney 
general when there was a vacancy. He served as the attorney general of 
Pennsylvania.
  He currently serves as the chairman of the Pennsylvania Banking and 
Securities Commission in Harrisburg. Previously he was a legislative 
appointee to the Commonwealth Financing Authority and Department of 
Community and Economic Development, a very important authority which 
makes determinations about where to invest tax dollars--economic 
development dollars--across Pennsylvania and how to make those 
difficult decisions about where dollars should go and how to grow the 
economy.
  From December of 2003 to January of 2005, as I mentioned, he was the 
attorney general of the State, and prior to that serving as first 
deputy. As attorney general he was in the National Association of 
Attorneys General, dealing with issues that relate to Pennsylvania and 
law enforcement and prosecution, but also on national issues that are 
common to all the States. So I know Jerry well and I know him to be 
someone of the highest caliber and integrity and commitment to service 
and commitment to justice. His long and significant history of service 
to our Commonwealth prepares him well to serve his Commonwealth, but 
also a Federal district court position as a U.S. district court judge.
  I can say the same of Jerry that I said of Mark Kearney, in terms of 
his qualifications, experience, but also his character and his 
integrity. I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak about both of 
these candidates and certainly am grateful to have a chance to work 
with Senator Toomey on moving these nominations forward and we hope 
tonight bringing them to a conclusion upon confirmation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I rise to offer my support as well to the two nominees to serve as 
judges for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of 
Pennsylvania, Jerry Pappert and Mark Kearney, whom we are scheduled to 
confirm in a short time.
  Let me start by thanking Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley 
for facilitating this process and handling this at the committee level, 
and

[[Page S6292]]

I want to thank Leader Reid and Leader McConnell for bringing these 
nominees to the Senate floor. I also want to take a moment to thank my 
colleague from the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, 
for all the work he and I have been able to do together. The 
collaboration we have had has been very constructive and it has been a 
pleasure to work with Senator Casey. In the 4 years I have been in the 
Senate, we have confirmed 11 district court judges. We have been able 
to place a judge in the Reading courthouse in Berks County which had 
been vacant for 3 years. We were able to place a judge in Easton 
courthouse in Northampton County which had been vacant for 10 years. 
With the confirmations that I am certainly hopeful about tonight, Mr. 
Pappert and Mr. Kearney, that number will rise to 13 members of the 
Federal bench from Pennsylvania in just the past 4 years.
  We have one additional district court nominee, Joseph Leeson, 
awaiting a vote from the full Senate, and I am looking at a speedy 
confirmation of his candidacy as well.
  Before I speak on the two nominees before us this evening, I want to 
briefly note how pleased I was that on November 20 the Senate confirmed 
Wendy Beetlestone to serve on the District Court for the Eastern 
District of Pennsylvania. She was confirmed unanimously by voice vote 
and I think that was a testament to her strong qualifications. I am 
delighted that Senator Casey and I were able to see that to completion.
  Let me say a couple of words about Jerry Pappert.
  Senator Casey spoke about Mr. Pappert. Jerry Pappert is eminently 
qualified for this post. He is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School and 
has an extensive and diverse legal background. He is currently a 
partner at Cozen O'Connor, which is a practice that has an emphasis on 
commercial litigation.
  Prior to that he was the general counsel at Cephalon, where he 
oversaw all of the company's litigation, financial transactions, and 
intellectual property issues.
  Not only has he handled a very wide range of issues in the private 
sector, but Mr. Pappert has also demonstrated his dedication to public 
service. As Senator Casey pointed out, he was a very successful 
attorney general for Pennsylvania for 6 years. He has successfully 
argued cases before the U.S. and Pennsylvania Supreme Courts. He won a 
landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Booth v. Churner, which 
set forth the administrative exhaustion requirement for a prisoner 
seeking to sue in Federal court.
  Mr. Pappert has also enjoyed bipartisan support in the Senate. The 
Senate Judiciary Committee successfully voted him out of committee on a 
voice vote back in September.
  Mark Kearney is the other gentleman we will be voting on in a short 
time. He is a graduate of Villanova University School of Law and a very 
successful attorney. As Senator Casey pointed out, he is a managing 
shareholder at Elliott Greenleaf & Siedzikowski, where he has been for 
24 years and practices commercial litigation.
  Mr. Kearney is highly respected by his colleagues. He received the AV 
peer review rating in the Martindale-Hubbell system--the highest 
rating. He has also taken time to give back to his community. He put a 
lot of time and energy into an issue that is very important to me; that 
is, protecting children from dangerous predators. Mr. Kearney has 
worked with the Montgomery County Child Advocacy Project, representing 
abused children, and I commend him for that service.
  Mr. Kearney has also enjoyed bipartisan support in the Senate. He was 
voice voted out by the Senate Judiciary Committee, reflecting unanimous 
support for his candidacy.
  It is clear, and I believe strongly, that both Mr. Pappert and Mr. 
Kearney have the experience, acumen, and commitment to public service 
that will make them excellent additions to the Federal bench. I am 
pleased to speak on their behalf, and I am grateful to Senator Casey 
for the cooperative effort that has gotten us to this point.
  I urge my colleagues to support the confirmation of these two 
outstanding individuals.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all postcloture time 
has expired.

                          ____________________