[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 152 (Friday, December 12, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6739-S6767]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INSULAR AREAS AND FREELY ASSOCIATED STATES ENERGY DEVELOPMENT
Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a
message from the House with respect to H.R. 83.
The Presiding Officer laid before the Senate the following message
from the House of Representatives:
Resolved, That the House agree to the amendment of the
Senate to the bill (H.R. 83) entitled ``An Act to require the
Secretary of the Interior to assemble a team of technical,
policy, and financial experts to address the energy needs of
the insular areas of the United States and the Freely
Associated States through the development of energy action
plans aimed at promoting access to affordable, reliable
energy, including increasing use of indigenous clean-energy
resources, and for other purposes,'' with an amendment.
Motion to Concur
Mr. REID. Madam President, I move to concur in the House amendment to
the Senate amendment to H.R. 83.
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The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] moves to concur in the
House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 83.
Cloture Motion
Mr. REID. Madam President, there is a cloture motion at the desk. I
ask the Chair to order it reported.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The bill clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R.
83.
Harry Reid, Barbara A. Mikulski, Brian Schatz, Benjamin
L. Cardin, Martin Heinrich, John E. Walsh, Richard J.
Durbin, Thomas R. Carper, Patty Murray, Tim Johnson,
Angus S. King, Jr., Mark R. Warner, Tom Udall, Dianne
Feinstein, Bill Nelson, Mark L. Pryor, Tammy Baldwin.
Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 4100
Mr. REID. Madam President, I move to concur in the House amendment to
the Senate amendment to H.R. 83, with a further amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] moves to concur in the
House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 83 with an
amendment numbered 4100.
The amendment is as follows:
At the end, add the following:
This Act shall become effective 1 day after enactment.
Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Amendment No. 4101 to Amendment No. 4100
Mr. REID. I have an amendment at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] proposes an amendment
numbered 4101 to amendment No. 4100.
The amendment is as follows:
In the amendment, strike ``1 day'' and insert ``2 days''.
Motion to Refer With Amendment No. 4102
Mr. REID. I have a motion to refer the House message with respect to
H.R. 83 with instructions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] moves to refer the House
message on H.R. 83 to the Committee on Appropriations with
instructions to report back forthwith with an amendment
numbered 4102.
The amendment is as follows:
At the end, add the following:
This Act shall become effective 3 days after enactment.
Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Amendment No. 4103
Mr. REID. Madam President, I have an amendment to the instructions
which is at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] proposes an amendment
numbered 4103 to the instructions of the motion to refer.
The amendment is as follows:
In the amendment, strike ``3 days'' and insert ``4 days''.
Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Amendment No. 4104 to Amendment No. 4103
Mr. REID. I now have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Nevada [Mr. REID] proposes an amendment
numbered 4104 to amendment No. 4103.
The amendment is as follows:
In the amendment, strike ``4'' and insert ``5''.
Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum required
under rule XXII be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Madam President, we now are waiting for a vote to occur.
Under the rules, this will occur 2 days from now, 1 hour after we come
into session. So I would hope we can work something out to get this
done tonight. Remember, midnight on Saturday the government is out of
money.
I hope that cooler heads would prevail and we can move forward and
get this done. There is just no sense in our waiting around. This bill
has been talked about for days now. It has been very good work to get
it where we are.
The two managers of this bill, the distinguished Senator from
Maryland and, of course, the senior Senator from Alabama, have worked
hard to get this bill done. I hope we can move forward on this as
quickly as possible. There is no reason we have to wait until Sunday to
do this.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I just wish to underscore the point that
it is urgent we take up this Omnibus appropriations bill; that we do
this in order to have a budget for our country and that we don't
threaten another government shutdown--we know how damaging that is to
this country; and that we don't have another continuing resolution.
Another continuing resolution provides uncertainty to our agencies.
They can't do the critical work they need to do. It establishes last
year's priorities rather than trying to establish the priorities for
this year and represents a failure of the Congress.
So I start by first thanking and congratulating my colleague from
Maryland, Senator Mikulski, for her incredible leadership through this
process, working with Senator Shelby and their counterparts in the
House of Representatives.
This is not easy. We have sharply different views in this Congress,
and we have seen over and over again gridlock where we are unable to
make decisions. I congratulate Senator Mikulski for bringing the
negotiations of the omnibus to a successful conclusion. When we look at
the work she did in the appropriations part of this Omnibus
appropriations bill, I am very proud, and I think we all should be very
proud and very supportive of the work she has done.
As I pointed out earlier, if we don't pass an Omnibus appropriations
bill, we are either going to have a government shutdown or we are going
to resort to a short-term continuing resolution. In either case, it is
very damaging to our country and to our economy.
The Omnibus appropriations bill we have before us allows us to set
certain priorities. I know Senator Mikulski has gone through many of
those priorities. I just wish to outline a few: the fact that we give
additional resources for missing and exploited children; the fact that
we provide law enforcement with rape kits to help in law enforcement
against those who have perpetrated violence against women; the fact
that we provide an additional $5 billion-plus to fight the Ebola crisis
globally. This has a direct impact on the world economy, on world
health, and directly affects the United States; the appropriations for
our Department of Defense to be able to combat the extremist ISIL in
its fear that it has invoked not just in that region but globally.
This Omnibus appropriations bill provides the resources in order to
carry out these important responsibilities of government. The
alternative is a continuing resolution, at best. How do we fight a war
on a continuing resolution? How do we fight Ebola on a continuing
resolution? We will not have the ability to be able to do it.
I thank Senator Mikulski. She has provided funds in here for our Farm
Service Agencies, which is particularly important to keep open the 250
threatened closures of farm services offices. I mention that because in
Maryland these offices are very important to our agricultural
community. Maryland farmers in their conservation efforts to help us on
the Chesapeake Bay work in conjunction with the service agencies. The
closing of these agencies would be devastating.
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The omnibus provides a modest pay adjustment for our Federal
workforce, our Federal workforce which has been asked to do more with
less people--less people, more responsibilities. They are on the front
lines of public service. This omnibus recognizes their service by
giving them a modest adjustment to their pay.
The transportation program, which is critically important for
economic growth--I can go over the differences here if we don't get the
omnibus. For example, the funds for our transit projects--I know in
Maryland there is $100 billion here for the Purple Line in Prince
George's County and Montgomery County. For those who travel in this
region, we know firsthand the gridlock problems on our roads. The only
good thing about being here tonight is that I don't have to fight the
traffic going home to Baltimore. We need the transit funding, and thank
you, Senator Mikulski, for providing that. If we have a continuing
resolution, we lose it. The funds for Baltimore--lost, if we don't have
the omnibus appropriations bill.
There are funds for dredging of the Baltimore Harbor. I particularly
appreciate the Appropriations Committee continuing the commitment we
made in 2008, the legislation that I authored for the full funding of
the Federal contributions to the WMATA system.
The funds that are here for our contract air traffic control towers.
You know, not too long ago there was a threat of a shutdown. We were
going to have to close the contract offices that worked the air traffic
control towers in our small airports, including in Maryland. Well, we
are protected by the omnibus so that will not occur. Go to a continuing
resolution, and there is no such protection.
The Appalachian Regional Commission gets a bump-up in this
appropriations bill, for good reason. The work they do is critically
important to the rural part of Maryland, the western part. They need
that. If you go to a continuing resolution and those initiatives are
gone, we don't get that.
We can go on and on and on. There is $1.4 billion of additional money
for community health centers--community health centers. Thank you. In
Maryland we have used those funds to expand community health centers,
to expand prenatal care, increasing infant survival in our State. We
have used it for community mental health services, we have used it for
pediatric dental services, and in the omnibus bill we will be able to
continue to make that progress. If we don't get the omnibus, all bets
are off. On a continuing resolution we cannot move forward in those
programs.
I would thank you on behalf of the veterans of this country. What you
have done requiring advanced funding is that you have protected our
veterans and the benefits that we promised them regardless of the
problems we have had getting our appropriations bills done. It is the
right thing to do. They fought to preserve the liberties of our
country, so they should at least know we are going to live up to the
commitments we made to protect our veterans.
I also appreciate that in this omnibus you have extended the TAA's
benefits that help our workers in transition who otherwise would not
have jobs due to the international trade issues. My colleague Senator
Brown has been very instrumental in this. We extend that through fiscal
year 2015.
Military construction. Military construction is critically important.
We have gone through a BRAC process. We have gone through ways in which
we have consolidated our military, but we also have to modernize our
facilities and the military construction budgets would come to a
standstill if we don't have a budget in Maryland, and we will have
projects that move forward in Havre de Grace, Annapolis, Indian Head,
Pax River, and Andrews. All of that is very important.
Money has been provided in this omnibus to help in regard to the
problems of Central America. We saw what happened on our borders. I
think we all agree we want children to be safe. It must be a horrible
choice for a parent to put their child on a transit to come to the
United States because of what is happening in their Central American
country. We begin on this omnibus bill to say, hey, let's try to work
for safer conditions in Central America which will give us more
stability in regard to what is happening on our own borders. That makes
sense. That is in there.
I also thank Senator Mikulski for an initiative I requested that
deals with Holocaust survivors. For the first time we have a direct
appropriation to help Holocaust survivors. These are individuals who
have a great fear of ending up in an institution. You can understand
why. So access to fundamental services in the community is particularly
important. This omnibus is sensitive to make sure that we provide that.
Again, if we don't have the omnibus, that initiative is gone.
You are protecting our Pell grant recipients so they can continue to
receive their Pell grants at current levels. All of this is so
important in the omnibus if we don't get it.
There are some things in this omnibus I don't like at all. As I said
earlier, this is a compromise. I know that we have seen the bills come
over from the House of Representatives. We have seen the
antienvironmental, antifinancial consumer protection bills. So many
bills have come over. And we know there were efforts made on numerous
of these policy riders to the appropriations to the omnibus bill.
Unfortunately, some got on, and I certainly understand the political
process. I am not naive to understand that we could win on every issue;
but I feel compelled to point out the policy riders that are on this
omnibus bill that I hope we will work together to remove the harmful
impacts that they could possibly have on policy in this country.
On the environmental front, there is a policy rider that restricts
EPA's authority to deal with tackle and ammunition as it relates to
lead content. Our policy should be based to allow EPA, based upon best
science for how they protect public health. I think that is compromised
by that rider.
There is a rider that could compromise how the agriculture community
works on our clean water bills. All stakeholders have to be in together
to deal with clean water. We do that with the Chesapeake Bay in
Maryland. I think that rider could have some very negative impact. We
have heard a lot of talk about the sage grouse which is a species that
could become endangered. The Environmental Protection Agency should be
able to do what is right in establishing the right conservation
efforts, but instead there were restrictions placed on EPA, and I
regret that. I hope we can work around that.
The definition of fill in mining regulations could open up more
mountaintop removal for coal mining, the most obscene way to obtain
coal, to blow up mountains and pollute streams. There are better ways.
We shouldn't put these arbitrary restrictions on the Environmental
Protection Agency.
There is a provision here you have heard a lot of comment on the
floor on dealing with financial consumer protection which would repeal
the Dodd-Frank provision where banks had to push out some of the
derivative trading into separate accounts so they weren't subject to
the FDIC, the government insurance program. That provision could be
used for risky trading and could result in government bailout. That is
bad. Let's work to make sure that doesn't happen. Let's work together
to restore that type of protection in our financial services.
The IMF doesn't receive funds over this omnibus bill. I think that is
a mistake. I think our responsibilities internationally require us to
cooperate in that.
There are provisions in here that interfere with the District of
Columbia home rule. That won't be the first time we have done that, and
I regret that. So it is not unusual to see those provisions in an
appropriations bill. It still doesn't make it right. It is not right.
There are some missed opportunities here. I am sorry we are not
participating in the Green Climate Fund. This is an international
effort to deal with the realities of climate change. The United States
needs to be a leader. We are missing an opportunity by not
participating in the Green Climate Fund.
I regret that this is an omnibus appropriations bill for all agencies
except one: Homeland Security. That is wrong. Our Homeland Security
needs the protection of a budget, not a continuing resolution. We may
have very different views on what we should do on immigration policy,
but that shouldn't stop us from allowing those
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who serve in Homeland Security to have the confidence that we will
support their budget for a year, and that they can go forward with an
initiative. I regret that. That is a missed opportunity that is in the
omnibus bill.
Lastly, let me mention the two extraneous issues that made their way
into the omnibus appropriations bill. That was a mystery, I think, to
Senator Mikulski and others who worked so hard in negotiating back and
forth in good faith only to find that the Rules Committee in the House
of Representatives added two extraneous provisions to an omnibus
appropriations bill. The process is wrong. They shouldn't do that. That
is an abuse of power. They are also, by the way, wrong on the policy.
One, it is a very serious issue, how to deal with multi-employer
plans. I have been working on pension issues ever since I came to the
Congress. We have a problem with the multi-employer plans, there is no
question about that. But we should have a bill on the floor of the
Senate and debate that. We shouldn't be passing a bill that could very
well have some very stark consequences on individuals who are currently
retired. That could very easily happen under this provision.
The second, which adds new categories of giving in our political
system to political party conventions and to the building funds, and to
recount, we don't need more money in politics in this country and we
shouldn't be taking up that bill on an omnibus appropriations bill.
Let me conclude my remarks as I began. To me, this is an easy
decision to make. It is an easy decision because the public does not
want to see more gridlock in Washington. They know the House of
Representatives has gone home. They know that our leaders have
negotiated an omnibus budget for the next fiscal year, and they are
saying at long last could we at least get this done, or are we going to
have another threatened shutdown? Are we going to put the government on
autopilot for a 3-month period?
I think we have a responsibility to see issues to conclusion, and on
the appropriation issues that are in this bill, you should be very
proud to support the work of Senator Mikulski and the entire group
behind the negotiations of this omnibus bill, Senator Shelby and
others. We should support that and recognize that what we need to do
next year--I know my colleague from Maryland has been the champion of
this. I heard her speak so eloquently in our caucus about this and on
the floor of the Senate, but what we need to do is get a budget done in
regular order so the appropriators know what their budget limits are
and they can work on the individual appropriation bills. We can bring
them to the floor, we can debate them, have amendment votes, and then
we won't be as frustrated as we are tonight, in the eleventh hour
dealing with issues for the very first time that we see on the omnibus
appropriations bill.
I know Senator Mikulski has been the great champion of saying let's
get back to regular order. She did that in her committee. We are not
surprised. We saw the work of her committee. It was done very openly.
We had a chance for input, and that is why a lot of what is in this
omnibus appropriations bill represents the work of each Member of this
body. But we can do this in a more open and transparent way by
considering individual appropriation bills on the floor of the Senate,
reconciling those differences at the House, and really doing the
people's business and not just confront ourselves with another omnibus
appropriations bill.
I encourage my colleagues to support the good work that has been done
and I hope we can approve the omnibus appropriations bill this evening
well in advance of the hour of midnight, which will be here sooner than
we think, in order to avoid a government shutdown and let the people of
this Nation know we are doing our very best.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I rise to speak on the consolidated
and further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2015.
Every year we have a particular responsibility that is mandated by
the Constitution, which is that the Congress of the United States shall
pass an annual revenue bill to fund the government. The power of the
purse is vested in the Congress. It is not vested in the executive
branch. Our subcommittee on appropriations is a constitutionally
mandated committee. The reason for that is, if one reads the Federalist
Papers, it says that if the leader of a country controls the purse,
they tend to be kings. But if the executive branch has to share power
with the legislative branch controlling the purse, you have checks and
balances.
Tonight is the night we talk about what is in our annual bill. It had
been the hope of myself and my vice chairman, Senator Shelby, that we
could file something here called regular order, where the 12
subcommittees in Appropriations would have brought up one bill at a
time. For a variety of reasons--mostly deep partisan politics--we were
not able to bring up 12 individual bills, and I regret that.
As a new party takes over, I hope we listen to the message of the
voters--end gridlock, end deadlock, end the partisanship that is
crippling our country. One way to correct that is to return to regular
order. I look forward to continuing to work with both sides of the
aisle to do that.
Tonight we are where we are. We are bringing the consolidated bill to
the Senate floor which represents the work of 12 subcommittees:
Defense, Interior, Labor, Education, Health, Foreign Operations, the
State Department, and Homeland Security will be on a continuing
resolution. I could call all their names. We will be looking at a $1
trillion expenditure, which is the discretionary funding of the United
States of America; $550 billion of that is in defense--DOD only. The
remaining amount is in domestic agencies which is also considered the
State Department.
We need to pass this bill tonight so we can show that there is no
government shutdown. The funding for the Government of the United
States of America expires at midnight. We want to be sure there is no
government shutdown, but we also don't want to be on a continuing
resolution. A continuing resolution simply says take what you have done
in 2014 and put it on autopilot.
If we pass the continuing appropriations, which I hope we do, the
government will be able to show that we have exercised thought and set
national priorities and worked on this. I hope today we will be able to
do our job.
The House passed the bill on Thursday night by a vote of 219 to 206.
We will now take up that bill.
It is remarkable in today's era of slam-down politics, that those of
us who have been working on this committee have been able to set aside
our differences, work across the aisle, and work across the dome to
find a way to compromise without capitulation on principles. The
American people said they wanted us to do that, and that is the job we
have done.
My wonderful colleague from Maryland, Senator Ben Cardin, explained a
good part of the bill. We are so close and we think so much alike, we
could have given each other's speech. He kind of gave my speech.
I will reiterate what is in this bill. This agreement provides for
our national security. It ensures readiness for our troops. It funds
training for the troops, as well as our maintenance facilities, so that
our military assets, such as aircraft carriers and ships, are ready to
go and our soldiers receive the training they need.
Military leaders say readiness is our top priority, and the bill will
provide $162.5 billion for readiness.
It also includes important funds for our National Guard and Reserve
so our units are ready for the job we ask them to do, and we have
included $200 million more for our national. We also included a 1-
percent pay raise--a 1-percent COLA, cost of living for the Defense
Department's 3 million employees.
We worked very hard on a variety of issues, one of which of course
has been the way we serve our veterans. One of our greatest
accomplishments is this bill is what we do for them.
Veterans service organizations came to me and many of the members
this evening and said: We not only need funding to implement the
reforms that were passed by the Congress, but we also want you to do it
for this year and a year in advance. We said: We don't do
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that. And they said: You have to do that because we are concerned that
often with the dysfunction and delay as a strategy in Washington, it
creates chaos for veterans and their survivors. Guess what. We were
able to do it.
For the first time ever, we provide funding for this year and 1 year
in advance. It means that no matter what happens to the government,
veterans can count on their disability check, their pension check, a
check to help fund the GI bill, and their health care will be paid for.
We also deal with the incredible problem of veterans backlog, and we
put in the money to able to do that. For the VA backlog process, over
$2.5 billion, adding another $40 million to do that.
I have been horrified--in my own home State of Maryland--that the
claims backlog at one point took more than 125 days. We are doing our
reform.
I also wish to talk about compelling human needs. We know that one of
the most able Members of the Senate, Senator Tom Harkin, is retiring.
But during the years he has served, he has never let up in championing
the little guy and the little gal to make sure we had access to health
care, access to education, and truly looking out for our constituents.
I am so proud that--working with him--we were able to fund the child
care development block grant, which passed the Senate overwhelmingly,
by adding over $75 million. That means they will able to ensure that
thousands more children will be able to qualify for daycare, and it
will be safe and affordable.
I wish to talk about college affordability as well--a great passion
of Senator Harkin, myself, and I know many Members of the Senate. We
increased the maximum Pell grant by $100, we reformed the Pell grants
to give students a chance to be able to go to college and get their
GED. This has been a tremendous problem for many single mothers and
they would drop out.
They now know they have to earn, and they are ready to learn. But in
order to be eligible to go to community college, they had to have their
GED, and they are now able to do both. It also restores the community
colleges' efforts to be able to fund scholarships from their own
endowments.
I will take a moment to speak about jobs. We need to create jobs in
the United States of America, and what we did when we focused in on
jobs was to fund the infrastructure. Guess what. We put in money in the
Federal checkbook for the highway trust fund and the harbor maintenance
fund so our harbors could be dredged, our roads and bridges would be
safe, and also included more money for dam safety.
In my own home State, we funded the Metro and made a big downpayment
on the Purple and Red Lines. These are jobs to improve our
infrastructure and are absolutely crucial.
I know there are others who wish to speak, and I am going to show
that we looked at trying to fund jobs and infrastructure. I will talk
about what we did in the commerce committee and how we came up with a
way to end the backlog on patents in the area of intellectual
infrastructure. There were over 400,000 patents pending. We wanted to
make sure in this America, that if you invent something, you get to
protect your idea so you can move it into the marketplace.
We also funded these regional innovation centers in manufacturing. We
promoted 3D manufacturing and made it local. In many of our States
where we lost it, we had major advances. I will talk more about it, but
I see my colleague, Senator Udall, is on the floor. I will yield the
time and allow him to speak.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. I thank Chairwoman Mikulski and the
Presiding Officer.
I will say a few words about Chairwoman Mikulski.
First of all, I am honored to serve on the Appropriations Committee.
For the last couple of years I served as the chairman of the
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, and with her
guidance and work, it has been a truly fulfilling task.
I thank Senator Mikulski for the last 2 years since she has taken
over and putting us on track in terms of having a good, solid
appropriations process, where we make every attempt to get the
appropriations bills through the Senate and in place at the beginning
of the budget year. That could make a real difference, as she has
indicated, for veterans, for jobs, and for all of the agencies that are
funded throughout government, and particularly in my State where we
have two premier national laboratories--Los Alamos and Sandia National
Laboratories. We have three Air Force bases, national parks, and
national monuments. There is so much that is a part of this
appropriations bill that is very important to my State.
We have a lot of work to do today, and I will speak for a few minutes
on some of the issues that are important to my State and our country.
First, I will start out on a positive note. The Senate just recently
passed the Defense authorization bill. That bill is critical to our
Nation's security and for our troops at home and abroad who deserve our
support and respect.
In addition, this year it also includes landmark conservation
measures to protect some of the most beloved landscapes in New Mexico.
These are measures we have worked on for many years--since Senator
Bingaman was in office--and they are the result of many years of dogged
hard work by a diverse group of sportsmen, conservationists, local
businesspeople, and others.
With this bill, we are designating Columbine Hondo Wilderness, giving
permanent congressional protection to this special area. We are
increasing public access to the Valles Caldera by transferring
management to the National Park Service. This will ensure financial
stability for one of the best places in New Mexico for hiking, hunting,
and fishing.
We are dedicating a historical Manhattan Project a national park that
will include Los Alamos, NM, where Americans can learn about and
remember our complicated Cold War history.
This bill protects the special and important places, increases
tourism, and creates jobs. We also renewed a BLM pilot program to
improve the permitting process for the oil and gas industry. This is
critical to energy development in New Mexico and other Western States.
It ensures that BLM has the resources to do all parts of its job--
managing land for conservation, grazing, and permitting for oil and gas
development.
I thank my colleague Senator Heinrich, who serves on the Energy and
Natural Resources Committee, for being a strong partner in getting
these measures passed.
Now the Senate has another important duty pending before us--passing
an appropriations bill to fund the Federal Government, including many
vital programs in my home State of New Mexico. We have not had regular
spending bills in recent years, and here we are at the eleventh hour
with an omnibus bill at the last minute.
The fact that we have a bill is due, in great part, to the leadership
of Chairwoman Mikulski, and I am glad to be part of her team on the
Appropriations Committee.
The alternative to this bill is a short-term CR or a couple of short-
term CRs for the whole year. I think that is an unacceptable way to do
business, and it would cost jobs and hurt our economy in New Mexico.
New Mexico's labs and bases need certainty in their critical jobs to
keep our Nation safe. Communities in my home State rely on funding
through the Payments in Lieu of Taxes Program to provide basic
services, such as schools and public safety.
I know Chairwoman Mikulski understands the PILT Program, has worked
hard to make sure that PILT is funded in this bill, and it is greatly
appreciated in the rural parts of the West.
Let me say again that continuing resolutions are disruptive. They are
inefficient. They lock in place programs that prevent us from
evaluating what is working and what isn't and keep us from rooting out
wasteful spending. But trying to put this omnibus bill at the end of
the year is far from ideal.
There was a time not long ago when having to pass an omnibus bill was
a sign that work had broken down. Today it is the best possible option.
I am extremely happy to have it. Again, I credit our chairwoman with
fighting hard to get us to this point. It has not been easy. But the
American people deserve better than this broken process.
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They deserve a Congress that works, that is open and deliberate, not
last-minute deals and gimmicks for special interests. Our duty is to
the American people, not Wall Street billionaires and bankers.
I will continue to do all I can as a member of the Appropriations
Committee to get back to the regular order. We cannot keep getting in
just under the wire.
In that respect, our colleagues in the House have to stop sending
over all of these riders. We had more than 100 riders sent over from
the House. As Chairwoman Mikulski knows, this isn't the way to
legislate on an appropriations bill. We are not supposed to be putting
riders in there. So they sent more than 100 of these over from the
House of Representatives. It is disruptive. Senator Mikulski took them
off and was able to work through them and get a decent, good final
product. I am going to continue to do all I can to make sure we get
back to the regular order.
Now I wish to speak about why this bill is important and why it is
important to pass this omnibus bill.
First of all, this bill is critical to my State of New Mexico. New
Mexico has two fine national laboratories--Sandia and Los Alamos; three
Air Force bases; White Sands testing range; and a number of other
Federal institutions, national parks, and national monuments. They are
all funded, and when they are funded on a regular basis at the
beginning of a fiscal year, it is a much better situation for everyone.
For PILT funds, which our counties depend on for schools, roads, law
enforcement, and anything they feel is important in their county, they
can rely on these PILT funds.
At this point my State is in severe drought. We have water projects
such as the Navajo Gallup project that can't keep waiting. There is
money in this bill to keep that project going. Communities can't just
put their needs on hold because Congress is broken. Navajo communities
in New Mexico still need clean water. In fact, every day we delay,
their situation gets worse. That is true of so many projects that are
funded by the Federal Government. Communities and businesses have to
plan, and they need certainty. The needs don't go away. So let's get
this done.
Finally, I wish to speak a little bit about the authorization, of
course, that we just produced out of the Foreign Relations Committee. I
urge Congress to address another important issue--this issue of the
authorization of force. We need to update the authorization of force
for our military in light of our changing involvement in a variety of
Middle Eastern conflicts--most notably, ISIS. If we leave without doing
this, we are failing the American people, our troops, and shirking our
constitutional duty.
ISIS is a brutal terrorist group, and it must be stopped. We must
continue to work with our allies, including those in the region, to use
strategic force to stop ISIS. I am proud of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee for recognizing our essential duty in defining the
parameters of this fight. This is the first step, but our Constitution
requires the full Congress to authorize war. This is a matter that
deserves debate. It should not be taken lightly. The last 13 years of
conflict in Afghanistan and in Iraq illustrate this--why it is so
important to be thoughtful and deliberate about war.
I urge my colleagues to stay until the work is done and we give the
AUMF consideration by the full Senate. This is not easy work, but this
is not a normal situation. ISIS is a rapidly growing terrorist group
recruiting young people from the West. It spans two countries, with
very expansive ambitions.
We must defeat ISIS, but at the same time we cannot allow another
open-ended war. That will yet again strain communities in my State and
across the country and put us in a situation we cannot pay for.
Since July I have received over 1,100 letters and hundreds of phone
calls from my constituents. They are clear, and I want to be equally
clear: Congress should rise to its constitutional oversight of the
Nation's war powers. This is a solemn responsibility, one I have taken
very seriously throughout my time in Congress. I voted for the 2001
authorization for the war in Afghanistan. I voted against the 2002
authorization for war in Iraq.
I believe the new AUMF is strong in that it prohibits ground
operations except in limited circumstances. Those circumstances, such
as rescuing servicemembers or U.S. citizens, are specified in the text
of the resolution. It also repeals the 2002 Iraq AUMF and sets a 3-year
timeline for the 2001 AUMF, which is currently supporting military
engagements around the world that we never intended when we originally
passed them. But I would still caution that we must be watchful so that
this engagement doesn't vastly change in scope without the approval of
Congress or the support from our constituents.
I fought to provide Congress with an even stronger role. I proposed
an amendment to limit authorization to 1 year. I also cosponsored a
proposal with Senator Paul to require a new authorization with Congress
if U.S. forces were to be deployed outside of Iraq and Syria. We need
this authorization to pass now, as the conflict has been ongoing for
months, but we also must continue to be watchful. Costs should not just
be charged to a credit card. Let's make sure we have a real
conversation on how the generation that has decided to go to war will
pay for it.
Again, I urge Congress to honor its responsibility to stay and finish
this critical duty.
Just to wrap up, I once again want to say to my chairwoman Senator
Mikulski that she has taken on a very difficult task in terms of
looking at what was sent to us by the House of Representatives--more
than 100 riders on all sorts of things, trying to dismantle the
Affordable Care Act, trying to tackle and get into the IRS and diminish
its ability to carry out its responsibilities, and on and on. The
Senator from Maryland has worked through these amendments diligently
and come up with a good product. This is much better than struggling
through continuing resolutions 2, 3 months at a time and then coming
back again. This gives certainty to government, gives certainty to
businesses, and it shows that we are trying to react responsibly to the
situation that is before us.
Again, I applaud Senator Mikulski. It is a real honor to work with
her on the Appropriations Committee.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am delighted to be on the floor this
evening to take, first of all, a minute to thank my good friend and
mentor Chairwoman Mikulski for her tremendous work on the product that
is before us tonight. We want to get something done when we come here.
In order to get anything done in Congress, we have to be willing to
compromise. We have to fight hard for our principles and what we
believe in. But at the end of the day it is a give-and-take. It is
never easy, and no one never ends up with a bill they have written on
their own.
Chairwoman Mikulski deserves so much credit for what is in this bill
that puts our country on a better track. Putting jobs and economic
growth first is a principle she always speaks to, and she fought for
them in this bill.
She fought off so many policies and riders that were thrown at her. I
know because I have spoken with her time and time again as she has
tried to say: What can I absolutely draw a line in the sand on, and
what can I put in here in order to make sure I am doing what is right
for my country? It is not easy to do that.
She fought off many riders that all of us on this side of the aisle
would have found extremely difficult to ever vote for. She took those
out.
She maintained the budget levels Chairman Ryan and I agreed on last
year. That was very hard to do. She is trying to put together a bill to
fund our government across the board, from defense, to agriculture, to
transportation, to so many areas that people take for granted every day
until our government shuts down. Then they remember how much they rely
on our national parks or our research and our investment or the
protection that is so important in our Homeland Security bills. She
worked hard under very strict requirements that we all supported in
another compromise a year ago and maintained that in this bill.
Critically, her work on this bill avoids another government shutdown.
[[Page S6746]]
Running this place by crisis we know doesn't work. It hurts our
economy. It hurts our families. Certainly, it hurts the stature of the
Senate.
So her work to put this together and have this bill before us tonight
is truly a remarkable accomplishment and really is proof of the
stateswoman she is. I commend her for that.
I am especially grateful that she put so much into this legislation
that really helps our everyday, average, middle-class families who are
struggling so hard in this country and really lays down a strong
foundation for long-term and broad-based economic growth. She did not
forget that principle at all in what she fought for, and that is
embedded within the legislation.
There are, of course, provisions in this bill that any one of us can
pull out and oppose, and there are certainly some provisions with which
I do not agree. I am really disheartened that the House Republicans put
Wall Street interests ahead of middle-class families and demanded a
provision in this bill. I am very concerned that some of the provisions
could increase health care premiums for our families and our
businesses. And I strongly oppose the policy change that was slipped
into the bill that could lead to a reduction in pensions for many of
our retirees. I share the concerns of many of us on this side that that
is in this legislation.
This is a compromise piece of legislation, and we had to swallow and
the other side had to swallow. Why? It is because at the end of the
day, we do not want to run our country in continuing resolutions, in
this economic upturn, in crisis management every 30 days or 60 days for
the next 2 years. That is why we had to look to the greater good of
this bill, and I am very pleased with some really significant pieces of
legislation in this bill.
I worked very hard with my good friend and colleague on the other
side of the aisle, Senator Collins, who is my partner on the
Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee. Senator
Collins and I worked very hard to find a compromise that makes
significant investments in our transportation infrastructure to help
our commuters and our families and our businesses and our economy.
I want my colleagues on this side of the aisle to know that the
investments in this bill that are in Amtrak, in public transit, in air
traffic control modernization, and in airport improvements are very
critical for all of our communities. I am going to vote yes for those
tonight. The bill makes it possible for the FAA to keep sufficient
numbers of air traffic controllers and inspectors on the job. This is a
key safety issue that I will be supporting in this bill. And our bill
puts to work new, targeted investments to help the Department of
Transportation to do everything possible to keep our communities safe
as the number of oil shipments by rail continue to increase in the
country.
I am especially proud of our part of this legislation that continues
to support a very successful TIGER program, and so many Members have
come to me and said they really appreciated that in this bill because
it allows investments in critical pieces of transportation
infrastructure in their home States that helps create jobs and boosts
their regional economy. I know this has been important in my State. I
know the demand is very high. We were not able to have the number we
liked, we did have to reduce it, but it remains in this bill as a very
strong investment in our communities, and I would be proud to be
supporting that in this bill.
On the housing side of our bill, we maintain the housing assistance
for low-income families that is so important today that they have the
support while they get back on their feet.
To not pass this bill tonight means we put a lot of people who are
struggling today at risk in their communities to not have the home that
is so important to their family's stability.
I am especially proud we are going to continue funding the HUD-VASH
Program. It is a program so many Members have told me is important to
them and takes the important steps of expanding HUD-VASH to Native
Americans who are at risk of homelessness living on reservations. We
increased the number of public housing units that can be part of the
public assistance demonstration that allows public housing authorities
to leverage private capital and to make capital improvements to more
than 100,000 additional units of affordable housing. We worked hard to
make sure this bill continues to support public housing and economic
development projects in communities across the country through the CDBG
Program. I will say that virtually every Member of the Senate has said
we need to maintain the CDBG Program on how important it is. There are
local communities to make decisions about the local communities, and
the funding is absolutely critical. This isn't just about spending. Our
legislation contains a number of reforms that are going to improve
government and save taxpayer dollars. Let me repeat that. We are voting
to save taxpayer dollars because we approved the process for
administering emergency preparedness grants, and we make sure property
owners are held accountable if they fail to take care of housing funded
with taxpayer resources.
We included a provision that supports efforts to improve the
coordination between domestic violence service and housing systems to
make sure our domestic violence survivors are getting the care and
support they deserve. I know much has been made of the provisions that
people don't like, and I share that angst.
But I think it is so important that we, as adults, stand up to the
responsibility we have, as the Senate and as Congress, to pass a
funding bill through the next year that makes sure we don't have
gridlock and dysfunction running this economy again.
The alternative to a bipartisan compromise spending bill is just
another short-term continuing resolution and another short-term
continuing resolution. We cannot run this government by crisis or
short-term resolutions. That is an irresponsible autopilot approach and
would cut off our ability as Senators to make decisions about how our
government operates.
I again want to thank my colleague and my mentor, the amazing Senator
from Maryland, the chairwoman of this committee, Barbara Mikulski, for
the work she has done and for the drive she has. She never lost sight
of what her goal is, despite some very difficult negotiations, and I
want to remind all of us that tonight hopefully we will be voting on a
compromise.
I know personally that in this country what everybody says to me
constantly is: We are tired of the partisan bickering. We want you to
compromise. That is what this is. We want our country to work again.
That is what this bill does. I urge our colleagues to support this
legislation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the spending bill
before us. I rise in opposition to the cynical substance of the
legislation. I rise in opposition to the un-Republican and undemocratic
process by which a small collection of political and economic insiders
crafted it to benefit each other at everyone else's expense.
Finally, I rise in particular opposition to the signals that this so-
called CRomnibus sends, the signal it sends to political insiders on
both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, the signal it sends to
special interest cronies on Wall Street and K street, and the signal it
sends to working families struggling on Main Streets across this
country who have been waiting for a decade for someone in this city to
start putting them first.
Those problems with this bill--each one alone enough to merit
opposition--do not even speak to its greatest weakness, its failure to
correct the President's lawless Executive amnesty. Since last night
when it was taken up in the House of Representatives, supporters of the
CRomnibus have couched their support in the language of compromise:
``This isn't a perfect bill,'' they say.
But on the contrary, it is perfect. As a representation of everything
wrong with Washington, DC, as an example of exactly the kind of unfair,
unrepresentative legislating that triggered successive electoral waves
of bipartisan condemnation in 2006, 2008, 2010, and again in 2014--the
CRomnibus is perfect.
Members of my party do not have the luxury of blaming this latest
failure on the outgoing Senate majority. No. This one is on us.
[[Page S6747]]
Americans just last month thought they went to the polls and voted
for change to stop this kind of thing: unread, 1,000-plus page bills
written in secret, filled with hidden favors for special interests
while funding the lawlessness of an out-of-control President.
Americans looking for that change will not find it in this bill.
Rather, they will find what the discarded revolutionaries of ``Animal
Farm'' found at the end of George Orwell's classic:
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man
to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was
impossible to say which was which.
Americans across our country are facing a new and unnatural kind of
squeeze, an opportunity deficit that is warping our free enterprise
economy and our voluntary civil society. This opportunity deficit is
not simply the result of globalization or technology or free trade. No.
It is the result of politicians creating a welfare system that traps
poor families in poverty--sometimes for generations at a time--and
locks lower skilled workers out of potential jobs, an education system
that traps poor kids in bad schools and college students into a
lifetime of debt, a health care system that locks the poor in second-
class care and erases what few wage gains the middle-class families
ever see, a tax system that unfairly discourages work, saving,
investment, marriage, and children.
Government policy unfairly protects the privileges of those who have
already climbed the ladder of success, while putting that ladder out of
the reach of those who have not yet grasped its very bottom rungs.
On Wall Street, corporate profits continue to soar. In Washington the
influence economy booms and booms on. Almost everywhere else, take-home
pay is flat. Jobs remain scarce. Small businesses are struggling to
grow, while new businesses are struggling even to get off the ground.
More and more today in America, the people who work hard and play by
the rules are being forced to subsidize political and economic elites
who don't. It is not big business or big special interests who created
this toxic environment. All they can do is ask. Only government--big
government--can rig the system. Only government can carve out a
regulatory exception for certain big banks while intensifying its
regulatory squeeze on smaller banks or tweak accounting rules to line
the pockets of certain big insurance companies or create new taxpayer
subsidies for certain industries and cynically present all of the above
as unamendable--take it or leave it, take it or shut down the
government propositions, as this bill does.
We wonder why the American people distrust their government, distrust
this government. We wonder why the principled grassroots of both
political parties--conservatives and progressives--are up in arms
against their Washington establishments over this bill. The American
people do not trust Congress because, as we are proving once again
today, Congress is not trustworthy.
Yet as rotten as the CRomnibus before us is, I want to state for the
record that this week leaves me with nothing but optimism about the
prospects we have for real reform and revival in the coming years.
The miserable process we witnessed this week represents the last
gasping throes of a discredited Washington status quo. Ten years ago
this bill would not have been controversial. Five years ago an easy
majority would have been purchased with earmarks. This week, with the
full weight of both party's leaderships, it barely made it over the
finish line. Change comes slowly, as we know, and it comes most slowly
to those institutions that make the rules, but change is coming. The
era of passing 1,600-page bills, written in secret, via a process that
includes lobbyists but excludes the American people is coming to an
end. The era of big government rigging the rules for special interests
while leaving everyone else behind is coming to an end. A new era is
coming in which Washington will once again be forced to work for the
American people instead of the other way around. To those Americans who
have watched with dismay what Congress did--and did not do--this week,
who made their voices heard by flooding both sides of the aisle with
phone calls and emails, my message is simple. Take heart. It may not
look like it today, but you are winning. America is winning.
The beltway establishments of both parties are exhausted, out of
ideas, and running out of time. Next year a new unified Congress has an
opportunity, a real open opportunity, to reshape the national debate,
to challenge Washington's failing status quo and its failed champion in
the Oval Office.
We can finally begin the hard, overdue work of rescuing our economy
from the grips of government dysfunction and political privilege, of
rescuing our health care system from ObamaCare, of reviving our
education system and modernizing our transportation system, of ending
special interest manipulation of our tax system and reforming
regulations to level the playing field for small and new businesses, of
fixing our broken immigration system.
Next year, just next month, we can begin to craft a new reform
agenda, to increase access to and opportunity within America's middle
class, an agenda that grows the economy and increases take-home pay, an
agenda that restores mobility and opportunity to working families and
communities while putting political and corporate elites back to work
for everyone else. We can look to our own House of Congress to reform
the way Congress conducts the people's business, the way we budget and
spend the people's money, so embarrassments such as this CRomnibus
might become relics of the past. We can do this. We must do this and we
will.
For too long the working families of and aspiring to America's middle
class have been fighting an all-too-lonely battle to keep up and to get
ahead. For too long, Washington has been an obstacle, even an opponent,
in that fight. That fight will remain uphill, but the first time in a
long time there is hope. There is a real chance that fight may get a
little less steep, and it might get a little less lonely. Help is on
the way.
I know it is hard to see right now. It is hard to see it in
Washington, and it must be even harder to see out in the country, but
change is coming. A new Congress is on the way, with new ideas and a
new renewed reform sense of purpose.
Temporary setbacks such as this bill should not discourage us, and
they will not deter us, for the only way to keep winning is to keep
fighting. Washington may still be broken, but America is ready to fix
it, no matter how long it takes and no matter how much Washington
resists it. Our opportunity to finally begin that work is almost here.
We just need to know where to look for it, for:
. . . not by eastern windows only
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I commend the distinguished senior Senator
from Connecticut. I realize when presiding he cannot respond. But I
just want to say what a pleasure it is, as a fellow New Englander, to
serve with him in the Senate. Sometimes you feel like you are on a
graveyard shift on a Friday night presiding over the Senate. But I must
tell him, after decades here, it is extremely important. To have
someone of his integrity, his ability, his competence, and his
experience presiding over the Senate should make every Senator, both
Republican and Democratic, proud.
After late night theatrics in the House yesterday, I hope the Senate
will soon vote on the fiscal year 2015 omnibus appropriations bill. I
support this comprehensive spending package.
Chairwoman Mikulski has done an outstanding job. She has been a giant
of the appropriations process. She should be congratulated for her
perseverance in getting us to this point.
I spoke yesterday about the funds included in the bill for the State
Department and foreign operations. I commended members of my staff,
Senator Graham's staff, and the editorial and printing staff who worked
so hard on that.
We included important funding for the environment, for AIDS
prevention and treatment, for United Nations peacekeeping, and for
emergency funding for Ebola. This bill protects U.S. security,
humanitarian, and economic interests around the world.
[[Page S6748]]
But it also funds many of the domestic priorities that face budget
cuts, that the people of our States depend upon, from law enforcement
to transportation, health care, and protecting our national parks. This
Congress and a past Congress, in what I believe was a terrible mistake,
voted to spend $1 to $2 trillion for the war in Iraq that we should
never have been involved in. As a result, we did not have the funds for
our police, health care, national parks, or to fix our decaying bridges
and roads in America.
I think most Americans think we should take care of those things.
This omnibus spending bill does that. It includes critical investments
in our rivers and lakes, including an increase in funding for one very
near and dear to my heart--Lake Champlain. That is done through the
EPA's geographic program.
Lake Champlain is a great treasure to this country. It is the largest
body of fresh water outside of the Great Lakes. It borders Vermont, New
York, and Canada in the Province of Quebec. Some parts of it are
hundreds of feet deep. It is special to me as a Vermonter, and because
my wife Marcelle and I first met on the shores of Lake Champlain.
I want to thank Senator Jack Reed, the chairman of the Appropriations
Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, for
his assistance in protecting the funding for all of the geographic
programs receiving funding in this bill--not just Lake Champlain but
all of them.
We fund critical investments that address the heroin crisis. Some may
think of rural States as being some kind of an enclave that are immune
from what happens in the rest of the country. Well, those of us who
live in rural America know differently. The heroin crisis has had a
devastating impact on communities in small, rural States like Vermont.
It does not make any difference if they are a red State or blue
State; they have been hurt. With Senator Mikulski's support, I was
pleased to include funding for anti-heroin task forces, to provide
Federal assistance to law enforcement efforts to investigate and combat
the distribution of heroin. Ensuring our local agencies have the tools
they need is just one portion of our effort to deal with this crisis.
But it is also unacceptable that Americans face a waiting list when
seeking help to recover from their addictions. This legislation
provides crucial funding to expand treatment services for those with
heroin dependence.
The omnibus makes important investments in our students by providing
funding to increase access to a college education through the Pell
Grant Program. It increases funding for the TRIO Program, which helps
low-income first-generation students get a college education. They are
the future of this country.
The bill provides $30.3 billion for the National Institutes of
Health--that is a treasure in this country--and funding for the
development of a vaccine against Ebola. Can anyone be against that?
It raises the cap in the Crime Victims Fund to a historic $2.3
billion. It means more money for victims assistance grants at the State
and local levels. This is a program I have supported from my early days
in the Senate. I compliment the Presiding Officer who always also
voted, in the Judiciary Committee, to help victims of crimes. Like me,
he knows from his own past experience as a prosecutor that we have
money to go after those who break the law, but we also have to help the
people who are the victims of crime.
The compromise package invests in housing for veterans and seniors.
It supports grants to help schools purchase critical equipment for
their school lunch programs. It provides funding for a new food safety
outreach program, helping the Food and Drug Administration work with
farmers and small businesses to understand complex new food safety
laws.
The bill protects our Nation's forests through a strong investment in
the Forest Legacy Program. Coming from a State that values its forests
I know how important this is. The list goes on.
So obviously, as I have praised the chair of the committee, Senator
Mikulski and what she has done, I do intend to support this
appropriations bill. She knows that I am disappointed with some last-
minute negotiations that forced the inclusion of several controversial
riders. It would have been a lot worse if she had not stood her ground.
They had nothing to do with funding the operations of the Federal
Government. She knew those provisions forced us into a choice between
shutting down the government or enacting this omnibus bill.
There is no doubt Congress has to do something to address vulnerable
pension plans. We all agree on that. The 11th-hour provision that we
were forced to accept by the Republicans in the House of
Representatives to reduce hard-earned benefits for retirees is
shameful. For decades these retirees have worked hard. They have
contributed to pension plans. They assumed those benefits would be
there when they needed them the most.
Now the game is being changed. I cannot help but wonder how the
Republicans in the House who are responsible for this provision would
react if it affected their pensions?
This legislation includes a particularly offensive rider that rolls
back an important provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that protects
taxpayers from another Wall Street bailout.
We know that elections have consequences. I worry this is the start
of a pattern we can expect to see over the next 2 years of protecting
the rich on Wall Street at the expense of hard-working Americans on
Main Street. Frankly, like Senator Mikulski, I stand with the hard-
working people on Main Street. They are the people I feel comfortable
with. Those are the people I know. When I walk down the streets of
Montpelier or Burlington or Brattleboro, those are the people who call
me by my first name. Those are the people paying the bills. Those are
the people representing businesses like the one my mother and father
ran, the Leahy Press.
I am also dismayed that this spending package includes another body
blow to what little remains of campaign finance law. By increasing the
amount of money wealthy donors can contribute to political parties, we
further roll back long-held campaign finance limitations that protected
the voice of every voter at the ballot box--not just those who paid to
have their voices heard.
It is unfortunate that pressure groups and special interests
prevailed in making this happen. It is also unfortunate that when we
had a chance in this Senate to do something, to restore part of what
has been called McCain-Feingold, after Citizens United, we failed by
one vote. Every Democrat in this Senate voted to restore many of the
provisions of McCain-Feingold. Every single Republican voted to gut
McCain-Feingold. It was gutted by a one-vote margin.
Finally, while I am pleased this omnibus bill will fund most of our
government through fiscal year 2015, I am disappointed that programs
and agencies funded through the Department of Homeland Security will
only be funded through February 2015. Yet, for months--for nearly 18
months--House Republican leaders refused to bring to a vote the
bipartisan Senate-passed immigration reform bill.
We had hundreds of hours of markups, hearings, and a debate on this
floor. Two-thirds of Senate Republicans and Democrats joined together
to pass the immigration bill that came out of the Senate Judiciary
Committee. It is political hypocrisy on the other side when they say:
Oh, look what President Obama is doing on immigration. We have to stop
him. They had the chance to pass a bill that would have trumped
whatever the President might do. They refused to even vote on it
because they were afraid that it would pass.
They wanted to talk about it. They wanted to talk about immigration.
They want to talk about what they wanted to do, but they never wanted
to vote one way or the other. We stood up here in the Senate, Democrats
and Republicans together, and we passed an immigration bill. They
refused to even vote on it so they could talk about what is wrong with
immigration. It is political hypocrisy at its worst. The bill would
have passed, and we would not be where we are today.
No bill is perfect, especially one of this size. There are certainly
provisions in here that I wish were not, as I have said. But this bill
moves us away
[[Page S6749]]
from governing by autopilot and takes off the table the threat in 1, 2
or 3 months of yet another government shutdown. If we fail to pass this
bill, under Republican majorities in the House and Senate next year it
will only get worse.
Senator Mikulski and Chairman Rogers in the House have kept us from a
government shutdown. It is easy to criticize, but waiting until next
year is not an option. This bill provides essential funding for this
country, for programs the American people depend on. And I would say
from a parochial point of view, it will do a great deal to help
Vermont.
Any Senator opposing this bill because of the riders it includes
should remember that a continuing resolution or omnibus spending bill
next year will contain many more, and some far worse.
Chairwoman Mikulski has done a heroic job in getting us to this
point. I hope we can do as well next year.
I know Senator Cochran of Mississippi, one of the closest friends I
have had in this body since coming to the Senate, and the incoming
Appropriations Committee chairman, agrees that we should return to the
regular order of debating and passing individual appropriations bill.
We will be well off with Senator Cochran and Senator Mikulski. These
are the people who know the difference between rhetoric and reality.
They are legislators. They believe in solving problems. The American
people do too. They are tired of partisanship, drama, and the harmful
consequences of shutting down the government.
Is this bill everything I wanted? No. Is it everything the chairwoman
would like? No. Is it everything that any one of us would like? No. But
it is a lot better than shutting down the government, or leaving it to
the next Congress. I will support it.
I yield the floor.
Ms. MIKULSKI. I note the Senator from Massachusetts wishes to speak
and I will yield to her.
But before the Senator from Vermont leaves, first I thank him for his
leadership in chairing the Subcommittee on the State Department and
Foreign Operations.
What he has done is make sure that we continue to be able to conduct
public diplomacy, to ensure money for embassy security.
There are many here who pound their chests and call for
investigations, but he actually puts money in the Federal checkbook,
meets with the State Department and the embassy security people so that
if you work for the U.S. Government, and you are in the embassies, at
least you will have the security you need.
The other is his work on foreign operations, making sure the poor,
dispossessed, and the marginalized of the world have the assistance of
the United States as a partner--whether it is curing malaria, fighting
AIDS in Africa, fighting Ebola.
Also at the same time I remember the great honor and how touched I
was to visit Madagascar with him when we looked at the children who
were the victims of land mines. This man has done heroic work, not only
to prevent the ghastly consequences of the land mines, but to make sure
that the children who have been injured by this ghastly weapon had the
means to recover their limbs and in that way their livelihood. Really,
we owe you a debt of gratitude and it is an honor to serve with you.
Mr. LEAHY. I thank my dear friend from Maryland.
Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Booker). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. I thank the Senator from Maryland and the senior Senator
of Vermont. They both show extraordinary leadership and we learn from
them every day.
I am back on the floor to talk about a dangerous provision slapped in
a must-pass spending bill at the last minute solely to benefit Wall
Street. This provision would repeal a rule called prohibition against
Federal Government bailouts of swaps entities.
On Wednesday I came to the floor and talked to the Senate Democrats
to ask them to strip this provision out of the omnibus bill and to
protect taxpayers.
On Thursday I came to the floor to talk to Republicans. Republicans
said they don't like bailouts either, so I asked them to vote the way
they talk. If they don't like bailouts, then they could take out this
provision that puts taxpayers right back on the hook for bailing out
big banks.
Today I come to the floor to talk about not Democrats or Republicans,
but to talk about a third group that also wields tremendous power in
Washington--Citigroup.
In recent years many Wall Street institutions have exerted
extraordinary influence in Washington's corridors of power, but
Citigroup has risen above the others. Its grip over economic
policymaking in the executive branch is unprecedented.
Consider just a few examples. Three of the last four Treasury
Secretaries under Democratic Presidents have had close Citigroup ties.
The fourth was offered the CEO position at Citigroup but turned it
down.
The vice chair of the Federal Reserve system is a Citigroup alum.
The Under Secretary for International Affairs at Treasury is a
Citigroup alum.
The U.S. Trade Representative and the person nominated to be his
deputy, who is currently an assistant secretary of Treasury, are
Citigroup alums.
A recent chairman of the National Economic Council at the White House
was a Citigroup alum.
Another recent chairman of the Office of Management and Budget went
to Citigroup immediately after leaving the White House.
And another recent chairman of the Office of Management and Budget is
also a Citigroup alum--but I am double-counting because he is now
Secretary of the Treasury.
That is a lot of powerful people all from one bank, but they aren't
the only way that Citigroup exercises power. Over the years, the
company has spent millions of dollars on lobbying Congress and funding
the political campaigns of its friends in the House and Senate.
Citigroup has also spent millions trying to influence the political
process in ways that are far more subtle and hidden from public view.
Last year, I wrote Citigroup and other big banks asking them to
disclose the amount of shareholder money they have been diverting to
think tanks to influence public policy.
Citigroup's response to my letter? Stonewalling. A year has gone by
and Citigroup didn't even acknowledge receiving my letter.
Citigroup has a lot of money. It spends a lot of money, and it uses
that money to grow and consolidate power--and it pays off.
Consider a couple of facts.
Fact 1: During the financial crisis, when all the support through
TARP, FDIC, and the Fed is added up, Citi received nearly half a
trillion dollars in bank loans. That is half a trillion with a t. That
is almost $140 billion more than the next biggest bank received.
Fact 2: During Dodd-Frank, there was an amendment introduced by my
colleagues Senator Brown and Senator Kaufman that would have broken up
Citigroup and the other largest banks. That amendment had bipartisan
support and it might have passed, but it ran into powerful opposition
from an alliance between Wall Streeters on Wall Street and Wall
Streeters who held powerful government jobs. They teamed up and they
blocked the move to break up the banks, and now Citi is larger than
ever.
The role that senior officials from the Treasury Department played in
killing the amendment wasn't subtle. A senior Treasury official
acknowledged it at the time in a background interview with ``New York''
magazine and said:
If we'd been for it, it probably would have happened. But
we weren't, so it didn't.
That is power.
Democrats don't like Wall Street bailouts. Republicans don't like
Wall Street bailouts. The American people are disgusted by Wall Street
bailouts. Yet here we are, 5 years after Dodd-Frank, with Congress on
the verge of ramming through a provision that would do nothing for the
middle class, do nothing for community banks, do nothing but raise the
risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks once again.
There is a lot of talk lately about how Dodd-Frank isn't perfect.
There is
[[Page S6750]]
a lot of talk coming from Citigroup about how Dodd-Frank isn't perfect.
So let me say this to anyone who is listening at Citi. I agree with
you, Dodd-Frank isn't perfect. It should have broken you into pieces.
If this Congress is going to open Dodd-Frank in the months ahead,
then let's open it to get tougher, not to create more bailout
opportunities. If we are going to open Dodd-Frank, let's open it up so
that once and for all we end too big to fail--and I mean really end it,
not just say that we did. Instead of passing laws that create new
bailout opportunities for too-big-to-fail banks, let's pass Brown-
Kaufman. Let's pass the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, a bill I have
sponsored with John McCain, Angus King, and Maria Cantwell. Let's pass
something, anything, that would help break up these giant banks.
A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt was America's trust buster. He went
after the giant trusts and monopolies in this country. A lot of people
talk about how those trusts deserve to be broken up because they have
too much economic power. But Teddy Roosevelt said we should break them
up because they had too much political power. Teddy Roosevelt said
break them up because all that concentrated power threatens the very
foundations of our democratic system.
Now we are watching as Congress passes yet another provision that was
written by lobbyists for the biggest recipient of bailout money in the
history of this country, and it is attached to a bill that needs to
pass or else the entire Federal Government will grind to a halt. Think
about that kind of power. If a financial institution has become so big
and so powerful that it can hold the entire country hostage, that alone
is reason enough to break them up.
Enough is enough. Enough is enough with Wall Street insiders getting
key position after key position and the kind of cronyism that we have
seen in the executive branch.
Enough is enough--with Citigroup passing eleventh hour deregulatory
provisions that nobody takes ownership over, but everybody will come to
regret.
Enough is enough.
Washington already works very well for the billionaires, the big
corporations, the lawyers, and the lobbyists, but what about the
families who lost their homes or their jobs or their retirement savings
the last time Citi bet big on derivatives and lost? What about the
families who are living paycheck to paycheck and saw their tax dollars
go to bail out Citi only 6 years ago?
We were sent to the Senate to fight for those families. And it is
time, it is past time, for Washington to start working for them.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. GRAHAM. I will be supporting their bill. I will gladly support
the bill. I am not pleased with every aspect of it, but let me respond
to my good friend from Massachusetts.
You are tired, you are frustrated, you are upset about a provision in
the bill that you don't like and think the country is going down the
wrong road. You have every right to be upset. You have every right to
vote no and to argue to bring the bill down.
Do you know what a lot of people on our side are tired of? The
President changing the law whenever he would like. Taking ObamaCare and
changing it unilaterally to fit the political needs of the President
and his party, by Executive action, turning the ObamaCare statute
upside down.
Do you know what people on my side are tired of? A President who
feels like he is more of a King than a President. Unilaterally reaching
out and conferring legal status on 4 million to 5 million people
without coming to the Congress because he is frustrated.
I have been working on immigration since 2006. I will put my
frustration up against yours, Mr. President, but democracy is
democracy. You can be frustrated all you like, but there are rules to
play by that keep us all safe.
So there are people on my side who want me to bring this bill down
because they have had enough. They have had enough of President Obama
going it on his own, taking the laws that we pass, ignoring some,
rewriting others, and the Executive action is the straw that broke the
camel's back. It is one thing to defer prosecution on people in terms
of your discretion, it is another thing to reach out to 4 to 5 million
people and say: You now have a legal status, without going through the
Congress. That should scare every Democrat, Republican, Libertarian,
and vegetarian.
So people on my side--and we will hear from some of them, saying that
this is an outrage and we should shut the government down and defund
all the parts of the government that would be used to implement this
illegal executive amnesty. I understand where they are coming from, and
I understood a year ago when people in my party said ObamaCare is bad
for the country, we need to stop it, and I am willing to shut the
entire government down or at least that part of the government that
depends on funding of ObamaCare, because I am upset with this law. I
have been on the side of listening to this on my side and understanding
the frustrations but always rejecting that temptation because we do
have a country to run.
As much as I am upset about the Executive action, I am not going to
heed the call of not passing this bill because I am mad because within
this bill we have money to fight ISIL, and God knows we need to fight
them. In this bill we have money to contain and fight Ebola, and God
knows we need to do that. In this bill we have infrastructure
improvements that God knows are long overdue.
So to my good friend from Massachusetts, there is something in here
you don't like? Welcome to democracy. You have absolutely the same
right as people over here on my side to blow up the whole place, but I
hope most of us will listen to your concerns and not follow your lead.
And listen to what the Senator from Massachusetts said when the shoe
was on the other foot, when people on my side were willing to take it
all down because they were mad. I was one of a handful who said no. I
would like to repeal and replace ObamaCare, but I don't believe
defunding the government is going to make the President repeal his
signature issue, and we don't have enough votes to override a veto. It
takes a long time to say that, and the people I was responding to were
mad and emotional because they thought they were wronged. I understood
they were mad. I understood they were emotional. But I thought I had a
duty beyond just worrying about me.
If you follow the lead of the Senator from Massachusetts and bring
this bill down and do a CR--which is the worst possible way to run the
government--I will tell you what will come your way. It is what came
our way. People are not going to believe you are mature enough to run
the place. Seventy percent of the Democrats in the House voted against
this bill, and three out of four Republicans voted to get it over
here--a level of maturity and judgment I haven't seen in my party in
quite a while. Speaker Boehner and your team: Well done.
To the Democrats, I am sure on MSNBC and on the liberal version of
talk radio you are a hero and you will have your moment with that
crowd. I can promise you this: There are people on our side who are
having their moment on other channels. But almost one-third of the
Democratic Party resisted that temptation, and I know how they feel.
Some of them will get a primary. I had six primary opponents. I am glad
I did not follow the lead of people who were trying to get me to shut
down the government because I felt I was wronged. That is not the way
to run a country.
So here is what the Senator said: For this rightwing minority,
hostage taking is all they have left--a last gasp for those who can not
cope with the realities of our democracy. The time has come for those
legislators who cannot cope with the reality of our democracy to get
out of the way.
Those were good words then, and you should read them now and apply
them to yourself.
What you are offering, there are plenty of people on our side who
would serve it up too. What you are offering is to take one part of a
complicated bill and try to convince people throughout the country that
some horrible wrong is being done and the rest of us who want to get on
with governing are the problem.
[[Page S6751]]
My advice: Don't follow her lead. She is the problem. There are
people on my side who are the problem.
We will address the Executive amnesty action in a responsible way
next year, attack it on every front, but we will not deny our troops
the money they need to fight the war to protect us all. We will not
deny those who are working to contain Ebola and doing heroic things the
money they need to protect us all. We will not deny the infrastructure
improvements that have long been overdue.
So to my Democratic colleagues, welcome to my world. It may seem
tempting to go the road of least resistance, but you will regret it. It
hurt our party, and it will hurt yours. If you do what is best for the
country, over time it will work out for you.
To my colleagues on this side, remember last year? Did we learn
anything? I hope so. I will make a prediction. To the voices on my side
that say ``Burn it down, blow it up, start all over again'' because
they are mad at President Obama's Executive amnesty and the voices
coming from the Democratic side, mainly through the Senator from
Massachusetts, saying ``Blow it up because we have done something for
Wall Street we shouldn't have done,'' I think most of us will put this
in context. Most of us will understand there are things in this bill we
don't like, but we do have an overriding duty to our country to govern.
I hope that next year we can do our appropriations process in the
normal course of business, that we don't find ourselves in these
messes. But all I can say about democracy is that it is messy, it is
emotional, it requires give and take, it requires some people not to
follow the hottest person in the room, and there will always be
somebody running hot.
And something else about democracy: As bad as it is, I can't think of
a better idea. I have seen the other way of doing business in the
Mideast and throughout the world. I certainly don't want any part of
that.
So tonight, tomorrow, or whenever that day comes--and to my
Democratic colleagues who have put this bill together with my
Republican colleagues on appropriations, I applaud you. I will vote for
your effort and for the product you created, knowing it is not perfect.
To the people on my side who want us to tear this down because you are
mad at President Obama, that is not the way to do business. To the
people on the other side who want to have the same result for a
different reason, don't follow their lead.
Tributes to Departing Senators
Mr. President, I will now speak very briefly about my retiring
colleagues and then turn it over to the Senator from Florida. I promise
I will be brief.
Everybody will face retirement, voluntarily or involuntarily. There
will be a last vote to cast and a last speech to make. Only God knows
when that day comes because we are all just one car wreck away from
ending our careers.
To the retiring Members, I have had the pleasure of serving with you,
and I know you all. You did what you thought was best for our country
and your State, and what more could anyone ask? My good friend Mark
Pryor, who tried to find common ground at a time when it is hard to
find. Mary Landrieu, who is--Mary would drill under the Capitol if she
thought it would help American energy independence. We have good
friends on the other side, and I will miss you, and I wish you well.
But I would like very briefly to speak about four.
Saxby Chambliss
Saxby Chambliss and Julianne and the Chambliss family have become my
family. If you are lucky in politics, you will make a few friends. I
have been very lucky, and I have made lifelong friends with the
Chambliss family, not just Saxby.
Saxby represents the best in being a Senator. He looks the part, and
he acts the part. And I would say to the people of Georgia that he
worked very hard on your behalf. He protected our country against
terrorism. He helped the farmer. He did everything he knew how to do to
serve the people of Georgia, and I will miss my friend.
Mike Johanns
Mike Johanns--he introduced me to Bono. I said: Who is Bono? I don't
follow that music that much, but I actually did know Bono.
Mike introduced me to Africa. He was the Secretary of Agriculture for
the Bush administration, and he had a passion for the developing world,
particularly Africa. And through Mike I got to know The One Foundation
and the Gates Foundation. Through Mike and Stephanie I have been to
Africa many times, and you represent the best in our country. You are
absolutely wonderful people. You will be missed. And my way to repay
you is to stay involved in the developing world.
Tom Coburn
To Tom Coburn, when I grow up, I want to be like Tom. I don't see
that happening anytime soon, me growing up. Tom Coburn has been at this
for 20 years. We came in together. He was one of the first people I met
in the freshman class of 1995--the 1994 Contract with America class. He
was full of ideas and determination from the first day I met him until
the very last day he leaves.
I cannot tell you, Tom, how proud I am to call you my friend. You and
Carolyn have become dear friends, and you, my friend, have changed this
body for the better. You had an awesome staff, and you will be missed,
but what you contributed to the Senate will last long after I am gone,
and we will all be the better.
Carl Levin
The last person is Carl Levin. If I had to describe to somebody from
a foreign country what a good Senator was like, I would pick Carl. Carl
understands the details of the government--very studious. He was the
chairman of the Armed Services Committee and ran it very evenhandedly.
He had a disposition that I don't know how he held on to in these
fractious times, but he was a gentleman.
I can promise you, working with Carl Levin, we both resisted the
temptation to go down some very dangerous roads on this detainee
contentious issue. All I can tell the men and women in uniform and the
people of Michigan is that you never had a better friend.
To all of you, Godspeed. I wish you nothing but the best.
I am fortunate enough to go into my third term. To my colleagues, as
we go into the next Congress, let's try to do better. I know we can.
And if we do, all boats will rise.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, one of the great things about America is
that two Senators with different outlooks, from different States, can
come to the same conclusion, as we have on this legislation.
What the Senator from South Carolina has just said is not only my
hope and my prayer, but I hope it will be the hope of the whole of the
Senate as we embark on the Nation's business next year. And let's see
if we can get along. Let's see if we can work together in a civil way.
Let's see if we can find that elusive consensus that has been so
elusive in the course of these past very contentious and highly
partisan and highly ideological years. Let's see if we can get it done.
There is a lot to be done. I am going to have the privilege of
serving with the new chairman of the Commerce Committee, John Thune of
South Dakota. I will be the ranking Democrat on that committee. John
and I have already started having personal and private conversations
about working together and getting things done, and I am looking
forward to it.
So in the words of the Senator from South Carolina--of which he is
very sincere--I want to echo those words, and I am not only sincere, I
am very determined. Now, we will see if it works, but this we know: The
people of this country want it to work, and they want us to work
together. They are tired of this nonsense they see.
So we come here late on a Friday night and we have in front of us our
responsibility to spend taxpayer money, hopefully wisely and
responsibly. It is one of our chief duties.
So the appropriations bill is in front of us. I will vote for it.
There are a lot of good things in it. Previous speakers have mentioned
those things.
We have to be prepared to take on the Nation's enemies, those whom we
identify and those whom we don't identify. They are all lurking out
there in many different ways.
We have to help the health of this country by continuing to try to
give the appropriate amounts to institutions such as the National
Institutes of
[[Page S6752]]
Health. There was a time a few years ago that they were being cut. That
didn't make sense. The head of NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, came to us and
said: I have to stop dead in the tracks 700 research grants going out
the door to universities and hospitals across this country, research
grants for trying to find cures for diseases.
That doesn't make sense. So we are beginning to correct that in this
bill, and this bill across the spectrum of government will be able to
fund the needs of government. But we have before us what is nothing
more than a blatantly partisan attempt to undermine the legislative
process and ram through a number of provisions that have no business
being in there.
We can hear the note of sadness in my voice that in the process of
making legislative sausage, some odiferous ingredients got in the
sausage because tucked into this spending bill is a provision to once
again bail out big banks and undo some of the reforms we made after the
financial crisis of 2008.
Have we forgotten that just 6 years ago our economy was on the verge
of collapse? Do we remember when the Republican Secretary of the
Treasury got on his knees in front of the congressional leadership and
begged them to pass the Troubled Assets Relief Program to try to buoy
up the financial institutions so that the entire country would not go
into a financial death spiral? Have we forgotten the lessons we learned
from that crisis? Have we forgotten what happens when we allow banks to
make extremely risky bets and tell them that if they win they can keep
the profits, but if they lose the U.S. Government will bail them out?
In this case, this bill would undo part of the financial reforms that
say the government isn't going to cover or subsidize the banks' so-
called credit default swaps. This is no way to legislate.
There is also a provision in here that would let truckdrivers drive
even longer hours without having to stop to rest overnight. Eliminating
this rule--this rule that simply requires truckdrivers to stop for some
rest once in a while--is a direct threat to public safety. It endangers
motorists on America's highways.
What we have seen is that what happens when truckdrivers make a
mistake because of the lack of sleep, that lack of sleep increases
risk. We enacted these rest requirements to protect folks, to make
traveling on our highways just a bit safer. They are common sense. But
this safety provision is reversed in a spending bill, of all places.
I intend to raise this issue in the commerce committee next year and
hope to have the support--and I know I will--of the Senator who is now
presiding in the Senate.
It doesn't stop there. Look what they are trying to do to health
care. There is a provision in here that would gut part of the new
health care law that helps to keep insurance premiums stable. Why would
we want to make people pay more for health care? Do you want to score
some political points with your base? Do you want to do it on the backs
of millions of hard-working Americans who are already struggling to
make ends meet? Well, the American people deserve better. If we want to
change policy, let's have an open and honest debate on the issues, not
some backroom deals tucked into a spending bill.
But we are down to the moment of truth, and it is either this
spending bill--which in large part is very good. The alternative is
uncertainty and a stop-start kind of appropriations process that will
do no one any good.
It is essential for there to be financial fiscal certainty in the
funding of the government for the remainder of this fiscal year. So I
am going to vote for the bill.
As I conclude, I, too, want to say a word about the Senators who are
retiring, and I will make this very short.
I am glad the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is coming back
to the floor, and I will happily yield to her very wise stewardship.
Having already spoken about the extraordinary measures, I would just
mention one thing while she is here. I have told this to her privately.
Today I spoke to former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Kay
Bailey and I had the privilege of being in the right place at the right
time when this Nation's human space program was at a crossroads. There
was no direction. There was uncertainty and debate in the
administration as to what direction it would take, and the task fell to
Senator Hutchison and me to try to give that direction with passage of
the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.
That act has served as the template for the direction of NASA. It
needs to be updated with other authorization bills because that was 4
years ago. Yet there are Senators in this Senate who have prevented us,
when there is no other objection, from getting unanimous consent to
pass the NASA authorization update.
But there is a safety valve, and the safety valve is the Senator from
Maryland and the Senator from Alabama, as they have taken the template
of the 2010 NASA authorization bill and fleshed it out and put flesh on
the bones of the structure each year, including this bill.
I will speak at length at another time about our colleagues who are
all such personal friends of mine who are departing: Senator Hagan;
Senator Pryor--one of my best friends in the Senate, someone with whom
I have met in private prayer sessions each week we were in session;
Senator Begich; Senator Udall; and that mighty fighting force known as
Landrieu of Louisiana as well.
Some of our other retiring Senators I have had the privilege of
speaking to at the time they gave their farewell speeches on the floor.
I look forward to further comments.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to give an update. The leadership
on both sides of the aisle is negotiating the time and method by which
we will continue to proceed with this bill, the omnibus spending bill
for fiscal year 2015. But what I have been happy about is that people
have actually come to the floor to make presentations on the substance
of the bill, both pro and con and sometimes in the same speech. I think
that has been both enlightening and informative. I thank all of my
colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, for coming.
I would like to make a comment about my Subcommittee on Financial
Services and General Government. This is a subcommittee that has been
chaired by the very able Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Tom Udall. He has
done an outstanding job.
Much is being discussed about Dodd-Frank and Wall Street bailouts.
Are we throwing our soul into the fires of greed? I can appreciate the
passion and the concern because I, too, remember, as the Presiding
Officer said, that grim day when the leadership in the Bush
Administration kept telling us that fundamentally we are OK,
fundamentally we are OK. Well, there was nothing fundamental about our
American values being thrown under the bus, and more than that, really
we were very concerned that the entire economy of the United States
America could be at risk.
Now, I come from a family who are Roosevelt Democrats. My dear father
and mother opened a small neighborhood grocery store the year they were
married in Baltimore. That year was 1935. It was the height of the
depression, and this young couple--second generation immigrants--opened
a business. Years later when I had the opportunity to have
conversations with my father about the decisions made, what he did and
why, I said: Dad, why did you open a business in the middle of the
depression? We lived in a neighborhood where there were all these
working class people, men who--it was at that time primarily men--
worked at General Motors, worked at Bethlehem Steel, making steel or at
least hoping they would have jobs to make steel. The shipyards--we were
a blue-collar manufacturing town, and all those jobs were at risk with
high unemployment and the travesty of the Great Depression.
So I said: Dad, why did you do it? How could you have the verve to do
it? He said: I did it because I believed in
[[Page S6753]]
Roosevelt. I believed Roosevelt was going to lead us forward, and
Roosevelt was doing things with the banks where if you put a dollar in
you could get a dollar back out--the famous FDIC. Roosevelt was leading
the way, and I believed in Roosevelt, and Roosevelt believed in me.
They believed then that a President believed in them. I went for it.
Well, that wonderful grocery store was open to lots of people in good
times and bad. When there were good times, we were there. When there
were rough times in the community, my father dealt on credit. When my
father passed away from the ravages of Alzheimer's, over 700 people
came to his funeral. They all had a story for my two great sisters and
me.
So we are Roosevelt people. We do believe in the public institutions
and the safeguards that were created so many years ago to protect the
little guy and the little gal against gouging.
I believe in this bill. By and large and far from perfect we have
continued to do this.
This bill does protect the public and consumers by focusing on five
priority areas. It protects investors from fraud and manipulation of
financial markets. I will elaborate on that. It safeguards the
financial system from abuse and illegal practices, such as money
laundering and deciphering complex Tax Code provisions so taxpayers can
accurately file returns. It promotes a fair, safe, and robust
marketplace by preventing fraud and enforcing against it and other
unfair business practices. It works with small business by making sure
that our agencies that are in charge of enforcing the rules to protect
against abuse are funded.
Let's go to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Without
enforcement, you could have every law on the books, you could have
every good intention on the books, you can say that we are going to
stop it, but unless you fund the Securities and Exchange Commission and
the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and unless you also make sure
that the now Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is protected against
being defunded, you don't have a law.
So what did we do? We actually worked on a bipartisan basis. It took
a little shove from some of us Democrats, but both sides of the aisle
want to look out for the little guy. So, guess what. This legislation
that is being so scrutinized needs also to take a look at the fact that
it includes $1.5 billion so that the Securities and Exchange Commission
can actually do its job. This funding level is $150 million more than
it was in fiscal 2014. This will help protect investors, promote
capital formation, and maintain fair, honest, and efficient stocks and
securities. We funded the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Then there is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Farmers and
businesses use the futures market to manage risk as well as pensions
and endowments. They rely on the CFTC to properly monitor markets to
guard against fraud, manipulation, and systemic risk. They work to
bring more transparency and accountability into the futures and into
that derivative market that everybody has been talking about for
several days. So I don't want the derivative market to go wild. This is
not the wild West. So we made sure we put money in the Federal
checkbook so that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC,
would have the money it needs for enforcement. The funding level is
actually $35 million more than in fiscal year 2014. It is more money
than 2014 to make sure the needed staffing and sophisticated
technologies are in place to foster open competitive and financially
sound futures and the swap markets.
A lot has been said about that swap market, right? We are worried
about it, too. We are absolutely worried about derivatives. We are
worried about the exploitation and manipulation of derivatives. But you
can have section 716, whatever that number is--and I am not
trivializing it; people worked very hard to create that legislation--
but unless you fund the enforcement agency, what does it mean?
Now, for whatever we did or didn't do, we actually put money in to
keep these agencies functioning. I am really proud of that. I am
absolutely proud of that.
A lot has been said about backroom deals and secret negotiations: Why
can't we do this out in the open? Guess what. Every single rider that
we faced--98 riders that came over for us to deal with in our
conference report--all passed the House of Representatives. They all
passed the House of Representatives. They had mark-ups in full
committee. They had debate on the floor. They passed them.
The so-called 716 problem that has everyone concerned--and it has me
concerned--passed the House of Representatives. They supported it by
passing it 292 to 122. There was nothing secret about it when they
passed it in the House. Seventy Democrats voted for it. It was dumped
in our lap. It was also dumped in our lap with several other riders in
that area, but we had a total of 98. So when people say in middle of
the night, every rider that came over that was so controversial had
come over from the House--very few came from the Senate, very few--and
we had to deal with them.
In the financial services subcommittee alone, where Mr. Udall was the
subcommittee chairman, we had six of these--six. They were tough. But
you know what. We were able to deal with them. There was a whole rider
to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau weaker by taking away
its mandatory funding. We stopped the weakening of the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau that the wonderful Senator from
Massachusetts had stood up for. We protected it. We protected the
agency, and we protected its money.
Also there was this whole attempt on a rider from the House to stop
the IRS from implementing the Affordable Care Act. We were able to deal
with that and eliminate that. Then there was the SEC. There was an
attempt to make sure that legislation would have affected the investors
by making sure we prevented the securities exchange with the fiduciary
standard of care for brokers. We also prevented the Treasury from a
rider that would have stopped the Treasury from designating certain
insurance companies as too big to fail. So it was not like we were
asleep at the switch here. It is not like we were all sitting around
saying, oh, Wall Street, our dear friends--these were hard fights.
So, what did we do? This is the Appropriations Committee. We would
have preferred to do an individual bill, open a debate. But guess what.
It wasn't meant to be. We had to fund it. We had to deal with all 11
committees and with Homeland Security on a continuing resolution, and
we worked, we debated, we argued, we fought. We won some, and we lost
some. One we did lose. This is the subject of great controversy and
debate here. But I want everybody to know it was one out of six. It is
a big one, but it is one out of six. And I want everyone to know we
added 11 percent more for the Securities and Exchange Commission to do
their job in enforcement. We added 15 percent more to the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission to do their job. Every one of those poison
pill riders to shrink the effectiveness of Dodd-Frank was voted on in
the House and came over, just like the controversial one on gutting
section 716. I will repeat: That passed the House 292 to 122, with 70
Democrats voting for it. That doesn't make it right. That doesn't make
it right, but it is not like we invented it. It is not like we brought
this up in a secret backroom deal.
So I want everybody to know, when they look at what we did in the
financial services, we did what I think my father would have wanted me
to do: Make sure that these institutions that were created to enforce
the law against fraud and gouging investors, taking advantage of the
taxpayers--I think we have done our job by making sure they were funded
adequately to do the enforcement job we asked them to do. Second, out
of six riders that would have really limited or handicapped the
enforcement to protect investors or to implement other laws such as the
Affordable Care Act, we were able to achieve, I think, some significant
victories.
So, I want the record to show this. Are we a quiet committee? Yes.
Did we work? Oh, yes, we did work. You know the secret meetings
everybody likes to talk about over the next several days, do you know
when they occurred? They occurred this summer when we were trying to
get the bill ready to come to
[[Page S6754]]
the floor and we were stopped in September, when everybody worked on
weekends, when we went out at Thanksgiving, when both that Senate
Republican staff and the Senate Democratic staff worked through the
weekend. So while everybody else was having a good time eating pumpkin
pie, they worked all the way up to Thursday night and were back on the
job Friday so we would not have a government shutdown and so the
government would not be on autopilot.
If you don't like what we did and the way we did it, then let me and
Senator Cochran--for whom I have so much respect--get back to regular
order. I need everybody who is cranky about this--and I don't dispute
the validity of their concerns because I share them myself, but I have
won some, I lost some, but I sure fought for them all--and don't like
the process, then why did they stand for this process? I wanted to
bring up individual bills. The vice chairman--the gentleman from
Alabama, Senator Shelby--wanted to bring up individual bills. We were
bringing them up.
We held 60 hearings in 60 days on these topics so that we could have
regular order and the Senate could consider them one at a time. So for
everyone who is concerned, I am ready for a new process. I have been
trying to do this for a couple of years now. Now we will be under
Senator Cochran's watch, and I will talk more about the process later.
I know there are other Senators waiting to talk, but I would like to
say a word to Senator Cochran. I have been informed that his beloved
and dear wife of so many years, Rose, has passed away. I personally
want to express my condolences, and I want to do it for several
reasons: one, just as a Member of the Senate, we should be concerned
about one another and what other Members are going through.
I also wish to express my gratitude to Rose herself. When I came to
the Senate--now many years ago--there were only two women in the
Senate, Senator Nancy Kassebaum, a wonderful Republican Senator from
Kansas, and myself. When I came, I was welcomed in the Senate. As the
Democratic woman, I often said although I was by myself, I was never
alone. I had Senator Paul Sarbanes, Senator Ted Kennedy, and Senator
Bob Byrd, who helped me learn the ropes of the Appropriations Committee
that I now chair.
I also had some other special help from the women of the Senate--the
spouses of the Senate. There were only Senator Nancy and myself in
those days, but the spouses of the guys in the Senate really reached
out to me, and the Southern women were particularly gracious to help me
learn the ropes--even learn about the building and how to maneuver here
in so many ways.
Senator Howell Heflin's wife, Mike; Sam Nunn's wife, Colleen; and
then there was Rose. She was vivacious, charming, fun, and savvy. We
often took trips together. Thad and I were on the NATO Committee, and
it was always Rose who said, come on, Barb, come with us. Not only did
she make sure I was included, she made sure that I was welcomed.
It was the sense of hospitality that made me think, my gosh, what a
wonderful institution. We are not Democrats or Republicans, we are
working together. The Senators were working together, the spouses were
welcoming. It was not so much a club as it was a family. I wish we
could get back to that.
Rose died from Alzheimer's. I spoke earlier about my father. My
father died from Alzheimer's, so I know what Senator Cochran went
through. Even when an illness is so ravaging, so cruel, where you hope
that death is either anticipated, or part of your heart even hopes for
it, when it comes, you just can't believe it.
I know he is going through his own grief, but I want him to know that
in his grief. I not only want to express my condolences, but I want to
express my gratitude to Rose, who made me feel so welcome and made me
feel like the Senate was a family. I hope we can get back and honor her
memory and act more that way.
Mr. President, as chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice, Science, CJS,
Appropriations Subcommittee to discuss funding in the 2015 omnibus
bill, I am pleased to have worked with Senator Shelby on this bill. He
is a true partner.
The CJS bill totals $50.1 billion in discretionary spending. That is
$1.5 billion below the 2014 level of $51.5 billion. Our bill focuses on
two priorities: jobs and the Economy and keeping communities safe. We
used those priorities to guide all our funding decisions, from Federal
law enforcement to space exploration.
The bill provides $8.5 billion for the Department of Commerce, which
is $286 million more than 2014 level of $8.4 billion. The Commerce
Department keeps America open for business--helping businesses to keep
the jobs they have, and helping entire industries to create new jobs.
The department works with business to promote business. Protecting
patents, promoting trade, and providing economic development projects
in every state.
The bill includes strong support for manufacturing. The National
Institute of Standards and Technology is funded at $864 million,
creating the standards that drive new technologies and new industries
and make household products safer and more reliable. The Omnibus also
includes the ``Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act'',
which creates public-private partnerships that revitalize U.S.
manufacturing in areas such as nanotechnology, photonics,
microelectronics.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is funded at $3.4 billion in
this bill, which is $434 million more than last year's level of $3
billion. This funding means the USPTO will hire 1,000 new patent
examiners, reducing the patent backlog, resulting in shorter wait times
for companies seeking patents and sending new ideas out to markets.
USPTO protects American ideas.
The Economic Development Administration is funded at $250 million,
providing funding for local projects like, water infrastructure for new
hospitals which support thousands of local workers. Funding for EDA
also provides grants for projects, such as those through the Trade
Adjustment Assistance for Firms, that promote infrastructure and
innovation, setting our small businesses up for success. Every $1
issued in EDA grants leverages $10 in local investment and creates jobs
in our home States, not in DC.
Commerce Department also promotes American goods and services around
the world, supporting more than 11 million jobs in the U.S. I support
President's pivot to Asia, but I believe that if we can put guns in
Southeast Asia, we can put Commercial Service Officers there too to
create new markets for American products and create American jobs. So
this bill puts more Commercial Service Officers on the front lines
getting products from American small businesses into the hands of
buyers around the world, including markets like Asia and Africa where
it's difficult for new companies to do business.
Commerce doesn't just promote American business, it also protects
communities. The National Weather Service warns Americans to get out of
the way when hurricanes, tornadoes and other severe storms threaten our
communities. Accurate weather information is important to every mom
trying to get a kid to school, every school superintendent trying to
decide whether to close school, and every state emergency coordinator
trying to decide when to deploy snow plows. Deploy too early and
communities waste money. Deploy too late and roads and highways become
commuting catastrophes.
However, reliable weather data doesn't come from an App. That is why
our CJS bill includes more than $3 billion for keeping flagship weather
satellites on-track and on-budget, and keeps our weather forecasting
offices fully staffed and ready to make sure it gives citizens the
weather predictions they need.
The Omnibus provides $28 billion for the Justice Department. That is
$393 million more than 2014 level of $27.7 billion, and $156 million
more than the President's request. The Justice Department's mission is
to keep America safe from crime and terrorism, to protect communities
and families, and to administer justice fairly. The bill funds key law
enforcement and prosecution agencies including: FBI; Drug Enforcement
Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives;
U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Attorneys.
[[Page S6755]]
We can't have strong, vibrant communities unless they are safe. I
have heard from Senators from every state about the rise of heroin.
Heroin is relatively inexpensive--$10 a hit. It is readily available
and highly addictive. The Department of Health and Human Services
reported that heroin use rose 79 percent nationwide between 2007 and
2012. We need to take action now so the bill funds several programs
that tackle the heroin problem.
That is why the bill funds a new anti-heroin task forces with $7
million of grants for State and local law enforcement to investigate
distribution of heroin in an effort to keep these drug dealers off of
our streets. The bill also funds residential drug treatment with $10
million so that when drug offenders are released from jail, they don't
relapse. Finally, the bill provides $11 million for Prescription Drug
Monitoring that helps States monitor and prevent those who ``doctor
shop'', getting real time info to police and doctors to prevent
overdoses and showing where overdoses are occurring so police can see
patters and stop drug rings.
I am proud to include $430 million in this Omnibus for Violence
Against Women Act programs. This is a record funding level for VAWA
grants to prevent and prosecute rape, and help women escape their
abusers.
Too many women are being doubly assaulted, first by a predator, then
by a broken system that fails to test DNA evidence. A Justice
Department investigation found 400,000 rape test kits sitting on
shelves and in police lockers. This bill tries to break the back of the
backlog by funding proven grants to test DNA in crime labs, such as
$125 million for programs like Debbie Smith DNA Grants, and $41 million
for new grants to test rape kit in police storage. These new grants
will not only test kits but also reform the system so rape victims
aren't victimized twice.
The bill also triples funding for the Crime Victims Fund to $2.36
billion, which will go to help victims of violent crime. This is an
increase of $1.5 billion over the fiscal year 2014 level of $745
million. States can help more victims pay their medical bills and get
counseling and legal assistance
The Science portion of the CJS bill supports jobs and the economy by
driving innovation. The bill provides $25 billion for science agencies:
NASA and the National Science Foundation. This funding for innovation,
research and discoveries creates American ideas, American products, and
American jobs in the private sector.
The National Science Foundation is funded at $7.3 billion in this
bill, $172 million more than the 2014 level. NSF will be able to fund
290 more competitive grants in 2015, supporting 4,100 more technicians,
scientists, and students. NSF research and education programs provide
scholarships to the next generation of Cyber warriors, bridge and
building engineers, and chemistry laboratory technicians. STEM
education builds jobs and builds an opportunity ladder for students.
NASA is funded at $18 billion. This will provide for a balanced space
agency with reliable space transportation, cutting-edge aeronautics,
and strong Space science. This funding directly supports NASA's high
tech workforce at Goddard Space Flight Center, Wallops Flight Facility
and other NASA facilities around the country: machinists grinding
precision parts for spacecraft exploring the galaxy; computer operators
compiling data used to make forecasts or understand the big bang;
engineers designing rockets that expand our reach to other planets; and
scientists rewriting the textbooks and inspiring our next generation of
explorers.
NASA funding also supports NASA's Turbo Contractors who build rockets
and satellites and design computer systems, providing jobs.
The Omnibus is not just a spending bill, it is also a reform bill.
Appropriators are shrewd stewards of federal funds, getting value for
every taxpayer. The CJS Subcommittee puts a premium on oversight,
inviting Inspectors Genera to testify at every hearing. The CJS bill
includes robust funding for IGs who help us root out waste, fraud,
abuse, and mismanagement. IGs give us good ideas for how to save money
in areas like addressing growth in the prison population and improving
management of the Census. CJS has dealt with its share of techno-
boondogles, such as 2010 Census handhelds, satellite costs, and IT
systems that never worked. To prevent techno-boondoggles, the bill
includes early warning systems when costs begin to escalate, audits of
grants and contracts, specific IG and GAO oversight of costly items
like the 2020 Census, weather satellites, the James Webb Space
Telescope, the patent backlog, and Crime Victim Fund spending.
This Omnibus is a good bill, with balanced spending. It protects
community safety, keeping the thin blue line from getting thinner and
making our weather forecasts better. The bill invests in jobs and the
economy, generating new ideas through research and discoveries and
creating markets for more American products throughout the world.
I urge my colleagues to support the omnibus.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Donnelly). The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise to speak tonight in support of the
omnibus appropriations package that Senator Mikulski, the Chair of our
Appropriations Committee, has spoken at great length about, and that
Senator Cochran has also dedicated so much of his time and effort and
energy to, and that so many Members of this Chamber have contributed
to. There are questions on the minds of my constituents from the home
State of Delaware and questions on the minds of colleagues of mine who
have spoken earlier this evening about this very large package--this
$1.014 trillion spending bill--appropriations package.
There have been questions raised about some specific provisions--an
issue here about pensions, an issue there about Dodd-Frank and swaps,
an issue about an environmental concern. There are a few issues that
have Members--particularly of my caucus--who are very concerned. I have
messages coming in to me in my office from social media and email
saying: Why on Earth would you support this? My Senator, Chris Coons
from Delaware, why would you support this?
We are going into the holiday season and I want us to take a few
minutes and look at what is actually in this package, to unwrap it a
little bit and to better understand why on Earth I would stand on this
floor and speak in favor of this package.
You have heard of the hard work of our Appropriations Committee
Chair. What you don't know is the tireless and determined and dedicated
work of all of the Appropriations Committee members and staff who,
across 12 different subcommittees, held more than 60 different hearings
to hammer out provision after provision, department after department,
and it is difficult sometimes to know what that means. Let me put this
in some context.
First, in terms of bad avoided and good invested. In terms of bad
avoided, the version of this that came over from the House--11 full
appropriations bills out of 12 that had within it all sorts of
provisions. We call them riders because they are provisions that ride
on top of the underlying appropriations bill.
You have heard about some of these riders that have been defeated and
beaten back. It is not one or two or three. They cover all the same
areas where concerns have been raised by colleagues in my caucus--the
environment, protections for organized labor and labor concerns,
protections for the safety of our communities related to firearms,
protections for the safety and soundness and transparency of our
financial system through preserving the Dodd-Frank act, preserving a
woman's right to choose and protecting the implementation of the
Affordable Care Act.
Dozens and dozens of riders came over in the bill from the House,
which our committee Chair and her dedicated staff worked tirelessly to
remove from this bill, and you have heard about some of them in the
speech just concluded by Chair Mikulski.
There was everything from fish and wildlife rules to fiduciary
rulemaking, from issues around union elections to concerns about the
strength and ability of the ATF to keep our community safe,
strengthening and supporting the CFPB and SEC and their ability to
enforce Dodd-Frank or ensuring a woman's right to choose. The actions
of our committee Chair ensure that these dozens and dozens of bad--from
our perspective--riders were removed from the bill.
[[Page S6756]]
Now we stand here on the verge of the end of the authority of the
government to continue to function, and we have a package in front of
us, and we have two choices. The choices are simple and clear. If we do
not pass this omnibus, we will continue government by crisis,
government by continuing resolution, government by chip shot down the
lane, and we will fund the government for a temporary 3-month
extension, and then this entire package will be put back together, not
by a Democratic Senate and a Republican House, but by Republicans on
both sides of this Capitol. We won't have one or two or three riders
from the perspective of my caucus to be concerned about, we will have
dozens and dozens. All of this that has been removed and taken out of
the package by the hard work of our committee Chair and her staff will
be right back in the mix.
If we turn away from enacting this package, we will do two things: We
will fail to give the certainty and clarity and predictability to our
government agencies and entities that they will have authorization and
funding through next September, and we will face a package toxic--far
more difficult for us to accept. It will have dozens and dozens of
problems riddled throughout it, and frankly, everyone in my caucus, I
expect, will vote against it and perhaps the President will even veto
it. We cannot let the perfect or the ideal be the enemy of the good.
I will take a few minutes and talk about what there is in this
package that is good because you only heard speeches tonight that have
highlighted concerns and focused in on the three or four provisions
that cause great alarm or concern to all of us who are on my side of
the aisle. I don't think there has been quite as much exposition as
there should be about what there is in this package that I hope to
unwrap for you that is actually good.
Why would I be standing here, as the Senator from Delaware, defending
this hard-crafted, hard-wrought, hard-won package if it were not full
of things that are important for the working families of Delaware, for
our community and our country, and that didn't advance our core values?
Well, I will take a few minutes and touch on a couple of things that
I think bear your consideration.
Infrastructure. The bridges, the roads, the rails, the ports that
from the very founding of our Nation have been the work of the Federal
Government and that are woefully behind to the point where we are not
competitive globally and where we could put people to work right away
by infusing more responsible investment and upgrading our
infrastructure.
As far as rebuilding American infrastructure, this package includes
$54 billion for transportation and housing programs that communities
and States such as Delaware care deeply about. It is $1.8 billion more
than what passed in the House package.
This covers things from the TIGER grants program that encourages and
incentivizes and leverages cutting-edge investments in infrastructure
to funding for Amtrak. For the east coast of the United States, Amtrak
is such a vital means of transportation. It also includes funds for
harbor maintenance and dredging, which are so vital to our maritime
industries. This is just one of dozens of areas we could talk about
this evening.
It will put Americans back to work, it will make our country more
competitive, and it will give us more resources in these areas than we
would ever get from renegotiating this package from the ground up.
Second, there was an unfortunate story about my hometown of
Wilmington in the past week that drew real alarms about the murder rate
and violent crime rate. This is a pressing issue in my hometown of
Wilmington. There is real concern because we have a record murder rate
and a record gun violence rate in my town.
This omnibus package includes financial resources that will help
communities large and small all over this country keep themselves safe
with these sorts of targeted and wise Federal investments in State and
local law enforcement that we have come to rely on and that we need.
There is something called the Byrne Justice Assistance grant. When I
was a county executive, my county police department relied on that
critical program. There is $2.3 billion, which is $55 million more than
last year, for the Byrne Justice Assistance grants and will affect
States and localities all over the country.
Something that I fought hard for on this floor and I care about--the
bulletproof vest program that has saved the lives of law enforcement
officers in the small towns of Delaware and in our biggest cities. That
grant made it possible to fund for state-of-the-art vests that are
correct and appropriate and current and save officers' lives.
There is a regional information system called RISK that provides
current intelligence and data so that law enforcement can be more
effective regionally.
There is the implementation of Violence Against Women Act programs--
all of these are at least sustained or increased over previous years
and make the sort of investments that are vital for our communities and
their safety.
There is $1.1 billion in this omnibus package to help the ATF, FBI,
and DOJ fight gun violence, and that matters to my hometown. That
matters to the families who wonder whether what we are doing here is
relevant to them. To turn back from this omnibus and turn away from
those investments in keeping our community safe, I think is unwise.
There is more money for criminal enforcement by the ATF to fund straw
gun purchases and their investigation and their prosecution, to fund
keeping guns away from traffickers and criminals, to improve interstate
background checks, to train law enforcement for the responsible
carrying out of their public responsibility, to intervene and stop
active shooter situations in schools or in public facilities, and,
last, the sort of resources we need for the victims of crime.
There is $2.3 billion in this omnibus for helping the victims of
violent crime and their families to get access to badly needed
services. I could go on, but in the area of law enforcement and
criminal justice, there are investments that matter to me and that
matter to my hometown as we work together to fight violent crime.
Let me lastly take on two other areas. No. 1, I am on the Foreign
Relations Committee. I am concerned that if we turn away from this
package, the vital investment in our central ally, Israel, and in the
Iron Dome program, which has been shown to keep Israel safe, will not
be made; and the multibillion dollar investment in fighting the scourge
of Ebola in West Africa, at this moment when the tide is turning and we
have a chance to heal three nations and contain this plague, which
otherwise may get out, get loose, and become a global pandemic, will
not be made. We need to make these investments. To not do so now is to
put our children's future at risk. Imagine if we could go back in time
to where HIV/AIDS was just beginning to spread around the globe and for
a modest investment, with an international effort, we could have
contained it to just two or three countries, instead of the hundreds--
the thousands of communities across dozens of countries that have
suffered through HIV/AIDS now for nearly 25 years. If we fail to invest
in turning the tide in the fight against Ebola now, we put at risk the
future public safety of not just a continent, but the world.
We also have to be mindful of what this omnibus makes possible for
our health and our safety and our future. Entities most Americans don't
think about or haven't heard of that perform basic science research or
advanced research, from the National Science Foundation to the National
Institutes of Health--institutions that are doing cutting-edge, world-
class science and developing the cures and the treatments for
everything from Alzheimer's to cancer--we continue to sustain and
support investment with billions of dollars in these areas in this
bill. Again, to walk away from this package means to wrap back up and
put away the potential for enormous progress.
There is $172 million more for basic science research programs in
this bill over last year. It raises up to $7.3 billion the level of NSF
funding. That may sound abstract and disconnected from our lives at
home, but in my State of Delaware, that funds education, training, and
research at the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, and
in public schools
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across our State. At a time when we need science education and when we
need the outcomes, the fruits of our labors and research more than
ever, I think that is vital funding.
Last, there is an area that I have spoken about on this floor many
times in this Congress and that I am passionate about because it is how
I came up. I spent years in the manufacturing sector. As a young man
working in the private sector for a family manufacturing business, I
saw its power to create good, high-wage, high-skill jobs. Manufacturing
is an area where most of the research and development in this country
that is privately funded is done, and manufacturing is an area that
many mistakenly think we have lost our edge in and can never regain.
But the truth is quite different. Over the last 3 years, we have grown
more than 750,000 new manufacturing jobs in this economy, and those are
great jobs--jobs people can raise their families on, jobs that provide
a renewed growth back to the middle class. If we fail to invest in the
things that will make manufacturing grow in this country, we miss a
vital opportunity.
There is an entity called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. In
the scope of all of this, it is a tiny little program. But for the
dozens of small and medium manufacturers in Delaware that I have
visited and that the Delaware Manufacturing Extension Partnership has
helped, it makes an amazing difference. It helps them understand how to
compete internationally. It helps them with upgrading the skills of
their workforce. It helps them with deciding what capital equipment to
buy.
I have stood on manufacturing floors from Bridgeville to Lewes, from
Dover to Claymont, and heard stories of companies transformed by this
powerful investment of Federal services--a public-private partnership
that really, genuinely makes a difference.
Lastly, in this provision of the bill, there isn't just renewed
funding for the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, or
NIST--a provision that includes the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
and the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Program--there is also
renewed opportunity for the funding and sustainment of manufacturing
hubs, a strategy that our competitor, Germany, has used very well and
very wisely to have doubled their GDP in manufacturing--a strategy that
this administration has led on and that we hope to emulate, and where I
think the investments made in this bill are wise and lay the foundation
for middle-class job growth and prosperity.
There are a dozen other areas I could speak to this evening, where
throughout this bill the investments made have been cut in some areas
that needed to be reduced and increased in others that are wise for our
States and our communities.
Some from my home State, watching the speeches on this floor earlier
this evening, have contacted me and said, Why on Earth would you vote
for a bill with this or this or this provision that concerns me? It is
a fair question. I hope in these few minutes I have helped my people
hear that our choice is not between a perfect bill from the perspective
of Democrats in the Senate or the country and a terrible bill, but a
choice between a great bill and no bill at all--a choice between
returning to regular order and ending what has been a nearly 4-year
pattern of government by crisis, by short-term extension, by chip shot,
and by near default, and instead respect and honor the very hard work
of the dozen subcommittees of this great Appropriations Committee, and
move forward a package that strengthens our country, that honors our
veterans, that invests in our future, that lifts manufacturing, that
makes us safer and healthier, and that does the job of bringing America
into the future.
That is why I will be voting for this package, and that is why I hope
all of my colleagues will consider doing the same.
Thank you, Mr. President.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will not be voting for the bill.
I am frustrated that we have gone through now 8 years of domination
by the majority leader in the Senate, denying votes on even simple
amendments as part of the entire funding of the discretionary accounts
of the United States of America. There is over $1 trillion in spending,
not one amendment, refusing to bring up the bills individually as they
should have been, refusing to pass the bill by September 30 when the
fiscal year ends, and appropriations should be done before that date to
fund the next fiscal year.
So what do we do? Well, they didn't want to vote because an election
was coming up. They didn't want to vote the previous year when an
election was coming up, I guess 18 months later, so there is always
some excuse. But the fundamental thing that has occurred in this Senate
is the majority leader, through the device of filling the tree, places
himself in control, places himself in a position to block amendments to
any bill. That is what he has done, to a degree that has never before
been done in the U.S. Senate.
Chairman Mikulski says she looks forward to getting on a better path
next year under Republican leadership, so we will have a more regular
process. Maybe the Republicans will allow the minority Democratic Party
next time to have rights that have been denied us for all of these
years. This is a fact. People can spin it any way they want to. I have
been here for 18 years, and I know what is happening. We have
demolished the collegiality in the Senate. It has caused the kind of
frustration and tension that has resulted in these failures to pass
bills.
So what do they do? They cobble the entire funding of the United
States together in one omnibus bill, bring it up at the last minute,
and say, If you don't agree to vote it out without getting any
amendments, we will accuse you of shutting the government down. We will
accuse you of shutting the government down. It is all your fault. For
some reason, our friends in the media seem to think that is true. And
if anybody has the gumption to stand up and object to this abusive
process, they are shutting the government down. What planet are we on?
Don't we know what really has happened?
So I have an amendment and I wanted to offer it to this bill. It
would simply say that Congress is going to fund the United States
government; we are going to fund the entire discretionary account in
this country, but we are not going to provide money to allow the
President of the United States to execute an unlawful, illegal amnesty.
He has already established a building across the river in Crystal City,
and they have ads out to hire 1,000 people, salaries up to $150,000.
And they are going to process people who are here unlawfully, give them
a photo ID, a Social Security number, and a work authorization, and
allow them to participate in Social Security and Medicare. They will
allow them, if their incomes are low--and statistics tell us their
incomes are lower--they are entitled to child tax credits of $1,000 per
child and they are entitled to the earned income tax credit. Combined,
according to the recent article by David Frum in ``The Atlantic'', that
is almost $5,000 if you are a working person with a family of four
earning up to $40,000 a year--you will be entitled to a direct check. A
tax credit is not a tax deduction. It is a direct check from the
Treasury for an average of nearly $5,000. It is a stunning situation
that should not be happening.
So I just wanted to have an amendment that funds the government,
allows the country to go forward, but just say to the President: Mr.
President, we don't authorize any funding for this project. It can
easily be done. It has been done hundreds of times. In fact, that is
why Guantanamo prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, where the terrorists are
being held--that is why it has not been closed, because Congress has
told the President, who wants to close it, we are not going to allow
you to spend a dime to close that prison. It has been successful.
Because Presidents can't spend money not authorized by Congress, not
appropriated by Congress. He cannot spend that money. It is wrong. It
is actually a criminal offense to spend money. The Antideficiency Act
says that anyone who pretends to represent the U.S. Government and
spends money not appropriated by the Congress of the United States--not
authorized by the Congress to be spent--violates a law, because the
Congress has the power of the purse.
We don't have to fund everything the President asks for. We don't
have to
[[Page S6758]]
fund programs we think are bad, that are unworthy of funding. What is
Congress for? Otherwise, it is a rubberstamp that cannot make an
independent judgment. We absolutely have a duty, a responsibility to
not fund a program that violates the law, violates the Constitution; to
allow the President to eviscerate and fail to enforce huge chunks of
our immigration law and, at the same time, allow him to create an
entirely new scheme of immigration law.
So the President's Executive amnesty say: I am not going to enforce
the law with regard to 5 million people. And not only that, the law
says if a person is here unlawfully, they can't work; and the law says
if a person is a businessperson, they can't hire somebody who is here
unlawfully--I am not going to enforce that, either. In fact, I am going
to go even further. I am going to get an office in Crystal City and I
am going to bring in 1,000 people and we are going to give the people
who are here unlawfully, as defined by the American people through
their Congress--I am going to give them a certificate, a photo ID that
says they are here lawfully. And I am going to say despite the fact
that a person is not supposed to work here if they are here unlawfully,
I am going to give them the right to work. And, by the way, they are
not entitled to Social Security or Medicare, and I am going to give
that to them, too. By the way, when they filed their tax return using
that Social Security number, if their income falls in this range--up to
$40,000--they can get a tax credit and a child tax credit. And for
people making, say--a typical family making $40,000 and with 2 children
will not owe any income tax.
They are not going to owe any income tax. What they are going to do
is file their return and wait for their $5,000 check from Uncle Sam. At
this time I am on the Budget Committee, ranking Republican, and I can
tell you: we are going broke. The last thing we need to do is put
Social Security and Medicare in a worse condition. The last thing we
need the country to do is for our Treasury Department to be sending out
billions of dollars in tax credits to people who have come to the
country unlawfully. We have to borrow money. Do we not know?
We borrow money every day in huge amounts to keep this government
afloat, and all this is going to do is add more. I am not happy about
it. I don't think the American people are happy about it. Poll after
poll, election after election--in November people said they were going
to come to Washington and do better. People who have been complicit in
this kind of activity are not going to be here next year, many of them.
I think Congress needs to listen to the American people. What is
wrong with what they are telling us? What is wrong with them saying we
want a lawful system of immigration? We don't care what Big Business
wants. We don't care what the special activist groups want. We want a
lawful system of immigration that is fairly applied and we can be proud
of and that serves our interests; that helps my child, my husband, and
me have a job. We would like to see wages rise. We expect the people in
Congress to look after us, not people who violate our laws.
Let me share some further thoughts that I believe are important. A
lot of people are ignoring this. They don't want to hear about it. They
don't believe it. They have taken the view they are going to dismiss
it. I want my colleagues to be aware of this, and I intend to continue
to press this issue:
The U.S. Department of Commerce informs us that ``today's typical 18-
to 34-year-old earns about $2,000 less per year, (adjusted for
inflation), than their counterpart in 1980.''
It is a painful and a sharp decline for young Americans.
What has happened to the labor markets since 1980? Data from the U.S.
Census Bureau offers this insight:
From 1930 to 1950, the foreign-born population of the
United States declined from 14.2 million to 10.3 million . .
. [but] Since 1970, the foreign-born population of the United
States has increased rapidly due to large-scale immigration.
Let me just stop here and say America has been generous in this
immigration policy. We have the largest number of people entering our
country on a lawful immigrant status than any country in the world by
far.
What I want us to do is to understand that we need to ask ourselves
how many people the United States can absorb without damaging the wages
and job prospects of unemployed, underemployed Americans.
The U.S. Census Bureau statistics report that in 1980, the foreign-
born population stood at 14.1 million. But from 1980 through 2013, the
immigrant population tripled from 14 million to more than 41 million.
The large increase in the size of the immigrant population is the
direct product of policies in Washington, creating both an expanded
lawful system and an expanded unlawful system.
Legal immigration during the 1980s averaged around 600,000 people a
year. But since 1990 through today, it has averaged about 1 million
annually--meaning the annual rate almost doubled. The sustained large-
scale flow of legal immigration--overwhelmingly, this group are lower-
wage and lower-skilled--has placed a substantial downward pressure on
wages.
I don't think there is any doubt about that. Some try to ignore it
and talk around it, but I think the facts are clear. We have right now
a very slack labor market with more jobseekers than jobs. The White
House has itself estimated that there are three unemployed Americans
today for each one job opening. We don't have a shortage of workers. We
have a shortage of jobs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that
in the construction industry there are seven unemployed persons for
each available job opening.
This is huge. Some in the construction industry said they need more
foreign workers, even as these statistics shows large numbers of
unemployed American construction workers.
This large-scale immigration flow, paired with the forces of
globalization and automation and robotics, has made it ever more
difficult for American workers to earn a wage that can actually support
a family.
Consider this report just published in The New York Times.
Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age
men--those 25 to 54 years old--who are not working has more
than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More
recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women
without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States,
which had one of the highest employment rates among developed
nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of
the list.
Continuing the quote from the New York Times--
At the same time, it has become harder for men to find
higher-paying jobs. Foreign competition and technological
advances have eliminated many of the jobs in which high
school graduates . . . once could earn $40 an hour, or more.
That is what the New York Times is telling us. It is not just a
recent development. It is a development of some years. Since the end of
the 1960s--the timeframe identified by the article, during this period
we have seen this decline in employment--the share of the U.S.
population that is foreign born increased from less than 5 percent to
more than 13 percent. As a total number, the size of the foreign-born
population has quadrupled over the last four decades.
Due to current Washington policy, these figures are only going to
rise. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the
foreign-born population could reach as high as 58 million within a
decade based on recent trends.
Again, let's be frank and talk honestly. Prime Minister David Cameron
of the United Kingdom recently said it is not wrong to talk about this.
Our Nation needs to talk about the wages of its people, the financial
status of its people, and it is all right and proper to ask the
question of whether immigration can impact that in an adverse way.
I just want to say I am not being anti-immigrant. There are many good
people who want to come be a part of America. I am not denying that.
What I am saying is that we are hurting, not helping, those who come to
America when we bring in more people than there are jobs. We also don't
have jobs for those who are American-born. Now we are bringing in
millions more. We need to ask ourselves honestly: Is this a good policy
for the Republic which we are supposed to serve? Only an adjustment in
policy, I suggest, will change this trajectory--just as policy
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has changed early in the 20th century to allow labor markets to be
tightened and wages go up. This is an issue that affects all residents,
our foreign born who are here wanting to work and the U.S. born. Among
those most affected by the size of these large immigrant flows are the
new immigrants themselves who want to get a good job that pays a good
salary.
By continuing to admit these large numbers over such a sustained
period of time, many immigrants themselves are unable to find jobs. For
instance, less than half of the immigrants who entered California since
2010 are participating in the labor force. They are not finding jobs.
There are not enough jobs for them. Half the entire number of
immigrants who entered California since 2010 are not working. In Los
Angeles, where 4 in 10 residents are immigrants, one-third of those who
recently arrived are living in poverty.
We have an obligation to those whom we lawfully admit not to create a
circumstance where, by admitting continuing to admit many more, we are
diminishing their job prospects. A sound immigration policy must serve
the needs of people who are lawfully here and who are native-born. That
has to be the primary focus of what we are doing. This discussion has
to be had. We can't ignore this. We can't make like we can absorb an
unlimited number of workers; we don't have jobs for the workers we
have.
Immigrants and native-born workers are also competing with a large
flow of temporary guest workers. Temporary guest workers are brought
into the United States from abroad for the explicit purpose of taking a
job, not on a path to green card and citizenship. They come just to
work for a limited period of time. Each year the United States admits
roughly 700,000 guest workers. They fill jobs that otherwise might go
to people here. Of those 700,000 guest workers, roughly about 10
percent are in agricultural work. A lot of people think the guest
workers are working on a farm somewhere. That is not so. Only about 10
percent are. Ninety percent take jobs in almost every industry in
America, from good-paying construction jobs to coveted positions at
technology firms in Silicon Valley.
The pressures on the middle-class are great. We have a large flow of
permanent immigration and temporary workers. The elimination of many
good-paying jobs at factories and plants due to advances in robotics,
the shedding of manufacturing jobs due to overseas competition, a
sluggish and overregulated economy that is growing too slow to keep
pace with the population growth and the high costs of energy, health
care, income and household goods. Policymakers in Washington need to be
reducing the burdens on working families, not making their lives more
difficult--but that is exactly what we have been doing.
Professor George Borjas--an top expert on these matters who has
worked on them for decades--estimates that high immigration flows from
1980 to 2000 reduced the wages of lower skilled American workers by 7.4
percent--about $260 per month--as a direct result of the size and flow
of immigration from 1980 to 2000. I don't think it is defensible for
colleagues to say it will help wages to bring in more people. That's
why the Congressional Budget office said the Senate immigration bill,
rejected by the House, would have reduced wages for the next dozen
years.
Professor Borjas estimates a current net loss of $402 billion for
American workers who compete with foreign labor.
Mr. President, $402 billion. Furthermore, as documented for the
Center for Immigration Studies, relying exclusively on government data,
all net employment gains among the working-age since the year 2000 have
gone to immigrant workers--net gains.
This remarkable trend occurred even as the number of working-age
native-born Americans increased by nearly 17 million. So the 17 million
is a dramatic figure. There is not a decline in native workers, as some
businesses try to say. Oh, we have a demographic decline. We have to
deal with it. The figures show we are still growing in the working-
ages, a nearly 17 million increase in the age group since 2000.
Here are a few more statistics. There are not temporary trends but
prolonged trends. Nearly one in four Americans in their prime working
years--25 to 54--is not working. This includes 10 million American men
and 18 million American women.
Real, median weekly earnings are lower today than in the year 2000.
Median family income is down $4,000 since November of 2007. Our wages
and earnings for families have declined dramatically--$4,000 is almost
350 a month.
So it is in this context that we must consider the economic fallout
from the President's unconstitutional Executive amnesty.
In plain violation of law and the express will of the American
people, the President has ordered 5 million work permits to be issued
to those illegally here. Those illegal workers will now be able to
compete for any job in America. They can now compete for jobs with the
power company, the county commission, city hall, working at
construction companies--good-paying jobs for which they are not now
eligible to compete.
The President's order will give illegal immigrants unfettered access
to compete for any job in America. If they are not hired at city hall
because the mayor thinks he should not hire someone who entered the
country illegally, they can file a lawsuit and demand to be hired. They
have been given lawful status ordered by the President of the Unite
States, an ID card with a Social Security number and a worker
authorization. They will be participating in Social Security and
Medicare, weakening those programs which are already in deep financial
trouble.
So this illegal amnesty is part of a broader immigration vision from
the President, legislation he endlessly champions, a bill written
behind closed doors with billionaire activists and open-borders
enthusiasts and immigration lobbyists. This legislation surges
immigration levels every year. That is his vision.
After four decades of record immigration, the President's bill,
supported unanimously by Senate Democrats, stopped in the Republican
House, tripled the issuance of permanent residency cards over 10 years.
In the next 10 years, had that bill passed, it would have tripled the
number of people given permanent legal status in America.
The Center For Immigration Studies explains that this legislation
would, in a mere 6 years from today, increase the percentage of the
U.S. population born abroad to a level never before reached in American
history. And by 2033 nearly one in six residents, under this plan,
would be foreign-born. This is a dramatic and historic change in our
immigration policy. Unsurprisingly, the nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office projected that the results of such legislation would be
lower wages, higher unemployment, and reduced per capita GNP.
All of this begs a simple question: Who is looking out for Americans?
Who is looking out for their interests, fighting to help them get a
better job and better pay, or working to help their communities climb
out of poverty? Who is looking out for their interests?
The immigration debate in our Nation's Capital is always centered, it
seems to me, on the needs of illegal immigrants, foreign workers, or
large employers. Is it not time, after decades of open immigration,
that we focus on what we can do to help Americans? Is not time to focus
on how we can grow their wages and improve their job prospects?
We have seen declining wages and higher unemployment. Is it not the
sensible and rational thing to just slow down a little bit, allow wages
to begin to rise some, assimilation to occur more effectively, and help
those who are already here today, including foreign immigrants who have
come to America, who are struggling to rise into the middle class? Will
this not help them be more successful, more prosperous, and flourish
better in America?
The American people have begged and pleaded for a lawful system of
immigration that serves the national interest--not special interests.
But the politicians have refused, refused, refused. This summer alone
the White House met 20 times, it was reported, with business
executives, amnesty lobbyists, and immigration activists to craft their
executive orders legalize people who are here unlawfully. They have
been meeting for years with those
[[Page S6760]]
groups. They have spent $1.5 billion, according to one independent
group, to promote their rejected amnesty legislation since 2007. But
you know who was not invited into that room? You were not invited into
that room. You, the American citizen, were not there. Do you not get a
say in these secret meetings?
We just had a meeting 2 days ago with sheriffs from all over America.
They said: Do not allow this unlawful amnesty to occur. They weren't
invited to these secret meetings either.
So the super-elites in Washington and on Wall Street dream of a world
without borders, a paradise, I guess, where little things like law and
rules and national boundaries are not a problem. Do not get in the way
of their wild chimera, their vision.
The only challenge these great global citizens face are these pesky
people called the voters who cling to the old-fashioned idea of a
nation as a home and a border as something real and worth protecting.
These elites, you see, know better.
If you are worried about your jobs or wages; if you are concerned
that the pace of immigration into your community is too fast and too
large; if you feel as though your needs are not being considered, well,
you are just a nativist, you see. You are selfish.
So when an election happens and the people rebel against this open-
borders agenda, there is really one thing for these wise elites to do:
They just impose their own law.
How Congress answers this challenge will shape the future of this
Republic. Will we defend and protect the people who sent us here, their
laws duly passed, their Constitution, and their communities, or do we
once again abandon them, give them lip service but no real action? I
pose that question to the body.
I suggest there is no purpose to our being here if it is not to serve
and protect and defend the loyal people who sent us here on their
behalf.
It is time for us to get busy.
I am deeply disappointed that the majority leader is blocking an
amendment that would deal with this matter. In the Senate, a Senator
from any State should be able to have an amendment that deals with the
crises of our time. We are being blocked once again. It denies
accountability. It is wrong. It is improper. The American people are
tired of it. And those who facilitate this conduct in the future will
hear that message clearly from the American people.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The American Dream
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I appreciate this opportunity to speak on
the floor tonight. People watching at home--to the extent there is
anyone watching at home tonight--but to those who have gathered here
and are still in the gallery watching the Senate, the Senate is
debating a budget. It is a massive budget. It is the largest in the
world in terms of any entity--I was about to say any government but of
any entity on the planet.
As of right now, if that budget is not passed I believe by tomorrow
night, the Federal Government will not have authority to keep operating
beyond the bare minimum. That is what the debate is about that you are
watching. We will see what is going to happen over the next few hours
in terms of ultimately getting a vote and what the leaders of the
respective parties have agreed on.
But what I wanted to talk about is related to the budget but goes
much deeper than that; that is, the state of America and the state of
our economy.
Last night I had the opportunity to come here and speak a little bit
about foreign relations and an international situation we were facing.
But I wanted to speak for a moment because that is what the budget is
about--it is about our domestic affairs. I think the budget is a
reflection of that.
You have heard a lot of different speeches here tonight--to the
extent you are watching--about different things that are happening in
our country. The Senator from Alabama spoke a moment ago about
immigration, but in talking about immigration, he talked about the
constraints that are upon the middle class. Before that, we have seen
others speak about issues. So at the end of the day, as we talk about
the budget, increasingly the debate is through the lens of those
factors that people are facing in their daily lives throughout this
country.
I always tell the story of my parents because, for me, it puts a
different framework to my vision of this country. My parents were very
poor. They grew up in another country. My father lost his mother when
he was 9 years old. He had to go to work literally the next day. He
would work for the next 70 years in Havana, Cuba.
My mother was one of seven girls who remembers that she never went
hungry, but she is pretty sure her parents did so that their children
would have enough to eat. She was raised by her father, my grandfather,
who was disabled as a young man. He had polio and struggled his whole
life to provide for his girls.
They came to America in 1956 in search of a better life. They came
here with nothing more than the dream of a better life and the hope of
a better life. They did not know anyone. They barely had any money.
They barely had any formal education. They arrived in this country in
1956. They never made a lot of money here. My father ended up settling
into a job as a bartender, at a hotel primarily. My mother was a
cashier. She was a stock clerk at Kmart. She worked as a maid at a
casino in Las Vegas. My parents never became rich, but my parents
achieved the American dream because the American dream is never about
how much money you make.
The American dream has always been about achieving happiness as you
define it. And while they weren't rich, my parents were able to afford
and own a home in a safe neighborhood--a neighborhood safe enough that
they would allow us, my sister and me, to walk to school when we lived
in Las Vegas.
My parents were able to retire with dignity. My parents--just a
generation removed from poverty and a lack of any formal education--
lived to see all four of their children go to college and have a life
much better than their own. They fully lived the American dream.
It is the American dream that has been possible because this Nation
was founded on the powerful idea that all people are created equal and
that all people deserve an equal opportunity to achieve happiness as
they define it.
That American dream isn't just a talking point. It defines us as a
nation and as a people. It makes us different, special, and, in my
opinion, better than any other nation that has ever existed.
But today something that troubles us is that American dream seems to
be eroding in the minds of way too many people, and we understand why.
There are people, when they open the newspaper every day and they
read--today is a perfect example. The Dow Jones closed over 300 points.
Wall Street is setting record profits.
They keep reading about how the economy is rebounding and
unemployment is down, but they don't feel any of this. They are working
as hard as they ever have, but their paychecks haven't gone up in more
than a decade. In the meantime, everything in life costs more.
Think about that. You are working hard, making less than ever
relative to how much things cost, and you are frustrated to read that
all these other people seem to be doing so great. Everybody keeps
telling you about how the economy is doing fantastically, and meanwhile
you are being squeezed in your own life. You can't get a pay raise,
there is nothing you can do about it, and everything costs more: your
rent payment, your health care, your children's education. This squeeze
is real and the middle class is feeling it.
We ask ourselves, but why is this happening? This is not just because
of a downturn. We had a very serious financial crisis in this country.
We had a very serious downturn.
But what I describe to you is not just a feature of that, because if
this were just a cyclical downturn, it would go up, down, and back up
again.
We have had a very dramatic change in the structure of our economy.
Our
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policies have not reacted to that, have not changed with those
structural changes that have happened in our economy.
Even in this debate about the budget, you will see evidence of that.
I didn't come to the floor to be critical of people who worked on it, I
know they have worked hard, but our policies do not reflect these
structural changes. They are very real.
In the 20th century, practically anybody who wanted a job in America
could find one. There were plenty of blue-collar jobs for people such
as my parents and there seemed to be plenty of white-collar jobs for
people such as their children. But in the 21st century many of those
jobs are gone. They have been sent overseas or they have been replaced
because of technology or innovation. New jobs have been created, but
they require skills that too many of our people still don't have.
In the 20th century, ours was a national economy. Your clients and
your competitors were halfway across town, maybe halfway across the
country.
In the 21st century, we operate in a global economy where your
customers, your clients, your investors, your competitors, and your
partners are just as likely to be halfway around the world as they are
halfway down the street. That has made a dramatic structural change to
our economy.
Last but not least, everything costs more. In the 20th century a
bartender and a maid could afford to own a home, own a car, take a
vacation once a year with their kids. If my parents tried to do today
what they did in 1956, they couldn't. Those jobs just don't pay enough
and all those things I just described cost so much more money.
We have to respond to these structural changes. We have to turn the
page on these old ideas and, quite frankly, on the leaders who have
those old ideas. We cannot continue to confront 21st century challenges
with 20th century strategies.
We need new leaders, and we need new ideas that respond to these deep
structural changes. For 4 straight years that I have been talking about
this in the Senate, the progress in that regard unfortunately has been
slower.
I didn't come here today to be overly partisan, but I know in 2008 a
lot of people thought that our current President would be that kind of
new leader, but that is not what we have gotten. They thought he would
be that kind of new leader because he talked about being a champion for
the middle class. He talked about a modern agenda of hope and change.
But that is not what we have received. Instead of focusing on working
families, he focused on things such as the liberal dream of government-
run health care.
He focused on radical environmental policies instead of focusing on
the middle class.
Instead of modern ideas, what we got was just old-fashioned big
government and crony corporatism. A startling example of it is how the
insurance companies have gamed ObamaCare.
Imagine for a moment if you were in a business and the government
came in with a law that said: We are going to make the people buy the
product that you sell. We are going to give them the money to buy the
product that you sell. By the way, if you lose money selling the
products, we are going to bail you out with taxpayer dollars.
That is what big insurance companies were able to get out of
ObamaCare. People are required to buy insurance, they get a subsidy to
buy that insurance, and if they lose that money, they get a bailout
with taxpayer dollars. That is outrageous, and it is not surprising
that the stock prices of big insurance companies have doubled since
ObamaCare passed.
Meanwhile, working Americans are paying more, higher deductibles,
higher copayments, higher premiums, and they are getting less coverage.
That is an example of corporatism.
Despite all this rhetoric that they are fighting on behalf of the
middle class, the past few years have been a bonanza for big business,
a bonanza for people who can hire the lawyers and the lobbyists to
navigate the complexities of government.
So it is very simple. If you can hire an army of lawyers and
lobbyists in Washington, DC, you get your priorities and bills like the
one that is before us today, or others, for that matter. But if you are
trying to start a business out of the spare bedroom of your home, if
you are a small businessperson who works 7 days a week, 16 hours a day
just to stay afloat, you can't hire the best law firm in Washington,
DC, to navigate those regulations. And you sure can't afford to hire a
lobbying firm to come here to write those laws to your advantage.
In fact, I would go farther and say that big government is a
competitive advantage for big businesses, because they know that the
bigger and more complicated the rules are, the harder it is for someone
new to come along and compete with them for that same business.
We have seen that time and again. I saw it during my time as a State
official, as the speaker of the State house in Florida, and I see it in
Washington, DC.
This is corporatism and both parties are guilty of it.
That is why it shouldn't surprise us that under the past 6 years of
this presidency, 95 percent of the income gains in this country have
gone to the top 1 percent of earners and 93 percent of Americans have
seen virtually no income growth in the past 6 years. Yet we continue to
see an effort to push policies from this administration that keeps us
on the same course. Here is the course that we are on--radical
environmental groups are going to get their way, their policies, and
their Executive orders written. Meanwhile, people who work at
factories, people who are dependent on energy jobs, they get nothing.
Public employee unions that are well represented and spend a lot of
money influencing government, they get all the rules they want from the
NLRB and the government. They get their help.
Do you know who doesn't? The UPS truckers, the plumbers, the
pipefitters, the electricians, and the construction workers. All these
elites who are going around begging for more government spending, they
are going to get their way in this bill from this administration--and
middle-class Americans who are working as hard as they ever had, they
get stuck with the tax bill to pay for it.
We can't keep doing this. If we keep doing this, we are going to lose
the American dream. We are going to lose what makes us different, and
we are going to lose what makes us special.
But I believe with all my heart that if we can turn the page on these
policies, not only can we save the American dream but we can have
another American century. To do that, there are three key things we
have to do, and I wish more of this was reflected in the bill before
us.
The first thing we need is we need better jobs. Jobs that don't just
pay more--and that is important, but jobs that provide enough
flexibility as well so that you do have time if you need to take time
off to go take your kids to a field trip or a doctor's appointment.
Do you know how many Americans out there can't take their kids to a
dental appointment because that requires them to take 2 hours off of
work? Do you know how many Americans don't have the flexibility to be
able to watch their son or their daughter at the Christmas pageant this
year in school because their job doesn't have flexibility?
These better jobs that I am talking about are jobs that pay more but
ultimately provide the flexibility so you have the time to be a better
spouse, a member of your community, and a better parent--and jobs that
won't disappear with the next advancement in technology, jobs that give
you an opportunity for promotion and upward mobility. These are the
kinds of jobs we need.
In order to have those jobs in America in the 21st century, we need
to become globally competitive. We are engaged in a global competition
with the rest of the world for these jobs. It is the economic olympics
every single day.
We can win that competition. We can win it if we had a Tax Code that
no longer made America one of the most expensive places in the world to
create those jobs. We could win it if we reformed our regulatory code
so that we are no longer such a burdensome place to create those jobs.
We could win it if we got our national debt under control, which scares
people from creating those jobs here because they believe we
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are headed for a debt crisis in the future.
We can win that competition if we fully utilize our energy resources
in a safe and responsible way. We have already seen the benefits of
American energy exploration, the jobs it creates, not only in energy
but in manufacturing.
You have already seen the benefits of American energy production in
the falling price of gasoline at the pump, and that has real-world
implications. Being from Florida, we expect that many more people are
going to take the drive to Disney World this winter because getting
there is a lot cheaper than it was a year ago. Ticket price is another
matter, but getting there is a lot cheaper than it was before. This has
real implications.
The other thing is we can win that competition, but we have to keep
our edge on innovation. We are the world's greatest innovators. We
can't lose that edge. By the way, winning that global competition
requires us to be globally engaged.
We must remain involved in global affairs. Strong American leadership
on this planet is a factor in allowing the world to have the prosperity
and the stability it needs for a rising middle class--people who can
afford to buy the things we sell, the products we offer, the services
we offer. We will benefit from that.
But creating more of those jobs is not enough. The second thing we
have to do is to make sure people have the skills for those new jobs
because these new jobs in the 21st century are going to require a
higher level of skill than ever before. The problem is we have an
archaic 20th century education model.
We tell kids in high school that the only way you will ever be
successful is you all have to get a 4-year degree. There is nothing
wrong with getting a 4-year degree, but it is wrong to tell children
and students in this country that is the only way to get ahead when we
know in the 21st century there are going to be millions of quality
middle-skilled, quality-paying jobs that require more than high school
but less than 4 years of college.
We have a system that does nothing, absolutely nothing, about that.
We don't offer nearly enough vocational problems in high school.
Why have we stigmatized jobs where people work with their hands, when
we know that we need airplane mechanics, electricians, plumbers, and
pipefitters? We need high-tech welders and people who know how to do
21st century welding and machinists for 21st century factories and
manufacturing.
We can teach these people skills while they are still in high school
so they can graduate ready to go to work. We also need more
apprenticeship programs, and that is something we can partner with
labor unions so we can train and retrain Americans in these higher
skilled jobs. We also need to help people who have to work full time.
Imagine for a moment a single mother raising two kids on her own and
she is a receptionist at a law firm. She is never going to get a
significant raise working as a receptionist. The only way she is ever
going to get ahead is if she can become a paralegal. But to become a
paralegal, she has to go to school. How is she going to go to school
under this current system?
She wakes up at 6 o'clock in the morning, makes her kids breakfast,
drops them off at school, drives to work, works 8 or 9 hours, rushes to
the daycare center or the afterschool program before it closes, picks
them up and brings them home. She is already tired, but she is not
done. She has to make them dinner and make sure they finish their
homework.
By 11 o'clock she hits that bed and she is exhausted. When is she
going to go to school--4 o'clock in the morning?
We need to have an education system that is flexible enough so that
she can acquire the skills to become a paralegal while she works full
time and she raises that family, allowing her to package learning from
online courses and work experience.
If someone is a receptionist at a law firm and has worked there for 8
or 9 years, there are some skills they have picked up working there
that should count for credit hours, instead of forcing you to sit
through a 2-year program so the college they are going to can make the
money off of them. We need to create programs so that people like her
can acquire those skills for 21st century jobs.
We also need to create alternatives to traditional college. It
doesn't matter where you acquire the learning. You should be able to
package all of your learning. Take, for example, someone who has worked
10 years, served in the military, has extensive experience at
volunteering, has taken a number of courses at a community college, and
wants to get a degree in something. We should be able to package all of
that lifelong learning, all of those sources of learning, into the
equivalent of a degree program.
Do you know how many Americans out there are sitting on 30 or 40
credit hours from a community college? But having 30 hours of college
credit is the same as having zero because you don't get any degree
certificate for it. So the private sector looks at you and says: We are
glad you went to class, but where is your degree or your associate's
degree?
I wish we had a more concerted effort in helping people who are
halfway there to get all the way there by using things such as online
coursework and giving them credit for life and work experience.
We need to think outside the box on these issues because if we don't
empower people with these skills, they won't be able to take advantage
of the opportunities of the 21st century. This is what a 21st-century
educational system looks like.
I would make one more point when talking about schools. The most
important school a child will ever attend is their home. We cannot
ignore the fact that the breakdown of American families is having a
dramatic impact on our economy and the quality of life of our people.
There is a reality here about this. A growing number of children are
born into single-parent homes or are born into broken families. We have
to help them because we know that, statistically speaking, children
being raised in broken families and single-parent homes with low
incomes will struggle to succeed. They will not have an equal
opportunity unless someone does something to help them out.
We can help. We can help by helping their parents acquire the skills
they need for better jobs, such as the single mother I talked about
earlier, but also by giving their parents the opportunity to send them
to the school of their choice. It is immoral, it is un-American that
the only people in this country who cannot choose where their children
go to school are poor people. It is outrageous. Rich people can send
their kids to any school they want, and that is their right. The middle
class will move to a better neighborhood or struggle to put together
just enough money to put their kids into a better school. But if you
are poor and the school in your neighborhood is a dangerous school and
you are not learning, there is nothing you can do. That is outrageous.
The answer to that is, well, improve that school. I agree. But in the 5
years it takes to improve that school, that child has gone from first
grade to sixth grade, and you are never getting those years back. Every
parent in America--especially low-income parents--deserves the
opportunity to put their children in the school of their choice.
There are other ways we can help families. Primarily that is our
responsibility as individuals and communities. But we should have a
promarriage Tax Code, a promarriage government program. We shouldn't
have marriage penalties. We shouldn't tell people ``If you get married
your taxes are going to go up'' or ``If you get married you will lose
Medicare, Medicaid.'' We have to get rid of those things. We have to
remove those marriage penalties in our Tax Code and in our programs.
By the way, we should also protect our faith communities. They are an
important part of instilling values because you can have all the
diplomas on the wall you want, but if you don't have the values of hard
work and discipline and self-control and respect for others and respect
for the dignity of the life of all people, you will struggle to
succeed. No one is born with those values; those values have to be
taught by strong families in a strong home, and they have to be
reinforced by strong communities. One of the pillars of a strong
community is our faith community, whatever faith you choose.
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That is why protecting religious liberty is so important.
Last but not least, restoring the American dream isn't just about
better jobs and better training and better skills; it is also about
dealing with the cost of living. That is why I think in the coming year
we desperately need a profamily Tax Code. Instead of all these
loopholes that are designed to help big business or the cronies of the
people who serve here in Washington, we need a profamily Tax Code. For
example, let's increase the child tax credit because it costs money to
raise children in the 21st century and these working families are
struggling to provide for their children. Let's have a profamily Tax
Code like the one Senator Lee of Utah and I have proposed. Let's
increase the child tax credit.
We also have to deal with the cost of higher education. It is
completely out of control. Do you know who is getting destroyed by
that? The middle class.
I had the honor of teaching a course at Florida International
University. There are many working-class students there. And here is
their frustration, and they are right: Their parents make too much
money for financial aid, but they do not make enough money to be able
to afford the school. So do you know what they do? They take out loans
in the tens of thousands of dollars.
I know about this firsthand because when I was sworn into the Senate
here 4 years ago, I owed over $100,000 in student loans. My parents
could never afford to pay for my school. I was blessed to be able to
receive Pell grants and other assistance, but I still had to use loans.
When we first got married, it was our single largest expenditure. I
used to joke with my wife: You didn't just get married to me; you got
married to Sallie Mae. Every month Sallie sent us a $1,300 or $1,400
bill.
There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people
across America who are stuck with big loan debt and degrees that don't
lead to jobs. I hope we will tackle that this year, and there are a
couple of proposals that I think will help. The first is we should make
income-based repayment the repayment method for everyone unless you opt
out of it.
Second, I think people deserve the right to know before they take out
a loan how much they can expect to make. Before you take out a loan to
pay the tuition of the school, that school should be required to tell
you: This is how much people who graduate from our school make when
they graduate with this degree. So you can decide whether it is worth
borrowing $100,000 to be a Greek philosophy major because the market
for Greek philosophers is very tight these days.
Last but not least, I think we need alternatives to traditional
student loans. One of the things I have proposed is something called
the student investment plan, which allows people to invest in your
future. Basically, it is a venture fund in you. Someone will come
forward and say: We will give you the money to go to college. In
exchange, you will pay us back 1 or 2 percent of your income for your
first 10 years.
They are investing in you. It is a student investment plan. It is not
for everyone. It is not a panacea, but it is an alternative to student
loans.
One of the things that would help, by the way, that would be an
alternative to student loans, is what I mentioned earlier--if you were
able to package learning and turn self-directed learning into the
equivalent of a degree.
There are other big items contributing to the cost of living. Health
care I don't need to tell you about. How many people out there today,
particularly in the middle class, are starting to find out they have
higher deductibles, higher copayments, higher premiums, and are getting
less coverage than they used to have. This is not a myth. It is not a
rumor. This is happening to millions of people. We get the calls, and
so do you in your office about all these things.
One last point on the cost of living is dealing with poverty. Our
antipoverty programs don't work. There are antipoverty programs in this
Cromnibus--a term, by the way, none of us have ever used before. I
don't know who makes these things up. But anyway, there are antipoverty
programs in this bill. Our antipoverty programs alleviate poverty, but
they don't cure it.
Imagine if you broke your arm and you went to the hospital and they
said: Here is a lifetime supply of pain killers. I am not saying you
shouldn't help people with the pain from the broken arm, but you have
to fix that broken arm.
Our programs don't fix poverty. They do not cure poverty. We need
programs that will cure poverty. That is why I believe we need what is
called the flex fund, where we take all of our existing antipoverty
dollars--I am not saying cut it; I am saying take our existing
antipoverty dollars and put them in a flex fund and allow States and
local communities to design specific plans that work in their
communities.
I can tell you that in the State of Florida, urban poverty and rural
poverty have different elements to them. A program that might work very
well in the inner city of Miami doesn't work at all with the rural
poverty in South Dade. We should allow States and local communities to
design programs that help cure poverty.
The ultimate cure for poverty is a good job. That means everyone who
is on these assistance programs should either be in school acquiring
the skills they need for a better job or they should be working,
improving their skills through experience.
Let me just say this about that, and I have talked about one of the
aspects of the reforms we want--a wage enhancement. If the only job you
can find pays $8 or $9 an hour but you need $15 an hour to provide for
yourself, I would rather come up with government money and make up the
difference through a wage enhancement than give you $9 or $10 an hour
or the equivalent of $7 or $8 an hour in a welfare check. Because while
you are working, you are gaining experience, and we are also helping
supplement your paycheck so you can pay your bills.
That condition isn't forever. It can't become a way of life. But if
you have been unemployed for 5 or 6 years and you show up somewhere to
get a job and they ask you what you have been doing for the last 6
years and you say you haven't been doing anything, your chances of
getting that job have just diminished dramatically. It is not good for
people to be unemployed long term in terms of their long-term job
prospects. That is why I have talked about a wage enhancement program
as well.
I think if we do all these things I have talked about--make ourselves
a globally competitive economy so the jobs are created here, give our
people 21st-century skills, help people deal with the cost of living--I
think we have every reason in the world to be optimistic about our
future.
I will close by saying that I think sometimes we get confused here
about how we measure the greatness of our country or the progress we
are making. We look to facts and figures, such as the unemployment
rate, and we look at the GDP of the country, and these are important
figures. We shouldn't ignore them. But let me tell you how I measure
the progress of this country.
I mentioned earlier that my father was a bartender. At many of the
events I have been involved in through public service over the years, I
give a speech somewhere, and there is a bartender standing behind a bar
in the back of the room. Almost every time I see that, it reminds me of
my father, who stood for so many years behind a bar. He was happy for
the work he had, but that is not the life he wanted for us. He wanted
something more for us. My father stood behind that bar all those years
so that one day I could have the chance to stand here on the floor of
the United States Senate and talk about things like the American dream.
That journey from behind that bar to where I am standing here tonight
is the American dream. That is the American dream.
A few years ago someone heard me give that speech in New York City,
and after I was done speaking the employees there came up to me and
handed me this name tag. It said ``Rubio, Banquet Bartender.'' It was
one of the most touching gifts I ever got from anyone, but it was also
a reminder that whether we remain a special nation will be determined
by whether people today can do what my parents did; by whether people
today can still make that journey my father made from behind that bar
to where I stand today. Can the single mother provide her children
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the life she always wanted but never had? Can that worker at that hotel
open doors for their children that were closed for him? That is how we
will know we are still special. If they can, then this new century is
also going to be an American century.
We do have real challenges, but we also have real opportunities. And
there is no time in history that I would rather be in than right here,
right now. I believe technology will allow us to collaborate and reach
more people than ever before. I believe innovation will solve problems
we once thought were insurmountable. I believe a rising global middle
class will provide more prosperity to more people everywhere than we
have ever seen. That is what I believe the 21st century can be about.
I believe you and I live on the eve of another American century. All
we have to do now is to reach for it and grab it. All we have to do now
is do what our parents did for us--whatever it took to leave for their
children a better life and a better future. If we do that, then we will
leave behind for our children what every generation of Americans before
us has left behind: the single greatest nation in the history of all
mankind.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, anyone watching Congress right now would
have little reason to think that an historic election occurred only a
few weeks ago.
Washington, DC, sadly, continues to remain deaf to the American
people. Washington, DC, continues to refuse to listen to the American
people.
Even though millions of voters rose up just 1 month ago to protest
how President Obama and the Senate Democrats were running Washington,
business as usual is continuing inside the marble halls of the
Congress. What is happening here?
Last night we saw chaos in the U.S. House of Representatives as they
were there until late in the night, voting on a bill that the vast
majority of the Members had never even sat down to read. Yet somehow,
at the last minute, just in the nick of time, with an arm twisted here
and a nudge there, it passed the House. Now it is here in the Senate.
Before the Senate today is a $1.1 trillion bill full of Christmas
presents for the lobbyists and special interests here in Washington. I
know it is Christmastime, but it is not our job to be playing Santa to
K Street.
This bill is not designed to help working Americans. It is designed
to pay off all the promises made to lobbyists who funded campaigns over
the past year. It is designed to make sure that a whole lot of folks
can fly home and ensure that more campaign dollars will be coming in
the coming weeks.
Before the Senate is a bill that continues to fund the train wreck
that is ObamaCare, and does nothing to provide relief to the millions
of men and women who are hurting, who are suffering, who lost their
jobs, who lost their health care because of this disaster.
And before the Senate is a bill that does nothing--absolutely
nothing--to stop President Obama's illegal and unconstitutional
amnesty. That is why I rise to speak here today.
The President's Executive amnesty is lawless and unconstitutional. To
be clear, the dispute over Executive amnesty is not a dispute between
President Obama and Republicans in Congress. It is a dispute between
President Obama and the American people.
In this last election President Obama said something that was
absolutely correct. He said his policies were on the ballot all across
this country. The President was right. This election was a referendum
on amnesty.
I spent roughly 2 months on the road campaigning for Senate
candidates all over the country, one after the other, in race after
race. Front and center was: If you elect Republicans, we will stop
President Obama's amnesty.
The American people's verdict on that referendum was not ambiguous.
Over and over again voters in States across this country decided not to
send back the incumbent Democrats, but to elect a new Republican.
I recall 2 years ago when the Presiding Officer and I were freshmen.
There were nine Democratic freshmen that year and just three
Republicans. Today there are 12 Republican freshmen--12 new Senators, a
quarter of the Republican conference--elected as the result of a
referendum on amnesty. The people have spoken loudly. Yet, sadly,
President Obama has reacted to the voters in a way that, frankly, is
unprecedented in American history.
Previous Presidents, particularly second-term Presidents, have been
repudiated by the voters, and there is a way Presidents typically
responded: They react with humility. They react acknowledging the
American people, trying to course correct. Sadly, President Obama
didn't do that.
Instead, he came out angry and defiant. He came out and declared to
the American people: It doesn't matter, in his view, what the American
people say. And it doesn't matter, in his view, what the Congress,
elected by the American people, says. He is instead going to
unilaterally decree amnesty for some 5 million people who are here
illegally.
We are going to have a vote in time on this omnibus bill. But
critical in that vote should be a vote on President Obama's illegal
amnesty.
We should consider the constitutionality of his actions. Every
Senator in this body should be put on record whether he or she believes
it is constitutional for a President to disregard--to ignore--Federal
immigration laws, and grant blanket amnesty to millions in defiance of
both the laws on the books and the voters.
This President believes he can unilaterally alter laws he disagrees
with. There is a form of governance where one man or one woman can make
the laws, can change the laws, can enforce the laws. It is called a
monarchy. There are countries on Earth right now that have monarchies
that vest the legislative and executive power in one person.
I would note Americans historically are not unfamiliar with monarchy.
We fought a bloody revolution to free ourselves from a tyrannical
monarch. And when our Framers drafted our Constitution, it was
designed, as Thomas Jefferson put it, to serve as chains to bind the
mischief of government.
The danger we are facing here right now is profound insofar as it
concerns amnesty, and is even greater as it concerns the checks and
balances in our government and the protection of individual liberty.
Because a President who can set aside the law, who can pick and choose
which law to follow and which law to ignore, is no longer a President.
That should concern all 100 Senators here.
If President Obama can decide I don't agree with the immigration
laws, so I will not enforce them, I will unilaterally change them--I
promise you there is going to come another President--another President
with different policy views. And the next time it may not be
immigration laws that he or she is changing, it may be tax laws or
environmental laws or labor laws.
I fervently believe we need tax reform, labor reform, and
environmental reform, but there is a proper way to do it. The proper
way to do it is this body debating and making legislative changes to
the laws, not one President by dicta setting aside the law. A
Presidential temper tantrum is not an acceptable means of discourse.
One of the characteristics of a monarch is he or she need not
compromise. The President has justified this illegal amnesty by saying
he told Congress what he wanted, and Congress refused to give it to
him. Well, the relationship in our constitutional Republic between the
President and the Congress is not the relationship between a parent and
a child. The President does not get to demand of Congress: Here is the
policy I want. Either give me what I want, or I will decree it to be so
and ignore the law. That is the President's bargaining position.
The President wants to reform immigration. And let me be clear: We
need commonsense immigration reform. I support commonsense immigration
reform. But the way it works in our constitutional system is if you
want to change the laws, you have to work with the other branches. And
that means you have to compromise. It means the President doesn't get
everything he wants. And this is a President who is barely willing even
to talk to Congress, much less to compromise on anything.
As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 69: A monarch decrees,
dictates, and rules through fiat--which is
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what President Obama is attempting to do right now.
When the President embraces the tactics of a monarch, it becomes
incumbent on Congress to wield the constitutional power this body has
as the elected people's representatives to stop it.
The Congress representing the voice of the people who just spoke
resoundingly in an election should use every constitutional tool
available to prevent the President from subverting the rule of law.
When the President usurps the legislative powers and defies the
limits of his authority, it becomes all the more imperative for
Congress to act. And Congress should use those powers given to it by
the Constitution to counter a lawless executive branch, or this body
will lose its authority. If the President will not respect the people,
Congress must.
Second, let me ask a question. Why are we here today in a lameduck?
Why is there a session of Congress the second week of December with so
many Members voting who the American people just said they no longer
want to be represented by? Why are there so many Members getting ready
to land at cushy law firms and lobby jobs in industry and trade
associations? All of our colleagues, a whole bunch of them, we are
going to see them again--except they will have more expensive suits,
more finely tailored, and come with an army of lobbyist aides with
them.
Both the House and the Senate are filled with people who won't be
here next year. And that is not of accident, because these bodies are
voting to fund a $1 trillion spending bill, and those Members who were
defeated or retiring aren't accountable to anybody. They won't have to
answer for this.
But it is even worse. I mention this omnibus is a payoff to K Street.
That is where a lot of these retiring Members are going to go. So what
a perfect way to start your job is to ensure that you come with goodies
for the rich and powerful.
Look, the American people are disgusted by the way Washington works.
Washington under the Obama administration takes care of the rich and
powerful, those who walk the corridors of power, and ordinary working
men and women are left in the dark.
People who have been hurt the most under the Obama economy have been
the most vulnerable among us. They have been young people, they have
been Hispanics, they have been African Americans, they have been single
moms. And yet, I am sorry to say, in this current Senate there are very
few advocates for the people who are really hurting.
Let me give one example. One of the elements of this bill is the so-
called expatriate health insurance plan fix that this omnibus exempts
from ObamaCare.
Now what is this about? Well, American insurance companies that sell
insurance policies to expatriates--Americans living abroad--are subject
to all of the oppressive mandates of ObamaCare. All of the mandated
coverage mandating things--like maternity care for women who are no
longer in childbearing years--all sorts of mandates that drive up the
costs. And they are also subject to the crushing impunity taxes.
So what has happened? Insurance companies have come to Congress and
said: It is not fair. It is hurting our business, it is hurting our
jobs. It is amazing. Get enough lobbyists together, and suddenly you
get bipartisan agreement.
This provision has Republicans and Democrats together saying we
should carve a special exemption for the big insurance companies.
There are a lot of things about this body that they don't teach in
civics class. There are a lot of things in this body that would horrify
the typical junior high or high school student learning about how
government operates.
One of them is something called the hotline. An awful lot of
legislation gets passed on the hotline. That is, someone introduces
legislation, sends around an email and says, unless you object, this
will be treated as automatically passed. All sorts of items get done on
the hotline without this body ever debating it, ever considering
amendments, ever taking it to the floor.
Well, this ex-patriot insurance amendment was hotlined. Senators,
both Democrats and Republicans, want to shoot it through in the lame
duck in the quiet of night. Now listen, I think there are some good
arguments on its merits for this ex-patriot bill. It is not
unreasonable to recognize that ObamaCare is costing jobs, and it is
hurting. But I will tell you the way a hotline works is any single
Senator can object. So I objected. Let me tell you why. I said listen,
this may make sense, but we shouldn't do it with no amendments, no
debate, in the dark of the night. We should do this on the floor of the
Senate, with a debate and with amendments. In particular, I want to
take the opportunity to ask my friends and colleagues who are
Democrats, who are supporting this exemption, if you think these
provisions of ObamaCare are so onerous, so damaging, are killing so
many jobs, why won't you provide an exemption for the people that live
in your State? If it is right that these are harmful, why discriminate
against the people living in your State? I want to take it up on the
floor in a context where you could offer amendments to say, listen, it
is all fine to take care of the big insurance companies, but how about
somebody stand up for single moms--single moms who are in vast numbers
being forced into part-time work, forced to work 28, 29 hours a week
because in ObamaCare the threshold that kicks in is 30 hours a week?
How about somebody stand up for the average working men and women.
But I will tell you what. The single moms, the African-American
teenagers, the legal immigrants--they don't have fancy lobbyists. There
is no provision in the past several months that I have been more
heavily lobbied over than this ex-patriot bill. I had an insurance
company CEO on the phone with me. I had Senators on the phone and
lobbyists on the phone all saying, look, take care of this provision. I
responded very reasonably. I said look, we could take it up in just a
couple of weeks. In January, with a new Congress, we could take this
up, we can debate it, we can consider it. But if we are going to be
making exemptions for ObamaCare, how about if we not start with the
richest and most powerful corporations? How about instead we start with
working men and women, put working men and women first because they are
the ones paying the biggest price. Yet I am sorry to tell you this is a
great illustration of how Washington works. When it couldn't get
hotlined in its own bill, what happened? It magically appeared on the
omnibus, tacked on at the last minute because they knew it would go
just right through Congress in the dark of night--how profoundly
corrupt.
Listen, if you are a Fortune 100 company, you should feel thrilled
because you can marshal armies of lobbyists to get special carve-outs
for you. But if you are a steelworker out of work, if you are a single
mom, if you are a Hispanic teenager trying to get her first job to
start climbing the economic ladder and moving towards the American
dream, you know what; you don't have a high-paid lobbyist, and
unfortunately, this Senate is not listening to you.
We need to change that. We need to change that. Another provision of
this omnibus is a special carve-out for Blue Cross Blue Shield. Blue
Cross Blue Shield is a very fine company. Blue Cross Blue Shield spent
more than $15 million on lobbyists this year. Now it is all fine and
dandy that Blue Cross Blue Shield gets a carve-out. What about working
men and women? Under the Harry Reid Senate, do you know how many bills
we have debated on the floor to provide meaningful relief to the
millions of Americans who have lost their jobs, lost their health care,
have been forced into part-time work, who face skyrocketing insurance
premiums and lost their doctors? Zero, not a single one, because
working men and women don't have $15 million to hire fancy lobbyists.
And the corrupt culture of Washington listens to the lobbyists and not
the people.
Let me be clear on this. This is a bipartisan bill. Harry Reid, the
Democratic Senate, has shut this institution down and has ceased
working for working Americans. But Republicans share in that sin, share
in that embrace of corporate welfare. Enough with the corporate
welfare. God bless big companies that provide jobs. We don't need to be
providing corporate welfare. How
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about instead we have fundamental economic reform that brings back
growth, that helps small companies start and grow and create jobs. How
about we stop playing favorites and picking winners and losers, and
instead how about Washington listening to the American people?
Another provision in this bill--another bit of corporate welfare--is
Brand USA, a travel promotion company. That is one of the current
majority leader's pet projects because it helps promote casinos in his
home State. Last I checked, casinos were very profitable endeavors that
didn't need the taxpayers helping them out, didn't need the Congress
serving your hard-earned dollars and handing it out to promote casinos.
Another example is the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It is
also reauthorized in this bill. Most people haven't heard about it, but
let me tell you what it does. Over the past few years, OPIC has
approved a $20 million loan to help luxury cars be built in Eastern
Europe. Coincidentally, the man who owns the company is a donor to
President Obama and Vice-President Biden. OPIC has also backed hundreds
of millions of dollars for solar farms in South Africa. It has also
helped finance the Ritz Carlton in Istanbul. It has backed $150 million
in insurance for Citibank to open branches in Pakistan, Jordan, and
Egypt. How is it that one of the largest banks in the world cannot get
its own insurance? Why should taxpayers take on that risk? They
shouldn't.
Also spread throughout this bill are all kinds of provisions
mandating what kind of vehicles the U.S. Government may buy for use,
limits on how much the car can weigh, rules on how it must be powered,
where the corporation is based and put together. They all together work
to give U.S. corporations that produce expensive electric cars an
advantage. Instead of saving the taxpayer money, this bill is pushing
the government to purchase Chevy Volts and Teslas, instead of other
more affordable cars.
Yet another problem in the lameduck was seen in a bill we considered
earlier today, the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA had a
lot of good provisions in it. I serve on the Armed Services Committee.
I introduced amendments that were accepted and included in the bill,
including one that is near and dear to my heart, a provision that
finally, finally, finally, allows the 14 innocent souls who were
murdered by Nidal Hassan of Fort Hood to be eligible for the Purple
Heart. It has been far too long that this administration has declared
that terrorist attack to be workplace violence. That was a good
provision. There are other good provisions in that bill. Yet in the
last minute, a giant chunk of legislation got added to the Defense
authorization that had nothing to do with defense. Instead it was a
giant land grab. Once again it was bipartisan--Democrats and
Republicans coming together and saying, let's have the Federal
Government seize a bunch of land. So the Defense authorization bill
added 250,000 acres of new wilderness designation.
The Defense authorization bill resulted in 400,000 acres being
withdrawn from productive use. It added three new wild and scenic river
designations, three new studies for additional designations. Some of
these provisions may have been sound on their own, but there was a
reason they weren't brought up on their own. There is a reason they
weren't debated on the floor of the Senate--because they couldn't
withstand the scrutiny. So instead, the way corrupt Washington works,
they were stuck on to a Defense authorization that was deemed must-
pass, and suddenly the Federal Government takes roughly one-half
million acres of land out of productive use, out of use by the
citizenry.
You know that is disrespectful to the men and women in the military.
It is a disservice. We shouldn't be using the Defense authorization as
a tool for congressional pork.
I will make an additional point about President Obama's amnesty. In
all likelihood, in a matter of hours or a matter of days, the Senate is
going to pass this massive pork-filled mess of a bill, a $1 trillion-
plus amnesty that is paying off lobbyists throughout this land.
Yet leadership from both parties--Republican leadership in both the
House and Senate have promised this bill is designed for Congress to
stand up to President Obama's illegal amnesty. They have said
repeatedly that in just a few weeks help is on the way. In just a few
weeks Republicans will be the majority in this body and in just a few
weeks we will have a new majority leader.
The new majority leader, my friend the senior Senator from Kentucky
has said:
If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and
imposes his will on the country, Congress will act. We're
considering a variety of options. But make no mistake. When
the newly elected representatives of the American people take
their seats, they will act.
I take the soon-to-be majority leader at his word.
The Speaker of the House has said: ``Come January, we'll have a
Republican House and a Republican Senate, and we'll be in a stronger
position to take action.'' The Speaker went on to say that the current
plan is ``the most practical way to fight the President's action.''
Again, I take him at his word. When the Republican leaders promise
this bill is all designed so that come January and February--just a few
weeks from now--we will see both Houses stand together and make clear
that when the continuing resolution expires for the Department of
Homeland Security, this body will not appropriate money to DHS to carry
out President Obama's illegal and unconstitutional executive action, I
take them at their word, because the alternative would be that elected
leaders are saying something to the American people they don't believe
and they don't intend to follow through with. And I very much hope that
is not the case.
Indeed, I am reminded of Reagan's famous admonition: Trust but
verify.
So I take them at their word, but I would note that a whole lot of
citizens across this country feel a little bit like Charlie Brown with
Lucy and the football. Where in fight after fight, leadership in
Congress says: We will fight next time. Not this time--no, no, no--the
wise thing to do is fight in a month, fight in 2 months, fight in 3
months--not now. It always seems to be when the month or 2 months or 3
months happens, the same statement is made: No, no, no--not January,
maybe March. No, no, no--not that. How about June? No, no, no. How
about September?
There has been a time when Charlie Brown has kicked the football and
fallen on his rear end one too many times. So when our leaders in both
Chambers say as a commitment, we will fight, and we will stop President
Obama's illegal amnesty, I take them at their word. But I am confident
that the American people will hold them to their word. The American
people may not be quite so trusting, as am I, because they have seen
far too many Members of Congress say one thing and do another.
We will learn soon enough if those statements are genuine and
sincere. We will learn in just a few weeks if leadership intends to
follow through on the promises they have made over and over again.
I would note that over the course of this election, Republican
Members of the House, Republican Members of the Senate campaigned all
over this country and they said two things repeatedly. They said No. 1,
if you elect us we are going to do everything humanly possible to stop
the train wreck that is ObamaCare, and they said, No. 2, if you elect
us, if you give us a Republican majority in the Senate, we will stop
President Obama's illegal action.
All over the country, that is what Republican candidates said, and it
is the reason they told the American people to elect a Republican
majority.
My admonition to my friends--especially to the newly elected
Republicans--is very simple: Do what you said. Simply do what you said.
Virtually every Republican on this side of the Chamber told the men
and women in his or her State: If you elect us, we will stop President
Obama's amnesty.
We must do what we said because it is profoundly unfair. This amnesty
is unfair to millions of legal immigrants who followed the rules and
waited years in line yet see those who came illegally being rewarded
nonetheless by the Obama administration. This Executive amnesty is
profoundly unfair to
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the 92 million Americans who are not working right now and to all the
working men and women struggling to just put food on the table to feed
their kids. This Executive amnesty is profoundly unfair, especially to
the African-American community, which is facing historic unemployment.
If Congress acquiesces and does not stand up and assert the
prerogative of this institution to legislate, to pass laws, and prevent
the President from ignoring the laws on the books, then we will have
ceded our authority not just on immigration but across the field.
It is incumbent on all of us to defend the Constitution, and it is my
hope that the Senators who take an oath to uphold the Constitution will
honor that oath more than party allegiances.
I will note that in recent weeks no fewer than a dozen Democratic
Senators have publicly criticized President Obama's illegal Executive
amnesty. I welcome that criticism. It is nice to see that sort of
candor coming from Democratic Senators, but, as my wife is fond of
telling me, talk is cheap. If those dozen Democratic Senators who
criticized President Obama's Executive amnesty as illegal and
unconstitutional mean what they say, then the only responsible action
is to use our legislative authority to stop it.
I hope my Democratic colleagues will put partisan politics aside--
even those who may agree with President Obama's amnesty--and say that
the way to change the immigration laws is to work with Congress and
compromise. You may not get everything you want, but we have a system
of checks and balances.
It is striking--in many ways the simplest and best explanation of
what the President has done came from ``Saturday Night Live.'' The week
after the President's illegal amnesty, ``Saturday Night Live'' reprised
the classic ``Schoolhouse Rock--How a Bill Becomes a Law.'' They had a
giant dancing, singing bill come out and say: ``First I go to the
House, then I go to the Senate, and if I'm lucky, the President will
sign me and I become a law.'' Then on ``Saturday Night Live,''
President Obama walked out onto the steps of the Capitol and pushed the
bill down the steps of the Capitol. He pushed the bill down the steps
of the Capitol four separate times, and then out walked an Executive
order smoking a cigarette, as it so happens, and it simply said: ``I'm
an Executive order. I pretty much just happen.''
Do you know what? ``Saturday Night Live'' is exactly right. The
President is ignoring the basic checks and balances of our Constitution
and trying instead to decree the law. That is unconstitutional, and a
portion of this bill that has been sent over from the House of
Representatives funds the Department of Homeland Security to carry out
that unconstitutional action.
Therefore, Madam President, I am now offering and raising a
constitutional point of order against division L of this bill on the
grounds that it violates the following provisions of the Constitution:
the separation of powers embodied in the vesting clauses of Article I,
Section 1 and Article II, Section 1; the enumerated powers of Congress
stated in Article I, Section 8; and the requirement that the President
take care that the laws be faithfully executed, as stated in Article
II, Section 3.
It is incumbent on this body to resolve those constitutional
questions and to honor and protect the constitutional authority of the
United States Congress.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). Is the Senator raising the point
of order at this time?
Mr. CRUZ. I am.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. At this time, a motion to refer is pending
barring other actions on the measure.
Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. I appreciate everyone's patience. You have all been
waiting.
I ask unanimous consent that at 5 p.m., Monday, December 15, the
Senate proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to
concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 83; that
if cloture is invoked, there be 30 minutes postcloture debate time
remaining on the motion to concur.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. LEE. Madam President, reserving the right to object. The American
people have grave concerns with the President's decision to take action
unilaterally with regard to Executive amnesty. This is an action that
is rather unprecedented and rather unsupported by law, notwithstanding
the President's insistence to the contrary. It is an issue that is of
concern to a great many people.
Right now we are being asked to punt all of our activity until Monday
at 5 p.m. I don't see any reason to do this. I don't see any reason why
the Senate should suspend its operations while the American people are
waiting for us to act. I don't see any reason why we should wait until
Monday at 5 p.m. I certainly don't see any reason why we should agree
to move forward then and not have any assurance that we would at least
have an opportunity to vote on an amendment that would impose a
spending limitation on the President's ability to implement his
Executive amnesty action.
I would respectfully request that the majority leader modify his
request and that he modify his request to assure us that we would
receive a vote on a spending limitation amendment that we could have in
connection with the CR/omnibus when we reconvene.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. I am unable to do that.
Mr. LEE. In that case, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
____________________