[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 80 (Friday, May 22, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3256-S3274]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       ENSURING TAX EXEMPT ORGANIZATIONS THE RIGHT TO APPEAL ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 1314, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 1314) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 
     1986 to provide for a right to an administrative appeal 
     relating to adverse determinations of tax-exempt status of 
     certain organizations.

  Pending:

       Hatch amendment No. 1221, in the nature of a substitute.
       Hatch (for Flake) amendment No. 1243 (to amendment No. 
     1221), to strike the extension of the trade adjustment 
     assistance program.
       Hatch (for Inhofe/Coons) modified amendment No. 1312 (to 
     amendment No. 1221), to amend the African Growth and 
     Opportunity Act to require the development of a plan for each 
     sub-Saharan African country for negotiating and entering into 
     free trade agreements.
       Hatch (for McCain) amendment No. 1226 (to amendment No. 
     1221), to repeal a duplicative inspection and grading 
     program.
       Stabenow (for Portman) amendment No. 1299 (to amendment No. 
     1221), to make it a principal negotiating objective of the 
     United States to address currency manipulation in trade 
     agreements.
       Brown amendment No. 1251 (to amendment No. 1221), to 
     require the approval of Congress before additional countries 
     may join the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
       Wyden (for Shaheen) amendment No. 1227 (to amendment No. 
     1221), to make trade agreements work for small businesses.
       Wyden (for Warren) amendment No. 1327 (to amendment No. 
     1221), to prohibit the application of the trade authorities 
     procedures to an implementing bill submitted with respect to 
     a trade agreement that includes investor-state dispute 
     settlement.
       Hatch modified amendment No. 1411 (to the language proposed 
     to be stricken by amendment No. 1299), of a perfecting 
     nature.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, as we resume the debate of our Nation's 
trade policy, I want to take a few minutes to provide an update about 
where things really are, where we are going, and the possibility of a 
path forward.
  We took a big step yesterday, and I thank all of my colleagues who 
voted for cloture, once again, for helping us to get closer to the 
finish.
  I am, of course, aware that a number of Senators have concerns about 
the process and amendments. I understand those concerns. As I said 
yesterday, I would have preferred a different path for moving this 
bill. It was always my preference to consider more amendments and have 
a fuller debate on these important issues. I know that is what the 
majority leader wanted, as well.
  Sadly, there were some who just did not want to cooperate, and 
instead of moving directly to the bill, we had to negotiate around a 
filibuster. Then, instead of bringing up and debating amendments, we 
spent a lot of time addressing concerns and overcoming objections.
  I am not going to point fingers or complain about anyone who chooses 
to exercise their rights under the Senate rules to slow down the 
debate. We are all well aware that a number of Senators would love to 
prolong this debate forever to keep the TPA bill from passing. But with 
a bill this important, we had to find a way forward, which led to a 
cloture motion and yesterday's vote.
  But even now that cloture has been invoked, I am still working to try 
to reach a reasonable accommodation to address Senators' concerns. Both 
sides worked late into the night to try to come up with an agreement on 
time and amendments in order to give Senators an opportunity to make 
their case. Up to now, no deal has been reached, which from my point of 
view is unfortunate. And keep in mind that under the rules, we don't 
have an obligation to do that. We bent over backwards to try to solve 
this problem, but so far, no deal has been reached.
  I am still willing to work with my colleagues to address their 
concerns, although it is becoming increasingly clear that some concerns 
are beyond accommodation. But I am always an optimist. As I said 
yesterday, if any of my colleagues have a reasonable proposal to solve 
this impasse and allow us to consider more amendments, I am all ears. 
But as of right now, cloture is invoked and only pending, germane 
amendments can be considered without an agreement.
  Until that time, however, one thing is clear: Absent an agreement on 
time and votes, the Senate will deal with pending amendments and vote 
on whether to invoke cloture on TPA this evening. I am, of course, more 
than willing to wait that long, but I am sure there are many in this 
Chamber who would prefer to see a solution come together before then.
  Let's work together. Let's find a way to hear more amendments and 
address more issues. I hope people will be willing to work with us on a 
reasonable path forward, but if not, it appears that the clock, more 
than anything else, will determine how this debate will unfold.


                           Amendment No. 1299

  Mr. President, later today the Senate will vote on the Portman-
Stabenow currency manipulation amendment.
  Up to now, we have all heard more than our fair share of arguments 
about this amendment. I want to take a few more minutes today to 
express my opposition to the Portman-Stabenow amendment and to explain 
to my colleagues why they should vote against it.
  I want to reiterate that the Obama administration has made it 
abundantly clear that if this amendment gets adopted, President Obama 
will veto the TPA bill. As I have already said a number of times, a 
vote for the Portman-Stabenow amendment is a vote to kill TPA. That 
would be, indeed, tragic.
  I know that all of my colleagues are aware of the statements made by 
Secretary Lew and the White House on this matter. I also know that a 
number of my colleagues who support Portman-Stabenow have said that 
they don't believe the President would veto the TPA bill over this 
amendment.
  Well, let's say, for the sake of argument, that they are right--but 
only for the sake of argument. Let's assume that the administration is 
bluffing. Should we call that bluff? Should we pass the amendment and 
dare the President to make good on his veto threat? The answer to that 
question is an emphatic no.
  Even if we take veto threats and administration statements of 
opposition completely out of the equation, one fact still remains: The 
Portman-Stabenow amendment is bad policy for America, and it is far too 
risky.
  Earlier this week, I laid out four separate negative consequences 
that would result from the Portman-Stabenow amendment, and I would like 
to reiterate those concerns here today.
  First, the Portman-Stabenow amendment would derail the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership. Once again, we know that this is the case. I have chatted 
with Japanese leaders, and they tell me this is the case. That is a 
very important aspect of what we are trying to do here. We are trying 
to get Japan, for the first time, to agree to a trade policy that 
works. I think we have a new leadership there that wants to agree, and 
we ought to help them.
  None of our negotiating partners would sign a trade agreement that 
included the kinds of rules mandated by the Portman-Stabenow amendment. 
We have already heard from countries such as Japan that they would walk 
away from the agreement if the United States were making these types of 
demands.
  Furthermore, the United States would never agree to these types of 
demands, either. What country would willingly sign a trade agreement 
that would subject their monetary policies to potential trade 
sanctions? No country that I am aware of.
  I heard some of my colleagues respond to these claims the same way 
they responded to the President's veto threat. They don't believe Japan 
when they say they will walk away from the TPP or they say that any 
country refusing to accede to these types of

[[Page S3257]]

standards must be planning to manipulate their currency.
  Now, I am all for healthy skepticism around here, but maybe--just 
maybe--if our government, as well as all of our negotiating partners, 
all say that Portman-Stabenow is bad policy that they cannot sign onto, 
there has to be something to those claims.
  Guess what. There is something to them, which brings me to the second 
negative consequence that we would see under the Portman-Stabenow 
amendment. It would put the Federal Reserve's independence at risk and 
subject our own monetary policies to trade disputes and possible 
sanctions.
  Once again, we have colleagues in the Senate who have simply decreed 
here on the floor that U.S. monetary policy is aimed at purely domestic 
objectives and that it is only other countries that manipulate their 
currencies to gain trade advantage. But anyone who paid attention to 
these issues knows that not all of our trading partners share that 
assessment. Other countries have already accused the United States of 
currency manipulation, and the Portman-Stabenow amendment would set 
forth a clear and accessible process for turning those accusations into 
trade disputes subject to possible sanctions.
  We may not agree with those allegations against U.S. monetary policy. 
I certainly don't. But the problem is that the Portman-Stabenow 
amendment would take those determinations out of our hands and give 
them over to international trade tribunals. So whether we agree or not, 
we are going to find ourselves in a mess no matter what happens, should 
that amendment be accepted.

  At this point, the proponents of this amendment will likely point out 
that they have included language to exempt ``the exercise of domestic 
monetary policy'' from the enforceable rules mandated by the amendment. 
With all due respect to the authors of the amendment, that is a red 
herring.
  Keep in mind that the U.S. dollar is a global currency, the primary 
reserve currency in the world today. That being the case, our Nation's 
monetary policies necessarily have a global impact, making it very 
difficult to determine what constitutes purely domestic monetary policy 
and what is meant to be international. Once again, after this 
amendment, that extremely difficult determination will not be made here 
in the United States but by international trade tribunals. I don't know 
about my colleagues, but I have to say that causes me great alarm.
  We also need to keep in mind that under currently available economic 
models and methodologies, it is virtually impossible to definitively 
measure currency manipulation. There is no clear and obvious threshold 
at which anyone can, with certainty, declare that a country's currency 
has been manipulated.
  Most like to point to the standards set by the International Monetary 
Fund. However, even their formulations have been unable to determine 
currency manipulation with any level of specificity.
  For example, IMF models recently showed that in 2013, Japan's 
currency was anywhere between around 15 percent undervalued and 15 
percent overvalued. In other words, existing standards for determining 
what is and what is not currency manipulation are flimsy and ill-
defined. It would be very dangerous to subject U.S. monetary policies 
to enforceable rules based on these standards. Yet that is precisely 
what the Portman-Stabenow amendment would do.
  Third, under the Portman-Stabenow amendment, the traditional role of 
the U.S. Treasury in setting U.S. exchange rate policies would be 
watered down and potentially overruled in international trade 
tribunals. Thus, adoption of the Portman-Stabenow negotiating objective 
cedes independence and full authority over not only monetary policy for 
the Federal Reserve but also the exchange rate policy for the Treasury.
  Fourth, the Portman-Stabenow amendment would deal a serious setback 
to ongoing efforts to fight currency manipulation by encouraging our 
trading partners to evade regular reporting and transparency of 
exchange rate policies. If currency standards become enforceable and 
immediately subject to sanctions under a trade agreement, parties to 
that agreement would almost certainly start withholding full 
participation in reporting and monitoring mechanisms that are designed 
to uncover and combat currency manipulation.
  Put simply, we cannot enforce rules against unfair exchange rate 
practices if we do not have information about them. The Portman-
Stabenow amendment would make it far more difficult to obtain that type 
of information. Their approach would push currency manipulation 
practices into the shadows as countries would fear being hit with trade 
sanctions if a trade tribunal--once again using ill-defined standards--
deems their policies to be manipulative.
  As we can see, concerns about the Portman-Stabenow amendment extend 
well beyond the veto threats. Indeed, even if no veto threats had been 
issued--and make no mistake, they have definitely been issued--there 
are enough problems inherent in the approach taken by this amendment to 
warrant opposition on its own. Can we take those chances? I don't think 
so.
  Colleagues don't have to take my word for it. Every living former 
U.S. Treasury Secretary, both Republicans and Democrats--every one--has 
expressed opposition to the approach taken by the Portman-Stabenow 
amendment. During the Finance Committee's consideration of the TPA 
bill, Congress received a letter signed by Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, 
John Snow, Paul O'Neill, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Nicholas Brady, 
James Baker, Michael Blumenthal, and George Shultz stating, among other 
things, that ``it is impossible to get agreement on provisions that 
subject currency manipulation to trade sanctions in a manner that both 
the United States and other countries would find acceptable.''
  It is ``impossible.'' That is their word, not mine.
  We also received a letter from 14 former chairs of the Council of 
Economic Advisers, again both Republicans and Democrats, expressing 
similar views. The letter was signed by Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, 
Charles Schultze, Martin Feldstein, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Martin Baily, 
Glenn Hubbard, Austan Goolsbee, Alan Krueger, Christina Romer, Edward 
Lazear, Harvey Rosen, and Greg Mankiw.
  All of these leaders--these experts in economic policy--have 
cautioned against requiring enforceable currency standards in our trade 
agreements that are subject to sanctions. They all noted such an 
approach, which would be required under the Portman-Stabenow amendment, 
would hinder our own economic policies.
  Our current Secretary of Agriculture said much the same thing in a 
letter this week. In his letter, Secretary Vilsack stated:

       Enacting a TPA currency discipline that requires an 
     enforceable negotiating objective would likely derail our 
     efforts to complete the Trans Pacific Partnership and cause 
     us to lose ground on holding countries accountable on 
     currency.

  He continued, arguing:

       An enforceable currency provision in our trade agreements . 
     . . could give our training partners the power to challenge 
     legitimate U.S. monetary policies needed to ensure strong 
     employment and a healthy, robust economy.

  We have also heard from leaders in the business community. In fact, 
we received letters signed by almost every major business association 
in this country, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business 
Roundtable, and countless others weighing in either against the 
Portman-Stabenow amendment, in favor of the Hatch-Wyden alternative or 
both.
  We have heard the same from agricultural organizations, including the 
American Farm Bureau, the National Pork Producers Council, and many 
others.
  In short, both the business and 
agricultural communities over-
whelmingly--overwhelmingly--oppose Portman-Stabenow. This isn't about 
politics, this is about sensible policy.
  Now, I am not arguing that we shouldn't do anything about currency 
manipulation. Senator Wyden and I have submitted an alternative 
amendment that would take a much more sensible and effective approach 
to deal with these issues.
  The Hatch-Wyden amendment would put a number of tools at our disposal 
to

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fight currency manipulation, including enhanced transparency, 
disclosure, reporting, monitoring, cooperative mechanisms, as well as 
enforceable rules--the only tool in the Portman-Stabenow amendment. The 
Portman-Stabenow amendment provides this single tool: enforceable 
rules, subject--and this is what a lot of people miss--subject to trade 
sanctions. This single tool is grossly unreliable and poses a serious 
threat to U.S. interests if we fail to monitor what is going on in 
international tribunals against the United States.
  The Hatch-Wyden amendment would give us maximum transparency and 
effectiveness with the ability to specifically tailor our efforts at 
addressing currency manipulation.
  The Portman-Stabenow amendment would tie our hands and give us no 
other option than to subject our trading partners and ourselves to 
potential sanctions based on unreliable, indefinite standards.
  The Hatch-Wyden amendment would preserve the integrity of our current 
trade negotiations. It would pose no threats to the independence of the 
Federal Reserve and would not subject our own monetary or exchange rate 
policies to the whims of an international trade tribunal, and it would 
increase transparency and accountability of our trading partners' 
currency practices.
  In pretty much every way, the Hatch-Wyden amendment provides a better 
approach to dealing with currency manipulation than the one offered by 
the Portman-Stabenow amendment.
  So, once again, even if we think the President is blowing smoke when 
he said he would veto any TPA bill that includes Portman-Stabenow, that 
is no reason to vote in favor of the amendment--and I don't believe he 
is blowing smoke. Our alternative approach represents a better solution 
to a myriad of serious problems.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose the Portman-Stabenow currency 
amendment and support the Hatch-Wyden alternative. I think my 
colleagues will be happy if they do that because I think I have made a 
very strong case this morning. There is more to be said, but this ought 
to cause everybody to think and to pause and to say, Should I really 
take the chance of voting for this? Is it really possible the President 
might veto it? Is it really possible it will interfere with our Federal 
Reserve policy? Is it really possible we could be subject to all kinds 
of international tribunals--over what? Something we could have avoided 
with the Hatch-Wyden amendment.
  I could go on and on. All I can say is I hope our colleagues will 
vote for Hatch-Wyden. It is not a matter of wanting to win on 
something. It is a matter of needing to win on something for the 
betterment of our country and its foreign policy.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the 
conclusion of my remarks, Senator Durbin, who has been very gracious to 
let me follow the Finance Committee chairman, be allowed to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, and colleagues, Chairman Hatch has made a 
number of important points this morning. I wish to follow up and give a 
little bit of an update on where we are and touch on one issue that has 
not been discussed.
  First, under Chairman Hatch's leadership, both sides have been 
working together in good faith with respect to the amendments, and I 
think it would be fair to say the chairman and I are optimistic that we 
can have a good and fair list of amendments. That is No. 1. I wish to 
commend both the Democrats and the Republicans who were part of that 
amendment discussion.
  Second, with respect to the currency issue which Chairman Hatch has 
addressed--and I certainly share his views--I would also sum it up by 
saying the Hatch-Wyden approach on currency provides a wider array of 
tools to deal with the currency issue without undermining our monetary 
policy. That is really the heart of the Hatch-Wyden proposal. We wanted 
to come up with the widest possible array of tools but at the same time 
not undermine monetary policy. That is what Janet Yellen has been 
concerned about. She has always been concerned about what would happen 
if, Heaven forbid, we had another financial crisis. She doesn't want 
her hands tied or the hands of the Fed tied in terms of being able to 
fight that challenge.
  We know that during that period of quantitative easing, a number of 
countries said the United States was manipulating our currency. Now, of 
course, that was an outrageous assertion. Chairman Hatch and I 
certainly disagree with that, but that is what we are up against. To 
me, what we ought to be trying to do is to provide the widest array of 
tools to fight these currency manipulation issues while at the same 
time not undermining our monetary policy. So those are two concerns.
  Now, I wish to provide an update from yesterday. Yesterday, I came to 
the floor because colleagues were talking about excessive secrecy in 
the way trade policy has been made in the past. I made clear that I 
have very much shared that view, and I went through in considerable 
detail how we have put in place a new approach that I am calling the 
sunshine trade policy. In particular, what it means is that before any 
Member of the Senate and the House vote on the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership or any other agreement--the American people will have that 
agreement in their hands for close to 4 months before any Member of the 
Senate or any Member of the House actually votes on the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership.

  The way it works--and I thank Chairman Hatch also for his efforts to 
build this sunshine trade policy--is that before the President of the 
United States even signs the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that document 
has to be public for 60 days. On top of that, there are probably about 
another 2 months that the American people would have that document in 
their hands.
  I know the Presiding Officer of the Senate is here. We welcomed her 
to the Senate. What this means is that when my colleague from West 
Virginia has a community meeting--and certainly people in West 
Virginia, like the rest of our country, care greatly about trade--
people would be able to come to a townhall meeting in West Virginia 
with the Trans-Pacific Partnership document in their hands for close to 
4 months before you or any other Member of Congress votes on it. So 
that is an awful lot of sunshine, Madam President, and it is long 
overdue. I thank Chairman Hatch again for working closely with me on 
this matter. This is required by law. It is required by law that the 
President of the United States make public the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership for 60 days before it is signed.
  Beyond that, yesterday we talked about the labor and environmental 
issues. Once again, there is a very dramatic set of changes, and that 
is why the President and I have said this is the most progressive trade 
policy in our country's history.
  For example, during the 1990s--my friend from Illinois is here. We 
remember all those fierce debates in the 1990s. One point that I think 
all Members now realize is that those labor and environmental positions 
meant very little. They weren't enforceable. They were off on the side. 
They were really shunted way out of real opportunities to affect the 
debate. That is different now because labor and environmental rights--I 
went through them in great detail yesterday--are now enforceable.
  On the labor issue, we are going to comply with the International 
Labor Organization standards, the ILO. So this is going to be a very 
different day, and it is why the President and I have both said this is 
the most progressive trade policy in our country's history.
  To just touch on one other topic briefly, I want to address some of 
the misstatements about what this trade package will and will not do. 
We have heard suggested, for example, that it is a backdoor route for 
immigration reform or action on climate change. We have heard some say 
that a future President could use trade deals to repeal the Affordable 
Care Act or water down Wall Street reforms. These hypotheticals somehow 
just seem to be getting more and more far-fetched. My sense is that at 
the rate these hypotheticals are going, one is bound to hear that a 
future President working on a trade deal might have second thoughts 
about the Louisiana Purchase.
  Now, to me, it is pretty important to keep this debate grounded in 
facts, and the fact is that the bipartisan legislation passed by the 
Finance Committee

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says in clear terms that trade deals cannot change or override American 
laws or regulations. Let me repeat that. Trade deals cannot change or 
override American laws or regulations. But there has been an awful lot 
of spin out there on this point, and I want to address some of those 
issues this morning.
  Many of the hypotheticals are centered on a common part of trade 
agreements called investor-state dispute settlement, also known as 
ISDS. Over the course of three decades with this approach in our trade 
agreement, our country has never lost a single dispute settlement case 
or paid one dime in penalties. So I have heard all kinds of discussion 
about this. We never lost a single dispute settlement case. We have 
never paid a dime in penalties. In fact, our country has been sued 17 
times, and if you look at the number of years we have had it, it is not 
as if there is some kind of tidal wave of litigation.
  Some have said that even the mere threat of a lawsuit causes laws and 
regulations to get watered down. Again, when you have gone 17-for-17 in 
dispute settlement in those cases, you have to put that upfront in this 
discussion.
  What we know is that our country has regulations challenged nearly 
every day in our own domestic court system, and there are thousands of 
lawsuits every year. This trade promotion legislation makes it clear 
that companies do not have greater rights under the investor-state 
dispute settlement approach than they do in U.S. courts.
  The fact is that our country is a safe and welcoming environment for 
investment, but that sure hasn't been the case all over the world. 
Property can be stolen, governments can dream up regulations designed 
to discriminate against our investors, or companies in fields such as 
renewable energy can be targeted and punished in unfair ways. Those are 
companies that we think are right at the heart of a vibrant economy--
renewable energy companies--and they have been targeted.
  In some places, unlike the United States, there is not a reliable 
court to turn to for help. This raises serious questions. What happens, 
for example, if a Malaysian judge decides to vote against an American 
company and it costs them millions? In another era, our country turned 
to gunboat diplomacy to protect our economic interests, but, in my 
view, the rule of law is a better option than military force.
  It is also important to recognize that there are an increasing number 
of cases brought by pro-environment plaintiffs. That looks to me like a 
positive trend, whether it is the renewable energy companies 
challenging a European Union state that has rolled back incentives for 
solar or wind energy or the ecotourism investors suing Barbados for the 
discharge of sewage in a wetlands area.
  Skeptics have argued that the arbiters are invariably biased in favor 
of corporations and that the panels that decide cases are rife with 
conflict. The numbers, however, tell a different story, which is that 
the overwhelming majority of cases are decided in favor of government. 
The record does not support the proposition that all of the arbiters 
are unprincipled individuals who allow corporations in those dispute 
settlements to get laws and regulations tossed out.
  Finally, I want it to be clear that I will only accept a plan for 
dispute settlement that uses a transparent process. What is true in 
trade negotiations overall has to be true with dispute settlement, too. 
America cannot be kept in the dark. The hearing briefs, the decisions--
all of the important matters must be open to the public.
  My bottom line is this: The bipartisan trade legislation that is now 
before the Senate will go further than ever before to protect American 
sovereignty and affirm the fact that only democratically elected 
leaders write the laws in our country.
  Done right, our trade policies help guarantee that American companies 
that have grown up here, invested here, and found opportunities to sell 
brand Oregon and brand America around the world are going to get the 
same fair treatment abroad that they get here at home.
  I thank my colleague, Senator Durbin, for his patience.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oregon and the 
Senator from Utah for their leadership on this important issue. 
Although we may disagree on some elements, they have really poured 
their hearts and souls into this debate, which is one of the most 
important ones we have faced.
  Thank you for your leadership on that.


                        Issues Before the Senate

  I would like to at this point kind of reflect on where we are in the 
Senate at this moment where we have three major issues facing us and 
say a word about each. I will address some aspects of the trade bill 
and questions about our national security that have been raised by the 
extension of FISA.
  Before I get into those elements, in respect to the Presiding Officer 
of the Senate from the great State of West Virginia, I would like to 
reflect for a moment on McColloch's leap.
  Samuel McColloch was a major during the Revolutionary War, and he was 
given the assignment of keeping the western border frontier of the 
United States safe, which at that time focused on Fort Henry in what is 
now Wheeling, WV. Major McColloch had this famous moment when he was 
turned away from the gates of Fort Henry and had to ride away with the 
Native Americans--the Indians--in hot pursuit. He rode up the side of 
this hill or mountain, and as he reached the top there were more Native 
Americans or Indians waiting for him. He was surrounded, in a desperate 
situation. As the story or legend goes, at that point, Major McColloch 
went to the edge and, on his horse, with his rifle in hand, leapt off 
the side of this mountain or hill. The Native Americans rushed to look 
down, feeling that he must have died, and looked down, as the legend 
goes, to see him ride away on his white horse. They say he made this 
300-foot leap on a horse. I don't know if he did or didn't, but that is 
how the story goes.
  What does that have to do with what we are facing here in the Senate? 
It is personal, but I used to drive Route 40 in those days between St. 
Louis and Washington, DC, when I went to college here at Georgetown. I 
had a 1962 red Volkswagen, and I used to drive it back and forth. No. 
1, it was a long trip. It was a long trip because there were not many 
opportunities to avoid cities. You went right through the middle of 
Indianapolis, right through the middle of Columbus, and right through 
the middle of Wheeling, WV. On the famous hill or mountain of 
McColloch's leap, traffic would slow to a crawl--so slow that although 
I never stopped, I was able to read the sign above McColloch's leap 
because I was stuck in traffic and it was right in front of me.
  I always thought about that--well, someday I will go back and take a 
closer look at it. Well, I did get back to Wheeling and found out that 
the old Route 40 has changed a lot, and it doesn't go through Wheeling, 
WV. I don't get to see that sign on the side of the building, ``Marsh 
Wheeling Stogies,'' and all the places that used to be there, because 
of the interstates.
  There are amazing interstate opportunities now around Wheeling, WV; 
around Columbus, OH; around Indianapolis; around St. Louis; around 
Chicago, and it calls to mind one of the issues we are facing here at 
the close of this session: Why do we have such a great Interstate 
Highway System? Three words: Dwight David Eisenhower, the President of 
the United States, the successful general who led the D-day invasion 
and our conquest in World War II. When he was President, he envisioned 
the creation of an interstate highway system in America. Where did he 
get the idea? From Germany. He looked at their highway system and 
realized what an asset it was to that nation at war, that they could 
move people and supplies in such an efficient manner on the autobahns. 
He had a vision that the same thing would be available for America. He 
called it the Interstate Highway System. He created it in the 1950s.
  Virtually everyone in America today would concede it was a brilliant 
idea. It has created a backbone for commerce in America. In my State of 
Illinois, having an interstate near your town or passing through your 
town is really the best thing you could have for your

[[Page S3260]]

economy except for one other thing--having the intersection of 
interstates nearby. Then you know what is going to happen. There is 
going to be a lot of retail, a lot of commerce, a lot of business 
opportunities.
  So here we have this Interstate Highway System which for almost 60 
years has proven to be such a great success in America.
  Why do I dwell on this issue in the closing moments--we hope--of this 
session? There are Members of the Senate who have announced publicly 
that they want to put an end to this. They have said that from their 
political point of view, we have to put an end to this Federal, 
national highway transportation system. They believe it should all be 
done by States and the localities. They think whatever we have done is 
fine, but from this point forward, the Federal Government should have 
no role, no voice. We should not collect the Federal gas tax and put it 
into the construction of highways and bridges and mass transit across 
America.

  That is their position. You would dismiss it as just a marginal 
political position, but it turns out they have power within the 
Republican Party. Add to that group those who believe we should not be 
collecting revenue--any more revenue--for the Federal highway trust 
fund. It explains where we are today.
  Because of the opposition of these two groups within the Republican 
Party, those who want to do away with the Federal highway program and 
those who are unwilling to talk about any revenue for the program, 
today we are going to be asked for the 33rd short-term extension of 
surface transportation programs. Just to put this in perspective, we 
used to pass laws that reauthorized the Federal highway trust fund, 
Federal transportation trust fund for 5 and 6 years. That makes sense, 
doesn't it? If you are going to build a highway, it takes some time. It 
took a long time in Wheeling, WV, and Chicago and St. Louis. You need 
more than just a few months' commitment, you need several years of 
commitment to make an investment that pays off for America.
  So we used to pass these transportation bills when I was in the 
House, even in the Senate. It was the easiest political lift that we 
were assigned. Why was it so easy? Because Members of Congress could 
not wait to go home and announce that Federal highway funds were going 
to come back home and make a difference. I was one of them. I do not 
know how many shovels I have collected over the years from 
groundbreakings for highways or scissors for ribbon cutting. We do a 
lot of that as politicians.
  This Federal highway trust fund was a mother lode of public relations 
opportunities for Members of the House and Senate. Why? Because in my 
State 75 to 80 percent of all the money spent in Illinois on highway 
construction comes from Washington.
  So if we can pass this bill, we can point to projects that make a 
difference. When I was a Congressman, there was a stretch of interstate 
called the Central Illinois Expressway that starts on the eastern 
border of my State at Danville and goes all the way across Central 
Illinois to Quincy, which has dramatically improved the economy of that 
region--dramatically.
  I was happy to--every time we would complete a segment--be there for 
a photo and a press release. But then the argument started that maybe 
we should not do this and maybe we cannot afford to ask those who burn 
gasoline to pay a tax to build new highways and to repair the old ones.
  Now we are stuck in this situation where we cannot pass a Federal 
highway bill. Madam President, 32 times now--32 times--we have given 
short-term extensions of surface transportation programs. This one is 
almost laughable. Listen to this: We are going to extend the Federal 
highway trust fund for 60 days. What can you build in 60 days? Well, 
you can fill a pothole--maybe quite a few of them, as a matter of fact. 
But if you are going to repair a bridge, 60 days does not really give 
you much to work with. If you are going to build a new highway, that is 
out of the question.
  So what we are doing, limping along, extending the Federal highway 
trust fund for 60 days, 6 months, sadly, is ignoring the obvious. There 
are darn few things you can point to with certainty that the government 
can do to help build the American economy, but one, I am sure, is 
infrastructure, which used to be a bipartisan issue. Democrats and 
Republicans alike agreed: build the infrastructure for business to keep 
businesses, to attract businesses, and to create opportunities for jobs 
in America--not anymore.
  Under the Republican leadership of the House and the Senate, they 
have refused to even schedule a hearing for a markup for the Federal 
highway trust fund. Nope, not going to do it. They want to extend this 
Federal highway trust fund for 60 days. They, I guess, believe that if 
you fill enough potholes you can build a highway. I don't think so. 
They think America can patch its way to prosperity. I don't think so.
  I think we have to look at the obvious. If we are committed to this 
country, to its future, to building the economy and creating jobs and 
keeping them, if we want our children and grandchildren to have 
infrastructure that builds competition into the 21st century, you 
cannot do it with a 60-day highway bill. It cannot be done. I had a 
long discussion with my Democratic caucus over the last several weeks 
and told them I think we are making a serious mistake. I think this 
``go along, get along, 60 days, we are living for a week for Memorial 
Day'' attitude has to come to an end.
  I think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate has to 
stand and accept responsibility. That means passing a Federal highway 
bill, a Federal transportation bill. It is not just highways and 
bridges, as critically important as they are; it includes mass transit.
  In the State I represent, Illinois, downstate we love our highways. 
You get up to the Chicago metropolitan area, we love our highways 
still, but without mass transit we could not move all the people we 
need to move to keep the economy humming in the Chicagoland area. 
Twenty percent of this Federal Transportation bill goes to mass 
transit. Now, I am all for it. I support that; more people in trains, 
more people in buses, fewer people on the highways, less congestion.
  I think we ought to look at the big picture, too, even beyond the 
Federal Transportation bill. Can you imagine when that tragedy occurred 
on Amtrak just a little over a week ago--I believe eight people lost 
their lives and hundreds were injured--that the very next day, the next 
day, the House of Representatives held a hearing and decided to cut the 
appropriations for Amtrak. It is a classic case of ``what are they 
thinking?'' We want Amtrak to be safe, reliable, efficient. The people 
of America have told us they want it to grow.
  If you want to ride an Amtrak train in my State, coming into Chicago 
or going out of Chicago, you better get a reservation because those 
cars on Amtrak trains are packed. Sadly, most Amtrak rolling stock is 
about 30 years old, and we are not investing in Amtrak for our future. 
Where I live, Amtrak makes a big difference. Without Amtrak service out 
of Chicago, headed downstate in Illinois, I can tell you a lot of 
university presidents will tell you they will not have enough students.
  The students come from Chicago down to Champaign-Urbana to the 
University of Illinois; to Charleston, at Eastern Illinois University; 
Carbondale for Southern Illinois. They take that west side of our State 
run on Amtrak down to Quincy University in Western Illinois, Knox 
College.
  Over and over again, Amtrak service is a critical part of our State 
and its economy. Yet those in leadership on the Republican side don't 
believe in it. They want to see it go away, just like they want to see 
the Interstate Highway System come to an end. I think they are wrong. I 
think they are shortsighted. I think the public of this country has to 
speak up.
  So I guess I am serving notice here. This 60-day extension will go 
through. I understand that. But from this point forward, it is not 
going to be automatic anymore. It is not going to be: Well, we will do 
another 60 days and then we will do maybe 180 days. No. I think we need 
to have a moment in the Senate and in the House where this convenient 
extension, at the expense of America's future, comes to an end. It is 
time for the Republican Speaker and the Republican majority leader to 
lead, to call together their committees and to pass Federal highway 
trust fund.
  They have 60 days--60 days from the end of this month to get it done. 
That

[[Page S3261]]

is enough. I hope they do it. Because if they don't, many of us are not 
going to stand by again and say: Let's just let this new approach of 
patchwork America become the symbol of our future.
  The second issue which we still have not resolved, is what to do 
about the PATRIOT Act. It was 9/11/2001. I was in a meeting just off 
the Senate floor. We had just seen, on a small television in our room, 
the second plane crash into the New York Trade Towers. It was pretty 
clear at that moment this was not just an accident. This was done by 
design.
  It was not 15 minutes later that somebody broke into the room and 
said: Leave immediately. Get out. There is another plane on the way. We 
evacuated the United States Capitol Building. I have never seen 
anything like it in my life. Tourists everywhere ran out those doors 
and stood out on the grass and looked at one another and said: Where 
are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do? It had never 
happened before.
  Because of that experience and the tragedy of losing 3,000 American 
lives, we came together as a nation and said: We are going to stop this 
from happening again. We passed something called the PATRIOT Act, which 
empowered our government to go further than it had ever gone to keep us 
safe. We put a sunset on it. That was a wise idea. We said: It is not 
permanent law. It is going to be reviewed in a matter of 2 or 3 years 
because we are acting now with this emotional feeling about what has 
happened to America. We think we are doing the right thing, but we want 
to reflect on it and revisit it on a regular basis.
  Why? Because we are dedicated to the safety of this country, No. 1--
security and safety--but we are also dedicated to the rights of 
American citizens, our rights to privacy. So we wanted to strike the 
right balance. We thought we did, but we would return to it. Now, we 
are returning again.
  Here is the basic question we face; that is, what will be the reach 
of our Federal Government in gathering information to keep us safe? 
Specifically, in this case, we are talking about telephone records, not 
the substance of your phone conversations but your records. Whom did 
you call? How long did the call last? Whom did that person call? How 
long did the call last? Maybe two or three generations of telephone 
information.
  ``Bulk collection'' is the term that is used. It means, basically, 
that if you suspect someone in my home downstate area code of 217 in 
Illinois, if you suspected someone in that area code of being involved 
in terrorism or connected with a terrorist, the Federal Government 
would have the power to reach in and gather all of that phone 
information from area code 217.
  You might say to yourself: Well, why would they want to take all of 
it? They certainly have a name or telephone number of the suspect. No, 
bulk collection suggests gathering all of that information. Many of us 
have questioned over the years whether that is needed or if it was too 
far.
  I have offered amendments in the past which were unsuccessful because 
we did not know details about what the government was doing, and I 
could not disclose it. It was classified at that time, how much we were 
gathering, how often we were gathering. So over the years, my 
amendments would not succeed, but the cause continued to grow, to the 
point where we now have a USA FREEDOM Act, which says, basically, the 
Federal Government can reach into area code 217 to go after a suspect, 
that suspect's phone records, and the people that suspect may be in 
touch with.
  So we are more or less localizing it, particularizing it, going to an 
individual rather than collecting all of this information, bulk 
collection. This is what USA FREEDOM Act does. It limits government 
reach. Now, we do not want to limit it to the point where it endangers 
us. So we went and asked the professional, the intelligence agencies 
and the Department of Justice: Is this new version of the law enough to 
keep America safe?
  They came back to us and they said yes. As a result, we have a 
bipartisan bill, which has passed the House of Representatives, 
Democrats and Republicans, supported by Speaker Boehner, the Republican 
leader, passed overwhelmingly the USA FREEDOM Act, and it has now come 
over the Senate. Why do we have to take this up now? Because at the end 
of May, the authority of the Federal Government to collect information 
on telephone records expires. The sunset I talked about recurs.
  So we have an obligation to do something before the end of May. I 
believe we should call up the USA FREEDOM Act that passed in the House 
of Representatives and pass it here. We are told by the President, the 
Attorney General, the head of our intelligence agencies that this is 
enough authority to keep us safe and not go too far. I failed to add, a 
recent court case in the State of New York found that this bulk 
collection of telephone records was illegal. So we clearly have to act 
and do something. We can, but it is tied up in knots. This morning, the 
majority leader came to the floor and took exception to some Members of 
his own party as well as my party and our position supporting the USA 
FREEDOM Act. I hope that he will give us a chance to pass that, and I 
hope there is a bipartisan majority to pass it.

  The last issue which I wish to address is the trade bill that is 
pending. It is a controversial measure. I will not go into any depth. I 
can't add a great deal to what has been said by so many people on the 
floor about this legislation. But the currency question raises an 
interesting question for us. There are ways to have unfair trade 
practices that are not very obvious, and there are some that are. One 
of the obvious ways to deal unfairly in trade is to dump a product in 
another country.
  What does that mean? It means if you are going to create and 
fabricate a ton of steel in Brazil and then sell it in the United 
States for less than your cost of production, you are dumping it. That 
is exactly what happened to us about 12 years ago. Brazil, Japan, and 
Russia decided to dump steel in the United States.
  Why would any country want to sell steel at lower than the cost of 
production. They are going to lose money on it, right? They saw that in 
the short term, but in the long term they knew what would happen. U.S. 
steel producers couldn't compete. They couldn't sell at that price. So 
they kept dumping steel in the United States until more and more steel 
companies in America went out of business.
  Oh, they filed their grievances for unfair trade practices, and 
therein lies the problem. Those grievances--those complaints--went to 
the International Trade Commission, which sat down to study the issue 
and make a decision on the issue. By the time they made a decision and 
found out that yes, there was dumping on, and yes, it was unfair to the 
United States, all of the U.S. steel companies that were affected had 
lost and gone out of business.
  So when you have a trade agreement, it isn't just a matter of having 
provisions. They need to be enforceable in a timely fashion or we will 
lose business and we will lose jobs in America.
  We have two other issues before us now. One of them relates to 
currency. You can price a product by the value of your currency against 
another country's currency. China and Japan have developed quite a 
reputation in the world for their currency manipulation to make sure 
they always had an advantage over the United States, no matter how good 
we were.
  So currency is an important issue that has been brought up in an 
amendment today, and it is an indication to everyone who follows this 
debate of the complexity of the debate on trade.
  There is a second issue that was brought up by Senator Wyden of 
Oregon, who is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and 
that is the whole issue of what to do when you have a dispute with 
another country about a provision of law.
  Here is an illustration. Australia passed a law, which required 
warnings on their tobacco packaging so that people in Australia 
understood the health risk of using tobacco. That is not uncommon. We 
do it in the United States. But Philip Morris, an international company 
that had offices in Hong Kong, protested to Australia that these 
labels, which discouraged people from buying their tobacco products, 
would cost them business. And they used this investor trade dispute 
mechanism, which meant they didn't have to go through the courts of 
Australia. They went through this basic mechanism,

[[Page S3262]]

this tribunal created by the trade agreement. The net result of it was 
that Australia faced this prospect: Either to remove the law requiring 
labeling or to pay Philip Morris for the effectiveness of that labeling 
on their profits.
  The argument for this separate tribunal is that you cannot always 
trust the courts of the country. I heard that from my friend from 
Oregon. But also, when you take this out of the court system and let it 
be decided by corporate leaders, it really puts you at risk.
  What is going to happen when some company protests in America about 
our environmental laws, about our banning toxic chemicals, about our 
tobacco warnings? That means in addition to going through the courts of 
the United States, it may also go through a tribunal. I worry about 
that. Again, that is an aspect of trade which most people don't think 
about, but it could affect each and every one of us very personally.
  We are likely to finish this session this weekend, I hope, and we 
have three important issues. We are probably going to extend the 
highway trust fund for 60 days--and I hope that comes very soon.
  I see my friend from Tennessee on the floor. I want to say a word 
congratulating him for his leadership on the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee and bringing about an extraordinary bill which passed on the 
floor of the Senate related to the negotiations with Iran. It is one of 
the highlights, I might say to my friend from Tennessee, of what we 
have achieved this year. I thank him for that.
  I don't know if he serves on any appropriate committee, but if he 
could take his skill and wisdom to create a bipartisan highway trust 
fund bill, we need it, and I hope we can do it.
  Secondly, I hope we can pass the USA FREEDOM Act. It is the right 
thing to do, striking a balance between security in America and 
privacy.
  Finally, we are likely to complete this part of the trade debate. I 
hope we have a fulsome debate on the amendments, which raise some 
important issues, two of which I have spoken to this morning. It is 
important that we do this business and we do it right. A lot of people 
are counting on us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I rise today to speak on the matter 
before us, which is the trade promotion authority that is so important 
to our Nation.
  I realize that whenever we deal with issues such as this, there are 
always parochial issues that people deal with in order to make sure 
their State's interests are represented well. I realize, for instance, 
that issues such as the Ex-Im Bank are very important to various people 
around our country based on manufacturing operations that happen to be 
in their States, and I respect that.
  I appreciated yesterday that we were able to move beyond an issue 
that was holding us up and get to a place where we are going to be able 
to vote on some final amendments and, hopefully, move trade promotion 
authority into fruition.
  I know we have talked a lot about these parochial issues. I want to 
move back to those in just one moment, but I want to talk about the 
importance of trade promotion authority and an agreement that I hope 
will come to fruition after we pass this, which is TPP.
  I know that many in our country--especially now as we see things on 
our television screen and in newspapers about unrest that is taking 
place around the world--have been concerned about our foreign policy. 
We have been concerned about the effectiveness of what we have been 
doing.
  One of the areas that our committee focused on this last week was 
much of what is happening in the South and East China Seas at present. 
Because of those activities, I was in Southeast Asia within the last 12 
months.
  Let me just say that there are concerns there among friends, people 
who want to move more toward a Western-based value system in their 
countries. They are very concerned about many of the activities that 
are taking place in the South China Sea but also about the economic 
dominance that is occurring now in China as it continues to export not 
only its strength into the South China Sea but also its economic 
dominance.
  They have been very concerned about the fact that our pivot to Asia 
really hasn't borne much fruit. They haven't really been able to see 
anything very substantial taking place in that regard. I think people 
on both sides of the aisle have concerns about what is happening in 
that area.
  But here we have an opportunity to do something that has nothing to 
do with military might, has nothing to do with things that could evolve 
down the road such as kinetic activity or anything along those lines.
  We have an opportunity now to hugely shape that part of the world by 
passage of this trade promotion agreement, which will allow the 
countries to finally put their last deal on the table. Without this, 
there is no way we are going to get to a final TPP agreement that will 
bring that region more closely aligned to the United States.
  It calls us to do much greater business with them, which will help 
people in Tennessee. It will help people in West Virginia. It will help 
people all across this country to be able to export goods to other 
places. But, importantly, it will draw those countries more closely to 
the United States, and it will act as a buffer against the dominance 
that is taking place now with China.
  In meeting after meeting, constantly I was asked: Will the United 
States come together and deal with this issue in an appropriate way? 
Will the United States actually be our partner? Will the United States 
work with us to make sure that our economies expand as the United 
States' economy expands? Will we be able to count on the United States 
to enter into an agreement where we have a balance, where we have the 
opportunity not just to export our goods to China and deal with China 
but also have the opportunity to deal with the United States? Can we 
count on the fact that the United States is going to promote free 
enterprise, is going to promote the rule of law, is going to promote 
anticorruption, is going to move away from state-owned enterprises, 
which in many cases is dominating that area?
  I just want to say that TPP--and passage of TPA, in order to cause us 
to come to a final agreement on TPP--is in our national security 
interest. It is the best way for us to counter what is happening in the 
region that we consider to be a threat. It is the best way to promote 
American values.
  In the process, what we are doing is actually raising the standard of 
living of Americans. So this is a win-win. Again, I know we have a lot 
of parochial issues that people care about rightly--I don't challenge 
that--and that could possibly get in the way. I hope that over the 
course of the next several hours, we will figure out a way to 
appropriately deal with amendments that allow people to voice concerns, 
especially concerns that they have in their own respective States. But 
I hope, when we move beyond that, when we move beyond disposing of 
those amendments as a group, that we will come together and pass this 
TPA, which, more than anything else we can do now in the region, will 
cause us to be a bulwark and will cause us to allow people to move 
toward the Western values that we hold so dear.
  That brings me to an issue, first, on the national security front. We 
have a host of former Secretaries of Defense who have signed a letter--
people on both sides of the aisle, former generals who have worked in 
the region. They know how important TPA is and TPP following on. They 
know how important they are to our national security interests.
  In addition, I think you know we have had 10 Treasury Secretaries who 
signed a letter talking about one of the amendments that may be on the 
floor dealing with currency.
  I don't know what the office of the Presiding Officer is like right 
now, but we are being inundated with emails, especially from the auto 
industry, regarding this currency issue. During the crisis, I know the 
Presiding Officer was serving in the House of Representatives, and I 
was in the Senate. During the auto crisis, the Senate debated issues 
relative to the auto crisis. I know the House did the same. But during 
that crisis, President Bush, late in December, decided that he would 
use

[[Page S3263]]

U.S. taxpayer monies to bail out the auto industry. And President 
Barack Obama, who was elected and came into office shortly thereafter, 
followed up on what President Bush had put in place. Through something 
called TARP, which was unexpectedly put in place to be utilized to bail 
out the financial industry--again, something that was regrettable and 
had to take place--the auto industry was bailed out. Taxpayers of the 
United States bailed out the auto industry to the tune of $80 billion. 
So $80 billion we invested in the auto industry.
  What that did was not just bail out the large entities that needed 
the money, but it bailed out the supply chain that worked to support 
what they did in their manufacturing operations. And so the taxpayers 
of this country, in a massive way, in an unprecedented way, back in 
2008 and 2009, injected taxpayer money--taxpayer money--into private 
enterprises to make sure they would survive. It was obviously 
controversial. Today, obviously, many jobs have stayed in place as a 
result of that. People certainly have differing opinions about what 
should have happened during that time.

  I fear what is happening right now is that the auto industry is back 
and asking for another bailout. In our office anyway, and I think other 
offices around the Capitol, we are hearing from the auto industry right 
now about a currency provision--a provision they want inserted in TPA 
in order to give them another bailout. They want to ensure, as we move 
into this agreement, that they will have a competitive advantage.
  I think all of us understand that the President has said he would 
veto TPA if it has this currency provision in it. We have had Treasury 
Secretaries--10 of them, highly respected on both sides of the aisle--
who have told us we should not have currency provisions of this type in 
a TPA agreement. I think we understand the difficulties having these 
currency provisions in TPA will create in actually completing the TPP 
agreement, which again I have mentioned before. Obviously, it is 
important to us economically, but it is hugely important to us from a 
national security standpoint and from our national interest standpoint.
  So I know these currency issues sometimes are difficult to deal with. 
I think it is important certainly for Senators to be able to express 
concerns about things that may happen in their own States, and I 
respect that. I respect that, but I hope as a body we will rise above 
giving another bailout to the auto industry because, if we do, it will 
greatly complicate our ability to enter into an agreement called TPP, 
which will be in our national interest, it will be in our economic 
interest, and it certainly is something Treasury Secretaries, Defense 
Secretaries, and others who know of the great national interest at 
stake oppose.
  I thank the chair for the time. I hope as a body we will do what is 
good for our Nation and not just for a small group of people; that we 
will do something that will stand the test of time; we will do 
something that will increase the standard of living for these pages who 
sit before us today and cause them to be safer; that will cause 
American values to be more prolific and certainly benefit our Nation's 
economy.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Highway Trust Fund

  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, in just 10 days, authorization for the 
highway trust fund will expire. The fund will run out of money entirely 
by the end of July, which means transportation projects in New 
Hampshire and across this country will grind to a halt.
  What is Congress's response to this crisis? This week, leadership 
will bring to the floor yet another inadequate short-term extension of 
the highway trust fund authorization, and there is no plan whatsoever 
to address the insolvency of the fund. In other words, once again, we 
are kicking the can down the road. But in this case the road is 
overwhelmed by traffic, badly in need of modernization, and filled with 
patches and potholes. For a country that seeks to remain competitive in 
the 21st century global economy, this is totally dysfunctional and 
unacceptable.
  I know my colleagues and the Presiding Officer travel around the city 
of Washington. Sometimes I feel like I am in a Third World country when 
I travel along the roads in DC. There are few more basic and necessary 
functions of government than providing for modernized highways, 
bridges, and other infrastructure. Yet Congress is grossly neglecting 
this responsibility. China spends about 9 percent of their gross 
domestic product on infrastructure, Brazil spends about 8 percent, but 
infrastructure spending in the United States has fallen to just 2 
percent of our GDP. That is half of what we were spending in the 1960s.
  Our highways and bridges face a more than $800 billion backlog of 
investment needs, including nearly one-half trillion dollars in 
critical repair work, and Americans spend a staggering 5.5 billion--
that is billion not million--hours stuck in traffic each year. Yet 
earlier this month, the majority party in Congress voted almost 
unanimously for a budget resolution that will slash Federal funding for 
transportation by 40 percent over the next decade. This is just 
irresponsible. This isn't about cutting fat and extravagance from the 
transportation budget; this is about cutting the muscle, the sinew of 
our Nation's critical transportation infrastructure.
  Last week, I went with the mayor and the city manager to Concord--New 
Hampshire's capital city--to inspect one of three bridges that are 
critical to the city of Concord. It is rusted out and it is now 
closed--the Sewalls Falls Bridge. Our office had worked with the city 
and U.S. DOT to get the approvals to replace this bridge. The city of 
Concord lined up all the permits--and then nothing. Because of 
uncertainty about Federal funding for the project, it was stopped dead 
in its tracks, until the city and State last week, when they realized 
we weren't going to act, stepped in with short-term funding in 
anticipation we would finally do the right thing.
  Well, thousands of other road and bridge projects across the country 
have been put in this same jeopardy and limbo because of our failure to 
do our job. This neglect is creating bottlenecks in our economy, it is 
hurting our global competitiveness, and it is killing jobs, especially 
in the construction trades, where employment still has yet to recover 
from the recession. According to a Duke University study, providing 
Federal funding to meet the U.S. Department of Transportation's 
infrastructure requests would create nearly 2\1/2\ million jobs.
  Earlier this month, I joined with a bipartisan group of eight 
Senators who previously served as Governors: Senators King, Rounds, 
Kaine, Hoeven, Warner, Carper, Manchin, and myself. We sent a letter to 
our Senate colleagues urging them to commit to fully funding national 
infrastructure priorities and putting a stop to the destructive, 
dysfunctional short-term fixes that have become routine in recent 
years.
  Madam President, you are too young to remember, but I remember being 
in elementary school when Dwight Eisenhower championed our great 
Interstate Highway System. That was a visionary move. I remember 
talking about it in class and being excited about it. The National 
Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 ensured dedicated Federal 
funding to build a network that today encompasses more than 46,000 
miles of roadways. That system has transformed our economy and it has 
created countless millions of jobs, but it is now six decades old. Its 
dedicated funding mechanism--the highway trust fund--is in constant 
shortfall and today is just 2 months away from becoming insolvent.
  So for Congress to pass yet another short-term extension is damaging 
and dysfunctional. It kicks the can down a road that is crumbling, 
congested, and increasingly uncompetitive. It is time for Congress to 
come together, on a bipartisan basis, to break the cycle of patchwork 
fixes. It is time to pass a 5- to 6-year funding bill that will allow 
government at all levels to plan long-term capital investment projects 
and to build a 21st century transportation system that meets the needs 
of our 21st century economy.

[[Page S3264]]

  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.


                        Exciting News on Cancer

  Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I rise to speak about an amazing 
presentation I have had the privilege of witnessing twice now in the 
past several months at the University of Pennsylvania, at the medical 
center there. I want to speak a little about the work some scientists 
and doctors are doing that is extremely exciting and has great 
implications for all of us.
  Let me start with a little background and some facts. In 2014, over 
585,000 Americans died from cancer. There were over 1.6 million new 
cases diagnosed. I think it is fair to say that every one of us has a 
family member, a very close friend or we know somebody closely who has 
been afflicted with some form of this terrible disease. The fact is 
cancer is on the verge of overtaking heart disease as the leading cause 
of death in America.
  Now, we have made a lot of progress on many forms of cancer, but we 
still have a long way to go. I want to speak a little about a very 
exciting new therapy, but let's start with talking about cancer a 
little bit itself.
  The fact is cancer cells have this protective shield, if you will. It 
is a shield that allows the cancer cell to hide from our immune system. 
If our immune system were able to function normally with respect to 
cancer cells, we wouldn't have cancer. The immune system would destroy 
the harmful cells, but that doesn't happen in cancer, and it is because 
of this protective shield. So imagine if we could develop a therapy 
that would penetrate that protective shield and allow our immune system 
to break through and destroy the cancer cells.
  Astonishingly, the very viruses that have been responsible for 
killing millions of people around the world--HIV, polio virus, 
measles--are now being used to create exactly this capability--this 
capability to break through cancer's protective shield.
  Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania--a team of researchers 
led by Dr. Carl June--have developed a process to harness the body's 
immune system and enable it to identify, track down, attack, and 
destroy an important form of leukemia, a blood cancer that is most 
often found in children. In their trial, 90 percent of the patients 
with this relatively rare form of recurrent leukemia went into 
remission after they got this groundbreaking treatment and their cancer 
has not returned.
  Dr. June and his colleagues don't ever say this, but they may be on 
the verge of curing leukemia, and it is very exciting. So let me talk a 
little bit specifically about this form of leukemia. Acute 
lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common cancer in children ages 1 
through 7. For young children, this is the most common form of cancer 
that afflicts them. There are 60,000 cases in the United States alone 
of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It is hard to say, so it goes by ALL. 
This cancer results when abnormal white blood cells accumulate in the 
bone marrow. The leukemia cells then are carried through the 
bloodstream to other organs and tissues, including the brain, liver, 
and other areas, where they continue to grow and divide.
  Now, most ALL patients can be successfully treated with conventional 
chemotherapy, expensive and sometimes dangerous bone marrow 
transplants, and stem cell transplants. These therapies have improved 
enormously, and they work in most cases. I think about 80 percent of 
ALL cases can be cured with these conventional treatments. But the 
recurrent ALL--those who don't respond and are not cured by these 
conventional treatments--their prognosis is much worse. Approximately 
3,000 pediatric patients relapse after the bone marrow transplant 
procedures, and most of these relapses are early relapses and, 
candidly, have a pretty dismal outcome--only a 15- to 20-percent 
survival rate for children with these kinds of relapses. This is where 
this new therapy comes in. It is called chimeric antigen receptor--or 
CAR-cell therapy.
  What happens is doctors remove T-cells from the cancer patient. T-
cells are a type of white blood cell we all have as part of our immune 
system. They then take those T-cells and they insert new genes from an 
inactive, harmless component of the HIV virus. They actually use part 
of the HIV virus to get into the T-cells, which gives the T-cells a new 
capability. Specifically, they develop the capability to identify and 
link to a protein that is on the surface of the cancer cell. That is 
the shield that protects the cancer cell. This enables the T-cell, in 
turn, to then destroy that cancer cell. So that is the idea. The T-cell 
is taken out, it is modified with a component of the HIV virus, and it 
is then injected back into the patient, where it multiplies massively 
and begins this wonderful search-and-destroy mission--searching for the 
cancer cells it has been programmed to find and killing them.
  This treatment is specific to every individual patient and works in 
part because it works with a patient's own T-cells. So that creates a 
whole set of protocols and challenges. You have to make sure that you 
are withdrawing a person's T-cells. You can go through almost a 
manufacturing process whereby you transform them so that they can be 
used for this purpose.
  One of the most exciting things about this therapy is that after a 
patient has been treated, after they have gotten their modified T-cells 
put back into their body and after the T-cells have served their 
purpose, they don't just vanish; they remain in a person's system. They 
remain as part of the immune system, sort of on standby, ready and able 
to attack if the cancer should emerge.
  They are still in the trial phase of this new process. Dr. June and 
his team were willing to take on the most difficult cases. In fact, 
that is all they were allowed to take on initially. The first 30 
patients they tried this therapy on had already undergone chemotherapy 
several times and the chemotherapy had failed. In fact, everything had 
failed for these patients. They had no treatment options left. By the 
time they got to Dr. Carl June and his team, these patients had weeks 
to live.
  In the first trial, 27 of the 30 patients were cancer free 1 month 
later--So 1 month after receiving the treatment, no cancer--and 78 
percent of the patients were alive 6 months after the treatment.
  Now, 125 patients have received this personalized cellular therapy at 
the University of Pennsylvania for several kinds of leukemia. They have 
modified the treatment to address other forms of cancer, including non-
Hodgkin's lymphoma, for instance. In more than 90 percent of the 
pediatric leukemia cases they treated, the patients are still in 
remission. Four out of five adults with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma have had 
complete remissions.
  This is amazing stuff. It is very exciting. Scientists, medical 
researchers, and doctors across the country who are following this have 
been blown away by the success, and they refer to it as ``a major 
breakthrough,'' as ``phenomenal,'' and it has been what ``we've been . 
. . hoping for.''
  Just last year, the FDA agreed that the progress is so stunning that 
they granted what they call ``breakthrough therapy'' designation for 
this therapy, for this treatment, because of the success they have 
shown in the early trials. This designation is going to allow Dr. 
June's team to treat more patients more quickly who are in these very 
difficult circumstances.
  In fact, the University of Pennsylvania is already working with 
Novartis in anticipation of the time that they will be able to roll 
this out as a standard treatment, where it will one day--hopefully 
soon--no longer be considered experimental and no longer be the last 
resort for patients but an early resort. The conventional treatments--
chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants and stem cell treatments--tend 
to have very unfortunate adverse side effects. It has been necessary 
because they can be successful. But one of the wonderful things about 
this therapy is there are no lingering side effects.
  So it is enormously encouraging. It is very exciting. One of the 
things that are most exciting about this is that this technique 
conceptually could very well apply to any number of cancers, maybe all 
cancers. It is not a small matter. It is a challenge. But these guys 
are meeting this challenge. The challenge is to design the 
transformation of the T-cell in a way that will pierce that shield, 
that unique shield for each form of cancer, and they are making 
remarkable progress. They

[[Page S3265]]

have also made tremendous progress on fighting multiple myeloma, which 
is another blood cancer that is very serious.
  I should point out that Dr. June and his team at the University of 
Pennsylvania are not alone in pursuing this general direction. MD 
Anderson in Texas is working to use the common cold virus--the virus 
that causes the common cold--to help fight brain tumors in a similar 
fashion.
  Penn researchers have already developed a way to engineer immune 
cells in mice to fight a very dangerous form of brain cancer, and that 
has been so successful in the animal trials that this fall they will be 
able to begin human trials on this as well. This kind of brain cancer 
that they will be trying to treat affects over 22,000 Americans. It is 
called glioblastoma. People who are diagnosed with stage IV 
glioblastoma are in very dire circumstances. The mean survival rate is 
less than 18 months. This is, in fact, the form of cancer that took the 
life of Senator Kennedy, a former colleague of so many of us. This is 
extremely exciting. And ``60 Minutes'' did a profile on some doctors at 
Duke University who are using a reformulated version of the polio 
virus. Instead of HIV, they are using the polio virus in a similar 
fashion to enable our immune system to attack this brain cancer, 
glioblastoma.
  I am, frankly, fascinated and incredibly excited about the progress 
these scientists and these doctors are making. But along the way, to 
get there, it costs money, and there has been a struggle for the funds 
to get this done. Dr. June's study has been supported by the NIH, by 
the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Specialized Centers of Research Grant 
Program, and a Stand Up To Cancer-St. Baldrick's Dream Team 
translational research grant.
  In 2008, the NCI had originally denied funding because they thought 
this was perhaps too risky. Fortunately, the Leukemia & Lymphoma 
Society and the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy stepped in.
  After they treated the first several patients, despite their success, 
they ran out of money and they had to stop treating patients for over a 
year while additional funding was lined up.
  The fact is, this research funded by the NIH has given us tremendous 
strides in early detection and treatment methods and survival rates for 
a variety of cancers but especially for this work.
  I know my colleagues and I are committed to continuing to fund the 
kind of research that makes these breakthroughs possible in a 
responsible way. I wanted to come down to the floor today and talk 
about how important this is and how exciting this is. I personally 
think we are in an extraordinarily exciting moment for health care for 
our whole society. Technology is producing spectacular breakthroughs, 
and it seems to be happening on an accelerating basis. Some of the big, 
gigantic intellectual breakthroughs of recent years--the Human Genome 
Project, the gene sequencing--the technology that is available now 
wasn't even imagined a few years ago. The combination of these things 
is enabling us to make discoveries and breakthroughs and treatments 
that were beyond human imagination just a few years ago. So I think we 
could be on the threshold of some absolutely stunning and wonderful 
developments. Personalized medicine is a big part of it. Understanding 
how our genes contribute to the health care problems we have but also 
can be used to combat these problems--I think this is all readily 
within reach. I am very excited about it.
  In closing, I guess my message is that when we think about where we 
are and how close we are to these stunning cures for some amazingly 
devastating diseases, I think we should set our goal at curing these 
diseases. Our goal shouldn't be to figure out how we treat this, how we 
extend life for a few months. We will do that for as long as we have 
to, but our goal should be to cure. Our goal should be to cure cancer. 
Our goal should be to cure heart disease. Our goal should be to cure 
Alzheimer's. We are going to be able to do this. We should make this a 
goal. We should make this a priority.
  We have a lot of competing priorities for the limited resources 
available to the Federal Government. I can't think of any that are 
higher than this extremely noble effort, and I can't think of any 
reason not to support it. It is within reach. The progress is stunning 
and exciting, and it is happening all across America and very much in 
Pennsylvania. I am proud of the work that is being done in 
Pennsylvania, and I look forward to seeing it continue.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I am speaking today on the underlying 
bill, but I do want to indicate, supporting my friend from 
Pennsylvania, that there is incredible, exciting work being done with 
the National Institutes of Health that is focused on those cures. I 
think the challenge for us is that the budget that was passed will 
actually end up cutting NIH, and with this very bad policy of 
sequestration that I hope we are going to be able to fix--if that 
continues, then we will not only not have the ability to move forward 
on exciting cures, but we will actually be seeing NIH cut, which I 
think would be foolish and devastating to all of us in the long run 
and, for a lot of reasons, going in the wrong direction. So I hope we 
can work together on a bipartisan basis to fix that.


                           Amendment No. 1299

  Madam President, let me first say, coming to the floor on the 
Portman-Stabenow amendment, that I ask unanimous consent to add two 
more cosponsors today: Senator Tester and Senator Markey. That brings 
us to a total of 30 bipartisan cosponsors on this very important, 
commonsense amendment outlining the importance of the biggest 21st-
century trade barrier, and that is currency manipulation. So I thank 
everyone who has joined together to cosponsor this.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. I also know there has been a tremendous amount of 
energy going on trying to defeat this amendment in the last day, and 
there are a lot of comments being made on the floor. I do want to first 
of all say in response to comments from someone whom I greatly respect, 
the Senator from Tennessee, who has played an incredibly important role 
in moving forward on some important foreign policy issues, that I would 
caution that we call support for manufacturing--whether it be autos or 
others or supply chains or materials manufacturing--somehow a bailout 
when we are talking about protecting American jobs--I would point to 
the fact that there is a very important company, Alcoa, in Tennessee 
that just received an advanced technology vehicle loan. I was proud to 
author that loan program back in 2007 in the Energy bill. They make 
aluminum, as we all know, and they are retooling to be able to benefit 
from Ford Motor Company's policy of moving to aluminum to take 700 
pounds out of the F-150 truck to make it more energy efficient. Alcoa 
is benefiting, a Tennessee company. I don't consider that loan a 
bailout any more than I consider any other loan programs we put 
together for manufacturing a bailout.
  But I would suggest that we have literally millions of jobs across 
our country connected to the supply chain, whether it is autos, whether 
it is dishwashers, whatever it is that we are making.
  We have manufacturers--large and small--telling us that if we are 
going to move forward and give negotiating objectives to this 
administration to negotiate a trade agreement with 40 percent of the 
global economy in Asia, we better understand that the No. 1 trading 
barrier used by Asian companies is currency manipulation--No. 1. I find 
it astounding. It would almost be funny if it were not so crazy. There 
are these arguments, on the one hand, that somehow, setting up a 
negotiating principle and just saying that if you negotiate something 
on currency, we want it to be enforceable for the first time--not just 
words--we have a lot of words. We have years and years of lots of words 
about currency manipulation. But this time, if you actually negotiate 
something, we want it to be enforceable. And somehow that is going to 
bring down the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If that is the case, then we 
have a lot more to be worried about than this amendment, in my 
judgment, in terms of what sounds like not a very good agreement 
overall.

[[Page S3266]]

  We are continually hearing, on the one hand, that things are getting 
better with China, that Japan does not do this anymore, and that the 
Bank of Japan does not do this anymore. But if they do not do this 
anymore, then why do they care? How can anyone with a straight face say 
they will walk away from a major Trans-Pacific Partnership because we 
say to our negotiators, on the list of things we think are important on 
behalf of American businesses and workers, that we count currency 
manipulation in that list. And by the way, if you do something--and we 
do not prescribe what it ought to be--it ought to be enforceable.
  I am astounded at the amount of energy going into this to say this is 
a poison pill. The reality is that in the House of Representatives this 
amendment would actually pick up votes, and there is going to be a lot 
of need to pick up votes in the House of Representatives.
  I do not know anybody who says they are voting for this and that 
somehow because this is in here--or somebody who is not voting for it--
they would not actually vote for the TPA.
  It is amazing to me, and it is amazing to me that my partner in this 
is a former U.S. Trade Representative who sat at the negotiating table, 
who supports TPA, who is saying that this is reasonable and will not 
interfere with the ability to negotiate.
  As I said before, I would like to go further. I would like to say 
that you do not get fast-track authority unless you do something on 
currency because this has cost us over 5 million jobs and counting. But 
that is what this amendment says. This creates maximum flexibility for 
the administration. It simply says on the list of things that are 
important that we care about wages, we care about the standard of 
living, we care about protecting the environment, we care about 
intellectual property rights, and we care about currency manipulation. 
And if you put something in there, it should be enforceable under the 
international rules under the WTO and meet the definition of the IMF. 
We are not mandating the outcome of any particular negotiation. If 
simply having this in here means that Japan walks away, then there is 
something else going on here that we ought to all be very, very 
concerned about.
  We have also heard that this will affect countries to attack us on 
our domestic policy, including quantitative easing. Our amendment 
explicitly exempts domestic monetary policy. In fact, in the text of 
the amendment, it says: ``Nothing in the previous sentence shall be 
construed to restrict the exercise of domestic monetary policy.''
  In the side-by-side by the leaders of our Finance Committee--by the 
way, they have no such exemptions, which is interesting. Some have 
contended that by adopting our amendment, particularly Japan will walk 
away. They really cannot have it both ways. Either the Bank of Japan is 
or is not doing what they have done for 376 times in the last 25 
years--376 times, despite the fact that they signed on the dotted line 
with 188 countries, signed on the dotted line through the International 
Monetary Fund: We are part of the IMF, and we will not manipulate our 
currency. And they have done it 376 times. So if they are not going to 
do it anymore, why should they care that we put this in as a priority 
for the United States, for our workers and manufacturers? And if they 
care so much and if they would walk away just by our simply raising 
this and saying we ought to do something enforceable, it is obvious 
there is going to be 377. And we ought to all be extremely concerned 
about that, because what does that mean? What are we really talking 
about?
  It means foreign products are cheaper here and American products are 
more expensive there, and in a global economy, when our manufacturers 
are competing not to get into Japan but competing around the world with 
Japan, we have already seen the results at other points in time--
anywhere from $6,000 to $11,000 more on the cost of one vehicle. Think 
about that. As a consumer, you are going to buy a car, and there is a 
$6,000, $8,000, $10,000, $11,000 difference in price. That is a big 
deal. That is a very big deal. I mean, for all of us who say we want a 
level playing field on trade, that our people are smart and competent 
and compete successfully with anybody, we ought to care about this--
that when the Bank of Japan intervenes, we are seeing anywhere from a 
$6,000 to $11,000 difference in the cost of an automobile. This has 
cost us over 5 million good-paying jobs in America.
  I thought that was supposed to be our priority. That was our job--to 
be fighting, but not for the Bank of Japan. In fact, Ford Motor Company 
says they will compete with anybody around the world, but they cannot 
compete with the Bank of Japan. So this is about a level playing field.
  Why does it matter? It is not just about selling in Japan. Unlike 
America, the Japanese have a preference for buying their own vehicles 
as a matter of patriotism in their country. I wish we had the same. So 
it is not just about getting into Japan, the little, small islands of 
Japan. It is about competing with them on everything in between. It is 
about the 1.2 billion people who live in India, where we are trying to 
sell to them and Japan is trying to sell to them. If they can sell a 
vehicle for $6,000 or $10,000 less, what do you think is going to 
happen? It is about the 200 million people in Brazil, whom we are 
trying to sell to and Japan is trying to sell to.
  They are fighting so much, even having a negotiating principle that 
says: If we put language in, it ought to be enforceable. If they are 
fighting so much, it must be because they are really looking at those 
countries and saying: You know what; we want that $6,000 difference. We 
want that $10,000 difference. We do not want anything to get in the way 
of that.
       Frankly, protecting Japan, Japanese automakers and 
     suppliers, and Japanese workers is not our job. It is not our 
     job. Our job is to stand up for American workers and American 
     businesses, and that is what this amendment is all about.
  By the way, the issue of currency manipulation affects every part of 
the economy--agriculture, medicines, and every part of the economy. All 
we are saying is to give us a shot here. Give American manufacturers 
and workers a shot, at least by saying in fast-track that we want 
something done on currency. If you do it, it should be enforceable.
  Countries have been signing up for years saying they will not 
manipulate their currency and nobody has ever enforced it. No one has 
ever enforced it. All we are asking is if we negotiate something, it 
should have enforceable standards. It is not enough to have a handshake 
agreement anymore.
  How many years do we have to go on and how many millions of jobs do 
we have to lose, when all we get is good-faith assurances and 
handshakes?
  Let me say this. I hope when this debate is done, the intensity to 
defeat this amendment that our manufacturers promote--by the way, they 
always support free trade. These are folks who are in the global 
economy, and they want to trade. But if we are going to put aside 
American manufacturers, American suppliers, American workers, I hope 
the next thing we will do is to focus on fast-tracking the middle class 
and have as much intensity, as many late-night calls, and as many 
meetings together to make sure we have a minimum wage in this country, 
to make sure we have a long-term investment in transportation that will 
not only deal with safety and fixing roads and bridges and transit and 
rail for our farmers but that creates millions of jobs. I hope we have 
as much intensity on that.
  I hope we have as much intensity on lowering the cost of college so 
kids have a fair shot to do what we want them to do, which is work 
hard, to get the grades, to go to college, and to go to work. I hope we 
have as much intensity around that.
  If we had more intensity around fast-tracking the middle class, we 
would not have to worry so much about what we are doing on trade 
agreements.
  I hope we have intensity about closing loopholes that are allowing 
companies to go overseas on paper while they still drive on our roads, 
breathe our air, drink our water, and send their kids to schools here 
but avoid paying their fair share because they moved on paper.
  I hope we have as much intensity around that. I hope we have as much 
intensity about making sure that in this global economy, we have a race 
up to increased standards of living, wages with which you can care for 
your family and send the kids to college and do

[[Page S3267]]

all the things that we want to do for our families rather than having a 
race to the bottom where somebody is told if you just work for less and 
lose your pension and health care, we can be competitive. So let's have 
fast-track. Let's have fast-track about the things that really matter 
to people in this country, which is getting back to having a middle 
class where you can stay in the middle class.
  While we are at it, let's pass an amendment that makes it clear we 
get how important currency manipulation is--when we are giving up our 
right to amend a trade agreement, when we are giving up our right to be 
able to use a 60-vote threshold on a trade agreement. And at least 
there ought to be a provision in there that says: Do your best on 
currency. And, by the way, if you get some language, how about we make 
it enforceable this time? Five million jobs and counting--that is what 
we lost and that is enough.
  I hope my colleagues will come together and support the Portman-
Stabenow amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.


                              Memorial Day

  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, as Chairman of the Veterans' Affairs 
Committee in the Senate, and on the eve of Memorial Day, I think it is 
appropriate that we pause for a moment. We debate as Democrats and 
Republicans today on the floor of the Senate currency, trade, national 
security, fast-track, and the issues of the day in a contentious 
debate. We do so freely. We do so without fear of retribution. We do so 
when we go home tonight knowing we are at peace and comfort and knowing 
that we are in a safe nation. We are because of the men and women who 
have worn the uniform, sacrificed, and given their lives so America 
could exist today.
  I think it is only appropriate that each of us on the Senate floor 
take a moment to pause and give a prayer for our soldiers who risked 
their lives and gave their lives for our country.
  For me, as the Chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, I make an 
effort to go to the American cemeteries all over the world to make sure 
we are still taking care of them and honoring those who sacrificed the 
way they should be honored.
  I want to share with the Senate a brief story to point out how 
important Memorial Day really is.
  On Memorial Day in May of 2007, I went with Senator Burr and other 
Members of the Senate to the American Cemetery in Margraten in the 
Netherlands where over 8,000 Americans are buried who fought in the 
Battle of the Bulge to root the Nazis out of Germany and liberate the 
Jews from concentration camps. They were successful, but they died.
  I walked down the rows of crosses and Stars of David looking at each 
name--ostensibly looking for Georgians so I could say a brief prayer 
for them. I came to the end of row H, toward the back of the cemetery, 
the last cross in that cemetery, and it said the following: Roy C. 
Irwin, New Jersey, died December 28, 1944. A tear welled up in my eye 
because that was the day I was born.
  Mr. President, 70 years later I have existed as a free person in a 
free society, been elected to the United States Senate, served in the 
military, raised a family, have had nine grandchildren, and have had 
all of the joys everybody in the Senate has had thanks to people like 
Roy C. Irwin, who on the day I was born died on the battlefield of the 
Battle of the Bulge in the Netherlands while fighting for democracy, 
freedom, the liberation of Europe, and saving the Jewish people.
  No matter what we debate or how contentious it gets, we must remember 
what Memorial Day is all about. It is about those who made the ultimate 
sacrifice for you and me to engage in this debate and to move our 
country forward.
  One other point. We should say a special prayer for the parents of 
those young Americans who fought and died in Iraq and Afghanistan and 
the current wars today. We had a tragedy with the fall of Fallujah, and 
we had a tragedy with the fall of Ramadi. We need those parents to know 
their sons and daughters did not die in vain; they died for a cause 
that ultimately will prevail because we, as Senators, will see to it 
that America does what America always does, and that is liberate the 
oppressed of the world and only ask for one thing when we leave, and 
that is a couple of acres to bury our dead who sacrificed for 
democracy, freedom, and liberty.
  On this Memorial Day, as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, 
I say thank God for the American soldiers who fought and died for our 
country, and thank God for the United States of America.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.


                           Amendment No. 1299

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to share 
some remarks and show my support for the Portman-Stabenow currency 
amendment.
  I think we are at a point in world history and world trade where our 
mercantilist trading partners have gotten to be very clever. On 
occasion, they use a variety of tools, some of which are used all of 
the time. Among these, we are seeing that we are unfairly subjecting 
American manufacturing to currency manipulation, and this is not free 
trade. It is not free trade. Currency manipulation and other trade 
barriers are just as much of an obstacle to free and fair trade as are 
tariffs. That is one of the things that we have to get a handle on if 
we are going to protect our workers here in America.
  After the Korea trade agreement, which I voted for, the numbers did 
not materialize that were promised. In 2010, before the trade agreement 
passed, President Obama's Web site said:

       . . . the U.S.-Korea trade agreement . . . [would] add an 
     estimated 70,000 jobs from increased goods exports alone, 
     with additional job potential from the further opening of 
     Korea's large services market to American firms, and other 
     measures.

  Well, that is what I had hoped would happen. He said it was an 
advancement of the idea of free and fair trade and so forth.
  His own Web site said that the U.S.-Korea trade agreement would 
increase exports of American goods by $10 billion to $11 billion and 
that the agreement would help create 70,000. Well, I guess 4 or 5 years 
have passed now. Have we achieved a $10 billion increase in exports to 
our ally, our friend, our tough, smart trading partner Korea? Did we 
get that kind of improvement? The answer is no. We are at $0.8 billion, 
less than $1 billion. But what about Korea's imports to the United 
States? Did they go up or down? Korea's imports to the United States 
during this time have increased by $12 billion. It almost doubled the 
trade deficit between our countries.
  I am saying this because it raises a fundamental question: What is 
happening here? In this trade agreement, people have been pretty 
careful--the promoters of it. They have not promised it would reduce 
the trade deficit, they have not promised it would create new jobs, and 
they have not promised it would increase wages. They suggest it. They 
say things like it will increase job prospects or wages in export 
industries. Well, we only export 13 percent of what we make. So this 
has been the only promise that they made.
  I have asked the President--written him--and asked other colleagues: 
Tell me if you believe this agreement is going to increase jobs. Tell 
me what studies and documents you have that say it will increase wages. 
Tell me or show me any reports or data that would suggest this trade 
agreement we now have before us would in some way reduce our surging 
trade deficits, which hit a virtual record last month--or at least in 
March. They are not going give an answer, and I have to tell you why--
because jobs are going down, not up, and the trade deficit is going up 
and not down, and that is not good.
  Well, why do they persist in this? I suggest that it is an ideology. 
I have suggested that it is almost a religion. We are for any trade 
agreement or any file or stack of papers that has ``trade agreement'' 
on it. Why? Well, I recall that back in the late 1990s, then-Federal 
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was before I believe the Budget 
Committee, which I was a member of, and I asked him a question. The 
question was this: Mr. Greenspan, if we are trading with a country and 
they stop buying all products from the United States and block our 
sales to them but want to sell products to the United States

[[Page S3268]]

and want us to buy their products, should we buy them or not buy them? 
That is a pretty simple question, and I remember it well. Should we buy 
from them? What do you think his answer was? Yes.
  I believe that is an extreme idea. I think that is an idea that in 
theory could have some validity, but you have to know, colleagues and 
friends, it is out there. It is a fundamental part of the movement for 
trade agreements that people don't really care whether they are 
reciprocal or not, and they are not worried about whether they shut 
down plants and facilities in your community, whether people lose their 
jobs, because their theory is that you are getting a better product at 
a cheaper price, and that is the only thing that counts, that is the 
most important thing, and somehow this is going to all work out.
  The Wall Street guys who manage capital can move their capital to 
anyplace in the world, and they think they will do fine. But nobody is 
thinking about what it is like in the real world where people's jobs 
are at stake, where our steel industry is under stress and we are 
facing competition that is not fair. I just feel strongly about that.
  I am reversing, in a way, my position on trade. I believe it is time 
for this country and this Congress to begin to ask tougher questions 
about why we continue to have huge trade deficits, why we continue to 
have a decline in wages, a decline in median family income--$3,000 
since 2009--and why all of these things are happening. Part of it is 
that we have been unwilling--unlike our trading competitors--to ask 
these kinds of questions. I think we are operating on a religious view 
of trade.
  How do you deal with that?
  Mr. Dan DiMicco wrote a very important article in Forbes magazine a 
few months ago. The title of it is `` `Fast Track' To Nowhere: Congress 
Shouldn't Give Obama Power To Ram Through TPP.'' He is a former CEO--
actually, CEO emeritus, I think--of Nucor Steel. They have steel plants 
all over America, and they are in one of our most vibrant, competitive 
industries. They deal with foreign competition every day. He lives with 
it. Currency and issues like that are critical to him and anybody in 
the steel industry, automobile industry, or manufacturing industry. 
These things are real. It is not academic. It is not theory. It is 
real.
  He said a number of things in this very important article. He talked 
about the cheerleaders for trade and said they make a big mistake.

       That's net trade--not gross trade. In other words, net 
     exports increase our economic size while net imports shrink 
     it. This is not a liberal plot, or a Tea Party plot, or a 
     protectionist plot. It is basic and uncontroversial economic 
     math that the TPP cheerleaders either don't understand or 
     don't want to.

  He goes on to say:

       In 2013, the U.S. economy amounted to $16.8 trillion. 
     Consumption was 68% of GDP. Investment was about 16%. 
     Government procurement was about 19%. But net trade 
     subtracted about 3% from our economy (because imports 
     exceeded exports.) This shrinkage is cumulative, compounding 
     year after year.
       America is the picture of an unbalanced economy, 
     disproportionately relying upon unsustainable consumption. 
     Investment is too small. . . . Stated another way, we need to 
     produce more of what we consume.

  Isn't that true? So this theory--it doesn't make any difference where 
products are made as long as they are cheaper? This is comparative 
advantage? People can manipulate their currency, they can subsidize 
their industry so they can have more exports, more people working, and 
it makes no difference to us, and we can allow American businesses to 
fail?
  Then he talks about mercantilism. This is the strategy of most of our 
competitors. He said: ``Free trade was crafted as an antidote to 
mercantilism, not an enabler of it.'' So he says our trade policies 
have not confronted our competitors' mercantilism and therefore we have 
enabled them and have allowed them to continue.
  Then he quotes President Reagan. I know a lot of people say President 
Reagan believed in total free trade. He did not. He was a realist.
  This is what Mr. DiMicco says:

       President Reagan gave a speech that established the 
     principle of ``free and fair trade with free trade and fair 
     traders.'' More specifically, he established the 3 R's: 
     Rules, Reciprocity, and Results.
       ``Rules'' mean that the trade must be rules based and every 
     nation should follow them. ``Reciprocity'' meant that there 
     will be reciprocal reduction in tariffs, quotas and other 
     barriers rather than one-sized reduction. ``Results,'' the 
     point forgotten most, meant that America must gain a net 
     benefit from trade arrangements rather than being taken 
     advantage of.

  I believe it. My father always taught me that a good trading 
agreement, a good contract, a good business deal was when both parties 
received advantages.
  Another person who knew Ronald Reagan well was Clyde Prestowitz. 
Clyde was the President's counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in 
President Reagan's administration and Vice Chairman of President 
Clinton's Commission on Trade. He negotiated Asia trade agreements with 
Japan and others. He was there. In his article he makes a very harsh 
statement about President Obama's statements. He said: Will the 
Japanese be driving Chevys in Tokyo?

  The President suggested we want to see more American-made cars being 
driven in Tokyo. He quoted the President as saying:

       Why wouldn't we want to rewrite those rules so there is 
     some reciprocity and we can start opening up the Japanese 
     market? That would be good for American workers.

  Mr. Prestowitz responded to the President's statement saying:

       Hearing that amazingly ignorant statement one could only 
     wonder if there is no one in the White House to prevent the 
     President from embarrassing himself. Apparently he is unaware 
     of the endless efforts of U.S. trade negotiators over the 
     past 50 years to open up the Japanese market. As one of the 
     Reagan administration's lead negotiators with Japan and as 
     the Vice Chairman of President Clinton's Commission on Trade 
     and Investment in the Asia-Pacific Region, I can assure the 
     President that reciprocity in trade with Japan has been the 
     aim of every agreement signed by both Republican and 
     Democratic administrations for half a century. I can also say 
     that virtually no former U.S. negotiator believes the TPP 
     will achieve reciprocity with Japan.

  They have nontrade barriers that Mr. DiMicco lays out in his article; 
he names them. These are not allowing for free trade, reciprocal trade 
that produces results that are beneficial to America.
  We can do better. We absolutely need more trade. We need to continue 
to negotiate good trade agreements, but this creates a situation that 
is dangerous.
  What kind of numbers do we have about this agreement? Do we have any 
studies, anybody who says anything other than what I believe, which is 
that it is going to be a net negative to our balance of trade?
  Well, the Wall Street Journal, that usually support trade agreements, 
had an article by Mr. Mauldin that examines a study by Mr. Peter Petri, 
professor of international finance at Brandeis University. This was 
just released this week, May 18--or at least this article was. He talks 
about the auto sector. Mr. Petri has done this study--the only study I 
know of that has dealt with the question.
  The article says: In the transportation sector, led by cars, the TPP 
could boost imports to the United States from Japan by $30.8 billion by 
2025, compared with export gains to Japan of $7.8 billion, according to 
Mr. Petri. That sounds like the Korea agreement.
  So we would export $7.8 billion more, but Japan would export $30.8 
billion more to us. The result is what? Less American manufacturing on 
net, more cars being bought from abroad, and a greater detriment to our 
trade balance. That is just the way it is.
  So I believe we need to get away from the religious view of trade and 
we need to do what President Reagan said, which is to look at the 
results. Don't tell me some theory. Let's live in the real world. It is 
our duty to see our manufacturers, our workers get a fair chance to 
compete in the world marketplace. We are not sufficiently there now.
  A part of this trade agreement that I have mentioned before and that 
I am very concerned about and that has gotten very little discussion 
and that needs to be discussed, I will take a minute to discuss it.
  According to the Congressional Research Service--our own group--the 
TPP's ``living agreement'' provision is ``unprecedented.'' Indeed, I am 
one of the few, I think, who went to the secret room to read the secret 
document, and when it described the living agreement, it said it was 
unprecedented. I presume

[[Page S3269]]

I will not be arrested for making that quote from the secret document.
  The United States Trade Representative's Web site is very candid 
about the purpose of this living agreement provision. It is to ``enable 
the updating of the agreement as appropriate to address trade issues 
that emerge in the future as well as new issues that arise with the 
expansion of the agreement to include new countries.''
  It creates a commission--another commission--consisting of 
representatives from each member nation, which has vast powers to 
govern the agreement and govern, to some degree, the countries that 
participate in it. Among the powers given to the Commission is the 
authority to consider any matter relating to implementation and 
operation of the agreement and to consider amendments and 
modifications.
  What we have to understand is that this is a new entity, an 
international entity, of which we are a member, and it gets to meet and 
vote and set new behaviors unlike what we approved in the Senate. But 
it can be amended as time goes by. It is unprecedented. This has not 
been done before.
  While the TPP states that those amendments must be agreed to ``in 
accordance with the applicable legal procedures of each party,'' that 
phrase is not defined. The TPP ``Chapter Summary''--a book that is 
provided to Members when we go to the secret room--states that this 
amendment process would occur similar to the process that occurs under 
the WTO, the World Trade Organization.
  So it says how the--the procedure is being handled like WTO. But 
under WTO and its implementing legislation, changes to the agreement 
and the addition of new parties are not to be approved by Congress, 
and, more importantly, not by consensus or a unanimous vote. The 
``Chapter Summary'' states that this process will be similar to the WTO 
under which the WTO can be--members can be added and certain amendments 
adopted by a two-thirds vote.
  So it gives the appearance of having consensus as the basis.
  In addition, new member nations under WTO can be added by only a two-
thirds majority vote--that is pretty clear--and apparently would be 
cleared under this agreement.
  So we have asked the President: What does this mean? Can China be 
added by a simple majority vote? We vote no and it happens anyway?
  We asked the U.S. Trade Representative staff about this situation. 
They didn't have an answer. This is a staff of the administration 
pushing for the bill. They simply asserted that changes to the TPP 
affecting U.S. law would require congressional approval. We asked 
whether USTR would agree to make that explicit in the TPP so we didn't 
have--wouldn't have any ambiguity, and they have declined to give us a 
reply.
  So if it is true that congressional approval is required, then why 
shouldn't they be willing to have it explicitly in the TPA and the TPP? 
In fact, there are already examples in the TPP of other countries 
making clear that certain procedures must comply with their domestic 
law. Why don't we make it ours? I have offered an amendment to that 
effect. I am disappointed that it is apparently not going to be given a 
vote.
  While the TPA states no standard trade agreement that has not been 
legislatively implemented can trump existing Federal, State or local 
law or prevent any Federal, State or local government from amending or 
modifying its law, the implementing legislation of a trade agreement 
would do these things and could--and certainly will--in many areas. It 
will delegate congressional authority when we pass it to the new TPP 
Commission.
  So by voting for it, we have delegated authority, it will be 
contended and probably correctly, that we gave it to them to amend the 
law. This is especially important because the whole purpose of fast-
track is to implement and expedite this legislation.
  So I think these trade agreements need to be considered carefully by 
Congress and the American people before the United States cedes one 
iota more of American authority and sovereignty, and Congress must 
retain the power to carefully review and vote on all future changes to 
these trade agreements.
  So I have offered this amendment. As Mr. Mark Hendrickson recently 
wrote in Forbes magazine, discussing what I had said about this: TPP 
cannot be an ``open-ended document'' lest ``the rule of law and 
republican government itself be lost.''
  That is why TPA must provide strong and enforceable protections 
against this kind of overreach.
  We just have to be careful. The normal process for treaties is a 
rigorous one. It requires, in the end, a two-thirds vote. So they have 
written this not as a treaty but as an agreement. It will be moved 
forward in a way so that when the final agreement hits the floor, it 
will be unamendable, it will be not subject to a 60-vote threshold to 
move forward, and it can be passed within 20 hours, without a single 
amendment, on a simple up-or-down vote.
  I really believe it is time for us, colleagues, to move away from a 
religious view of trade to ask what is happening in the real world. If 
our businesses, our manufacturers, and our American workers are not 
being treated fairly on the world stage, we should take action to 
ensure they are. I believe in trade, and I have supported it over the 
years. But I think it is time for us, in light of declining wages, a 
declining middle class, surging trade deficits, to ask ourselves: Can't 
we do better with our trade agreements? Here we have this huge one, 
representing 40 percent of the world economy, creating a new commission 
with all kinds of powers to be able to add new members that we may not 
approve of, and we are just going to pass it, hardly without reading 
it. Very few Senators have been to the secret room to see what is in 
the document.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue. The Senator from Florida.


                        Issues Before the Senate

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am going to speak on the three bills 
that are pending before the Senate: The trade bill, the highway bill, 
and the continuation of the PATRIOT Act.
  Every one of us is in love with our cars. America is in love with 
their cars. Every one of us can remember the first time we learned to 
drive. I started out on country roads in an International pickup truck 
with cow bodies on the side--those are the wooden slats that go out--so 
I could put my heifers on the little Ranch that I had, so I could haul 
them around. That is how I got to and from high school. Every one of us 
has a different story like that. America has been spoiled because of 
the automobile. It has now become an exceptionally creature-comfort 
room in which we can suddenly climb in and lose ourselves in beautiful 
music, comfortable seats, while easily accessible in the cup holder is 
a cup of coffee. But America's love affair with the automobile will not 
do us any good if we don't have any roads to drive on and especially if 
the roads are just filled with potholes or if you can't go across the 
bridges because they are in danger of falling down.

  Of course, that leads us to the obvious; that here in front of us is 
the highway bill, a transportation bill which involves other things as 
well--transportation safety and considerable transportation 
enhancements in urban areas. But we can't get together, even though 
probably every one of the Members of the Senate would agree we have to 
pass a highway bill.
  The problem is we can't figure out how to fund it. It has to be 
funded with something called revenue. It either has to be taken out of 
the general revenues of the U.S. Government--and Lord knows those 
revenues are being cut back with this meat-cleaver approach across the 
board called the sequester, the results of which--for example, we have 
had the Joint Chiefs up here telling us this is going to severely 
hamper their ability to protect the national security. We have had the 
head of NIH up here telling us about the consequences of the sequester 
in the past. A few years ago, when the sequester kicked in, he had to 
cancel 700 medical research grants, all of which almost all of us would 
support because of the extraordinary medical research successes that 
were going on. So general revenue out of the U.S. Treasury is going to 
be hard to come by to fund the highway bill. If we do this month, 2-
month, 6-month extension, all that is saying is that we are going to 
pull that out of general revenue.

[[Page S3270]]

  Then, transportation companies, departments of transportation back in 
our respective States, can't plan on building the roads because they 
have to have such lead times for the design and engineering and the 
eventual building of the roads. It is similar to building an aircraft 
carrier. Money cannot be appropriated for an aircraft carrier in 1 
year. It is going to take, in the case of an aircraft carrier, a decade 
to build. Well, it doesn't take a decade to build most of our roads, 
but clearly one has to plan ahead to know the money is there so you can 
proceed.
  What good is America's love affair with the automobile if we don't 
have the efficient roads to drive on? Where is the money coming from? 
Well, some people have suggested a sales tax, others have suggested 
updating the gas tax, and others want to look to general revenue. It is 
time for us to come together and determine what that should be.
  I can say to the Senate that this Senator will consider anything that 
will give us the revenue so we can build this crumbling infrastructure, 
particularly roads and bridges. One of the things that immediately does 
is it creates all kinds of jobs. I have seen one commentary. I don't 
know that this is accurate, but it illustrates the point. If you spend 
$1 billion in building roads, there is some huge number of thousands 
and thousands of construction jobs.
  So let's get real. Let's come up with the revenue. Now that is the 
Finance Committee. One place to start is the gas tax. The gas tax has 
not been updated. Also, when it is updated, it needs to be calculated 
for the increases in the cost of living over time. Since it is a user 
tax, it perhaps needs to be combined with other sources of revenue 
because we are going to have to face the music and come up with the 
revenue. One of the issues that is holding us up right here, right now, 
on a Friday afternoon just before Memorial Day weekend, is figuring out 
what we are going to do on continuing the highway bill authorization.
  Mr. President, one of the other issues in front of us is the trade 
bill. This Senator is one of the Democrats who has voted for the trade 
bill known as fast-track, which is to enact a procedure that when the 
Pacific trade agreement is negotiated, finalized, and announced, it can 
be considered by the Congress, after ample time for examination, and it 
would then be considered with an up-or-down vote, instead of the normal 
process where it would be subject to amendment.
  Put a trade bill together with another 11 nations in the Pacific 
region. If it were subject to the amendatory process in the Senate and 
the House, it would get pecked to death. It would never survive the 
legislative wars; thus, the need for this trade promotion authority, 
the TPA, that we have in front of us.
  I believe we will pass it, I believe it will be an overwhelmingly 
bipartisan vote, and I believe a big vote out of the Senate will send a 
significant message to the House, where there are some rumblings of a 
problem. At the end of the day, when the Joint Chiefs come in front of 
you and say that this is one of the most important things for them for 
the national security interests of the United States in that region of 
the world, the Pacific arena, then at the end of the day, it likely 
will pass, and in this Senator's judgment it will be in the interests 
of our country.
  Mr. President, the third issue that is before the Senate is the 
PATRIOT Act. Now, every one of us, if we were here--whether you were 
here or not, you remember exactly where you were on that fateful day of 
September 11, 2001. A number of us were in a room right off the floor, 
right over here on the west front. We were in a meeting with the 
Democratic leader, the majority leader, Senator Daschle. The meeting 
started at 9 a.m. We saw on this grainy black-and-white TV what had 
happened in New York. The human mind wants to play tricks and deny the 
reality of what was happening; that, in fact, it was no accident that 
two planes had flown into the two distinct towers of the World Trade 
Center, but all doubt was cast aside when suddenly someone burst into 
the room and said, ``The Pentagon has been hit.''
  We leapt to the window overlooking the west side of the Mall and 
looked in the direction of the Pentagon, and sure enough there was the 
black smoke rising where the third plane had hit. I immediately raced 
to a telephone to try to reach my wife because we had just moved into 
an apartment overlooking the southwest corner of the Pentagon. I wanted 
to tell her to get out of the apartment and move down into the 
basement. I couldn't reach her.
  By the time I came back, the room was vacated. Out in the hallway, I 
saw security take the majority leader and the minority leader off in a 
different direction to a prearranged place for the congressional 
leadership in times of national security threats and national attack. I 
will never forget going down those major stairs right out this door of 
the Senate Chamber, and at the bottom of the stairs the Capitol Police 
shouting at the top of their lungs: Get out of the building. Get out of 
the building. Run. Run.
  They had heard the reports that there was a fourth airplane inbound. 
That was a fateful day.
  I huddled up outside with Senator Rockefeller, trying to get hold of 
our staff to tell them to vacate. Later in the day, the Capitol Police 
told Senator Rockefeller and me not to come back to the Capitol 
Complex. We ended up at Senator Rockefeller's home. I was still 
desperately trying to get my wife on the telephone. I will never forget 
the eerie silence over Washington because all air traffic had been 
stopped, and that silence was pierced by F-15s and F-16s as they were 
flying CAPs over the Nation's Capitol.
  Well, because of that attack that killed some 3,000 Americans--the 
first time, by the way, that we were rudely awakened to the fact that 
our national security was not protected here at home by two big oceans; 
that an enemy could, in fact, attack and attack within--then how to go 
after them to prevent it in the future.
  That led to the PATRIOT Act. That led to trying to give our 
intelligence community and the NSA, the National Security Agency, the 
tools to, when the bad guys are planning--wherever they are, abroad or 
here--and we get some snippet of evidence that they are planning a 
dastardly deed, we can give our intelligence community and our law 
enforcement the tools to try to go after them.
  Now, let me give you an example. It used to be that if we would 
invade somebody's privacy by going after their telephone, we would have 
to get a court order to be able to tap that telephone. Well, then came 
the present-day technology. The terrorist does not use just one 
telephone. The telephone they use now is multiple cell phones and, 
therefore, you had to update the law to allow you to be able to go 
after them and see whom they were calling--not from one telephone but 
from multiple telephones.
  That is just one example of how the law was updated. The law was also 
updated to allow the NSA to be able, at the request of the telephone 
companies, to obtain the business records--not the private 
conversations but only the business records--which showed that on such 
and such a date this number called this number and for how long. All 
the telephone companies did not comply. A lot of them did.
  The PATRIOT Act was enacted to allow a process whereby you would go 
to a special court classified for national security information, called 
the FISA Court, and that court would give the appropriate legal 
authority for the NSA to obtain those records.
  Now, this whole disagreement in front of the Senate is over how you 
hold those business records. It has been misstated on the floor of the 
Senate that this is obtaining private conversations, invading privacy. 
This is just a question of how you hold those records.
  There will be an attempt to extend the current law, toward which I 
have some degree of positive attitude, and that is at the request of 
the NSA. Those records are held by NSA--the telephone business records.
  But the legislation that we are going to vote on, the USA FREEDOM 
Act, is a change--a slight change--of the current law. It says that 
those records would still be retained by the telephone companies; that 
they would have to retain those records and not destroy them for some 
period of time; that if the government suspects terrorist activity, it 
would go to get a court order to obtain the business records of a 
particular number or person subject to a judge's order, just as we do 
if law enforcement or the FBI wants to go into

[[Page S3271]]

our home and get evidence. They have to go to a court to show probable 
cause to the judge that, in fact, there may have been a crime 
committed.
  This is the same process. You go to the classified court that can 
handle the classified information. The court gives an order to obtain 
those business records. Why is that important? It is important because 
we might get a snippet of information about such and such a terrorist 
or such and such a number that has been used by the terrorist or 
someone suspected to have been talking to a terrorist. Then, in order 
to protect ourselves, the intelligence community and law enforcement 
are going to have to go and get the records so they can see where that 
call went and then, from that person or number, where it went one more 
hop, with a limit of two hops.
  This Senator prefers not to have those limitations. But that is not 
what is in front of us. So this Senator from Florida is going to 
support the USA FREEDOM Act because it is so necessary that by the end 
of this month the PATRIOT Act does not cease to exist because of all 
the other provisions in it that allow our intelligence community to try 
to get the information to protect us before the terrorists can strike.
  I can tell you, as a former member of the Intelligence Committee at 
the time that this PATRIOT Act was drawn up and later amended, and I 
can tell you as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 
it is my judgment that this is clearly in the national security 
interest. We cannot take the risk to let the PATRIOT Act cease to exist 
so that we do not have the tools to protect ourselves.
  My final comment is that every day these bad guys are trying to do us 
in. Every day they are trying all kinds of things to find what is the 
little flaw or what is the little defect in our defenses. If we do not 
continue this legislation, as I am suggesting it be amended by the 
legislation in front of us, then, in fact, we are not giving just a 
little crack in the door for the terrorists to get in, we are opening 
up the entire barn door. That clearly is not in the interests of the 
United States.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.


             The Middle East and the President's Leadership

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the evolving 
situation in the Middle East. I have grave concerns, as do a majority 
of Americans, with the President's handling of the current situation in 
that region of the world. Under this President's watch, the world has 
become increasingly unsafe. Under this President's watch, despots have 
dug in, and the most horrific terrorist organization we have ever seen 
has risen to power and thrives.
  This week the reality of this failure was brought to the forefront of 
the world's attention. The fall of Ramadi marks the capture of another 
major city. We lost more than 1,300 U.S. soldiers in Anbar Province. 
Thousands more were wounded. We fought across every foot of Al Anbar 
and now a handful of ISIS fighters have seized its Provincial capital. 
For those in Ramadi, this was not just a setback; this cost them 
everything. Hundreds have already been executed at the hands of ISIS. 
But the White House does not see it that way. The White House has tried 
to spin a different narrative, downplaying the significance of this 
defeat.
  When this narrative is challenged, the White House doubles down. The 
White House Press Secretary said: ``Are we going to light our hair on 
fire every time that there is a setback in the campaign against ISIL?'' 
Such comments are dumbfounding and disturbing. The Obama administration 
is not only demonstrating a complete lack of situational awareness but 
a total disconnect with how this conflict is being viewed by the rest 
of the world.
  In fact, this week, President Obama chose to lecture the graduating 
class of the Coast Guard Academy about climate change while Ramadi 
burned. To ISIS combatants in Syria and Iraq, the fall of Ramadi was a 
definitive victory. Even if it hands Ramadi back tomorrow, ISIS has 
shown it still has the capability to make major advances. To those 
living in Ramadi, ISIS has already won. Regardless of what happens 
next, for many of those people, their lives have been destroyed.
  To potential recruits around the world, ISIS just won again, despite 
U.S. air strikes and 3,000 trainers for the Iraqi Army. However, 
according to Secretary of State John Kerry, the fall of Ramadi was only 
ISIS taking advantage of ``a target of opportunity.''
  Does the Obama administration not understand how terrorist 
organizations operate? ISIS is not going to line up and go toe-to-toe 
with the United States. It is going to seek out targets of opportunity 
wherever it can and avoid conflict where it knows it will lose. That is 
how it operates. That is how it has been operating since the beginning 
of this conflict, all the way back to January of 2014, when President 
Obama referred to ISIS as the junior varsity of terrorist 
organizations.
  Ramadi can be retaken. America can defeat ISIS. But we cannot beat 
ISIS with half measures while consistently underestimating its 
capabilities. This terrorist organization must be stomped out. It must 
be defeated.
  In Syria, ISIS is now in control of Palmyra, an ancient site with 
irreplaceable monuments that may soon be destroyed. Called the ``Venice 
of the Sands,'' this may be yet another historical scar left by ISIS 
that will never heal.
  President Obama often speaks of regional powers needing to step up 
and take the lead. Well, let's just be honest here for a moment. The 
United States has the most powerful military in the history of the 
world. If our President does not show a little leadership, no one else 
is going to step up and lead.
  If we are not going to utilize our overwhelming technological 
superiority to fight this enemy, at the very least--at the very least--
embedding spotters with Iraqi forces to make air strikes more 
effective, why would others want to contribute their far more limited 
resources? We need our President to show absolute conviction that 
defeating ISIS is his No. 1 priority, not trying to reach a mediocre 
compromise on an Iranian nuclear deal, not having Secretary Kerry fly 
to Sochi to shake hands with Putin while he still occupies the 
territory of other countries, and not having a summit at Camp David to 
lecture our allies on what America thinks is in their best interests.
  There is a terror organization killing people, as we speak, in a 
country that we fought to liberate from a brutal dictator. We had won 
in Iraq. We had defeated this insurgency until it was determined, for 
political reasons, that we should pack up and go home. The President 
claims he does not want to get into another prolonged war.
  Well, unfortunately, that is exactly what he is doing. There is no 
way to defeat ISIS with half measures. There is no way to negotiate 
with ISIS. Unless ISIS is defeated, it will grow and spread like a 
cancer. This President, throughout his administration, has shown 
himself to be crippled by indecision. Against ISIS, we need decisive 
action. We need it now.


                     Honoring American Fighter Aces

  Mr. President, I also want to speak today to recognize the tremendous 
and selfless service of America's veterans. This week Congress honored 
American Fighter Aces, the 1,447 military pilots who have earned the 
special distinction of destroying five or more hostile aircraft in air-
to-air combat, by awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal.
  Of these distinguished aviators, 10 hailed from South Dakota. While 
they are no longer with us today, their heroism and valor have not only 
built the foundation of the modern air superiority that our Armed 
Forces employ today but have shaped who we are as South Dakotans and 
Americans.
  Becoming an ace was no easy feat. In World War I, the pioneers of 
dogfighting faced perilous situations in wood and canvas biplanes that 
had limited ranges and could barely top 100 miles an hour. Still, these 
innovators refined the still-adolescent technology of flight and 
forever changed the nature of modern war.
  Decades later, American pilots proved invaluable in turning the tide 
of World War II. Fighters flew attack and bomber escort sorties over 
Europe and attack and fleet protection missions in the Pacific. Just 2 
weeks ago, when America and the world celebrated the 70th anniversary 
of V-E Day, 56 World

[[Page S3272]]

War II-era aircraft in various formations flew over the National World 
War II Memorial, the National Mall, and the U.S. Capitol in an 
impressive display of the air power that helped secure victory for the 
allies.
  The aerial parade included an F6F Hellcat, which one of my heroes, my 
dad Harold, flew off the USS Intrepid in the Pacific theater.
  While my dad was one aerial victory short of achieving ace, his 
squadron mate and fellow South Dakotan, the late CAPT Cecil Harris, 
racked up 24 victories.
  Harris, a farm boy from Cresbard, SD, ended the war as the second-
highest Navy ace. South Dakota also produced the second-highest ace in 
the Marine Corps during World War II, Medal of Honor recipient Joe 
Foss. Foss earned the title of ``ace'' in just 1 week in 1942 on his 
way to a total of 26 air victories.
  Foss's service and leadership continued after the war. He helped 
organize the South Dakota Air Guard unit. He was recalled to duty in 
the Korean war. He went on to serve two terms as South Dakota's 
Governor and even as the first commissioner of the American Football 
League.
  Our airport in Sioux Falls, Foss's hometown, is home to the South 
Dakota Air National Guard 114th Fighter Wing and is appropriately named 
Joe Foss Field.
  South Dakota is also proud and grateful for the service of our other 
eight aces: Clarence Johnson, from Aberdeen, who was killed in action 
over Holland in 1944; Robert Graham from Beresford; Robert Buttke from 
Lemmon; LeRoy Grosshuesch from Menno; Leslie Clark, from Mitchell; 
Arthur Johnson, Jr., from New Effington; Gene Markham from Turton; and 
Robert ``Duke'' Hedman, from Webster, who achieved ace in a single day 
over Burma on Christmas Day in 1941.
  When you come from rural America, it can be hard sometimes to see how 
one might fit into the larger scheme of global events, let alone the 
defining moments in our history. Yet when the world erupted in chaos 
over the Second World War, these were 10 South Dakotans in the thick of 
it. These are but 10 heroic examples of the dedicated selflessness 
South Dakotans have shown in conflicts past and present. South Dakotans 
have always punched above their weight when it comes to military 
service.
  As the age of jets arrived and the capabilities of aerial firepower 
and defense systems have increased, the title of ``ace'' became even 
more elusive. Still, on Wednesday, we celebrated the 40 American aces 
from the Korean war, as well as two pilots and three weapons systems 
officers from the Vietnam war.
  The maturation of our air combat capabilities, from the origins of 
aerial combat in biplanes to the sophisticated airframes and advanced 
weapons systems on which we rely today, rest heavily on the courage of 
American fighter aces. These aviators represent the best of our 
American Armed Forces and helped shape history with their courage.
  As we reflect on the gallant service of America's fighter aces, may 
we also remember all those who answered the call to serve, all those 
who supported the effort on the homefront, and those to whom, I should 
say, we are forever indebted--those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
  This Memorial Day, as a free and grateful nation, may we remember 
those who have fought and died for this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. GARDNER. Mr. President, I rise to talk and continue the 
conversation we were having in the Senate about trade and the need to 
pass trade promotion authority, all geared toward hopeful entry and 
final conclusion of a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that this 
Senate will be able to vote on to approve or disapprove, if it is not a 
good bargain, and eventual conclusion of a treaty with the European 
Union, TTIP, and what we can do to make sure we are fashioning a trade 
partnership in this country to truly grow our economy.
  One of the things that have made me so passionate over the years 
about public service has been the economic circumstance and the 
conditions of rural America, what happens to Main Streets across our 
great Nation that are suffering. They have more boarded-up storefronts 
than they have ever had at any other time in history. Perhaps one of 
the greatest things we could do right now to help Main Street, to help 
create new jobs and opportunities, is to pass trade promotion authority 
later today, tomorrow, whenever we get to it--to make sure it passes 
without provisions that could break up any future negotiations but do 
so in a way that allows agreements to be entered into like the Trans-
Pacific Partnership--all benefiting rural America and particularly 
rural Colorado.
  To make rural America more successful, we have to find new ways to 
bring new value to those things we can produce in rural America, 
whether it is wheat crops, corn crops or a small manufacturing 
business. How do we add value to what is produced in and across rural 
America?
  According to a 2012 Peterson Institute for International Economics 
study, it is estimated that industries across this country could see a 
2-percent increase in added value as a result of a finalized Trans-
Pacific Partnership Agreement. So when we talk about adding value to 
crops, and we talk about adding value to goods produced in rural 
America, this study shows that if we pass the trade promotion authority 
and move to the successful conclusion of TPP, it adds value to what we 
produce across this country, creating jobs and opportunity.
  There are a lot of people who are concerned about the trade promotion 
authority, people who are maybe opposed to it, people worried it may 
not create the kind of value others believe it will.
  But the conservative Heritage Foundation had a study that showed 
trade was adding $1.7 billion to our GDP in 2013. In fact, this same 
study showed that, according to the Heritage Foundation, trade brings 
value to the average American household of over $13,000 per family. 
That is $13,000 per family added to income in a household, that they 
would be able to succeed with to achieve greater opportunity, to raise 
their value of life, to raise their quality of life--all because of and 
possible through trade.
  Trade promotion authority is the first step we will take in this 
Chamber and across the hall to the House of Representatives to make 
sure we are giving the tools to our negotiators to develop the best, 
strongest, possible agreement.
  Now this agreement doesn't just say do whatever you want, this 
agreement has sideboards on it, firewalls that create opportunities to 
enter into the best deal possible to direct our negotiators to tear 
down barriers.
  Some of the concerns I hear from people who may be unsure about the 
passage of trade promotion authority seems to be: This is about big 
business, isn't it? This is only going to benefit those corporations 
that are the biggest in the United States.
  But that is simply not true, because what free-trade agreements allow 
us to do is to tear down trade barriers. It allows us to break those 
barriers that are creating impediments to doing business. In fact, if 
you are in a big business, corporate welfare has become a common way 
that you are actually trying to succeed in this country. Corporate 
welfare, where you have a lobbyist you can pay--or a team of lobbyists 
you can pay--to provide, to get or to gain a special tax preference or 
maybe there is a trade barrier you would like thrown up against some 
other nation that is importing goods into the United States, and this 
big corporation says, you know what, we think we can stop this through 
special interest favors--so what is an advantage in big business is 
corporate welfare.
  By entering into a free-trade agreement by passing trade promotion 
authority, allowing us to tear down those trade barriers like the TPP 
will, it actually helps all businesses in this country by eliminating 
corporate welfare, by taking out the advantage that a big business has 
to hire lobbyists to curry favor through legislation, giving small 
businesses an equal opportunity with that value that they added through 
a trade agreement to sell their goods around the world.
  So the Trans-Pacific Partnership, trade promotion authority, these 
are agreements that focus on sending goods from Main Street to 
Malaysia,

[[Page S3273]]

what we can do to create economic opportunity in Colorado and beyond, 
because everybody in Colorado is benefitting right now from free 
markets and free trade; 265,000 Colorado jobs are supported by trade 
with nations that are represented in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In 
fact 48 percent of all Colorado goods, 48 percent of the goods we 
create in Colorado, were exported to nations represented in the TPP, 
the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
  In a State that exported over $8.4 billion worth of goods, we can see 
the kinds of jobs and economic opportunity that trade promotion 
authority will lead to. In fact, there have been economists who have 
talked about pillars of our economy; one pillar being lower taxes, one 
pillar being spending restraint, one pillar being lessening the 
regulatory burden on businesses around this country. But another pillar 
is trade, the ability to create goods in the United States to send them 
overseas. That creates jobs and opportunity for all of us. Whether it 
is our agricultural commodities, whether it is manufacturing in 
Colorado, aerospace or technology, we know we will benefit from a 
strong agreement that tears down barriers giving big and small 
businesses alike the opportunity to enter into a promising economic 
opportunity that we will all share in.


                              Memorial Day

  Mr. President, I also rise to talk about this upcoming weekend. 
People and families across this country will be celebrating Memorial 
Day, sharing time with family and friends celebrating the weekend. In 
Colorado, normally you would be celebrating by possibly going to the 
lake or going on a hike in the mountains or down the river, but 
unfortunately the weather may not be as nice as it has been in past 
years. We are receiving much needed rain and moisture, but it may not 
let up in time for a lot of the outdoor activities that we would 
normally enjoy over Memorial Day.
  But one thing that will not be dampened, one thing that will not stop 
is the observation of Memorial Day and the tribute, the thoughts, the 
remembrance that we pay to those who served our country. Now, it may be 
a little wetter than normal, there may be more tents than perhaps the 
jackets we usually have, but Coloradans across the State will still go 
to the cemeteries paying their respects. They will still share stories 
with their families about the members of their family who have served 
this country, who have given so much and sacrificed so greatly for this 
country.
  It is 70 years ago this year that one of the Colorado Guard units was 
involved in World War II in the liberation of Dachau. Seventy years 
ago, Felix Sparks was one of the first to arrive on that atrocious 
scene. That is something that will no doubt be on the minds of many 
veterans in this country and in Colorado this year, the sacrifices they 
have given so people all around this world will be able to enjoy 
liberty, share in the democracy that free people have, and where we can 
continue to provide opportunities to enrich liberty, to promote 
democracy. That is what this Nation will continue to do thanks to the 
sacrifices of our veterans and the noble goals and efforts of those men 
and women in uniform today.
  I wish the people in this country a very good Memorial Day.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.


                            Order for Recess

  Mr. GARDNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following 
the remarks of Senator Blumenthal for up to 5 minutes, the Senate 
recess today until 2 p.m., and that the time during recess count 
postcloture.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Connecticut.


                              Memorial Day

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I join my friend and colleague from 
Colorado in celebrating and saluting on this historic day the service 
and sacrifice of so many of our military men and women who have given 
their lives so we can enjoy the precious freedom all of us will benefit 
from over this weekend. The freedom to gather as we wish, speak as we 
please, worship, and gather together with friends--all of these 
freedoms are due to the service and sacrifice of the men and women 
whose lives we celebrate this weekend.


                       Identity Theft of Veterans

  As it happens as well, my office is issuing a report that shows our 
veterans and servicemembers often are victims of practices around the 
discounts and promotions that will be offered this weekend. Many 
retailers will offer sales and discounts to our veterans and, in fact, 
our veterans are twice as likely as the ordinary population and the 
general public to be victims of identity theft and fraud because they 
are asked to provide information in connection with taking advantage of 
these discounts.
  I am proposing reforms to be adopted by the Department of Defense 
under existing authority, and these reforms will save veterans from 
identity theft and fraud when retailers offer discounts but demand 
sensitive personal information.
  A national recognition of service card will honor our heroes and save 
them from scammers who may prey on them after they provide this 
information. Retailers who commendably--and I emphasize commendably--
offer veterans discounts, especially around this holiday and others, 
should not put them at undue risk in verifying their status.
  As Memorial Day approaches and as we celebrate it today, the 
Department of Defense should adopt the recommendations of the report I 
am offering today. And I will offer legislation, if necessary, to 
compel these kinds of reforms. Our veterans and servicemembers need and 
deserve commonsense protections so discounts don't become really bad 
deals. The reforms, such as the national recognition of service card, 
can guarantee privacy and protection for our veterans and 
servicemembers, even as they take advantage of the discounts and 
promotions that will be offered to them over this Memorial Day weekend, 
and avoid disclosure of information to third parties who may not 
protect that information as they should.


                            USA FREEDOM Act

  I want to say a few words about the choice currently before this body 
in connection with the USA FREEDOM Act and the PATRIOT Act--words that 
come to mind over this Memorial Day weekend so often and frequently on 
our lips. This issue before our body is a profoundly important one. It 
has been framed as a question of whether the Senate passes the USA 
FREEDOM Act or the short-term extension of the PATRIOT Act that 
authorities say is a compromise.
  There is supposedly a compromise before this body, but let's keep in 
mind that the USA FREEDOM Act is, in fact, a compromise. It reflects 
the views of hawks and doves, Democrats and Republicans, the House and 
the Senate, the Congress, the executive branch, and the judiciary.
  Many of us have made significant concessions to reach the USA FREEDOM 
Act. In fact, I have wondered at times whether to walk away from this 
so-called compromise because it does too little in the way of reform 
and perhaps shortchanges the proposals I and others have made to 
protect privacy and balance that protection with the very profoundly 
important need to preserve our national security.
  A short-term extension is not a compromise. The USA FREEDOM Act is, 
in fact, already a compromise, and that is why I have opposed and will 
continue to oppose a short-term extension, even when it is portrayed 
and depicted as a compromise, as has happened so far.
  Another important point here is that a short-term extension will not 
solve our problem. A short-term extension is simply an invitation for 
more uncertainty, more litigation, more expense, and, in fact, more 
compromise to our national security.
  The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has made it absolutely crystal 
clear that if Congress authorizes section 215, the Second Circuit will 
read it as disallowing bulk collection. That court held: ``If Congress 
fails to reauthorize Section 215 itself, or reenacts Section 215 
without expanding it to authorize the telephone metadata program . . . 
the program will end.''
  That means if Congress passes the so-called short-term 
reauthorization, phone companies in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont 
will not be able

[[Page S3274]]

to comply with a bulk collection order. Around the Nation, the court of 
appeal's ruling is the law of the land, or should be given that 
respect, and it will be unclear around the land and throughout this 
country what kind of order, in fact, is demanding of them. The result 
is likely to be legal uncertainty that will last long after Congress 
decides to act.
  The only way to avoid endless litigation is to pass legislation that 
specifies what section 215 allows, what it does not allow, and the only 
proposal that does that task is the USA FREEDOM Act.
  I continue to believe that one of the central core provisions of the 
USA FREEDOM Act is that it requires transparency and the adversarial 
process, containing reforms that I proposed to make sure that this FISA 
Court is no longer a secret tribunal considering arguments in secret 
and issuing secret opinions--exactly the kind of court that prompted 
our rebellion from England. When it operates and when it hears 
arguments, it should hear both sides--it should hear from an adversary 
to the government that offers a different point of view. Courts make 
better decisions when they hear both sides of the argument. That is why 
I proposed from the start a constitutional advocate who will make 
arguments against the government without compromising the need for 
timely warrants and other surveillance and without in any way reducing 
the secrecy of this court where it is appropriate.
  I hope this body reaches a result that includes the USA FREEDOM Act. 
I hope we pass it. I urge my colleagues to join in supporting it.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  Mr. President, I withdraw my observation about the absence of a 
quorum.

                          ____________________