[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 11 (Wednesday, January 20, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S111-S126]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL OF A RULE SUBMITTED BY THE 
   CORPS OF ENGINEERS AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY--VETO--
                               Continued

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I call for regular order with respect 
to the veto message on S.J. Res. 22.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The veto message is the pending business.
  The Senate proceeded to reconsider the joint resolution.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. I send a cloture motion to the desk on the veto 
message.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the veto message 
     on S.J. Res. 22, a joint resolution providing for 
     congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United 
     States Code, of the rule submitted by the Corps of Engineers 
     and the Environmental Protection Agency relating to the 
     definition of ``waters of the United States'' under the 
     Federal Water Pollution Control Act.
         Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, John Thune, Johnny Isakson, 
           Steve Daines, Roy Blunt, Cory Gardner, Deb Fischer, Pat 
           Roberts, Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, Joni Ernst, David 
           Vitter, Lamar Alexander, John Barrasso, Ron Johnson, 
           Thad Cochran.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call 
be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
notwithstanding rule XXII, this cloture vote be set at 10:30 a.m. on 
Thursday, January 21; further, that if cloture is not invoked, the veto 
message be indefinitely postponed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S112]]

  

  Mr. McCONNELL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Nuclear Agreement With Iran

  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, 6 months ago, world powers reached an 
agreement to constrain Iran's nuclear program and to give us a path 
forward toward constraining Iran's nuclear ambitions. While the 
international community has taken some positive steps to implement this 
agreement and to limit Iran's nuclear program and while Iran has 
recently taken positive steps to observe and to implement this 
agreement, we must do much more to strictly enforce this deal and 
aggressively push back on Iran's bad behavior outside the deal's 
parameters. If we don't, this nuclear agreement may not survive into 
next year.
  This past weekend was an eventful one for U.S. foreign policy and, in 
particular, for U.S. policy toward Iran. Saturday marked implementation 
day of this nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of 
Action, or JCPOA.
  Implementation day is important because it means that the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, or the IAEA, has certified that 
Iran has completed a whole series of tasks required as part of the 
nuclear agreement. The four most important of those tasks are these:
  First, it has shipped 12 tons of enriched uranium--nearly its entire 
stockpile, which took Iran a decade to amass--out of the country to a 
secure facility supervised by the IAEA around the clock.
  Second, it means Iran has reduced the number of its functioning 
centrifuges--centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium--by nearly two-
thirds, or from roughly 19,000 to a little more than 6,000, and it has 
accepted long-term limits on developing, testing, and deploying new 
centrifuges.
  Third, it means that Iran has presented the IAEA with unprecedented 
24/7 access to monitor all of its nuclear-related facilities. That is 
not only enrichment facilities. That is uranium mines, uranium mills, 
and centrifuge production facilities--every known and declared site 
within Iran connected to its nuclear program. This level of access far 
exceeds previous IAEA authorities in countries suspected of trying to 
develop a nuclear weapon.
  Fourth--and to me, in ways most importantly--Iran has filled the core 
of its Arak heavy water reactor, pictured here, with concrete, 
permanently disabling the most likely short-term path that Iran had to 
producing weapons-grade plutonium. Had Iran proceeded and had Iran been 
able to produce significant quantities of weapons-grade plutonium, our 
ability to intervene and to prevent their march toward a nuclear weapon 
would have been significantly harder.
  Plutonium is one of the most lethal toxic substances known to man, 
and any attack on a heavy water reactor producing plutonium would have 
had horrible consequences, not just in Iran but throughout the entire 
region. So blocking Iran's short-term pathway through uranium 
enrichment and through plutonium enrichment is a significant step 
forward and does reflect significant restraints on Iran's nuclear 
weapons program.
  As a result of the conditions on this deal that I just referenced, 
the time it would take Tehran to break out and to dash toward a nuclear 
weapon, to amass all of the fissile material needed for a bomb has been 
extended significantly from just 2 months to 3 months to a year or 
more. But these positive developments come with substantial risks, 
principally among them is the tens of billions of dollars in sanctions 
relief that Iran will now receive for complying with the terms of the 
deal. Tens of billions of dollars of Iranian assets, which have long 
been frozen in bank accounts around the world through an American-led 
international sanctions effort will now be released.
  That is why America and our international partners must continue to 
aggressively enforce the terms of the deal and to make sure that Iran 
remains in compliance with every aspect of the JCPOA. Our work in this 
area is more urgent and more difficult than it has been at any point 
before. We can be confident that in the coming months and years the 
Iranians will test the boundaries of the deal and will probe our every 
response. Indeed, they already have.
  If we fail to respond more swiftly and more vigorously to these 
Iranian provocations, Iran will nibble away at the deal's restrictions 
and gradually undermine the international coalition that put it 
together. Every minor violation that we permit, every violation that we 
tolerate damages our credibility and gives Iran tacit permission to 
continue its breaches of the agreement.
  Given this stark, difficult reality, our efforts to deter Iranian 
aggression must not be limited to just enforcing the nuclear deal, or 
the JCPOA. Rather, our efforts must be part of a coherent, unified 
regional strategy to contain Iran and to push back on its bad behavior 
in the Middle East, a task made even more difficult because of its 
newfound access to assets previously frozen. That comprehensive effort 
to counter and contain Iran must include a willingness to take 
unilateral action by imposing new sanctions on Iran for destabilizing 
actions, both inside and outside the parameters of the nuclear 
agreement.
  That brings me to the second important development of this past 
weekend--the designation of additional sanctions to punish Iran for its 
ballistic missile tests. Last fall, in clear violation of the United 
Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, Iran conducted two ballistic 
missile tests: one on October 10 and one on November 21. Since then, I 
and many of my colleagues have been calling on the Obama administration 
to punish Iran for these disruptive, dangerous, and blatantly illegal 
actions. Over the weekend, the administration took action by 
designating for sanctions 11 additional individuals and business 
entities involved in supporting Iran's ballistic missile program. These 
sanctions follow a series of steps previously taken by the Treasury 
Department last fall to sanction other Iranians, other Iranian-linked 
individuals and organizations for a litany of other dangerous and 
illegal activities: supporting Hezbollah officials and agents who 
threaten our vital ally, Israel; supplying financial and material aid 
to the Houthi rebels in Yemen; providing military support for the 
murderous Assad regime in Syria; and the list goes on. It is important 
for all of us, on a bipartisan basis, to remind our allies throughout 
the world that American-led sanctions against Iran--for its human 
rights violations, for its ballistic missile program, for its support 
of terrorism--remain in effect and will be vigorously enforced.

  From conducting these missile tests to supporting terrorism, to 
continuing to deny the very existence of some basic human rights, Iran 
has shown time and again it will continue to flout international rules 
and values. The United States must continue to maintain its unilateral 
sanctions in these areas, and we must not hesitate to use these 
authorities--not just to punish Iran for its immediate bad behavior but 
to send a clear signal to our allies in the region, throughout the 
world, and to Tehran that we are serious about holding Iran 
accountable.
  Of course, implementation day and the imposition of sanctions and 
sanction designations for Iran's illegal ballistic missile tests 
weren't the only significant developments of the new year. We also 
learned this weekend that America would soon be able to welcome home 
five innocent Americans long held unlawfully by Iran. These Americans 
should never have been held in the first place and their release was 
long overdue. The negotiations to release these five Americans occurred 
outside the parameters of the JCPOA.
  While we are grateful for their safe return, this release also raises 
some serious questions. We still don't know the status of retired FBI 
agent Robert Levinson or his whereabouts. We don't know the status of 
Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American energy industry executive arrested 
in October. It is my hope there are equally ceaseless efforts by the 
administration to bring them home.
  We have to ask: What did we give up? What were the terms of the 
agreement?

[[Page S113]]

How did we make possible this release? A key part that is public is 
that while none of the 7 Iranians released were convicted of violence, 
they were nonetheless convicted of criminal acts, and 14 Iranians who 
may have been convicted had the charges against them dropped. The 
question we are going to have to pursue is, What precedent did these 
prisoner swaps set for our future interactions with the Iranian regime? 
It is my hope that we are at the end of prisoner deals with the Iranian 
regime.
  We must remember, though, that despite the limits imposed by the 
JCPOA, Iran continues to destabilize the Middle East and undermine 
America's goals for the region. Iran's behavior since the JCPOA was 
signed has made it crystal clear that Iran is neither America's friend 
nor ally. We must remain suspicious and distrustful of the Iranian 
regime.
  In addition to its ballistic missile test I referenced before, the 
Iranian Revolutionary Guard has conducted dangerous military operations 
near U.S. ships, most recently threatening the safety of American 
sailors by conducting a live-fire exercise barely a mile from the 
aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman.
  Iran also detained American sailors in the Arabian Gulf last week, 
and it did not treat them in a manner consistent with naval forces 
rendering assistance at sea. While I am pleased our sailors were 
released safely, Iran did use the images of those sailors for 
propaganda purposes in an attempt to send a signal to the world about 
its capacity to sow chaos in the region. We must not turn a blind eye 
to provocations of Iran in the open seas of the Persian Gulf and 
throughout the region. I call on the administration and on my 
colleagues to support significantly increased efforts at maritime 
interdictions in the gulf and throughout the broader region. We should 
conduct more joint military exercises with our valued allies and 
partners in the region to make it clear to Iran that we will continue 
to pursue our interests, and we will counter Iran's maligned 
activities. Again, to remain distrustful of Iran and push back on the 
regional ambitions I think is the only path toward a safer, stronger 
Middle East and an American presence as one of its regional leaders.
  No one should mistake Tehran's compliance with the terms of the 
nuclear agreement for a broader willingness to respect human rights and 
engage with the international community in the rules-based order that 
we have helped lead since the Second World War. I have seen nothing to 
indicate that the regime in Tehran cares about the well-being of the 
Iranian people, much less the opinion of the world community. In 
October, for example, two Iranian poets each received 10-year sentences 
and 99 lashes for kissing members of the opposite sex and shaking their 
hands. That same month an Iranian award-winning filmmaker was sentenced 
to 6 years in prison and 200 lashes on the charge of insulting 
sanctities. The filmmaker was making a documentary about an Iranian 
artist, based in Europe, who had been accused of blasphemy.
  Nearly two-thirds of the 12,000 candidates who applied to run in next 
month's parliamentary elections recently withdrew or were disqualified 
by Iran's Guardian Council. Iran's Supreme Leader said: ``Americans 
have set their eyes covetously on elections, but the great and vigilant 
nation of Iran will act contrary to our enemies' will, whether it be in 
elections or on other issues, and as before we will punch them in the 
mouth.'' These are not the actions or the statements of a state that 
respects the rights of its people or seeks friendship with the United 
States in the near future.
  Just 2 weeks ago I returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, 
Israel, and Austria. I am grateful to my colleague from New York, 
Senator Gillibrand, for organizing this trip, which included important 
meetings with nuclear inspectors from the IAEA. We met with their 
leadership headquartered in Vienna and had meetings with Israeli Prime 
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Ya'alon, and Turkish 
President Erdogan, as well as other vital regional leaders. The message 
my colleagues and I heard from these leaders was simple, powerful, and 
clear: America must reassure our allies that we will not waver in our 
commitment to push back on Iran, its nuclear program, and its 
destabilizing actions in the region. Our partners, our allies--and 
Iran--must know and believe through our words and our actions that we 
are serious about preserving the long-term stability of the Middle East 
and that Iran--a revolutionary regime--does not share our values or 
that goal.
  As part of this effort, we must reassure, reaffirm, and strengthen 
our support for our vital ally, Israel. As the administration 
negotiates a new, long-term memorandum of understanding to provide 
Israel with the security assistance it needs to protect itself in the 
most dangerous neighborhood on Earth, we must insist that joint U.S. 
and Israeli strategic planning includes protection of Israel from 
threats it faces from neighboring instability in Syria. We must not 
allow Israel to be attacked by Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah and 
Hamas. We must work closely with the Israelis to share intelligence and 
intercept any weapons shipments from Iran to its regional proxies.
  If we fail to push back on Iran and enforce the terms of the nuclear 
deal, not only will the agreement collapse, but our efforts to show the 
world that diplomacy actually works will be dealt a dangerous blow as 
well.
  In the weeks and months to come, I call on the administration to do 
more to push back on Iran, and I call on my colleagues--Republicans and 
Democrats alike--to come together, to be engaged, and to remain focused 
on enforcing the terms of this nuclear agreement, on containing Iran, 
and on deterring their bad behavior, their support for terrorism, their 
support for human rights violations, and their relentless effort to 
develop and advance ballistic missile capability.
  As I said before on this floor, the Iranian Government has long paid 
close attention to everything America says and more closely to what 
America does. Never has it been more true than today. Never has it been 
more urgent than today. As the regime gains greater access to money and 
resources, we must not take our eye off of Iran.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.


                           Wasteful Spending

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, as the Presiding Officer knows, throughout 
last year's session I would come to the Senate floor every week and 
talk about a waste of the week. That was in 2015. We did nearly 30 of 
those in the 30 weeks that the Senate was in session, maybe skipping 
one or two. It is 2016. We are in a new year, and I am back for the 
2016 version of ``Waste of the Week.''
  The reason I am doing this is because I am trying to bring to the 
attention of my colleagues and the American people the fact that the 
government is not spending their hard-earned tax dollars in the most 
efficient and effective way that they could. By highlighting these 
various uses of expenditures in Washington and abuses of that spending, 
we alert them to the fact that there are significant savings that can 
be made.
  In 2015, we totaled up to nearly $130 billion of demonstrated 
examples of waste, fraud, and abuse--money that was spent for no 
purpose whatsoever or for a purpose that certainly didn't qualify for 
the use of taxpayer dollars and the abuse of that spending and the 
fraud that went along with it. This is just scratching the surface.
  The Presiding Officer was very much a part of this and knows that 
since 2010 there has been a significant effort, much of it a bipartisan 
effort, to try to deal with the long-range plunge into evermore 
spending and evermore debt that is plaguing our country, holding down 
our ability to grow as an economy, and will have long-term negative 
consequences on our generation and particularly on future generations.
  Whether it was Simpson-Bowles or Domenici-Rivlin or whether it was 
the Gang of 12, the Committee of 6 or the Vitter committee, many 
efforts were made to try to work with the administration to address the 
long-term problems. Eventually, each one of those failed. I am not here 
to impose blame on anyone. It would be easy to do. It is a very 
difficult problem working with the administration, and sometimes we 
have differences between our two parties here, but there was general 
recognition--universal recognition--that we couldn't continue down the 
same

[[Page S114]]

path of excessive spending, more than we received in revenues, year 
after year at a frightening pace to ever greater debt.
  When this administration took office, the national debt--accumulated 
well over 200 years of the existence of this country--that debt has 
nearly doubled in the 8 years this administration has been in office 
and will virtually double before that term is up. It is unsustainable.
  The Congressional Budget Office--a neutral agency that has nothing to 
do with Republicans or Democrats or politics. It simply gives us the 
numbers and the numbers tell the story. Those numbers are frightening 
when we look at the degree to which we continue to plunge into debt.
  The Congressional Budget Office just released its latest report, 
which said coming deficits will be more than 20 percent larger than 
previously forecast--previously forecast, just last August. Depending 
on some of the actions taken here in Congress regarding spending, the 
calculation has to be changed, and it is going to be 20 percent more 
than what they had projected just a few months ago. We are looking at 
trillion-dollar deficits on the horizon.
  In my mind, here is the most startling of the 10 recommendations and 
notices to us: In 10 years, 99 percent of all revenue that comes in to 
the Federal Government--the cumulation of everyone's taxes and all the 
money that flows into Washington through user fees, excise fees, 
withholding taxes from our paycheck, the taxes we pay either every 
April or quarterly taxes, every tax out there accumulating, 99 percent 
will go to mandatory spending and net interest spending.
  If you are for a stronger defense, if you are for better research at 
the National Institutes of Health, if you are for funding the Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention, if your interest is education, 
social welfare, if you are looking at any of the hundreds, if not 
thousands, of programs that various interests have here, if 99 percent 
of the revenues coming in are going to things we have no control over--
mandatory spending, which is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--
essentially only 1 percent is left to divide up among everything else 
the Federal Government does; that is, building roads, fixing bridges, 
grants to cities, environmental interests, on and on we could go. If 99 
percent is going to spending what we can't control--simply paying 
interest on the debt and covering the entitlement spending of Social 
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--it is unsustainable. Those efforts 
have failed. It is a pox on all of our houses. We tried mightily and 
had no ability to bring it to conclusion.
  That has been kind of pushed off the table. We didn't talk about that 
much in the last year of this Congress. The focus was on other 
issues. But this looming catastrophe that will happen based on nothing 
but numbers, arithmetic, and facts--will happen sooner than anybody 
anticipates--cannot be put aside. But having failed in those major 
efforts and as long as this President is in office, it appears that we 
are not going to be successful this year. This catastrophe will be 
dumped on the next President's lap, whoever that President might be, 
and I thought the very least we could do is continue to look at how to 
make government more efficient, how to prioritize our spending, and how 
to eliminate and address the issue of waste and fraud.

  I started this program, waste of the week, trying to educate the 
public in terms of the fact that there is money out there that can be 
spent more wisely or that wouldn't have to be taken from them in the 
first place or that can be used to reduce our debt. I am now up to 30 
examples of ways in which we can address that. So today I am doing, I 
believe, No. 30. This is something that has to do with our foreign 
policy.
  These wastes of the week have everything from the ridiculous, such as 
hundreds of thousands of dollars for a grant to a university to study 
whether massaging rabbits--after strenuous activity--allows for faster 
recovery from the strain of the rabbits' work. This is what they are 
spending your tax dollars on. I think you can ask any person--whether 
they are in Little League, high school, professional sports, or 
college--whether, after strenuous exercise, it helps if you have a 
massage. I think the answer would be yes, of course. Everybody knows 
that, but we had to issue a grant of almost $400,000 to somebody who 
filled out a form and said: This is a great idea. Send us some Federal 
money, and we will produce this study, and then we will give you the 
conclusion.
  There is everything from the ridiculous to issues that are very 
serious, such as the duplication of effort in two programs to help 
people who are out of work either because of disability or because they 
can't get a job. One is called unemployment insurance and the other is 
called Social Security disability. To qualify for Social Security 
disability, you have to prove you can't work. To get an unemployment 
insurance payment from the government, you have to prove you can work 
but there isn't a job. You don't get both. Yet we identified $5.7 
billion of expenditure in duplication--people who were getting a check 
for both being disabled and not being able to work and saying: I am 
able to work, but the job isn't there. So two checks arrive every month 
in the mailbox for these people--to the total amount of $5.7 billion.
  You would think that in this day and age where everything is 
computerized, it would be easy for the unemployment insurance agency to 
call up or to contact Social Security and say: You know, John Smith 
here is applying for unemployment insurance. Can you check your records 
to see whether he is also receiving Social Security disability? It 
would be easy to get their Social Security number and match. But, no, 
one agency is working over here and another agency is working over 
there. Both are sending out checks, one of which is illegal, and they 
are not communicating with each other. It ought to be an easy fix, but 
this is the Federal Government.
  On and on it goes.
  Let me talk about No. 30. No. 30 involves the Task Force for Business 
and Stability Operations in Afghanistan. It is a Pentagon business 
advocacy agency that was formed to provide contracting work in 
Afghanistan through rebuilding. We did this in Iraq, and now we are 
doing it in Afghanistan. It was established for a valid purpose: to 
encourage foreign investment. They have a task force, and the task 
force lives over there. What we found through the inspector general--a 
special inspector to ensure that this money that is being spent over 
there is spent wisely has found that millions has been spent on private 
housing for the staff of this task force instead of allowing those 
people to utilize excess space at existing Department of Defense bases.
  So here is a Department of Defense program. The Department of Defense 
has housing and provisions for food and shelter and so forth, and they 
have excess capacity because we have drawn down troops. But instead of 
putting those people in this area where they can occupy unoccupied 
space, where they can get food through the DOD process--a much cheaper 
process--they put them in specially furnished, privately owned villas 
and spent $150 million doing it. They have also hired contractors to 
provide--because they are separate from the Department of Defense base, 
they have to have private security, they have to have food services 
provided to them, they have to have bodyguards for staff and visitors, 
and they have to have onsite laundry service, food and drink services, 
private transportation, cultural advisers, and housekeeping services. 
All of this could be avoided for this task force which is there to 
provide investment counsel and advice for Afghanistan.
  Not surprisingly, reports of the spending drew the attention of the 
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, who has spent 
time digging into finding out exactly what is happening here. He noted 
that the exorbitant cost of the villas is especially concerning, as I 
have said, because there are other facilities through the Department of 
Defense that have been planned for this specific purpose that are not 
being used and it would be much cheaper if they were used. Because they 
are already there, they don't to have all this collateral support. He 
said that 20 percent of the task force budget provided housing and 
security for no more than 5 or 10 staffers.
  Former task force employees told investigators that the inspector 
general estimates that housing a staff of 10 at

[[Page S115]]

the U.S. Embassy in 2014 in Kabul would have cost $1.8 million and 
little or nothing if they had bunked with troops at a military base.
  The IG also noted that poor oversight and the complete lack of 
coordination--where have we heard that before? Where have we heard 
about Federal programs with a complete lack of coordination with other 
programs to see if there is duplication, such as Social Security 
disability and the unemployment insurance as an example? That has not 
been provided, he said.
  He is still investigating all of this, but what we are going to do 
today is take that $150 million price tag for these Afghanistan villas 
to the taxpayer, and we are going to add that.
  By the way, I have a picture of the villas. I can see why people 
might want to live in something like this rather than an Army base. But 
this is tax dollars going over to Afghanistan. We have a mission over 
there to complete. I don't know--this could be in Washington, DC, or 
this could be in Indianapolis, IN. They are pretty nice digs. Is it 
really necessary to spend that kind of money when other facilities are 
available, when all the services and food are available to maintain 
these and the security is within a Department of Defense military base? 
Do we have to go to this level of support with taxpayer dollars?
  We are adding $150 million to our ever-growing list of waste, and our 
total is now well over $130 billion of cost. That is this week's waste 
of the week.


                            Syrian Refugees

  Mr. President, I also wish to talk about the Syrian refugee issue. I 
had the opportunity to spend some time in Jordan, as a member of the 
Intelligence Committee, and in Turkey looking at the situation as it 
exists in Syria. I also spent time in Italy and Greece relative to the 
humanitarian crisis that is taking place, with literally hundreds of 
thousands of people who are fleeing Iraq, northern Iraq, and fleeing 
Syria because it is a war-torn area, and their migration and all the 
issues involved with that migration and the implications and 
consequences it is having on Europe.
  It is an issue here in the United States, resettlement of refugees. 
It is overwhelming. These countries cannot even begin to process people 
coming to their borders to determine whether they are legitimate or 
whether they are inserted terrorists who are using this flow of 
migration to gain access to Europe, to gain access to the United 
States, and to gain access to other places. They are legitimate people 
who are leaving with their families to avoid the consequences of this 
war; yet we know, because we have already ascertained this, that 
included in that effort are terrorists who want to insert themselves 
into that flow so they can come to Europe, come to our European 
capitals, come to the United States, and continue their brutality and 
jihad against Americans and against Western civilization.
  I think the issue we just voted on here unfortunately fell short. We 
didn't get support from our colleagues across the aisle and didn't have 
the necessary number of votes to pass what the House has already 
passed, and that is to provide a suspension of time to comply with what 
our FBI Director has said needs to be done so that we can ensure that 
people in this refugee flow who are going to be admitted to America 
under the administration's plan are truly war-torn refugees and not 
representing a terrorist threat to the American public. The FBI 
Director and our intelligence agencies have said we don't have the 
necessary tools in place to be able to ascertain this, and until we do, 
we cannot guarantee that these refugees do not include people who are 
not coming for asylum reasons but are connected in one way or another 
to terrorists. I thought it was a very reasonable thing to do to 
provide for security for Americans and assure them that we are not 
simply opening the gates here to terrorist access, to pause and get 
these screening procedures in place before we allow this to happen.
  We just had this vote within an hour or so and came up short, which 
is unfortunate, and we did not gain the support we needed to get the 
necessary votes from our colleagues. So the effort the House has made 
once again dies in the Senate because while we had virtually every 
Republican vote, we couldn't get any other votes to get to the 
necessary level to take up the legislation and move forward. There may 
be another attempt to do that.
  After going and looking and talking to U.N. associate officials, 
talking to our government officials, talking to officials from these 
various countries and particularly those entry points from northern 
Africa that come through Italy and from Greece, which comes from Syria 
and Iraq, the conclusion I came to was that this flow, which is now 
well over 1 million people--temporarily slowed here because of the 
weather, and it will start up again in the spring when it warms up--is 
overwhelming Europe. You don't have to watch too much cable news or 
read too much of a newspaper to see what is happening in Europe with 
the massive inflow of refugees, asylum seekers, and the incorporation 
of people who are not abiding by the laws, overwhelming the system.
  So as open-arms welcome, as Germany was under the Chancellor's 
proclamation to ``bring them here, and we will take care of them,'' 
even that is now under question in terms of Germany's capability of 
doing that. A number of other countries, including Denmark and Hungary, 
are basically saying: We can't handle all of this. It is just 
overwhelming us. The social and financial consequences of all of this 
are a great political, as well as a financial, threat to Europe, and we 
have seen evidence of that. No one is really talking about a possible 
alternative that can deal with this problem.

  Several months ago, I came to the Senate floor and basically said: I 
think I have a better solution that is perhaps even more financially 
feasible. My solution is to provide safe havens for these people either 
within their country or simply across the border of other countries. 
Turkey and Jordan are taking in millions of refugees, but they are 
overwhelmed. There is a precedent here in terms of providing safe 
havens.
  I was serving in the Senate at the time of the Balkan war, and the 
brutality there was equal to some of the brutality that is taking place 
in Syria. It was a desperate situation, but through the U.N. agencies 
for refugee relief and the use of NATO to provide security, we created, 
as a coalition of nations, safe havens for people in the Balkans. There 
were a few mistakes, but in the end it worked very significantly.
  These people wanted to go back to their homes. They wanted to stay 
citizens of their country. They had hundreds of years of history 
through the line of their families in these countries, and they didn't 
want to try to take on a different language and have to learn different 
skills in order to assimilate in other countries any more than we would 
want to move our people out to another country if we were in that 
situation.
  By creating safe havens and having NATO provide the security to keep 
these safe havens from being attacked or misused and by providing a 
coalition of financial support and enough humanitarian support through 
the United Nations and through the world's nations, I said this is a 
better way to handle it, and we succeeded in that effort. So the 
precedent is there, and I thought: Why not use the same model for 
Syria? It solves the immigration issue because those people are housed 
in a humanitarian way, with NATO providing for their safety, which is 
what I suggested. After all, Turkey is part of NATO. It is a mission in 
which NATO would address the problem in Europe, where most of the NATO 
nations are housed. Obviously, the United States would take part in it.
  It provides a financial situation to the issue. I haven't been able 
to calculate this, but the cost of providing those safe havens can't 
exceed the cost of all the transfer, movement, assimilation into the 
culture, training, education, learning the language, and everything 
that has to be provided for those who are going to foreign nations from 
their homeland.
  So once again, I am bringing this suggestion to my colleagues' 
attention, and, hopefully, to the attention of NATO and other countries 
that are caught up in this refugee problem and asking: Why don't we 
reopen the discussion and debate about what the cost would be, what it 
would take to accomplish it in order to create these safe havens in 
areas close to or within the

[[Page S116]]

borders of the countries from which they are coming from? It addresses 
a multitude of problems that are overwhelming the capability of 
European nations and have created a political storm of opposition both 
in Europe as well as in the United States, and it legitimately gives 
those refugees safe harbor, humanitarian support, and housing 
conditions. It gives them food, water, and humanitarian and medical 
support at their safe haven rather than have them flowing into other 
countries.
  So, once again, I am calling for this. Germany estimates that last 
year alone the cost of the refugee crisis was 21 billion euros, and in 
dollars it would be even more. Italy spent 620 million euros in 2014 
and more than 800 million euros in 2015. Individual islands in Greece 
spent between 1 and 1.5 billion euros last year, and they can't afford 
it. We all know that Greece can't begin to afford this. They have said: 
We have enough financial problems trying to take care of our own 
people, let alone the massive influx of refugees. Sometimes they get 
10,000 refugees a day in their country who say: We are here, we want to 
eat, we want a place to sleep, and we need to be taken care of.
  Greece is saying: We can't even take care of our own, let alone the 
refugees.
  It is creating tremendous tension and tremendous political 
consequences for many European nations. The EU allocated 560 million 
euros for the crisis last year, which is far too short. But in that 
context, this money can be used to address the problem of funding for 
these safe havens, avoiding all of the cultural, political, and social 
dynamics that are a part of this refugee flow and creating so many 
problems there.
  I have kind of given an outline here of what I think we ought to 
seriously consider as we are looking at the refugee crisis. For those 
who say America is not a welcoming country, that is not true.
  My mother is an immigrant. I am the son of an immigrant. She came 
here as a young child with her sisters and brothers the legal way. My 
mother and father learned the language and worked hard so that we could 
get a good education and assimilate into the United States.
  But now we simply don't have the capability. It is not wise to simply 
open our borders and say: Come one; come all. Maybe that was possible 
before ISIL, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and these other terrorist groups were 
formed, but today we have a major national security issue combined with 
the ability to assimilate refugees from other countries.
  The security issue alone puts us in a position where we just simply 
can't provide the kind of security for the American people without 
screening and background checks because ISIL said: We are doing this. 
Look at California and these other places where they are inspired over 
the Internet or injected into our country. The FBI Director says: We 
are overwhelmed in terms of trying to keep track of people whom we 
suspect are trying to do harm to the American people. I think because 
of that issue alone, as well as the other issues involved here, this is 
a model we ought to take a serious look at.
  Once again, I am calling for that, and I will talk more about that as 
we go forward.
  I am now finished with my two presentations.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Capito). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                      Right to Life for the Unborn

  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, Kansans celebrate a rich history of 
protecting man-made laws that deny natural rights. We have protested 
many things over a long period of time, and our history is significant 
in that regard. After years of bloodshed leading to the Civil War, 
Kansas was born a free State. Though we lament the use of any violence, 
residents of our State have acted on the firm conviction that human 
beings, regardless of their stage or state in life, could not be 
regarded as property by other people.
  We take pride in the fact that one of the first sit-ins of the civil 
rights movement took place at the Dockum Drugstore in Wichita, KS, 
leading the way for peaceful protests in the struggle for equality.
  Today I wish to call attention to a somber anniversary in our 
Nation's history that will be observed this week. Forty-three years 
ago, the Supreme Court determined an unborn child has no guaranteed 
right to life under the Constitution, paving the way to destroy the 
lives of 57 million unborn children since 1973.
  Many Kansans, most of them very young, will continue a decades-long 
tradition of standing up for the civil rights of an unprotected class 
of people as they come to Washington, DC. With their chaperones, they 
will comprise one of the Nation's largest groups attending the annual 
March for Life.
  They come each January, when it is rarely warm, and, as is forecast 
for this Friday's march, it will be snowy, cold, and probably very 
miserable. Despite the elements--despite the weather--when the hundreds 
of thousands of youth walk down Constitution Avenue past the Capitol 
and the Supreme Court, they give witness to the sanctity of human life 
from the moment of conception. They protest abortion providers 
receiving taxpayer dollars. They object to government policies that 
violate freedom of conscience.
  These Kansans have made a 20-hour bus ride and will yet again brave 
cold weather to demonstrate their commitment to the right to life--a 
right that those of us in positions of power have an obligation to 
protect.
  When visiting with these young advocates, I have been struck by the 
clarity with which they march. Motivated by a joy for life, a love for 
life, they come to Washington, DC, not to condemn, but rather to affirm 
that all life is sacred and to encourage a broader realization of that 
in our Nation.
  Every opportunity they have while they are here they will use to 
educate and to encourage a point of view that protects life. As other 
times in our struggle for civil rights in our country, they will make 
progress to pursue and secure the right to life, and none of those 
things have happened as quickly as we would like.
  As we work to expedite the day when the unborn are protected under 
law, I welcome to our Nation's capital all Kansans, as well as the 
hundreds of thousands more who will join them as they march for life. 
Every great movement begins with the first step, and these young 
Kansans can be certain their march will not be in vain.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.


             Price Spikes in Decades-Old Prescription Drugs

  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I rise today with my friend and 
colleague, the Senator from Missouri, Mrs. McCaskill, to inform our 
colleagues of an important development in the investigation underway by 
the Special Committee on Aging as we examine the sudden and dramatic 
price hikes for certain decades-old prescription drugs.
  First, let me provide the Presiding Officer and our colleagues with 
some background on our investigation to date. Given that 90 percent of 
seniors take at least one prescription drug every month, the egregious 
price increases we have witnessed on these older drugs that are no 
longer under patent protection could inflate the cost of health care by 
hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Concerned not only about the 
high costs but also about the potential risk that patients will not be 
able to access the prescription drugs they need, we launched a 
bipartisan investigation early last November into the causes, effects, 
and potential solutions to these massive and unjustified price 
increases.
  Our investigation is focused on four companies that recently acquired 
six drugs that were decades old--drugs whose patents had expired long 
ago--and then these companies, after purchasing these drugs, 
dramatically hiked their prices. The four companies are Turing 
Pharmaceuticals, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin, Incorporated, and 
Rodelis Therapeutics.
  Of these four, Turing Pharmaceuticals, previously led by its founder 
Martin Shkreli, is the company that has received the most attention. In 
August of last year, Turing acquired the

[[Page S117]]

drug Daraprim. Daraprim is considered to be the gold standard for the 
treatment of toxoplasmosis, a disease resulting from a parasite 
infection that can be particularly harmful to infants born to infected 
mothers.
  Despite the fact that Daraprim has been on the market for 63 years, 
Turing bought the drug and then promptly raised its price from $17.63 
to a whopping $750 per pill.
  The other three companies also dramatically increased the prices of 
the drugs they acquired from between 300 to 2,000 percent.
  On November 4, we wrote to the companies asking for detailed 
information regarding their pricing decisions. I ask unanimous consent 
that our letter be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my 
remarks.
  Around the same time, Turing CEO Shkreli was actively engaged in 
online postings and other communications discussing Turing business, 
using what appeared to be his own personal electronic devices.
  On November 12, 2015, the Aging Committee asked the counsel for 
Turing to take reasonable steps to ensure that any business records on 
Mr. Shkreli's personal devices be properly preserved and produced. 
Turing still has not provided the Aging Committee with clear assurances 
that it will do so, notwithstanding the fact that they have told us 
that Mr. Shkreli was ``principally involved for Turing in all aspects 
of the transactions and the decisions covered by'' our November 4 
letter.
  On December 9, 2015, we issued a subpoena for documents to Mr. 
Shkreli in his capacity as CEO, compelling Turing to produce the 
information that had been sought by our November 4 letter. On December 
15, 2015, we learned that Mr. Shkreli had been indicted on seven counts 
unrelated to Turing and predating the company's corporate existence. 
The next day Turing announced Mr. Shkreli's resignation as CEO but left 
unclear whether or not he remained on its board of directors.

  The fact that the company has not made it clear that it would act to 
preserve Turing business records in its former CEO's possession left 
the committee deeply concerned that we might not receive all documents 
relevant to our investigation. Therefore, on December 21 of last year, 
the committee requested that Turing provide detailed information on the 
steps it was taking to preserve these records. Once again, however, 
Turing failed to produce an adequate response to our request.
  Consequently, the Special Committee on Aging issued another document 
subpoena--this one directly to Martin Shkreli himself--on December 24. 
It directed him to produce substantially the same documents sought by 
the committee's December 9 subpoena. By a letter dated January 12, 
2016, counsel informed our committee that Mr. Shkreli was categorically 
invoking the act of production privilege under the Fifth Amendment to 
the Constitution and was therefore refusing to produce any documents in 
response to the December 24 subpoena. So this is the important new 
development. He has chosen, in response to a document subpoena for 
Turing documents that may be in his personal possession, to invoke the 
Fifth Amendment.
  To be clear, Mr. Shkreli is essentially arguing that the very act of 
producing and authenticating documents that are seemingly unrelated to 
the charges filed against him may incriminate him. The committee has 
asked him through counsel for an explanation of the rationale for this 
argument, and we are awaiting a response. The committee is troubled by 
his unsupported invocation, given that the Turing documents we have 
requested appear to be unrelated to the charges brought against him. 
Absent a valid justification of the grounds for invoking the Fifth 
Amendment, Mr. Shkreli's assertion could hinder our important 
investigation.
  Our committee is seeking to understand how companies can acquire 
prescription drugs--drugs for which they had nothing to do with the 
research and development, drugs that in some cases are more than half a 
century old--and then suddenly impose dramatic price increases on those 
drugs at the expense of infants, vulnerable seniors, and others with 
devastating diseases for which in some cases these drugs are the gold 
standard for treatment.
  So far the Special Committee on Aging has received nearly 20,000 
documents over the course of this investigation. The documents the 
Senator from Missouri and I are seeking on behalf of the committee 
likely include information that is essential in order for us to fully 
understand why this phenomenon is happening and to develop the 
legislative and regulatory solutions to end this disturbing practice.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                             United States Senate,


                                   Special Committee on Aging,

                                 Washington, DC, November 4, 2015.
     Mr. Martin Shkreli, 
     Chief Executive Officer, Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC, Avenue 
         of the Americas, 39th Floor, New York, NY.
       Dear Mr. Shkreli: The United States Senate Special 
     Committee on Aging is conducting an investigation into the 
     pricing of off-patent drugs in certain circumstances. We seek 
     your cooperation with this investigation so that the 
     Committee may better understand drug pricing and related 
     regulatory and public policy concerns.
       In particular, the Committee wishes to learn more about 
     Turing Pharmaceuticals' recent acquisition of the rights to 
     sell Daraprim, a drug used to treat and prevent infections, 
     from Impax Laboratories and Turing's subsequent decision to 
     increase the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per tablet to 
     $750.00.
       In order to assist us in our investigation, we ask that you 
     provide us with the documents set forth in Schedule A and the 
     information set forth in Schedule B by December 2, 2015. 
     Please submit the material responsive to this request as it 
     becomes available, rather than waiting to provide it all at 
     once. In order to facilitate this production, we request that 
     you schedule a time to meet and confer on the Request with 
     Committee Staff as soon as it is practicable for you to do 
     so.
       The jurisdiction of the Special Committee on Aging is set 
     forth in Section 104 of S. Res. 4, agreed to February 4, 
     1977.
       We appreciate your attention to this matter. Should you 
     have any questions, please do not hesitate to have your staff 
     contact Samuel Dewey of the Majority Staff at (202) 224-2798, 
     or Cathy Yu of the Minority Staff at (202) 224-7752. Please 
     direct all official correspondence to the Committee's Chief 
     Clerk, Matt Lawrence.
           Sincerely,
     Susan M. Collins,
       Chairman, U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.
     Claire McCaskill,
       Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.


                               SCHEDULE A

       1. Any analysis conducted by Turing relating to the price 
     of Daraprim.
       2. Any analysis in Turing's possession, custody, or control 
     relating to the price of Daraprim; exclusive of documents 
     responsive to Schedule A, Specification 1, herein.
       3. My communications with Turing's Board of Directors 
     relating to Daraprim.
       4. Any documents generated by the Turing Board of Directors 
     relating to Daraprim.
       5. My projected or historical financial data relating to 
     Daraprim, including, but not limited to, costs, revenues, 
     profits, losses, and cash flows.
       6. Any projected or historical financial data relating to 
     Turing's research and development, including, but not limited 
     to, research and development relating to Daraprim.
       7. Any documents evaluating any product market that 
     includes, directly or indirectly, Daraprim, regardless of the 
     definition of the geographic market, including, but not 
     limited to, analysis of barriers to entry thereto.
       8. Any documents evaluating any market share that includes 
     Daraprim, or the market power of that market share, for any 
     product market or geographic market; exclusive of documents 
     responsive to Schedule A, Specification 7, herein.
       9. Any communications with Impax relating to Daraprim.
       10. Any documents relating to Impax's sale of Daraprim to 
     Turing.
       11. Any contracts entered into by Turing that are related 
     to the production, marketing, and sale of Daraprim.
       12. Any marketing or pricing plans prepared for, or being 
     used in, the sale or advertisement of Daraprim, including all 
     documents related thereto.
       13. My documents relating to Patient Assistance Programs 
     relating to Daraprim.
       14. My documents relating to Daraprim and Imprimis.
       15. Any documents relating to the price of Daraprim that 
     have been produced pursuant to an investigative inquiry by 
     any federal, state, or local government entity.
       16. My analysis relating to Daraprim and any statute or 
     regulation administered by the FDA.
       17. Any communications with the FDA relating to Daraprim; 
     exclusive of documents responsive to Schedule A, 
     Specifications 15 or 16, herein.
       18. Any documents relating to Daraprim and the Health 
     Resources and Services Administration's 340B Drug Discount 
     Program;

[[Page S118]]

     exclusive of documents responsive to Schedule A, 
     Specifications 13, 16, or 17, herein.
       19. Any projected or historical financial data related to 
     Daraprim and Medicare or Medicaid; exclusive of documents 
     responsive to Schedule A, Specifications 5, 6, or 15-18, 
     herein.
       20. Any documents notating, memorializing, or summarizing a 
     communication, or a portion thereof, responsive to Schedule 
     A, Specifications 3, 9, or 17, herein.


                               SCHEDULE B

       1. State:
       a. A list of all countries where Daraprim is sold (or is 
     expected to be sold in the next two years from the date of 
     this letter) and the corresponding price or planned price for 
     each country.
       b. In detail, how Turing reached the price for each 
     country.
       c. How the revenue, costs, and any discounts associated 
     with international sales are accounted for within Turing.
       2. State in detail any changes Turing has made, or plans to 
     make, to Daraprim or the administration of the drug.
       3. Identify the Turing employee responsible for setting the 
     price of Daraprim.
       4. Identify the names and addresses of all companies owned 
     in whole or in part by Turing that are involved in the 
     production, marketing, and sale of Daraprim and any of its 
     components.
       5. State the total expense to Turing related to the 
     acquisition of Daraprim.
       6. State in detail all known uses of Daraprim by medical 
     professionals, including both on-label and off-label uses.
       7. State in detail all known protocols, of which Daraprim 
     is a component, used by medical professionals, including both 
     on-label and off-label uses.
       8. For each discrete communication that did not occur via 
     document, but which would have been responsive to 
     Specifications 1-19 of Schedule A if made via document, 
     state:
       (a) The method of communication.
       (b) The date and time of the communication.
       (c) The author and addressee of the communication.
       (d) The relationship of the author and addressee to each 
     other.
       (e) A general description of the communication.
       Information responsive to this question should be produced 
     in a native Excel file.

  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I yield now to the ranking member of 
the Special Committee on Aging, my colleague Senator McCaskill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mrs. McCASKILL. Madam President, first I want to compliment the 
chairman of the committee for her remarks, which presented, I think, a 
very thorough and complete look at what the committee is doing and why 
we are doing it.
  There are different ways that people can do business in the Capitol. 
There is the one-off press conference, there is the topic of the day 
that everyone scurries to get attention for, and then there is the 
professional, plodding, complete investigation into a very important 
public policy issue. That is the kind of investigation that Chairman 
Collins is leading--one that is responsible, thorough, and, frankly, 
grounded in a deep belief that the American people have the right to 
know why these obscure drugs and the companies that developed them were 
purchased, and then they exploded in price. This is something we need 
to understand. These drugs are lifesaving drugs. This is something that 
adversely affects many Americans with these drugs. But the problem that 
is represented here could have much broader implications.
  Prescription drug prices have increased by 13 percent in 2015, and 
they are up 76 percent in the past 5 years--more than eight times the 
rate of inflation. A recent national poll shows that the affordability 
of prescription drugs was Americans' top health concern. This problem 
appears to continue unabated as we speak. Just last week, there were 
reports in the Wall Street Journal that several major drug companies 
have all raised prices on drugs, some by double digits in the last 
month alone.
  We need to get to the bottom of why we are seeing such huge spikes in 
these drug prices. In the course of the investigation, we have received 
quite a bit of pushback from lobbyists and insiders. One industry 
lobbyist said if we wanted to cure cancer, we better leave the drug 
companies alone. That is absurd.
  We want to encourage innovation, and that is why the investigation is 
being handled so responsibly by Senator Collins. We want to protect 
those in research and development, but we can do so while taking a hard 
look at price gouging and the hedge fund-like behavior of some 
pharmaceutical companies.
  I believe Congress has both the ability and the duty to conduct a 
thorough investigation of this issue, and I am proud to be a part of 
this bipartisan investigation led by Chairman Collins so that we can 
find policy solutions that will help Americans. As she indicated, we 
have already requested and received over 20,000 documents from multiple 
sources and have conducted more than 60 interviews with relevant 
stakeholders, and we plan to continue our investigative efforts until 
we have assembled a sufficiently complete picture so that we can be 
confident that any proposed policy solutions are well informed and 
targeted to the specific problems we have identified. In order to do 
that, it is important that we get all of the documents that have been 
requested.
  The privilege against self-incrimination is an extraordinarily 
important and sacred constitutional right. It is a right that this body 
believes in protecting, and we in no way want to erode it. But as a 
former prosecutor, I am also very aware of its limitations. In order to 
invoke the Fifth Amendment, there needs to be a nexus between the 
documents and the information that one is refusing to provide under the 
privilege and an actual fear of self-incrimination in a criminal 
proceeding. We are asking for documents that on their face have no 
apparent connection to any ongoing criminal proceeding. If there is no 
connection between the documents and a criminal proceeding or if the 
documents are corporate documents, the courts are very clear that they 
should be turned over to authorities.
  I appreciate the chairman's conscientious and dogged pursuit of this 
investigation. I will continue to cooperate and assist in any way 
possible. I look forward to continuing the important work of the 
Special Aging Committee's investigation into drug prices, and I can 
assure the public that with the work that Chairman Collins is doing 
along with our staffs and the other members of the committee, we will 
get some answers.
  Thank you, Madam President.
  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           American SAFE Act

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, all across the Middle East and Europe, 
hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing the medieval barbarism of 
ISIS and the violent cruelty of the Assad regime. Out of a population 
of 22 million, more than 4 million Syrians have fled to neighboring 
countries. These refugees--almost all of them women and children--have 
been living away from their homes for years in Jordan, Turkey, or other 
host countries, struggling to survive, struggling to be free. Hundreds 
of thousands have decided to make the dangerous journey to Europe. Many 
perish along the way. According to the United Nations, over 3,200 
refugees attempting to reach Europe died or went missing in 2015 alone.

  Throughout our history, when we have been at our best, the United 
States has accepted the world's most vulnerable seeking refuge from 
violence and murder. Our principles don't mean very much if we jettison 
them when we find them politically inconvenient or difficult to live 
by.
  The legislation we voted on today represents a significant departure 
from our proud history. It would require the Secretary of the 
Department of Homeland Security, the Director of the FBI, and the 
Director of National Intelligence to personally certify that each 
refugee from Syria and Iraq poses no security threat before admission 
into the United States and would effectively halt the refugee process. 
This is not the reason I opposed the legislation. It is worth noting it 
is likely those three officials would be able to do nothing else during 
the course of the day to keep us secure because they would be busy 
signing certifications.
  It is very clear, from all the testimony we have heard at our 
committees and people who are experts in this area, that a blanket 
prohibition like this

[[Page S119]]

doesn't actually make us safe. Refugees are the most thoroughly vetted 
group of anyone entering the United States. Let's start with that. The 
United States first screens them and collects biometric data. Only 
those who pass are then referred to the United States--and refugees 
don't even know which country they are going to be referred to when 
they approach the United Nations. Then multiple agencies--including 
DHS, the FBI, the State Department, and our intelligence agencies--
conduct a rigorous screening process. This includes health checks, 
repeated biometric checks, several layers of biographical and 
background screenings and interviews. Out of the 23,000 individuals 
referred to the United States, only about 2,000 have been accepted. It 
should be understood by people in this body--and I hope it is 
understood by the American people--that no refugee enjoys a presumption 
of acceptance into the United States. The reverse is true. They are 
required to pass the most stringent standards of any group seeking to 
enter the United States--a process applicants must endure with 
uncertainty for over 2 years.
  So instead of playing politics, in my view we ought to be having a 
serious discussion about how actually to keep our country safe and what 
will make it safer. One of the things I learned when we were working on 
the immigration bill in the Senate--which still hasn't passed the 
House. I would remind everybody, the only bill to secure our border, 
the only bill to provide internal security when it comes to immigration 
was the bill that passed through the Senate that has never been taken 
up by the House in any form. One of the things I learned was that of 
the 11 million undocumented people in the United States, 40 percent of 
them--almost half--are people who came lawfully to the United States 
but overstayed their visa, and we have no way of tracking that. We have 
no way of understanding who those people are. This legislation would 
have fixed that. I would have loved to have seen the House pass a 
companion piece of legislation, but that concerns me because there are 
a bunch of people in here who haven't been vetted at all. So instead of 
playing politics, we ought to figure out what we can do.
  Another example. A group of us have introduced a bill that 
strengthens the Visa Waiver Program, which terrorists can exploit to 
enter the United States. Currently, over 25 million people come to the 
United States every year through this program. Our legislation 
addresses important security vulnerabilities and closes the program to 
foreign fighters. The omnibus we just passed in December included some 
important parts of our bill. It prevents people who have traveled to 
terrorist hot spots in the last 5 years--including Iraq and Syria--from 
even using the Visa Waiver Program. It also requires all travelers 
using the program to have electronic passports, which are harder to 
fake. These are big changes to make the American people safer. 
Together, these changes will help stop terrorists from coming to the 
United States, but there are still important parts of the bill we must 
pass, including requiring individuals using the Visa Waiver Program to 
submit biometric data such as fingerprints and photos before boarding a 
plane to the United States, working with our European partners to close 
their borders to the flow of foreign fighters heading to ISIS and back, 
requiring better information sharing on foreign fighters and dangerous 
individuals.
  This is not to say that a refugee--or even a U.S. citizen--is not 
vulnerable to radicalization. We need to be vigilant about that. 
Americans are justifiably concerned about the reality of the threat and 
the dangerous world in which we live today. We must counter terrorist 
groups' ability to radicalize using social media, both here at home and 
abroad. Our country needs a much better strategy for countering and 
degrading ISIS propaganda and its recruitment machine. We have to 
develop creative and agile technologies to effectively degrade the 
ability of terrorist organizations like ISIS and others to persuade, 
inspire, and recruit by using social media. Congress should also pass 
the Senate immigration bill I mentioned earlier, which included a 
historic investment to secure our borders and enhance our interior 
enforcement.
  As a reminder to everybody here, this bill would double the number of 
border agents, expand fencing, implement new technology and resources, 
address visa overstays, and provide for full monitoring of every inch 
of our southern border. By addressing real vulnerabilities and 
investing in smart security solutions, we can protect our borders and 
also--and also--live by our values.
  We cannot allow ourselves to return to dark periods in our history 
when Americans debated turning away those fleeing cruelty around the 
world.
  My mom who was born in Poland in 1938 while Nazi tanks amassed at the 
borders--she and her parents miraculously survived--Polish Jews--
miraculously survived one of the worst human events in human history, 
and they survived it in and around Warsaw. They lived there for 2 years 
after the war and then went to Stockholm for a year, Mexico City for a 
year, and then they came to New York City. They came to the one country 
in the world where they felt they could rebuild their shattered lives.
  On my first birthday--when I was 1 year old, 1965, 15 years after my 
mom and her grandparents came to the country--my grandparents sent me a 
birthday card. This is what they said in that card. They wrote in 
English, by the way, 15 years after they came to the United States: The 
ancient Greeks gave the world the high ideals of democracy in search of 
which your dear mother and we came to the hospitable shores of 
beautiful America in 1950. We have been happy here ever since beyond 
our greatest dreams and expectations with democracy, freedom, and love 
and humanity's greatest treasure. We hope that when you grow up you 
will help to develop in other parts of the world a greater 
understanding of these American values.
  We have very few opportunities to live by our values. This is one of 
those times. In this case it is not about developing them, as my 
grandparents worried during the Cold War, in other parts of the world. 
This is making sure that we hold on to the values that have defined us 
as a nation, that have separated us from so many other nations in the 
world and made this a place where my grandparents and my mom were able 
to come and achieve the American dream--a dream that would have seemed 
unimaginable to them during the Holocaust.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.


                           Our Value for Life

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is a basic American value: Families.
  America has gotten particular about our families. We love our 
families and we love our kids. It is one of the struggles we have had 
recently as a nation because we have seen this collapse of the American 
family, this basic value. We see that unit struggling. Families begin, 
a husband and a wife, in that incredible moment when a lady looks at a 
pregnancy test, sees that little line, and realizes there is a baby on 
the way.
  Forty-three years ago as a country there was a decision made by the 
Supreme Court. That decision forever changed the structure of our 
families, forever changed the values within the country, because the 
values shifted 43 years ago, and it changed from there is a baby on the 
way to that family gets to choose if that is a baby or not. To 
literally be able to say, based on the preference of the mom, it is 
tissue or it is a baby, we should handle those two things very 
differently.
  I can remember distinctly in my family 19 years-plus ago now, when we 
saw that little line on the pregnancy test and we started getting a 
house ready and getting things organized and we started trying to 
figure out how to get our finances in order and everything ready to go 
because there was a baby on the way. In those first moments, before my 
wife could even feel that she was pregnant, we found out that she was. 
That was a child coming to our family. She has a name now. Her name is 
Hannah. With the first of our two daughters--Hannah and Jordan--we 
understand full well how things started and what things were like in 
those earliest days. It is remarkable to me that so much of the 
conversation now circles around preference. At that moment we knew that 
if we didn't do something right away to actually reach into the womb 
and take that child out of the womb--Planned Parenthood and other folks 
would say

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``just to remove the tissue''--that if something wasn't done from that 
moment on, there was a baby coming, a baby who would look up into our 
face and would smile and would have a name.
  Americans have lost track of this basic principle. That is not tissue 
in the womb. When that pregnancy test comes up positive, that is a 
baby. Regardless of the preference of any individual, that is a baby on 
the way. Cells are dividing. For many they don't find out for maybe a 
couple of months even and begin to figure out something is really 
changing and they do a quick test. Sometimes by the time they even do a 
test there is a beating heart there. They look in with a sonogram and 
count 10 fingers, 10 toes. If you were to reach in and do a DNA test, 
you would find out that lump of tissue that is in there is not tissue. 
It has DNA different than the mom, different than the dad. That is a 
child. It is a unique life. That life is not determined based on a 
preference. That life is determined based on that dividing cell as a 
child with 10 fingers and toes.
  I can't think of anything else we have in America where anyone can 
say, based on their preference, I choose for that to be alive or I 
choose for that not to be alive. I can't just look at this desk and say 
I choose to call that a life because we know life has basic criteria. 
It has dividing cells. It can function on its own. It can reproduce. It 
is life. We know what life is. We can't casually say one thing is life 
and one thing is not, just like we casually don't just try to fight off 
the destruction of tissue in other ways.
  I always smile when I hear some folks on the other side of this 
argument say they want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. I hear it 
all the time--safe, legal, and rare. When someone says that to me, I 
always ask the question: Why rare? I understand safe and legal. Why 
would you care if it is rare? If it is just tissue, why does it matter 
if you remove it?
  No one has a big national movement to fight individuals from taking 
warts off their hands because everyone knows, if you have a wart on 
your hand, it is just tissue and no one cares if you take that off. 
They understand that really is your body. It is a wart on your hand and 
it doesn't look good, so take it off. Everyone is fine with that. For 
some reason there is a push to say safe, legal, and rare when it comes 
to abortion because I believe inherently even the individuals who say 
safe, legal, and rare understand it is not just tissue or you wouldn't 
say it has to be rare. You understand it is an incredibly painful, 
difficult decision that a mom is making because she knows in her gut 
that is not tissue. That is a child, a child who would one day have a 
name and a smile. That is a child.
  In China the government gets to decide whether it is just tissue or a 
child because the government will step in and say: If you have a second 
child, you can't have that one. You have to destroy the second child. 
Now, in their benevolence, China has shifted to say you can have up to 
two children in certain areas and in certain regions, but if you have a 
third one, you have to destroy that child. In America, for whatever 
reason, we have individuals with the freedom to be able to say: I 
prefer for this not to be a child. Suddenly, somehow our culture says: 
OK. You can pick.
  The Supreme Court in 1973 looked at this issue, and they argued a lot 
about viability, what they call quickening. This conversation about 
viability really circled around whether States could actually make laws 
protecting the lives of children once they reach viability. In 1973, 
viability was very different than what it is today. In the NICU units--
neonatal intensive care units--you will find a very large area in most 
hospitals. You ought to go by and visit and walk into an NICU area 
because you will find many rooms and many beds there. Decades ago that 
wasn't true because children at 22 weeks and 24 weeks didn't survive 
before. Now a higher and higher percentage are.

  There are children who are in Oklahoma City right now in NICU who 
weigh just a tiny bit more than two iPhones. That is their weight when 
they are born--just a tiny bit more than two iPhones in weight. Yet 
they are growing up to be healthy, productive kids. They are children.
  We are getting better at NICU as well, learning how to provide oxygen 
so their lungs develop. I visited some of the physicians in the NICU at 
OU Children's Hospital over the Christmas break and said: What have we 
learned? What have we gained? Is this getting better?
  They talked about how we feed differently now than we did decades 
ago. At NICU, we understand how they are developing and receive food, 
and we want their digestive systems to develop. Things are very 
different now in science. It is forcing the country to rethink an issue 
again: When is a child a child? And in our basic American values, 
should we stand up for them?
  I believe we should. I am amazed at the number of moms who--if they 
will get a sonogram and see the picture of their child in their womb, 
they understand clearly that is not tissue; that is a face looking back 
at them. Those are fingers and toes that they can count. There is a 
beating heart there. That is not random tissue.
  In fact, I don't know if you knew this, but they can now do 3-D 
sonograms and then send the sonogram to a 3-D printer and actually 
print out a model of what the child looks like in the womb in that 
exact position. Not only is that cool as a parent, to be able to say 
that I can actually hold a model of what my child looks like right now 
at 20 weeks of development, 28 weeks of development and to be able to 
see and look at their face, but it is revolutionary for physicians that 
at 20 weeks they are reaching into the womb, giving anesthetic to the 
child, and they can actually see exactly what the imperfections are so 
when they go in to do surgery, they can practice on the outside before 
they reach into the inside.
  The technology continues to advance. I say to my colleagues, at what 
point will our laws catch up with our science? How long will we deny 
clear science and not understand that is a child?
  I think in the decades ahead, our Nation will catch up to the science 
and will look back on a season in our country when we ignored the 
obvious: When a pregnancy test says positive, that is not positive for 
tissue; that is positive for a baby.
  I also want to affirm thousands of volunteers around the country--
many of them coming this week to the March for Life--who serve every 
single week in crisis pregnancy centers around the country, who 
lovingly walk with moms through some of the most difficult days of 
their lives as they make hard decisions. With great compassion, they 
walk them through a tough pregnancy. Then they are with them in the 
days after delivery, bringing diapers to them, bringing formula to 
them, helping them in those early moments. Thousands of volunteers 
around the country do that every single week. Good for them. Good for 
our country. Good for our value for life. I am always proud when 
Americans stand up for other Americans no matter how weak they are.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                           American SAFE Act

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, the terrorist attacks that we have seen 
over the last couple of months, including those tragically in Paris and 
San Bernardino, CA, have made it all too clear that terrorists' threats 
to Americans and to our allies are very real.
  I believe the best way to combat the threat of ISIS across our globe 
is to continue to degrade and destroy their forces overseas and show 
the world that they are not as powerful as they claim to be. Our 
success will not only rob them of their safe haven but will also 
undercut their recruitment narrative that ISIS is on the rise. But in 
addition to destroying ISIS overseas, we must also focus on defeating 
the threat of ISIS here at home.
  I realize that many Americans and many of our colleagues are 
concerned about terrorists traveling to our borders as refugees from 
Syria or maybe some other country. As many of my colleagues may recall, 
late last year we debated the question regarding the resettlement of 4 
million Syrian refugees and whether we in this country should open our 
doors to even a small fraction of them. We debated it right here on the 
Senate floor, as some of you recall, and we debated it in our 
committees, including the Homeland Security and

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Governmental Affairs Committee, where I serve as the senior Democrat.
  During that debate, I was reminded of the words of Pope Francis's 
historic and moving address to a joint session of Congress in the House 
Chamber last fall when he reminded us of the Golden Rule--to treat 
other people the way we want to be treated, to love our neighbors as 
ourselves. He also invoked Matthew 25, which deals with ``the least of 
these'': When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you 
clothe me? When I was thirsty, did you give me drink? When I was a 
stranger in your land, did you take me in?
  I think we have a moral imperative to provide for ``the least of 
these,'' but at the same time, we have a moral imperative to protect 
Americans from extremists who seek to come to the United States to 
cause us harm. As we learn to address this tension, our Nation has 
rigorous screening procedures in place for all refugees, as well as 
enhanced screening for refugees who might be coming here from Syria. It 
is a process that takes an average of 2 years to complete.
  For those who aren't familiar with the process, people--in this case, 
4 million refugees--are left for fighting in Syria to try to get away 
to save their lives. They are in refugee camps in that part of the 
world, and the United Nations has a special mission which includes to 
vet them, to get to know them, to talk with them, and to see if they 
would like to stay in a refugee camp or try to get settled into some 
other country.
  In vetting the 4 million refugees, a small fraction of those are 
folks who indicated that they would be interested in maybe resettling 
in this country. At the end of the day, after winnowing down from 4 
million refugees, I believe the U.N. sent us 7,000 names. Out of the 
7,000, we selected 2,000--mostly kids, mostly young families, mostly 
old people, and not very many men of fighting age, if you will. But the 
President has called for increasing that 2,000 to something like 10,000 
over the next year--of course, this year.
  Think about that. Out of 4 million, what percentage of 4 million is 
10,000 people? Even if we took all 10,000, it is one-quarter of 1 
percent. That is what it is: one-quarter of 1 percent. There are 
obviously concerns about whether any of those people are dangerous--
pose an imminent danger to our people. Keep in mind that 2,000 have 
come in the course of the last year, and not one has been arrested, not 
one has been convicted of plotting or trying terrorist activity. One of 
the reasons that happens is--if I were an ISIS person and I were in 
Syria and wanted to get over, I sure wouldn't spend 2 years trying to 
come through with the refugees.
  That is the most stringent vetting of any group of people who want to 
come to this country. They have to undergo biometric checks. They are 
interviewed by people who are trained not just by the U.N. but also by 
us overseas, and they are vetted by people, interviewed by people who 
are trained to detect deception.
  We have the ability to check these people against any number of the 
databases that relate to potential terrorist activity. If I were an 
ISIS person wanting to embed myself with a terrorist group, I am not 
going to wait 2 years to do that and face the most rigorous of vetting 
processes for anyone trying to come to this country.
  For those of Syrian descent, the process could be even longer than 
that. It is a long time to wait for terrorists if they were going to 
try to use the refugee program to access the United States. If I were a 
terrorist trying to come here, the last thing I would do is go through 
those 2 years of vetting.
  While I understand my colleagues' concerns, the refugee bill that we 
dealt with today would do little to address our Nation's security 
needs. That is why many of my colleagues joined me in opposing this 
bill. The bill that was before us would require the head of top 
national security agencies to personally certify that each refugee from 
Syria and Iraq poses no security threat before admission to the United 
States--not now, not ever.
  If this bill had passed, it would have served as a backdoor way to 
shut off the refugee program by requiring our national security 
leaders--the head of the FBI, Director of National Intelligence, 
Secretary of Homeland Security--to promise something they would never 
promise. As currently drafted, this bill would require these three 
national security leaders to guarantee that the refugee will never, 
never become a security threat. That is not how these leaders or their 
organizations evaluate security threats. They don't have a crystal 
ball, and they cannot predict the future.
  Simply put, the SAFE Act would effectively stop the resettlement of 
fully vetted refugee women, children, families, and older folks from 
Syria and from Iraq and would weaken our national security. Again, that 
is one of the reasons I believe we must focus our attention on threats 
that pose a greater risk to our homeland.
  Democrats put forward a series of commonsense solutions--
alternatives, if you will--that will strengthen our security and help 
protect us against ISIS, a couple of which I had the pleasure of 
coauthoring. Instead of vilifying refugees, the proposals that we put 
forward impose tough new sanctions on financial institutions if they 
knowingly facilitate transactions with ISIS. That particular proposal 
closes loopholes that would let terrorists legally buy guns. This bill 
improves intelligence sharing with our allies who join us in the fight 
against ISIS.
  The bill also includes several provisions to better protect the 
homeland. For example, the bill--our proposal--strengthens the security 
of our airports. The bill provides better training for law enforcement 
to respond to active shooter incidents. The legislation also makes 
several improvements to the security of low-level radiological material 
so that potentially dangerous material does not fall into the hands of 
terrorists who might use it to create a dirty bomb.
  One particular area I want to focus on, though, is countering violent 
extremism. As the tragedy in San Bernardino, CA, underscores, some of 
the greatest threats we face are homegrown terrorism and self-
radicalization. That is why the Democratic alternative includes 
language from the legislation I introduced that would strengthen the 
Department of Homeland Security's ability to counter violent extremism 
here in the United States.
  This proposal authorizes a new office charged with helping 
communities across the country--Muslim communities across the country--
stop their young people from being recruited by ISIS. The legislative 
proposal would also create a grant program that would help the 
Department of Homeland Security connect with nonprofits, with local 
officials, with religious leaders and youth groups to work together to 
counter the narratives proffered by terrorist groups like ISIS.
  If you look in recent years at the folks in this country who are 
inspired by ISIS to commit terrorist activities against those of us in 
this country, you will not find them having come over embedded, to my 
knowledge, with any refugee organization or any refugee group. The 
biggest threat to us is not necessarily the people coming through on 
the Visa Waiver Program, student visa programs, or tourist visa 
programs. The biggest threat to our security is from folks who in many 
cases were born here or in some cases folks who could have come from 
Syria, Iraq, or some other place, but they became radicalized after 
coming here--maybe after becoming a citizen here. Those are the threats 
that I think pose the greatest danger. We call them lone wolves.

  One of the best ways to address those folks is to look around at 
maybe our history and look at what is going on in Arabic and other 
countries and ask if there is some way to reach out to those people who 
are actually in danger of becoming radicalized or a lone wolf, if 
someone could reach out to them and reduce the likelihood of having 
them become radicalized and prevent them from taking out their 
frustration or anger on people in this country in harmful ways.
  In my last year as Governor of Delaware, I was involved in a 
foundation that was called the American Legacy Foundation. It was 
funded by a tobacco settlement between the tobacco industry and all 50 
States. The idea behind the American Legacy Foundation was to use the 
$1 billion that was provided to the American Legacy Foundation to

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develop ways to message and communicate with young people in this 
country who were either smoking or thinking about becoming smokers.
  Some of us remember from our youth--and when I was a kid growing up, 
the idea of smoking was thought to be a desirable thing. Early on, we 
were not aware of the health consequences to it. We would see all kinds 
of people in commercials on television advertising smoking, and you 
would think that would be a cool thing to do. The American Legacy 
Foundation came along in 2001 and developed a countermessage to all of 
that, and we called it the Truth Campaign. The Truth Campaign was a 
multimedia campaign that was included in radio and TV commercials, as 
well as on the Internet and in magazines and that sort of thing, that 
young people read or listened to. The narratives and the messaging 
communications were not developed in boardrooms or by someone like me 
or the paid staff of the American Legacy Foundation; they were 
developed by young people who could have been 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 
17, or 18 years old who developed an area and said: This is a message 
you need to send out through all of these different mediums to try to 
convince them not to smoke or if they are already smoking, to quit. And 
that is what we did.
  If you look at the incidence of smoking for people who were preteens 
and teenagers in this country in 2001 and what it was by the end of the 
last decade, it is amazing how well it worked. It was called the Truth 
Campaign. The messaging and the messages developed by our target 
audience were hard-hitting. There was a saying when I went to business 
school: Talk to your customer and ask them what they want. And in this 
case, we talked to our customers. A lot of them were about the same age 
as our pages who are sitting here today.
  The Department of Homeland Security is attempting to start up an 
office called the Office of Community Partnership. It is an office that 
would work with Muslim communities across the country, including 
families, religious leaders, and other young people, in order to try to 
make sure young people do not become radicalized and undertake 
activities that are going to harm other folks in this country. I think 
it is a very promising initiative. The folks leading this community 
partnership office at the Department of Homeland Security are going to 
work with the American Legacy Foundation to see what worked and really 
changed the game with respect to young people smoking and using tobacco 
in this country. We may be able to apply some of those lessons to deter 
the likelihood of people of Muslim faith who are somehow convinced that 
their faith directs them to undertake these violent activities. I am 
encouraged by this prospect.
  The last thing I will say is that we have 1\1/2\ billion people 
around the world who are Muslims. I am Protestant, and there are people 
of different faiths in this body. There are Protestants, Catholics, 
Jews, and others. Among the things we have in common, as well as with 
the Muslim faith, is something I mentioned earlier--the Golden Rule. 
Almost every major religion on Earth has several things in common, but 
one of the things they have in common is the Golden Rule, which is to 
love your neighbor as yourself and treat other people the way you want 
to be treated. I don't care if you are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, 
Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim, somewhere in your Sacred Scripture is that 
idea, that notion, that directive.
  There are some people who take my Christian faith and turn it on its 
head to say and do things that we would never do and should never do. 
We take the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and instead 
of embracing Matthew 25--the least of these, when I was a stranger in 
your land, did you take me in--we are basically saying: We are not 
going to let any people in this country who are, say, of the Muslim 
faith. That is not a Christian thing to say or do.
  People take my religion, my faith and turn it into something that it 
is not even close to being, and, not surprisingly, there are some 
people who do that with the Muslim faith. We need to counter that and 
help the vast majority of folks in this country who are Muslim to 
better counter them in ways which, frankly, I could never do but which 
people in Muslim communities and of that faith across the country would 
like to do and want to do. We need to be a good partner and help them 
to be successful in that effort. Frankly, that is a whole lot better 
alternative than the legislation that was before us today, and that is 
one thing we ought to be able to agree on. I hope my colleagues--
Democratic, Republican, and Independent--will find a path to join me 
and others who think this is a good idea and make it happen.
  With that, I will pass the baton to my friend from another big State, 
Rhode Island.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to speak today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
up to 17 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise for ``Time to Wake Up'' speech 
No. 124.
  Today, let's talk Texas. Polling from the University of Texas at 
Austin shows that more than three out of four Americans--or 76 
percent--now believe that climate change is occurring. Fifty-nine 
percent of Republicans say it is happening. While most poll respondents 
say they would support a Presidential candidate who supports reducing 
coal as an energy source, the number goes up to 65 percent for voters 
under the age of 35. So we might expect Republican Presidential 
hopefuls to acknowledge the problem and incorporate climate action into 
their campaign platforms. We might, but we would be wrong.
  Republican candidates for President have a key constituency: fossil 
fuel billionaire donors. So the candidates ignore the clear tide of 
public opinion, mock the warnings of our scientific and national 
security experts, dismiss climate disruptions in their own home States, 
and dismiss the world-class climate research of their own home State 
universities and scientists--even in Texas.
  When asked if global warming is real, the junior Senator from Texas 
responds that the ``data and facts don't support it. . . . Science 
should follow the facts.'' OK. Let's follow the data and facts.
  NOAA and NASA just announced that 2015 was the warmest year ever 
recorded on Earth. That is a fact, and it not an anomaly. It is the 
continuation of a clear trend. Fifteen of the warmest 16 years ever 
recorded by humankind on this planet are the 15 years of this century.
  Texas A&M has a department of atmospheric sciences. The faculty there 
have unanimously adopted this statement:

       1. The Earth's climate is warming, meaning that the 
     temperatures of the lower atmosphere and ocean have been 
     increasing over many decades. Average global surface air 
     temperatures warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit between 
     1880 and 2012.
       2. It is extremely likely that humans are responsible for 
     more than half of the global warming between 1951 and 2012.
       3. Under so-called ``business-as-usual'' emissions 
     scenarios, additional global-average warming (relative to a 
     1986 to 2005 baseline) would likely be 2.5 to 7 degrees 
     Fahrenheit by the end of this century.

  That is Texas A&M's scientific assessment supported by the data and 
facts.
  Go Aggies.
  The Texas State climatologist, Dr. John Neilsen-Gammon, appointed to 
his position by Governor George W. Bush, has concluded that ``fossil 
fuel burning and other activities are the primary cause of the global-
scale increase in temperature over the past decades.''
  According to a Yale University poll released last fall, most Texans--
61 percent of Texas adults--support setting stricter limits on coal-
fired powerplants. Well, the President's Clean Power Plan would do just 
that. It is projected to both cut carbon emissions and save Americans 
money on their annual energy bills. Yet the junior Senator from Texas 
rails against the plan, urging people ``to stand up against this 
administration's dangerous agenda of economic decline''--economic 
decline if you are a big polluter, maybe, used to polluting for free. 
The Clean Power

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Plan will save the average American family nearly $85 on their annual 
energy bill by 2030, not to mention preventing death and disease 
through reduced soot, smog, and other harmful pollutants.
  A 2014 study found that strong limits on carbon pollution similar to 
those in the Clean Power Plan would prevent 2,300 deaths in Texas 
between 2020 and 2030. Texas emits the highest amount of carbon 
pollution in the country. Yet Texas is well positioned to meet its 
Clean Power Plan targets.
  An Environmental Defense Fund study based on data from Texas's 
primary electric grid operator shows that existing market trends alone 
will get Texas to 88 percent of its compliance with the plan as a 
result of increased wind power capacity, improved energy efficiency 
results, and switching from coal to natural gas. In fact, Texas's wind 
farms have become so good at generating power that some utilities are 
giving away energy.
  Here is an article from the New York Times on this unique situation 
in Texas with the headline ``A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime 
Special: Free Electricity.''
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed 
in the Record at the end of my remarks.
  Scott Burns, the senior director of innovation at Reliant Energy, a 
Texas utility with plans to incentivize night and weekend electricity 
use, says: ``You can be green and make green.''
  With Texas so strong in wind energy production and solar energy 
potential, Texas is actually in a position to use its clean energy 
resources to help other States comply with the Clean Power Plan, a win-
win with even more Texas clean energy jobs.
  So, in Texas, there is an overwhelming consensus of scientists at 
their own State universities, there is a desire for action among the 
majority of Texans, and there are vast economic opportunities from 
Texas renewable energy. But the junior Senator from Texas continues to 
rail against mainstream climate science. He claims that ``according to 
the satellite data, there has been no significant global warming for 
the past 18 years.'' Eighteen years. What an interesting number to 
pick--18 years. If we go back 18 years, we start in 1998.
  Why might the junior Senator from Texas start his assessment of 
satellite data in 1998? Well, look at this. When PolitiFact 
investigated the Senator's claim that global warming has paused, the 
Senator's office referred to the work of Dr. Carl Mears, a scientist 
who worked with satellite data temperature sets. This is a graph of 
that data. Look at 1998. The Earth was experiencing a large El Nino 
event in 1998, and the observed temperatures were substantially above 
normal. So if that is where we start the data set, of course it is 
going to look like a pause. As the Washington Post put it, ``There is a 
reason why Cruz uses this particular year, and that reason is what 
makes this claim misleading.'' PolitiFact ruled him ``mostly false,'' 
by the way.
  The whole data set shows a clear, unequivocal, long-term global 
warming trend. As Dr. Mears himself said, ``You can look at the data 
since 1980, and it's pretty clear that there's an ascending trend 
there. But if you look at any 15-year period, it's a lot less clear 
that the trend line that you drive might actually mean something.'' Dr. 
Mears also warns against drawing conclusions from just this one data 
set. ``Look at all the different datasets,'' he said. ``You don't want 
to trust only the satellite temperatures; you want to look at the 
surface temperatures and that sort of thing.''
  Scientists have known for some time that the oceans bear the brunt of 
global warming. The reason is simple: They can absorb more heat than 
the atmosphere, and they do. Peter Gleckler, an oceanographer at the 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said, ``Ninety, perhaps 95 
percent of the accumulated heat is in the oceans.''
  A study released this month shows the world's oceans absorbed--I 
don't think this number has ever been said before on the Senate floor--
approximately 150 zettajoules--that is a lot of zeroes; I don't even 
know how many zeroes that is--150 zettajoules of manmade heat energy 
between 1997 and 2015. What does that mean? Here is how the Washington 
Post described it. I will quote the Washington Post:

       [I]f you exploded one atomic bomb the size of the one 
     dropped on Hiroshima every second for a year, the total 
     energy released would be 2 zettajoules. . . . Since 1997, 
     Earth's oceans have absorbed man-made heat energy equivalent 
     to a Hiroshima-style bomb being exploded every second for 75 
     straight years.

  Yet the Senator from Texas would like us to base our calculation on a 
cherry-picked data set beginning in an outlier year.
  The oceans aren't just warming, unfortunately. The warming in the 
oceans is accelerating. Paul Durack, coauthor of the study, notes, 
``After 2000 in particular the rate of change is really starting to 
ramp up.''
  People who insist that the climate has not warmed in recent decades 
ignore a lot, but one thing they particularly ignore is the oceans, and 
we measure this stuff. The oceans don't lie.
  Here is another good one from the junior Senator. The Senator from 
Texas informs us that ``history with markedly more CO2 
predated the Industrial Revolution, so it didn't come from automobiles 
or the burning of carbon fuels.'' What he omits is that this history 
with markedly more CO2 occurred more than 800,000 years ago.
  This chart shows that here is where we are right now. Here is the 
record of carbon in the atmosphere going back 800,000 years. Where in 
that period was it more than now? Never. Eight hundred thousand years, 
hundreds of thousands of years before humans even began to walk the 
Earth.
  Greenhouse gases blanket our planet, absorbing the Sun's energy and 
preventing heat from escaping back into space. Ice sheets melt, seas 
warm and rise, and so since the late 1880s, sea level has risen 3 feet 
along the shores of Galveston, TX. None of that matters to the junior 
Senator from Texas.
  In December he even convened a hearing protesting scientific 
consensus on climate change as ``partisan dogma and ideology.'' Tell 
that to NASA and the U.S. Navy. At the time, more than 190 countries 
were negotiating the groundbreaking international climate agreement in 
Paris. Well, Texans were on hand in Paris too. Austin mayor Steve Adler 
signed the Compact of Mayors, a ``global coalition of mayors pledging 
to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions, enhance resilience to climate 
change, and report transparently.'' Katherine Romanak and Hilary Olson 
represented the University of Texas's Gulf Coast Carbon Center to share 
their expertise on carbon capture and storage. Professor Robert 
Bullard, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Houston's Texas 
Southern University, organized a delegation from the Historically Black 
Colleges and Universities Climate Change Consortium, and Dr. Katharine 
Heyhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech 
University, encouraged fellow evangelicals to join her in faith-
inspired support for climate action.
  On that subject, let me read into the Record the 2015 statement of 
the National Association of Evangelicals:

       [T]he Earth belongs to God, not us. . . . Probably the most 
     serious and urgent challenge faced by the physical world now 
     is the threat of climate change. . . . We encourage 
     Christians worldwide to . . . exert legitimate means to 
     persuade governments to put moral imperatives above political 
     expediency on issues of environmental destruction and 
     potential climate change.

  Well, as the President said last week, America ``led nearly 200 
nations to the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate 
change.''
  The junior Senator from Texas would be President, yet he completely 
refuses to engage on climate change. He ignores Texas State 
universities, Texas scientists, Texas local officials, and the whole 
clean energy economy in Texas. He courts evangelicals. He associates 
himself with the evangelical movement, but he ignores the statement of 
their own national association.
  Now, some say his candidacy is a danger to our distinct American 
heritage, the separation of church and state. But, really, it seems to 
me his problem is with the separation of oil and state.
  The fossil fuel industry is the last bastion of climate denial. It 
funds a vast apparatus of climate denial. It also funds a lot of 
politics. You do the math.
  It is time to wake up.
  I yield the floor.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S124]]

  


              [From the New York Times, November 8, 2015]

                          Energy & Environment

      A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime Special: Free Electricity

                (By Clifford Krauss and Diane Cardwell)

       Dallas.--In Texas, wind farms are generating so much energy 
     that some utilities are giving power away.
       Briana Lamb, an elementary school teacher, waits until her 
     watch strikes 9 p.m. to run her washing machine and 
     dishwasher. It costs her nothing until 6 a.m. Kayleen 
     Willard, a cosmetologist, unplugs appliances when she goes to 
     work in the morning. By 9 p.m., she has them plugged back in.
       And Sherri Burks, business manager of a local law firm, 
     keeps a yellow sticker on her townhouse's thermostat, a note 
     to guests that says: ``After 9 p.m. I don't care what you do. 
     You can party after 9.''
       The women are just three of the thousands of TXU Energy 
     customers who are at the vanguard of a bold attempt by the 
     utility to change how people consume energy. TXU's free 
     overnight plan, which is coupled with slightly higher daytime 
     rates, is one of dozens that have been offered by more than 
     50 retail electricity companies in Texas over the last three 
     years with a simple goal: for customers to turn down the 
     dials when wholesale prices are highest and turn them back up 
     when prices are lowest.
       It is possible because Texas has more wind power than any 
     other state, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the state's 
     generation. Alone among the 48 contiguous states, Texas runs 
     its own electricity grid that barely connects to the rest of 
     the country, so the abundance of nightly wind power generated 
     here must be consumed here.
       Wind blows most strongly at night and the power it produces 
     is inexpensive because of its abundance and federal tax 
     breaks. A shift of power use away from the peak daytime 
     periods means lower wholesale prices, and the possibility of 
     avoiding the costly option of building more power plants.
       ``That is a proverbial win-win for the utility and the 
     customer,'' said Omar Siddiqui, director of energy efficiency 
     at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit 
     industry group.
       For utilities, the giveaway is hardly altruistic. 
     Deregulation in Texas has spurred intense competition for 
     customers. By encouraging energy use at night, utilities 
     reduce some of the burdens, and costs, that the oversupply of 
     wind energy places on the power grid.
       Similar experiments are underway elsewhere.
       In Italy, customers of Enel, a leading utility, can receive 
     incentives for keeping their electricity use below a 
     predetermined level at times of highest demand.
       In Maryland, Baltimore Gas & Electric allows customers to 
     earn rebate credits on their bills for every kilowatt-hour 
     less that they use during certain high-demand times. The 
     program is run by Opower, which manages similar programs for 
     several utilities.
       And in Worcester, Mass., National Grid has installed a home 
     energy management system from Ceiva Energy in about 11,000 
     homes, connecting a range of devices like smart plugs, high-
     tech thermostats and digital picture frames that display the 
     home's energy use along with the photos.
       But no major market has gone as far as Texas, which is 
     conducting a huge energy experiment made possible by the 
     nearly universal distribution in recent years of residential 
     smart meters that can receive and transmit data on 
     electricity.
       ``Texas is head and shoulders above everybody else with 
     really unique packages for the consumer,'' said Soner 
     Kanlier, a retail energy markets expert at DNV GL, a 
     consulting firm based in Oslo, Norway.
       Texas is a unique power market, one that makes it better 
     suited for innovation than most others. It is by far the 
     largest deregulated electricity market in the country, 
     spawning scores of retail power competitors hungry to make 
     new customers and keep old ones.
       ``You can be green and make green,'' said Scott Burns, 
     senior director for innovation at Reliant Energy, which has 
     plans to offer incentives to increase night and weekend 
     electricity use.
       Energy experts say smart meters have not yet reached their 
     potential and have made little difference in total power use. 
     In many cases, utilities have monopolies and fixed rates, and 
     they do not want to see customers bled away by renewable 
     energy sources, so they have little incentive to use the new 
     data source in creative ways, experts say. Texas is trying to 
     be the exception, though experts say it will still take more 
     time to assess the impact.
       ``The American consumer wants choice,'' said Jim Burke, 
     TXU's chief executive. ``Consumer choice, with its impacts 
     and benefits, will drive the future of the power industry.'' 
     But he quickly added a note of caution: ``I think the pace at 
     which it evolves is the unknown.''
       Executives freely acknowledge that the range of residential 
     electricity plans they offer is overwhelmingly a marketing 
     tool.
       ``We're all trying to grow, and it's a very competitive 
     market,'' said Manu Asthana, president of the residential 
     division of Direct Energy, which offers various plans.
       Commercials on television and radio, billboards on 
     highways, and aggressive social media campaigns promise 
     joyful, or at least free, cooking, cooling and gadget-playing 
     at certain hours.
       ``Every morning, every evening, ain't we got fun?'' goes 
     one TXU jingle, mimicking the jaunty song that became popular 
     in the 1920s. When customers ask for information or complain 
     on the phone or by Twitter post or Facebook comment, company 
     agents go over their electricity needs and habits to find the 
     right plan for them. Otherwise, power executives say, the 
     customer can easily be lost.
       ``Time of use'' plans are growing in popularity in Texas, 
     according to figures compiled by the Electric Reliability 
     Council of Texas, or Ercot, the operator of the power grid 
     and the manager of the deregulated market for 75 percent of 
     the state.
       In June 2013, 135,320 households had enrolled in ``time of 
     use'' plans in the Ercot region. That number climbed to 
     290,328--out of more than six million residences in September 
     2014. And although nearly 63,000 residences dropped out of 
     the program over that time--in part because rates are 
     typically higher under the plans at peak hours--Ercot 
     officials believe that the number of households enrolled 
     continues to grow.
       Consumers estimated that the plans were saving them as much 
     as $40 or $50 a month during the peak summer season.
       ``We are still in the formative stages of this,'' said Paul 
     Wattles, an Ercot senior analyst for market design and 
     development. ``If we can reach critical mass--and 290,000 is 
     already a pretty good number--but if that number started to 
     double or triple, you could start seeing a significant 
     shifting of load, and that is the whole point.''
       Ms. Burks, the law firm business manager, is part of that 
     shift--and she is not motivated by environmental concerns.
       ``I never thought about it,'' she said. In fact, she leaves 
     lights on and even the television on when she leaves the 
     room.
       ``I'm really wasteful now,'' she said. ``The first thing I 
     tell my guests is my electricity is free after 9.''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from Maryland.


                           American SAFE Act

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I take this time as a Senator from 
Maryland, as well as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee, to talk about the bill we voted on earlier today--
on the motion to proceed to the so-called SAFE Act dealing with Syrian 
refugees. I like to call it the fear act because I think it really is 
an act that is misguided.
  I will start by saying that the world looks to the United States, and 
when there are tough problems, they look to our leadership. They know 
this country is prepared to step forward and provide the international 
leadership to deal with the toughest problems we face as a global 
community.
  The bill I call the fear act would jeopardize America's response to 
one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time, it would 
jeopardize the U.S. leadership on humanitarian issues, and I think it 
would compromise U.S. security. Let me tell my colleagues why. We face 
the greatest crisis on refugees and displaced individuals since World 
War II. The number is about 60 million globally who are currently 
refugees or displaced. The largest numbers right now are coming out of 
Syria. Make no mistake about it--millions are coming out of Syria. They 
are escaping the Assad regime's barrel bombs and gases and starvation 
policies. These are victims. These are people who are losing their 
lives because of the barbaric regime of President Assad. Our values are 
that we respond to those issues, that we act in a responsible way, that 
we help the international community to help those people who are trying 
to escape the persecutions of oppressive regimes.
  The fear act would shut down the U.S. process of accepting Syrian 
refugees. Why do I say it would shut it down? Because it would require 
the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secretary of 
Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence--all 
three--to certify, on an individual basis, the ability of these 
individuals to meet our standards to come into the United States. That 
would require 100 certifications per day, 300 certifications total.
  What else would they be doing? I hope the Director of the FBI is 
working to keep our country safe and more than just dealing with the 
Syrian refugees. This would cut down and eliminate our ability to 
accept Syrian refugees.
  Let me cite some of the numbers. The United States has accepted 2,000 
Syrian refugees. There are millions of Syrian refugees. The total 
number the President has talked about is 10,000--a small fraction of 
the total numbers who are being relocated under the Syrian refugee 
program. We look at the neighboring countries alone, what is being done 
in Jordan, what is being done in Lebanon, and look at what Europe is 
accepting. We are taking a very

[[Page S125]]

small burden here, and it is individuals who do not pose a threat. I 
will explain that. Every one of us will do everything we can to make 
sure that our homeland is safe. I am prepared to do everything 
reasonable to make sure we keep Americans as safe as we possibly can 
from the threat of extremists.

  So what do these Syrian refugees go through? By the way, there has 
not been a reported case of a Syrian refugee in regards to terrorism. 
What do they go through?
  First, they are screened by the High Commissioner for Refugees of the 
United Nations. They screen the individuals who are considered eligible 
to come to the United States. They go through that screening process. 
Then they are fingerprinted and go through a biometric check. They go 
through several layers of biographical and background screenings. They 
are individually interviewed by U.S. officials. It takes about 18 to 24 
months. If you are a terrorist, you are not going to go through this.
  It is up to the potential individual who will come to the United 
States as a refugee to establish that they are a refugee. That means 
they must establish that they have been a victim of the terrorist 
activities in order to be able to get to the United States. It is up to 
them to establish that burden. We don't accept individuals who cannot 
establish that burden. This is not the target group that we should be 
concerned about.
  The real threat to our homeland security--let's take a look at others 
who come to this country. We already did this in the omnibus bill, but 
we know under the Visa Waiver Program there are individuals who hold 
passports of countries with which we have the Visa Waiver Program. That 
means they are countries that have relations with the United States, 
and we generally accept their visitors without a visa. Many of these 
countries have foreign fighters who have gone to the affected areas 
that could very well be involved in terrorist activities and then come 
back to the European country and come to the United States under the 
Visa Waiver Program. Well, we took some action against that in last 
year's bill. That was good. We need to continue to scrutinize that.
  What we saw happen in California was that we had a spouse who didn't 
come under a Syrian waiver program or a Syrian refugee program, but who 
came under other visa programs. That needs to be scrutinized. For 
people who come to America, we need to know that they are not connected 
to a terrorist organization.
  But the greatest concern is the radicalization of Americans. We need 
to know why people do what they do. We need to have a better system to 
protect the homeland. Let's focus on the real problem areas in our 
country.
  If this bill were to be passed, it would actually make us less safe. 
It would affect our national security. Let me tell you the reason why. 
First, it would clearly diminish U.S. leadership. When we go and seek 
international support, particularly for our coalition against ISIL, our 
failure to be willing to take any of the Syrian refugees will certainly 
compromise America's credibility and ability to lead internationally.
  It will be used by ISIL as propaganda. Make no mistake about that. 
They understand that. This is what they are saying about America.
  It is against our values. It makes us weaker as a nation.
  It is for those reasons that we found that national security 
professionals from both parties, including Henry Kissinger, David 
Petraeus, Brent Scowcroft, and Michael Chertoff, all have come out in 
opposition on the grounds that it would undermine our security and 
benefit ISIL. These are professionals. They understand the risk 
factors.
  What we should be doing is everything we can to protect us from the 
threat of ISIL. That means let's figure out ways we can share 
intelligence information among all of our willing partners. Let's 
provide the leadership, particularly in those countries in which ISIL 
can operate, so that the governments represent all the communities, so 
that there is not a void where the Sunni minority population feels that 
their only safety is with ISIL.
  Let's make sure we cut off all the financial support for ISIL, 
including their oil abilities and the transport of oil. This is what 
the Obama administration is doing. Let's make sure we do cut off any 
opportunities to expand their capacity.
  Let's deal with foreign fighters--people who come from Western 
countries who go to these areas and train. Let's make sure that we know 
where they are, and when they try to come back into one of the Western 
countries, that they are apprehended and tried because of their 
affiliation with terrorists.
  Let's help countries such as Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon that are 
taking on the extreme burdens of the refugees so they can deal with 
their own crises that have been exaggerated because of the Syrian 
conflict and ISIL formation.
  In other words, let us work in a coordinated way to root out the main 
cause of the terrorist activities; that is, ISIL's ability to attract 
supporters and to gain territory. Let's take away that territory, 
coordinate our airstrikes, and work with the local forces on the 
ground. All of that should be done, and we need to work together on 
that.
  To concentrate on the few thousand Syrian refugees who have gone 
through this country's strictest vetting process makes little sense and 
will not keep us safer, but, as I indicated before, will actually 
compromise our national security.
  In closing, let me state what makes this Nation the great Nation that 
it is. I think each of us knows that we are living in a special 
country--a country that has stood up for freedom, a country that has 
been looked upon as a beacon of hope around the world. Many of our 
parents and grandparents came from other countries in order to settle 
in this country because of its opportunity.
  I am a student of history, not just because it is an effective, 
factual counterpart to the bluster of politicians and social media 
accounts. History can be a touchstone to remind us of who we are and a 
lens through which we can see who we are. Throughout our history, we 
have recognized that even in times of war we were fighting leaders of 
authoritarian regimes and not their victims. From 1945 to 1952, we 
resettled 400,000 displaced persons from Nazi-controlled areas in 
Europe. In the fall of Saigon in 1997, the United States rescued 
883,000-plus refugees who fled Vietnam, a country with which we had 
been in a state of undeclared war that claimed 58,000 American lives. 
Between 1970 and 1991, we resettled 200,000 Jews from the Soviet Union, 
the very government which posed the greatest security threat the United 
States has ever known. In addition, we have resettled hundreds of 
thousands of refugees from Cuba and other countries behind the Iron 
Curtain.
  This Republican bill we considered today dishonors our proud history 
of providing a safe haven. History can also be harsh and unsentimental. 
This bill risks repeating mistakes of the past when the United States 
tragically turned away Jewish refugees in World War II.
  After the photo of Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old who was washed up on 
the beach, was published in the news media, the American people opened 
their hearts to the Syrian people. The American people recognize the 
distinction between those who are victims of terror and those who 
perpetrate it. We should not let knee-jerk reactions keep us from being 
the beacon of hope for Syrians and other refugees in the Middle East, 
Africa, and around the world. We should do what we do best--our values.
  We should never compromise homeland security. We need to do 
everything we can to keep Americans safe. We need to make sure we have 
the strictest vetting procedures for anyone who wants to come to this 
country as a refugee or a visitor. We could always do a better job, and 
we have to do more to understand why Americans have been converted to 
radicalization through the Internet and what has happened on social 
media.
  Yes, we need to do a much more effective job of keeping America safe 
and the homeland safe, but shutting down the Syrian refugee program 
would be a major mistake for our values of who we are as a nation and 
for our national security.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.

[[Page S126]]

  

  Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to 
speak as in morning business for up to 7 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                        Remembering Paul Kinsman

  Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the life and 
legacy of Paul Kinsman. Paul was born in Watertown, SD, on September 7, 
1958, and died in Pierre, SD, on January 10, 2016, at the young age of 
57. Paul was a lifelong South Dakotan and a dedicated public servant to 
the citizens of our State.
  After earning his law degree, Paul began 28 years of public service 
to the people of South Dakota. We are a better State and a better 
people because of his hard work and his dedication.
  As an administrative law judge, the deputy commissioner of 
administration, the director of property taxes and special taxes, the 
commissioner of administration, and the secretary of revenue, he 
inspired his coworkers with his intelligence, his humor, and his 
tenacity for getting things done.
  During my 8 years working as Governor of South Dakota, Paul served as 
commissioner of the Bureau of Administration and secretary of revenue. 
He was a burly, teddy bear of a man. No matter how hard the problem or 
how challenging the issue, whenever we met he had a gleam in his eyes 
and a smile on his face that told me without words that we were going 
to solve that problem or meet that challenge. And we did because of 
him.
  As an administrative law judge and tax collector, he earned the 
respect and admiration of the public, even when his rulings and 
applications of law were not in their favor. He was straightforward and 
fair, which South Dakotans appreciate.
  As the head of the Bureau of Administration, he led and championed 
many projects that increased the efficiency of State government to 
serve the people and preserve the heritage of South Dakota in the 
people's house, our State capitol.
  But more important than all of his career accomplishments is the kind 
of person Paul Kinsman was. He was a loving husband, father, 
grandfather, and friend to all who knew him. He had a tremendously 
positive impact on the many thousands of people he met and touched with 
his kindness and generosity. With this, I welcome the opportunity to 
recognize and commemorate the life and legacy of this public servant 
and my friend, Paul Kinsman.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                        Enemies List Regulation

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, news outlets reported something today 
that should worry all of us. Apparently, President Obama is again--one 
more time--considering imposing his enemies list regulation by 
Executive order, just weeks after Congress voted overwhelmingly to 
pass, and the President signed into law, legislation prohibiting him 
from doing that very thing.
  The enemies list regulation would inject partisan politics into the 
government contracting process by allowing an organization's political 
leaning and donations to be considered. Here is the practical effect: 
Administrations of either party could draw friends lists and enemies 
lists and then award contracts based upon whether an organization 
backed the right horse in the last election.
  That is the kind of thing you would expect in some banana republic 
but not in the United States of America. So why would the President 
even attempt to impose such a bad idea?
  Let me remind my colleagues of something the President's own Chief of 
Staff recently said. He implied that the central question President 
Obama will now ask himself before imposing a policy is--listen to 
this--``Why not?''
  ``Why not?'' Think about that--not whether it is good for the 
country, not whether it is constitutional, just ``why not.''
  If future Republican Presidents lived by this ``why not'' standard, 
Democrats would be truly outraged. If future Republican Presidents 
ignored prohibitions passed by Democratic-controlled Congresses, 
Democrats would be outraged. When the legislature passes a prohibition 
and the President signs that prohibition into law, it is the law.
  I hope every one of my colleagues, even those who support the idea of 
an enemies list, will join me in that sentiment at least. If it is the 
law, it is the law. We are always mindful that the precedents set today 
could be wielded by a different President tomorrow.
  The intent of the prohibition Congress passed here is absolutely 
clear, regardless of creative arguments the administration might 
construct to justify skirting the law.
  If President Obama's standard these days is ``why not,'' then here 
are a few reasons why not. Here is the first: He can't do it. That 
should really be the end of the discussion.
  For the sake of argument, here is another reason: It is a terrible 
policy. Just listen to what members of the President's own party have 
said about it. One of our Democratic colleagues in the Senate said:

       Under the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the award of 
     contract must be based on the evaluation of quality, price, 
     past performance, compliance with solicitation requirements, 
     technical excellence and other considerations related to the 
     merits of an offer. The requirement that businesses disclose 
     political expenditures as part of the offer process creates 
     the appearance that this type of information could become a 
     factor in the award of Federal contracts.

  She explained:

       Requiring businesses to disclose their political activity 
     when making an offer risks injecting politics into the 
     contracting process.

  The second-ranking Democratic in the House--not some back-bencher--
said:

       The issue of contracting ought to be on the merits of the 
     contractor's application and bid and capabilities. . . . 
     There are some serious questions as to what implications 
     there are if somehow we consider political contributions in 
     the context of awarding contracts.

  He said he was ``not in agreement with the administration'' on this 
issue.
  So, look, no one should have to worry about whether supporting a 
certain political party or a candidate will determine their ability to 
get a Federal contract or keep their job. I hope what we read in the 
papers is not accurate.
  The President's enemies list proposal fails even the ``why not'' test 
on multiple levels:
  No. 1, he can't.
  No. 2, it is bad policy, as Democrats have reminded us.
  If you need another reason, here is a third: No. 3, Congress has 
rejected these types of policies already.
  There are plenty of reasons why the President should not attempt to 
impose this regulation, and the President should heed them.

                          ____________________