Congressional Record, Volume 162 Issue 139 (Wednesday, September 14, 2016)

[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 139 (Wednesday, September 14, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5694-S5718]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 2016

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 2848, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 2848) to provide for the conservation and
development of water and related resources, to authorize the
Secretary of the Army to construct various projects for
improvements to rivers and harbors of the United States, and
for other purposes.

Pending:

McConnell (for Inhofe) amendment No. 4979, in the nature of
a substitute.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

Foreign State-Owned Companies

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I have been to the floor several times
to call attention to foreign state-owned companies' growing investments
in American companies and commercial markets. I come to the Senate
floor to discuss this further with my colleagues.
It is becoming increasingly clear that foreign state-owned companies
are highly involved in international commerce and competing with
companies that are privately owned by shareholders with nothing to do
with any government. This trend is part and parcel of globalization.
While there are some obvious benefits to globalization, we also need to
be aware of the challenges it may bring with it, and I think this is
one of them.
To give an example, I have seen this trend at work in the
agricultural sector of our economy. ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned
company, is currently working on a deal to buy the Swiss-based seed
company Syngenta. About one-third of Syngenta's revenue comes from
North America--meaning the company is heavily involved with American
farmers, including Iowans--and that is why I am interested in this
transaction.
I have already been considering the approval aspect of this proposed
merger. Senator Stabenow and I asked the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States to review thoroughly the proposed
Syngenta acquisition with the Department of Agriculture's help. We have
raised the issue because, as I have said before, protecting the safety
and integrity of our food system is a national security imperative as
well as an economic issue.
There is another aspect of this issue I would like to focus on. I
would like to consider the flip side of the approval question. As their
involvement in international commerce grows, how can we ensure that
foreign state-owned companies are held to the same standards and the
same requirements as their non-state-owned counterparts or companies
that are in the private sector?
First, consider two age-old principles of international law. One is
that American courts don't exercise jurisdiction over foreign
governments as a matter of comity and respect for equally independent
countries. Each is sovereign. This is called the foreign sovereign
immunity. The second is that when foreign governments do in fact enter
into commerce and then behave like market participants--conducting a
state-owned business, for example--they are not entitled to foreign
sovereign immunity because they are no longer acting as a sovereign but
rather acting like any business. In that case, they should be treated
just like any other market participant. This is called the commercial
activity exception to the principle of foreign sovereign immunity.
Congress codified both of these age-old principles in the Foreign
Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976. All of these principles are well and
good, but I am concerned that in some cases they may not have their
intended effects in today's global marketplace.
Some foreign state-owned companies have recently used the defense of
foreign sovereign immunity--the principle that a foreign government
can't be sued in American courts--as a litigation tactic to avoid
claims by American consumers and companies that non-state-owned foreign
companies would have to answer. In some cases, foreign state-owned
corporate parent companies have succeeded in escaping Americans'
claims. They have done this by arguing that the entity conducted
commercial activities only through a particular subsidiary, not a
parent company often closer to the foreign sovereign. Unless a
plaintiff, which may be an American company or consumer, is able to
show complete control of the subsidiary by the parent company, the
parent company is able to get out of court before the plaintiffs even
have a chance to make their case.
This results in two problems. First, there is an unequal playing
field, where state-owned companies benefit from a defense not available
to a non-state-owned company. Second, there is an uphill battle for
American companies and consumers seeking to sue state-

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owned entities as opposed to non-state-owned entities. When a foreign
state-owned entity raises the defense of foreign sovereign immunity,
American companies as well as American consumers don't even get a
chance to prove their cases.
Consider the example I talked about a few months ago. American
plaintiffs brought claims against Chinese manufacturers for much of the
drywall used to rebuild the gulf coast after Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita. The drywall in question was manufactured by two Chinese
companies, one owned by a German parent and one owned by a Chinese
state-owned parent company.
The court considering these plaintiffs' claims had this to say: ``In
stark contrast to the straightforwardness with which the litigation
proceeded against the [German] defendants, the litigation against the
Chinese entities has taken a different course.'' The German non-state-
owned parent company appeared in court and participated in a bellwether
trial, where plaintiffs were allowed to try to make their cases.
The manufacturer of the Chinese state-owned parent ``failed timely to
answer or otherwise enter an appearance'' in court and didn't do so for
a long period of time of at least 2 years. In fact, it waited until the
court had already entered a judgment against it. Only then did the
Chinese state-owned company finally appear in court. When that company
did appear, it argued it was immune from suit in the United States
because it was a state-owned company. After approximately 6 years of
litigation, it ultimately succeeded in its request for dismissal. In
contrast to the German parent company, the plaintiffs didn't have a
chance to try to prove their case against the Chinese parent company
merely because it happened to be owned by a foreign government. That is
a great big problem.
To address these issues, I am proposing a very modest fix to the
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. This change would extend the
jurisdiction of the U.S. courts to state-owned corporate affiliates of
foreign state-owned companies insofar as their commercial activities
are concerned and only as far as their commercial activities are
concerned. It wouldn't create any additional substantive causes of
action against these foreign state-owned companies. Instead it would
mean only that a foreign state-owned company would have to respond to
the claims brought by both American companies and American consumers,
just like any other foreign company that isn't owned by a government.
This fix has two main results correcting the problems I just
mentioned. First, it levels the playing field between foreign state-
owned and foreign private companies by making both subject to suit in
the United States on the same footing, as the commercial activity
exception originally contemplated. Second, it brings clarity to the
sometimes opaque structures of foreign state-owned enterprises and
provides American companies and American consumers the chance to prove
their case against these companies just as they would have that
opportunity against any private company.
In an age when sovereign-owned entities, with increasingly complex
corporate structures, are interacting with American companies and
interacting with American consumers more than ever, it is appropriate
to reexamine the commercial activity exception and to update that
commercial activity exception. We have to make sure it is working as it
was designed and as it was historically understood.
I yield the floor.
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. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Nomination of Merrick Garland

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, not once in the history of America has the
Senate refused to give a hearing and a vote to a Presidential nominee
to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court--not once--until this moment, a
moment in history on the death of Antonin Scalia and President Obama's
meeting his constitutional responsibility to send up a nomination to
fill that vacancy.
A decision was made by the Republican majority, led by Senator
McConnell, that he would not hold any hearing or vote. It has never
happened before. Some will say: Oh, Senator Durbin, if the shoe were on
the other foot--it was, not that long ago. It was the last year of
Ronald Reagan's Presidency. He was, in nominal terms, a lameduck. There
was a vacancy on the Supreme Court. There was a Democratic majority in
the Senate. Ronald Reagan sent the name of Anthony Kennedy, his nominee
to the Supreme Court, to the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The Senate not only held a hearing and a vote, but they voted in
favor of President Reagan's nominee and sent him to the Supreme Court.
But this time, with this vacancy on the Supreme Court, the Republican
majority has refused to give this man a hearing for 182 days.
He just visited my office again. He was there 5 months ago. Life is
more complicated now because he is the President's nominee. He is still
the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court. That is one of the most
important in the United States. He is recusing himself from cases on
the chance that he may get a hearing and may get a vote. He is working
on the administrative part of the court, but he is not dealing with
decisionmaking and writing opinions. So he is trying to show an
abundance of caution and not raise any ethical questions if he is
eventually on the Supreme Court.
He is a good man. He is highly competent. The American Bar
Association has ruled him ``unanimously well qualified.'' This Senate
and many of the Republican Senators have voted for him when he went to
the DC Circuit Court. Some have said publicly that he is a qualified
person, but they have not said it recently.
One Republican Senator slipped back home at a town meeting and said:
Well, I think that Merrick Garland, the President's nominee, at least
deserves a hearing. That is what he said: At least he deserves a
hearing. The Koch brothers came down on that Republican Senator like a
ton of bricks and told him: Be prepared; we are going to run someone
against you in the Republican primary. Within 24 hours, that Republican
Senator reversed his position and said: No, no hearing for Merrick
Garland.
So I think we understand the inspiration for this position. It is
certainly not the Constitution we have all sworn to defend. The
Constitution is very clear. With a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the
President is obligated to send a nomination to fill the vacancy. Why
would the Constitution require that? Because you can have some
political gamesmanship. A President might decide: Well, I will just
keep it vacant. Maybe it is to my political advantage.
The Constitution says: No, Mr. President, send a name. The
Constitution goes on to say that the Senate has a responsibility to
advise and consent to that nomination. That is where the process has
stopped and fallen apart.
So why would the Republican majority in the Senate go out on a limb
and take a position that has never been taken before in the history of
the United States to deny Merrick Garland a hearing and a vote? Well,
because there are certain people in high places who want to see a
President named Donald Trump fill this vacancy. They believe he would
pick a person closer to their political liking, someone who would serve
their economic interests. It is a shame. It is unfortunate. Some would
argue it is unconstitutional.
That is where we are, and that is what elections are about. I won't
even speculate on the type of person Donald Trump would choose to fill
that vacancy. I will leave that for someone else another day. It is
really sad to think that a judge of Merrick Garland's quality, of his
integrity is being treated so badly.
There was speculation that maybe--just maybe--if Donald Trump lost
and Hillary Clinton won, the Republicans would relent and in the
closing weeks of this year give him his hearing and his vote. Senator
McConnell, just a few days ago said: No, not at all, not on my watch--
there won't even be a consideration of this nominee.
It is a sad chapter in the history of the Senate, written for
political reasons, at the expense of a man who should have his day at a
hearing in sworn testimony to tell us how he

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would like to continue to serve this Nation.

For-Profit Colleges and Universities

Mr. President, there is an industry in the United States of America
that is the most heavily federally subsidized private industry in our
country. If I asked Members of Congress what that would be, many would
say: Oh, it must be a defense contractor; right? Maybe it is some major
farm operation. No, it is the for-profit college and university
industry--for-profit colleges and universities.
Think of the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, DeVry,
Rasmussen, and those types of schools.
They are in business for profit. They are the most heavily subsidized
businesses in America. The students who attend these for-profit
colleges and universities receive Federal money in Pell grants, which
they give to these for-profit colleges, and then they borrow money from
the Federal Government to pay the tuition at these for-profit colleges.
These for-profit colleges--many of them--receive more than 90 percent
of their revenue directly from the Federal Treasury.
Well, you would think if an industry or a company were that heavily
subsidized, they must be doing one great job--wrong. Here are some
numbers. These are going to be on the final. So you may want to make a
note. Ten percent of students enrolled in postsecondary education go to
for-profit colleges and universities--10 percent.
Twenty percent of all the Federal aid to education goes to these
schools. That is 10 percent of the kids and 20 percent of the aid
money. Why? It is because they charge so much. Their tuition is so
high. There are two other numbers that really tell the story--40. Forty
percent of all college student loan defaults are students from for-
profit colleges and universities. Why? Because they are so burdened
with debt that they drop out or they end up graduating with worthless
diplomas. The last number I will give you is 72. So 72 percent of the
graduates of for-profit colleges and universities--72 percent, on
average--earn less than high school dropouts in America. It is the most
heavily subsidized private businesses in America and with awful,
terrible results: 10 percent of the students, 40 percent of the loan
defaults, 72 percent of the graduates not earning as how much as high
school dropouts in America.

Last week, another one of those for-profit colleges bit the dust--ITT
Tech, with 35 to 40,000 students nationwide, and 750 in Illinois. I
would go home to Springfield, IL, and go by the local mall, and I would
look up on the side of the mall and see a sign which read ``ITT Tech.''
I said to myself: I know how this story ends. Some students are going
to walk into that mall, and they are going to sign up for a course, and
they are going to be disappointed. They are going to end up with a
heavy student debt and a virtually worthless diploma. Someday--just
someday--that school may go bankrupt or go away.
That day has arrived. What happened to those students? Let me give
you one illustration. If you walked into Springfield, IL, to the White
Oaks Mall, to the campus of ITT Tech, this for-profit college and
university, and signed up for a course in communications or an
associate's degree in communication or in computer management, the
tuition they charged students in Springfield, IL, for a 2-year degree
was $47,000--$47,000.
Get in your car at White Oaks Mall in Springfield and drive for 15
minutes to Lincoln Land Community College, where you could get the same
degree not for $47,000 but for $7,000--$7,000. The hours that you
accumulated would be transferrable to a 4-year school or wherever you
wished to go. The hours at ITT Tech were a laughing matter when
students tried to transfer.
So the school went down. The Federal Government took a close look at
the practices. They found more than a dozen State attorneys general
investigating ITT Tech. Why? What did they do wrong? Well, it was
obvious what they were doing wrong. They were deceiving these students
into coming into these schools and paying the tuition.
Many of them were steering them into loans--college loans--which were
not the best for the students. They were paying higher interest rates
than they should have paid. So when they started detecting these things
in each of the States, the attorneys general decided to start
investigating. More than a dozen of them were investigating this one
school.
Then the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, here in Washington,
DC, did the same and found predatory lending. Higher interest rates
were being charged by these schools than should have been for these
students and the company was lying to students about their ability to
repay them. Then the Securities and Exchange Commission got involved as
well and found that this same school was really violating some of the
basic rules in terms of disclosures under Federal law.
Well, as these and other problems continued to mount, the Department
of Education said to ITT Tech: Stop. We are not going to let you go
forward and bring in more students and receive more money from the
Federal Government unless you put up a bond--a letter of credit--to
guarantee to us that the taxpayers won't be left holding the bag if you
go out of business.
ITT Tech said: Before we will do that, we will go out of business.
They did. So these students are out there trying to figure out what is
next in their lives. It is a heartbreaking situation. For many of them,
they at least wasted 1 year or 2 years or more. A lot of them have
piled up a lot of debt at a school that has now gone out of business.
I have written every community college in my State and said: Would
you reach out to the 750 ITT Tech students in Illinois, sit down with
them, see if they have taken any courses or training of value that can
transfer, and put them on the right track in terms of perhaps getting
that associate's degree at an affordable cost?
There is another thing that is offered through the Department of
Education. Once one of these for-profit schools closes, the students
have an option. It's called a Closed School Discharge. They can
essentially keep the hours they have earned--the credits they have
earned and the debt that was associated with it--or walk away from
both.
So students will have to decide. I can't decide for them. Once they
have had some counseling at the community colleges, they can make that
decision. But here is what ultimately happens. When the students walk
away from the debt and the hours they earned at these schools, the
losers--the ultimate losers--are the taxpayers of America.
You see, when we pay taxes, it goes into the Federal Treasury. The
money out of that Treasury is being loaned to these students to give to
these schools. When the students default or if they are forgiven their
loans, the Treasury is not paid back. Our tax dollars do not return to
the Treasury to be loaned again.
So the taxpayers are the ultimate losers. It raises a very basic
question. When is our Federal Government going to wake up to the fact
that this for-profit college and university industry is causing great
harm to a lot of innocent students across the United States and their
families and ultimately to the taxpayers of this country?
Steve Gunderson was a Congressman from Wisconsin. I served with him
in the House. He is now the spokesman for this industry. He was quoted
in the papers yesterday saying that ITT Tech was being treated
unfairly, that they were not given due process, and that this industry
was being held to unreasonable standards. I could not disagree more.
What the Obama administration is calling for now is to measure the
performance of these for-profit schools and to decide whether they
should stay in the business. It is called gainful employment. Here is
what it boils down to. If you graduate from a school, if you receive a
certificate or diploma that they promised, how much debt did you
accumulate? How much is your job paying as you come out of school? Can
you reconcile the two? Did you end up with a job that ended up paying
enough so you could pay back your loan?
Too few of these students can. Mr. Gunderson now argues that we
should not hold the schools to those standards, that we should not be
concerned about the amount of debt, and that we shouldn't really ask
about what kind of jobs these students end up with. I think we should.
I think we owe it to the students and to their families to do just
that.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an editorial

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from the New York Times that is entitled: ``Late to the Fight Against
Predator Schools.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[Sept. 8, 2016]

Late to the Fight Against Predator Schools

The federal government's failure over decades to regulate
for-profit colleges freed the schools to prey on veterans,
minorities and the poor by saddling students with crushing
debt and giving them worthless degrees in return. This is all
the more outrageous because the schools rely on the federal
student aid system for virtually all of their revenue.
The Obama administration has taken steps to get these
schools off the federal dole. But regulators need to
intervene decisively--and as soon as possible--when evidence
of fraudulent conduct emerges. They must also reach out to
students who are entitled to have their loans forgiven when a
school defrauds them or shuts down while they are enrolled.
Just this week, ITT Technical Institute--one of the
nation's largest for-profit operations--announced it was
closing, leaving about 35,000 students in the lurch.
ITT blamed the Education Department, which recently barred
it from enrolling students using federal funds, citing its
accreditation problems and financial instability. The
department also demanded that ITT come up with more than $150
million to cover refunds in case it closed. According to the
department, ITT could not do so.
The school has only itself and its business model to blame.
In 2011, Senate hearings showed that ITT recruiters were
deliberately targeting desperate unemployed people for some
of the most expensive programs in the for-profit sector and
that many students were taking on high-cost private debt
after exhausting federal aid. It also emerged that the
company was spending more on marketing than on instruction--a
giveaway of what the game was about.
ITT's reputation got worse every time it came under
investigation or was hauled into court. In 2014, the federal
Consumer Financial Protection Board sued it for pushing
students into high-cost private loans that were likely to end
up in default. A year later, the Securities and Exchange
Commission accused it of fraud and charged it with concealing
financial information from investors.
Complaints have also arisen at the state level. This year,
Massachusetts charged ITT with falsifying job-placement rates
for one of its programs. The death knell finally sounded for
ITT this spring when the organization that accredits
independent colleges and schools told it that it did not
comply with accreditation criteria that were not rigorous to
begin with.
The Education Department is at fault for waiting so long to
end ITT's use of federal aid. Now it needs to adopt and
vigorously enforce recently proposed rules that shield the
taxpayers from loss when a school is forced to close.
The most important rule would require schools that show
signs of financial instability--like being sued by federal
entities or state attorneys general or failing to meet
requirements for receiving federal aid--to put aside money
for debt relief for students hurt by the school's conduct.
The companies and their supporters in Congress want the rule
rolled back. But the only way to hold schools accountable is
to make the cost of abuse high.

Mr. DURBIN. This editorial says that this should be an eye opener.
This should be an awakening for Congress and for our government. We saw
Corinthian go down, another for-profit school. Do you know how much
that cost the taxpayers? Over $1 billion. Now, don't believe for a
minute that the CEO of Corinthian or even the CEO of ITT Tech is
sending any money back to the Treasury. No way. They are off with their
millions of dollars--which, as presidents, they took out of these bogus
universities--living a pretty sweet life. They got the money, the
school went down the drain, and the students are left holding the bag
with the taxpayers. We could lose over $1 billion on Corinthian. Sadly,
ITT Tech could turn into another billion-dollar baby. Which one of
these for-profit schools is going to fail next?
One they are looking at closely is called Bridgepoint. Bridgepoint is
based out of California, but they did something very interesting.
Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa had a hearing and told the story of
Bridgepoint. Bridgepoint, a for-profit school, bought a Franciscan
college in Iowa--a small Catholic girls' college that was going out of
business--and they created something called Ashford University. They
said: Our campus is in Iowa. This is where we are going to do business.
It turned out it was a fraud on the public. It was the showcase for
another for-profit school.
Listen to this. Tom Harkin's investigation found Ashford University
had 1 faculty member for every 500 students. They put almost 25 percent
of all their revenues into marketing, signing up students, picking up
their Pell grants, picking up their college loans, turning it into
profits, and paying millions of dollars to their CEO and the officers
of their company.
Now they have closed down that campus in Iowa, and they are looking
for a home. They need one because now one of the most lucrative
businesses of for-profit colleges is the military and veterans. The
military provides assistance for Active military members and their
families to go to school. These for-profit schools are swarming all
over our military bases trying to get these families to sign up and
also those who come out of the military with GI bill rights. They have
a lot of money to spend--as we want them to spend to improve their
lives--and it is these for-profit schools that are crawling all over
trying them, trying to get them to be part of it.
Well, they need a base of operations, Bridgepoint does, to continue
to receive GI Bill benefits and no State wants them. Iowa has said: No
thanks. California, where they are based, has indicated they don't want
them either.
So will Bridgepoint be the next? I don't know, but I know there will
be another one. There will be more disappointed students. There will be
more disappointed taxpayers.
The question that ought to be asked by those who are following this
is, What are you doing in the Senate or the House to deal with this?
How are you changing the rules and the law to protect students, their
families, and taxpayers? The answer is, we are doing nothing--nothing.
That is inexcusable, unacceptable.
I don't know if we will have time this year to take up an issue of
this magnitude, but we must. I wish we would, but if we can't, then
next year we must.
How many more students are going to face what the students at ITT
Tech are facing at this moment? Do we care that the most heavily
subsidized private businesses in America are doing such a miserable job
for students across the United States? We should.
I sincerely hope my colleagues will join me in this effort. This
should be bipartisan. We have a lot of Senators who spend a lot of time
zeroing in on whether people are getting an extra 50 bucks a month for
food stamps they shouldn't receive. I am against food stamp fraud, but
are they not ready to zero in as well on this horrific waste of
billions of dollars each year to an industry that is not serving
America well?
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Wasteful Spending

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I am returning to the floor--and I can
hardly believe this number--for my 50th edition of ``Waste of the
Week.'' I started this thinking that because we have not been able to
secure any kind of long-term reform to our broken financial system, the
least we can do is identify those documented wastes, frauds, and abuses
that inspectors general, the Congressional Budget Office, and the
Government Accountability Office have studied, examined, determined,
and reported to us. The least we can do to control out-of-control
spending by this Federal Government is to stop this waste, fraud, and
abuse to the best extent we can--the least we can do.
When I started this, I thought that, well, I am going to come to the
Senate floor once a week and we will see what we can determine. I
wasn't sure we would have enough information available to us so that I
could come down each week during this cycle. We have been overwhelmed.
I could come to the floor every day. We have been overwhelmed by what
we have learned and found. It is shocking. It ought to be shocking to
the taxpayer when they learn about how we waste their tax dollars.
These are people struggling to get the mortgage paid at the end of the
month, struggling to get the kids' education paid for, struggling to
just keep

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their heads above water. They are dutifully paying taxes, which are
withheld from their paychecks, sending it to Washington, DC. Then they
learn it is wasted, that the abuse that goes on has not been corrected,
that the efforts to run an efficient, effective government have simply
not been implemented, that we have a government out of control in
Washington, and that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is
doing.
So these wastes of the week have been pouring in, and this is No. 50.
We thought the goal we wanted to reach would realistically be about
$100 billion. We are way above that, and I will be talking about that
in just a moment.
Yet here we are again, and this is a big one, Medicaid: the waste of
dollars that have been improperly sent to the wrong people in payments
for Medicaid--to the wrong people, to people abusing the system or just
simply errors. They were not corrected in the systems that account for
whom we are paying, what we are paying them, and when they are getting
the money.
I first wish to say I acknowledge that Medicaid is a vital safety net
program, depended on by many low-income families and children who have
no other health care options. Medicaid recipients rely on HHS to
effectively supervise the Medicaid Program and so do the American
taxpayers who are footing the bill with their hard-earned taxpayer
dollars. This is in no way a criticism to take down a program that is
necessary to provide needed medical help to low-income people who
simply cannot find it any other way.
If we want to maintain the program's integrity, we have to root out
the bad actors. We have to root out the abuse and waste of taxpayer
dollars or at some point there simply will be a rebellion back that
will undermine the necessity of this program.
Most importantly, the Health & Human Services' Cabinet must address
the high rate of improper payments that have plagued this program from
its very beginning and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. It seems
the problem is getting worse, even though Medicaid has routinely been
identified as a high risk for potential waste. Being identified as a
high risk, you would think alarm bells would sound and structures would
be put in place so we can solve some of these issues and not waste
these taxpayers' dollars, give them to the wrong people, or deny others
who are qualified and not receiving these payments.
In 2015, Medicaid had the second highest improper payment rate across
the entire Federal Government. Over the past 3 years, Medicaid's
improper payment rate averaged almost 10 percent each year. Earlier
this month, the Department of Health & Human Services put out an alert
that Medicaid's improper payment rate for 2016 is expected to increase
to 11.5 percent. That is nearly double the rate of improper payments
since 2013. So in just 3 years, the rate of improper payments has
doubled.
Instead of correcting the program, instead of moving it in the right
direction toward solvency and toward proper administration, it is going
in the other direction. That means more and more taxpayer dollars are
being simply burned, thrown to the wind. Put it in a fireplace. It is
gone. It has gone to the wrong people, they are improper payments, and
it is a staggering, staggering number. To put a dollar figure on this,
nearly 10 percent of everything that goes out in Medicaid payments--we
are talking about $85.5 billion which will be improperly put out
through Medicaid in just 3 years. That is an astonishing amount. Let me
repeat that: Having acknowledged there is a serious problem with
Medicaid payments and misuse of taxpayer dollars, instead of that being
addressed successfully, it has put us in a situation where it is
increasing dramatically. Now, in a 3-year period of time, $85.5 billion
has been wasted.

While these $85.5 billion in improper payments were made, Medicaid
enrollment continued to expand as a result of ObamaCare, which means
more and more Americans are relying on an increasingly fraudulent
system. So we have to ask the question: Why do these improper payments
continue to take place? Why is it accelerating? What is happening?
Well, we dug into this. One reason was that a persistent problem lies
within the HHS--Health & Human Services--data system for identifying
and validating Medicaid and Medicare providers, which HHS directs
States to use to help ensure those medical providers receiving payments
are actually eligible. The system itself reminds me a lot of ObamaCare.
Remember when they rolled out that system? I can't remember the number
of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars that had to be spent to
fix it when we were assured this was ready to go, all plugged in, and
the system collapsed. The taxpayer then had to come in and rescue it
with even more hundreds of millions of dollars.
So one problem here lies with the agency itself in terms of
implementing the right systems. Bureaucratic mismanagement, which is so
prevalent throughout the Federal Government, has enabled providers to
obtain Medicaid payments when they aren't even medically licensed in a
State or when they do not even practice in the United States. Payments
are going to bogus people. Payments are going to people who don't even
practice in the United States and qualify for this.
The Government Accountability Office recently examined the addresses
listed in HHS's database by some of these providers as their primary
place of practice, and it turns out a lot of them are simply fake
addresses. Let me put up this first chart that identifies the address
of where Medicaid payments were going. This is a picture of an empty
lot. There is no building. There is no place, unless someone has a
little tent here or something like that saying: This is my place of
practice. Payments are going to this address, and there is nothing
there. Everything has been bulldozed. There is nothing there. That was
determined by the government, and this is just one example among
thousands in terms of how these Medicaid payments are being wasted.
Another listed the address, as we determined, of a fast-food
restaurant. I am not going to mention which one it is, but a fast-food
restaurant is receiving Medicaid payments. Maybe their food is bad.
Maybe someone practices there on a 24-hour basis, sleeps on the floor,
and I guess can get a burger for breakfast, a burger for lunch, and a
burger for dinner, but it is yet another example.
This fake address was determined by the Government Accountability
Office, not by any one of the thousands, tens of thousands of people--
maybe hundreds of thousands of people--who work for HHS. One would
think they would have something going on within that bureaucracy that
would track all this information. Why does this have to go through an
inspector general or go through the Government Accountability Office--
some agency outside of these agencies such as HHS--to determine this
kind of thing? Can't somebody figure that out?
We wonder why the public is frustrated with Washington. We wonder why
the public thinks their taxpayer dollars are being misused, and
obviously they are. We wonder why we are getting this backlash here in
this political year. People are fed up with how the government is so
dysfunctional and operates in such a dysfunctional way. They want
change, and it looks as though it is going to happen.
Another problem is that criminals understand that poor oversight
among the agencies gives them access to Medicaid, which harms patients,
such as the case of a pediatric dental company that performed medically
unnecessary procedures on children covered by Medicaid. It is bad
enough that somebody puts a false address in and receives Medicaid
payments in a fraudulent way, but it is outrageous--it is outrageous--
that professional people, many of them with doctors' degrees, are using
this as a basis to receive Medicaid payments by subjecting children to
procedures that are not necessary. This case was a dental company that
performed medically unnecessary procedures on children covered by
Medicaid. These children went through significant physical pain, such
as having a baby root canal. And there is no telling how many other
patients have been harmed by providers who should have been prohibited
from participating in Medicaid.
Yes, the $85.5 billion in improper payments is a big deal, but it is
also a big deal that Federal agencies are not

[[Page S5699]]

doing their jobs and allowing billions of dollars to be squandered. HHS
has the tools already at its disposal to prevent these improper
payments, such as verifying the locations of physicians' offices and
making sure providers are licensed.
My colleagues and I also must remain vigilant and ensure that HHS is
fully utilizing its resources to crack down on improper payments and
bad actors within Medicaid. We are elected. It is our responsibility to
come here and make sure we are doing everything we possibly can to make
these agencies cost effective and efficient, so we do not have to come
down here every week to talk about some bureaucratic nightmare where
taxpayer dollars have been wasted.
Initially, I said our goal was $100 billion. We are way past that
now. We are at $200-some billion. And with this, we add another $85.5
billion. Our chart can't accommodate it. We thought we would end up
here; then we went to $200 billion. This is just within this one cycle
of Congress, and now we have to add to our chart. We are going to have
to get a new chart because we are way up here now. We went way over our
chart. The grand total of wasted taxpayer dollars is $326 billion. That
is not small change, Mr. President. That is hard-earned tax dollars.
Think what we could do to lower our debt. Think what we could do to
provide for better education, better health care research, dealing with
Zika with the CDC, paving roads, providing services, protecting our
national security, helping our veterans. Think what we could do with
$326 billion of wasted money. And this is just a fraction.
The public understands. We expose this information to them. Do we
then blame the public for being furious with the dysfunction that
exists in Washington, DC? I think they are going to go to the polls in
November and express how they feel.
Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Ms. HIRONO. Aloha, Mr. President.

REMEMBERING MARK TAKAI

Mr. President, I rise in memory of our friend and our colleague,
Congressman Mark Takai. In June, Mark passed away after a courageous
fight with pancreatic cancer. He leaves behind a legacy as a champion
swimmer, a National Guard officer, and a public servant. Most
importantly, Mark was a family man and friend to many.
Over the years, I have affectionately called Mark my younger brother.
Mark was elected to the Hawaii State legislature in 1994, the same year
I won my race to be our State's Lieutenant Governor. I came to count on
Mark as one of my closest allies throughout my time in State government
and here in Congress. I will continue to be a champion for the causes
he believed in, particularly the fight to keep the promises we made to
our Nation's veterans.
Mark always remembered personal details and would go the extra mile
to give back to others. Knowing how much we all missed food from home,
he hosted potlucks for his staff and others in the delegation. They
often included one of my favorites--his mother Naomi's famous beef
stew. Whenever his mother made a batch of her famous stew, Mark, always
thoughtful, made sure he saved some for me. In return, when I made
Portuguese bean soup and Korean kimchi, he got some too.
Mark embodied the aloha spirit of kindness and generosity and would
bring a bit of Hawaii wherever he went. Last year, Mark and I traveled
with dozens of our colleagues from both the House and Senate to Selma,
AL, for a march commemorating the 50th anniversary of ``Bloody
Sunday,'' the civil rights march led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
When Dr. King marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, he and other
march leaders wore a white carnation lei from Reverend Abraham Akaka,
the brother of Senator Daniel Akaka. Dr. King and Reverend Akaka had
met and become friends the year before, and Reverend Akaka sent the lei
from Hawaii to Alabama to stand in peace and solidarity with the civil
rights marchers.
Mark decided to replicate that gesture of harmony and unity by giving
a lei from Hawaii to all our colleagues from the House and Senate who
joined in the commemorative march. He enlisted me in this goal. Over
100 lei were ordered and shipped to us in Selma. But there was a
glitch. The lei were to arrive by plane and by truck, but arrive they
did not. In fact, Mark and I had absolutely no idea where the boxes and
boxes of lei were in transit from the west coast to where we were.
At that point, frustrated, I looked at Mark and said: You are the
National Guard guy. You know logistics. I am trusting you to get this
done. Mark was on the phone day and night. We have pictures of him with
his phone practically glued to his ear. Others later recounted that
they wondered what he was doing with this phone for 2 days while all
kinds of other commemorative march events were occurring.
Well, all of Mark's work paid off, and the lei were delivered safely.
That Saturday we presented a white carnation lei to civil rights leader
John Lewis. They were just like the ones that Reverend King and the
other leaders had worn 50 years before. Together, we marched across the
Edmund Pettus Bridge with our first African-American President,
Hawaii's keiki o ka aina, President Obama.
As we celebrate Mark's life in the Capitol today, I recall his
memorial services that took place in Honolulu last month. As we
finished singing ``Over the Rainbow'' at the State Capitol rotunda in
Honolulu--we were outside--the sun suddenly broke through and shown
brightly on a large photo of Mark placed at the service. Mark was
literally glowing. The photo was taken just after he was elected to the
U.S. House, and you could see in his smile how joyful and happy he was.
Later that day, during our services, a rainbow appeared over Pearl
City, his hometown that he represented for decades in the State
legislature. These are what we call in Hawaii ``chicken skin
moments''--moments where Mark's presence was very much felt.
Mark, you will be missed, but we will carry on your fight for what we
believe is right, while treating each other with kindness and always
aloha.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, today we are debating the water
resources development bill that contains crucial provisions to improve
and rebuild some of our locks, dams, ports, and flood control systems
across the United States. It also authorizes valuable habitat
restoration programs like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Those
are all incredibly important issues and are worthy of our investment.
Today, however, I wish to discuss an issue that is far too often
overlooked by those of us in Congress: wastewater infrastructure.
Today when we talk about infrastructure, it translates into the
critical structures we see every day--roads, bridges, locks, dams,
airports. What is too often neglected in this conversation, however, is
water infrastructure, which is just as critical to keeping our
communities clean and livable and attracting investment and growth.
We all want clean water, particularly our local communities that are
committed to working toward that goal. Unfortunately, too many of our
cities and towns are in a situation where the Federal Government is
demanding significant investments to prevent wastewater runoffs, while
providing virtually no support to help meet those mandated goals.
I believe we should have high standards for our wastewater
infrastructure, but those federally mandated standards should be
achievable and met with a commitment to help make the necessary
investments to protect the health and safety of our communities.
The truth is, unless we get serious about investing in all American
infrastructure, including wastewater, we are hurting the very
communities these regulations were initially intended to help.
This water resources bill includes some responses to the difficulties
our communities are facing in preventing sewer overflows. We have
established a

[[Page S5700]]

technical assistance program for small and medium treatment waterworks,
and our communities will now have more opportunities to develop
integrated plans for dealing with multiple clean water requirements and
have greater certainty when working with EPA to develop financially
responsible investments in wastewater control systems. The bill also
reauthorizes a grant program for cities that are addressing their
combined sewer overflow, sanitary sewer overflows, and storm water
discharge responsibilities.
The bill only authorizes, however, $250 million for wastewater grants
all of next year. That is a sizeable investment but not nearly adequate
to help communities respond to the financial challenges they are
facing. To put that $250 million in perspective, local governments
reported spending an average of approximately $320 million per day--per
day--on water and wastewater services and infrastructure in 2013. That
means this bill will authorize grants for an entire year at an amount
that is only 75 percent of what local governments spend in 1 day.
In my hometown of South Bend, IN, the city may need to spend up to $1
billion to address its obligations to eliminate sewer overflows. The
solution may include deep rock tunneling, with tunnels so deep they
might as well build a subway system while they are down there and with
a price tag so high, the required investments break down to $10,000 per
resident--in a town with a per capita income of $19,000 per resident a
year. It is not just one town, though; Fort Wayne, Indianapolis,
Evansville, Richmond, and others--these Hoosier communities are forced
into consent decrees and are required to make significant investments
with essentially no help from Congress, which made the rules in the
first place.
I know we are operating in a time of budget constraints, but
wastewater infrastructure investment is a problem. It is a problem
Congress has failed to adequately address for far too long. That is why
I have introduced an amendment that doubles the authorized funding for
grants to local communities to respond to wastewater challenges. Even
that is a modest investment, but we need to work together to find a way
to do more.
I know that Chairman Inhofe--a former mayor of Tulsa--understands the
challenges facing our cities, and local communities across the country
are experiencing the same difficulties funding these improvements.
Senator Boxer is such a tireless advocate on behalf of the communities
in her home State, and I know she is interested in being as helpful as
possible as well.
This bill makes improvements for our communities, and I appreciate
that, but I am eagerly looking forward to finding ways to do more.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be
in a period of debate only until 2:25 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the
Senate as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Foreign Policy

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, events that are taking place in Syria and
in the Middle East in general but in Syria and around the world show an
incredibly dangerous deterioration of American national security, of
our standing in the world, and can have consequences that are far-
reaching and very damaging to the United States of America.
Yesterday the Washington Post--not known as a rightwing conservative
periodical--had an editorial entitled ``Whether or not the Syrian
cease-fire sticks, Putin wins.'' It begins by talking about the
circumstances concerning what happened with this so-called agreement,
which, according to the New York Times today, has been objected to by
the Secretary of Defense and other members of his own administration.
The Washington Post editorial says:

When Russia launched its direct military intervention in
Syria a year ago, President Obama predicted its only result
would be a quagmire. Instead, the agreement struck by
Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Friday with his Russian
counterpart offers Mr. Putin everything he sought. The Assad
regime, which was tottering a year ago, will be entrenched
and its opposition dealt a powerful blow. The United States
will meanwhile grant Mr. Putin's long-standing demand that it
join with Russia in targeting groups deemed to be terrorists.

I might add that when the Russians came in, the first people they
attacked were the moderate people whom we trained, armed, and equipped,
slaughtering them.

If serious political negotiations on Syria's future ever
take place--an unlikely prospect, at least in the Obama
administration's remaining months--the Assad regime and its
Russian and Iranian backers will hold a commanding position.
In exchange for these sweeping concessions, which
essentially abandon Mr. Obama's onetime goal of freeing Syria
from Mr. Assad and make the United States a junior partner of
Russia in the Middle East's most important ongoing conflict,
Mr. Kerry promises that humanitarian lifelines will be opened
into the besieged city of Aleppo and other areas subjected to
surrender-or-starve tactics. The Syrian air force will
supposedly be banned from dropping ``barrel bombs,'' chlorine
and other munitions on many areas where rebels are based--
though there seem to be loopholes in the deal, and its text
has not been made public.

I might add that the text has not been made available to the Congress
of the United States or the American people.
It goes on to say:

If that really happens, and lives are saved, that will be a
positive benefit. Perhaps it's the only one available to a
U.S. policy that swears off, as doomed to failure, the same
limited military measures that Russia has employed with
success. But Mr. Putin and Mr. Assad have agreed to multiple
previous truces, in Syria and, in Mr. Putin's case, Ukraine--
and violated all of them. Their reward has been to gain
territory and strengthen their strategic positions, while
receiving from the United States not sanction but more
concessions and proposals for new deals. If the regimes
observe their promises in this case, it may be because the
time to exploit this U.S. administration--which has retreated
from its red lines, allowed Russia to restore itself as a
Middle East power and betrayed those Syrians who hoped to rid
themselves of a blood-drenched dictator--is finally running
out.

In other words, there may be a time when Vladimir Putin and Bashar
Assad decide on an actual cease-fire, which has been violated time
after time. After they have gained sufficient control, after they have
driven any of the moderate forces out of the major regions of Syria--
and for all intents and purposes, thanks to Hezbollah; the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard; Russia; and more Iranian involvement by people
like Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard;
Hezbollah from Lebanon--they will have gained enough control over Syria
that they will be satisfied with what they have and then will seek a
cease-fire.
This is one of the most disgraceful chapters in American history.
Look at the map of Syria and Iraq in the Middle East in 2009 when
Barack Obama became President of the United States and look at a map
today. When Barack Obama came to power in 2009, Al Qaeda was defeated.
The situation was under complete control thanks to the sacrifice of an
enormous amount of American blood and treasure.
When my colleagues and the liberal media and others criticize what
happened in Iraq and what a colossal failure it was, maybe there is an
argument about going in. There can be no intellectual honesty unless
you mention the fact that we had it under control. Al Qaeda was
defeated. The casualties were down. All we needed to do was keep a
residual force there to maintain control. Instead, the President of the
United States decides to take everybody out, and the rest is history.
Al Qaeda moves to Syria, Al Qaeda becomes ISIS, and the rest is
history.
Why is it that the liberal media and my friends on the other side of
the aisle who continue to talk about how Iraq was such a disaster fail
to mention that thanks to GEN David Petraeus and brave young Americans
who sacrificed time after time, we had it won? And the reason given for
pulling everybody out was that we couldn't get a Status of Forces
Agreement ratified by

[[Page S5701]]

the Iraqi Parliament. We now have 4,500 permanent and thousands who are
rotating in and out. Where is the Status of Forces Agreement with the
Iraqi Parliament? Wasn't that the reason given by these experienced and
talented members of the President's National Security Council, experts
on--I believe science fiction was one of them, and others who have
never heard a shot fired in anger and have no experience in the
military of any kind? They are the ones who said we can't stay because
we haven't got the Status Of Forces Agreement, so we pulled out, and Al
Qaeda rotated to Syria and became ISIS and now we have a caliphate. We
may be able to finally destroy them, although this is the classic of
incrementalism--50 troops here, 20 troops there, 50 more here, a
gradual escalation in targets. Still, I have been told one-third or
maybe as many as half of our aircraft that went out and flew on a
mission returned without having fired a weapon or having dropped a
bomb, and everything is run from those experienced tacticians and
leaders at the National Security Council.

Here we are now, after Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,
the Russians came in, and the President declared a ``quagmire,'' we now
have a ceasefire that, according to our view and others, Putin wins. By
the way, there is also a New York Times story that shows there are
severe divisions within the administration as to whether this was a
good idea.
I draw my colleague's attention to this morning's Wall Street
Journal. Syria's Regime is pressing a systematic effort to alter the
country's demographics and tighten Assad's grip on power, U.N.
officials and opposition figures said.
How do they do that? They surround an area, starve them out, and
barrel bomb them. Barrel bombs are horrible weapons, my friends. They
barrel bomb them and kill a whole bunch of them and then they declare a
ceasefire and let them leave and take over that particular area. One of
the most brutal and inhumane types of warfare is being practiced by
Bashar al-Assad as we speak.
There are a lot of things going on in the world, which apparently
includes the dictator in the Philippines now saying he is going to buy
Russian and Chinese equipment and throw Americans out of the
Philippines. The Philippine leader, Duerte, is seeking arms from Russia
and China, signaling a shift in its alliance with the United States.
The Chinese continue their aggressive behavior in the South China Sea,
and of course we are now seeing the other Middle Eastern countries
deciding they have to go their own way because the United States of
America cannot be relied on for assistance as the situation continues
to deteriorate.
I ask my colleague and friend from South Carolina for his comments
about the deteriorating situation and this latest ``agreement.'' I
don't know what number that agreement is, by the way, but it certainly
isn't the first nor the second nor third that has been reached in the
hopes that somehow--and each time greater and greater concessions are
made to Bashar al-Assad and now acknowledgment of the Russians as our
senior partner.
I just ask my colleague: Are we supposed to enter into some kind of
alliance with Vladimir Putin in this conflict in Syria? Vladimir Putin
dismembered Ukraine, bombed the people we armed, trained, and equipped
when they first went into Syria--I don't know how many were
slaughtered--put enormous pressures on the Baltic countries, and has
occupied parts of Georgia. Does anybody on Earth believe our new
partners will insist that Bashar al-Assad leave Syria?
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I want to associate myself with everything
my friend said. Here is our dilemma. There are two forces inside of
Syria that are a threat to us, the region, and the people in Syria--
ISIL, al-Nusra, and the other radical Sunni groups are certainly a
threat to the United States. Raqqa, which is the capital of the ISIL's
caliphate, is in Syria. They planned the attacks in Paris and Europe
out of Raqqa, and they communicate with sleeper cells throughout the
world. Thousands of westerners have gone to Syria for training under
ISIL's control. The bottom line is, it is in our interest to destroy
this caliphate because the next 9/11-type attack is being planned in
Syria. If you take the land away from ISIL, then you are doing a lot of
damage to them, and they become a terrorist organization rather than a
terrorist army. The plan to destroy ISIL is beyond ill-conceived.
I had dinner last night with the Turkish Ambassador. What is the
ground force we are relying upon to go take Raqqa away from ISIL? You
are clearly not going to win the war from the air. We have done a lot
of damage, but the air campaign will not destroy the caliphate.
Somebody has to go in on the ground and actually liberate Raqqa, take
Mosul back, and all the other stuff.
Inside Syria, the main fighting force is a Kurdish force called the
YPG. The Kurdish force inside Syria is the mortal enemy of Turkey. On
two occasions, you have seen where Turkey used military force against
the coalition we are training to destroy ISIL because in the eyes of
Turkey, substituting ISIL for YPG Kurds is not a good trade.
Most Members of the body--I don't know if you are following this, but
you should. The whole goal is not to destroy ISIL. It is to do as much
damage to ISIL as possible and pass this problem on to the next
President. For a couple of years, Senator McCain and I have made the
argument that the liberating force--if it is made up of Kurds--is
doomed to fail. The Arabs in the region are going to have a hard time
turning over more of Syria to the YPG Kurds, and it is a nonstarter for
Turkey. This ceasefire is brought on by the fact that Aleppo is Hell on
Earth.
The administration's goal was to destroy ISIL and replace Assad.
Assad will be in power and Obama will be gone, and this failure of the
Obama administration to act effectively has changed the balance of
power. Four years ago, Senator McCain and I and others argued to help
the Free Syrian Army while it was intact. The entire national security
team of President Obama advised him to aggressively train the Free
Syrian Army to take Assad out because he is a puppet of Iran. The one
thing I can tell you is, no Arab country in the region is going to
recognize Assad as the legitimate leader of Syria because his main
benefactors are the Iranians, their mortal enemy.
Instead of helping the Free Syrian Army, President Obama blinked and
took a pass. That vacuum was filled. Hezbollah sent in 5,000 fighters.
They are also a puppet of Iran. Their Hezbollah militia, which is
supported by the Iranians, came to Assad's aid as we backed off of
helping the Free Syrian Army, and then Russia came in for Assad. So now
the Russian President has been bombing forces trained by the American
President, and we are not doing a damned thing about it.

All of the training we provided to the Free Syrian Army has been
basically neutered by the fact that Russia and Iran are now firmly in
Assad's camp. When we were trying to train Syrians to go take out ISIL,
we also wanted them to take the fight to Assad. Obama's refusal to do
anything about Assad has created a vacuum. Very few Syrians are going
to go fight ISIL and not turn their attention to the ``Butcher of
Damascus,'' the person who has killed 250,000 to 400,000 of their
family.
This whole Syrian strategy is flawed. The ceasefire is an opportunity
for Assad and Russia to retrench. Here is what will happen. We are
going to have a ceasefire. Hopefully, some of the humanitarian aid will
get to Aleppo, but as Senator McCain said, when it is all said and
done, they are going to gobble up more territory. This idea of the
United States partnering with Russia to go after the al-Nusra group,
which has changed its name, to me, is very dangerous. Our military is
very reluctant to share with the Russian military targeting and how we
know where people are. Sharing information with the Russians is very
dangerous to do in Syria because their goal is not to just destroy
radical Islamic groups, their goal is to keep their puppet Assad in
power.
This whole idea of a joint operation center, where the United States
and Russia will focus their attention on al-Nusra elements, is doomed
to fail because in the eyes of Assad, everybody who opposes him is a
terrorist. All the people we are training to liberate Syria from Assad,
in the eyes of Assad, are no different than ISIL. So to expect

[[Page S5702]]

Assad and Russia to limit their military activity to radical Islamic
groups and not go after the opposition in general defies the past.
Russia has dropped more bombs on people we have trained than they
have on ISIL. Russia has hit more targets aligned with opposition to
Assad than they have al-Nusra targets. Why? Russia is using their
military might to give Assad military superiority and at the same time
helping on the margins with radical Islam.
The biggest mistake of all was to not help the Free Syrian Army when
they were intact and allow Russia and Iran to fill this vacuum. I will
say this to anybody on the other side who believes this strategy is
going to result in Assad leaving, you are completely out to lunch. Why
would Assad leave when he is winning? Why would Assad leave when Russia
and Iran are firmly in his camp? Why would Assad leave when the
Russians can bomb the people the Americans are training to take Assad
out and America will do nothing about it?
This whole idea that there is some plan coming that will replace
Assad is a complete fantasy. This ceasefire is not going to bring about
the results we all would hope for, which is the destruction of ISIL and
the removal of the ``Butcher of Damascus,'' Assad, who is an enemy of
the Syrian people, who helped send fighters into Iraq to kill American
soldiers as we were trying to help Iraqis, who is a puppet of Iran and
a proxy of Russia.
To the administration, most people are not paying any attention. You
are literally getting away with national security malpractice because
most people are not paying much attention, and there is a war over
there involving people we can't relate to. All I can tell you is, you
should be worried about what is going on in Syria because it will
affect us here at home. We are about to give yet another Arab capital
to the Iranians. This will be the fourth Arab capital that Iran has
basically had to fight their control over, and that is not good for our
interests because our Arab allies will be put in a spot one day where
they will have to fight back.
If you want to create a bigger war in the Middle East, we are on
track to do it. We are about to create a conflict for our Turkish
allies and the people we are trying to liberate--Raqqa from ISIL inside
of Syria. In the effort of destroying ISIL, we have created a nightmare
for Turkey. In the effort of destroying ISIL, we are giving Assad a
pass, which is nightmare for Jordon and Lebanon and all of our Arab
allies.
In other words, in our effort to destroy ISIL, we are empowering
Iran. In our effort to destroy ISIL, we are making Russia more
effective in the Middle East than they have been since the early 1970s.
In our effort to destroy ISIL, we have created an imbalance of power in
the Middle East that will come back to haunt us. The bottom line is,
Obama and his administration wanted this nuclear deal with the Iranians
so much that he would not challenge their proxy in Syria. They want
cooperation with the Russians so much when it comes to Iran and other
issues, they will not challenge Russian aggression inside Syria.
Here is what will come back to bite us all. In the future, nobody in
the Middle East will rely upon us. Every Arab government I have talked
to has asked: Where has America gone? Why should we join with you? You
are an unreliable ally. The stain on our honor is very great. All those
young Syrian men who were brought to the fight and trained to fight
ISIL and get rid Assad, many of them have been killed by Assad and
Russia and we haven't done a damned thing about it.
What are the consequences of this? It is going to be harder for
people to work with us in the future, and it is going to be easier for
our enemies to peel off people in the region. The vacuum we are
creating today will grow over time.
I hope the next President, whomever he or she will be, will revisit
our strategy in Syria because it is on a collision course.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional
2 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I wish to add to my colleague's assessment
when he said that 400,000 people were killed.
Mr. GRAHAM. All with families.
Mr. McCAIN. All with families--barrel bombs, poison gas. By the way,
there has been a recurrence of poison gas. Six million people are now
refugees and it is putting an enormous strain on Europe. We can look
around the world and see where all of this weakness is reflected,
whether it be in Syria or whether it be in Iran, which threatened two
American surveillance planes as they flew over the Straits of Hormuz--
Philippines leaders seeking arms from the Russians and the Chinese,
Chinese continued aggression in the South China Sea, and the list goes
on and on.

In summary, I agree with the editorial in the Washington Post
yesterday: ``Whether or not the Syrian cease-fire sticks, Putin wins.''
This election is going to be a very important one.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The Senator from West Virginia.

Miners Protection Act

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise today to engage in a colloquy with
my colleagues on a bipartisan bill that we have been working on, one of
the most important pieces of legislation that we have before us today.
Basically, 16,000 retired miners and their widows are counting on
this to be done. If we don't do it by the end of the year, 16,000
miners will lose their health care benefits at the end of this year.
Another 3,500 miners will lose their health care at the end of March of
next year, and another 3,500 will lose it by July. So 23,000 miners'
lives are at stake.
This is a piece of legislation that fulfills a commitment and a
promise we made starting back in 1946, 1950, 1974, 1990, 1992, 1993,
and 2006. So basically, we as a government, we as lawmakers here have
understood the value of the coal that has been produced by the Coal
Miners of America and the United Mine Workers and this is to fulfill
the promise that we made back in 1946 for what they have done from the
start of the century--in the early 1900s--providing energy in a very
difficult and tough way and then, basically, being able to guarantee a
pension and a retirement plan to keep this country moving forward. That
is what this is about. If we don't fulfill this promise to the people
who have given us the life we have and the superpower status and the
freedoms we enjoy, then I would say God help us all.
I am joined by some of my colleagues who understand these people,
understand how wonderful they are and the hard work they have
provided--the mine workers all over this country. I wish to turn to my
good friend from Ohio, Senator Brown.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia, and
I thank our colleague Senator Capito.
Last week I joined Senator Manchin, Senator Capito, and others to
speak to hundreds of coal miners rallying on the lawn right outside the
Capitol. It was an oppressively hot day, yet the heat and humidity
seemed to bother them not at all. They are used to working in mines and
working in some of the hardest and least safe conditions in this
country.
One of the things that most impressed me at the beginning of this
rally was when President Cecil Roberts, the president of the UMWA,
stood up and asked at the beginning of his remarks: How many of you are
veterans? A huge number of miners put their hands up. He then asked
about family members and World War II veterans. We think about these
mine workers. Some stayed in the mines and continued to mine coal, to
win our wars and to power our defense plants and to power our homes and
our commercial establishments and everything else. So many of them went
off to war. As if we don't owe them for the work they have done in the
mines and the promises that Senator Manchin mentioned, we also owe so
many of them for serving our country the way they did.
This is about retirement security. In my State alone, 6,800 Ohioans
are covered and will be betrayed if we don't do our work, if the Senate
doesn't do its job. If Congress fails to act, thousands of retired
miners could lose their health care this year, and the pension plans
could fail as early as 2017. This is retirement security that miners

[[Page S5703]]

worked for, security they fought for, security that many of them
sacrificed their own health for.
One of the things that Senator Manchin and Senator Capito and I
understand--and that, frankly, a whole lot of Senators don't--is that
when unions bargain and sit down at the bargaining table, they often--
almost always--give up raises today for retirement security in the
future. We call these legacy costs. During the auto rescue, I heard a
number of my colleagues complain about the legacy costs that afflicted,
in their words, the United Auto Workers. It is the same thing here.
These are workers who rather than take more pay now they said: We will
forgo some of these raises, and we will put this money toward
guaranteeing and ensuring our futures. So then they aren't wards of the
State. They are not living off taxpayers. They are living off their own
wealth that they created and invested so they would have health
insurance and so they would have pensions when they retire. That is
good for the country, not bad for the country. But a number of anti-
union Members in this Senate--and I would say in the House, where
Senator Capito and I used to serve--don't really understand that they
have earned this health care and they have earned these retirement
payments that have been promised to them. These workers have more than
held up their end of the bargain.
I want to tell a couple of stories and then turn it over to Senator
Capito. As do the two West Virginia Senators--they have more mine
workers in their State than I do, but it is a major part of our State
and a major part of the southeast quadrant of Ohio.
I have talked to some of these workers, Ohioans like Norm Skinner,
Dave Dilly, and Babe Erdos. I first met Norm in March. I have known
Babe Erdos for years.
I appreciate the work Senator Warner has done. He is joining us now
as well.
Norm is a veteran who started working as a miner for what became
Peabody Coal 40 years ago. He worked 22 years. He retired in September
of 1994. For every one of those years he earned and he contributed to
his retiree health care plan and his pension plan. Sixty percent of his
colleagues, he told me, at the mine have died of cancer because of the
chemicals. Norm has been lucky. But after putting in decades in that
mine, he is in danger of losing that health care that he worked for.

We know how to fix this. This block, if you will, seems to be down at
the end of the hall in the majority leader's office. Because of the
work of Senator Capito, Senator Manchin, Senator Warner, and others, we
would get a strong majority of Members of the Senate to pass this if we
could get it up for a floor vote.
We must mark this bill up in the committee that Senator Warner and I
sit on--the Finance Committee. We were supposed to vote this week. For
whatever reason, it was pushed back to next week. Senator Manchin and I
have talked about how we hope this isn't a slow walk to delay it
through the end of the year. The Senate has not been in session much
this year, and we are not doing the work we should.
This is absolutely mandatory. The Senate Finance Committee should
move on it next week. Senator Casey is on that committee. He is also
supporting it. It is time we do it.
I thank Senator Manchin, Senator Capito, and Senator Warner for their
work on such an important issue for our country.
Mr. MANCHIN. I thank Senator Brown.
At this time I wish to call on my colleague, Senator Capito.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I wish to thank my fellow Senator from
the State of West Virginia for his lead on this, and I am happy to be
his primary cosponsor. I wish to thank Senator Brown as well. He brings
a lot of passion. I got to follow him the other day at the rally. He is
a hard act to follow. Senator Warner, certainly your State of Virginia
and the southwest portion right there--you are lucky enough to be
really close to West Virginia--are going to feel a lot of this.
I think Senator Brown really stated it when he spoke about the rally
that we saw last week. It was a very hot day. There were thousands of
miners and families there, and we all went for the show of hands.
Senator Portman is here now. Let's have a show of hands from those from
Ohio and from West Virginia. It was really spread throughout the
eastern part of the country. It wasn't just one State or the other.
Everyone that I shook hands with I asked: Is this personally affecting
you? It was amazing to me that most of the people I talked to, it
personally affected them. Many of them are retired. They are not spring
chickens, as a lot of us are not. They were willing to weather a really
long bus ride, a really hot day to stand arm in arm in brotherhood and
sisterhood for something that we all believe in and on which we are
approaching a critical deadline.
So as I said before, these are the workers who power our Nation and
who work hard. My kids have gone to school with their grandchildren. We
go to church with many of them. In a small State like ours, Senator
Manchin and I certainly know many of the folks and the faces that we
saw that day and the ones that are affected by this.
We can't leave them in the lurch. This is where we are. We hear the
statistics--22,000. Some of the statistics are a little bit different,
but they could be losing their health care here in the next three
months. The pension plan that provides benefits to over 90,000 current
retirees could become insolvent.
We have a fix. Senator Portman and I have talked a lot about this
because we have those adjoining parts of our States that are very much
affected, and we have worked hard to bring this fix and get it to the
point where we think we are assured that the vote will come through the
Finance Committee, on which Senator Portman serves.
So I look forward to that. Even though it disappointingly was pushed
back a week, we still are fighting the fight.
The war on coal in our State has resulted in thousands of lost jobs.
Six of our counties are in a deep depression. We were at a local
hearing in Morgantown where our State economist said that six of our
counties are in a very severe depression. A lot of these counties are
where a lot of these folks live. For these counties and communities
across our State, the situation, if we don't do something, is going to
get even worse.
This is not a partisan issue. We have Republicans and Democrats here.
I would say it is more of a regional issue than a partisan issue. We
are working with Chairman Hatch to get this bill marked up in the
Finance Committee, and, hopefully, that will get us the next step that
we need, which is the big step and which is to get it across the floor
here in the halls of the Senate.
So with the hard-working men and women of Appalachia, with the
leadership that Senator Manchin has shown on this, and with many of us
here working together in the many different ways that we can affect the
votes of our colleagues--somebody said to me: What is going to make the
difference? You are on that side of the aisle where maybe there are a
lot of folks that can't see why we should vote for this. What I would
implore them to do is to look at the human faces of the people who are
affected here. These are people, most of whom have worked hard their
whole lives. Many of them have health issues--severe health issues.
Many of them are living on limited resources. This really just kind of
kicks the stool out from under their entire family.
So I join with everybody here today to make that real difference that
we need to make, and we will keep the fight going here as we move
through the next several weeks and months.
Thank you.
Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague and friend.
This has been a bipartisan piece of legislation, and we just need a
little bit more help. I think we are going to get there.
Let me just paint the picture very quickly for everybody of what we
are talking about--the energy for this young country in the early
1900s. The energy was needed to build the country. Then we had the
industrial revolution, if you will. Then we had World War I, and then
we had World War II and we needed the domestic energy in order to
defend ourselves. From 1900 to 1946, these were people who were down in
the mines. They would work hard, and they would provide the resources

[[Page S5704]]

we needed to win the wars, to build the industrial revolution, and to
build the middle class. They got no pensions, no benefits.
Here is one personal story. In 1927, there was a young man who had
four children, and his wife was expecting her fifth. It was
Christmastime 1927. Have you ever heard the words of the song:
``Sixteen tons, what do you get, another day older and deeper in
debt.'' Tennessee Ford wrote that song. ``I owe my soul to the company
store.'' That was the fact. That was the absolute truth. From the
paycheck at the end of the week, there was nothing left. They owed
their soul to the company store. There was no money to take care of
their family, no pension, no retirement plan, no health care as far as
giving you the health care that you and your family would need to stay
healthy.
This is what happened. A person--a young man in 1927--was talking to
other people saying: We have to do something. We can't continue to
carry on like this. We can't live this way. We can't take care of our
family and ourselves. We are not getting ahead at all. That night,
Christmas Eve, he was thrown out of his house. All of his furniture was
thrown into the middle of the road--everything. Four kids and an
expectant mother were thrown out.
That person's name was Joe Manchin, Sr. When you think about the
commitment they made to our country, and the effort--that was my
grandfather. You think about what they were willing to do, and they
sacrificed everything for this country. We did not get a piece of
legislation until 1946. Harry S. Truman--President Harry S. Truman
signed an agreement, the Krug-Lewis agreement, because it was so
important after the war to keep the economy going.
Without the miners that were providing the product, the coal that
fired this Nation, we would not be a superpower today. We would not.
People forget that. I think it sets the stage of who we are and what we
are fighting for. This is a commitment we owe. This is a responsibility
that we have.
I thank all of my colleagues who are here, all of my colleagues who
are supporting this. We have 46 Democrats supporting this, and we have
a minimum of 8, possibly more, of our Republican friends who are
supporting it also. We need a few more. That is what we were asking
for. We think we will be able to get that help and get that commitment
for the markup. I wish it would have been done this week. It wasn't.
With that, I want to recognize my good friend from Virginia, the
former Governor. We served together.
He worked in the coal fields. We have met many times in the coal
fields. A coal miner is usually a veteran. These are the greatest
people, the most patriotic people that you have ever met. They mine the
coal that made the steel that built the country we have today. They
give their blood, sweat, tears, and hard work.
With that, I want to turn it over to my good friend from Virginia who
knows these people all so well, Senator Warner.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I want to start by echoing what Senator
Brown and Senator Capito and others have said and thank my friend from
West Virginia for continuing to wage this fight. It feels a little bit
like deja vu all over again. We have been down here time and time and
time again to simply reinforce the case that the Senator from West
Virginia just went through in terms of history.
I think it is sometimes interesting that--I'm sure that the Senator
from West Virginia did it earlier than I, but it was the early 1990s,
the first time I went underground to see the working conditions of
miners across this country. Even though the advances in technology in
the 20th century and 21st century still endure, it is hard work. It is
gritty work. Many of the miners who have spent years working
underground come out with black lung and other illnesses. Their life
expectancy is much shorter than so many other jobs.
The Senator from West Virginia has already gone through at some
length the historic commitment to these miners. It started with
President Truman. It was renewed a number of times, Democrats and
Republicans alike.
Through this past year--again because of the Senator from West
Virginia and those of us who tried to help--his State has the most,
probably Kentucky has the second most, and Virginia has about 10,000
folks who are affected. We did finally force--and I want to thank the
chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, Senator Hatch and
Senator Wyden. We did have a hearing. Families came in. All they said
to us was: Keep your promise. The United States of America said: We are
going to honor this commitment to make sure that your pension benefits
and your health care benefits are honored.
The remarkable thing here--and many folks, including myself, are
greatly concerned about our debt and deficit. So how are we going to
pay for this? We have even identified a source of funding that is
industry generated. So any of the typical ``well, maybe not now'' or
``what if'' or ``how did this happen''--all of those issues have been
addressed.
The Finance Committee held a hearing on the Miners Protection Act.
Miners from Southwest Virginia came in, a couple of folks from Grundy,
a couple of folks from Wise, which is very close to the State of West
Virginia, close to Ohio--folks whose lives were going to be
dramatically affected if these health care benefits and pension
benefits are taken away.
Disproportionately, as the Senator from West Virginia has repeatedly
said, the vast majority of those individuals, candidly, are not former
miners, but they are the widows. So many folks have passed that the
widows now depend upon these benefits in many ways. They are still the
lifeblood of the communities that have been hard hit by the changing
nature of power generation, by government regulation, by a host of
other things.
Last week, on that incredibly warm day, my good friend the Senator
from Ohio and I were there, speaking to miners from all across the
region and others who were supportive of the cause. The question I got
as I walked through the crowd was: Are you guys going to keep your
word? It was not Democrat, Republican--not particulars of the bill.
Are you going to keep your word that this country made to the coal
miners and their beneficiaries that their pension and health care
benefits are going to be honored?
So we are going to be tested on this, at least in terms of the next
step. As a member of the Finance Committee, my hope and expectations
have been--and my friend, the Senator from Ohio, a member of the
Finance Committee, and in this case we have the support of the chairman
and the ranking member--that we would mark up this legislation, that we
would not add all kinds of extraneous other things that would take us
off course or take us down into some other briar patch but that we
would honor this commitment on the UMWA health and pension benefits.
Well, as things often happen here, it got delayed. But I for one
don't believe, even if we get our CR done and get Zika done, that the
Finance Committee should leave town without having this markup. That
commitment was made earlier in the year. I went through a whole group
of folks, not just from Virginia, but from West Virginia, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Kentucky and said: Yes, I believe we are going to at
least get the next step done and get this bill marked up out of the
Finance Committee. And then it should be not just reported out of the
Finance Committee but actually acted on here on the floor of the
Senate.
We have all come and gone through the facts and the details on the
variety of times that we have spoken about this issue on the floor. My
appeal to my friends the chair and ranking member of the Finance
Committee is that this date of September 21 does not slip again. I know
in that committee markup we will have the votes. We need to get that
bill reported out. We need to get it acted on before the end of the
year because, as the Senator from West Virginia has so relentlessly
continued to make the point, this is not something that we can kick the
can on anymore. People start losing these benefits that their lives
depend on at the end of calendar year 2016.
So I say to my friend from West Virginia and my friend the Senator
from Ohio that we are in this together. It is bipartisan. There are not
enough bipartisan things that are done here. I thank my friend from
West Virginia for being relentless on this issue. I thank my friend the
Senator from Ohio--sometimes it is an issue that looks as if it

[[Page S5705]]

is stacking up more on one side than the other--for his leadership on
this as well.
I tell you, I think we owe it to those miners and families who depend
upon these benefits to keep our word, keep the word we told them we
were going to keep back when we held the hearing, keep the word that
all of us said to the miners and others who rallied last week in the
middle of that heat. If we do our job next Wednesday, we will be able
to keep our word, bring this bill to the floor, and get it passed.
So with that, I thank the Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I appreciate so much the Senator's
support. He knows the miners so well because we joined--his Southwest
Virginia miners and my West Virginia miners work very well together.
With that being said, we are very proud of our neighbors and friends
from Ohio. Senator Portman has been here, and he knows the mine workers
of the Southeast, where most of them have congregated and where they
really mine the coal, along with Southwest Virginia. We are very proud
of that.
So we appreciate Senator Portman's being part of this colloquy.
Mr. PORTMAN. Well, first, I want to thank my colleague from West
Virginia for holding this colloquy today. I enjoyed listening to
Senator Capito, his colleague from West Virginia, talk about it, and I
know Senator Brown was here. Senator Warner, from Virginia, was out
there at the rally just before me. I get to follow him again.
What I said the other day when we were at the rally was that this is
not a partisan issue. This is one where you have Republicans and
Democrats coming together to identify a real problem: 100,000 miners
having their pensions endangered and 20,000 miners potentially losing
their health care at the end of this year.
That is a really urgent problem for them. He did a good job today of
talking about some of these issues. I loved when Senator Manchin talked
about the fact that this country was built on an energy economy that
included coal. I will tell you, we have mined 4 billion tons of coal in
Ohio. We are still a State and a country that depends on coal for our
electricity. In Ohio, it is about 58 percent of us who turn on a light
when we go home and get our electricity from coal.
So it is incredibly important for our economy and has built this
country, in effect. It has given us in Ohio the ability, frankly, to
attract a lot of industry because we have had relatively low energy
prices, stable energy prices.
This is about telling these miners who for years and years have been
doing the hard work, playing by the rules, doing exactly what they are
supposed to do that we are not going to let them down. That is all this
is about. It is just not fair to pull the plug after all of those
years.
As was noted earlier, having talked to a lot of these miners, some of
them are in poor health. Part of the reason they are in poor health is
that they were in the coal mines for many years. There are higher rates
of cancer, for instance, among some of these miners. There are a lot of
widows because some of the spouses have moved on.
This is about keeping true to our commitment and our promise. I do
think that we are going to have this committee vote a week from today.
I am told it was pushed back from today to a week from today because
the Congressional Budget Office had not done the score yet of what this
costs.
OK. That is fine. But let's be darn sure that we do not leave town to
go back in October without addressing this issue. That is something I
am going to insist on, as will my other colleagues that I have heard
from today. I got a commitment on this. I got a commitment from the
leadership, from the chairman, who I know is good to his commitments.
We ought to be darn sure that we do the right thing for these miners.
We had a hearing on it. We had people come forward and talk about the
specifics of it.
I will tell you, I know some people have differences of opinion on
the fiscal impact of this. As a person who is a fiscal conservative and
proud of that, I will tell you the alternative to this is that these
plans could potentially go insolvent and the PBGC, the Pension Benefit
Guaranty Corporation, which is the government program that backs all
these up, would then be in deep trouble because this is the second
biggest multiemployer plan that could be in trouble. That could result
in taxpayers having to pick up the tab in a much more significant way.
The actuaries have looked at our plan. They believe this will enable
us to get through this period of time where we have a tough issue with
so many companies going bankrupt. The Senator from West Virginia, Mr.
Manchin, and I have talked about the underlying problem here, which is
that there are a lot of people who are trying to do away with coal.
The so-called war on coal is leading to some of these bankruptcies of
these companies and some of these pension problems. That is part of the
issue, too. So the Federal Government also has played a role here. We
need to recognize that as well.
I am going to thank my colleagues for coming to the floor today. I
want to say that we look forward to the opportunity to debate and
discuss this issue in committee a week from today to get a strong vote.
Let's make it a strong bipartisan vote. Let's be sure that it comes to
this floor with that kind of support and goes over to the House, and we
can get something done to help those people who worked hard and played
by the rules and deserve now for us in the Congress to look after them.
I thank my colleague.
I yield back.
Mr. MANCHIN. I thank my friend from Ohio, Senator Portman. Let me
just say in wrapping up that there has been concern and there is talk
about--you know, we are concerned about the United Mine Workers, which
are all union miners, and nonunion miners. I am concerned about all
miners, but the agreement, if you think back to 1946, was about anybody
and everybody who worked in the mines and belonged to the United Mine
Workers of America. That is the agreement that was made to stop a
strike from happening, to basically get people back to work and keep
the country moving forward. We ratified that again. We ratified it in
1974, 1990, 1992, 1993, and 2006. It has the handstamp of basically the
President of the United States. I am saying that if we can't keep that
commitment, if we will not fulfill that promise--and people think
everybody is basically saying: Well, we are going to subsidize this. It
is a Federal Government guarantee. It was a guarantee that the coal
that was mined--that the mine operators would pay into the pension
plan. Then, through bankruptcy court, that evaporated.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 1 additional
minute to finish.
Mr. ENZI. It has already exceeded the time it was supposed to go.
Mr. MANCHIN. I ask unanimous consent that I have 1 additional minute
to wrap up.
Mr. ENZI. Go ahead.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MANCHIN. Thank you, my friend.
With that being said, you can see it is bipartisan. We are asking for
that. We have had a commitment. We have been gone for 9 weeks. The only
thing we are asking for--before we leave on the 21st, this has to be
brought out of the Finance Committee. That is what we are asking for;
that is what was promised. I hope that all of my colleagues will
fulfill that promise that was made to all of us and to the 16,000--to
the 102,000 miners who have been depending on this.
With that, thank you all. I appreciate it very much. I hope this body
will rise to the occasion to take care of the people they made the
promise to, the United Mine Workers of America.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I am going to return the discussion to the
legislation that is actually on the floor at the moment, and that is
the Water Resources Development Act. It is a necessary update for Corps
projects and for water quality systems, and I applaud the chairman and
the ranking member for working in a bipartisan manner to ensure its
passage. However, the amendment's inclusion of direct spending for
Flint and other public drinking water supply systems doesn't comply
with the Budget Committee's rules of enforcement. It would provide $100
million in drinking water State revolving funds, it would provide $70
million in water infrastructure loans, and

[[Page S5706]]

it would provide an additional $100 million for lead exposure programs.
The Flint provisions will also result in $53 million in revenue loss
from increased utilization of tax-exempt bonds to finance water
infrastructure projects.
The sponsors have sought to offset this new spending by prohibiting
new loans after 2020 under the Advanced Technology Vehicles
Manufacturing--ATVM--Program. This program was originally created in
2008 and was designated as an emergency. When Congress determines that
an expenditure is an emergency, we make a conscious decision to spend
above the limits of the budget. We tell the American taxpayer that
these dollars are necessary to respond to sudden and unforeseen
circumstances. In the case of the ATVM, Senators argued that the
emergency designation was necessary to respond to the precipitous drop
in auto sales caused by the 2008 credit crisis and subsequent
recession.
Because advanced technology vehicles manufacturing dollars were
originally provided under an emergency designation, budget rules will
not allow the cancellation of future ATVM funds to be used as an
offset. Phrased simply, if ATVM money didn't count going out, it cannot
count coming in.
What we are talking about is dollars that might go out after 2020. In
our budget process, we are going to have to refrain from trying to
spend future money in the present. It just won't work.
The Government Accountability Office has recommended that Congress
rescind all or part of the remaining credit subsidy due to the lack of
demand for new ATVM loans, and Congress ought to do that. The remaining
dollars in the ATVM Program should not be spent. That was a 2008
crisis, not a 2016 crisis and definitely not a 2020 crisis. But to use
the emergency ATVM money 8 years later to increase unrelated spending
represents a failure of Congress to act as good stewards of taxpayer
money and is not compliant with our budget rules.
Congress must use restraint when designating expenditures as
emergencies. If we don't, future lawmakers will simply designate
everything as an emergency to escape the budget limits and then, years
down the road, reprogram the funds for an entirely different
nonemergency purpose. The Senate must be judicious with its use of
emergency-designated funds or risk diluting the meaningfulness of the
designation altogether.
The CBO has estimated that under Senate scoring rules, the substitute
amendment increases the on-budget deficit by $299 million over the
2016-2026 period. As such, it exceeds the 2017 enforceable Senate pay-
as-you-go levels.
I do have a motion that I will be making at the appropriate time, but
in order for other discussion to happen, I reserve the remainder of my
time and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, let me say that I agree with my
friend from Wyoming that we must not allow bills to move forward that
are not fully paid for, but this is not the case for the substitute.
What we are talking about right now is the Inhofe-Boxer substitute,
which would become S. 2848. But let me be clear. The substitute, S.
2848, does not add to the debt or the deficit, which CBO has verified.
The issue with this point of order involves a disagreement between
the Senate Budget Committee rules and the CBO as it relates to the ATVM
spending offset used. While CBO gives us credit for rescinding it, the
Budget Committee does not.
The fact is that when we reported this bill out of committee in
April, CBO verified that the rescission of spending authority for the
Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Program generates $300
million in real savings to the U.S. Treasury. In this substitute, we
are taking those funds from a program that many believe is wasteful and
unnecessary and we redirect the funds toward a crisis across the Nation
that involves failing and outdated critical infrastructure, which we
address in this bill.
Another issue is that the Budget Committee is concerned that the
substitute is not budget neutral over 5 years based on how ATVM loan
authority is rescinded. However, over a 10-year budget window, CBO says
we actually reduce the deficit.
The Budget Committee does not want to count the rescission of an
unnecessary ATVM program as real money because of how it was
authorized, but the fact remains that it is real money and will be used
to offset other spending if not used now--or at some other time--for
this urgent and real need.
After the 90-to-1 cloture vote yesterday to end debate on this bill
and a voice vote to adopt this fully paid for substitute, I urge
Members to waive this budget point of order, which I will make at the
appropriate time.
I yield the floor.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, parliamentary request: Is this the proper
time for me to make the motion? Has everyone finished with debating?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I would mention that the Congressional
Budget Office has prepared a revised cost estimate for the committee-
reported S. 2848, and I have a copy of the letter here, which says that
CBO estimates that the net changes in outlays and revenues that are
subject to pay-as-you-go procedures would increase budget deficits by
$294 million over the 2016-2026 period. As such, the pending measure,
substitute amendment No. 4979, would violate the Senate pay-go rule and
increase the on-budget deficit over the period of fiscal years 2016-
2026. Therefore, I raise a point of order against this measure pursuant
to section 201(a) of S. Con. Res. 21, the concurrent resolution on the
budget for fiscal year 2008.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the
Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of
applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections
of that act and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of amendment
No. 4979, as amended, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I yield back all time from our side.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Ayotte) and the Senator from Illinois
(Mr. Kirk).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms.
Ayotte) would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Kaine) is
necessarily absent.
I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from
Virginia (Mr. Kaine) would vote ``yea.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 85, nays 12, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 139 Leg.]

YEAS--85

Alexander
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Boxer
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Cochran
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Donnelly
Durbin
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Franken
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Heller
Hirono
Hoeven
Inhofe
Johnson
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Paul
Peters
Portman
Reed
Reid
Risch
Roberts
Rounds
Rubio
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Toomey
Udall
Vitter
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden

NAYS--12

Barrasso
Coats
Corker
Enzi
Flake
Isakson

[[Page S5707]]

Lee
Perdue
Sasse
Scott
Sessions
Tillis

NOT VOTING--3

Ayotte
Kaine
Kirk
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 85, the nays are
12.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to and the point of order falls.

Vote on Amendment No. 4979, as Amended

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question occurs on amendment No. 4979, as
amended, offered by the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. McConnell, for the
Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe.
Is there further debate?
Hearing none, the question is on agreeing to the amendment, as
amended.
The amendment (No. 4979), as amended, was agreed to.

Cloture Motion

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant 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 Calendar No.
523, S. 2848, a bill to provide for the conservation and
development of water and related resources, to authorize the
Secretary of the Army to construct various projects for
improvements to rivers and harbors of the United States, and
for other purposes.
Mitch McConnell, James M. Inhofe, John Cornyn, Orrin G.
Hatch, Shelley Moore Capito, Thom Tillis, Dan Sullivan,
Mike Rounds, Marco Rubio, Cory Gardner, Dean Heller,
Pat Roberts, David Vitter, Roy Blunt, John Barrasso,
Roger F. Wicker, Steve Daines.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on
Calendar No. 523, S. 2848, a bill to provide for the conservation and
development of water and related resources, to authorize the Secretary
of the Army to construct various projects for improvements to rivers
and harbors of the United States, and for other purposes, shall be
brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Ayotte) and the Senator from Illinois
(Mr. Kirk).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms.
Ayotte) would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Kaine) is
necessarily absent.
I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from
Virginia (Mr. Kaine) would vote ``yea.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 94, nays 3, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 140 Leg.]

YEAS--94

Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Boxer
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Coats
Cochran
Collins
Coons
Corker
Cornyn
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Donnelly
Durbin
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Franken
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Heller
Hirono
Hoeven
Inhofe
Isakson
Johnson
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Paul
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Reid
Risch
Roberts
Rounds
Rubio
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Scott
Sessions
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Udall
Vitter
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden

NAYS--3

Flake
Lee
Sasse

NOT VOTING--3

Ayotte
Kaine
Kirk
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 94, the nays are 3.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
The Senator from Montana.
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a
colloquy with my freshmen colleagues.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Defense Appropriations

Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, just yesterday I joined a colloquy with my
freshmen Republican Members on the importance of our national security,
the importance of our troops, the importance of the threats that are
currently facing our Nation. I was honored to be on the floor with my
fellow freshmen Members, including Senators Rounds, Capito, Sullivan,
Lankford, and Gardner. Today, Senators Ernst and Perdue will also join
us.
I wish to take this opportunity to talk about the Republican freshmen
class and describe who we are. We were all elected just about 2 years
ago, in the fall of 2014. While each one does much more than these
brief descriptions, I thought it might be important to share this:
Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa is a retired lieutenant colonel in the
Army National Guard, where Iowa, of course, is home to Camp Dodge
National Guard Base. Senator Ernst was the first woman to serve in the
U.S. Senate as well as see combat. Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska,
lieutenant colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Senator Sullivan is a
marine. My dad is also a marine. Of course, Alaska is home to Joint
Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Senator Mike Rounds, the former Governor of South Dakota. He is a
great businessman, and he resides in South Dakota, which is also the
home of Ellsworth Air Force Base.
Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado serves on the Foreign Relations
Committee. I served with Cory in the U.S. House. Of course, Colorado is
proudly home to the U.S. Air Force Academy as well as NORTHCOM and
NORAD.
Senator David Perdue of Georgia. Senator Perdue has over 40 years of
business experience, including being a CEO. Of course, Georgia is home
to many military operations but is the home of Fort Benning as well.
Senator Shelley Capito of West Virginia, the first woman ever elected
to the U.S. Senate from West Virginia. I also served with Shelley in
the U.S. House. West Virginia is proudly the home of McLaughlin Air
National Guard Base.
Then, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. Again, I served with James
in the House. Oklahoma is the home of Tinker Air Force Base and many
others. Senator Lankford is on the Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee, as well as serving on the Appropriations Committee
with me, and we will talk more about that in a moment.
We are all new to the Senate, and I can tell you we are scratching
our heads trying to understand why this institution is not funding the
Department of Defense. Here are the facts: The Department of Defense
appropriations passed the U.S. House of Representatives in June on a
bipartisan vote of 282 to 138. Forty-eight Democrats were part of that
vote in the affirmative. I sit on the Appropriations Committee of the
U.S. Senate. We passed the Defense appropriations bill out of the
Appropriations Committee on May 26. There are 16 Republicans and 14
Democrats on that committee, for a total of 30, and it passed 30 to 0.
It was a shutout. Not one member on either side of the aisle opposed
funding the Defense appropriations bill.
I ask my colleagues, what has changed? The other side has
filibustered our troops a total of six times in the last year and a
half.
Senator Capito raised a very good and simple question yesterday: Why?
This past Friday, I visited Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls,
MT, home of 4,000 airmen in my home State, and I thought the same
thing. Here we are having a 9/11 remembrance ceremony there in the
beautiful chapel on Malmstrom Air Force Base. Here we are in the middle
of Malmstrom Air Force Base that protects us and has responsibilities
for 147 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Why can't my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle vote to support the troops who keep us
safe?
I can tell my colleagues one thing for certain. The world is a very
dangerous place, and the defense of our country

[[Page S5708]]

relies on properly and promptly funding the Department of Defense.
Usually, the Defense appropriations is one of the easiest
appropriations to get passed. It is the layup, if you will, that this
body can do. I can tell my colleagues one thing. Our enemies aren't
waiting around for Democrats to drop their political games. Why can't
they support a bill that was voted out of committee unanimously on a
bipartisan basis? Why can't they work with us to pass this very
important bill that would provide the necessary funding for our
military? What has changed?
I think I might have figured it out, and it is not a good answer. It
is about political credit. The other side does not want to fund our
military because they don't want the Republicans to take credit for
funding our troops. That can't be, can it? I hope this body, the U.S.
Senate--the great deliberative body of Congress--has not become a place
where we hold up a noncontroversial bill that funds our troops because
one side is playing politics.
I am very honored to have Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa join me. Senator
Ernst is a great American. Senator Ernst is an officer, retired from
the U.S. military; the first woman who has served in both the U.S.
Senate and has been in combat.
It is an honor to stand with Senator Ernst on behalf of our troops,
and I am looking forward to her comments.
Mrs. ERNST. Mr. President, I thank the Senator very much. It is an
honor to join my freshmen colleagues on the floor of the U.S. Senate to
talk about our failing national security strategy.
This past weekend, we all bowed our heads in remembrance of the
nearly 3,000 brave souls we lost on September 11, 2001. The response to
those horrific attacks was not as our Islamic extremist enemies had
hoped. America did not falter. We bonded together and we fought back.
We fought back.
The response to 9/11 was a comprehensive one, with an object as clear
as its name--the global war on terror. From places like Sub-Saharan
Africa, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, U.S. troops operating under
Operation Enduring Freedom showed those responsible for 9/11 the true
power of the United States of America. From combat operations in
Somalia to advising missions in South America, there has long been a
global and a comprehensive strategy to our response to 9/11. There was
American leadership.
Today, the administration has dismantled that global strategy. There
is no leadership. Their failure to develop a strategy in 2011 for the
troop withdrawal in Iraq and their continued fight for lower troop
numbers in Afghanistan, those are just a couple of examples that are
the tip of the iceberg.
One of the most alarming things in this administration--one of the
most alarming things they have done is not only ignore threats but also
fuel those threats, just as they did with the Iran nuclear deal. The
nuclear deal that this administration brokered with Iran is putting
taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the largest State sponsor of
terrorism.
Let's look at some of the recent headlines that are centered on Iran.
CNN: ``Iran continues to seek illicit nuclear technology.'' That is
from CNN.
Reuters: ``Iran test-fired ballistic missiles,'' which is against
international law.
The Wall Street Journal: ``Iran begins construction on second nuclear
power plant.''
The New York Times: ``Russia sends bombers to Syria using base in
Iran.''
And how about this alarming headline from the Wall Street Journal:
``The U.S. sent another $1.3 billion to Iran after hostages were
released.''
Yet we continue to allow this. We are allowing this.
Just last weekend, Iran threatened to shoot down our Navy aircraft in
the region. These are our men and women, and Iran is threatening to
shoot them down. What is next, folks? These actions will only continue
because this administration yields to their demands. From the start, I
have spoken out against this deal with Iran, which not only threatens
our safety but the safety of our ally Israel. It threatens us here at
home as well.
As we remembered the victims of 9/11 this past weekend, I was
reminded of Iran's link to Al Qaeda, the ones who carried out that
horrific attack on our homeland 15 years ago. In 2011, the Treasury
Department officially accused Iran. This is our Treasury Department.
They accused Iran, as the Wall Street Journal report put it, ``of
forging an alliance with Al Qaeda in a pact that allows the terrorist
group to use Iranian soil as a transit point for moving money, arms,
and fighters to its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.''
It is astounding that despite all of this, we continue to broker a
deal with Iran. Before more of these dangerous acts continue, we should
scrap this ill-advised deal and hold Iran accountable for all of their
actions.
I say to Senator Daines, I am very, very proud that my Republican
colleagues are joining me here on the floor today to recognize that our
country needs leadership. We need leadership. I look forward to the
thoughts from my friend on the Armed Services Committee, the Senator
from South Dakota.
Mr. DAINES. I say thank you to Senator Ernst. As I listened to
Senator Ernst, I was struck by the fact that here to my right I have
Lieutenant Colonel Ernst, who proudly served in the Iowa Army National
Guard, and to my left I have Lieutenant Colonel Dan Sullivan, U.S.
Marine Corps Reserve, the Senator from Alaska.
So it is really an honor to be here between veterans who are speaking
on behalf of our veterans about what is going on here in Washington and
how broken it is. It is my honor now to introduce Senator Mike Rounds.
Mike was the Governor of South Dakota. So he had the Guard reporting to
him as the Governor. Montana and South Dakota share a fence line, as we
say, Senator Rounds. So my good friend and my neighbor from South
Dakota, Senator Rounds, thanks for joining us.
Mr. ROUNDS. First of all, let me just thank you for putting together
this discussion today. Let me thank both the Senator from Alaska and
the Senator from Iowa for their service to our country, although the
Senator from Iowa is clearly too young to have retired already.
I did have the opportunity and the true privilege of serving as the
Governor of South Dakota and of working with a number of members of the
National Guard--in fact, not only Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid
City, SD, but also the 114th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard,
out of Sioux Falls. Both have participated in the defense of our
country time and again.
Today, let my just add a little bit of my thoughts in terms of what
is going on here in the Senate today. I speak of it not in terms of
partisan issues but rather as statements of fact and finding a way to
identify them and finding ways in which we can actually take our
system, make it better than what it is today, and try to discover what
it is that makes this system down here so difficult to work through in
times in which we should find solid support for such items as a Defense
appropriations bill.
South Dakotans have heard me say time and again that the No. 1
responsibility of the Federal Government is the defense of our country.
Unless that responsibility is fulfilled, our freedoms are in jeopardy.
Yet, six times--six times--this body has been blocked by Senate
Democrats from considering legislation to fund the Department of
Defense. That is funding necessary for our troops to accomplish their
missions.
It sounds partisan, but it is simply a fact. Democrats have made a
conscious decision to block even debate of this appropriations bill on
the floor of the Senate. Yet, as we noted yesterday during our colloquy
yesterday, the Defense appropriations bill is not a partisan bill. In
fact, it passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously.
There was not a single vote against it--Democrat and Republican alike
sending it out, saying it is a good bill.
It is largely free of budget gimmicks, and it is in line with the
budget that we agreed to last December. I have said since taking office
that we must get back to what we call regular order when it comes to
the budget process, by passing not only the Defense appropriations
bill, but I think we should be passing all of the appropriations bills
one by one--not as one single huge bill but as 12 separate
appropriations bills

[[Page S5709]]

in which we get the opportunity, with a 60-vote agreement, to debate
the merits of each bill separately on the floor.
Leader McConnell, to his credit, set aside 12 separate weeks to bring
those bills down in order to accomplish this. We have not gotten the
job done. It is an important tool, I think. If we were to go through
these 12 bills, it is the one way in which we can actually fine-tune
part of the Federal budget.
But I guess there is another issue that should be discussed as well.
Even if we did all 12 bills in the Senate--or in the House--we would be
talking only about funding defense and nondefense discretionary
funding--nothing about the mandatory payments that our Federal
Government is expected to put together.
Right now, even if we pass all 12 bills, the only part of the budget
that we talk about is $1.15 trillion out of a $4 trillion national
budget on an annual basis. How do you fix a $550 billion deficit if all
you are going to talk about is 25 percent of the budget in the first
place?
Yet what we are talking about is trying to balance that budget--half
of which goes to defense--on the backs of the young men and women who
stand up for our country. That is not right, yet, that is
what sequestration does.

Now, all of my colleagues on the floor of the Senate today with me,
in addition to many of the others--both Republican and Democrat--are
united in an effort to try to attack this crisis. You see, here is the
deal. The Congressional Budget Office has already projected that within
10 years, 99 percent of all of the Federal revenue coming in--gas tax
money, personal income tax money, corporate income tax money--is going
to go back out in two categories: interest on the Federal debt and
mandatory payments on mandatory programs such as Medicare, Medicaid,
and Social Security.
There will be nothing left for defense, nothing left for roads and
bridges, nothing left for research, nothing left for education. That
crisis, which occurs in 10 years, is not a crisis then; it is a crisis
now. How do we address that if we can't even start with the one item
that we all seem to agree on, and that is funding our troops? That is
the reason why we are here today.
We need to start someplace. So as freshmen, we are down here to say
enough is enough. We want to change the way that the Senate operates.
We are prepared to stand down here and to tell everybody else that
there is a better way to do it. Back in South Dakota, when you send off
young men who are in the National Guard, you send them off and you wish
them the best. You really mean it. Their moms and their dads are there.
You tell them that you will do everything you can to see that they come
home safe.
We have that same obligation here in the Senate. You see, I don't
want our forces to go to war and have it be a fair fight. What I want
is for our forces to go to war with absolute certainty that they will
crush whoever is in the way, that they will come in with the best
strategic plan, that they will come in with the best intelligence, with
the best equipment, and with all of the necessary supplies that they
need.
They put their lives on the line. We should not be sitting here today
trying to leverage--Republicans or Democrats--what we think is more
important, rather than simply agreeing as Americans that this is the
most important thing that we do. We defend our country. That is what we
get sent here for in the first place. That is what we all committed to
do.
Yet we find ourselves today in a position where, once again and for
six times, our friends on the other side of the aisle have decided it
is politically expedient to get other things done, that they are going
to withhold what has been in the past a bipartisan agreement to fund
our troops on a regular basis and in a timely fashion. This has to
stop.
If we are going to talk about the bigger picture of fixing these
budgets and talk about all of the other items that should be voted on
every single year--not just the defense and nondefense discretionary
items but the mandatory payments as well--we ought to at least start
with something that we all agree on.
Either side, Republicans or Democrats, will say that they care about
our troops. I believe them. But let's put that into action. Let's
actually step forward before we leave on this break and make darn sure
that our troops are taken care of and that it is no longer a partisan
issue or being held as a chit to try to get something else done within
the Senate.
With that, I appreciate the fact that the Senator put this together.
Once again, thank you to our other Members who are members of the Armed
Services Committee. I am very, very proud to be a part of this very,
very special body, but it is time we got back to work and that we
recognize that the crisis 10 years from now should be addressed now and
not in 10 years.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this issue. I look forward
to listening to my other colleagues today as well. Thank you.
Mr. DAINES. I say to Senator Rounds, thank you.
We have heard from a lieutenant colonel, Senator Ernst. We have heard
from a former Governor, Senator Rounds.
I say to Senator Rounds, I could see the passion. This is not just in
our head, it is in our heart. You looked in the eyes of the troops. You
have wished them the very best as they deployed--going into harm's way
to protect our freedoms in this country--as the Governor of South
Dakota. I am honored to stand here today with you and to push this
institution to fulfill its duty on behalf of our men and women who
serve in the Armed Forces and are performing their duty.
Speaking of executive leadership, I am honored now to ask Senator
Perdue of Georgia to share his thoughts on this. Senator Perdue served
40 years in the private sector, rising to the highest level in the
corporate world, to CEO. He brings that business experience, that focus
on results, that accountability that Washington, DC, so desperately
needs.
Senator Perdue has the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, one of the two
submarine bases that support the sea leg of our nuclear triad. In
Montana, we have the ICBMs, the land leg. Senator Perdue has the sea
leg, one of the three legs of that very important deterrent that we
have, a nuclear deterrent.
I say to Senator Perdue, thank you for joining us today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. PERDUE. I say to Senator Daines, I am honored to be here with the
other freshmen. I am humbled by the emotion that I have heard here in
the last half hour. I am humbled to be a part of this freshman class.
By the way, we all ran on this issue. We ran on the fact that
government was not functioning, that it was dysfunctional. What we see
today and why we are here on the floor of the Senate today is to talk
about that dysfunction.
Let me just share a few highlights of what I have seen in the press
in the last few weeks:
``Obama administration again underestimates Islamic State as Afghan
affiliate grows into threat.''
``DC transit police officer charged with aiding ISIS.''
``ISIS increasingly using women and children to terrorize France.''
``Five US troops wounded in combat with ISIS in Afghanistan.''
``Vladimir Putin's rumblings raise new fears of Ukraine conflict.''
``Russia holds biggest military drill yet in Crimea.''
``Iran escalates high seas harassment of US Navy.''
``Iran threatens to destroy Israel with 100,000 missiles.''
``North Korea conducts fifth nuclear test, claims it has made
warheads with `higher strike power.' ''
``South Korea prepares for `worst case scenario' with North Korea.''
These are just a few samples of headlines in the last few weeks
alone. What we see right now going on in the Senate is gridlock--the
gridlock that is creating the backlash that we are seeing in the
Presidential race right now.
People back home know Washington is dysfunctional and that it is not
working. But right now we have a situation where the Democrats are
blocking these Defense appropriations. Yet again, the Senate has
reentered this period of dysfunction. The world is more dangerous than
it has been at any time in my lifetime.
I am a product of the nuclear age, the Cold War. I grew up in a
military town, and at one point we had B-52s there. I

[[Page S5710]]

remember the Cuban missile crisis, where KC-135s, B-52s, and C-141s
were flying out of there in support of the blockade over Cuba. Yet,
today I believe the world is more dangerous than it has ever been.
Right now we face a global security crisis. I believe it is on
several levels.
First, there is the rise of aggressiveness in Russia and China,
partly caused by our own intransigence, by creating power vacuums
around the world and encouraging misbehavior.
Second, right now I believe ISIS is a product of our own creation in
many ways. The early removal of our troops from Iraq created a vacuum
into which ISIS has grown. They needed territory to validate their
caliphate, and they got that.
We now face nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.
We have a cyber war going on today. I personally believe we have been
invaded, which means that today we are at war with nation states around
the world. Right now, two brigades are being stood up in my home State,
in Augusta, GA, Fort Gordon. Two cyber warrior brigades are being stood
up right now--2 of 31 brigades in our U.S. Army. I am proud of those
people. They are going to stand up to this threat, but it is real.
Lastly, we have an arms race in space that nobody is talking about.
In my lifetime, I have never seen the symmetric threats and the
asymmetric threats that we face in our country today. Ensuring the
safety of our men and women in uniform--those who protect our freedom
around the world--should never be open to political games, least of all
now in the face of all these myriad threats, but obviously Senate
Democrats in this body don't feel that way.
Since I came to the Senate, our colleagues across the aisle--many
friends--have blocked funding for our military six times. Six times in
my tenure here, Democratic Members of this body have put their partisan
games before funding in support of our troops, and that is after the
appropriations--as you just heard, 30 to 0--14 Democrats and 16
Republicans got together in a room, argued their differences, and came
to a bipartisan agreement. Isn't that what we were sent here to do?
That is what they did. They passed this bill in committee. There is no
debate here; everybody in this body wants this bill. I just don't
understand why they are now holding it hostage for other partisan
political games they are playing right now.
One of only 6 reasons 13 Colonies came together in the first place
was to provide for the national defense. Yet, some 200 years later, in
the midst of a global security crisis, Congress can't even get that
done. We can't fund our government and fund our military without drama.
What message does this send to our men and women in uniform around the
world? Can you imagine? They can't even depend on us here in this body
to fund the needs they have every day. This is a total breakdown in the
system.
Democrats are endangering our men and women in uniform, and they are
not doing their job. I am outraged by this. Georgians back home are
outraged. People around the country are outraged by this. Is anyone
surprised that less than 20 percent of Americans trust the Federal
Government? I am not surprised at all.
As I have said before, Democrats claim they want to support our
military. They tell us all their heart-wrenching stories. Some of them
have children in uniform. They call for action, and yet they are the
ones blocking this bill and blocking us from debating this on the floor
of the Senate. I don't understand that.
At a time when we should be united in the face of global threats, the
brinksmanship and gridlock permeating in this body are quite simply
disgraceful.
America must lead again. It must lead in the world. I have traveled
the world a lot, as the Presiding Officer has, in the last year and a
half, and the No. 1 request I get from heads of state we talk with is
America needs to lead again. They are not asking for us to be the
police anymore; they just need us to lead to common solutions against
these same threats that threaten their countries just as they threaten
ours.
We have to lead again, but to do that, we have to have a strong
foreign policy. To have a strong foreign policy, we have to have a
strong defense. To have a strong defense, we have to have a strong
economy. We know about the debt crisis. We can't fix our military
without having a strong economy and solving this debt crisis.
One of the biggest complaints I hear when we are doing continuing
resolutions--and that is what we do when we don't do our job, by the
way--is that it really hurts the military's ability to plan and to
train. They can't look forward, they are so worried about getting
funding today. And I have seen those shortfalls around the world, as
the Presiding Officer has. That is what it has come to.
My colleagues across the aisle believe their political gain in this
Presidential election season is more important than our men and women
in uniform and more important than protecting our country. This is not
a partisan comment, this is fact.
I am an outsider of this process, and I have to tell you that I feel
the same outrage the people back home feel. We can no longer take our
security for granted, we can no longer take our military for granted,
and we can no longer take our men and women in uniform for granted.
I firmly believe our Founders would be outraged by what is going on
right now. Senator William Pew was the very first person in 1789 who
stood in my seat right here. In the Senate room just down the hall,
William Pew--ironic as it is, a direct descendent of his was on my
staff when I ran for this office. But I think that man would be
absolutely apoplectic about us not funding our military. Can you
imagine somebody who put their life on the line back then looking at
what we are doing right now, the nonsense we have going on?
The stakes are too high for this nonsense to continue. Democrats must
drop this obstructionism. It is time for Washington to fund our
military, pass the Defense appropriations bill, and move on to fund our
government.
Senator Daines, I can't thank you enough for arranging this colloquy
today and for what we did yesterday.
I know Senator Sullivan is on the floor to speak. His leadership in
this regard has been very encouraging to me as well.
Thank you.
I yield the floor.
Mr. DAINES. I say to Senator Perdue, thank you. Your clear eyes in
bringing that clear-headed perspective and 40 years of experience in
the private sector are so badly needed here. I am grateful for your
love for our country and your experience here and fighting on behalf of
our veterans in Washington, DC.
The Senator mentioned that the world is more dangerous than it has
ever been before. I was flying back home to Montana late Thursday
night, flying Delta Air Lines through Minneapolis back to Great Falls,
MT, to be at Malmstrom Air Force Base, with the airmen there, on
Friday. We often have Wi-Fi on planes today. I was watching my Twitter
feed, and I saw the reports of the 5.0 quake that was reported in North
Korea because they had conducted their fifth test--their most powerful
test yet of an atomic bomb.
Six weeks ago I was in Israel. We talked about Iran, spoke about
nuclear threats and existential threats to the world. We spoke to the
Israeli leadership, to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli
intelligence, about the threat from Iran. We crawled in the terror
tunnels that came out of Gaza that Hamas had built--Hamas largely
funded by Iran. We stood on the northern border of Israel staring into
Lebanon at 100,000-plus rockets from Hezbollah pointed at Israel today
that are primarily funded by Iran.
I agree with Senator Perdue--the world is more dangerous today than
it was on September 11, 2001, when you look at the threats and, as he
pointed out, the cyber threats as well.
I am very privileged and honored to stand with Senator Dan Sullivan
of Alaska. My father is a marine. He served with the 58th Rifle Company
out of Billings, MT. To have a lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Marine
Corps Reserve, Lieutenant Colonel Sullivan--Senator Sullivan, it is an
honor to have you with us here today. Thank you for sharing your
thoughts.
Mr. SULLIVAN. I say to Senator Daines, I again thank you for your

[[Page S5711]]

leadership. All of my colleagues, the Presiding Officer, you, the other
colleagues we have seen on the floor--your leadership has been
outstanding, my good friend from Montana.
It begs the question. Why have we, the Republican freshman class--
really for weeks, we have all been coming to the Senate floor to talk
about what is happening. We have been coming to the Senate floor to
counter the minority leader's decision to filibuster our troops, as
Senator Rounds mentioned, six times. There is no other bill in the
Senate, since we have become Senators, that the minority leader wants
to focus on and filibuster than the bill that funds our troops. It is
pretty remarkable. I think it is a disgrace.
So we are here because we want to bring attention to this issue. What
is happening here? Sometimes it can be confusing.
We have the press that sits above the Presiding Officer's chair, and
they watch what is going on. We want them to report this. We want the
American people to know what is happening here because it doesn't
matter where you are from, what State you are in, what party you are
affiliated with in terms of politics, if you knew your Senator from
your State was filibustering the spending that supports our troops when
they are in combat all around the world right now, you would probably
be very disappointed. You would think it was a story the press would
want to write about, but they haven't yet, but we are trying because it
is a very important issue. I believe the American people really care
about this issue. That is why we are here.
I will tell you another reason why we are on the floor, why we have
spent hours and weeks coming to this floor and talking about this
issue, because there is someone else who cares about this issue--the
men and women in the U.S. military. They really care about this issue.
I know there is this kind of sense in the Senate--when these votes
are taken late at night and there are filibusters and procedural
issues, I think a lot of my colleagues think that the troops don't know
what is going on, that somehow they don't know the minority leader of
the Senate and his colleagues have filibustered the funding for their
mission and their welfare and their training six times in the last year
and a half. But the troops do know that. They know it. They read about
it. I guarantee you they are concerned about it. I think in some ways
they think it is demoralizing, as Senator Perdue mentioned. It doesn't
give the military leadership the chance to plan long term.
Another reason we are on the floor--you know it--is we need to let
our troops know we have their back. There might be somebody in this
body who thinks filibustering spending for our troops six times is a
policy they can be supportive of. Again, I don't know why the minority
leader is doing this. I certainly don't know why my colleagues on the
other side are blindly following him. But we need to be on the floor to
let the troops know, when they watch this, when they hear about this
and it confuses them, that we have their back. We don't think this is
appropriate.
Yesterday when a number of us were on the floor, we talked about what
we are asking--what the President, the Secretary of Defense, and our
generals are asking our men and women in uniform to do. They are all
over the world keeping us safe--in Iraq, in Syria, in the South China
Sea, in Europe. Many of the initiatives undertaken by the President in
terms of our troops in these places--many of us are supportive of them,
but this is a lot that they are responsible for. They are doing so
much. You come back to this body, what is this body doing?
Filibustering spending for our troops. They are certainly doing their
job; it is time the minority leader let us do our job to fund them.
Recently, of all the different things they are supposed to be doing,
we learned about something new that they might be doing. In a deal
recently negotiated by Secretary Kerry, the men and women in the U.S.
military might possibly soon be conducting joint airstrikes and sharing
intelligence with the Russians. There was a New York Times article
today that makes it clear that our military leaders are very, very
skeptical of this deal. So it is another thing we might be asking them
to do--share intelligence and conduct joint operations with a country
we shouldn't be trusting, particularly in terms of military terms.
I will quote from the New York Times today. The result of this deal
potentially--and by the way, the State Department has not yet allowed
us to see the terms of it. We haven't been able to see it. It kind of
sounds like that other deal Secretary Kerry negotiated, the Iran
nuclear deal.
This is from the New York Times:

The result is that at a time when the United States and
Russia are at their most combative posture since the end of
the Cold War, the American military is suddenly being told
that it may, in a week, have to start sharing intelligence
with one of its biggest adversaries to jointly target Islamic
State and Nusra Front forces in Syria.

This is from Gen. Philip Breedlove, the recent NATO Commander, who is
very well-respected and who just stepped down.

I remain skeptical about anything to do with the Russians.
There are a lot of concerns about putting us out there with
this kind of agreement.

So that is again what we might be asking our military to do soon, yet
we are not going to fund them.
The Washington Post today, in an editorial about this deal--titled
``Either way, Putin wins''--made it clear this is a deal that is not in
our interest. Yet that is what our military might be asked to do. But
we will not fund them, and the minority leader continues to filibuster.
Mr. President, one of the things we have been asking of our
colleagues on the other side of the aisle is to come down here and
explain why they are doing this--why, for weeks--six times in a year,
year and a half. Why?
To the credit of the Senator from Illinois, yesterday he actually did
come down. Senator Durbin did. He kind of had to because we made a
unanimous consent request to move this funding forward, so somebody
actually had to come down and say no and do a little explaining. But at
least he did. For those who saw it, the explanation fell way short. It
was kind of DC mumbo jumbo, process bureaucratese. It was not
convincing at all--at all. So it would be good if they could come down
and explain it a little better than the Senator from Illinois did. But
at least he gave it a shot.
Here is what we know. We need to fund our troops now. They are
working so hard for us. It is the right thing to do. The American
people want it, our troops need it, and it is our solemn responsibility
and our duty in the Senate.
I thank Senator Daines again for his leadership on this. This is a
critically important issue, regardless of whether the media picks it
up. We are going to continue to highlight it because it is an outrage
that the No. 1 bill filibustered by the minority leader for the last
year and a half in the Senate is the bill to fund our troops. It is an
outrage.
I thank my colleague again for his leadership.
Mr. DAINES. I thank Senator Sullivan. I am not sure whether to call
him Senator Sullivan or United States Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel
Sullivan, but his humility as a soldier, as someone who served in the
United States Marine Corps leads me to brag about him. He is bringing
the voice of the troops, as he is one--a reservist--to the floor of the
Senate. He is a voice for those whose voices are not being heard right
now. We are making that clear today, and I thank him again for bringing
that voice to the floor.
I also think about Senator Sullivan when he talks about Russia. It is
one thing being a Montanan and speaking about Russia, but when you are
an Alaskan speaking about Russia--well, Alaska is on the doorstep of a
resurgent Russia. I know this threat is particularly meaningful to him
as an Alaskan, and he is proud of the men and women from Alaska who
serve regarding that threat.
I am now looking forward to hearing from Senator Gardner. I think we
are going to have Senator Sullivan preside over the Senate so Senator
Gardner can come and share his thoughts.
Senator Gardner is a dear friend. He also resides in a Rocky Mountain
State. He is from Colorado, and I am from Montana. We share a love of
the West and our beautiful States. I have

[[Page S5712]]

been so impressed with Senator Gardner's leadership as a freshman here
in Washington, DC. We served together in the House, and then we came to
the Senate. Senator Gardner has been a leader on the threat of North
Korea and helped to pass a bill with strong bipartisan support as a
member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
I am grateful for his leadership and what he is doing for our country
in coming to the floor today and speaking on behalf of our troops. I
thank him.
(Mr. SULLIVAN assumed the Chair.)
Mr. GARDNER. I thank Senator Daines for organizing this discussion
again today, as he did the discussion we had yesterday. And I thank our
colleague from Alaska for his leadership on this matter for a number of
weeks as we have discussed why this funding bill for our troops, which
pays our troops, gives our troops a pay raise, and is critical mission
support, is being filibustered. Six times it has been blocked by a
partisan minority that actually supported this measure out of the
Committee on Appropriations unanimously.
I thank my colleague for bringing attention to this very important
discussion as we end the fiscal year and continue providing the men and
women in uniform with the resources they need to defend themselves,
protect themselves, and defend this Nation's homeland.
This is incredibly important, not just for Colorado. Yes, Colorado is
home to 49,000 Guard and Reserve members and uniformed military
members. It is home to a number of defense installations across the
front range of Colorado.
My colleague mentioned the important part of the triad that is in
Montana. We also share a number of those ICBMs located in Eastern
Colorado--a critical part of that triad, which is our deterrent, our
efforts to make sure we have the ability to address threats to this
Nation. The Senator from Montana mentioned the detonation of a nuclear
weapon by Kim Jong Un. He wants nothing more than the ability to place
a miniaturized warhead on top of a missile and use it against the
United States. These are real threats. These are not made-up problems.
These aren't just hypothetical issues. These are real threats.
We heard on the floor today from Lt. Col. Dan Sullivan, who has
served this Nation in the armed forces; we heard from LTC Joni Ernst,
who served this Nation; we heard from Governor Rounds, his unique
perspective; and we have heard over the last couple of days and weeks
from a number of people with a variety of backgrounds about the need to
fund our troops and to pass this bill. We heard from a Governor who had
called up members of the South Dakota National Guard and who has gone
to ceremonies for National Guard members who are going overseas--Active
Duty--and who has gone to funerals of people in South Dakota whom they
lost. So this is a very important debate we are having right now.
There seems to be a key question that is not being asked, and that
key question stems from that 30-to-0 vote out of the Committee on
Appropriations for this bill, with Republicans and Democrats alike
voting for this bill. There were 30 people who voted for this bill.
There was no one in opposition. Yet we cannot get this bill to the
floor. There is a partisan obstruction, a tactic known as the
filibuster, that is being employed against it to stop this from even
being debated. We are not talking about being amended; it is not even
being debated because they are afraid, for whatever reason, to bring
this bill to the floor.
I guess the people of this country ought to be asking every Member of
this Chamber--Members on the Democratic side of the aisle and Members
on the Republican side of the aisle, anybody: Do you oppose this bill?
It is a simple question that ought to be asked of every Member of this
body: Do you oppose the Defense appropriations bill? Give the number of
the bill.
The fact is, this bill passed 30 to 0 out of the Committee on
Appropriations. When we asked for unanimous consent yesterday to move
to the debate of the bill, we heard a glowing endorsement of the bill.
We heard our colleagues on the other side of the aisle state how
supportive they were of this legislation and the policies it contained.
That is why they voted for the bill. So the question is, Do they oppose
the bill? Let's get people in the Senate on record. Do they oppose the
bill?
Right now, we know of no one who opposes the bill. So the next
question ought to be: Why are you blocking it? If they do not oppose
the bill--if people don't oppose the bill--then why are they blocking
it? The answer clearly isn't policy because they support the policy.
The answer isn't funding because they support the funding. The answer
isn't that they oppose it because it funds the troops because they
support funding the troops. So there must be another reason, right?
Well, the reason is simply politics at its worst. The reason is a
leadership decision to obstruct this bill--to obstruct the passage of
legislation that would fund our troops.
Again, in the objection to our unanimous consent request to proceed
to this bill, we heard from our colleagues on the other side of the
aisle who are voting to obstruct the bill that, look, they agree with
the bill. They agree with it. They agree with it. We just need
different timing, we should wait until all the other bills are in
place, or we should do it as one big package--basically ceding to this
body that we should never do stand-alone appropriations bills, that we
have to do everything as one big, massive chunk of omnibus
appropriations or continuing resolutions.

You know, I don't think I could get away with this at home. If I told
our 12-year-old daughter at home that she needs to take the trash out,
and her response to me is: Look, I agree with you. I agree the trash
should be taken out. I agree that trash can is too full. But then she
doesn't do it. That is a problem. That doesn't tell me she agrees the
trash can is too full. That tells me she agrees to ignore the wishes of
her dad--in that case. And that is the same analogy that can be used
here.
Mow the lawn. Our son is a little too young for that. If my wife told
me to go out and mow the lawn, and I said: You know what, I agree. The
grass is too long. It needs to be mowed. I agree with you. But if the
lawn never gets mowed, all my neighbors in that whole town know the
grass is too tall and that I didn't do my job.
That is the same thing that is happening in the Senate. People can
say they agree all they want with the funding for this bill, but when
they vote to obstruct it, when they vote to shoot it down, when they
fail to vote to bring it up for debate, I guess the only way you can
consider that is that it is in opposition to the efforts to fund our
troops.
Filibustering the Defense appropriations bill endangers our
military's ability to respond to the threats they face every day, and
they face significant threats. Let's just take a look at Iran alone. We
only need to look at the recent uptick in unsafe encounters that have
been widely reported in newspapers around the country between American
sailors in the Persian Gulf and the Iranian Guard vessels in the
Persian Gulf to see what happens when our enemies sense weakness.
In 2016, there have been 31 unsafe encounters between the U.S. Navy
and Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf. In all of 2015--the entire
year--there were only 25 unsafe encounters in the Persian Gulf. Yet
this year, in August and September, we have seen 31, far outnumbering
what we saw in the entirety of last year.
Less than 2 weeks ago, seven Iranian fast attack boats were involved
in an unsafe encounter with the USS Firebolt, with one Iranian craft
coming to a stop in front of the American ship. That provocative
maneuver brought the Iranian boat within 100 yards of the Firebolt, a
coastal patrol boat that carries a crew of about 30. This was unsafe,
unprofessional, and could have led to a collision.
Less than 3 weeks ago, the USS Squall had to fire three warning
shots. They fired three warning shots when an Iranian Guard vessel came
within 200 yards of it. GEN Joseph Votel, the Commander of the United
States Central Command, has said the attacks are ``concerning,'' and he
went on to say that he believes the ``unsafe, unprofessional'' behavior
is an attempt by Iran to ``exert their influence and authority in the
region.''
So while this administration is paying Iran billions of dollars--
while they are giving that money, billions of dollars, to Iran, the
same country that

[[Page S5713]]

held American sailors hostage and that is performing unsafe,
provocative maneuvers in the Persian Gulf--this body, the Senate, as a
result of a partisan minority, is holding the DOD appropriations bill
hostage. They are denying critical funds to those American sailors at
the same time we are giving money to the army, the navy of those who
would hold our own sailors hostage. They are doing this through the
money--the billions of dollars--being given to the Iranian regime.
Now remember, this bill isn't a partisan product. This bill is the
result of extreme bipartisan collaboration--input from leaders of the
Department of Defense, strategists, people who know what they are
talking about, and people on the Committee on Armed Services, such as
the Presiding Officer of the Senate who served in the Armed Forces.
This is a product that had 30 people voting for it--Republicans and
Democrats. It is a bipartisan product, yet it is being blocked every
time we try to bring the bill up.
If the Presiding Officer were on the floor with us now, I would ask
him if he thinks that is a rational reason he could explain to the men
and women in his unit. Could he say: Look, the Senate has said they
support the bill, but they refuse to pass the bill. Would they say: OK.
I understand. I get that. That is not the reaction he would receive.
When we look at the needs of the commanders to have certainty in
their funding, it is real. They need passage of this bill. We can't
wait until the last minute and cobble it together, put it together with
a bunch of other bills, fund it for a couple of weeks and then do it
again and again and again in an uncertain manner.
Secretary James said a full-year continuing resolution could
underfund the Air Force by nearly $1.3 billion and would cause many
issues to their systems.
Delaying the annual appropriations bill could limit our ability to
take our fight to the enemies because the enemies are certainly taking
their fight to us. Production of the Joint Direct Attack Munition--the
JDAM--currently being used in the fight against ISIL would be cut in
the short term under a continuing resolution. Upgrades could be cut to
the fleets of the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft, C-130 cargo
transports, and both B-52 and B-2 bombers. Yet that is what our
colleagues on the other side of the aisle are insisting by blocking
this bipartisan legislation.

So to my colleague from Montana and the Presiding Officer from
Alaska, I thank them for continuing to shine a light on this.
I hope the American people will ask this question to all of us: Do
you support this bill? If you do, why do you refuse to pass the bill?
It is a simple question, and it is a simple answer. Politics don't
cut it. The American people deserve results.
So I thank the Senator from Montana for his leadership on this. It is
an honor to serve with him as we continue to highlight this failure of
the Senate to move beyond petty partisan politics.
Mr. DAINES. I thank Senator Gardner for those great thoughts.
This struck me: What if the Members of Congress were dependent upon
the members of the U.S. military to vote on whether we got our
paychecks or not? Maybe we ought to turn around the tables. Maybe we
should halt paying this body until our troops get the assurance that
they are going to get paid. Let's put the accountability right back on
this institution.
I thank the Senator for standing up on behalf of the men and women
who wear the uniform of the United States of America military.
I spent 28 years in business before I came to Capitol Hill. I spent
one term in the House, and now this is my first term in the Senate.
When I came here with my freshman class in January 2015, we came in
here with our loved ones. Our friends and family were up in the
Gallery, near where we stand here and sit here today. About 30 feet
from where I am standing right here, we all stood on that step, and the
Vice President, right there, administered an oath to us. We raised our
right hand and took the oath. In that oath that I was honored to give
that day after I was elected by the people of Montana, I swore and
said: ``I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and
domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that
I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or
purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the
duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.''
What has happened? We all took that same oath. It is time we started
acting like it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
recognized to speak as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Air Travel to and from Cuba

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I wish to cover something that happened
today. A revelation was just made a few hours ago at a hearing in the
House. I will give the history of this.
As we all know, after the President's opening toward Cuba, there was
increased travel to Cuba, now including the opening of commercial
travel to the island from the United States.
Back in May, the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of
Homeland Security told the House Homeland Security Committee that new
scheduled air service from the United States to Cuba, and vice versa,
was not going to start until air marshals were allowed to be onboard
those flights.

In August, the TSA provided the U.S.-Cuba Trade and
Economic Council, as well as reporters, a statement . . .
[and they said] that the United States and Cuba had ``entered
into an aviation security agreement that sets forth the legal
framework for the deployment'' of air marshals ``on board
certain flights to and from Cuba.''

Today, at a hearing in the House, ``a top TSA official divulged [for
the first time] . . . that Cuba has yet to agree to allow U.S. air
marshals aboard scheduled airline flights between the two countries--
meaning there have been no air marshals on board thus far, despite''
the fact that the administration said there would be. So, basically,
what we have here is an outright lie.
Last month, to great fanfare, the Obama Administration announced that
an agreement had been reached that there was going to be air marshals
on commercial flights to and from Cuba, and today they confirmed that
they weren't telling the truth. There was no agreement finalized. On
most, if not all, of these flights there are no air marshals. This is
endangering U.S. passengers.
This is a startling admission from the administration, and it is a
startling admission by the TSA to the American people that they lied.
They told us these flights would not begin until they had reached an
agreement with the Cuban Government to have air marshals and other
security measures in place. Today, only because they were asked--only
because they were asked--did they admit that this is not happening.
It was incumbent upon the TSA to lock down a Federal air marshal
agreement before these flights started taking off to begin with. That
is what they told us they were going to do. That is what they said or
implied was happening. Unless that question had been specifically asked
today at that hearing, we would not have known about this.
My friends, this is the latest example of an administration that is
so intent on burnishing its legacy, on getting credit for this opening,
that they are willing to throw everything else out the window. They
already are ignoring the human rights violations.
We have one of the leading human rights dissidents in Cuba on the
verge of death because of a hunger strike, and this administration
hasn't said a word about it. They don't do anything about it. They
don't highlight that case. Instead, they are all celebrating and
popping corks of champagne on these new flights, which they told us
were going to be safe because they were going to have air marshals.
Today, because they were specifically asked, we find out that it is not
true. This is outrageous. The TSA under the Obama administration has
lied to us about the status of the security.
Last week, I filed a bill that would stop all commercial flights to
Cuba until this agreement is in place, until adequate security is in
place. Now we know for a fact that adequate security is not in place.
These flights should be

[[Page S5714]]

suspended until such time as this agreement is signed.
I want us to think about what this means if it doesn't happen--what
it means is these are now flights that are vulnerable. There is a
reason why we have air marshals on flights. It is because of the
experience of 9/11, of which we just commemorated the anniversary on
Sunday. We now have flights 90 miles from our shores that could
theoretically be commandeered, and we could have a repeat of that,
particularly in South Florida, which is just minutes away from the
airport in Havana. This is just unacceptable.

Forget about how we feel about Cuba policy for a moment. They have
lied to the American people. They have lied to this Congress, and they
were only caught today because they were specifically asked about the
status of this. This puts us in incredible danger.
By the way, it is important for everyone to remember that years ago
there were no metal detectors even at airports. They started putting
metal detectors at airports 30 years or 35 years ago because of
hijackings to Cuba. There is a reason.
So now here we have this situation where theoretically some terrorist
could travel from any country in the world into Cuba and then try to
come into the United States, commandeer an aircraft, and I don't need
to say what could happen next. I think this is an incredibly dangerous
situation.
I think we need to unite across parties, across the aisle, and,
basically, say: No matter how you feel about Cuba policy, we all agree
that travel to Cuba should be safe--no less safe than travel to the
Bahamas, no less safe than travel to the Dominican Republic, no less
safe than travel to Mexico. Why are we allowing the Cuban Government to
conduct flights without the same conditions we have on allies of the
United States? Cuba is not an ally of the United States.
The Cuban Government hosts intelligence facilities for both the
Chinese and the Russians. The Cuban Government harbors fugitives from
American justice. The Cuban Government helped North Korea evade U.N.
sanctions on missile technology and weapons. Yet we have allies in this
hemisphere who have to comply with all of this, but not Cuba. This is
absurd.
The TSA has lied. It leaves this Nation vulnerable. Those commercial
flights need to be immediately suspended until such time as these
security measures are put in place. This is something that just broke
hours ago, and I hope we can come together here and actually deal with
it, irrespective of how we may feel about the issue of Cuba.

Zika Virus Funding

Mr. President, the Governor of Florida was here yesterday and again
today to discuss Zika funding. I met with him personally yesterday, and
we met with the majority leader earlier today to reiterate again its
importance.
Let me reiterate again the statistics. There are now, on the mainland
of the United States, almost 3,000 cases. In combination with U.S.
territories--meaning, primarily, the island of Puerto Rico--there are
now close to 16,000 cases. In my home State of Florida alone, we are up
to 799 cases, and 70 of those cases are locally transmitted, meaning
that they were not Zika infections acquired abroad. They were either
sexually transmitted or transmitted by a mosquito in the State of
Florida. As to infections involving pregnant women in Florida, there
are 86. That is combined, both travel and local transmission. It has
taken this Congress far too long to act.
Now, I believe the good news is that, given the conversations that
are still ongoing, we are on the verge of getting something done on the
fight against Zika. I remind everyone that the Senate did act on this
issue back in May in a bipartisan way, and I would take this moment to
point out that my colleague, Senator Nelson from Florida, has been
great to work with on this and multiple issues--but on this in
particular. I thank him for his partnership and hard work in this
regard. I enjoy our partnership on many issues involving the State of
Florida, including the water bill before the Senate, but on this issue
of Zika in particular. But it is time for the rest of us to come
together in the interest of our people.
I know that right now all the headlines are about the impact this is
having on Florida. But make no mistake, Zika is a national problem, and
it requires a Federal response including funding to develop a vaccine
that will eradicate this virus. So I do appreciate Governor Scott's
efforts at the State level to combat Zika. It is long past time that
this Congress follows suit.
This is, by the way, Governor Scott's second visit to Washington to
address Zika. I am not aware of any other Governor who has come up here
for the same purpose. But I can assure you that if we fail to seize the
chance to pass funding, we are going to see more Governors and more
Americans from every State and territory beating down the doors here in
Washington fairly soon. As I said earlier, there are almost 20,000
Americans that have now been infected, and I think it would be a tragic
and terrible mistake to ignore their plight. We have a chance here to
help to prevent even more people from getting infected, but to do so we
have to act now.
I want to point to one of the aspects of this issue that isn't talked
about enough. We already understand the risk of microcephaly and what
it means for unborn children. We understand the risk it poses to people
in general. But I want to talk a little bit today about the economic
impact of it. We can imagine that, as Zika outbreaks are being reported
around the world and for the first time ever the CDC is actually
designating areas of the continental United States as travel advisory
areas that perhaps people should avoid, it begins to have an economic
impact. I also don't need to remind people--although, maybe I should--
how important tourism is to the State of Florida. The evidence that
this is having an impact on our economy is now far more than just
anecdotal. I will quote extensively from an article in the Miami Herald
a few days ago.

In August, leisure airfare prices fell 17 percent year-
over-year at Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-
Hollywood International Airport, according to an analysis by
Harrell Associates. Fares for top routes at the nation's
other airports rose 4 percent over the same time period.

So other airports saw a 4-percent increase in fares, and leisure
airfare fell by 17 percent. People may think that this is good news for
the consumer. But this is reflective of something--that demand is down
and that the number of people wanting to travel there is down. This is
not travel in general, because across to other airports it was up 4
percent. But in two airports in South Florida, it was down by 17
percent. That is evidence that this is having an impact on travel, both
business and leisure.
Here is more evidence: ``And hotel bookings in greater downtown Miami
fell by nearly 3 percent in the first three weeks of August compared to
last year. . . .''
As someone raised by parents who worked in the tourism sector--
primarily in hotels--if these numbers and trends continue, not only are
these hotels going to get hurt, but the people working there are going
to get hurt.
There is a reason why this is happening. I will go to a couple more
business aspects that we would think would go beyond simple tourism,
just so we know this is not just about hotels and airports.
There is a Bay Harbor Islands-based company that does wedding
planning called Forever Events. The owners said that a couple from
California spent several months planning a destination wedding in Miami
and then cancelled it. Instead, they are getting married in California.
A nanny service that provides babysitting for families staying at
hotels and resorts, often because they are in town to celebrate
weddings, said the cancellations started coming as soon as the first
travel-related cases were discovered in February. They said that
families told them that because their wives were pregnant, they were
too nervous to travel to Miami.

Business has plummeted by about 25 percent, she said,
hurting her staff. Phones have gone quiet. . . . ``We used to
get calls every couple of weeks for a mom coming in town
having her baby and now we haven't gotten any in months. . .
. No calls at all.''

The rationale behind all this, perhaps, is a Kaiser Family Foundation
poll conducted in August, which found that ``48 percent of Americans
would be uncomfortable traveling to Zika infection areas within the
U.S., including Miami.''

[[Page S5715]]

So, again, this is not just something that is having an impact on our
health care system, which is dramatic in and of itself, but it is
having an economic impact as well, which is why it is so inexcusable
that we didn't address this in April. We couldn't get final passage on
this in May. I know the Senate did its part. It has gotten tangled up
in all this election-year politics.

All I would say to my colleagues is, we fight about so many things
around here. We have so many issues we could have a debate over. There
are some significant differences between our political parties. In
election years, they become more pronounced. Let's have debates about
those issues, but at least when it comes to public health and safety,
can't we say that on this issue, we are not going to play politics.
Let's put this issue aside and let's not entangle it in all the
political stuff that is going on because in the end, this does not
discriminate. This is an issue that affects anyone and everyone,
potentially.
That is what I hope is going to happen. We have taken far too long.
Can you imagine going back at the end of next week or at the end of
this month and explaining to people, not just in Florida but in
America, that Congress once again couldn't get anything done on this?
I would ask both sides to show a tremendous amount of flexibility. I
know there are ongoing conversations now behind the scenes to get some
resolution on this. There are so many other issues we could have an
argument over. On this one, let's just come together; let's provide the
funding.
It is already less than what the President asked for, and I believe
we will need more in the future. Let us come together, once and for
all, and let's get this done in the Senate, and then let's work on
encouraging our colleagues in the House to do the same so we have at
least some good news to tell the American people at the end of this
month. No. 1, your government didn't shut down; and, No. 2, Congress
has finally provided funds, not just to help States and localities deal
with Zika, not just to help health care facilities treat people with
Zika, and not just to help people prevent Zika but to continue the
research to develop a vaccine because once we have a vaccine, then I
think this issue becomes very different. Then we have an answer with
permanency to it. That is where I hope we are headed. That is why I
encourage my colleagues to continue to work on it. Let's get this done
once and for all. It is the right thing to do for America. It is the
right thing to do for our people.
Mr. 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. CARPER. 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.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today we have made important progress on a
piece of legislation that we refer to with another one of those funny
sounding names. In this case, it is WRDA. It is spelled W-R-D-A. That
stands for the Water Resources Development Act.
The average American who might tune into C-SPAN today probably has no
idea what it means when we use its nickname. Frankly, they are likely
confused with a lot of the other strange acronyms we use in Washington
as well, but the truth is, the things this WRDA bill will accomplish
will have a big effect on the everyday lives of a lot of Americans.
Many of them will be things that happen behind the scenes.
There are many important functions of the Federal Government that
require years of planning and action by Congress. We as private
citizens oftentimes sort of take them for granted. Hearing your local
Senator or Member of Congress talk about critical dredging projects
might sound boring, but if ships carrying groceries into our country's
ports can't reach their destination, the prices continue to rise; in
some cases, by a whole lot. That means families struggling to put food
on their tables must figure out how to stretch their strained budget
even further.
For the neediest among us, that ship reaching its port isn't just a
policy decision made in our Nation's capital, it is the difference
between a hungry child and a healthy one, but it takes a lot more work
to keep our children healthy.
In April of 2014, news broke of a horrendous drinking water crisis in
Flint, MI. Our networks and our newspapers were flooded with images of
families holding up jugs of discolored water that came from their
kitchen sinks and from their bathtubs. It was like we were watching a
nightmare unfold overnight, but in reality it was years in the making.
For decades, cities across this country have struggled to fund proper
maintenance of their drinking water infrastructure. In Flint, officials
repeatedly cut corners, with little regard for public health concerns,
in order to avoid investing in a high-quality water system. Let's think
about this. Really, what is more important than an investment in making
sure our kids aren't drinking water that slowly stunts the growth of
their brains and the development of their brains?
Unfortunately, while the national spotlight has focused on Flint,
aging water infrastructure is a growing problem faced by way too many
of our communities across this country. This year, the Guardian
newspaper found that over the past decade, water departments in at
least 33 large cities have chosen to test their water with methods that
would underestimate the lead levels in their drinking water--
underestimate.
Philadelphia, which is half an hour up the road from my home State
and hometown of Wilmington, DE, has been accused of having some of the
worst testing procedures of any city in the United States.
Congress banned lead water pipes some 30 years ago, but many of our
pipes are older than that. In fact, we don't even know the full extent
of the problem. Estimates of lead pipes still in use range from 3 to 10
million. That means some parts of our drinking water infrastructure are
poisoning unsuspecting families across this Nation of ours.
We are doing good bipartisan work today by moving forward on
authorizing programs that will begin to tackle not all but many of
these issues, but in truth this is only the tip of the iceberg. The
Environmental Protection Agency estimates it must spend nearly $400
billion between now and 2030. Think about that, $400 billion between
now and 2030 in order to keep our drinking water safe. It is not only
pipes that we have to maintain to ensure that our water supply is clean
and that we have enough of it.
For example, the Delaware River Basin supplies drinking water for
more than 15 million people. People don't just depend on this water for
drinking. This river houses the catches our fishermen and fisherwomen
depend on for their livelihood. This river serves as a shipping route
to direct goods to and from our local businesses. It facilitates
tourism that ripples through local economies up and down the eastern
seaboard.
Today we have made important strides toward improving coordinated
protection and restoration of the Delaware River Basin on which so many
rely. With this legislation, we are also taking important steps to
strengthen our coastal areas, which are the first line of defense
against extreme weather and sea level rise.
For communities near the ocean in Delaware, a severe storm isn't just
a day off from work or from school. It has the potential to wreak havoc
on our cities and our towns, potentially destroying local businesses
and causing irreparable damage to families' homes, as well as to our
transportation infrastructure or water and wastewater treatment systems
as well.
State and local governments that are already strapped for resources
are then forced to scramble to help their residents rebuild. Instead of
trying to patch the damage after every storm, maybe we ought to prepare
ahead of time to make our coastlines more resilient. That will keep
people safer and also save us a lot of money in the long term.
I learned this from my grandmother: An ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure, and no place is this saying truer than with regard to
maintaining our local critical infrastructure. Too often we in Congress
neglect our responsibility to invest in the

[[Page S5716]]

things that make life possible and better. We shy away from reminding
people that things worth having are worth paying for.
We weren't elected to take the easy way out. That isn't what we come
here for. We were elected to make the tough choices required of
leaders. I am proud of the bipartisan work that has been done today to
help make sure parents can feel confident about the glass of water they
will give their kids to drink at the supper table tomorrow or the week
after that.
I am proud we are taking action to address some of the often ignored
businesses of running a nation like ours. I hope my colleagues on both
sides of the aisle will join me to continue this good work. Let's
remind the American people that with a little determination, with a
little more dedication, we can accomplish the responsibilities which
they entrust to us.
Mr. President, I see we have been joined by a friend from Arkansas. I
am going to yield the floor to him.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.

National Security

Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, while I was traveling around Arkansas
during our instate work period, one of the top issues I heard about
from my constituents was national security. It remains at the forefront
of the minds of Arkansans. I am sure my colleagues heard the same thing
during their time at home.
The message I received was one of concern--concern with how the
administration's terrible Iran deal is flushing the regime with cash
and allowing Tehran to continue its nuclear activities while rebuilding
its arsenal and belligerently bullying the United States and our
allies. They are concerned that North Korea is ramping up its nuclear
program to try to get the same sweetheart deal, and they are concerned
the threat from ISIS continues to grow despite the President's attempt
to convince the public that radical Islamic terror is not a problem.
Let's start with Iran. Earlier this week, Iran threatened to shoot
down two U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft for flying ``too close to
Iranian airspace.'' Yes, the country the Obama administration bent over
backward to appease threatened us once again. This is the latest in a
long line of provocations directed by Iran toward the United States.
Last month, Iran harassed our warships in the Persian Gulf on at
least five occasions. Iran's belligerence has been matched by the
nation's pursuit of weapons, all of which has been enabled by the
terrible nuclear deal President Obama brokered--a deal Iran has zero
intentions of abiding by.
Earlier this month, the regime in Tehran deployed a Russian-supplied
surface-to-air-missile defense system around its Fordow underground
uranium enrichment facility. This potent missile defense system was
part of an $800 million deal Russia signed with Iran in 2007. That deal
has been voluntarily put on hold because of a 2010 U.N. Security
Council resolution, but that hold was lifted after President Obama's
weak Iran deal signaled to Russia that it is acceptable to sell weapons
to Iran.
This news is shocking given that President Obama said his deal halts
enrichment at Fordow. If that is the case, why does Iran need this
potent defense system to protect its scientific facility? Where did
Iran get the money for this system? The Obama administration and its
negotiating partners agreed in secret to allow Iran to evade some
restrictions in the nuclear agreement. This reprieve was grand in order
to give Iran more time to meet the deadline for it to start getting
relief from economic sanctions. For all of these concessions, what
exactly did the international community get out of the deal? Certainly
not peace of mind. Meanwhile, Iran gets concession after concession to
build a peaceful nuclear program that no one outside the White House
believes will remain that way, but outside the White House walls, the
rogue actors of the world have a different perspective. What they see
is a meal ticket--a way to get out of sanctions without having to end
the pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Case in point, North Korea. They have seen the windfall Iran has
received for agreeing to the President's deal and appear to be angling
for a windfall of their own, which is why North Korea defied U.N.
resolutions and detonated its fifth and largest nuclear weapon last
week. After carrying out the test, North Korea boasted that the warhead
could be used to counter the American threat. Make no mistake, North
Korea wants its own deal and will continue to try to provoke the United
States.
Will President Obama cave in to North Korea's demands in the same
manner in which he did with Iran? We certainly should not be granting
sanctions relief to North Korea nor should we be doing so for Iran. In
fact, we should be ratcheting up sanctions. We have passed legislation
to do that for North Korea already. The chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee has a bill to make that happen for Iran as well. I
am cosponsoring that bill and hope we can move it forward in the
Senate.
While Iran and North Korea step up the posturing, ISIS just released
a gruesome new propaganda video showing dozens of captured prisoners
hung from meat hooks inside a Syrian slaughterhouse. The video then
shows ISIS members slitting the throats of these prisoners. The
brutality of these terrorists, which President Obama once referred to
as the JV team, is shocking and revolting. The President has never
presented a strategy to Congress for eliminating ISIS, and our sporadic
airstrikes have done little to stop the terrorist group from pressing
forward to strengthen its global reach.
As these events play out, Senate Democrats continue to block vital
funding for our troops and our country's security and keep it from
moving forward. This is why national security was the main concern I
heard about during the instate work period and I continue to hear about
now. The anxiety and unease created by this administration's failed
foreign policy weighs heavy on the American people. We must change
course.
With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Nomination of Merrick Garland

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, after one of the longest recesses in
modern history, Congress returned last week to Washington.
Unfortunately, it seems that some of our colleagues have been more
interested in continuing to play politics with the health and welfare
of the American people than in getting the job done.
Nearly 19,000 Americans have been infected by the Zika virus,
including hundreds of pregnant women. Yet Congress has failed to pass
an emergency funding bill to address the Zika crisis, and as I
discussed on the floor earlier this afternoon, thousands of retired
mineworkers, many of them suffering from serious illnesses, are still
waiting for us to work on the bipartisan Miners Protection Act.
This afternoon, I would like to focus on another area where
unfortunately the Senate has failed to do its job--an important job
that is part of our constitutional requirements--which is to make sure
we end this unprecedented obstruction regarding the vacancy on the
Supreme Court. It has now been a recordbreaking 182 days since
President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland, and yet 182 days
later, the Supreme Court is still forced to function one Justice short.
It is an example of Washington dysfunction at its absolute worst.
The Senate confirmed Supreme Court Justices during Presidential
election years at least 17 times, so there is no reason this should be
a partisan issue. Until recently, both parties have recognized the
Senate's constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on the
President's nominations to the Supreme Court.
President Reagan himself said: ``Every day that passes with a Supreme
Court below full strength impairs the people's business in that
crucially important body.''
The truth is, Judge Garland's qualifications and dedication to public
service are beyond reproach.
Again, today, as I did earlier this year, I am strongly urging my
colleagues to do the job we were elected to

[[Page S5717]]

do. Let's go ahead and vote on Judge Garland. If you don't want to
support him, that is your right, but let's give him that hearing and
take on that vote.
Let's make sure we take on the very important health care crisis
around Zika. Let's make sure we don't leave the American people hanging
in terms of a continuing resolution. Let's pass that and make sure the
government stays funded.
Again, it is time for us to get to work. It is time for the Senate to
do its job so we can make sure that when we go back to our
constituents--as we continue with the final weeks before the election--
we can look them in the eye and say: We have done our duty.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue. Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Opioid Epidemic

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I have been coming every week and
speaking about an epidemic we have across our country. The State of
West Virginia has been hit hard. I know Utah has been hit hard. There
has not been a State that has been spared. This opioid epidemic, this
prescription drug abuse is ravaging our country and a whole generation
of our people.
We have come to a crisis point. In West Virginia, drug overdose
deaths have soared by more than 700 percent since 1988. We lost 600
West Virginians to opioids last year alone--600--more than any other
cause of death in my State. Of the 628 drug overdose deaths in the
State in 2014, most were linked to prescription drugs. These are legal
drugs.
Now, 199 were oxycodone related, with 133 attributed to hydrocodone.
We have a situation where basically people ask: How did we get to this
point? We have products that are being made by reputable companies that
we depend on for lifesaving medication every day. So you have a
reputable company. We have the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA,
which basically is our guardian, if you will. It is the gatekeeper of
whether things we are consuming are good for us and will not be
harmful. Then you have your doctor, the most trusted person next to a
member of your family, telling you and prescribing what you should take
to make you better.
So we have a runaway epidemic on our hands. We have to get this genie
back into the bottle. West Virginia had the highest rate of
prescription drug overdose deaths by any State last year--31 per
100,000 people--31 people out of 100,000 people died. The next closest
State was New Mexico at 25 deaths per 100,000. In West Virginia,
providers wrote--I want you to listen to this figure. It is almost
unbelievable. In West Virginia, providers wrote 138 painkiller
prescriptions for every 100 people. I want to repeat that. They wrote--
that means our doctors--prescribed 138 prescriptions for every 100
people. Now, that is impossible. You would think that is absolutely
abusive. It is.
Between 2007 and 2012, drug wholesalers shipped--this is an
unbelievable amount--they shipped more than 200 million pain pills to
West Virginia. The population of my State is 1,850,000, give or take.
So with a little over 1,850,000 people, the drug wholesalers shipped
200 million pain pills to my State of West Virginia--40 million per
year.
This number does not include shipments from the two largest drug
wholesalers. Every day in our country, 51 Americans die from opioid
abuse, legal prescription drugs. National drug abuse facts. Drug
overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2013. Among people 25
to 64 years old, drug overdoses caused more deaths than motor vehicle
crashes.
There were 41,982 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2013.
Of these, 22,767 or 51.8 percent were related to prescription drug
overdose. These are legal prescription drugs. Drug misuse and abuse
caused about 2.5 million emergency room visits in 2011. Of these, more
than 1.4 million of these emergency room visits were related to
prescription drugs. Again, legal prescription drugs.
Among those emergency room visits, 420,000 visits related to opioid
analgesics. Nearly 2 million Americans age 12 or older either abuse or
were dependent upon opioids in 2013. Of the 2.8 million people who used
an illicit drug for the first time in 2013, 20 percent began with a
nonmedical use of a prescription drug--nonmedical--including pain
relievers, tranquilizers, and stimulants.
The United States makes up only 4.6 percent of the world's
population--4.6 percent. We are 330 million. Over 7 billion people live
on Mother Earth. We make up less than 5 percent of the population. Yet
we consume--the United States of America--80 percent of its opioids and
99 percent of the world's hydrocodone--99 percent of the world's
hydrocodone.
Opioid abuse has jumped 287 percent in 11 years. In 2013, health care
providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers, enough for
every American to have a bottle of pills. Think about that--enough for
every American to have a bottle of opioid pain pills. Misuse and abuse
of prescription drugs cost the country an estimated $53.4 billion per
year in lost productivity, medical costs, and criminal justice costs.
If you talk to anybody, any of the law enforcement officers in your
hometown, your home community, your State, they will tell you, 8 out of
10--a minimum of 8 out of 10 of the crimes that are reported that they
go out on are drug-induced. Currently, 1 in 10 Americans with a
substance abuse disorder receives treatment. So only 10 percent are
getting treatment. So many people over the years believed--and I was
one of them 20 years ago--believed if you fool with any types of drugs,
you are committing a crime, and we are going to put you in jail.
Well, we put you in jail, but we just did not cure anybody. It didn't
get any better. So we better try something different. It has been
proven that addiction is an illness, and an illness needs treatment.
There is no treatment. Only 1 in 10 can find it. Since 1999, we have
lost almost 200,000 Americans--200,000--to prescription opioid abuse.
If we lost 200,000 in any other arena, I will guarantee you we would
go into action. We would find a way to stop this, but we have not done
a thing about this. In October, President Obama came to Charles Town,
WV, to talk to people on the frontlines of the epidemic. Following the
visit, he called for emergency funding to combat the opioid crisis. Now
we have Presidential candidates talking about prescription drug abuse.
Earlier this year, Secretary Clinton was in West Virginia talking about
ways we can work together to prevent and treat prescription drug abuse.
The FDA began making changes to the way it approves opioid
medications. The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, released much
needed guidelines for the prescribing of opioids for managing chronic
pain. We need a serious culture change in America, and I mean a serious
culture change, to get to the root of the problem. We need to change
the approval of opioid drugs at the FDA.
We can't have the Food and Drug Administration that is responsible
for us getting products that are supposed to be good for us to consume
not knowing what the effects may be. I keep telling them--I ask: Why do
you continue to approve new opioid painkillers coming on the market?
Why? Don't we have enough? If you do approve something new, don't you
think something ought to be removed rather than just keeping more
products on the market?
I am going to read a letter. I read letters because I have always
said that this is a silent killer. The silent killer of drug abuse, of
prescription drug abuse, is, if it is in your family, we don't want to
talk about it. It is my son or my daughter, it is my mom or my uncle,
it is my aunt, we will take care of it. We will keep it within
ourselves.
So it is a silent killer because nobody talks about it. Nobody knew
what was going on. Nobody knew the heartache and all of the absolutely
devastating tragedies families were going through. They thought they
could take care of it because we did not know it was an illness. We did
not know it needs treatment. They did not have a place to turn. Most
families don't have the resources to send them to the treatment
centers. They are very expensive.

[[Page S5718]]

So we have asked people to start speaking out. I am getting letters
from all over the country. I am going to read Samantha Frashier's
letter. They are giving me names now. It is not anonymous. It used to
be anonymous, ``Don't use my name.'' They want you to know. They want
you to know and put a real face with a real name and a real person:

I will start this off by saying, I am not from West
Virginia. I live in Ohio. But I felt like I could still share
my story.
My dad's family is from West Virginia and I have seen the
devastation of the opiate epidemic there. It is just as bad
here in Cincinnati and all of the suburbs surrounding it.
I grew up in Mason, Ohio, and had a good life. We weren't
rich, but we weren't poor. My parents did everything they
could to take care of me and my brother.
I was very involved with the youth group in high school and
just an all-around happy person. I went to a Christian
university and just started drinking a lot.
That went on for a few years, and by the time I was 21, I
started using pills recreationally. Stupid choice. That was
in 2008 and heroin was just starting to creep in everywhere.
I used for 5 years, every day. Once I started, it was like
I made a decision I could never quit, that I would use
forever. I was such an evil, manipulative liar and thief. I
ruined every relationship I ever had.
Finally, I got in trouble. I went on a small car chase,
(stupid, I know) and was booked into jail on 11 charges,
which resulted in 2 felonies, and I was sent to MonDay
Correctional Institute in Dayton, Ohio. It was there that I
was taught the skills I needed to survive. I had to dig deep
and really figure out who I was and what issues I need to
really work on.
I also received letters from women at church I didn't even
know. I corresponded with them over the months. These women
made me feel a sense of being surrounded, even though I was
in a lockdown facility.
I spent 5 months there, got a job, became a manager and ran
a failing pizza restaurant. About 10 months after being
released, I found out I was pregnant with identical twin
boys. I had some complications with my pregnancy and was on
bed rest and still dealing with issues. My boys are 7 months
old now. My boyfriend and I are both almost 3 years clean,
and we are blessed enough to find someone to rent a house to
us.
I am currently involved in starting a nonprofit recovery
home here in Warren County, Ohio, called ``The Next.'' We
will help women after they detox with a recovery home.
The other part of my story is that I have also watched my
family become crippled by this disease of addiction. My
brother recently was using drugs. We couldn't find him help
anywhere. Waiting lists, insurance copays for thousands of
dollars, flying to different states, nothing local. He ended
up getting in trouble and he now has a felony.
My aunt has already lost one son to a heroin overdose and 3
weeks ago we sat in the hospital with her daughter, holding
her down because she had alcohol poisoning, and she was
intubated and on a breathing machine.
The pain, the hurt, I see it in everyone's eyes. I can't
imagine what that is like. I look at my boys and pray that I
will do everything I can to steer them away. It's in their
genes and they have to be careful.
My heart is big and I have spent nights crying over this.
My friend Pete's funeral is next week. He died of a heroin
overdose. Every few weeks, someone dies, or they are sent to
jail and get no help, get released, or go to prison and don't
get help and spend their time with other people who don't
want to change. They get released eventually and have no
skills.
Everyone is set up for failure. This is affecting every
single person in this community, and I know it is like this
in so many other places.
I hope to hear of a dollar amount attached to the CARA act,
and that there are changes. We need recovery homes, rehab,
different laws to encourage getting help, helping those in
prison that want to change to provide a reachable
opportunity.
It is 100 percent possible to get clean. I want everyone to
know it is possible to share the hope that a successful life
is achievable. I have a huge passion to change things and to
help that change. I have sent letters, e-mails, web messages
to all the Congressmen, judges, prosecutors, City of Mason,
Mason Police Department, and Warren County. I am doing
whatever part I can.
This is killing so many young lives, and mothers, fathers,
daughters, and sons, everyone, and they need to change.

This is a letter--and I want to answer this by saying we are trying.
I have a piece of legislation that I have drafted. This piece of
legislation is going to have permanent funding that will go directly to
treatment centers--directly--100 percent to treatment centers around
this country.
What it does is it asks to be charged one penny per milligram--one
penny per milligram--for every opioid produced and sold in America.
That will raise about $1.5 to $2 billion. So I would say to all of my
colleagues and friends who are afraid that, oh, this is a new tax--this
is a treatment center. This is a way to get people clean again. This is
what we are asking people to sign on to.

I will guarantee you there will not be one family--Democratic or
Republican--that would vote against you if you can help save their
child and give them a place to go to get clean. This is so important.
I thank you for allowing me to speak today, taking the time to read
this letter, and allowing us to share this letter with so many people
because it is personal. You can now put a face, a story, and a family
behind it, and that is what we all should be doing.
It is no longer the silent killer. It is still a killer, but people
are speaking out. They asking for help. That help comes right here in
the Halls of the Senate and the Halls of Congress. We can make a
difference in America and save a whole generation.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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