[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 144 (Thursday, September 7, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5031-S5038]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REINFORCING EDUCATION ACCOUNTABILITY IN DEVELOPMENT ACT
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of the House message to accompany H.R. 601, which
the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
House message to accompany H.R. 601, a bill to enhance the
transparency and accelerate the impact of assistance provided
under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to promote quality
basic education in developing countries, to better enable
such countries to achieve universal access to quality basic
education and improved learning outcomes, to eliminate
duplication and waste, and for other purposes.
Pending:
McConnell motion to concur in the House amendment to the
Senate amendment (No. 6) to the bill with McConnell amendment
No. 808 (to the House amendment to the Senate amendment (No.
6) to the bill), in the nature of a substitute.
McConnell amendment No. 809 (to amendment No. 808), to
change the enactment date.
Motion to Refer With Amendment No. 816
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I move to refer the House message on
H.R. 601 to the Committee on Appropriations with instructions to report
back forthwith with the Paul amendment No. 816.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] moves to refer
the House message to accompany H.R. 601 to the Committee on
Appropriations with instructions to report the same back
forthwith to the Senate with an amendment numbered 816.
The amendment is as follows:
At the end add the following:
Notwithstanding any other provision in this Act:
(1) no supplemental appropriation shall be made to the
``Community Development Fund'';
(2) the ``Disaster Relief Fund'' shall be increased by
$7,400,000,000,
(3) $15,250,000,000 of unobligated funds previously made
available to the United States Agency for International
Development shall be rescinded; and
(4) The emergency designations in Division B in this Act
shall have no force or effect.
Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays on my motion.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Amendment No. 817
Mr. McCONNELL. I have an amendment to the instructions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] proposes an
amendment numbered 817 to the instructions of the motion to
refer.
Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the
amendment be dispensed with.
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The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
At the end add the following.
``This Act shall take effect 2 days after the date of
enactment.''
Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Amendment No. 818 to Amendment No. 817
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I have a second-degree amendment at
the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] proposes an
amendment numbered 818 to amendment No. 817.
The amendment is as follows:
Strike ``2'' and insert ``3''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to address the
Senate as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, like all of us, I would like to join
with our fellow citizens and colleagues in expressing our deep
condolences to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. All Americans stand
with the people of Texas who have been devastated by this terrible
storm as they work to recover and rebuild their communities.
My thoughts and prayers are also with the people of Florida as they
prepare for Hurricane Irma. I urge everyone in the path of this
horrible storm to pay attention to instructions from local officials to
stay safe.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, I am pleased that the
legislation before us includes $15 billion in emergency funding to help
the people of Texas put their lives back together. Congress should and
must provide this needed relief.
In due time, if the devastation of Irma is anywhere near as bad as
predicted, obviously I and others will support sending Federal funding
to assist the people of Florida with recovery. That is clearly a
requirement and function of government.
Madam President, I also support increasing the debt ceiling as a
necessary way to prevent default on our government debt. However, I
cannot in good conscience support those very important pieces of this
legislation if it also means supporting a continuing resolution.
I have come to this floor many times to talk about the harmful
effects of continuing resolutions on our military. Year after year, we
have lurched from one short-term fix to another without doing the hard
work of governing and budgeting. And year after year, I have reminded
my colleagues that continuing resolutions are not only no way to fund
the government, they inflict great harm upon those Americans we are
constitutionally obliged to provide for, and that is our men and women
in uniform.
Our defense leaders have also sounded the alarm. For the last several
years, our senior military and civilian leaders have come to the Senate
Armed Services Committee and asked for the same thing: that Congress
provide stable, predictable funding and that we provide it on time. Is
that a lot to ask, stable and predictable funding, and providing it on
time?
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee this year,
Secretary Mattis pointed out that ``during nine of the past ten years,
Congress has enacted 30 separate Continuing Resolutions to fund the
Department of Defense, thus inhibiting our readiness and adaptation to
new challenges.'' He asked Congress to ``pass a FY 2018 budget in a
timely manner to avoid yet another harmful Continuing Resolution.''
Let me explain. A continuing resolution just continues and continues
at previous years' levels. I will talk about some of the impacts
continuing resolutions have had.
The Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford, also
stated that ``without sustained, sufficient, and predictable funding, I
assess that within 5 years we will lose our ability to project power;
the basis of how we defend the homeland, advance U.S. interests, and
meet our alliance commitments.''
My friends and colleagues, that doesn't come from Senator John
McCain, it comes from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that
without predictable funding, within 5 years, we will lose our ability
to project power, the basis of how we defend the homeland, et cetera.
I shouldn't have to remind everyone that threats are on the rise
around the world. Global terrorist networks, increasing great power
competition with Russia and China, malign Iranian influence spreading
across the Middle East, a North Korean dictator racing to acquire
missiles that can hit the United States with nuclear weapons--the
threats to our national security have not been more complex or daunting
than at any time in the past seven decades.
Let us not forget that we are a nation at war. There are brave young
men and women serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places. We must
always ask ourselves, are we really doing all we can to support them?
There is no point to discussing our strategy for Afghanistan or North
Korea or ISIS or any of the other myriad of threats we are currently
facing if we are simply going to fund the military through a continuing
resolution.
My friends, the state of our military is dire. The overwhelming
majority of our forces are not fit for combat in the near term. Three
out of our fifty-nine Army brigades are combat-ready. Four of sixty-
four Air Force squadrons are ready to ``fight tonight''--that means
fully combat ready. Fewer than half of the Marine and Navy planes are
ready for combat. The Air Force has a pilot shortfall of 1,500, 1,000
of whom are fighter pilots. The Navy has a maintenance backlog of 5.4
million man-days scheduled for 2017.
The hard truth is, our military is declining. The President of the
United States campaigned with a full commitment of rebuilding our
military. If we do a continuing resolution, we are not only not
rebuilding our military, we are harming our military.
The hard truth is, the military is declining. For evidence of this,
we need look no further than all the headlines about ship collisions
and aviation accidents during peacetime training operations--incidents
that have tragically taken the lives of dozens of our brave men and
women in uniform. The incident involving USS McCain, which killed 10
young sailors, is only the latest example.
So how did we get here? How did we get into this position? Uncertain
budgets that are consistently late. Continuing to increase the
operational tempo for our military despite not having sufficient money
to pay for it. Making cuts elsewhere to stay afloat, like training and
maintenance. And we are about to do the same thing. Apparently,
watching as young men and women die for entirely avoidable reasons
seems not to be enough for us to change.
To be sure, while the budget alone will not fix all of the underlying
causes of the recent incidents, the military cannot improve without
timely and growing budgets. Yet that is exactly what a CR--a continuing
resolution--will not provide. A continuing resolution will lock the
Department of Defense into last year's funding levels, it will prevent
them from reprogramming funding to meet emerging needs, and it will
prohibit the start of new programs to modernize for future threats.
Perhaps worst of all, a continuing resolution will mandate a level of
spending $52 billion less than the President's budget request.
The military cannot fix its readiness problems without more funding.
The military cannot grow its forces to meet the expanding requirements
of a global threat environment under a continuing resolution. A
continuing resolution will not allow our military to modernize its
forces to ensure we maintain our strategic advantage over our
competitors.
While the President and this Congress understand that the military
does have a need for additional funding to rebuild the military, we are
asking them to keep treading water for 3 months for no reason
whatsoever. A continuing resolution is a crutch we
[[Page S5033]]
rely on when we cannot pass actual appropriations bills. It is a
temporary solution to avoid the worst possible outcome--a Federal
shutdown--and to allow us more time to reach a solution for funding the
government.
The majority of us can agree that passing continuing resolutions is
not the proper way of funding government. Congress cannot perform
oversight by passing continuing resolutions. The Federal Government
cannot execute effectively or efficiently when locked into last year's
funding bills. Having to pass a continuing resolution, by all accounts,
is a failure by the Congress of the United States to fund the Federal
Government.
I understand the need to use these from time to time as bipartisan
spending agreements are not always easy to come by. What I do not
understand is why we are voting on a continuing resolution 3 weeks
before the actual start of the next year without having spent any time
in the Senate on actually trying to pass an appropriations bill or
negotiating a bipartisan budget agreement. How is it that we are voting
on a continuing resolution--a mechanism of last resort--before we have
even made a single attempt at funding the government?
There has been no discussion of a bipartisan budget deal. There has
not even been a fiscal year 2018 budget resolution. We have not called
up a single 2018 appropriations bill--not a single one for 2018. Quite
simply, we have not been doing our jobs. If we are going to call
ourselves the world's greatest deliberative body, we have to do one
heck of a lot better. We have 3 weeks before we need to pass fiscal
year 2018 funding. Why have we given up before having even tried? We
could be spending this month debating a bipartisan budget deal we all
know we will now need to pass in December.
Attaching emergency funding for hurricane relief to a must-pass
continuing resolution and debt limit increase is irresponsible and a
dereliction of our most routine duties. It is the result of yet another
self-inflicted--I repeat, self-inflicted--crisis. Instead of returning
to the regular order by moving individual spending bills to fund our
government and our national security priorities, with ample time for
debate and amendments, we are shirking our responsibilities and kicking
the can down the road. All of us are responsible for the detriment to
the men and women serving in our military during a time of incredible
global uncertainty.
I would like to vote to provide assistance to the people of Texas. I
cannot vote for another continuing resolution that will harm our men
and women in uniform. Quite often, I go to where we have conflicts--
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries in the region. I can
tell you that these young men and women who are serving in uniform,
under difficult and challenging circumstances, are not being provided
with the support, the weapons, the strategy, or, most of all, the
funding that is necessary.
Yes, we have been in this conflict for many years. The main reason
the conflict is not over is, we never had a strategy by which to win.
Now we have a national security team that has a strategy to win, but
they cannot do it without the tools they need to win but also do their
best to protect the lives of these young men and women who are
literally placing their lives on the line.
Meanwhile, what do we do? We decide that by December 15, maybe we
will take up a continuing resolution. We may take certain action.
Meanwhile, we are not providing the men and women in the military with
what they need not only to win but to do everything we can to ensure
that we have provided them with every possible means of protecting
their own health and welfare.
I say to my colleagues, we have seen this movie before. We are
lurching down the road to December 15--December 8, I think it has been
changed to now--when everybody will be eager to get out of town and go
home for one's undeserved Christmas holiday break. The point is, today
we should be taking up the budget, taking up our appropriations bills,
and moving forward. If people want to block it, fine. Then let's stay
in tonight. Let's stay in on Friday and Saturday and Sunday. Let's do
something really unusual. The men and women who are serving over there,
whom we are supposed to be taking care of, do not leave on Thursday
afternoon and go back on Monday. They are out there, putting themselves
on the line for us every single hour of every single day, and they
deserve a lot better than what they are getting from this
administration and this Congress, where the Republican Party has the
majority.
I urge my colleagues again, Why don't we sit down? Why don't we move
forward with these appropriations bills? Why don't we take care of the
men and women who are serving? There are so many things we can do for
them and for the country that we are not doing today. I urge my
colleagues to sit down together, and let's move forward because the
American people deserve it, and our oath of office makes it incumbent
on us to practice it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Motion to Refer With Amendment No. 816
Mr. PAUL. Madam President, in Washington, we have a disease--or a
syndrome rather. I call it the dinosaur syndrome: big hearts, small
brains. Unfortunately, it is a recurring problem year after year, bill
after bill, day after day.
In Washington, it is argued that you are more compassionate if you
give away more of someone else's money. I would argue that true
compassion is in giving your own money away. I would argue that truly
rational policy is giving away money that you have. It is one thing to
give away other people's money. It is another thing to give away money
you do not even possess. As a country, we have a $20 trillion debt. We
borrow $1 million every minute. Yet we are putting forward a bill to
allocate $15 billion to those who are suffering from Harvey without
paying for it and without finding the money from anywhere. We are
simply adding it to our tab--adding it to our $20 trillion bill.
How did we get to $20 trillion in debt? Big hearts, small brains.
Nobody has the courage to ask: Why don't we pay for it? Why don't we be
legislators and stand up like men and women and say: Let's set
priorities.
If it is a priority to help those in Texas--and I have great sympathy
for those in Texas. My family is there. I have family members with 2
feet of water in their house so I have great sympathy for those who are
in need, but there is no reason to be foolish. We shouldn't just borrow
the money. Why don't we take the money from something less important?
My amendment, the America first amendment, would take the money from
money we are going to send to foreign countries. We send billions and
billions of dollars to countries that hate us. We send billions and
billions of dollars to countries that burn our flag. I think it is a
very simple choice, when we are looking at helping those in need in our
country, that we quit sending money to other countries.
What my amendment would do would be to pay for the $15 billion in aid
by taking it out of the foreign aid account. Who gets the money in the
foreign aid account? What is it spent on? I will give you a couple of
examples of what we spend our foreign aid on.
We spent billions of dollars--I think it is over $100 billion--on
building roads in Afghanistan, blowing up roads in Afghanistan,
building schools, blowing up schools, and then rebuilding all of them.
Sometimes we blow them up, and sometimes someone else blows them up,
but then we always go back and rebuild them. What about rebuilding our
country? Why don't we look at our country and rebuild our
infrastructure and rebuild our roads? For those who are flooded in
Texas, let's help them, but let's help them by not sending the money to
Pakistan and to other countries that do not even like us.
In the foreign aid account, we spent $273 million last year teaching
people how to apply for more of our money. So it is not bad enough that
they take your money and send it to foreign countries that do not even
like us, but we teach these people how to apply for more of our money.
We had a televised cricket league that we spent $1 million on in
Afghanistan--a televised cricket league. The only problem is, they
don't really have any televisions. Why it is our obligation? Why is the
U.S. taxpayer asked to pay for a cricket league in Afghanistan?
[[Page S5034]]
We spent $45 million on a natural gas, gas station in Afghanistan--
$45 million. It was estimated to cost a half a million dollars--86
times cost overruns. What does it serve up? Gasoline. Natural gas. Who
has a car that runs on natural gas in Afghanistan? Nobody. So we bought
them cars. We bought them cars that run on natural gas. Then they had
no money with which to buy the natural gas so we gave them credit cards
to buy the natural gas. That is where your money is going. If you want
to help the people in Texas or those people who may be hurt in Florida,
why don't we quit sending the money overseas? These are the people who
chant ``Death to America,'' and we send more money to them.
We spent money on home mortgages in Nigeria. We are spending money on
home mortgages in Nigeria? We spent money on tourism in Albania. This
is one of my favorites: We spent money teaching people in Kenya how to
use Facebook.
All I am asking is, Why don't we stand up like men and women, like
real legislators? If we are going to have compassion for those in
Texas, why don't we have the good wisdom not to just simply add it to
our debt? In hysteria--everyone is hysterical--we must give, give, give
someone else's money but not only that. We must give, give, give money
we do not have. We are going to destroy our country. There have been
people who have argued that our $20 trillion debt is the No. 1 threat
to our national security.
So what I am asking is, Why don't we pay for this? Why don't we
simply take some money that we were going to spend somewhere else, for
something not as valuable in another country, and spend it here? You
realize what is going to happen. I will proffer this amendment, and in
all likelihood, the swamp--the establishment--will vote this down
because they never want to cut a dime of spending. They are always
compassionate. They have big hearts. They are willing to give away
everybody else's money, but they are never ever willing to pay for it.
This is both parties--both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.
Watch the vote and see who is a conservative and who says we should pay
for the aid for Harvey and who says, oh, no, that we should add it to
the tab.
Where is the $15 billion going to come from? This year, we are going
to run a $500 billion debt. There is no money. They are giving away
your grandchildren's money to help people. People will say that is
compassion, that we are going to help people now. Yet we are stealing
it from our kids' futures, and we are stealing it from the future and
the soundness of our country, and we are threatening the very security
of our country with this enormous and elaborate debt.
Simply pay for it. Simply say: Do you know what? This year, we cannot
be so compassionate to people who are wanting to get healthcare in
Cambodia. We have USAID money going to Cambodia to help them get cost-
effective or lower cost insurance. We could not even do anything with
the healthcare in our country. We failed to act on it, but we are
sending money to Cambodia to help them with their healthcare. Why don't
we act here at home? Why don't we take care of our own problems before
we think we can take care of everybody else's problems everywhere
around the world?
So we will get a chance to vote today. My amendment will come up
shortly, and it will simply say, yes, we are a big, rich country. We
can help those in Texas, but we will pay for it by taking the money
away from somewhere else in the budget that is less of a priority. We
give hundreds of millions--really billions--of dollars to Pakistan. How
much do they like us? Sometimes they help us, but sometimes they harbor
the enemy. Sometimes they harbor whole networks of people who are
plotting to kill us.
What do they think of Christianity in Pakistan? Asia Bibi is a
Christian. She has been in jail for 5 years--on death row--for being a
Christian. What do they think of helping us with bin Laden? They did
not raise a finger to help us with bin Laden. Bin Laden lived among
them for years and years and years, and when we finally got bin Laden,
we got bin Laden with information from a doctor named Shakil Afridi.
What did Pakistan do to reward the doctor who helped us get bin Laden?
Pakistan has him locked up for life in prison.
Really, we need to requestion whether this aid works at all to
foreign countries, whether it is counterproductive, and whether we have
it in the first place, but we should also ask an important question:
Maybe that aid ought to be better spent at home. Maybe we ought to
start rebuilding our country instead of always thinking we have to
rebuild everybody else's country.
I think this amendment is so easy to decide, and I think the American
people are behind me on this amendment. If we were to take this to a
huge vote of the entire American public, I think 75 to 80 percent of
the American public would say: Do you know what? Let's take care of our
problems at home; let's don't send our money abroad. And I think we
would win this battle.
Watch this vote because in Washington you will see the opposite. You
will see three-fourths of this body or more say: Oh, no, we are not
going to cut any spending to anyone. We could never cut foreign aid or
welfare for foreign countries. We are just going to add it on to the
tab. I, for one, want to be a loud voice to say that it is risking our
country's future. It is risking the security of the United States to
keep adding to a $20 trillion debt, no matter how good the cause is.
Remember, the next time a politician tells you that they are so
compassionate because they want to give away more of someone else's
money, ask them how much they gave of their own money if you want to
judge their true compassion.
Thank you.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. SASSE. Madam President, Hurricane Harvey is a horrible tragedy.
It has ruthlessly taken lives. It has taken diplomas and baby albums.
It has taken homes and gardens and playgrounds. It has also given us
many new pictures of volunteerism, heroism, and neighborliness, and God
bless those many helping hands. It has also revealed the willingness,
the advanced planning, and the hard work of many government employees
in the State and local governments, in the National Guard, in FEMA, and
beyond.
So what are we doing here today in this body? And what should we be
doing? What is the specific duty of the U.S. Congress at this moment?
We should provide emergency funding relief. We should provide emergency
funding for FEMA and for related agencies. They are doing important
work, and they need it.
The amount agreed upon by the administration and the House of
Representatives on Tuesday--just 48 hours ago--was $7.8 billion. It
passed noncontroversially. The vote was 419 to 3. They did the right
thing. So let's approve it. Let's do the exact same thing. Let's let
FEMA spend that $7 billion. It is important money. There is a genuine
emergency. There is real need. I am a small government guy, but there
is a clear and urgent governmental role in this moment, so we should do
it.
But what we should not do are unrelated things that we will pretend
are hurricane relief. We should not fool ourselves into pretending that
the legislation on the floor today is actually doing what it says it
does just because it has a certain name on the top of the legislation.
What we are actually considering doing today in this body is much, much
larger, much clunkier, and much less explicable or defensible to your
and my constituents.
Do your constituents know, for example, that far less than half of
all of the spending in this bill before us today is in any way related
to emergency relief for Hurricane Harvey? Think about that. Do your
constituents know that far less than half of the spending is actually
related to hurricanes? Shouldn't they know that? Shouldn't they know
that the vast majority of the money this body is going to spend today,
under the pretend guise of an emergency in the Schumer-Pelosi-Trump
bill, is not actually emergency spending at all?
Do your constituents know that we are using the hurricane as an
excuse to extend the debt ceiling? Translated, that means we can't pay
our credit card bill, so we are just going to take over the credit card
company and change our credit limit without any discussion. We are not
going to have any conversation about the fact that
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we constantly spend more money than we have, and we have to borrow to
do it.
There is a mechanism by which, when we hit up against our debt limit,
we are supposed to pause and have a conversation, but we are not going
to do that today. We are going to use the hurricane as an excuse to
hide from that truth.
What we are really doing right now is borrowing from our kids. There
is no other explanation for what we are doing. What we are doing is we
are intergenerationally stealing. We are passing on debt to the next
generation for current spending. We are not funding infrastructure
here. We are not funding roads and bridges and IT systems and weapons
systems. These are not things that could be called investments in the
future.
Again, I am not talking about the hurricane spending. We should do
all of the hurricane spending. But mostly what this bill is going to do
is spend current priorities--current-year money--month over month, as
we always do, but we are going to pass the price tag and the debt on to
our kids, and we are going to hide from our constituents what we are
actually doing. We are not going to admit it. We are not going to have
a conversation about it. We are not going to have an honest accounting
about how much money we are going to spend. What we are going to do is
increase the odds that we will have a debt crisis soon. At the moment
that comes, we will have another emergency that we will be able to use
as an excuse to do things that we then also will not want
accountability for.
We should separate these two things. We should do all of the
hurricane spending. We should not do things that are not hurricane
spending but, rather, are excuses to kick the can down the road on the
nature of the obligations we are constantly incurring beyond our
ability to pay.
What we are not doing in this body today is draining the swamp. What
we are doing is running a whole bunch of hoses to the edge of the
swamp, turning them on to the highest possible volume flow, and then
turning our backs on the swamp and shouting that there is nothing to
see here. That is what we are doing. We are doing the opposite of
draining the swamp today.
Finally, do your constituents know that what we are doing today
actually increases the likelihood of both a government shutdown and a
government default in December? The odds of a government shutdown are
up and the odds of a government default are up in December.
Do your constituents know that Chuck Schumer--whose title is minority
leader, not majority leader--just made himself the most powerful man in
America for the month of December? Chuck Schumer has made himself the
key man in all negotiations in December because of the legislation we
are going to pass today.
Do your voters know that real and fundamental tax reform is going to
get less likely because of today?
What is going to happen today is that the calendar for the next 90
days will be laser-beam focused on that December shutdown and showdown,
and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi now hold most of the cards for when
we get to December. This is an embarrassing moment for a Republican-
controlled Congress and a Republican administration.
Here is the good news. We still have an off-ramp before us. We can do
better, and we have a legislative pathway to do better.
I have a motion at the table that is simple. It funds all of the
emergency relief that the administration has requested for Hurricane
Harvey. Hear that clearly. What the House did yesterday morning that
they negotiated Tuesday night funds all $7.8 billion that the
administration says they need for hurricane relief. It passed 419 to 3.
We can still pass that same legislation. That is it. That is what my
legislation does. It doesn't do anything that is not hurricane relief
and pretend it is hurricane relief; it just goes back to the bill that
funds all of the hurricane relief that the administration says they
need.
I am not offering lots of other stuff. I am not kicking the can down
the road on the conversation that we should have tonight and tomorrow
and Saturday and Sunday about the debt crisis we face. All I am trying
to do is make a bill that says it is about hurricane relief, actually
be about hurricane relief instead of a majority of other stuff
masquerading as hurricane relief.
In short, if you want hurricane relief, this amendment is your
vehicle to get to hurricane relief, not other pretend stuff calling
itself hurricane relief. Just as the House did earlier this week in a
419-to-3 vote, we can do hurricane relief clear, plain, and simple, and
we don't have to hide a whole bunch of other stuff in it.
Thank you, Madam President. I thank this body for its consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Motion to Refer With Amendment No. 816
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I move to table the motion to refer,
and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to table.
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 Florida (Mr. Rubio) and the Senator from Alaska (Mr.
Sullivan).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr.
Menendez) is necessarily absent.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Are there any other Senators in the
Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 87, nays 10, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 189 Leg.]
YEAS--87
Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Cochran
Collins
Coons
Corker
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Crapo
Daines
Donnelly
Duckworth
Durbin
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Franken
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Harris
Hassan
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Hirono
Hoeven
Isakson
Johnson
Kaine
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Merkley
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Roberts
Rounds
Sanders
Sasse
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Strange
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young
NAYS--10
Cruz
Flake
Heller
Inhofe
Lankford
Lee
Paul
Risch
Scott
Toomey
NOT VOTING--3
Menendez
Rubio
Sullivan
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rounds). The majority leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. For the information of all of our colleagues, the next
vote will be on the motion to table the Sasse motion on disaster
funding. With a little bit of cooperation, we will then set two votes
after lunch to get to passage of the bill this afternoon so it can be
sent over to the House today. Senators should expect additional votes
right after lunch.
Motion to Refer
Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Sasse, I move to refer the House
message on H.R. 601 to the Committee on Appropriations with
instructions to report back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] moves to refer
the House message to accompany H.R. 601 to the Committee on
Appropriations with instructions to report the same back to
the Senate with changes that (1) are in the jurisdiction of
such committee; and, (2) do not include any provision that
was not contained in the House message accompanying the bill
H.R. 601.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to table the motion to refer and
ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to table.
The clerk will call the roll.
[[Page S5036]]
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) and the Senator from Alaska (Mr.
Sullivan).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr.
Menendez) is necessarily absent.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Are there any other Senators in the
Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 72, nays 25, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 190 Leg.]
YEAS--72
Alexander
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Cochran
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Donnelly
Duckworth
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Graham
Harris
Hassan
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Hirono
Hoeven
Isakson
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCaskill
McConnell
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Peters
Reed
Roberts
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Scott
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young
NAYS--25
Barrasso
Corker
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Flake
Gardner
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Inhofe
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
McCain
Moran
Paul
Perdue
Portman
Risch
Sasse
Strange
Toomey
NOT VOTING--3
Menendez
Rubio
Sullivan
The motion was agreed to.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
notwithstanding rule XXII, the vote on the motion to invoke cloture
occur at 1:45 p.m.; further, that the time until 1:45 p.m. be for
debate only; finally, that if cloture is invoked, the McConnell
amendment No. 809 be withdrawn and all postcloture time be expired and
the Senate vote on the motion to concur in the House amendment with
further amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I encourage folks to take a close look at
this picture of a forest ablaze in Oregon. Right now, there are
innumerable fires burning across our State. Some of them are called
complexes--a fire complex. Maybe it is referred to as a single fire
complex, but that means there may be 10 or 20 different fires within
that area.
What we are seeing more and more with the changing climate, with
climate disruption, is that we have lightning storms that sweep over
our forests, will light up and create multiple fires at one time, and
then, because the forest is so much drier, they burn fiercely.
Just last week, Mary and I were hoping to spend a couple days out on
the Pacific Crest Trail. This is the trail that runs from Mexico to
Canada, and we were planning to go down to the Cascade-Siskiyou
National Monument and experience some of that, but we couldn't because
of the intense smoke from fires burning.
Fires in the middle of the State had shut down some of the Pacific
Crest Trail near Jefferson, so we decided to go up to the northern end
of the trail, the trail that plunges into the Columbia River at a place
called Bridge of the Gods, Cascade Locks, and walk south. The plan was
to go about 18 miles or so and then pick up the Eagle Creek Trail and
come right back through to where we had started. But posted at the
start of the Pacific Crest Trail was that the Eagle Creek Trail had
been closed and that the loop was shut down due to the Indian Springs
fire.
Well, we decided, OK, we can still at least do the first half and
maybe continue walking on through to Lolo Pass on Mount Hood and then
get a ride and come back around to where we were. The point is that all
across Oregon, there were either blazes or smoke from blazes.
Oregon State is a plain, and it is not the only State. California,
Washington, Montana, and parts of Idaho are burning up, and it is
getting worse each year.
As we were considering how we were going to progress, we had to
bypass a campground at Wahtum Lake because it was shut down. We had to
camp on the side of a ridge that was just on the edge of the fire
containment area. So we pitched our tent on a steep slope that had a
little rock outcropping and a little bit of flat ground, basically
about 3 feet by 6 feet. We settled down after a long day of hiking. We
were absolutely exhausted.
About 1 in the morning, I woke up and I got a strong whiff of smoke.
So I leapt out of the tent, and down below us on the slope last week
was this glow. Immediately I was concerned that fire had leapt into the
valley below us, and you do not want to be on a steep slope upstream
from a fire, especially when that is the direction the wind is
blowing--as it was.
I said to Mary: Wake up. Get out of the tent. We may have to make a
run for it. And she jumped up.
The glow just stayed the same, and it turned out it wasn't a fire. It
turned out that it was a landslide, and the Moon was illuminating that
landslide and creating that glow on the slope below us. But we were
terrified. You can imagine, if you are hiking through Oregon and
suddenly there is a forest fire on the slope below you, you are going
to run like crazy.
Well, there were a bunch of folks who were on that Eagle Creek Trail
that I referred to, and they were on a section very near the Columbia
gorge--that section that hadn't been shut down. They were walking
south, but they couldn't go on through the Tunnel Falls area. They
could go only a few miles in. But a couple of teenagers went up that
trail and started throwing firecrackers, fireworks off the edge of a
cliff, and it set the gorge on fire on that Eagle Creek Trail.
You can see how the Cascade Mountains plunge down to the Columbia
River, and you can see here how that Eagle Creek Trail was lit up.
There were 140 hikers trapped by this fire and the fire that Mary and I
were dodging--the Indian Springs fire--and they had to retreat to the
section of trail that actually goes through a tunnel that is drilled
through the basalt. It has a waterfall next to it, and they were
dropped supplies overnight before they could be brought out and escape
this fire. This fire was raging so much, it had leapt the river--the
Columbia River, the largest river by river flow volume in the United
States of America. It had leapt this river to the State of Washington.
These are just two of the fires of the many that are burning across the
State of Oregon.
There is also the Chetco Bar fire, which is even larger than the
Eagle Creek fire. The Chetco Bar fire has continued and now has burned
176,000 acres of Douglas fir and oak and manzanita brush fields. There
are 1,700 people working to contain this fire right now and, as of
yesterday, it was just 5 percent contained. And, as of yesterday, the
Eagle Creek Trail was just 5 percent contained.
Fires are a big problem that is just getting bigger. There are 65
large fires burning across the United States; 19 of those are in
Oregon. You can see how they are spaced out here. Both the Indian
Springs fire and the Eagle Creek fire that I referred to are here, and
you can see its position and how it leapt across the Columbia River
into Washington State.
There are more in Washington State and more in California and Idaho
and Montana going this way. Nineteen of those 65 big fires are
represented right here. Another 23 are in nearby Montana.
Over the last decade, we have seen an average of about 50,000 forest
fires in America each year, with an average of about 5\1/2\ million
acres being burned. This year, we are already over 8 million acres,
with a lot more acreage that will be burned in the weeks ahead. In
Oregon, we have seen an average of about 493,000 acres a year burn. We
are over 550,000 acres now--and counting.
So what happens during these intense fire years? What happens is we
run out
[[Page S5037]]
of money to fight these fires, and then we engage something called fire
borrowing. There is no FEMA for fires--no Federal Emergency Management
Agency for fires. So the Forest Service says: Well, we must fight these
fires. I can tell you that a tremendous number of helicopters and
planes and ground crews are involved in this effort. It is very
expensive to fight them.
We run out of money, and the Forest Service has to borrow from other
accounts--from the hazardous fuels fund, which tries to reduce the
amount of fuels that will create fires on the front end, so we decrease
our effort on the front end in order to fight the fires on the back
end.
Forest management funds, forest restoration funds, forest
conservation funds, road maintenance funds, and funds that are designed
to prepare for future timber sales--all of those are borrowed from. So
I have been pushing, I have been fighting for us to get the funds now,
right now, to make sure we don't engage in fire borrowing to have to
address this challenge, and we have a compromise that has been worked
out that is going to help. In the continuing resolution, the funds are
based not on the amount the administration wanted but on the fiscal
year 2017 level that included $400 million of buffer funds. One-quarter
of what was authorized in fiscal year 2017 is now going to be
available--and available retroactively--so that it can be used and
spent in September, which is still in fiscal year 2017, so in immediate
moments we will not have to engage in fire borrowing. That is a
victory.
I thank the cochairs of the Appropriations Committee for working so
hard to help us get this provision that will stop the fire borrowing
problem in the short term. But in the near future, after we are into
fiscal year 2018--into October--we will be short funds that were spent
for fiscal year 2017, so that will be a challenge we will have to
continue to address in the year to come.
We are all thinking a lot about Harvey and its impact on Houston and
Texas, and we are all worried about Irma and the fact that it is
hitting Puerto Rico, and it is aimed for Florida. But let's not forget
the fires burning all over the United States at an unprecedented rate,
which we need to make sure we address as well.
Under this provision I just mentioned--this compromise that will be
helpful in the short term--the Office of Management and Budget has
control, and we need to make sure they actually exercise that control
and release those funds, so we will have to keep pushing.
I see my colleague is here. I do want to talk a little bit about
fisheries, but I will defer to him if my colleague from Vermont would
like to speak.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to continue for 5
minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I strongly support the disaster relief
package that is before us today. It is going to provide much needed
assistance to the thousands of families and communities who were
devastated by Hurricane Harvey. As vice chairman of the Appropriations
Committee, I looked at it very carefully, and I know it provides a
short-term increase to the debt limit to ensure the U.S. Government has
access to the resources it needs. It funds the government with a
continuing resolution through December 8, enabling Congress to work to
complete the fiscal year 2018 appropriations bills. It is a responsible
approach to addressing the needs of our Nation.
As a Vermonter, as a human being, it was heart-wrenching to watch the
devastation march through Texas as Hurricane Harvey made landfall, only
to see it turn toward Louisiana. Now, Hurricane Irma has struck Puerto
Rico and continues on its path toward Florida and the east coast.
Hurricanes Jose and Katia are swirling in the Atlantic. They are
threatening our coast. This is a horrific time.
My fellow Vermonters and I are all too familiar with these images. It
was only 6 years ago that Tropical Storm Irene tore through our small,
special Green Mountain State and left a wound we are still trying to
heal today.
A disaster of this magnitude demands the full support of the U.S.
Government, and that includes all of us here. I am glad this disaster
relief package is before us today. My Appropriations Committee staff
has worked so hard on it. If we don't act and act fast, FEMA exhausts
its funds by the end of this week.
Republicans and Democrats in the Senate stood by my side in 2011 and
in the following years to help Vermont rebuild after Irene, and I will
stand in support of Texans and Louisianans now. And I will stand in
support of Floridians, if and when they need it. This is only a
fraction of what we will need to help recover and rebuild after these
storms. It is going to require years of Federal support, and we cannot
let our commitment fade.
We live in a world where 100-year storms seem to occur every year, so
we have to invest in technology, conservation, and infrastructure that
will mitigate further damage and make our communities more resilient in
these crises.
Our ability to respond doesn't just depend on emergency assistance.
Each year, in the annual appropriations bills, we fund programs that
help us prevent and respond to severe weather events and invest in the
necessary infrastructure. The National Weather Service, the Army Corps
of Engineers, the Sea Grant program, the Flood Map Modernization
Program, Watershed Flood Prevention Operations, Regional Coastal
Resilience Grants, Community Development Block Grants, and State and
Local First Responder Grants--just to name a few--are all critical to
these efforts. We cannot and should not accept the deep cuts that have
been proposed by President Trump to these critical investment programs.
Now, I thank Chairman Cochran for his leadership and cooperation to
advance these bills. It is through these bills we can fund important
priorities. I have been asking since March to begin bipartisan budget
negotiations to establish responsible topline funding levels for both
defense and non-defense programs based on parity. The current budget
caps do not allow us to produce 12 responsible bills. Absent a budget
deal, deep cuts are mandated for both defense and non-defense programs.
We have to move forward with urgency.
So my heart goes out to all of those affected by Hurricane Harvey and
Hurricane Irma. My vote goes out to help them, and I will continue to
fight for them.
This Senate amendment is really the first step and I support it.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, may I have 2 minutes to conclude my
statement?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, so far this year, the Secretary of
Commerce has declared nine disasters for fisheries, and another
disaster assistance request is pending in Southern Oregon and in
Northern California.
When these fisheries close, our fishermen and their families are in
deep trouble. Their expenses don't disappear--the mortgages on their
vessels, their mooring fees, their maintenance. Of course, they have to
continue to be able to pay their basic living expenses. So when they
are told they have to stay in port because a fishery is closed because
of a fishing disaster, then, it is an enormous challenge to which we
need to help to respond. It is not just for the fishermen themselves,
but for the entire community--the recreational anglers, as well as the
commercial fishermen, the processors, the gear stores, the boat repair
facilities, and the tourism. All of it is impacted.
So let us not forget that we have nine declared disasters for
fisheries, and we should make sure we respond and assist these
communities.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
Cloture Motion
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the
mandatory quorum call.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The quorum call is waived.
Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending
cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
[[Page S5038]]
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R.
601, with a further amendment numbered 808.
Lamar Alexander, John Boozman, Roy Blunt, Thom Tillis,
Mike Crapo, John Cornyn, Shelley Moore Capito, Steve
Daines, Cory Gardner, Richard Burr, Orrin G. Hatch,
Roger F. Wicker, David Perdue, Dan Sullivan, John
Barrasso, John Thune.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. By unanimous consent, the mandatory
quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R.
601, a bill to enhance the transparency and accelerate the impact of
assistance provided under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to promote
quality basic education in developing countries, to better enable such
countries to achieve universal access to quality basic education and
improved learning outcomes, to eliminate duplication and waste, and for
other purposes, with a further amendment, 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 Florida (Mr. Rubio) and the Senator from Alaska (Mr.
Sullivan).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr.
Menendez) is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 79, nays 18, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 191 Leg.]
YEAS--79
Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Cochran
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Donnelly
Duckworth
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Harris
Hassan
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Heller
Hirono
Hoeven
Isakson
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCaskill
McConnell
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Roberts
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Scott
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young
NAYS--18
Corker
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Flake
Inhofe
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
McCain
Moran
Paul
Risch
Sasse
Strange
Toomey
NOT VOTING--3
Menendez
Rubio
Sullivan
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 79, the nays are
18.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
Amendment No. 809 Withdrawn
Cloture having been invoked, under the previous order, amendment No.
809 is withdrawn.
Vote on Motion to Concur With Amendment No. 808
Under the previous order, the question occurs on agreeing to the
motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R.
601, with a further amendment.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
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 Florida (Mr. Rubio) and the Senator from Alaska (Mr.
Sullivan).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio)
would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr.
Menendez) is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 80, nays 17, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 192 Leg.]
YEAS--80
Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Cochran
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Donnelly
Duckworth
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gardner
Gillibrand
Harris
Hassan
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Heller
Hirono
Hoeven
Inhofe
Isakson
Kaine
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCaskill
McConnell
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Roberts
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Scott
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Strange
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young
NAYS--17
Corker
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Flake
Graham
Grassley
Johnson
Lankford
Lee
McCain
Moran
Paul
Risch
Sasse
Toomey
NOT VOTING--3
Menendez
Rubio
Sullivan
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion
to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________