[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 7 (Thursday, January 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S154-S165]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         RAPID DNA ACT OF 2017

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair lays before the Senate the message 
from the House.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Resolved, That the bill from the Senate (S. 139) entitled 
     ``An Act to implement the use of Rapid DNA instruments to 
     inform decisions about pretrial release or detention and 
     their conditions, to solve and prevent violent crimes and 
     other crimes, to exonerate the innocent, to prevent DNA 
     analysis backlogs, and for other purposes.'', do pass with an 
     amendment.


                            Motion to Concur

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment 
to S. 139.


                             Cloture Motion

  I send a cloture motion to the desk on the motion to concur.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  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 the motion to 
     concur in the House amendment to S. 139, an act to implement 
     the use of Rapid DNA instruments to inform decisions about 
     pretrial release or detention and their conditions, to solve 
     and prevent violent crimes and other crimes, to exonerate the 
     innocent, to prevent DNA analysis backlogs, and for other 
     purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, James M. Inhofe, Roy Blunt, Shelley 
           Moore Capito, Marco Rubio, Johnny Isakson, Deb Fischer, 
           John Boozman, Thom Tillis, Richard Burr, Pat Roberts, 
           Orrin G. Hatch, Roger F. Wicker, John Cornyn, John 
           Hoeven, John Thune, Mike Rounds.


                Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1870

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment 
to S. 139, with a further amendment.
  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 concur 
     in the House amendment to S. 139, with an amendment numbered 
     1870.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  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 1 day after the date of 
     enactment.''

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to concur 
with amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                Amendment No. 1871 tO Amendment No. 1870

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. 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 1871 to amendment No. 1870.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike ``1 day'' and insert ``2 days''


                Motion to Refer With Amendment No. 1872

  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to refer the House message on S. 139 to the 
Committee on the Judiciary with instructions to report back forthwith 
with an amendment numbered 1872.
  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 S. 139 to the Committee on the 
     Judiciary with instructions to report back forthwith with an 
     amendment numbered 1872.

  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end add the following.
       ``This Act shall take effect 3 days after the date of 
     enactment.''

  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. 1873

  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 1873 to the instructions of the motion to 
     refer.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike ``3 days'' and insert ``4 days''

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                Amendment No. 1874 to Amendment No. 1873

  Mr. McCONNELL. 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 1874 to amendment No. 1873.

  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike ``4'' and insert ``5''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.


                                 Russia

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I take this time to share with my 
colleagues a report I released yesterday, which is the product of the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The report is called ``Putin's 
Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for 
U.S. National Security.''
  I commissioned this report to be done early in 2017. I had to make a 
decision on the allocation of resources, and I thought it was extremely 
important that the American people and the international community 
understand the breadth of Russia's campaign against democratic 
institutions.
  Yes, we saw it in 2016 in the U.S. elections, but that was only one 
part of a much broader design, and I recognized we needed to devote the 
resources at that time in order to make this report work. It is how 
Russia has interfered not just here in the United States but in Europe.
  I want to start with the statement that this is not a partisan 
report. Yes, I commissioned it as the Democratic ranking member because 
decisions had to be made early in 2017 on the allocation of resources. 
I know the Presiding Officer knows, I worked very closely with Senator 
Corker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and throughout the 
development of this report, I have kept Senator Corker informed.
  The work of this report has relied upon the work of many Members of 
the Senate on both sides of the aisle. In fact, I think the Presiding 
Officer will recall the work we did--Democrats and Republicans--in the 
passing of legislation in 2017 that held Russia accountable for its 
maligned activities. I was proud that I had the strong cooperation and 
support and leadership in developing that legislation from Senator 
McCain, Senator Graham, and Senator Rubio, who contributed greatly to 
the enactment of that legislation, and on the Democratic side, Senator 
Menendez, Senator Shaheen, and Senator Durbin.

[[Page S155]]

  This report is the accumulation of a year's work. It had 
professionalism and dedication and patriotism of the very talented 
staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I want to acknowledge 
that because I know all of us recognize that our staffs are critically 
important to the work we do in the Senate.
  Damian Murphy was our captain on this project. He was the one who 
provided the leadership to make sure we had a thorough report, that we 
had an accurate report, and that our recommendations would be tailored 
to make our Nation more secure. Terrell Henry provided incredible help 
throughout the entire year. Laura Carey was an instrumental part of 
getting this done. Megan Barkley helped us with making sure all of the 
sources were properly cited.
  I also want to acknowledge my Democratic staff leader, Jessica Lewis, 
who really was the one who decided early that we could get this done 
and encouraged me to move forward.
  Lastly, this report has received considerable attention since I 
released it yesterday--considerable attention--because this is the 
first comprehensive report that has been authored that deals with 
Russia's maligned activities, which are global in nature. Sean Bartlett 
was capable of making sure this story would be heard. I thank him for 
his professional work in the way we were able to get this report 
circulated.
  Following the 2016 elections, I thought it was important that we shed 
more light on the Russian Government's efforts to interfere in 
democracies beyond our own. Anyone who thinks the threat posed by 
Russia is limited to hacking emails or the American election in 2016 is 
missing the real story, and that is what this report shows.
  We wanted to describe the scale and scope of this threat to make the 
American people aware that the Russian Government's interference in the 
2016 elections are part of a pattern of behavior and warn that Russia 
could attack again in 2018 and 2020. The Kremlin is a learning 
organization, and they are constantly perfecting and improving their 
techniques.
  This report is the first government report to lay out in detail 
exactly how the Russians operate. Mr. Putin employs an asymmetric 
arsenal that includes not just military invasions--and they do use 
their military--but cyber attacks, disinformation and propaganda, and 
support for fringe political groups. They have employed the 
weaponization of energy resources. They have a network of organized 
crime, and they have a system that is fueled by corruption.
  This threat existed long before President Trump and will remain 
following his tenure, unless he takes steps and we take steps to 
address it.
  Our report examines how the Russian Government has sought to 
interfere in 19 countries across Europe. Many lessons are to be learned 
from our allies in Europe that have shown his behavior can be deterred. 
While many in the executive branch understand the threat and have taken 
steps to address Mr. Putin's asymmetric arsenal, Presidential 
leadership has been absent. Never before has a U.S. President so 
clearly ignored such a grave and growing threat to our national 
security, and without Presidential leadership, the United States will 
remain uncoordinated in its response.
  The Washington Post reported in December that the National Security 
Council has not had a meeting on countering malign Russian influence--
more than a year after the intelligence community assessment that 
Russia interfered in our elections.
  Mr. Putin's rise to power in 1999 was cynical and opportunistic. He 
capitalized on a war in Chechnya and apartment bombings in Moscow to 
shore up his image as a strong hand that could steady the country after 
the rocky 1990s.
  To do so, this former KGB officer emboldened his security services to 
play an outsized, criminal role in running the state. Mr. Putin's 
regime used violence to stop those who opposed him in and outside of 
Russia, cheated his way through the Olympics, and, through his security 
services' connections with organized crime and money laundering, has 
emboldened cyber theft and racketeering that has real-world 
implications for U.S. companies and citizens.

  Mr. Putin developed his techniques first at home against his own 
people. In Russia, he repressed independent civil society, journalists, 
and political opposition, while manipulating cultural and religious 
influences, the media and information space, and a corrupt crony 
capitalist system to shore up his own regime.
  The tools in Mr. Putin's asymmetric arsenal are drawn from a Soviet 
playbook but updated with new technologies. These include propaganda 
and disinformation, cultivating political fringe, religious and 
cultural groups as influencers, and weaponizing crime and corruption as 
a system of governance.
  In Europe, Mr. Putin's Russia has invaded countries, attempted coups, 
cut off countries from energy in the middle of winter, temporarily 
crippled governments with cyber attacks, created a whole new way to 
exponentially spread fake news using bots and trolls, and used dirty 
money as a weapon to attempt to buy candidates and political parties. 
The report illustrates these events in more detail in the 19 countries 
across Europe.
  The international response to the Kremlin's arsenal has been a 
patchwork. Some European countries have shored up their democracies in 
ways the United States has yet to do, in a strategic, whole-of-
government fashion. Europe's experience with Russia's meddling shows it 
can be deterred, and the United States must take steps to deter Russia 
now, as laid out in the report's recommendations.
  The report helps us to understand why Mr. Putin is doing this. He is 
doing this because that is all he has. Russia's economy is faltering. 
It has a limited military capacity. It doesn't have many friends around 
the world. Its economy is about 7 percent the size of the U.S. 
economy--ranks No. 12 in the world. It is smaller than Italy or South 
Korea or Canada, but we have to acknowledge he has had success with the 
use of these tools, with the use of these weapons.
  He has accumulated, by reported sources, more than tens of billions 
of dollars of stolen wealth. He has a propaganda machine that has been 
able to make him popular at home and accomplish many of his objectives 
in other countries. He has slowed down Serbia's integration into the EU 
and Ukraine and Georgia's ability to join NATO because of Russia's 
troops located in its countries.
  The report highlights the lessons we have learned from our Europeans. 
It is interesting, the Europeans understood this risk before we did and 
took action. The Brexit campaign in the UK, Russia was clearly engaged 
in it. Prime Minister May has made a resolute public statement that 
Russia's meddling is unacceptable and will be countered.
  France looked at what happened in 2016 in the U.S. elections, and 
they took steps. The Macron campaign was subject to cyber attacks with 
emails from President Macron during the campaign. They were released 
shortly before the runoff election, but France was prepared, and they 
were able to counter that. The French Government worked with 
independent media and political parties to expose and blunt the 
dissemination of fake news.
  In Germany, we saw the famous ``Lisa case'' that was fabricated by 
Russian-sponsored news outlets in order to incite the Russian-German 
community for an anti-migrant-type protest. The German Government 
bolstered democratic cyber security capabilities, particularly after 
the 2015 hack of the Bundestag, and the Interior Minister proposed 
creating a Center of Defense Against Misinformation. Germany has acted.
  In the Nordic countries, the states have largely adopted a whole-of-
society approach, with an emphasis on education that teaches critical 
thinking and media literacy. They have a curriculum in their school for 
their schoolchildren to be able to differentiate between what is real 
and what is fake in the news.
  In Lithuania, the government diversified its supplies of natural gas. 
All the Baltic governments have worked to integrate their electricity 
grids to reduce dependency on Russia for energy needs.
  In Spain, the Spanish Government has investigated, exposed, and cut 
off significant money-laundering operations by Russia-based organized 
crime.

[[Page S156]]

  So what do we do about this? Russia has this plan to compromise our 
democratic institutions. What do we do about it? Well, the report 
spells out many, many recommendations. I am proud to say that many of 
these recommendations have been championed by Members on both sides of 
the aisle.
  First, we call upon Presidential leadership. We need President Trump 
to acknowledge the threat and establish a high-level interagency fusion 
cell to coordinate all elements of U.S. policy on the Russian 
Government's malign influence operations. The President should present 
to Congress a comprehensive national strategy and work to get it 
implemented and funded.
  Second, the U.S. Government needs to support democratic institution 
building and values abroad. We need stronger support for these 
programs. The United States should provide assistance to help bolster 
democratic institutions in European states.
  Members of the U.S. Congress should conduct hearings and use their 
platform to make democracy and human rights an essential part of their 
agenda. I am proud of the work we have done in the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee. Working with Senator Corker, we have highlighted 
human rights throughout the year, but we need to do more. The Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee has recommended to the full Senate that we 
pass legislation so we can start evaluating every country and its 
ability to fight corruption, patterned after the ``Trafficking in 
Persons Report'' on human trafficking. We need to get that bill enacted 
into law.
  Third, we need to expose and freeze Kremlin-linked dirty money. We 
should declassify any intelligence related to Mr. Putin's personal 
corruption and cut off Mr. Putin and his inner circle from the 
international financial system. We know that the elite class in Russia 
does not want to hold their money in rubles; they want dollars. We have 
to deny them that opportunity. They also would like visas to visit the 
United States; they don't want to be stuck in Russia. Those sanctions 
have an impact, and we need to make sure they are enforced.
  Fourth, we need to create a ``state hybrid threat actors'' 
designation and impose a sanctions regime. The United States should 
designate countries that employ malign influence operations to assault 
democracies as ``state hybrid threat actors.'' Those designated would 
fall under a preemptive escalating sanctions regime that would be 
applied whenever the state uses weapons like cyber attacks to interfere 
with a democratic election or disrupt a country's vital infrastructure. 
We need to make it clear that, yes, we want relations with all 
countries, constructive relations, but if they are going to use these 
weapons against our democratic institutions, we need to be prepared to 
increase our sanctions against these countries.
  Quite frankly, what we must understand is the importance of democracy 
against what Mr. Putin is trying to do.
  Fifth, we have to defend the United States and Europe against foreign 
funding that erodes democracy. We need to pass legislation to require 
full disclosure of shell company owners and improve transparency for 
funding of political parties, campaigns, and advocacy groups. We have 
bipartisan legislation to do that. Let's get that passed. We know that 
shell companies are shielding illegal funds. Let's make sure that 
Russia's game plan is not funded through shell companies that are 
located here.
  Sixth, we need U.S. leadership to build global cyber defenses and 
norms and to establish a rapid reaction team to defend allies under 
attack. We should push NATO to consider the implications of a cyber 
attack within the context of article V and our ability to defend each 
other. We should also lead an effort to establish an international 
treaty on the use of cyber tools in peacetime, modeled on the 
international arms control treaties.
  Lastly, we need to hold social media companies accountable. 
Government should mandate transparency for funding political 
advertisements. This is the new way of communications. We have to catch 
up with technology in our laws. We require traditional advertisers to 
disclose all this information, but we have left social media alone 
because we didn't know about it when we passed these laws. We have to 
make sure that we have full laws on disclosure. Companies should 
conduct audits on possible Kremlin-supported meddling in European 
elections over the past several years. Companies should establish civil 
society advisory councils and work with civil society and government to 
promote media literacy.
  That is just a sampling of some of the recommendations that are in 
this report. It is pretty comprehensive, but I think it does give us a 
game plan to understand that we can protect our national security, and 
we must.
  Following the end to World War II, the United States led the world in 
constructing the liberal international order, underpinned by democratic 
institutions, shared values, and accepted norms. It protects our shared 
security, advances our interests, and expands our prosperity. Yet the 
defense of that system of institutions and democratic principles is 
anathema to Mr. Putin, who seeks to protect little more than his power 
and wealth. It is therefore up to the United States and our allies to 
engage in a coordinated effort to counter the Kremlin's assaults on 
democracy in Europe, the United States, and around the world.
  In closing, we must take care to point out that there is a 
distinction between Mr. Putin's corrupt regime and the people of 
Russia, who have been some of his most frequent victims. Many Russian 
citizens strive for a more transparent and accountable government that 
operates under the democratic rule of law, and we hope for better 
relations in the future with a Russian Government that reflects these 
values. We applaud the courage we saw very recently from the protesters 
in Russia, who stood up against Mr. Putin because they want basic 
freedom in their country.

  I remember very clearly that when we passed the Magnitsky law that 
holds those who violated the basic human rights, in Russia, of Sergei 
Magnitsky, who was just doing his job as a lawyer--that they would be 
denied our banking system and denied the ability to travel to this 
country--when that bill was enacted, it was the people who were 
protesting against the government who said: That law passed by the U.S. 
Congress was the most pro-Russian bill passed by the U.S. Congress. We 
stand with the people of Russia.
  I am also the ranking Democrat in the U.S. Helsinki Commission. I 
have worked for the Helsinki Commission for a long time. The Helsinki 
Commission includes all the countries of Europe and the former Soviet 
Union, the United States, and Canada. All countries had signed on to 
the Helsinki Final Act. It talks about basic democratic principles, and 
it gives each member state the right to challenge the activities of 
every other member state.
  We have an obligation to call out what Mr. Putin is doing because it 
is not only against our national security interests; it is not only 
hurting the people of Russia; it is against the commitments Russia made 
in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
  The United States must work with our allies to build defenses against 
Mr. Putin's asymmetric arsenal and strengthen international norms and 
values to deter such malign behavior by Russia or any other country.
  I stand ready to work with all of my colleagues to protect our 
national security interests and to recognize the threat that Mr. Putin 
poses to our democratic institutions. I look forward to a day when we 
can truly have a better relationship with Russia because they stop this 
assault on democratic institutions in Europe, the United States, or 
anywhere in the world.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.


                            My Senate Agenda

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, earlier this month, I announced that my 
current term of service would be my last. Since then, many of my 
colleagues have asked how I feel with my Senate tenure drawing to a 
close. I think many expect me to say that I feel an overwhelming sense 
of satisfaction and relief. Hardly. If anything, the decision to retire 
has imbued me with a sense of urgency that I have never felt before.
  With a year left in office, I have an agenda that is as ambitious as 
ever,

[[Page S157]]

and the ticking shot clock is a constant reminder of just how much I 
have left to accomplish. Just 168 legislative days remain in my Senate 
term, and I can assure you that those 168 days will be among the 
proudest and the most productive periods in all my public service.
  Anyone who thought Orrin Hatch would coast quietly into his golden 
years clearly doesn't know me. The stars have aligned for this year to 
be one of my most successful yet. So don't expect me to go gentle into 
that good night. Expect me to be right here on the Senate floor, early 
and often, pushing the most critical reforms of this Congress. Expect 
me to take the lead on a Finance Committee agenda that will equal in 
ambition our accomplishments of 2017. Expect me to be the same steady 
presence in this body that I have been for the last 41 years.
  Above all, expect a flurry of legislative activity from my office. I 
have a dedicated staff. They are determined to drive this old workhorse 
into the ground. And I have arguably the best working relationship with 
this President of anyone on Capitol Hill. Add to this the advantages 
that accrue from a lifetime of legislative experience and bipartisan 
dealmaking.
  The point I wish to make is simple: In legislative terms, my final 
year could well be the most fruitful yet, and I hope it will be.
  In the months ahead, I am eager to capitalize on our tax reform 
victory by putting the Nation back on the path to fiscal 
sustainability, finding a way forward on immigration, and securing 
long-term funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program--a 
program that I helped put into law and have been very pleased with over 
the years. I also intend to update our intellectual property laws for 
the 21st century, enact key fixes to our higher education system, and 
fill our courts with as many qualified judges as possible. Likewise, I 
look forward to working with my colleagues across the aisle to improve 
the competitiveness of our workforce, strengthen digital privacy, and 
blaze new trails on medical marijuana research.
  But this brief overview doesn't cover even half of my agenda for 
2018, nor does it include some of the legislative surprises I plan for 
later this year. The virtue of being a seven-term Senator with a 
reservoir of good will is that you have a little bit of latitude in 
your final year. That is why my plan is to go big and to go bold, 
because unless you are Michael Jordan, you retire only once, so you 
might as well make the most of it.
  The truth is, I put the pieces in place long ago to ensure that my 
final year in office would be a legislative knockout, so no one should 
count me out, not for a single second, and anyone who does should be 
reminded that I can do in just a few months what it takes most a decade 
to complete. Tough old birds like me don't have lameduck years; we just 
dig in and get tougher. For me, 2018 is not a victory lap but a sprint 
to the finish, and I plan to finish strong. I look forward to working 
with all of you until the very end.
  With that, I just want to say how much I love the Senate, how much I 
love my colleagues on both sides of the floor, how much I have enjoyed 
working with all of you over all these years and will enjoy this 
remaining year hopefully even more. I hope I can do some things that 
will be very beneficial to our country, to all of us, and that will 
help us all feel better about our service here and help us all strive 
to do better together.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to assure the Senator from Utah, 
who just spoke, who is also the President pro tempore of this entire 
body, that he is well regarded on both sides of the aisle. I don't 
think any Senator has had a more distinguished or consequential 
career--four decades of legislating.
  I want to assure the Senator that nobody thinks he is going to slow 
down. In fact, as he just said, he has plenty on his agenda for the 
next year, and we look forward to working with him during that time 
period.
  We also wish him well on his retirement. I have talked to him a 
little about this. He has a wonderful family, and he has big plans for 
the future with some important work he wants to do in public policy 
through his foundation.
  I have so much respect for Senator Hatch. I thank him so much for 
what he did most recently to help guide us through this latest tax 
reform and tax cut bill that actually is making a difference for the 
people I represent and he represents.
  Mr. HATCH. If the Senator will yield, I thank the Senator so much. I 
am grateful for the friendship that I have with all of you but 
especially with him. He is one of the up-and-coming, moving, strong 
Senators in this body. I have tremendous respect for his work ethic, 
the effort he has put forth on a daily basis, the ethics that he 
imposes upon himself, and the logistical all around way of doing the 
Senate's work. I am very pleased to have him as a friend.
  Mr. PORTMAN. I thank the Senator. I have to get the last word, 
though, because this is about the Senator.
  Senator Hatch said he loves this place and he loves its Members. 
There is a lot of love for him in this place on both sides of the 
aisle, and it is well deserved and earned.


                                 Russia

  Mr. President, I heard Senator Cardin earlier speaking about the 
threat that Russia poses not just to us--and the meddling that has been 
occurring here in our elections over the years--but also the threat 
that they pose to other democracies around the world, particularly in 
Eastern Europe. I appreciate his report. I appreciate the fact that he 
has worked with a number of us, including Senator Murphy, on the other 
side of the aisle, to put forward legislation to try to push back 
against this disinformation.
  In fact, we have required that the State Department increase their 
efforts through what is called the Global Engagement Center. I am 
meeting with the Deputy Secretary of State here after this speech, and 
I am going to speak more about that with him, but we really want to be 
sure that the United States is taking more aggressive action against 
the kind of disinformation that can destabilize democracies.
  We heard some of the examples of what his report was able to uncover 
in terms of some of the Russian activity, particularly, again, in 
Europe and in Eastern Europe. This is an issue. It is a foreign policy 
issue that we have been, in my view, slow to respond to. It didn't 
start with the last Presidential election, and it will not end with 
this last Presidential election unless we take a more aggressive stance 
and step up.
  So I appreciate that it has been a bipartisan effort that we should 
acknowledge as Americans that it is in our interests to push back 
against the disinformation and the propaganda and the destabilization 
of democracies.


                               Tax Reform

  Today, Mr. President, I wish to speak about some good news; that is, 
that here in Congress we actually did something with the tax relief and 
tax reform legislation that is actually creating a better economy and 
more hope for people.
  There was news announced today, just a few minutes ago, that is in 
addition to the news we have heard over the last few weeks. This 
historic tax reform was created, we will remember, with two goals in 
mind. One was to cut taxes for middle-class families--so individual tax 
cuts. The second part of it was to make America a better place to do 
business. Let's ensure that there will be more jobs created here rather 
than elsewhere. Let's level the playing field so our workers aren't 
competing with one hand tied behind their back.
  As I have said through the process and as we developed this bill, we 
had a bipartisan agreement that our Tax Code was broken, but we 
couldn't seem to come up with an agreement of how to fix it. Some 
Democrats said: Well, that is great that you guys have done this bill, 
but it is not going to help. I said at the time: The proof will be what 
happens, what happens to jobs, what happens to wages, what happens to 
the economy in general, and what happens to your paycheck.
  I am here to announce today that the results have been pretty darn 
impressive, and they have been across the board--all of those things I 
talked about. We have already seen as a result of this tax legislation 
that America has become a better place to do business. All over the 
country there are companies and businesses, small and large,

[[Page S158]]

that have stepped forward to talk about that. I now have a list of 150 
businesses--and I am sure there are many, many more--that have decided 
to do something. Either they announced a pay increase, a bonus, an 
increased 401(k) contribution, an increased pension contribution, or 
maybe a new investment in equipment and in technology to make workers 
more competitive. All of this is specifically because of the tax relief 
and reform bill. That is what is happening.
  For those who haven't followed it, even today another company, 
Walmart--the largest employer in my State--announced that they are 
indeed going to increase pay and provide bonuses to over 1 million 
workers. Some companies have actually announced a combination of 
things, not just a pay increase but maybe a pay increase as well as an 
increased contribution to a 401(K) or an increased contribution to a 
charity.
  So I think we are already seeing the direct effects--the direct and 
very positive beneficial effects--of this tax reform legislation, as 
many have hoped that we would see, given the fact that we wrote it to 
create these incentives for more jobs and better jobs.
  But today we are going to begin to see the direct effects of the 
other part of the bill; that is, the tax relief directly to 
individuals. The IRS just announced about an hour ago that they are 
publishing updates to the tax withholding tables for employers. Now, 
what does this mean? This means that Uncle Sam is going to take a 
little less of your paycheck, and you are going to see it on your 
paycheck. So the withholding--the amount that is withheld from your 
paycheck with taxes--is going to be changed. The Treasury Department 
says that for 90 percent of Americans--90 percent--there will be a 
change in withholding that will be positive for them. In other words, 
they will have less money coming out of their paycheck.

  Most people whom I represent in my home State of Ohio live paycheck 
to paycheck. This is really important. We talked earlier about how much 
this is going to be: $2,000 a family on average. That is the median 
income for a family in Ohio. Whatever the amount is, this is 
significant, and it is something that people are going to be pretty 
surprised about because so many people have misrepresented what this 
legislation is about. They are now seeing that it is about jobs, it is 
about wages, it is about bonuses, and so on. But they are also going to 
see in their own paycheck that it is about more take-home pay. It is 
about having a little healthier family budget.
  So, again, as we went through this process, when we would have these 
debates I would say: I encourage people to look online, to look at the 
professionals, to look at a tax calculator. I said: The proof is in 
your paycheck. I think the proof will be in their paychecks--more hard-
earned money staying in their pocket rather than going to Washington is 
something that my constituents will like, particularly if we see this 
economy start to pick up because of this tax reform bill, which, by the 
way, will result in a stronger economy.
  Therefore, there will be more revenue through growth. So the Federal 
Government will have more revenue coming in. Every 1-percent increase 
in GDP--a 1-percent increase in growth in this country--means about 
$2.7 trillion in increased revenue coming into the Federal coffers. So 
that is more revenue coming in, not from a tax increase but from 
growth. That is the kind of revenue we want to have to be able to deal 
with many issues we face on the fiscal side, including our large 
deficits and debt, and that we will also begin to see as we see a 
better economy grow and develop because of this tax reform legislation. 
That is my strong belief and, again, I think the evidence is pretty 
clear that we are headed that way.
  I want to commend the IRS for moving so quickly because this is 
pretty quick for us to turn it around. We just passed the legislation 
at the end of the year. It became effective on January 1. Here we are 
on January 11, and we are already seeing them changing the withholding 
that is going to go to the employers so that employers will withhold 
less from people's paychecks.
  I also want to personally commend the Treasury Secretary, Steven 
Mnuchin, because I know he has a passion to make sure that our hard-
working taxpayers get this tax relief as soon as possible. My sense is 
that he is the one who has promoted our moving quickly on this, in a 
professional and careful way so that the withholding tables are 
accurate but ensuring that we do allow people to begin to have a little 
more in their paychecks to be able to help make ends meet. Again, with 
most people I represent living paycheck to paycheck this is a big deal. 
Steve Mnuchin has been, I think, essential to getting this done as 
quickly as it has been done, as he was essential in the tax reform 
legislation, along with Gary Cohn of the White House, and others.
  So this law is going to help middle-class families in three main 
ways.
  First, it cuts taxes across the board. As I noted, the IRS 
announcement means that about 90 percent of taxpayers will see more 
money in their paychecks. They do this in a number of ways in the tax 
reform legislation, and I am talking about the reform notice here. It 
is Notice 1036. For those who want to go online and look at it, just go 
on the IRS website, irs.gov, and you can see it, the new withholding 
tables. They lay all of this out. Depending on how much your paycheck 
is, whether you are paid weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly, you 
see what your benefits are going to be. But it happens because there is 
a doubling of the standard deduction, and most people already take the 
standard deduction in my State of Ohio. Now more people will take it 
because there is a doubling and essentially a zero tax bracket. So it 
goes from about $12,000 a family to about $24,000 a family.
  It also has a lowering of the rate of tax. So your tax rate is going 
to be lower relative to what it was before this.
  Also, if you have kids, you get a doubling of the child tax credit, 
including part of that being an increase in the refundability of that 
if you don't have income tax liability. But if you still have expenses, 
if you still have payroll taxes, you get your benefit there.
  So these are the kinds of things that, combined, end up with this 
notice going out saying: You are going to have a little more in your 
paycheck.
  Second, the result of these tax cuts is going to take about 3 million 
Americans off the tax rolls altogether. I say ``about'' because the 
Joint Committee on Taxation doesn't have the final number yet but they 
have told me that it is at least 3 million Americans who now pay income 
taxes who will no longer have income tax liability. Now, they may have 
payroll tax liabilities, and they may have State and local taxes, but 
the point is that this was about Federal income reform and relief, and 
they are going to be out from under the IRS and again be able to help 
make ends meet. That is as a result of this legislation. I said earlier 
that about $2,000 per family is the average tax savings for a median 
family income in Ohio, $2,000 a year in tax relief is about the 
average.
  This is important because as expenses have gone up over the last 
couple of decades--particularly, healthcare expenses in the last 
decade--wages have not. So wages have been relatively flat. In fact, on 
average, if you take inflation into account, they have been flat over 
the last couple of decades. We are beginning to see some increase in 
wages now. This is terrific, but with wages being flat and expenses up, 
people have had a real squeeze, and that middle-class squeeze is real 
in my home State. So this is extra money that families--many people 
living paycheck to paycheck--can use for expenses like healthcare, 
maybe make a car payment, save for retirement, or maybe help their 
kids.
  The second goal of this tax reform, boosting the American economy, is 
also beginning to happen, as I said earlier. When the Tax Cuts and Jobs 
Act became law, immediately we saw a number of companies and 
businesses, small and large, around the country say: We are going to do 
something about this. I remember being home over the holidays and, 
actually, the day after Christmas, December 26, I was talking with 
friends, and a guy who owns a small manufacturing business, the brother 
of a friend of mine, said: Would you be willing to come out to our 
little company to talk about the tax bill?
  I said: Sure, if we can figure it out schedulewise.

[[Page S159]]

  He said: Because I want to give my employees a bonus. I am looking at 
this tax bill, how it is going to affect our little business, and what 
it is going to do for us to be able to invest more in the company, and 
I want to give my employees a $1,000 bonus--everybody, 137 employees--
and I also want to do something in terms of investing in my equipment 
because I want to make my people more competitive.
  This is a small manufacturer in Cincinnati, OH, that makes a high-
quality product, a precision product, and he wants to make sure that 
his people have the best equipment to be competitive. In his case, he 
has competition from overseas, as do a lot of American businesses, 
either directly or indirectly these days in an increasingly global 
economy, and he wants to be sure he is competitive. So I went there.
  I went to the company, Sheffer Corporation, and I had the opportunity 
to talk about the tax reform bill and what it does across the board. He 
made the announcement, and I can tell you that people were very happy 
because these are folks who work hard and play by the rules. They 
aren't looking for any kind of a handout, but what they do want is to 
be able to know that if they work hard and do the right thing, they 
will be able to see a little better future for themselves and their 
kids and their grandkids and not have that middle-class squeeze we 
talked about, where wages are flat and expenses are up.
  When the economy is not growing at a fast rate, which we have seen 
over the last decade, it is really a challenge. When we have an economy 
growing at 2 percent or less, it is tough to see that kind of open 
opportunity. Now, with this tax reform bill, I think we have a much 
better chance of seeing that. In fact, looking at some of the 
projections for next year, it looks like most people think the economy 
is going to grow at better than 2 percent--maybe 3 percent or maybe a 
little higher. We don't know. The point is that people are going to 
have more hope and opportunity.
  It is not just Sheffer, though. In my hometown of Cincinnati, the 
Fifth Third Bank announced a companywide wage increase. So wages are 
going to go up for entry-level jobs and push all wages, as well as 
bonuses, for 13,000 employees in Cincinnati.
  Across the country we have seen this. Tomorrow I will be at a plant 
in Cleveland, OH, that is putting more money into their pension plan. I 
think it is going to be about $15 million into a pension plan, which 
isn't in terrible shape, but it could be a lot healthier. That is going 
to help those employees directly.
  Last Friday I was at a plant in Columbus, OH, a small manufacturer, 
Wolf Metals. They do an awesome job there competing with people all 
around the globe, and they are going to make more investments in 
equipment. In fact, I like this comparison to the tax bill because one 
of the pieces of equipment--a $1 million piece of equipment they are 
going to replace with the tax bill savings--is 32 years old. The Tax 
Code that we reformed was 31 years old. So it is time, don't you think, 
every few decades to actually reform our Tax Code, to bring it up to 
speed and make it more competitive to give our workers the edge, just 
as it is time to replace that machine to give his employees, what they 
need to compete globally.
  Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, OH, is going to reinvest in their 
workers. Western & Southern Financial Group, Boeing, Comcast, and AT&T 
are some of the big companies we have heard about. They have all 
announced increased investments in their workers and new investments in 
their operations as a result of this law.
  With regard to Walmart, they employ about 1.5 million Americans now. 
As I said, it is the largest employer in Ohio, with over 50,000 
employees. They are going to raise wages, provide bonuses, and expand 
benefits for the workers as a result of this tax reform legislation.
  So these are the results. This isn't a hypothetical. This is not 
something we are just saying might happen; it is something that is 
actually happening.
  I think every single American is going to see a benefit from this 
because a stronger economy helps everyone. The 90 percent of people who 
see their withholdings change so that they have more tax relief are 
obviously going to see it. The people who work in the businesses we 
have talked are going to see it. But all of us benefit.
  President John F. Kennedy once said something I think makes a lot of 
sense. He talked about a rising tide. He said, ``A rising tide lifts 
all . . . [ships].'' In other words, it helps to have a growing 
economy.
  These results are going to help with regard to our competitiveness 
too. Right now, we have a situation where, because of our Tax Code, 
jobs and investments are going overseas. Now, we may not hear as much 
about this, but what we are going to see is fewer foreign companies 
buying U.S. companies and, therefore, less investment in jobs going 
overseas.
  In 2016, the last year for which we have numbers, three times as many 
American companies were bought by foreign companies as the other way 
around. Ernst & Young has done a study saying that over the past 13 
years, 4,700 American companies were purchased by a foreign company 
that otherwise would still be American if we had in place this tax bill 
that we have now.
  Part of the result of this tax reform and tax cut legislation we are 
talking about today is obvious. We will see better jobs, higher wages, 
more investment in companies, more investment in retirement--all the 
things we all want to see, Republican and Democrat alike. Part of it is 
the tax cuts. Today, with the IRS announcement, people will see this in 
their paychecks. If not this next pay period, they will see it before 
February 15 because that is what the Treasury Department is requiring 
companies to do. So it is coming soon.
  The other part we may not see, but is very real, is that the decline 
we have seen in American competitiveness--the result being that jobs 
and investment go overseas--is going to start to reverse, and it is 
none too soon. We needed to do this years ago. Many of us have been 
talking about it for years.
  Finally, we are putting American workers in a position where they can 
compete and they can win. Isn't that what it is all about? I don't want 
these 4,700 companies going overseas. I don't want three times as many 
American companies bought by foreign companies instead of the other way 
around. We don't want that. What we want is people to say: I am going 
to invest in America and American workers.
  I believe we have so many advantages in this country, and we are so 
blessed to be Americans. We have great universities. We have the 
opportunity here, through our workforce, to be as productive as anybody 
in the world. But when we have a tax code that is holding us back, it 
is unfair. It is our responsibility as Members of Congress to fix it, 
and that is what we have done. We should have done this sooner, but now 
that we have done it, I think we will see continued good results, as we 
have talked about today. We are going to see the opportunity for more 
investments in American workers, in American jobs, in American 
families, and in American businesses, and that investment will pay off 
for all of us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.


                              Immigration

  Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, today I was honored to be invited to the 
White House and included in a small meeting with President Trump, and 
it was very clear that I was invited to the White House to stand firm 
with President Trump today. We talked about immigration, and today I 
was proud to stand with our President.
  We have been crystal clear. Chain migration must end, period. Any 
solution to our current immigration crisis that the U.S. Senate will 
consider must include ending chain migration. Before I talk about the 
details of what chain migration is, I want to put it in perspective.
  Our immigration crisis today has been longstanding. We had a law 
written in 1965 and other changes in 1986, but it has really not been 
since 1991 that there has been any meaningful immigration change.
  Three times in the last 11 years, well-intended people in this body 
and in the House have done a yeoman's job of trying to solve the 
comprehensive problem of immigration in the United States--without 
success. Here we are, again, right now, facing a deadline that the 
President has put on, and rightfully so. We have a sense of urgency.

[[Page S160]]

The President has done a couple of things. He has defined the scope of 
the problem, and he has defined a sense of urgency for the people in 
Congress.
  The legal immigration system right now is broken, but to deal with 
that, we have to deal with our entire immigration system in pieces. The 
reason I believe most past efforts have failed is that they tried to do 
a comprehensive solution.
  Today, we are breaking it into three areas. One is our legal 
immigration system, and the next step might be our temporary work 
visas. Today, we bring in about 1.1 million legal immigrants a year, 
and I will talk about how that relates historically. But we issue about 
2.2 million temporary work visas a year. Then the third issue is, of 
course, the people who are in the United States illegally.
  President Trump had a meeting 2 days ago at the White House. In that 
meeting, he had Democrats, Republicans, Members of the House, and 
Members of this body, the Senate, and he drove consensus in that 
meeting.
  It was very interesting that he had the media in there for almost 60 
minutes for an open dialogue, and we heard from all people in that room 
about their position on these topics. I thought it was very interesting 
that the President had the courage to put this issue in front of the 
American people and create an air of transparency that we have not had 
on this issue in decades. In that meeting, he drove two conclusions: 
one, a scope of the problem and, two, a sense of urgency.
  The scope is very simply defined as this: We have to address the DACA 
situation. The President has given Congress the date of March 5 to come 
up with a solution for these individuals who are in the country 
illegally--but not of their doing.
  The second issue is border security. We know that border security is 
a national security issue as much as it is an immigration issue. The 
good news is that we know that illegal crossings of our southern border 
are down dramatically this year just because of a couple of reasons. 
One is the enforcement of current law, and the second is an 
understanding around the world that we are going to deal with this 
issue.
  The third piece of the scope is chain migration. Any solution to the 
DACA situation or the legal immigration situation must include 
addressing the chain migration issue.
  Then the last is this archaic diversity visa lottery we have in the 
United States that was related to at least one of the terrorist 
attacks, and chain migration was involved in both of the terrorist 
attacks we have recently experienced here in the United States.
  With regard to DACA, the first item on the scope is that we know we 
have a March 5 deadline. There is a growing consensus in this body of 
how to deal with that, and there is great latitude on the part of 
Republicans in this body to deal with that in a way, with our 
Democratic partners here, to get a consensus bill that solves this once 
and for all.
  The second is border security. Here, with the President's leadership 
and in these recent meetings with Democrats and Members of the House, 
there is a growing consensus that we can deal with the national 
security issues related to our southern border. We don't need a 2,000-
mile wall, as even the President of the United States has said just 
this week. But there are things we need to do, and we need to do them 
quickly.
  The President today said that his goal is to get this done this year. 
Coming from the real world, I know that is possible. This President, 
who comes from the real world and is an outsider to this community here 
in Washington, knows that is possible, and I think he is going to hold 
us accountable to that.
  The third area I mentioned before is chain migration. I will say more 
about that in a minute.
  The fourth is the diversity lottery. This diversity lottery has not 
served us well. It is not the number; it is the way it is being 
handled. We know there is fraud, and we know this is a loophole 
terrorists are now using to put people in their chain inside the United 
States.
  There is a growing consensus on these four items of this scope that 
the President has defined, and we had a consensus in that room 2 days 
ago in the White House. There is consensus that we can get to a 
solution within the timeframe here, but let me be very clear. Any 
deal--whether it is in business, sports, or certainly in politics--has 
to have some symmetry. Therefore, any solution for the DACA situation 
must include a solution for our chain migration crisis.
  We must continue working with the President. He is holding us 
accountable. He is moving at a business pace, but to do that, we really 
have to talk about chain migration. I understand there are other areas 
that we have to talk about, as well, but there is a lot of 
disinformation about what it really is.
  Chain migration is nothing more than a law put in place in 1965 to 
allow legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens to sponsor people for 
U.S. citizenship. It was put in place in 1965. It has been updated a 
little bit. But today, a legal permanent resident--for the most part, 
this is someone who has come in qualified in our legal immigration 
system, who goes through a 5-year waiting period, who eventually can 
apply for U.S. citizenship. While they are a legal permanent resident, 
almost immediately they can sponsor spouses, minor children, and 
unmarried adult children. That is current law.
  Once they become a citizen--and this is true of any U.S. citizen, 
whether they were a recent immigrant or were born here; a U.S. citizen 
can sponsor their parents, their spouses, minor children, unmarried 
adult children, married adult children, and siblings
  The issue around this is pretty simple. We have a chart here which 
shows that in 1965, when this law was put in place, approximately 
300,000 U.S. citizens were brought into the United States in that year 
under this system. Last year, we had, roughly, about 1.1 million. We 
had a high of somewhere close to 1.3 million. But we can see, this is a 
geometric progression that increases unbounded. It is not really the 
number here, but it is the balance that we have lost.
  What happens, and the criticism I have as a business guy looking at 
this, is that the individuals who determine who future immigrants are 
going to be are current and recent immigrants.
  We don't have many guidelines. We have a country cap system which 
says that most countries have a percentage of the total they have to 
have, and they can't exceed that. But there is no real cap here, such 
that if all these numbers were maximized, then over time you would see 
this number go up geometrically.
  We have a second chart that shows this and demonstrates that over a 
very short period of time, the numbers can increase dramatically, as we 
have seen in the last 40 or so years.
  There have been studies on this. Princeton has a study which says 
that right now, based on recent history, any immigrant who comes in 
sponsors somewhere around 3.5 future immigrants within a short period 
of time. We don't know what the 3.5 immigrants do when they get 
sponsored and become citizens or legal permanent residents, but if you 
extrapolate this out--let's say we start with 2 million as a starting 
point. They become citizens and they sponsor--let's just say the number 
is 3. In the first iteration, now we have 6 million people sponsored by 
the original 2 million; then the second iteration goes from 6 to 18; 
and in the fourth iteration we are at 54 million people. So all of a 
sudden, as you can see, there is no limit here, other than the country 
caps, and the country caps do not limit the total number. They limit 
the mix.
  What is wrong with this system? The problem, as I said just now, is 
that future immigrants are determined by current immigrants without any 
regard to their ability to participate in the system.
  The second one is that because you can bring parents in, immigrants 
who come in under this system and become U.S. citizens can bring their 
parents in, and all of a sudden, now we have an aged population coming 
in--not a younger population--and they then draw social services on an 
already bankrupt system.
  Chain migration is not based on skill or the ability to participate 
in the current economic situation in the United States. Last year, we 
brought in 1.1 million immigrants. Of that, 140,000 were immigrants who 
were related to the worker; 70,000 were the workers, and the other 
70,000 were their immediate family. So we can see that over 950,000 
people were derivative iterations of what I am talking about.

[[Page S161]]

  The third thing is that if chain migration is not stopped, it 
continues to incentivize future illegal immigration because of what you 
can do once you get here.
  Chain migration is another problem with the DACA situation because if 
you permit a pathway to some sort of legalized situation in the United 
States for the DACA population, you end up with a situation where those 
people who are then legalized can sponsor their parents. The problem 
with that is, the DACA population is not violating fair law, but their 
parents have.

  The last issue I will bring up is, the national security issues are 
profound. We have seen two national security incidents just this past 
year related to chain migration and the diversity visa lottery. There 
is more than enough evidence to show this has to be addressed.
  Again, any symmetric deal on immigration has to include, I believe, 
the four points the President talked about the other day. We have to 
deal with the DACA situation. We have to deal with our border security, 
and that means building a wall. We have to deal with the chain 
migration issues, and we have to deal with this diversity visa lottery. 
The President demands it. The American people demand it. Today, as a 
matter of fact, over 80 percent of America believes we need to deal 
with the DACA situation. Likewise, 72 percent of people in America 
believe the immigration law should be the worker, the spouse, and their 
immediate minor children only--72 percent. I can't think of another 
issue that has come before this body where we had those sorts of 
agreements in the American population.
  The President wants results. He has charged leadership in this body 
and the House and those of us who have been involved in this for some 
time to get to it. There is a March 5 deadline looming. Some people say 
there is a January 19 date that has to do with funding the government. 
I personally believe the two have nothing to do with each other, but we 
want a sense of urgency. The President has demanded it. We need it.
  We know there are going to be other steps. This is not the last step 
to this problem. We know we have to deal with how we bring people to 
the United States. We need a balance. Of course, we want to continue to 
be the open arms of the world today in terms of welcoming people to our 
shores. Just look at what is written on the Statue of Liberty. Who can 
argue with that? At the same time, we have to have a balance. Right 
now, we don't bring in people who are contributing to the economy, for 
the most part, and we are eliminating--we are not bringing in people 
who can contribute. All we are asking for is a dialogue to bring 
balance back to that system.
  I am excited to be a part of this dialogue because I believe we have 
a unique, historic opportunity with people on the other side and people 
on this side who generally have hearts that are not that dissimilar 
with regard to how to deal with the DACA population, how to deal with 
the Dreamers population, how to deal with future immigrant populations 
that are coming to the United States. We can have those debates, and we 
are having them now. I welcome input from all points. I am anxious to 
get to the bottom line of this.
  I will close with this. It is exciting to have leadership from the 
executive branch on this issue that has put the responsibility back on 
this body to come up with something that will not allow us to be back 
here in the next 3, 5, or 20 years dealing with this same problem. We 
have a historic opportunity. It is time to get to it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.


                          Judicial Nominations

  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I have been consistently voting against 
cloture motions to proceed to debate on judicial nominations, and I 
would like to take this opportunity to explain why. The Senate has a 
constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent on judicial 
nominees, and I take this obligation very seriously.
  The American people depend on the Senate to fully consider and vet 
each judicial nominee because throughout the course of their lifetime 
appointment, judges will issue rulings and opinions that touch each of 
our lives. The process of nominating, considering, and confirming 
judges should be a deliberate one. Its purpose should not be to confirm 
as many judges as quickly as possible. Senators should be able to 
provide input on who should sit on the Federal bench; Senators should 
have an adequate opportunity to hear from third-party experts about the 
records and qualifications of each nominee; and Senators should have 
enough time to question and examine a nominee during a confirmation 
hearing.
  Insisting on a deliberate and comprehensive process is not, as some 
of my Republican colleagues might argue, an effort to deny the 
President his prerogative to nominate judges to lifetime appointments 
to the Federal bench. Instead, this process is essential in determining 
whether each nominee is qualified for the job and can separate their 
personal ideology from the decisions he or she renders. For a lifetime 
appointment to the Federal bench, this shouldn't be too much to ask.
  Over the past year, we have observed a number of concerning issues in 
the nomination and confirmation process for Federal judges that need to 
be corrected. The President has essentially outsourced the judicial 
selection process to two organizations with strong, ideologically 
driven agendas--the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.
  The Federalist Society, for example, describes itself as ``a group of 
libertarians and conservatives dedicated to reforming the legal 
order.'' This is a group that has supported legal efforts to undermine 
environmental protection, erode the constitutional right to choose, and 
blur the lines between church and State.
  The Heritage Foundation describes its mission as one to ``promote 
conservative public policies.'' Over the past few years alone, this 
organization, this group, has fought to undermine the Affordable Care 
Act, oppose LGBTQ rights, and erode the ability of Federal agencies to 
issue lifesaving regulations. It is not unreasonable to assume that 
these organizations, through their close association with the White 
House, expect their ideologically driven agendas to be reflected in the 
nominees they recommend.
  While I concur with Justice Rehnquist's assertion that no judge joins 
a court tabula rasa, or as a blank slate, we should have a baseline 
expectation that lifetime appointees should be able to render justice 
free from their own personal ideologies. At the same time as the Trump 
administration relies more heavily on the Federalist Society and 
Heritage Foundation to select its judicial nominees, it is devaluing 
the work done by the American Bar Association. The ABA has reviewed and 
vetted judicial nominees in a nonpartisan manner for over 60 years. 
With the exception of George W. Bush and now Donald Trump, Presidents 
in both parties have consulted with the ABA prior to officially 
nominating to the bench.
  President Obama, for example, provided a great demonstration for how 
this process should work. Working closely with the ABA, President Obama 
routinely submitted potential candidates for scrutiny prior to their 
formal nomination. After conducting their independent, nonpartisan 
reviews, the ABA issued ``not qualified'' ratings for 14 candidates who 
had been proposed by President Obama. President Obama followed the 
ABA's recommendation and did not formally nominate any candidates rated 
``not qualified.''
  Under President Trump, on the other hand, we no longer wait for the 
ABA to complete its assessment of nominees prior to a nomination 
hearing itself, much less before the nomination. We no longer have an 
opportunity to review the ABA's report and, in many cases, do not have 
the chance to question an ABA representative at a nomination hearing 
about its review of the nominee.
  We have seen the serious consequences of this change in practice in 
two high-profile nominations this year.
  Despite having never tried a case, President Trump nominated Brett 
Talley to serve the District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. 
Mr. Talley was nominated, given a hearing, and listed for a Judiciary 
Committee vote before the ABA could even finish its evaluation. Given 
his complete lack of qualifications for the job, it wasn't

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surprising that the ABA unanimously rated him ``not qualified.'' 
Because he was rushed through the nomination process, we only learned 
later that Mr. Talley failed to disclose that his wife works in the 
White House Counsel's office. After two Republicans on the committee--
Senator Grassley and Senator Kennedy--expressed their opposition to Mr. 
Talley, he, fortunately, withdrew from consideration.
  We were not so lucky with Steven Grasz, who was recently confirmed to 
the Eighth Circuit. Mr. Grasz was nominated and scheduled for a 
Judiciary Committee hearing before the ABA could complete its review. 
By the time the ABA finished its exhaustive evaluation, during which it 
found him to be not qualified, Mr. Grasz was scheduled to appear before 
the Judiciary Committee in less than 48 hours. This was not nearly 
enough time to adequately address and assess the ABA's conclusion that 
Mr. Grasz would not be able to serve as a judge without the undue 
influence of his personal beliefs.
  Courts are supposed to protect the rights of minorities, and it is 
troubling to reflect on the ABA's conclusion that Mr. Grasz would be 
unable to divorce his positions on issues like reproductive and LGBTQ 
rights from the cases he will hear on the Eighth Circuit. Circuit court 
judges are only one step away from the U.S. Supreme Court and deserve 
to be scrutinized closely in the Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, 
last year, the Judiciary Committee overrode the objections of the 
minority to hold four nomination hearings with more than one circuit 
judge nominee considered simultaneously.
  To put this in some historical context, the Judiciary Committee held 
four such hearings in the entire 8 years Barack Obama was President, 
and it held each of these hearings with the consent of the Republican 
minority on the committee. During hearings on circuit and district 
court nominees, each committee member generally has only 5 minutes to 
question nominees--many of whom are highly controversial and deserve 
maximum scrutiny. Five minutes, which includes the time the nominee 
takes to respond, is not nearly enough time to engage in meaningful 
dialogue about a nominee's judicial philosophy or to examine 
controversial cases a nominee may have decided in the past.
  The American people deserve much more as we consider lifetime 
appointments to the Federal bench. I am also concerned about the 
erosion of the blue-slip process, which has traditionally been a 
collaborative mechanism to enable Senators to confer with the White 
House on nominees from their States. Although there have been 
exceptions over the years, Presidents and Senate majorities of both 
parties have both respected the blue-slip process.
  In 2009, the Democrats controlled the White House and had a 
filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Every Senate Republican signed 
a letter to President Obama urging him to respect the blue-slip 
process. I would like to read a passage from that letter for emphasis.

       Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a 
     nominee from our states, the Republican Conference will be 
     unable to support moving forward on that nominee.
       Despite press reports that the Chairman of the Judiciary 
     Committee now may be considering changing the Committee's 
     practice of observing senatorial courtesy, we, as a 
     Conference, expect it to be observed even-handedly and 
     regardless of party affiliation. And we will act to preserve 
     this principle and the rights of our colleagues if it is not.
       Because of the profound impact that life-tenured federal 
     judges can have in our society, the founders made their 
     appointment a shared constitutional responsibility.

  This is the Republican conference asking the Democratic majority, the 
Democratic President, and the chair of the Judiciary Committee to 
observe the blue-slip process.
  President Obama, and the Democratic majority at that time, upheld the 
blue-slip process without exception. Last year, the Judiciary Committee 
held a nomination hearing for David Stras to serve on the Eighth 
Circuit despite his not receiving two positive blue-slips from his home 
State Senators. This is the first time since the early years of the 
George W. Bush administration that the Judiciary Committee has held a 
hearing for a nominee when a home State Senator has not returned a blue 
slip. If the Senate proceeds to vote on and confirm Mr. Stras, it will 
be the first time since 1989 and only the third time in the last 100 
years that a judicial nominee will be confirmed without having two 
positive blue slips.

  I, certainly, take the chairman at his word that this was a onetime 
exception to the blue-slip process, but I will hold him and the 
President to the same standard they demanded from President Obama in 
2009.
  I will continue to rigorously defend the Senate's constitutional 
obligation to provide advice and consent on lifetime appointees to the 
Federal bench. Until we return to a normal process through which we can 
provide this kind of advice and consent, I will continue to oppose 
invoking cloture on any judicial nominee, and I encourage my colleagues 
to join me in this position.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.


                          Tribute to Jeff Cook

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, every week, I try to come down to the 
floor and talk a little bit about my State and do a little bit of 
bragging in what we call our ``Alaskan of the Week'' series. Now, there 
is a lot to talk about with regard to Alaska. We would love for the 
people in the Gallery and the people who are watching to come out and 
visit our great State. It will be the trip of a lifetime. The scenery, 
of course, is gorgeous, and the mountains are rugged, but it is really 
the people who make my State so special--rugged, self-sufficient, kind, 
and very generous people all across an area that is over two and one-
half times the size of Texas.
  I apologize to my Texas colleagues, as they get a little upset when I 
talk about that, but it is true.
  Every week, we have been recognizing a group or a person who has 
worked to make Alaska a stronger place, a stronger community--a State 
that, I think, is the best State in our great Nation. I call these 
individuals our Alaskans of the Week.
  Today, I take all who are watching to Alaska's interior, to a town 
called Fairbanks, AK, where about 32,000 of my fellow Alaskans live. It 
is a beautiful, wonderful place. Fairbanks is hot in the summer. My 
wife and I were married there many years ago. It was over 90 degrees 
when we got married in August, but it is really cold in the winter. We 
spent January 1, 2000--the millennium celebration--in Fairbanks with 
our kids and our family. It was 50 below zero without the windchill--
cold. It is a place I love, where my wife was born and raised, where we 
lived, where my in-laws still live, and the place Jeff Cook, our 
Alaskan of the Week, calls home.
  Jeff has been in Fairbanks his whole life. His parents moved to 
Fairbanks in 1938. He went to college in Oregon, and his wife Sue was 
there, but the couple moved back to Alaska, to Fairbanks, and started a 
family. He is now 74 years young. He and Sue have four children, two of 
whom have settled in Fairbanks, and they have five grandchildren. He is 
the patriarch of not only a great family but of many community 
organizations throughout Fairbanks and, really, Alaska.
  Throughout the years, Jeff has had a career in real estate, in 
business. He has sat on numerous boards--community boards--and been in 
community groups. Let me just give a couple of examples of his 
community work, of his sitting on the board of the Fairbanks Chamber of 
Commerce, the University of Alaska Board of Regents, the Rotary Club of 
Fairbanks, the Greater Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation board, 
the board for the State of Alaska Chamber of Commerce, the Rasmuson 
Foundation board, and the boards for Alaska Airlines and Wells Fargo 
Bank. This is an individual--a leader--who has been involved in his 
community for decades. He is a perfect example of the community-minded 
individual whom we call our Alaskan of the Week.

  We could be done right here. It is a pretty amazing career--a great 
example of someone who is dedicated to his State, to his country, to 
his community. Yet Jeff has done a lot more. He recently used all of 
his energy, all of his experience, all of his community involvement to 
embark on what really has become an extraordinary fundraising campaign 
to raise money for cancer research--so important for our Nation, so 
important for Alaska. This became a personal issue for Jeff. Let me 
tell you this story.

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  Last March, he and Sue received, really, a devastating phone call 
from their youngest daughter Chrissy, who is 34 and lives in Las Vegas 
with her husband and 2-year-old daughter. She called to tell them the 
bad news--really, the horrible news that millions of American families 
hear every year--that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and 
that she had a positive match for the BRCA2 gene, which increases one's 
risk of developing breast cancer or ovarian cancer.
  Jeff and Sue felt powerless against this disease when they heard 
this. He said: ``When you're a parent, it doesn't matter how old your 
children are; you're supposed to slay the dragons and conquer the 
monsters'' and protect your kids.
  If that were not devastating enough, weeks later, he and his wife 
made sure that everyone in the Cook family got tested. Unfortunately, 
five other members of the family tested positive for this gene. They 
are all being monitored now.
  Here is what Jeff said: ``We couldn't conquer the cancer, but we just 
had to do something.'' He said he had heard about the American Cancer 
Society's ``Real Men Wear Pink'' campaign--a fundraising program that 
is held in October. October, as everybody knows, is Breast Cancer 
Awareness Month. About 3,000 men from across the country participated 
in the program this year, the ``Real Men Wear Pink'' campaign.
  So Jeff started. He started with the pretty impressive goal of 
raising $5,000 for cancer research and an email list of about 70 
people, most of whom were in Fairbanks. Within 90 seconds after sending 
his first email, he had raised $1,000. Pretty good. Then what happened? 
The community of Fairbanks, of Alaska--really of the whole country--
started opening up to his plea. Donations kept coming in. The more 
donations he received, the more Jeff worked at raising funds. Many of 
the people he knew were donating, but what happened? Strangers from 
across Alaska and from across the country started to send money for 
this very worthy cause of breast cancer research--often with heartfelt 
stories of their loved ones, of their own struggles with cancer, or of 
those of their kids. Someone from a small town in New York State sent 
him $250.
  As the weeks passed, he began to pay attention to how he was stacking 
up against others across the country. Jeff is a competitive guy. He is 
very successful. When he reached No. 10 in the country in terms of 
fundraising for this very important matter, he told one of his friends 
there was no way he could beat the No. 1 person ahead of him who had 
raised $30,000--no way. That was a high number. Now, Fairbanks is not a 
very big city, and the other people on the list above him were from 
much bigger cities from across the country and had what he thought were 
larger connections and larger networks. Yet his friend told him: 
``Don't underestimate yourself, Jeff.'' After he read that, he said: 
``Okay. I'm going for broke.'' This is what he did.
  He was all in. He started fundraising everywhere. When it was all 
said and done, on this campaign, Jeff Cook, from Fairbanks, AK--a town 
of a little over 30,000 people in Alaska's interior--was the No. 1 
fundraiser in America for breast cancer research this year--No. 1. In 
terms of the American Cancer Society's ``Real Men Wear Pink'' campaign, 
Jeff Cook raised over $120,000.
  If my colleagues were down here, I would ask them for a round of 
applause.
  That was for the entire country. Think about that. We come down to 
this floor a lot and debate cancer research, medical research--very 
important. Here is one individual in America who raised over $120,000 
through his own energy and passion and for the love of his daughter. 
This is a testament to Jeff's perseverance, but it is also about the 
good people in Fairbanks, throughout Alaska, and really throughout the 
country.
  As Jeff said, ``It says so much about our community. There was such 
an outpouring of love, goodness and generosity. That was the most 
touching part of [this entire experience].''
  What else did Jeff learn? He learned that his daughter Chrissy, who 
underwent chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, is stronger than he 
ever imagined. She is recovering well, but she is still in recovery.
  I am going to humbly ask my colleagues and those who are watching 
here and those who are watching on TV to put a prayer in for Chrissy 
and other cancer victims like Senator Hirono, who was just on the 
floor. Put them on your prayer lists as they are in recovery--all of 
them.
  I want to end with a big thanks to everybody in Alaska and across the 
country who are part of the ``Real Men Wear Pink'' campaign who are 
literally raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for breast cancer 
research.
  I thank Jeff, of course, for not underestimating himself but for 
another--another--mission well done as a community leader in Fairbanks 
and throughout Alaska.
  Congratulations for being our Alaskan of the Week.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I would have joined Senator Sullivan in a 
round of applause. I thank him for sharing that inspiring story.


                         Funding the Government

  Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon just to talk very 
briefly about the real-world impacts of the decisions we are going to 
make in the next week or so regarding the future of the budget and to 
really implore my Republican colleagues here, most especially the 
Republican leadership, to get this job done and not put us on another 
continuing resolution. This is not a theoretical or a rhetorical 
exercise; this is about people's lives and our failure to do our job--
our failure to pass a budget and to extend lifesaving programs, like 
the Children's Health Insurance Program. It is not about politics, and 
it is not about headlines. It is not about point scoring. It is about 
making people's lives better.
  I really just want to share three stories from Connecticut to talk 
about the impact of the decisions that we are going to make with 
respect to the Federal budget. Let me first talk about this often 
esoteric-sounding concept of parity. One of the most important things 
that we are discussing is how many additional dollars are going to be 
in the budget for 2017 and 2018 versus in the prior fiscal year.
  There seems to be fairly widespread agreement that we are 
underresourced when it comes to the Department of Defense. We have a 
multitude of kinetic challenges that are presented to the United 
States. A group of us just got briefed, once again today, by our 
military leadership on the scope and extent of the North Korean threat. 
I agree with many of my Republican colleagues that we need to increase 
funding for national security, but national security is not just housed 
in the Department of Defense. National security is also about making 
sure that our families are secure and that our communities are secure.
  We believe that we should increase funds for the Department of 
Defense, and we should also make sure that our schools have teachers. 
We should also make sure that we have cops on the streets. We should 
also make sure that our bridges aren't falling down. That is national 
security as well. It is not too much to ask to make sure that our 
security is taken care of internationally and domestically as well.
  Let me give you a perfect example of how you can't just plus-up 
defense spending and leave the rest of the budget unattended to. We 
love defense spending in Connecticut. Why? Because we make a lot of big 
ticket items for the Department of Defense. We make the helicopters at 
Sikorsky. We make the jet engines at Pratt & Whitney. We make the 
submarines at Electric Boat.
  We are proud of all of them, but let me tell you what happens at 
Electric Boat if you plus-up the Defense Department at the expense of 
all of the other discretionary accounts. We are going to be building a 
lot more submarines over the next 10 years. We are now building two 
fast attack submarines a year. We are going to start building the new 
ballistic submarines, the Columbia class, and Electric Boat needs to 
hire 14,000 employees over the next 10 years. Much of that is because 
their workforce is older, and so they are going to have a lot of 
retirements. They have to find 14,000 new employees over the next 10 
years. If they can't, we cannot make the submarines in the United 
States, or we cannot make the parts that go into

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the submarines in the United States. Either the job will not get done, 
or the work will happen somewhere else in another country. You can't 
assemble the submarines anywhere other than at Electric Boat, but those 
parts will go to foreign companies rather than American companies.
  The way in which we are going to fill the 14,000 jobs is through the 
Department of Labor. The Department of Labor has a partnership with an 
organization called the Eastern Connecticut Manufacturing Pipeline. 
That is a public-private partnership that seeks to train hundreds of 
individuals in the skills necessary to build the submarines. They 
received 4,500 applications over the past year. They can't place all 
those people because they only get a certain amount of funding from the 
Department of Labor, but they were able to train 500 new workers for 
Electric Boat, putting them right into those jobs that are necessary to 
build these submarines. The problem is the money for that program is 
running out, and with another CR, they can't get renewed funding for 
that program. So if you plus-up the Defense Department without 
increasing funding for the Department of Labor, you can't get the stuff 
that you want to build for the Department of Defense because you can't 
get the workers in order to fill the contracts.
  If you don't renew this contract, if you don't renew this funding 
agreement with the Eastern Connecticut Manufacturing Pipeline, the work 
will not get done, and the jobs will go overseas. I just want my 
colleagues to understand that this isn't some philosophical belief that 
we need the same amount of money in the Department of Defense as we 
need in the rest of the budget. It is practical. It is practical 
because we need domestic economic security, but you also can't execute 
the Department of Defense contracts without funding in the rest of the 
budget.
  Second, let me talk to you about the real-world implications of not 
funding the Children's Health Insurance Program. You know that 
healthcare more than any other issue has become a political football. 
Democrats toss it to the Republicans, and Republicans toss it back to 
Democrats. Yet there is no other issue that is more personal than this. 
If someone doesn't have healthcare for their family, nothing else in 
their life can happen.
  I want to share one story. These letters and emails are flooding into 
our offices with respect to the real-world impact of not funding the 
Children's Health Insurance Program.
  In Connecticut, letters have gone out to families whose children are 
insured through CHIP, telling them that by the end of this month--that 
is 20 days away--they lose their insurance. So here is what Tara from 
Washington, CT, writes. She said:

       Despite our full time employment--

  She works as a small business manager, and her husband is a full-time 
electrical apprentice--

     my husband and I do not make enough money to buy health 
     insurance for our children in addition to our other mandatory 
     expenses.

  She explains that her children go to daycare, which costs $1,800 a 
month, which she says is more than their mortgage plus taxes and 
insurance.
  To go back to her letter, she says:

       This is where the [Children's Health Insurance Program] 
     comes into play in our lives. I cannot even begin to tell you 
     the anxiety I faced when I was pregnant with my daughter, 
     crying every day because I didn't know how we were going to 
     make ends meet. Thank God for a family friend who happened to 
     be an insurance agent. She told us about [CHIP] and suddenly 
     some of that anxiety was quelled.
       We have been blessed to have [CHIP] in our lives.

  I say CHIP. She says in the letter HUSKY. HUSKY is the name of the 
CHIP program in Connecticut.

       We have been blessed to have [CHIP] in our lives. Last 
     month my daughter got RSV and was prescribed a nebulizer. Two 
     weeks ago, my son caught it from her and that developed into 
     a double ear infection and pink eye, requiring two expensive 
     medications. The co-pays and premiums are manageable though 
     and they got the care they needed.
       I read in the [local paper] this weekend that letters were 
     going out to parents of children . . . telling them that 
     their coverage will end on January 31, 2018.

  She is writing this in December.

       We are a week away from Christmas, and what should be a 
     happy time of year has now turned into stress and depression. 
     How am I going to get insurance for my kids? My daughter 
     turns two on February 10th, how am I going to pay for her 
     well visit? I can't just skip it, they won't allow her back 
     into daycare.
       I cannot believe the dysfunction going on in this country. 
     I cannot believe tax cuts for the wealthy have taken 
     precedent over the health of my kids. . . . What is Congress 
     doing to ensure their continued healthcare?

  This story is repeated literally millions of times over all across 
this country. People went through the holiday anxious and depressed 
because they were convinced that we weren't taking seriously the 
healthcare of their kids. When we debate the budget, it has to have 
attached to it a long-term, if not permanent, extension of the 
Children's Health Insurance Program because there are families just 
like Tara out there who are doing everything we ask them to. She is 
full-time employed, her husband is full-time employed, and they can't 
afford health insurance for their kids without CHIP.
  Let me talk to you about the importance of making sure that we get 
the right amount of disaster funding to Texas, Florida, and in 
particular Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico matters to us in Connecticut 
because we have the largest percentage of our population with Puerto 
Rican roots than any State in the country. We are so proud of that. The 
Puerto Rican community in Connecticut is vibrant, economically and 
culturally, powerful politically, involved in our cities and towns and 
in State government.
  The Governor of Puerto Rico has requested $94 billion for Maria 
recovery and rebuilding, and I am just back from Puerto Rico. I can 
report to you that the island is still in crisis. One hundred days 
after the hurricane hit, more than half of the country--half of the 
households--still don't have electricity.
  If that were happening in Connecticut, Alaska, or Louisiana, there 
would be riots in the streets, but for some reason it is acceptable in 
Puerto Rico. We are 100 days after the hurricane, and we still haven't 
approved a disaster recovery package, and the Trump administration is 
nickel-and-diming the island.
  I walked through the poorest, most densely populated neighborhood in 
San Juan, the capital of the Commonwealth. They have no power. Mold is 
growing in these homes because they can't dry out the moisture without 
electricity. Kids are enduring more frequent and more intense bouts of 
asthma. People are dying because they can't refrigerate their 
medication or keep their ventilation equipment running. This is what is 
happening in the United States of America. We need to authorize 
significant, robust funding for Puerto Rico and for Texas and Florida. 
We need to do it now.
  We need to do it now because the day that I arrived on the island--I 
think it was January 2--it was reported to us that there was the 
highest volume of people leaving Puerto Rico since the hurricane--on 
that day, January 2. The exodus is getting more intense. More people 
are leaving, not less. Why? Because they don't think we are committed 
to rebuilding the island. Puerto Ricans don't think that Congress is 
serious about putting back on the electricity. They waited 1 month. 
They waited 2 months. They waited 3 months, and then they said: Enough, 
we can't put our kids in these conditions.
  They started leaving in record numbers. They were leaving right off 
the bat, but they are now leaving in record numbers. While most of them 
are coming to places like Florida, many of them are coming to 
Connecticut. Why? Because when they make that move, they often go first 
to stay with friends. Because we have such a compassionate, large 
Puerto Rican community in Connecticut, many of these families are 
coming to Connecticut.
  So let me just give you a couple of the numbers here. We asked our 
school systems to try to keep a rough track of how many new Puerto 
Rican students are showing up. Our cities are small in Connecticut. We 
don't have a city that is much bigger than 100,000. In Hartford, they 
have 388 new Puerto Rican students--``new'' meaning having come since 
the hurricane from the island. Waterbury, CT, has 268. New Britain, a 
very small city, has 213. Bridgeport has 179. These are kids who are 
glad to have shelter and schooling in Connecticut, but they don't want 
to be in Connecticut. They came under duress. They came to Connecticut 
as refugees. They want to be back in Puerto Rico.

[[Page S165]]

  The stress that this is putting on the schools is serious. We are in 
a budget crisis in Connecticut. Schools have already had their funding 
cut from Hartford. Yet these schools are now having to staff up to deal 
with this influx of students from Puerto Rico. We are glad to do it. We 
see it as our obligation, and we know that these kids will be a part of 
Connecticut's strength. But it is not easy to do when we haven't 
authorized any money to help States like Connecticut to deal with this 
influx of students. At McDonough Middle School in Hartford, these kids 
are thriving, but they have had to set up a new immersion lab to handle 
all these kids coming in. They have had to hire new staff to teach 
English as a second language. These are schools that were already 
seeing their funding hemorrhage from the State government.
  The impact is real on McDonough Middle School. The impact is real on 
Tara and her family from Washington. The impact is real for an 
important supplier in our industrial base, Electric Boat. If we just 
continue to push CR after CR, these families, schools, and companies 
will not succeed. This isn't about political headlines. This isn't 
about numbers on a page. This is about real-world impact for 
businesses, families, and schools.
  So let's get the job done. Let's write a budget. Let's at least agree 
to the overall budget numbers. Let's fund the Children's Health 
Insurance Program. Let's get Puerto Rico, Florida, and Texas everything 
they need. News flash: That is our job.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

                          ____________________