[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 7, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S667-S697]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               CHILD PROTECTION IMPROVEMENTS ACT OF 2017

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the House message to accompany H.R. 695, which 
the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       House message to accompany H.R. 695, a bill to amend the 
     National Child Protection Act of 1993 to establish a national 
     criminal history background check system and criminal history 
     review program for certain individuals who, related to their 
     employment, have access to children, the elderly, or 
     individuals with disabilities, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       McConnell motion to concur in the amendment of the House to 
     the amendment of the Senate to the bill.
       McConnell motion to refer the message of the House on the 
     bill to the Committee on Appropriations, with instructions, 
     McConnell amendment No. 1922, to change the enactment date.
       McConnell amendment No. 1923 (to (the instructions) 
     amendment No. 1922), of a perfecting nature.
       McConnell amendment No. 1924 (to amendment No. 1923), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.


                          Russia Investigation

  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak a little 
bit about the rule of law and President Trump's approach to what has 
happened as far as the Mueller investigation.
  The rule of law has protected our Nation's democracy, institutions, 
and citizens for over 200 years. It means that no one person is above 
the law--no one--not even the President.
  President Trump does not seem to respect the rule of law. He acts as 
if the law doesn't apply to him. He believes that he can steer the 
wheels of justice in whichever direction he wants to shield himself 
from lawful investigation.
  This President is willing to risk national security, to defy the 
judgment of the FBI Director and his team, and to release classified 
material for his own political purposes. Think about that. The 
President of the United States just declassified a top-secret document, 
and he did it with the clear intent to undermine the investigation into 
Russian interference in our election. His actions should end any doubt 
about his willingness to obstruct justice.
  After he declassified the Nunes memo, President Trump said: ``A lot 
of people should be ashamed of themselves. It's a disgrace, what's 
happened in our country.'' This is one of the rare times I have agreed 
with President Trump. It is a disgrace, what has happened in our 
country, but not for the reasons the President gives.
  Russia's cyber attacks and other potential operations during the 2016 
election represented a direct strike at our democracy. I cannot think 
of a time when our national interest has been so threatened and the 
President of the United States has ignored the threat. Not only has 
this President turned a blind eye to Russia's interference, but he has 
done nothing to prevent future attacks. He ignores the threat even 
though the CIA Director says Russia will try to interfere in our 
elections again. Instead, he has done everything he can to curry favor 
with Vladimir Putin. He should be ashamed of himself.
  Unfortunately, he has demonstrated time and time again that he is 
incapable of shame. But he is not alone. Many members of his party 
should be ashamed for enabling the President to undermine the special 
counsel investigation, for enabling his defamation of career public 
servants, and for remaining silent in the face of a growing crisis.
  The President has made clear that he does not like Special Counsel 
Mueller's and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein's independence and 
commitment to the rule of law, and he has had an eye on getting rid of 
them for quite a while. We learned he considered firing them last June, 
and we have known for many months, from the President's own admission, 
that he fired FBI Director James Comey to stop the Russia 
investigation. These men have dedicated their lives to serving our 
country. Mr. Mueller served as a Federal prosecutor and a Department of 
Justice lawyer for much of his career, and he was appointed as FBI 
Director in 2001 by

[[Page S668]]

President Bush. Mr. Rosenstein is also a career Federal prosecutor and 
was appointed as a U.S. attorney by President George W. Bush.

  The President has said many times: ``There was no collusion.'' If 
that is true, why does the President go to such great lengths to 
undermine the investigation?
  The President's intentions are transparent and dangerous. He fails to 
accept that Mr. Mueller and Mr. Rosenstein swore an oath to the 
Constitution. Because they will not pledge their loyalty to him, he is 
bound and determined to stop the investigation into his potential 
wrongdoing.
  But the Republican leader has delayed bringing forward bipartisan 
legislation to protect Mr. Mueller from arbitrary dismissal. In light 
of recent events, Congress must act. The special counsel needs 
protection to do his job. He shouldn't have interference from the 
President and his partisan supporters.
  In the Senate appropriations bill for the Department of Justice, I 
included language directing the Department of Justice to abide by its 
current regulations for the special counsel, but it is clear to me that 
we must do a lot more.
  During the Watergate investigation, Eugene McCarthy said: ``This is 
the time for all good [people] not to go to the aid of their party, but 
to come to the aid of their country.''
  It is time for all Members of Congress to come to the aid of our 
country and ensure that Mr. Mueller and his team are able to gather the 
facts and draw their conclusions without obstruction.
  It is astonishing that President Trump still calls the Russia 
investigation a ``witch hunt.'' Our government's 17 law enforcement and 
national security agencies all reached the conclusion that Russia 
actively interfered with our Presidential election through hacking 
national party computers, leaking information, and spreading 
disinformation over media and social media outlets. The President's 
continued refusal to address this threat is unconscionable, and it 
betrays our national interests. Mr. Mueller's investigation into 
Russian interference is justified by the evidence, and it is 
imperative.
  We also have abundant evidence that the President tried to interfere 
with the Department of Justice and FBI investigation. The President's 
firing of FBI Director James Comey because of ``the Russian thing'' is 
what landed him with a special counsel in the first place.
  Why did the President want a pledge of personal loyalty from Mr. 
Comey and Mr. Rosenstein? Why did he ask Mr. Comey to drop the 
investigation of Mr. Flynn?
  Why is the President so angry at Attorney General Sessions for 
recusing himself from the investigation, and why did the President need 
the Attorney General to not recuse to ``protect'' him?
  The evidence of interference with an ongoing investigation is enough 
reason to investigate. We all remember that President Nixon's chief 
transgression was the coverup. Despite a constant refrain of denials 
from the President that his campaign had any connection with Russia, we 
know there were many connections.
  Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pled guilty to lying 
to the FBI about his December 22, 2016, conversation with the Russian 
Ambassador about relieving U.S. sanctions imposed for Russia's 
interference. Campaign foreign adviser George Papadopoulos pled guilty 
to lying to the FBI about his contacts with people connected to the 
Russian Government. Former campaign manager Paul Manafort was charged 
in a Federal indictment with acting as a foreign agent for the pro-
Russian Ukraine Government. The President's son, Donald Trump, Jr., and 
his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Mr. Manafort all met with Russian 
operatives to gather dirt on Hillary Clinton. Then, the President 
personally dictated a press statement misrepresenting the nature of the 
meeting. These are just a few of the connections.
  Mr. President, I refer to a November 13, 2017, article from the 
Washington Post. It chronicles many of the meetings between the Trump 
campaign officials and the Russians during the campaign and is too long 
to go into here.
  But neither the compelling evidence justifying investigation nor Mr. 
Mueller's credentials have stopped the President and his friends in 
Congress from attacking both. Representative Nunes nominally recused 
himself from the Trump collusion investigation in the House 
Intelligence Committee, but he and his colleagues on the committee have 
now released a memo based on incomplete and misleading information, 
with the President's full backing. This is despite a warning from the 
FBI against its release, and the Speaker will do nothing to rein in him 
or his committee members.
  The President's attacks on the independence of our Nation's premier 
law enforcement agency mirror his attacks on our other foundational 
institutions. He has maligned the judiciary. He has maligned the press. 
He attacks and disrespects our foundational principles--separation of 
powers, freedom of speech and religion, and equality under the law. 
This is in addition to the President's regular assault on the truth. 
The Washington Post counted at least 2,000 times where this President 
departed from the truth in his first year in office.
  The White House and its allies in Congress must stop their baseless 
attacks on Mr. Mueller and his team. They must let them do their job 
and find the facts. We must ensure the independence of prosecutors so 
we can ensure that investigations and outcomes are fair and impartial.
  Why is the President going to such lengths to fight this 
investigation? We do not know. But we do know that a foreign power--
Russia--interfered in our last election, and we do know that the 
President and his team have had significant business links to Russian 
financial interests.
  The President's family business continues today, but it does so while 
concealing his tax returns and keeping their business partners secret. 
On top of that, the Trump administration has become much more 
accommodating of Russian interests. Are these things connected in some 
way? We need to know. That is why the special counsel's investigation 
is so important.
  Now is the time for every Member of Congress to put the country ahead 
of politics. Special Counsel Mueller must be able to do his job, to 
follow the facts wherever they may lead, and to draw his conclusions. 
Congress must pass legislation to protect the special counsel from 
being arbitrarily fired, not serve as the President's lieutenants in an 
unprecedented assault on the rule of law.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                     Attorney General Jeff Sessions

  Ms. WARREN. Madam President, 1 year ago today, I came to the Senate 
floor to oppose the nomination of Jeff Sessions to lead the Department 
of Justice.
  The Justice Department is charged with defending our laws and 
standing up for all people regardless of color, sex, sexual 
orientation, religion, or ability.
  That night, I described Jeff Sessions' appalling record on nearly 
every major national issue handled by the Justice Department, including 
civil rights, immigration, and criminal justice reform.
  That night, I also read a letter that Coretta Scott King sent to the 
Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 that opposed Sessions' nomination to 
serve as a Federal judge. Mrs. King wrote a vivid account of how Jeff 
Sessions, as a U.S. attorney in the 1980s, had ``used the awesome power 
of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black 
citizens.'' That letter had been a part of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee's records for more than 30 years. It helped sink the 
nomination of Jeff Sessions for the Federal judgeship for which he had 
been nominated back in the 1980s.
  I had hoped that by reminding the Senate of its bipartisan rejection 
of Sessions in the 1980s, that the letter might help us to once again 
come together in a bipartisan way to say that this kind of bigotry 
shouldn't be allowed in our criminal justice system. That was my plan. 
Yet, for reading

[[Page S669]]

those words--the words of an icon of the civil rights movement--I was 
booted off of the Senate floor. Every one of my Republican colleagues 
who was present that night voted to shut me up for reading Mrs. King's 
words. Then, the next day, every single Republican voted to confirm 
Jeff Sessions--a man deemed to be too racist to hold a Federal court 
judgeship in 1986. Nope. They confirmed him to lead the agency charged 
with defending justice for all Americans.
  Now it has been 1 year since the Republican-controlled Senate made 
Jeff Sessions Attorney General of the United States. I wish I could say 
that I had been proven wrong--I actually really do--but Coretta Scott 
King's warnings ring even louder today than they did in 1986. On issue 
after issue, Jeff Sessions' Justice Department has failed in its 
mission to promote justice for all Americans. Instead, Sessions has 
taken the Department in exactly the opposite direction. So let's make a 
list and start with voting.
  In 1986, Mrs. King warned us that Sessions had used the awesome power 
of his office as an Alabama prosecutor to chill the free exercise of 
the vote by African Americans. As Attorney General, he has continued 
that crusade, targeting not only African Americans but Latinos, the 
elderly, veterans, and other marginalized groups.
  Only weeks after Sessions took the reins, the Justice Department 
abandoned its legal challenge of a Texas voter ID law that 
intentionally discriminated against voters of color. Later, the 
Department argued that it should be easier for States to strike 
eligible voters from their voting rolls--a proven way of preventing 
eligible citizens from voting.
  Sessions has eagerly embraced President Trump's make-believe, fact-
free conspiracy theories about voter fraud--condoning the President's 
voter suppression commission and engaging in State-level inquiries into 
voter databases.
  Next on the list: defending all Americans--equal protection under the 
law.
  In her letter, Coretta Scott King warned that Jeff Sessions would 
undermine equality under the law. Sure enough, when Jeff Sessions took 
over at the Justice Department, he immediately got to work in reversing 
the agency's prior efforts to defend laws and policies that protect 
Americans from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender 
identity.
  Sessions' Justice Department has rescinded guidance that protects 
transgender students and workers from illegal discrimination. The same 
day that President Trump used Twitter to announce that he was banning 
transgender individuals from serving in the military, the Justice 
Department filed a legal brief that reflected Sessions' view that our 
great civil rights laws don't protect gay Americans from 
discrimination. This was despite the rulings by other Federal courts 
and guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reaching 
the opposite conclusion. Sessions' Justice Department has also gone out 
of its way to argue in the Supreme Court that business owners should be 
able to deny service to gay customers.
  In 1986, Mrs. King wrote: ``I do not believe Jeff Sessions possesses 
the requisite judgment, competence, and sensitivity to the rights 
guaranteed by the federal civil rights laws to qualify for appointment 
to the federal district court.'' It is clear that Sessions has not 
acquired those skills in the 32 years since Mrs. King issued her 
warning.
  Third, criminal justice.
  Jeff Sessions is using the monumental power of his office to invert 
our criminal justice system. For too long in America, we have had a 
dual justice system--one sympathetic, soft-on-crime system for the rich 
and another ineffective, cruel system for everyone else. Coretta Scott 
King told us about Sessions' role in this broken system when she wrote 
that he ``exhibited an eagerness to bring to trial and convict'' Black 
civil rights leaders despite there being evidence that clearly 
demonstrated their innocence of any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, she said, he 
``ignored allegations of similar behavior by whites.''
  In recent years, we have made some progress away from that broken 
system by having implemented proven reforms that make our communities 
safer. Jeff Sessions has worked with laser-like focus to reverse those 
gains.
  Just last week, Sessions effectively closed an office within the 
Justice Department that helped to make legal aid more accessible to 
people who don't have enough money to pay for a lawyer, and that is 
just the tip of the iceberg.
  Under Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department killed off a reform 
initiative that allowed local police departments to voluntarily partner 
with the Federal Government to improve community policing.
  The Justice Department has abandoned its longstanding efforts to hold 
local police forces accountable when they routinely and systematically 
violate the constitutional rights of American citizens.
  Sessions ended the Justice Department's Smart on Crime Initiative, 
which allowed prosecutors to divert some low-level, nonviolent 
offenders into rehab programs. This was a program that saved money, 
allowed offenders to avoid incarceration, and improved safety in our 
communities. It improved the lives of these offenders and their 
families. Instead, Sessions instructed all prosecutors to bury even 
low-level, nonviolent drug offenders under the most serious charges 
possible that guaranteed the longest prison terms possible.
  Sessions even rolled back efforts to take weapons of war off of our 
streets by lifting commonsense restrictions on the transfer of 
military-grade weapons to local police departments--weapons of war, 
such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles that belong on 
battlefields, not on the streets where our kids ride their bicycles and 
walk to school--weapons that even the Pentagon cannot justify handing 
over to local police.
  Next, immigration.
  As a Senator, Jeff Sessions was an anti-immigration extremist who led 
multiple successful campaigns to defeat bipartisan, comprehensive 
immigration reform. As a Senator, he urged the deporting of Dreamers 
who were brought to the United States as kids.
  Now, as the head of the Justice Department, he has continued his ugly 
anti-immigrant rampage. He has zealously defended every illegal and 
immoral version of President Trump's Muslim ban. He has used the 
Department to try to cut off aid to cities and States that prioritize 
keeping their communities safe over being part of his national 
deportation force. While it was Donald Trump who ordered it, Jeff 
Sessions himself announced the end to the Deferred Action for Childhood 
Arrivals Program, or DACA, which has subjected 800,000 Dreamers to 
deportation.
  So there it is. Coretta Scott King's words about Jeff Sessions were 
true in 1986, they were true in 2017, and they remain true today. On 
Jeff Sessions' watch, the Justice Department has promoted voter 
suppression. On his watch, the Justice Department has endorsed 
discrimination. On his watch, the Justice Department has reversed 
efforts to reform our broken criminal justice system. On his watch, the 
Justice Department has led an all-out, bigotry-fueled attack on 
immigrants and refugees.
  All of this, all of it, was predictable. All of this, all of it, was 
foreseeable. All of this, all of it, could have been avoided if just a 
few Republican Senators had stood up for fair and impartial justice, 
but they didn't--not one. So here we are.
  Here is the ultimate irony: President Trump turned on his Attorney 
General. Why? It was not over voting or equal rights or criminal 
justice or immigration--no. The President turned on Sessions because 
Sessions formally recused himself from a law enforcement investigation 
into the President's ties to Russia. Sessions has groveled, but Donald 
Trump will never forgive the sin of Sessions' failing to serve Donald 
Trump personally.
  Jeff Sessions, President Trump, and this Republican Congress seem to 
think that they can stoke the fires of hatred and division without 
being consumed by them. Maybe they can for a time, but people are 
resisting and persisting. States and cities are stepping up to defend 
civil rights that are under assault by the Federal Government. The 
American people are showing up in the streets, in the airports, in the 
courtrooms, and even at the polls to hold this government accountable.

[[Page S670]]

They will continue to show up and to fight day in and day out--to fight 
for fairness, to fight for equality, to fight for liberty and justice 
for all.
  Republicans tried to silence Coretta Scott King for speaking the 
truth about Jeff Sessions. They tried to silence me for reading Mrs. 
King's words on the Senate floor. They have tried to silence all of us 
from speaking out, but instead of shutting us up, they have made us 
louder.
  Warn us. Give us explanations. Nevertheless, we will persist, and we 
will win.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                             Infrastructure

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, last week, President Trump gave his 
State of the Union Address. It was full of that same spirit of optimism 
and confidence that I have heard over the past year from the people at 
home in Wyoming. I imagine the Presiding Officer has heard the same 
things from people in her State of Iowa as well. As the President said, 
``This is our new American moment.''
  ``This is our new American moment,'' and I agree. The American 
economy is back on the right track. It is going to take a lot of hard 
work for us to stay on the right track. Some of that work involves 
building our country's infrastructure. America's roads, bridges, dams, 
highways, and ports are critical to our Nation's success. Republicans 
know it. Democrats know it.
  The American Society of Civil Engineers gives America's 
infrastructure a poor grade. One out of every five miles of highway 
pavement is in bad condition. As chairman of the Environment and Public 
Works Committee, I am committed to improving this situation by working 
with the President and with Members of both parties. We need to fix a 
lot of our aging infrastructure. To do that, we need a robust, fiscally 
responsible infrastructure plan that makes it easier to start and to 
finish these projects more quickly.
  I was chairman of the Transportation Committee in the Wyoming State 
Senate. I saw how we could make projects less costly and more efficient 
if we could just speed up and streamline the permitting process and the 
approval process for projects to get done.
  We have a project back home to rebuild a highway interchange in the 
northern part of Sheridan County in Sheridan, WY. It took 14 years to 
develop and get the approval of the planning and permitting for this 
interchange that needed to be built for safety purposes. The actual 
construction took less than 2 years. This is a safety project. It is 
important for trucks and cars that go through this part of our State to 
do it in the safest way possible. Anything we can do as members of the 
EPW Committee and Members of the Senate to make sure we can finish 
projects like this one faster is going to be better for our communities 
and is going to be better for people's safety.
  According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, there are 59 different 
reviews and permits that an infrastructure project may need to get. 
There are a dozen different agencies that can slow down projects along 
the way, and that is just at the Federal level.
  One of the steps that takes the longest amount of time is what they 
call an environmental impact statement. We all agree we need to make 
sure that big construction projects don't damage the environment. The 
problem is, these reviews have taken on a life of their own. They now 
take an average of 5 years to complete. That is just one type of review 
that the construction projects have to go through before workers can 
put a shovel in the ground.
  The regulations and redtape have become unreasonable, and they have 
become excessive. There was a study recently that looked at all of 
these regulatory delays and the cost of them. It found that the cost of 
delaying the start of all these public infrastructure projects in this 
country by 6 years is over $3.7 trillion--not millions, not billions--
$3.7 trillion. Think of how much we could accomplish and how much we 
could save if we could cut out these delays just a little bit.
  We know that is possible. In 2011, the Obama administration picked 14 
infrastructure projects for expedited review. One of the projects was a 
new bridge in New York. New York managed to do the environmental impact 
statement in just 11 months. Why should it take 5 years in Wyoming? It 
is 5 years normally and less than 1 year with this expedited plan. This 
proves Washington can do these reviews and can do this permitting 
faster when it wants to.
  The problem is, Washington usually doesn't care if these projects get 
done any faster. President Trump understands this completely. He has 
shown that he intends to change the mindset in Washington. It is 
interesting, when we remember that George Washington was a surveyor 
long before he was our first President. I don't think we have had a 
President since then who has President Trump's experience in building 
things and dealing with all of the challenges that come with what we 
have seen from the times of Washington and Jefferson.
  President Trump understands that the shorter we can make the permit 
process, the better. These are projects that can save lives. They can 
provide economic opportunities in towns and communities all across the 
country. It is what we are hearing in townhalls when we talk to people. 
When we cut the Washington regulations and redtape, we allow for more 
economic growth.
  That is what Republicans have been doing for the past year because as 
soon as President Trump took office, Republicans in Congress began 
striking down unnecessary, burdensome, and costly regulations from the 
Obama administration.
  Republicans wiped 15 of these major rules off the books. A major rule 
is one where the time and money it takes to comply with the rule adds 
up to $100 million or more. This is going to save Americans as much as 
$36 billion. The total saved so far, $36 billion.
  The Trump administration has been very active in cutting needless 
regulations as well. The President froze action on over 2,000 Obama 
administration rules that hadn't taken effect yet. This is one of the 
first things President Trump did and what he is committed to do.
  He said that for every significant new regulation Washington writes, 
his administration would offset it by getting rid of two other rules. 
New regulation, get rid of two. That is how to make a real difference 
in Washington, and we are seeing it with the Trump administration. That 
is how to free the American people so they can get back to work.
  The economy has responded all across the country. New employment 
numbers came out last Friday. The American economy has created more 
than 2 million jobs since President Trump took office. The unemployment 
rate is down to 4.1 percent. Wages are up by almost 3 percent over the 
past year. The Associated Press had a headline on Friday that said: 
``US added strong 200K jobs in January; pay up most in 8 years.''
  The Los Angeles Times headline was: ``U.S. economy creates 200,000 
jobs in January; wages take off.''
  According to a Gallup poll last week, Americans' satisfaction with 
the state of the economy improved by 12 percentage points over the past 
year. That is a huge leap.
  President Trump is absolutely right, this is our new American moment. 
We must keep providing relief from Washington redtape for it to 
continue. We have done that with other regulations. We need to do it 
with the things that slow down infrastructure projects as well. That is 
how we make sure our economy continues to grow. Fixing and improving 
America's aging infrastructure needs to be a bipartisan goal. We need 
to be able to do it faster, better, cheaper, and smarter.
  So today I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do all 
we can to make this happen. These are not Democratic projects or 
Republican projects, they are the projects we need to continue to make 
our country stronger, safer, better, and more prosperous.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

[[Page S671]]

  

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I know the leaders are coming down 
shortly, but I thought I would get started, and I will return when they 
are finished with their remarks.


                            Secure Elections

  Madam President, 271 is the number of days left before the 2018 
elections. Only 271 days to go--a little more than 9 months--and we 
still cannot assure American voters that our elections are secure. That 
is unacceptable, and that is on us.
  We know what happened in 2016. There was no debate about the facts. 
On January 6, 2017, intelligence reports made clear that Russia used 
covert cyber attacks, espionage, and harmful propaganda to attack our 
political system.
  Six months later, on June 21, the Department of Homeland Security 
confirmed that Russia launched cyber attacks against at least 21 State 
election systems and illegally obtained emails from local election 
officials.
  This week, we also learned that voter systems in Illinois were 
hacked, and the information on thousands of voters was exposed to the 
Russians. Our national security officials have sounded the alarm. This 
is just the beginning.
  Last week, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said he has ``every expectation'' 
that Russia will target the U.S. midterm elections. The former Director 
of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said: ``I believe Russia is 
now emboldened to continue such activities in the future both here and 
around the world, and to do so even more intensely.''
  Yet we have made no real progress in Congress toward shoring up our 
election systems. Just 41 days from now, Illinois--a State that 
Russians successfully hacked in 2016--will hold a primary for the 
midterm elections. So why haven't we acted? There is no excuse, and 
that is because there are six solutions on the table. Many of them are 
bipartisan.
  First, States need support to protect their voting systems from cyber 
attacks. Right now there are more than 40 States that rely on 
electronic voting systems that are at least 10 years old. Think about 
that. Ten years ago, we were using flip phones. Now we have smartphones 
that we update regularly to keep pace with the emerging technology.
  So we need to provide States the resources to update their election 
technology because our voting systems haven't kept pace with the times, 
much less the sophistication of our adversaries.
  In addition, our election officials need to know exactly what they 
are up against. It took the Federal Government nearly a year to notify 
those 21 States targeted by Russian-backed hackers, and today many 
State and local officials still feel like they are in the dark.
  That is why Senators Lankford, Harris, Graham, and I have introduced 
legislation that will bring State and local election officials, cyber 
security experts, and national security personnel together to provide 
resources and guidance on how States can best protect themselves from 
cyber attacks.
  Second, we need reliable backup measures in place when something goes 
wrong. Each State administers its own elections. Our decentralized 
election process is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength to 
have multiple States using multiple systems. Then there can never be 
one centralized place to hack. We saw this in 2016. Russian hackers 
attempted to breach the systems of many States but were only successful 
in one.
  I will continue my remarks after the leaders are finished. I know 
they have a major announcement, but I would just end with this. This is 
a pivotal moment for our country. We will not give up on our free 
elections and the freedom those elections deserve. If the worst happens 
in 2018, it is on us, not just Russia. How does the saying go? Hack me 
once, shame on you. Hack me twice, shame on us. We know what we can do. 
We must put the resources into the State elections, and we must protect 
the elections.
  I yield the floor.


                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.


                            Budget Agreement

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I am pleased to announce that our 
bipartisan, bicameral negotiations on defense spending and other 
priorities have yielded a significant agreement.
  I thank my friend the Democratic leader for joining me this afternoon 
and for the productive discussions that have generated this proposal.
  The compromise we have reached will ensure that, for the first time 
in years, our Armed Forces will have more of the resources they need to 
keep America safe. It will help us serve the veterans who bravely 
served us, and it will ensure funding for important efforts such as 
disaster relief, infrastructure, and building on our work to fight 
opioid abuse and drug addiction. This bill is the product of extensive 
negotiations among congressional leaders and the White House. No one 
would suggest it is perfect, but we worked hard to find common ground 
and stay focused on serving the American people.

  First and foremost, this bipartisan agreement will unwind the 
sequestration cuts that have hamstrung our Armed Forces and jeopardized 
our national security. Secretary Mattis said: ``No enemy in the field 
has done more harm to the . . . readiness of our military than 
sequestration.''
  For years, my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, led 
by Chairman John McCain, have spoken out about these damaging cuts. In 
the face of continuing and emerging threats, these cuts have left us 
unable to realize the potential of our missile defense capabilities. 
They have whittled down our conventional forces, laying an undue burden 
on forward-deployed personnel and their families. And they have shrunk 
our fleet to its lowest ship count in nearly three decades. We haven't 
asked our men and women in uniform to do less for our country. We have 
just forced them to make do with less than they need. This agreement 
changes that.
  In addition, this bill will provide for our returning heroes. Too 
often, underfunded, overcomplicated bureaucracies fail to deliver the 
care our veterans deserve. The Trump administration and Congress--
thanks to the leadership of Chairman Isakson--have made important 
progress for veterans in the past year. This agreement will expand on 
those steps.
  This agreement will also bolster our ongoing national struggle 
against opioid addiction and substance abuse. It will fund new grants, 
prevention programs, and law enforcement efforts in vulnerable 
communities all across our country.
  It also provides funding for disaster relief efforts. Last year, 
powerful storms crippled Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and 
damaged mainland communities from Florida to Texas. Thanks to the 
efforts of Members such as Senators Cornyn, Cruz, Rubio, and others, 
this bill will get more help on the way.
  The agreement will clear the way for a new investment in our Nation's 
infrastructure--a bipartisan priority shared by the President and 
lawmakers of both parties.
  This bill does not conclude the serious work that remains before 
Congress. After we pass it, the Appropriations Committees will have 6 
weeks to negotiate detailed appropriations and deliver full funding for 
the remainder of fiscal year 2018, but this bill represents a 
significant, bipartisan step forward. I urge every Senator to review 
this legislation and join us in voting to advance it.
  I particularly want to thank my friend the Democratic leader. I hope 
we can build on this bipartisan momentum and make 2018 a year of 
significant achievement for Congress, for our constituents, and for the 
country that we all love.


                              Immigration

  Now, on one final matter, as I have said publicly many times, our 
upcoming debate on DACA, border security, and other issues will be a 
process that is fair to all sides. The bill I move to, which will not 
have underlying immigration text, will have an amendment process that 
will ensure a level playing field at the outset. The amendment process 
will be fair to all sides, allowing the sides to alternate proposals 
for consideration and for votes. While I obviously cannot guarantee the 
outcome, let alone supermajority support, I can ensure the process is 
fair to all sides, and that is what I intend to do.

[[Page S672]]

  



                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.


                            Budget Agreement

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, first let me thank the Republican 
leader for his comments and his work these past several months. We have 
worked well together for the good of the American people. We had 
serious disagreements, but instead of just going to our own separate 
corners, we came together with an agreement that is very good for the 
American people and recognizes needs that both sides of the aisle 
proffered.
  I am pleased to announce that we have reached a 2-year budget deal to 
lift the spending caps for defense and urgent domestic priorities far 
above current spending levels. There are one or two final details to 
work out, but all the principles of the agreement are in place. The 
budget deal doesn't have everything Democrats want, and it doesn't have 
everything Republicans want, but it has a great deal of what the 
American people want.
  After months of legislative logjams, this budget deal is a genuine 
breakthrough. After months of fiscal brinksmanship, this budget deal is 
the first real sprout of bipartisanship, and it should break the long 
cycle of spending crises that have snarled this Congress and hampered 
our middle class.
  This budget deal will benefit our country in so many ways. Our men 
and women in uniform represent the very best of America. This budget 
gives our fighting forces the resources they need to keep our country 
safe, and I want to join the Republican leader in saluting Senator 
McCain. We wish he were here because he has fought so valiantly and so 
long for a good agreement for the Armed Forces.
  The budget will also benefit many Americans here at home: folks 
caught in the grip of opioid addiction, veterans waiting in line to get 
healthcare, students shouldering crippling college debt, middle-class 
families drowning under the cost of childcare, rural Americans lacking 
access to high-speed internet, hard-working pensioners watching their 
retirements slip away. Democrats have been fighting for the past year 
for these Americans and their priorities. We have always said that we 
need to increase defense spending for our Armed Forces, but we also 
need to increase the kinds of programs the middle class so needs and 
depends on. It is our job as Americans, as Senators, to make sure that 
middle-class people can live a life of decency and dignity so that they 
can keep in their hearts the American belief that their kids will live 
a better life than they do. In this budget, we have moved, for the 
first time in a long time, a good deal forward on those issues.
  Alongside the increase in defense spending, the budget deal will lift 
funding for domestic programs by $131 billion. It will fully repeal the 
domestic sequester caps while securing $57 billion in additional 
funding, including $6 billion to fight against the opioid and mental 
health crises; $5.8 billion for the bipartisan child care and 
development block grant; $4 billion to rebuild and improve veterans 
hospitals and clinics; $2 billion for critical research at the National 
Institutes of Health; $20 billion to augment our existing 
infrastructure programs, including surface transportation, rural water 
and wastewater, clean and safe drinking water, rural broadband so 
desperately needed in large parts of rural America, and energy 
infrastructure; and $4 billion for college affordability, including 
programs that help police officers, teachers, firefighters.
  The deal also boosts several healthcare programs that we care a lot 
about in this country. An increase in funding for community health 
centers, which serve 26.5 million Americans, is included. My friends 
Senators Murray, Tester, Sanders, and many others have been champions 
for these community health centers. I want to thank them for the hard 
work they have put in to get this done. The Children's Health Insurance 
Program will be extended for an additional 4 years. Credit is due to 
our ranking member, Senator Wyden, for his effort for this extension. 
American families with children who benefit from CHIP will now be able 
to rest easy for the next decade.
  Seniors caught in the Medicare Part D doughnut hole will also benefit 
from this bill, which eases the coverage gap next year, helping 
thousands, millions of seniors afford prescription drugs. We have 
waited long for this. Rural hospitals that struggle, seniors, children, 
and safety net healthcare providers will benefit from a package of 
health tax extenders as well.
  On the pension issue, Democrats secured a special select committee 
that must report a legislative fix to the problem by December 2018. 
Millions of pensioners--teamsters, carpenters, miners, bakery workers, 
and so many more--are staring down cuts to their hard-earned pensions. 
They didn't do anything to cause those cuts. Their livelihoods are 
staked to these pensions. We ought to make sure that they get every 
penny they earned. We Democrats would have liked to take up and pass 
the Butch Lewis Act. We couldn't reach an agreement to do that, but now 
we have a process and potentially the means and motivation to get it 
done. There were so many Senators, led by Senator Brown, who are 
responsible for this. I want to acknowledge him and Senators Casey, 
Stabenow, Manchin, Klobuchar, Baldwin, McCaskill, Donnelly, and 
Heitkamp, who worked so long and hard on pensions.
  The budget deal also includes long-awaited disaster relief for Texas, 
Louisiana, Florida, the Western States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. 
Virgin Islands. Many of these places are still taking their first steps 
on the long march to recovery. Much of Puerto Rico and the Virgin 
Islands remains damaged and in the dark. This recovery aid could not 
have come a moment too soon. Senator Nelson worked very hard for both 
Florida and Puerto Rico relief, as did so many others in this Chamber.
  I would also like to thank our ranking member on the Appropriations 
Committee, Senator Leahy, who worked so diligently with his staff and 
his ranking members on these issues, as well as Senator Murray, who has 
been our beacon on health issues, where we have made real progress 
today.
  The budget deal is a win for the American people. It will also do so 
much good for our military and for so many middle-class Americans and 
finally consign the arbitrary and pointless sequester caps to the ash 
heap of history.
  A final point: Our work here in Congress on this budget deal between 
the Republican leader and me, between the Senate and the House was 
completed without a great deal of help from the White House. While 
President Trump threatened shutdowns and stalemates, congressional 
leaders have done the hard work of finding compromise and consensus. It 
has been a painstaking and months-long process. It has required 
concessions, sometimes painful, by both sides. But at the end of the 
day, I believe we have reached a budget deal that neither side loves 
but both sides can be proud of. That is compromise; that is governing. 
That is what we should be doing more of in this body, and it is my 
sincere hope that the Republican leader and I will continue to work 
together in this way to get things done for the American people.
  Now, of course, we must finish the job. Later this week, let's pass 
this budget into law, alongside an extension of government funding. I 
hope the House will follow suit and President Trump will sign it. I 
also hope that Speaker Ryan will do what Senator McConnell has agreed 
to do--allow a fair and open process to debate a Dreamers bill on the 
House floor.
  This budget deal will be the best thing we have done for our economy, 
our military, and our middle class for a long time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, we are very pleased by this 
bipartisan work and what this will mean for our country. I thank both 
leaders for their work.


                            Secure Elections

  Madam President, I want to finish the remarks that I started before 
the leaders took the floor pertaining to another issue that is very 
important to this country, and that is the issue of the elections in 
2018.
  I mentioned the importance of the bill that Senator Lankford and I 
are leading, along with Senators Harris and Graham, that would give--
along

[[Page S673]]

with House support, Republican and Democratic support--some much needed 
resources to the States to help them with their equipment. Many of the 
States have not updated their election equipment in over 10 years.
  I also mentioned the reliable backup measures that we are going to 
need for things like a paper ballot system. Ten of our States don't 
have that. If they were hacked, there would be no backup to prove what 
had happened. That must change.
  Third, we have to make sure our elections are free from foreign 
influence campaigns. We know that the Russian disinformation reached 
more than 126 million Americans through Facebook alone. And while $1.4 
billion was spent on online political ads in 2016, we still don't know 
how much Russia actually used to purchase those ads, although we do 
know they bought Facebook ads in rubles to influence the 2016 election.
  Today, online platforms are dwarfing broadcast, satellite, and cable 
providers. The largest internet platform has over 210 million American 
users. The largest cable provider only has 22 million subscribers. That 
is why Senators McCain and Warner and I have introduced the Honest Ads 
Act, simply putting in a level playing field. So if money is spent on 
political ads, the same rules that apply to print, radio, and TV apply 
to online media companies, and that is a disclaimer, and that is simply 
a disclosure of both candidates' ads and also issues--defined by 
statute--of national legislative importance. If my radio station in 
Thief River Falls, MN, is able to track their ads, and the press is 
able to see them, and opponents' campaigns are able to see them, that 
should be able to be done by some of America's most brilliant 
companies. We must fix that.
  Fourth, we need to make sure our elections are free from foreign 
money. About $184 million in dark money was spent in the 2016 
Presidential election. Senator Whitehouse has a bill that would ban 
campaign contributions and expenditures by corporations that are 
controlled, influenced, or owned by foreign nationals. Senator Blunt 
and I have a bill that would use existing credit card protocols to help 
verify that online donations are only coming from Americans. If Amazon 
can check your credit card against your home address, campaigns and 
PACs should be doing the same to verify that online donations are truly 
from the United States.
  Fifth, we must send Russia a message that this behavior is 
unacceptable. We need to make it clear to Russia that we will not 
tolerate their interference in elections. That is why I have said time 
and again that we need to impose the Russia sanctions that passed the 
Senate with overwhelming bipartisan approval. This is about sending the 
Russian Government a message: There will be consequences if you 
interfere with our elections. We will impose sanctions against those 
who engage in business with the Russian defense and intelligence 
sectors--two parts of the Russian Government responsible for 
orchestrating the attacks on our election systems.
  The Senate voted 98 to 2 for those sanctions, and this administration 
has not implemented them. It makes no sense to me that the 
administration does not stand with 98 out of 100 Senators on this. When 
we don't do the sanctions, we are announcing to the world that there 
are no consequences to foreign governments that interfere in American 
elections. By doing that, we simply embolden them.
  My colleagues also recently introduced a bipartisan bill that would 
require mandatory sanctions against countries that interfere in U.S. 
elections. Deterrence is key, and imposing additional sanctions would 
send a strong message to Russia and any other country that seeks to 
undermine our democracy.
  Sixth, we must understand the full extent of Russia's role in our 
2016 election. That is why Senator Cardin introduced a bill to 
establish an independent commission with one goal: to examine Russian 
cyber operations and interference in the 2016 elections, because 
understanding what happened in the past will help us prevent attacks in 
the future.
  All of these tools would help secure our elections, and so many have 
bipartisan support. I am not just talking about the Senate; Republican 
and Democratic former national security officials support these 
policies. Republican and Democratic State and local election officials 
want Federal resources to protect election security. Republican and 
Democratic House Representatives do too. Representative Meadows, the 
leader of the House Freedom Caucus, and Democratic Congressman 
Jim Langevin introduced a companion to one of these election security 
bills that I am leading. It was Republican Senator Marco Rubio who said 
that once they went after one party in one election, the next time it 
will be the other.

  Our whole country is based on free elections and the freedom to 
participate in our democracy. Our Founding Fathers set up a system so 
that we would be free of foreign influence. In fact, our whole country 
began because our country wanted to be free of foreign influence.
  Now is the time to put politics aside and come together to secure the 
future of our elections. So whether you are a four-star general, a 
fourth grade teacher, or a computer engineer at Foursquare, this is an 
issue that should unite us.
  In 1923, Joseph Stalin, then General Secretary of the Soviet 
Communists, was asked about a vote in the Central Committee of his 
party. Stalin was unconcerned about the vote. After all, he explained 
that who voted was ``completely unimportant.'' What was 
``extraordinarily important'' was who would count the votes and how.
  It is 95 years later, and sometimes it seems as though we are back at 
square one. Who voted is important. And if we suppress a vote or if 
people aren't allowed to vote or if the wrong people have voted or they 
are calculated the wrong way, that means that they had their way. What 
he acknowledged back then is that who counts the vote matters.
  We have to decide who is going to count America's vote. Is it going 
to be America, or are we going to let another country influence our 
elections and be able to count them themselves?
  Russia, as we know, is not our only threat. Our adversaries will 
continue to use cyber attacks. These attacks may not involve 
traditional weapons of war, but they can be just as disruptive and 
destructive.
  As I said in closing before the leaders took the floor, the 2018 
elections are just 271 days away. We need to protect our election 
systems. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in an interview just 
yesterday that Russia is already trying to influence the U.S. midterm 
elections and that Russia has a lot of different tools at its disposal. 
So I ask my colleagues, why don't we start having some tools at our 
disposal, laws at our disposal that will actually do something about 
this, resources supported by the head of the Freedom Caucus in the 
House that will help to strengthen our State election equipment? That 
is what we need. Hack me once, it is on them; hack me twice, it is on 
us.
  The 2018 elections are just hundreds of days away. It is time we take 
action, and we will have opportunities in the next few weeks to put 
some resources into this.
  I will remind you that the cost of the bill that Senator Lankford and 
I have, which we have paid for by unspent grant money, is 3 percent of 
the cost of one aircraft carrier. If these other countries are viewing 
this as a form of warfare, at least we can put the resources of 3 
percent of one air carrier into this challenge.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The Senator from South Carolina.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, 6 weeks after the passage of tax reform, we 
continue to show the American people how we are delivering on our 
promises with real, lasting tax reform.
  In fact, a recent poll showed that 69 percent of Americans are 
satisfied with the boost in our economy. Another poll showed that 
Americans' approval of our tax reform package has more than doubled 
since its passage. I know it will continue to rise as more families see 
the benefits coming their way. Our new tax law will ensure that they 
are able to keep more of their paychecks and that the jobs of the 
future are created right here in the good old U.S.A.

[[Page S674]]

  Back home in South Carolina, we continue to see positive changes 
because of tax reform. More businesses are awarding their employees 
with raises, and as a result, more families are putting more money in 
their bank accounts and in their pockets.
  Here is a real-life example. I received a note from Steve Potts, the 
CEO of Scout Boats in Summerville, SC. Scout Boats is, for those who 
may not know--but everybody knows Scout Boats--Scout Boats is a world-
class brand. It has been recognized all over the world for quality 
boats. Here is a success story, an organic success story.
  Back in 1989, Steve started his business with his wife in their 
garage. They did very well for a while, and then, of course, very 
quickly, Hurricane Hugo came about several months later and wiped them 
out. They had to start all over again.
  They had two employees in 1989. Their life savings were invested into 
Scout Boats. Today, almost 30 years later, they have 340 employees. 
This year, they are going to hand out $1,000 bonuses to their 340 
employees, and they hope this is the year that they will take their 
employees from 340 to 350 and exceed 400 employees.
  He said:

       We're confident this will help--

  The tax reform package.

     --further stimulate our own company morale, as well as become 
     an attractive career opportunity for new employees we are 
     currently searching for. . . . We believe by us giving back 
     to our employees, we're doing exactly what you and many 
     others originally intended with tax reform.

  This is fantastic news and proof that we are reaching our goals.
  I want to say thank you to Steve, not only for sharing your story but 
for rewarding the hard work of your employees. It is what happens in 
small and medium businesses all over the country.
  Having started a small business myself, I understand and appreciate 
the dedication Steve had to his vision and to his employees, because 
for Steve and so many entrepreneurs, their employees are an extension 
of their family. So being in a position to provide those folks with a 
$1,000 bonus each is a big deal. It is a big deal for the company. It 
is a big deal for the employees. It is reflective of the fact that most 
small businesses are reinvesting in their future, which means 
reinvesting in their employees. Steve is a classic example.
  Just like Steve, in the last 6 weeks, more than 3 million Americans 
have seen direct benefits from tax reform, be it bonuses or wage 
increases or better benefits. It is all good news, and it just keeps on 
coming. It is good news. More than 300 companies across our great 
Nation have announced significant benefits for their employees.
  There is more. My Investing in Opportunity Act was included in the 
tax cut, and it is designed to help 52 million Americans living in 
distressed communities like the very one in which I grew up. We have 
worked hard to get the IIOA--Investing in Opportunity Act--across the 
finish line so that it can be deployed in States around this Nation to 
help those very folks. That means everything from workforce investment, 
to better education, to businesses being attracted into these 
opportunity zones.
  I want to thank the majority leader for his words on the Investing in 
Opportunity Act yesterday morning. He is right. This will empower 
communities, and it will put up a big neon sign that says we are open 
for business. It will help communities that today may be wavering, 
questioning whether they can be successful. This is a resounding yes. 
Yes, you should be hopeful. Yes, you can be successful.

  I know these communities full well, and they are full of folks 
looking for a chance, an opportunity to put their creativity, their 
intelligence, and their work ethic on display. The Investing in 
Opportunity Act will provide that chance.
  The benefits of tax reform have just begun. Whether it is bonuses for 
workers, more wages, better benefits, or the implementation of the 
Investing in Opportunity Act, we know that the best is yet to come for 
the American people.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Paid Leave

  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, we just marked the 25th anniversary 
of the Family and Medical Leave Act, known to most as FMLA.
  When FMLA passed 25 years ago, it was an incredible step forward for 
millions of working families. They finally had the legal right to step 
away from their jobs to take care of their families without the risk of 
being fired. But we now know that the law just has not kept up with the 
times.
  FMLA doesn't apply to 40 percent of the workforce, and it doesn't 
guarantee any pay during the time the worker is away. In fact, 25 years 
after FMLA was signed into law, we are still the only industrialized 
country in the world that doesn't guarantee access to some form of paid 
leave. That means that workers all over the country are losing wages 
and retirement savings when they take time off. The economy is losing 
tens of millions of dollars. We have to change this because FMLA is not 
good enough anymore.
  We need an actual national paid leave program, and I am pleased to 
see that paid leave has now clearly become a bipartisan issue. Both 
parties agree that paid leave is something that our country desperately 
needs and urgently wants to have.
  Earlier today, a group of Republican colleagues announced a proposal 
they claim would solve this problem, but it is clear that their 
proposal will not help the vast majority of working Americans. In fact, 
it would not create a real paid leave program that covers all workers.
  Not only that, this plan will actually rob the Social Security trust 
fund. This would not strengthen Social Security; it would weaken Social 
Security. No worker should have to borrow against their own Social 
Security benefits, which are already too low, to get paid family leave 
when they need it to take care of a new baby, a sick family member, a 
dying parent, or themselves. And let's not forget that Social Security 
already pays women less than men. So this proposal would make that 
problem even worse.
  If you are watching this debate right now and you are wondering 
whether Congress is finally going to pass a paid leave law that 
actually helps working Americans, don't be fooled by this Republican 
proposal.
  If your son is diagnosed with cancer and you need time to bring him 
to his chemotherapy appointments, their plan will do nothing for you. 
If your elderly mother has dementia and you need time to be by her 
side, this plan will do nothing for you. If your husband has a heart 
attack and he needs you there while he recovers, this plan does nothing 
for you.
  Right now, millions of American workers are stuck choosing between 
earning a paycheck and leaving their jobs to take care of a loved one 
when some medical emergency happens, and if this bill passes, that 
would not change.
  Listen to what a woman named Shelby went through because she didn't 
have paid leave.
  Shelby is a mother and a grandmother, and she takes care of her 
parents. She is a security officer, committed to keeping her community 
safe. We all know that we can never predict when medical emergencies 
happen. All of a sudden, Shelby's youngest daughter and parent needed 
medical attention at the same time. Shelby had to leave work because 
her family needed her, but all she had was FMLA--unpaid leave--which 
counted as an employment disciplinary action where she worked.
  As Shelby put it, taking unpaid leave was an enormous financial 
burden for her. She couldn't keep up with her rent or utility costs, 
and it took her months to catch up on just paying her bills. She was 
able to keep her job, but she suffered far more than she should have, 
with an enormous amount of added stress on top of her family's medical 
issues, because she didn't have paid leave. This Republican proposal 
would not help her.
  We have to fix this. Even President Trump agrees. In his State of the 
Union Address last week, he said: My response is this: Actions speak 
louder

[[Page S675]]

than words. Our country needs a real paid leave plan.
  If President Trump and Congress really are serious about creating a 
national paid leave program, then I urge them to support my paid leave 
bill, which would actually work. It would cover all workers, not just 
new moms. It is called the FAMILY Act.
  The FAMILY Act would finally guarantee paid family and medical leave 
to every working American. The FAMILY Act is affordable. It is an 
accessible earned benefit that you and your employer would contribute 
into together. It would stay with you for your entire career, no matter 
where you worked. It is universal and comprehensive. It is for women 
and for men. It is for the young and the elderly. It is for workers in 
big companies or small companies or even if they are self-employed, it 
would only cost about the cost of a cup of coffee a week.
  This is the kind of paid leave program that our country needs, and 
anything less is just not enough.
  Five States around the country have already stood up for what is 
right and given their workers access to paid leave. These States, 
including my home State of New York, are doing a much better job than 
Congress of meeting the needs of their people on this issue.
  California, for example, has had their paid leave program for more 
than a decade. I know some of my colleagues are worried about whether 
paid leave is good for business, so I hope they will listen to these 
numbers.
  In a survey, 90 percent of business owners in California said that 
paid leave had a positive or, at worst, no negative effect on their 
profit or their productivity and on their retention. Ninety-nine 
percent of them said that it boosted morale.
  Paid leave is good for business and it is good for working families, 
so we have to pass it. I know there is bipartisan support to do it. 
Let's start rewarding work again and give people the opportunity to 
earn a better life for their families, and let's finally give Americans 
access to paid leave.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in this fight and pass the FAMILY 
Act.
  I now wish to yield the floor to my colleague from Illinois, who is 
also going to speak about why this is good for America.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from New 
York, who is on the floor today, for her leadership on this very 
important issue.
  I am here to join in the discussion on one of the most pressing 
issues facing American families all across our country--our Nation's 
outdated family leave policy. About 2 weeks ago, I announced that I am 
expecting a baby girl in April. The support for my announcement has 
been overwhelming, and I am grateful for it. I have received so many 
congratulations and lots of questions about my daughter-to-be. I have 
also gotten questions about how I balance being a working mother and a 
legislator, how I expect to handle having a newborn and a 3-year-old as 
I continue my work here in the U.S. Senate.
  I know these questions come from a good place, but let's be real. It 
is 2018. Women have been having children since the beginning of 
humanity, and I am nowhere near the first person to be a working mom. 
In fact, my colleague was a working mom and legislator long before I 
was.
  Millions of women have been balancing the demands of their job and 
their families ever since female trailblazers first joined the working 
world, but you wouldn't know that based on the policies we have adopted 
as a country. The United States is one of just a handful of developed 
countries in the world that doesn't offer paid maternity leave, and one 
of the very few industrialized nations that doesn't offer paid parental 
or family leave to parents.
  Across our Nation, working parents face barriers to staying in the 
workforce. Lack of access to affordable child care and paid family 
medical and parental leave forces people to choose between taking care 
of their children or a sick family member and losing their job and 
their health insurance. That hurts our entire country. That is why, as 
we mark the 25th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act today, 
I want to highlight the commonsense legislation my colleagues and I 
have introduced to make the workplace more accommodating for working 
parents.
  Senator Gillibrand has a great bill, the FAMILY Act, which would do 
just that by creating a universal family and medical leave insurance 
program that would cost employers and employees less than $1.50 per 
week on average. This is the ultimate in self-help. This is people 
helping themselves so that they can have the leave they need when their 
families need it.
  Senator Patty Murray's Child Care for Working Families Act would 
ensure every family has access to affordable and high-quality child 
care. And my Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools Reauthorization 
Act would increase access to on-campus care for student parents, who 
make up more than one-quarter of all college students in America.
  These bills are a great place to start, and we should take them up in 
the Senate as soon as possible. After all, the FMLA passed in 1993. 
While it was an important step forward for our country, it is not 
comprehensive and it is nowhere near enough. Many workers across the 
country are ineligible for it, don't qualify to receive unpaid time 
off, and can't afford it. The FMLA does little to help Americans who 
cannot afford to take unpaid time off from work, forcing people to 
choose between a paycheck and being able to pay their mortgage and 
support their own loved ones.
  We need to do what we can to change that--to finally offer paid 
parental leave like the rest of the world has. There is no reason we 
can't get this done today, and we should get to work on it today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about paid family 
leave. I want to introduce this topic by saying that politicians across 
America, whether they are local, whether they are in State offices, or 
whether they are in very important bodies like the U.S. Senate, make 
one pledge; that is, to support American families. They promise to try 
to make life just a little easier for people who are raising the next 
generation, to do what it takes to encourage people to have families 
and to have children, so our future is secured not only with a 
workforce but also the vibrancy that is America.
  It has been 25 years since we adopted the Family Medical Leave Act. 
That was a great step forward, and I actually remember when it 
happened. I was North Dakota's attorney general cheering from the 
sidelines, thinking: We have solved this problem. We are now protecting 
parents from losing their jobs and enabling them to care for their 
newborns. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough because how 
many people, even if they have the protection, can afford to exercise 
their rights under the Family Medical Leave Act? The answer is very, 
very few in my State.

  It is absolutely essential that we take this to the next step. It is 
essential that we make sure we are not forcing our citizens to choose 
between working--as they have to when families live paycheck to 
paycheck--and caring for their newborn. Many daycare facilities will 
not even take an infant until they are 10 or 12 weeks old. So what 
choice have we really given people under the Family Medical Leave Act?
  Just 15 percent of the workforce in the United States has access to 
paid family leave through their employer. That leaves millions of 
people without access to paid leave for time away from their job to 
care for a new child or a seriously sick relative.
  It is well past the time that the United States of America--the 
greatest country in the world--has a Federal paid family and medical 
leave policy to truly support working families.
  I will tell my colleagues that I find this issue particularly vexing 
because North Dakota competes with the rest of the country for 
workforce. If you go to California, this benefit is extended through a 
State system. If you go to Rhode Island, this benefit is extended 
through a State system. New York is pursuing a State system. Certainly 
States with large populations, like New York and California, have the 
economies of scale to offer this benefit in a State-based system. Guess 
what happens to a State that only has just over

[[Page S676]]

700,000 people in population. Think about the percentages that we would 
need to run a State-based program.
  We need a national solution to this problem. I know a lot of people 
are saying: Well, the States are doing it; they are the laboratories of 
experimentation in this great democracy. But the fundamental problem is 
that for States like mine that don't enjoy economies of scale, this 
will not be a reality for the women, for the families in my State who 
want to have children. Also, daycare is the second issue that makes 
this so difficult.
  We need to make sure that people know they are going to have a 
guaranteed income for those first three months of child-raising. Why is 
that important? It is important because we know that as a matter of 
physiological development, that bonding period of time with your 
parents during those early months is so critical. When children get 
detached from their parents during those early months, they can suffer 
psychological effects that will last forever. So we need to get this 
done.
  Let's talk about what proposals are on the table. I don't want to be 
critical because I think it is wonderful that this issue has come to 
this body, not only on this side of the aisle, to talk about the need 
for paid family leave. But, once again, where we applauded the Family 
Medical Leave Act, we left too many people behind. We can't do that 
again. That is why it is really important that we analyze the proposals 
that are out there.
  I know that along with my good friend, the Senator from New York, we 
have been having long and extensive conversations with many Republicans 
about this issue, as well as with many folks in the White House, about 
the need for Federal paid leave. Over the past few days, details have 
come out about a Republican plan that would have new parents do 
something we should never do, which is take money out of our retirement 
system. The plan suggests that new parents take money out of their 
Social Security benefits. Think about that. We have a retirement crisis 
in this country. Too few people have anything other than Social 
Security to live on in their older years, and now we are saying: Guess 
what. Borrow against that. Get your Social Security to help you pay for 
what happens today, and then hope upon hope that you will have enough 
money to retire in the future. It is, quite honestly, the wrong 
direction.
  This plan does not, in my opinion, support families. It would not 
help most working families and those who could use it. It would force 
them to choose between caring for a newborn or a family member or their 
retirement savings. I think it is likely that people would take that 
option, but jeopardizing their future retirement is not a choice they 
should have to make.
  Additionally, just think about this: Women already get, on average, 
20 percent less in Social Security benefits than men. Why is that? It 
is that way because of the pay gap we have in this country--another 
issue we could discuss, but we are not going to do that today.
  Social Security is a critical retirement security plan in this 
country, and for far too many families, it is the only thing they can 
rely on in retirement--something we need to fix--and we don't need to 
exacerbate it by complicating the Social Security retirement crisis 
with the problem of paid family leave.
  So I am here to advocate for a bill that Senator Gillibrand has 
introduced and I have proudly cosponsored called the FAMILY Act. It is 
a real Federal paid leave policy that I think we desperately need. We 
need to support working families, and this bill does, because it would 
make that promise of family paid leave possible.
  Our bill provides 12 weeks of partially paid leave for workers 
dealing with serious health issues of their own, including birth and 
adoption of children, or for family members. Our bill would create an 
affordable, effective earned benefit that both employers and employees 
could and would contribute to. For employees, the paid leave benefit 
would always apply to them no matter where they live. It is 
transportable, which is so important in this new gig economy.
  Almost half of North Dakota workers do not qualify for a single--now, 
I want my colleagues to remember this--work day where they could get 
sick, and only about one-third of North Dakota's workers are eligible 
for and can afford unpaid leave. For them, the FAMILY Act would make 
all the difference. No family should have to choose between a loved one 
and their job. No family should have to make the choices that they have 
to make today, frequently delaying raising a family because they simply 
can't afford it when they put pen to paper.
  Our bill also levels the playing field for businesses. I think this 
is an important part. I want people to understand this. If you are a 
small firm in North Dakota that does coding--let's say you are a 
software firm and you get an exciting new product and you want to 
generate excitement within your business. You want to recruit the best 
and the brightest coming out of our universities, coming out of our 
tech schools, but you are competing against Microsoft and you are 
competing against Google and you are competing against all of those 
companies that can afford to provide that benefit. Many, many of the 
small businesses in my State have said: Help us compete; help us 
compete for the best and brightest. When those benefits are offered to 
workers, where are they going to go if they want to raise a family? 
They are going to go not just to where the pay is better, but they are 
also going to go where they can get the benefit of paid family leave. 
It is critically important that small businesses be enable to enjoy the 
economies of scale.
  If you work in retail and you say ``I want to exercise my right to 
paid family leave or my right to family leave, and I am going to go,'' 
the employer is going to protect the job, but they can't afford to pay 
that person when they are paying another person in a small business. If 
my colleagues can think about this the way I think about it--we have 
unemployment insurance for a reason. We have unemployment insurance 
because temporarily people have to get out of the workforce because 
maybe their job no longer exists or they have lost their job for some 
reason. We give unemployment benefits to help bridge them to the next 
job and to keep them in the workforce. As a condition of that, we ask 
them to continue to look for a job, and, hopefully, we provide some 
services in their search for a job.

  Think about the unemployment system. Who here would repeal 
unemployment insurance? It is temporary. This is an extension. Think 
about it like we would think about unemployment insurance. If something 
happens in your family--you have a baby, your mother gets cancer, your 
husband gets cancer--you can't afford to take time off, but you can't 
afford to leave them alone. So what do you do? You exit the workforce, 
potentially qualifying for food stamps, potentially qualifying for 
government benefits. This benefit keeps people in the workforce.
  When I talked about this benefit in Dickinson, ND--not exactly a 
hotbed of liberalism--and explained why I thought it was important, a 
woman came up afterward and said: Do you know what I really like about 
your plan?
  I said: That we are going to help families?
  She said: Well, that is important. But I really like that it keeps 
people in the workforce, that they have a job when they come back, and 
that they are able to bridge that and not leave employment.
  Think about the economic disruption when somebody can't keep an 
employee because of these challenges. Retraining costs are high.
  When this started in California, this was not yet again another big 
government program. People would talk about it that way. Satisfaction 
levels with this program from every end of the spectrum in California 
are off the charts--with employers and employees, with small business 
and with large business--because they know that the retraining and 
retooling they would have to do for employees is expensive, and they 
want to keep the good employees that they have.
  Let's do something for families. Let's actually do something. Let's 
not just promise it. Let's not mortgage our retirement for it. Let's do 
something for families and actually take this burden and say: We are 
going to help you. If you want to have a child, it is 3 months of paid 
family leave. It is not at your total salary. It will not be the full 
amount, but we are going to help you if

[[Page S677]]

your mom gets sick with cancer so you don't have to leave your job to 
take care of her. We are going to work with families to make this 
happen.
  I guarantee that this will be a program that will be remembered the 
way we remember other great programs, such as Social Security, 
Medicare, and unemployment insurance.
  I urge my colleagues to take a look at the FAMILY Act. Take a look at 
all of the good economic arguments that go with it--not the 
heartwarming arguments, which I think we can make, but the economic 
arguments about why this makes sense for American business and for the 
American economy.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed 
into law in December, we heard a lot about what was going to 
immediately happen. This was going to be a tax cut for the rich. 
Corporations were going to use their money to buy back their stock and 
not share it with the people who work for them.
  The Senate was as divided on a partisan basis as the Senate could be. 
Every person in the majority voted for the tax bill. Every person in 
the minority voted against the tax bill.
  We heard from some of the leaders of the other side that it would be 
Armageddon. We heard from President Obama's Treasury Secretary that 
10,000 people would die every year if the tax bill was signed into law. 
We heard that the average family would only get crumbs and scraps from 
the tax bill. It is turning out that this is not what appears to be 
happening at all.
  Companies have stepped up to show that in a growing economy--in an 
economy they believe is going to grow--they value the people they work 
with and they value the employees of their company in a way we wouldn't 
have anticipated. I thought this would happen as we saw the economy 
take off from the tax bill. It didn't occur to most of us that 
companies would step up on day one and say: We are going to value and 
show our value to the people who work for us.
  Over 3.8 million people now have received over $4 billion in bonuses. 
A lot of those happened in my State of Missouri. The Central Bank of 
St. Louis, which employs over 2,000 people, gave a $1,000 bonus to all 
full-time employees, and the 246 part-time employees will get a $500 
bonus.
  Charter Communications announced, as many people have, that they are 
going to increase their own minimum wage. Whatever their minimum 
salaries have been in the past, those are now going to be higher. The 
best kind of minimum wage increase is because you believe that is the 
fair thing to do for your employees and also because you believe it is 
what you need to do to keep good employees in a rising economy. I think 
we had gotten so used to the stagnant economy of the last 8 or so years 
that people had forgotten what happens when the economy begins to grow. 
So Charter Communications is now increasing their minimum wage to $15 
an hour.
  Commerce Bancshares, in Kansas City, has more than 2,300 employees in 
Missouri, and they gave a $1,000 bonus to all of their full-time 
employees and a $250 bonus to their part-time employees.
  Mid-Am Metal Forming in southwest Missouri gave all 140 of their 
employees a cash bonus.
  This is not just about big companies. This is about little companies 
looking at how they want to grow and knowing that to grow, they need to 
keep a workforce that can be part of that growth.
  Great Southern Bank, in my hometown of Springfield, has over 800 
Missouri employees. They gave a $1,000 bonus to full-time employees and 
a $500 bonus to part-time employees.
  Walmart announced that the 25,700 Missourians who work for them are 
not only getting bonuses, but they are raising the starting wage for 
full-time employees to just under $14 an hour--substantially higher 
than the wage otherwise.
  That doesn't sound like crumbs to the people who are getting those 
bonuses. They see what they can do with it.
  Solomon Essex, a warehouse worker at Dynamic Fastener, in Raytown, 
told us he was using his $1,000 bonus to help his daughter buy a car.
  Mary Beth Hartman, who owns a construction company in Springfield, 
said: ``I've been able to offer my long tenured employees a week of 
vacation'' that they didn't have before. ``They're getting plenty of 
overtime; they have job security.'' She is also creating new jobs in 
her business.
  It is a good start, but I think there are even more announcements and 
more good opportunities ahead.
  Senator Capito and I were on the floor talking about this before the 
bill passed. I said several times that there are two ways to increase 
your take-home pay. One is for the government to take less out of it, 
and another one is for you to get a better job to start with. We are 
already beginning to see both of those things happen. When you double 
the standard deduction, when you double the child tax credit, and when 
you lower the rates, the new code allows you to have more money.
  Our friends on the other side said people wouldn't get a tax cut. But 
90 percent of the workers in the country who have income tax deducted 
from their paycheck are going to have less income tax deducted on the 
same pay in February than they would have had in December. What does 
that mean?
  I will mention here that the University of Missouri just beat 
Kentucky in basketball for the first time since we got into the SEC, a 
handful of years ago. We didn't want to let that go unmentioned.
  The Boone County clerk announced that he had run the payroll for the 
first time for all 485 county employees, and the average county 
employee was getting $150.54 a month more than they were getting on 
that same salary last year. Many of those employees have two people in 
their house working. This is just the one salary--an average of 
$150.54. That is about $1,800 a year.
  A brand-new deputy sheriff in Boone County who earns $45,905 will 
have an extra $1,929 this year that they didn't have if they started 
that same job in November or December of last year. Now, $1,900 does a 
lot of things. Two hundred dollars a month only seems like a lot if you 
don't have it. In Boone County, that payroll for 485 people calculates 
right at $945,000 a year that those employees will have that in the 
past they would have sent to the Federal Government. Some of it will be 
saved. Some of it will be spent.
  When I was flying back from Kansas City on Sunday, a guy behind me on 
the plane, as we were getting off, tapped me on the shoulder and said: 
Thanks for the tax cut. My wife and I just got our first checks with 
the new tax rates, and we are going to have $5,000 more this year than 
we had last year. We are going to put every penny of it in our kids' 
college savings account and we are really happy about it. We are really 
happy about it.
  We don't often hear people say: We are really happy about something 
you have done for us because it is going to make a difference for the 
future of our family.
  But this tax bill will.
  For a single parent with one child in Missouri who makes $41,000 a 
year, their taxes are going to go down 75 percent. That single parent 
with one child will have $1,400 more this year than they had last 
year--over $100 every single month.
  A family of four who makes about $75,000 will have $2,000 more. That 
is a 50 percent tax cut for that family. For most people, that is 2 
months' worth of groceries. It is gasoline. It is an electric bill.
  If you get your electricity from a privately owned electric company, 
like many people do in 47 States, some of the electric companies are 
going to be reducing their rates. Now, if you have a rural electric 
coop, like my farm in Strafford has, or a public utility, like my house 
in Springfield has, you will not get that tax cut, but lots of 
Missourians get their electric from somebody that pays taxes. If you 
pay taxes, you are going to be reducing your electric bill because that 
35 percent rate

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was figured into what you are allowed to charge. Now you are paying 20 
percent. That is money you are going to be giving back to the families 
and businesses you serve.
  Helping families means ensuring that they have more opportunities in 
the future. Being part of a growing economy means you are going to have 
more opportunities in the future. We are seeing all those things 
happen, and I think we are going to continue to see them happen--not 
just in businesses like AT&T, Boeing, and Apple, which, by the way, 
just brought all of the money they had earned outside the country back 
home. They just announced that they are bringing 100 percent of 
everything back, which they would have not brought back at a 35-percent 
rate. But they are glad to bring it back at the rate in this tax bill. 
We are glad to see all those companies in a more competitive 
marketplace, just like small businesses are.
  So even though the law went into effect just a little over a month 
ago, I think we are seeing the kind of reaction we would have hoped 
for. Families are beginning to see that what they were told about the 
tax bill wasn't true. You should never want to say something that is 
not true, but surely you should not want to do it when in 60 days you 
are going to be proven not true in the one thing that everybody looks 
at--which is a bigger paycheck than they had 60 days ago.
  In spite of what was said, 9 out of 10 workers are going to have a 
bigger paycheck, and those are hard-working families. The people who 
don't benefit from the tax cut are the people at the richest end of the 
tax scale, not the other end of the tax scale.
  So I think we are off to a good start. I think we ought to be talking 
about a growing economy. All of us ought to be watching, after a decade 
of not seeing the economy grow, what has happened over the last few 
months and what really happens now as we move to a better place for 
families, a better place for jobs, and a better place for competition 
because of the tax bill we passed in December and the President signed 
into law.
  With that, I think other colleagues of mine are here. Senator Capito 
and I have been on the floor a number of times talking about this 
together, and I know she is here to follow me now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Missouri for 
his terrific explanation, 60 days hence, of voting for the tax reform 
bill and the effects it is having in his great State. I would like to 
join him today to talk about what I think are the positive effects of 
tax reform, not just across the country but particularly in my small 
State of West Virginia.
  Last Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence and Commerce Secretary 
Wilbur Ross came to West Virginia to talk about this at a small 
business, Worldwide Equipment, which employs 1,100 people across the 
country, 200 or so of which are in West Virginia at 7 different 
locations. We learned from owner Terry Dotson how he feels about tax 
reform and the effect it has had on his business, his employees, his 
ability to grow his business. What we learned is that Mr. Dotson is 
going to be investing $8 million more in the operations and in his 
workforce, whether it is through bonuses, expanding the facilities, 
buying new equipment. But particularly for the men and women working 
for Worldwide Equipment, it is the bonuses that are going to have 
people seeing the immediate effect. He attributes this all to tax 
reform.
  The men and women of Worldwide Equipment join hundreds of thousands 
of workers all across this country at companies like Walmart, AT&T, 
Comcast, Fiat Chrysler, and many others who will receive bonuses or 
salary increases because of this bill. The good news doesn't stop 
there, and that is good.
  Those of us who voted for this bill--and I did, very proudly--said 
that the effects of this tax reform are going to be felt in many 
different ways. Mr. Dotson has a relatively small business. He 
mentioned how he is feeling it. But many workers will see their take-
home pay increase in the coming weeks, as employers are adjusting the 
tax withholding based on the new law.
  People like Robert from Berkley Springs, WV, wrote me last week:

       Thank you for helping my family by voting yes on the tax 
     bill. My family saw a significant increase in our take-home 
     pay today.

  Edward from Hurricane, WV, said:

       I really want to thank you and the President for the tax 
     breaks! Please keep working to help the American workers.

  Dennie from Charleston wrote:

       The recent tax bill that was passed will provide a great 
     boost to our economy in many ways including more employment 
     opportunities and money in people's pockets.

  And Robert, who is a small business owner from Huntington, wrote:

       I want to thank you for your yes vote on the Tax Cuts and 
     Jobs Act. This legislation recognizes the importance of small 
     business.

  In a State like ours, 95 percent of the businesses are small 
businesses. Many of them are family-owned. Other West Virginians will 
soon see the benefits.
  I would like to tip my hat and congratulate our State auditor, J.B. 
McCuskey, because he took the time and made the effort to figure out 
what kind of impact the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will have on State 
workers and the workers from West Virginia University or Marshall 
University--the three largest workforces the State of West Virginia 
does payroll for. He announced that, in total, all three of those 
entities will have $50 million more in their pockets throughout the 
year--an average for a State worker of $1,000 or $1,200 more per year. 
These are significant amounts of dollars for young families trying to 
buy new shoes, buy books and school supplies, use the gas to go visit 
or go on a vacation. We could go on and on. It seems that the coldest 
day--a wet day like today--is always the day the furnace breaks down. 
How nice it would be to not have to borrow or worry or put more credit 
on the credit card and have the cash to be able to do these things.
  I would say, $50 million more for West Virginia workers is $50 
million more going into the local economy, into the State economy. 
Better yet, people are making their own decisions on how they are going 
to spend it.
  Just 2 months after the bill became law, Americans are already seeing 
the benefits. The jobs report that was released last Friday showed over 
200,000 jobs that were created just in the month of January. The report 
showed--and I think this might be even more significant than job 
growth--that wage growth is accelerating at the fastest rate in the 
last 8 years.
  People talk about stagnated wages and how they haven't had a raise or 
how their dollars are not going as far. By increasing the standard 
deduction and the child tax credit for middle-class families, we are 
making life better for the people we represent. By making our Tax Code 
more competitive, we are allowing American companies to bring home 
money that had previously been left overseas.
  There was a big controversy on this when we began discussing it: Are 
they really going to bring their money home?
  Apple announced plans to return as much as $250 billion in cash that 
it had kept overseas. That is billion with a ``b.'' That move is 
expected to create 20,000 new American jobs and a tax payment of $38 
billion on the repatriated cash. I think that is, obviously, one of the 
largest examples but also one of the best examples of an American 
company.
  Under our previous, outdated Tax Code, corporations were faced with a 
35-percent tax if they brought their foreign earnings home. Because the 
U.S. corporate rate was the highest in the developed world, American 
companies often made the financial choice to leave their foreign 
profits overseas, which meant that under the old system, the Federal 
Treasury was frequently left to collect 35 percent of nothing because 
people weren't bringing the money back. Jobs that could have been done 
in America were being done elsewhere. That was a big problem. In 
December we fixed it with this bill. We said that a more competitive 
tax code would allow our companies to bring their money back and 
provide more opportunities for Americans all across this country. That 
is exactly what we are starting to see.
  Today I want to highlight another part of the tax reform effort. I 
thank my colleague from South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott, who 
spearheaded this. He was the sponsor of the Investing in Opportunity 
Act, and I was a cosponsor. This bill, which became part

[[Page S679]]

of the law in the tax reform bill, will help spur growth in 
economically distressed areas. Under the bill, investors can defer 
their capital gains tax if they invest in opportunity funds.
  In rural areas, particularly those that have difficult economic 
conditions, such as many of the areas of my State, it is hard to spur 
investment, to get more people back to work, to create new 
opportunities. These funds must be invested in distressed areas and 
census tracts that are designated by Governors--who knows best but the 
Governors where these distressed census tracts are--and create 
opportunity zones. That will provide capital to help grow new 
businesses and also create jobs in parts of our country that really 
need them the most. If those parts of our country rise, the rest of the 
country will continue to rise.
  According to the Economic Innovation Group, one in six Americans 
lives in an economically distressed community. These distressed areas 
lost 6 percent of their jobs between the years 2011 and 2015.
  The New York Times recently highlighted the benefits of the Investing 
in Opportunity Act, writing that rural areas accounted for just 3 
percent--only 3 percent--of the job growth in the years 2010 to 2014. 
Rural communities saw more businesses close than open over that time 
period.
  Many West Virginia communities are continuing to suffer the 
consequences of the previous administration's anti-coal policies. Their 
economies could use this boost, and this is exactly what tax reform and 
the Investing in Opportunity Act, in particular, will provide. Passing 
tax reform fulfilled a promise that we made to the American people to 
make jobs and economic growth our top priority.
  Two weeks ago, the Senate fulfilled another major promise by passing 
the longest extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program. In 
West Virginia, approximately 22,000 children rely on CHIP for access to 
their healthcare. It has been a successful program. It has been one 
that really helps a lot of families, a lot of working families. Over 
the years, it has helped improve the health of our State's children. 
These working families deserve the long-term certainty that the CHIP 
program will be there to provide access to critical services, and I am 
proud we provided that certainty. I have been a strong supporter of the 
CHIP program for over 20 years. I was on the conference committee in 
the State house in the late nineties when we forged and implemented the 
program in our State, and I have been dedicated to it ever since.
  When I came to the Senate 3 years ago, in my maiden speech, I made 
long-term funding for the CHIP program one of my main priorities. 
Passage of this bipartisan legislation to extend it for the next 6 
years was a big win for the children of this country and across West 
Virginia too. Hard-working Americans are the beneficiaries of both tax 
reform and the CHIP reauthorization.
  I am confident the benefits will keep coming. It seems that every day 
something good is happening in the American economy with businesses and 
raises and bonuses and lower tax bills. People are beginning to see 
this in their withholding. Struggling communities in West Virginia 
welcome this. Cities and suburbs in rural areas across the country will 
see greater economic growth, all because of the tax reform bill. It has 
been presented to us as that. Many of the companies making 
announcements are not making these announcements in a vacuum. They are 
saying, very exclusively, that because of the tax reform bill that the 
Congress passed and the President signed, we are able to do these 
things we have been wanting to do for our employees: Give them a bonus, 
put more money in their pensions, help give more charitable 
contributions in the communities where they live, provide more long-
term certainty.
  Have no doubt, we will continue to work to add to the list of 
accomplishments, and I will probably be on the Senate floor talking 
about them.
  I yield the floor.
  I see my colleague from Indiana is here to talk about tax reform.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of--and to 
share a sample of--the positive results my State of Indiana is already 
experiencing as a result of tax reform. Hoosiers like Chelsee Hatfield, 
who accompanied me at the State of the Union address last week, are 
already seeing the benefits of this historic tax overhaul. Chelsee is a 
young mother of three. She is a teller at a rural branch of First 
Farmers Bank & Trust Company in Tipton, IN. Chelsee recently learned 
that she is going to receive a raise and a bonus as a result of tax 
reform. This additional income will help Chelsee go back to school and 
earn her associate's degree. It is also going to enable her to put 
money away for her children's college education.
  First Farmers Bank & Trust is also investing $250,000 per year--per 
year--in community development in the small rural communities where 
they serve businesses and individuals. Moreover, First Farmers is going 
to invest $150,000 per year in employee development. This is just one 
company throughout the State of Indiana, and we are seeing all sorts of 
stories like this already emerging.

  Chelsee and the employees of First Farmers Bank & Trust represent so 
many regular Hoosiers who work in small towns and in our large cities, 
and they are going to see real benefits, substantial benefits, for 
themselves and their families. As a result, the entire State and 
country, of course, will benefit as well.
  Indiana, like so many States, is already seeing a steady stream of 
tax reform success stories like these--and has ever since we passed the 
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I will just go through a number of these 
positive stories that are emerging.
  Anthem, an Indiana-based health insurance company, announced on 
Monday that more than 58,000 employees and recent retirees will receive 
$1,000 contributions to their retirements. Now, in my family and in so 
many families around this country, $1,000 is a lot of money. That is 
just in the here and now. Moving forward, we can expect increased 
economic growth, a greater demand for workers, and for more wages to 
increase. Just in the near term, we know that Anthem has said it will 
give retirees and employees $1,000 contributions to their retirements.
  Family Express Convenience Stores, out of Valparaiso, announced it is 
boosting its starting wage for employees at their 70 locations 
throughout Indiana. Gus Olympidis is its CEO, and he said: ``We feel 
obligated to pass on a significant portion of the tax savings to our 
staff.'' Of course, we have heard this from a number of employers and 
their leadership. They are passing on tax savings to their employees 
because they want to retain these employees. This, of course, is a good 
way to do it.
  Southwest Airlines announced that it will be investing in a new fleet 
of airplanes, and the engines will be built by Hoosiers in Lafayette.
  FedEx is investing $1.5 billion in its Indianapolis hub and is 
providing bonuses to its workers.
  First Midwest Bank raised its minimum pay for hourly employees to $15 
an hour at its 18 Northwest Indiana branches.
  These are real results--real compensation and real benefits--already 
being experienced by rank-and-file Hoosiers--the people who help keep 
this economy humming.
  I listened very carefully to Hoosier voices when we were debating the 
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and I am glad to see their voices were heard, in 
the end, by a majority of my colleagues. Workers at companies of all 
sizes are already beginning to see the benefits of a tax code that is 
simpler, that is fairer, and that allows Hoosiers to keep more of their 
hard-earned money.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, 47 days is how long it has been since 
President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law, and what a 
47 days it has been. We are already beginning to see what meaningful 
tax relief looks like for middle- and working-

[[Page S680]]

class Americans. In just 47 days, well over 3 million American 
workers--the people who get up every day and go to work and obey the 
law and try to do the right thing by their kids--have received wage 
increases, benefits increases, and/or bonuses.
  I have heard a number of so-called experts say--and it has been my 
experience that the experts are almost always wrong, but that is a 
separate subject--that if Congress reduced the corporate tax rate from 
40 to 21 percent and if Congress lowered taxes on subchapter S 
corporations, LLCs, LLPs, sole proprietorships, and family farms, the 
benefits would only be felt by the so-called rich. I, respectfully, 
suggest that those 3 million Americans who have received bonuses and 
higher wages and more generous benefits--once again, in just 47 days--
would not agree with the experts. In those 47 short days, over 330 
companies have passed along their tax savings to their employees.
  I am from Louisiana. One of my State's largest employers, JPMorgan 
Chase, has increased its minimum wage and expanded benefits for its 
hourly workers--real money in higher take-home pay. JPMorgan Chase has 
also planned a $20 billion 5-year domestic investment that will benefit 
those Americans who own homes, who own small businesses, or those who 
would like to someday as part of the American dream.
  Honeywell, another well recognized corporation, happens to have a 
manufacturing plant in Geismar, LA. Honeywell was quick to increase its 
401(k) match for its employees, which helps to ensure certainty for 
people in their retirements. BancorpSouth, another company that does 
business in Louisiana, gave raises to 70 percent of its employees right 
off the bat--within the first 47 days. AT&T has 4,600 employees in 
Louisiana. Those employees are going to see $1,000 in bonuses and many 
other benefits of a $1 billion increase in investment by the company--
all as a result of the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
  There are other businesses with footprints in Louisiana--businesses 
like Home Depot, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation, Starbucks, Visa, American 
Airlines, Capital One, Southwest Airlines, Bank of America, Apple, 
Fidelity, Humana, Nationwide, Regions, Verizon, and FedEx, just to name 
a few. They also made the list of companies that are passing along 
their savings to the American worker.
  Furthermore, in my home State of Louisiana, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 
is allowing small businesses to grow and reinvest in their employees 
and in their communities. Thanks to the TCJA, or the Tax Cuts and Jobs 
Act--I hate acronyms, as does the Presiding Officer--the Gulf Coast 
Bank & Trust Company, which is a bank in Louisiana--actually, in the 
New Orleans metropolitan area--was able to raise its minimum wage to 
$12 an hour, nearly doubling the federally mandated minimum wage. The 
Gulf Coast Bank & Trust Company was also able to increase its 
charitable contributions by $75,000. Maybe, to some, that $75,000 is 
mere crumbs, but to the people of Louisiana, that is a lot of money.
  Blessey Marine Services, in Harahan, LA, immediately took $1 million 
of its tax savings and increased its employees' benefits.
  The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also allowed for a small brewery in 
Hammond, LA, to expand. I live about 30 miles away from it. The brewery 
is called Gnarly Barley. I love that name, ``Gnarly Barley.'' Gnarly 
Barley is going to expand, hire more workers, and provide more benefits 
to its existing workers. It is not as big as AT&T, but Gnarly Barley 
and the people who work for it are just as important to my State and to 
the country.
  I would also point out that another Louisiana bank, IBERIABANK 
Corporation, is giving 80 percent of its employees $1,000 bonuses. You 
can call that a crumb if you want to, but in Louisiana, $1,000 is a lot 
of money, and I think it is a lot of money to most Americans.
  I could keep going, but I think you get the point. The Tax Cuts and 
Jobs Act has promised just about every American family and just about 
every American worker and nearly every American business, large and 
small, a tax break, and they are already starting to see the effects.
  I have said this before, but it bears saying one more time that you 
cannot be for jobs if you are against business. You will never hear a 
politician say he is against jobs or she is against jobs. Every 
politician is for jobs, but you cannot be for jobs if you are against 
business.
  In order for businessmen and businesswomen to succeed, they need four 
things. They need reasonable regulations, they need a well-trained 
workforce, they need decent infrastructure, and they need low taxes. 
That is what government is supposed to provide. Then government needs 
to get out of the way and let the free enterprise system work. Our Tax 
Cuts and Jobs Act has provided those low taxes, and I am very proud of 
the bill.
  Last September, I stood here and talked about the importance of tax 
relief for American families, businesses, and industries and for the 
overall health of our economy. I didn't know if I would see the day, 
but, finally, we are on track to see better than average economic 
growth. I am talking about 3-plus percent. We talk about 3 percent 
growth as if it is the Holy Grail, but it is just average for the 
American economy. Our burdensome Tax Code--it is clear now--was 
hamstringing our job creators, limiting productivity, and keeping wages 
about as low as they were, adjusted for inflation, in 1999.
  The American economy needed a shot in the arm, and that shot in the 
arm came 47 days ago. I think the outlook for our economy is better now 
than, certainly, it has been in 10 years. I guarantee you that 47 days 
from now, it will look even better because the Congress had the courage 
to legislate what the American people already knew, and that is that 
people can spend the money they earn better than the government can.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield to the Senator from Montana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana for 
allowing me to say a few words, and I thank you, Mr. President, for 
doing the same.
  Hopefully, today works out better than the last 131 days have, in 
that hopefully today a bipartisan group of Senators will be able to put 
forth a budget agreement that will be long term.
  I thank them because as part of that--although it isn't done yet so 
we don't want to get the cart too far ahead of the horse--there is 
funding for community health centers in this agreement.
  Funding for community health centers has become a top priority for 
me, and it became that because of my visits to community health centers 
around the State, from Bullhook in Havre to RiverStone in Billings, to 
the Southwest Montana Community Health Center in Butte, to Partnership 
Health Center in Helena and Missoula, and the list goes on. These 
health centers provide incredibly affordable and efficient healthcare 
to people across Montana. So I am incredibly pleased to work with the 
leadership in this body and get a deep deal for community healthcare 
centers across this country, including Montana's 17 community health 
centers.
  I would say 2 years is a good start, but there happens to be 19 
bipartisan cosponsors on a bill called the CHIME Act, which would 
reauthorize community health center funding for 5 years. That is where 
we really need to be. I am not complaining about the 2 years. I think 
it is important that we keep these folks going, and 2 years is 
certainly better than where we are now, but, really, we don't look with 
much vision in this body, and it is not visionary to say we are going 
to give a 5-year funding mechanism to our community health centers, but 
that is what we need to do today. We need to give the community health 
centers the long-term predictability they deserve.
  In Montana, these centers are the backbone of much of our healthcare 
delivery system. They provide affordable access to care, keeping our 
communities and families healthy. Let me give you a little example of 
how important these are.
  Community health centers alone provide over 10 percent of the 
healthcare for the people of the State of Montana. It is where they go 
to get care, and 85 percent of those folks are low income. These are 
folks who probably wouldn't

[[Page S681]]

be able to get healthcare without the community health center there, 
and 20,000 of them are children. Montana is a big State geographically, 
with not a lot of folks. Oftentimes folks have to travel a long way, 
under the best of conditions, to see a doctor. If we didn't do this 
funding mechanism that we hope happens today or tomorrow, we would see 
these folks traveling hundreds of more miles to see a doctor because 
oftentimes this is the only healthcare facility close to them.
  Although the news we have heard today so far seems to be positive on 
our budget, it doesn't change the fact that Congress should have acted 
on this 131 days ago. A solution should have been passed when our 
fiscal year ended at the end of September. It speaks to the dysfunction 
of this body. Our basic job is to put forth a funding mechanism, known 
as a budget, that will provide basic healthcare that will fund 
community health centers and CHIP--not use them as political pawns--
fund them, give people certainty, give our military certainty, give our 
security folks certainty, and not continue governing from crisis to 
crisis with continuing resolution after continuing resolution. I have 
seen firsthand the destruction these short-term budgets have had on 
health clinics, veterans, and small business.
  I just had a group of school board folks in my office yesterday who 
talked about Impact Aid. These are schools that serve our military and 
Native Americans. They said these CRs were limiting the possibility for 
payments for Impact Aid schools.
  We have heard from our military leaders about how the short-term CR 
is wasting taxpayer dollars and hurting our military readiness. At a 
time when men and women from this great country are stationed around 
the world, we need to give them certainty. They need to know we are 
doing our job as they do their jobs in incredibly difficult conditions.
  So, for 131 days, too many Americans have been living with 
uncertainty as a direct result of dysfunction in Congress. This 
agreement is a step in the right direction, and I am very pleased to 
see progress on a budget because 131 days is too long.
  Let's get this fixed, and over the coming weeks, I will be more than 
happy to sit down with Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who are 
willing to roll up their sleeves and work to give this country, small 
businesses, and working families predictability through a longer term 
budget so they can move forward and be all they hope to be in the 
greatest country in the world.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Paid Leave

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we hear a lot in this Chamber about 
family values. We hear from Democrats and we hear from Republicans 
about the need to support and improve the strength of families across 
our Nation. What are the things that really do provide the foundation 
for a family to thrive? Jobs, education, and healthcare. Good-paying 
jobs and jobs with good working conditions, certainly, are extremely 
valuable, but the issue of good-paying jobs and good working conditions 
has been caught in a struggle between ``we the people'' and the 
powerful and privileged of this Nation. Our Constitution starts out 
with these three beautiful words: ``We the People.''
  The whole entire setup was to avoid the type of situation that was in 
so many places in Europe, where the privileged and powerful families 
ran everything for their own benefit and not for the benefit of the 
people of the United States of America--in that case, the people of 
Europe.
  Our vision is different. Yet, time and again, we see this struggle 
played out, where the powerful and privileged are trying to ride right 
over the top of ordinary people--ordinary working Americans, ordinary 
middle-class Americans.
  That certainly is the case when we take a look at the issue of the 
Family and Medical Leave Act, FMLA. This is an act passed 25 years ago. 
It was a major step forward in striking a better balance for good 
working conditions.
  Let's revisit a little bit of the debate that occurred 25 years ago 
in preparation for the consideration of that act. Many folks today 
don't realize that the opportunity to take unpaid time off to be with a 
child or be with a loved one who is very sick or a family member who is 
dying is something that came out of the FMLA 25 years ago. They assumed 
this is just a fair, decent, and right way to treat your employees; 
that it produces more productive, more loyal team members, and it is 
just part of an appropriate consideration of the human condition.
  Before we had the FMLA 25 years ago, oftentimes people couldn't take 
time off to have an operation for a medical condition. Being sick a day 
might mean you are fired. Tending to a newborn child might mean you 
lose your job. Decent, ordinary interaction with family was something 
that was not prioritized by the companies around this country. It is a 
system that big, powerful, and privileged individuals and organizations 
fought to preserve.
  It took 7 years of congressional debates. It took overcoming two 
Presidential vetoes. It took overcoming entrenched opposition from 
special interests that said it would be a disaster for workers to be 
able to address their medical conditions or their family medical 
conditions. They predicted all types of catastrophes.
  The chamber of commerce back then called FMLA--that is simply family 
and medical leave--a dangerous precedent. The National Federation of 
Independent Business said it was the greatest threat to small business 
in America. One Member of Congress, Representative Cass Ballenger of 
North Carolina, described FMLA as essentially ``nothing short of 
Europeanization,'' and he didn't mean that in a complimentary fashion.
  We know better today. There is no partisan debate over the FMLA 
today. There is no organized corporate opposition to the Family and 
Medical Leave Act. Companies have found, treating their employees with 
the opportunity to address medical conditions of their own or their 
family members or to be with a new baby is simply a win-win for the 
company and for the employer. More than 200 million working Americans 
have taken leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to care for a 
newborn child, to sit at the bedside of a sick loved one, or to 
recuperate after a major surgery. What has been the result? According 
to a Labor Department survey released 5 years ago on the 20th 
anniversary, 91 percent of employers said the law had either a positive 
impact or at least no negative impact on the business. Whenever you get 
9 out of 10 on anything in America, we should pay a lot of attention to 
that.
  The FMLA has been so successful and so popular, it has been expanded 
twice. In 2008, we expanded it to allow military families to take up to 
26 weeks of leave to care for injured servicemembers. Then again, in 
2009, we expanded it to cover flight attendants and airline flight 
crews. It is time we consider, on the 25th anniversary, that we need to 
go from a system of simply unpaid leave to a system of paid leave. We 
need to join the rest of the developed world and say: It makes so much 
sense for family members to have this flexibility. It makes so much of 
an improved worker and an improved family that it is a win-win for 
America.
  It is time to recognize that while the FMLA--Family and Medical Leave 
Act--was powerful, it is only powerful for those who could afford to go 
without income. That leaves out a great, vast swath of America.
  President Trump said he wants to fight for working families, so I 
would expect him to be down here lobbying for the improvement of this 
act. We haven't heard from him yet, and I am not really expecting we 
will because what we have seen in the course of the past year is, while 
talking about strengthening families, time and again, the President is 
simply about diminishing the support for working families and 
undermining them.
  We saw that most recently with the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau, by assigning someone to go over there and head it up and then 
proceed to undo the protections for fair financial deals that are the 
foundation for

[[Page S682]]

the financial success of our families. Really? Turn the Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau into a bureau to support financial 
predators? No, that does not help our families.
  In fact, it will help our families to advance Senator Gillibrand's 
FAMILY Act because the time has come for national paid family and 
medical leave insurance in the United States. We know this because a 
number of States have already enacted their own paid leave law. This 
isn't some big experiment that we have no foundation for understanding 
the pros and cons because States have already acted. We can evaluate 
how that has gone.
  When California was debating paid leave before its passage in 2002--
yes, 16 years ago--the chamber of commerce described it as a coming 
disaster, and the National Federation of Independent Business predicted 
it would be the biggest financial burden for business in decades, but a 
study looking back on California's paid leave found that after 1.4 
million leave claims were paid--that is 1.4 million times that a worker 
was able to take care of a medical condition, was able to care for a 
newborn, was able to sit by the bed of a dying family member--the law 
has helped reduce turnover. That is good for business. It has increased 
employee loyalty, which is also good for business.
  New Jersey passed paid family leave in 2008. They offered workers 6 
weeks, at two-thirds their salary, funded through a payroll tax. At the 
time, the mayor of Bogata, NJ, railed against it saying, ``The basic 
argument for this . . . is to subsidize an army of breastfeeding single 
mothers.'' Well, I must say what a misunderstanding that is of the 
importance of a mother to be with a newborn or a father to be with a 
newborn. That bonding, that support--those are family values. Don't 
talk about family values to me and then talk about a mother having zero 
days to be with a newborn or a father zero days to be with a newborn.
  After 2 years, New Jersey has a leave fund that has a surplus, and 
they did a reduction in the payroll tax that pays for it. Between 2009 
and 2015, 200,000 paid leave claims were approved, paying out $507 
million in benefits, resulting in employee retention of over 90 
percent. Business is humming in New Jersey and in California. In fact, 
businesses are doing well in each of the States and the District of 
Columbia where paid leave has already been established by law.
  I celebrate what we accomplished 25 years ago with the Family and 
Medical Leave Act, but I am saddened we restricted it to only those who 
could afford to take time off with no pay. Strengthening families is 
something we should want to happen with families who are doing well 
enough to go without pay, but we should also assist families who are 
struggling and living paycheck-to-paycheck. I want those moms and dads 
who are living paycheck to paycheck to be able to spend a moment with 
their newborn. I want them to get the operation they need, which causes 
them to miss time from their job. I want them to be able to sit by the 
bed of a loved wife or a husband or child as they are dying. That is 
strengthening the families in America. That is putting people ahead of 
the powerful and the privileged. And putting people ahead of the 
powerful and privileged is what our Nation is all about. So let's get 
it done and pass this bill.

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


                   Remembering George and Peggy Brown

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, every community has one--the iconic 
American diner. Its definition, as has been officially outlined, is ``a 
friendly place, usually mom-and-pop with a sole proprietor, that serves 
basic, home-cooked, fresh food, for a good value.'' This is sort of an 
official definition that was coined by a gentleman named Richard 
Gutman, who is regarded as the curator and expert on all things diner.
  In 1955, 4 years before Alaska won statehood, our very own iconic 
American diner opened in Anchorage. It was called the Lucky Wishbone. 
It was a friendly place. It featured pan-fried chicken, real 
cheeseburgers, great milkshakes, by the way, and French fries that had 
been cut from potatoes just that morning. Fitting squarely within 
Gutman's definition, it was a mom-and-pop. Mom was Peggy Brown. Peggy 
passed away in 2011 at the age of 87 after a long struggle with 
Parkinson's disease. Pop was George Brown, who passed away on January 
13 at the age of 96.
  This is the story of two extraordinary individuals who helped build 
our community and helped build our State in remarkable and very humble 
ways.
  George, along with his partner at the time, Sven Jonasson, built the 
restaurant with their own hands. Sven exited shortly thereafter, and 
Peggy became George's business partner, as well as his life partner. 
She did the books. She greeted the guests. She was involved in every 
aspect of the enterprise.
  In 2002, the Lucky Wishbone was named Alaska's Small Business of the 
Year. When you think about it, there is nothing more homegrown, nothing 
more truly small business and entrepreneurial than that small diner 
everybody calls home. Peggy flew back to Washington, DC, to receive the 
award in 2002. She was introduced at the time to President George W. 
Bush by Senator Stevens. Senator Stevens told the President: ``This 
lady makes some of the best fried chicken in the country.'' You 
wouldn't think that coming from Alaska, but I can testify from personal 
knowledge that that is a fact.
  The Lucky Wishbone, I expect, will continue on. It is a successful 
business with a large following. But with the passing of Peggy and now 
George, it marks the end of an era for us in Alaska. We have lost two 
beloved pioneers who were dear friends to so many of us, and I am proud 
to count myself among that group. It is important that we acknowledge 
their place in Alaska's history, and that is what I intend to do 
briefly today.
  George was a native of Wisconsin. He attended high school in Red 
Wing, MN. He joined the Minnesota National Guard. He was selected for 
Officer Candidate School.
  In 1943, George and Peggy met, and they married the next year, in 
1944. It is said that they met ``over Formica.'' George was training to 
be a pilot, and Peggy was a waitress. Some would suggest that their 
destiny as operators of an iconic diner was sealed at that very moment, 
but World War II came first. George received orders to go to India. He 
was one of those brave pilots who navigated military aircraft over the 
Himalayas, colloquially known as the Hump.
  Coincidentally, another significant figure in Alaska's history flew 
those same routes during the war. That guy's name was Ted Stevens.
  After the war, George and Peggy returned briefly to the Midwest. They 
bought a share in a restaurant. In 1951, they sold their share and took 
off for Alaska in a 1949 Nash. It was a pretty bumpy, dusty, 2-week 
journey, we are told. Upon arrival, George worked construction on 
Elmendorf Air Force Base and helped build a home for his family. They 
moved to Arizona for a short time in the 1950s and tried out another 
restaurant; at that time, it was in Tucson. It didn't work. It was a 
flop. So they returned to Alaska to try again, and this time there was 
no flop.
  On the occasion of the Wishbone's 50th anniversary in 2005, George 
recalled the Wishbone's first week in business. He shared this with a 
reporter from the Anchorage Daily News, Debra McKinney. He said as 
follows:

       The first day we took in $80. The second day, $125. Then we 
     went to $300 on Saturday, I believe it was. We were totally 
     swamped. And on Sunday it was $460. At that time, why of 
     course coffee was 10 cents, a jumbo hamburger was 65 cents, a 
     regular hamburger 40 cents, a milk shake, 35 cents--that kind 
     of thing. Things were looking pretty good after that first 
     week. From then on, the business grew and grew and grew.

  Those were George's words.
  Fifty years later, according to McKinney, the Wishbone was serving up 
over 1,000 chickens a week, somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 a year.
  Serving up all of that food, of course, requires a pretty big team. 
George and Peggy have four children, and every one of them put in time 
at the Lucky Wishbone. Patricia Brown Heller--Pat Heller--is one of 
those children. She is

[[Page S683]]

the oldest of the four. She tells the story of her involvement working 
in the restaurant. She says she pretty much cut her teeth in the 
restaurant. She was the fastest potato peeler and slicer at the 
Wishbone, she says on the order of 200 pounds a day. She worked in the 
family's restaurant cutting those potatoes, peeling and cutting them 
every morning.
  Pat decided that the restaurant was not going to be her career and 
decided to go another route. She was the longtime State director for 
the former Senator Murkowski--my father, Senator Frank Murkowski--and 
then when I came to the Senate, she continued on as my State director 
in 2003. But Pat has always been, as have her siblings, a true fixture, 
along with her parents, at the Lucky Wishbone.
  The demands of the business required growth in the workforce, and 
George and Peggy maintained a high standard and demanded much of their 
employees. Many chose to stay. They were adopted into the Browns' 
extended family. If you ask people throughout Anchorage if they know 
somebody who has worked at the Lucky Wishbone, I can tell you that 
extended family is pretty large. It is pretty significant.
  George and Peggy were known for giving away $30,000 to $40,000 in 
Christmas bonuses, health insurance, and pensions. They were very 
protective of the health of their customers and their employees, and 
the Lucky Wishbone became smoke-free long before it was fashionable and 
not without more than its share of controversy because many of their 
customers liked to smoke, but not at the Wishbone.
  Oftentimes, when Mom and Pop pass away, the business dies with them. 
Fortunately, that won't be the case here. Ownership responsibilities 
going forward will be shared by Pat and two long-term employees of the 
Wishbone. And out of love and respect for George and Peggy, they have 
made a commitment to Anchorage, so nothing is going to change. It is 
comforting to know that the chicken will still be wonderful, the 
cheeseburgers will still be real, the milkshakes good, and, of course, 
the french fries cut fresh every morning.
  Community is a highly valued concept back home in Alaska. George 
Brown may have set out to run a successful restaurant, but what he did 
was he created a community institution, a place for people to talk 
about golf or flying or whatever were the issues of the day.
  We have a tradition, I guess you can call it, in my family. During a 
campaign, when you come to election day, there is oftentimes not much 
more that can be done. You have gotten your message out. You are just 
kind of waiting for people to vote. So a tradition in our family is we 
go out for a nice lunch, and we always go to the Lucky Wishbone on 
election day. I think I am going to continue that tradition. This is a 
place where the coffee is warm and the food is hearty, a place where 
the smiles and the hugs have always been readily available.
  As much as I have missed Peggy since she has passed, I will certainly 
miss George. I will miss his smile. I will miss his conversation. But 
it is comforting to know that their legacy will continue.
  On February 11--this weekend--George's friends and supporters and 
admirers will gather at the Alaska Aviation Museum to celebrate his 
life. It is really an appropriate place for George because he was a 
pilot, and once a pilot, always a pilot. He had 73 years of experience 
in the cockpit at age 94 when he last landed his Cessna on Deshka Lake 
to fish.
  I had an opportunity to speak with Pat before I came to the floor, 
and she is worried that the location they have chosen for the service 
will be too small because they anticipate that some 400 Alaskans will 
come to gather. She made the comment to me: At 96, you wouldn't figure 
that there would be that many people at someone's service.
  I reminded Pat that George was that person who touched so many 
people's lives, whether as a pilot, a small businessman, a community 
leader, or just the generous man with a good cup of coffee who would 
sit at the banquet table with you there at the Lucky Wishbone and just 
share a conversation. He was a man of many talents with an 
extraordinary good heart and good will.
  On behalf of my Senate colleagues, I bid farewell to this outstanding 
Alaskan. I extend my condolences to his family and to all of those 
whose life he enriched.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, all week I have been speaking about the 
impending deadline of tomorrow, the continuing resolution that we 
passed following the shutdown of the government over the DACA issue, 
and the importance of meeting that deadline. So you can imagine my 
pleasure at hearing the announcement this afternoon by the majority 
leader. His hard work leading to this critical funding negotiation has 
now produced an agreement that both sides should be able to get behind.
  One of the reasons these negotiations were so significant and why the 
announcement today was such good news has to do with our military. I 
happened to have been raised in a military family. My dad served 31 
years in the U.S. Air Force and was a B-17 pilot in World War II in the 
Army Air Corps. Those who have seen the old movies about the B-17, like 
``Memphis Belle'' and others, realize what treacherous service that was 
during World War II.
  He was shot down on his 26th mission over Mannheim, Germany, and was 
captured as a prisoner of war for the last 4 months of World War II. 
But, thank goodness, the U.S. Army and General Patton came through 
Germany and liberated those POW camps at the end of World War II. My 
dad came home, built a family, and finished his career after 31 years 
in the military. So, as you might imagine, the men and women who serve 
in our military are near and dear to my heart.
  I recognize the importance of our support not only for the ones who 
wear the uniform but also the families. Of course, having an all-
volunteer military means we have to provide support not just for the 
servicemembers but for the families as well. When our servicemembers 
enlist, they sign a contract and, basically, hand their lives over to 
us to be good stewards of their service and to be in a position of 
trust.
  To hold their budget hostage, which is what has happened until now, 
is to ask them to assume even greater risk in order to satisfy certain 
narrow political agendas. Given all that our men and women in uniform 
do for us--to keep us safe, to keep the world at peace as much as 
possible--it is not too much to call holding that funding hostage a 
disgrace.
  Our men and women in uniform can't afford to be hamstrung, especially 
when we face new and evolving threats across the globe, but because of 
our inability to produce longer term certainty, they were. That is, 
until now.
  The compromise we have reached will ensure both that our troops have 
what they deserve--in terms of training, equipment, and readiness--and 
that our country has what it needs in order to achieve ``peace through 
strength'' across the globe.
  Since the Budget Control Act of 2011, we have kept discretionary 
spending, which includes defense spending, relatively flat. 
Unfortunately, the threats have done nothing but proliferate and 
increase, and we have seen a number of training accidents like the 
Fitzgerald and the John McCain where, literally, according to General 
Mattis, we have lost more servicemembers in accidents as a result of 
inadequate training and readiness than we have in hostile activities. 
That is just a shameful situation. Of course, now we have acted to 
change it.
  Yesterday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis testified before the House 
Armed Services Committee, and he wasted no time in telling us how 
urgent the situation was becoming. He said that, without a proper 
defense appropriations bill, the U.S. military lacks the most 
``fundamental congressional support.'' As Secretary Mattis stated, the 
Trump administration's new national defense strategy requires 
sustained, predictable appropriations in order to be carried out. I am 
confident that we are heading toward that

[[Page S684]]

in light of this new agreement, but it took us an embarrassingly long 
time to get here, and that is regrettable, to say the least.
  I join the majority leader and our colleagues in strong support for 
our men and women in uniform and their families during this week of 
difficult and delicate negotiations, and I ask my other colleagues to 
vote to support this bipartisan legislation, to show their support for 
our military readiness, procurement, and testing--all of which are 
required to keep our forces the best trained, the best equipped, and 
the best prepared force on the planet.
  When we vote on this agreement, we can't lose sight of other 
critically important issues--issues that seem to fade from people's 
memories; that is, something like disaster relief. I can't adequately 
describe the outpouring of support we got from the President on down to 
neighbors helping neighbors following Hurricane Harvey and its 
devastating impact on my State. Certainly, our hearts are with the 
people of the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Florida as they have 
suffered from Hurricane Maria, as well as our friends and colleagues in 
the West, who have suffered as a result of the devastation caused by 
wildfires and mudslides and other hardships.
  The House passed an $81 billion relief package at the end of last 
year, and here we are; a couple of months later, we are actually acting 
on this disaster relief package. It is long overdue. I am pleased, 
though, to announce that the bill we will be voting on provides 
significant funding for disaster relief efforts around the country, and 
I applaud the House for taking the first step in December. I appreciate 
Governor Abbott of Texas, as well as the Senate Appropriations 
Committee, for working with us to help us strengthen the House bill.
  My fellow Texans who were hit by Hurricane Harvey last August have 
been waiting patiently, along with all the folks who faced the fury of 
Mother Nature in Florida, California, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin 
Islands. It simply has been unacceptable to see the delay in getting 
the relief they need to them. Now we have the chance to stand up, 
finally, in a bipartisan fashion and show not only that we remember 
what they have been through but also that more help is on the way. That 
is why I am urging all of my colleagues to support this agreement when 
we take it up.


                             Kari's Law Act

  Mr. President, the last issue I wish to address is a bill that I 
cosponsored called Kari's Law. Two days ago we passed it in the Senate, 
and soon, I hope, the House will follow suit. It is imperative that we 
get this bill to the desk of the President for his final signature soon 
so that it can become law.
  Kari's Law amends the Communications Act of 1934 to require multiline 
telephone systems, common in places like hotels and offices, to be 
equipped for emergency calls. Under the bill, the users of these phone 
systems will have the ability to dial 911 without first having to dial 
for an outside line.
  Why is this important? Let me tell you briefly the story of Kari Hunt 
Dunn of Marshall, TX. Kari was killed in her hotel room in Marshall, 
TX, in 2013. Kari's then-9-year-old daughter was unable to reach 
emergency personnel because she failed to dial 9 to get an outside 
line. She tried four times but was unable to connect, which meant no 
help ever came.
  With this simple change in the default configuration of phone systems 
in offices and hotels, we can help folks reach the help they need in a 
crisis quickly, and we can save precious seconds that ultimately could 
save precious lives.
  I am grateful to my colleague, the senior Senator from Minnesota, for 
working with us on this legislation, as well as my colleague 
Representative Louie Gohmert, who carried the corresponding bill in the 
House. I also want to thank Mr. Hank Hunt, Kari's father, for his hard 
work in championing this bill and pushing so hard for this crucial 
change to become law.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.


    Congratulating the Philadelphia Eagles on Winning the Super Bowl

  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the Super Bowl 
champions, the Philadelphia Eagles. Last Sunday night in Minneapolis, 
the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the vaunted New England Patriots by a 
score of 41 to 33 in one of the most amazing Super Bowls ever--one of 
the most amazing NFL games ever. It was really an extraordinary night. 
In so doing, the Eagles captured their first Super Bowl title ever and 
the franchise's first national championship since 1960.
  The Eagles' arguably improbable Super Bowl run came despite many 
serious injuries and a whole lot of doubt from naysayers and pundits 
and oddsmakers. The oddsmakers, by the way, had the Eagles as underdogs 
in every playoff game they played, but, of course, they won every one 
of them.
  It is a team led by Doug Pederson, a coach who, himself, entering the 
season, was often doubted and sometimes dismissed by the punditry and 
the talking heads. Not only did Coach Pederson make his critics look 
silly, but, in winning the Super Bowl, he beat a man who is arguably 
considered one of the best coaches in NFL history. Pederson did it by 
deploying one of the greatest offensive game plans I think the NFL has 
ever seen.
  The group of men who comprise the Eagles' roster embody the city of 
Philadelphia. They are brash, gritty, and talented, with a never-say-
die attitude. They are led by stalwarts like Malcolm Jenkins, Fletcher 
Cox, Carson Wentz, and Alshon Jeffery. The Eagles' ``next man up'' 
mentality was incredible to witness.
  Think about what they had to overcome. Over the course of the regular 
season, the Eagles lost a Hall of Fame left tackle, their amazing 
middle linebacker, arguably the best pound-for-pound player in all of 
football, and they still steamrolled through to a 13-to-3 record in the 
regular season.
  For all of that, maybe the greatest example of the ``next man up'' 
mentality in NFL history was the way that Nick Foles took over for 
Carson Wentz at quarterback when Wentz was lost to a serious injury 
late in the season. The fact is, Wentz was, I think, the leading 
candidate for the league's MVP at the time of his injury. I think he 
still should be considered a leading candidate for MVP for the season. 
The fact that Nick Foles was able to step in and guide the team not 
just into the playoffs, not just through the playoffs, but all the way 
to the Super Bowl and to a Super Bowl victory against the New England 
Patriots is what legends are made of.
  The Philadelphia Eagles are a historic franchise. Some of the best 
players in the history of the game have worn the green and white. Names 
like Van Brocklin, Bednarik, White, and Dawkins come to mind. This 
Super Bowl is also for all of these great players who put on the Eagles 
jersey over the years.
  I will conclude with this. If you listen to sports radio in 
Philadelphia or most of Eastern Pennsylvania, you learn that the 
passion of the fan base is really extraordinary. This is because the 
Eagles, in many ways, are more than a football team to their fans. The 
Eagles are a part of Pennsylvania culture. They are a part of the 
region's culture. The mood of the region is affected every weekend that 
they are playing. Other cities have certainly celebrated Super Bowl 
victories in the past. Somebody gets to do that every year. But this 
Thursday afternoon in Philadelphia, get ready for a party like you have 
never seen because the most passionate fans in the country are finally 
getting a parade down Broad Street with the Lombardi trophy.
  Go Birds. Fly, Eagles, fly.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to address the Chamber on a topic 
that I have been speaking on once a week--or thereabouts--since we 
passed the historic tax reform late last year. Last Friday, I had the 
chance to visit JED Pool Tools/Northeastern Plastics in Scranton, PA. 
It is a company owned by Cindi and Alan Heyen and employs about 30 
people. JED Pool Tools makes swimming pool accessories. They make the 
skimmers and water test kits and other devices that people use in their 
pools. Northeastern Plastics is the sister company, and they make 
custom plastic products like locker handles, barber supplies, and all 
kinds of special order products.

[[Page S685]]

  This is a great example of tax reform in action, tax reform that is 
working for this small business and this employer in Northeastern 
Pennsylvania. They, like other small businesses, get to discount by 20 
percent their net income and pay tax only on the other 80 percent. That 
frees up cash flow for this business and businesses all across America 
to go out and purchase new equipment, invest in their employees, grow 
their business, hire more workers, raise wages. That is exactly what is 
happening. It is happening at JED Pools, but it is also happening 
across the country.
  In less than 2 months since our legislation passed, over 300 
businesses employing over 3 million workers have announced bonuses, 
wage increases, expanded benefits, contributions to pension plans, and 
increased investment in charitable contributions. The list goes on and 
on. These are the ones that cite tax reform as the reason they were 
able to do these things for their workers, for their business.
  In Pennsylvania alone, we have had some recent announcements. Thermo 
Fisher employs 2,600 people in Pennsylvania. It is a biotech 
development company. They announced $50 million in additional 
investments, $34 million in the form of bonuses they are going to pay 
to each of the company's 68,000 nonexecutive employees. They also 
announced $16 million in additional research and development programs 
and support for STEM education. They cited that they are doing this as 
a direct result of the tax reform that was passed.
  Cigna is a big, global health service company. It has 5,900 employees 
in Pennsylvania. Again, citing our tax reform, they have announced that 
they are going to increase the minimum wage they pay throughout the 
company to $16 an hour. That will be the lowest wage anyone at an entry 
level, starting level, makes at Cigna. They are going to provide an 
additional $15 million in salary raises to people who are already 
working there. They are also going to put $30 million more into 401(k) 
savings programs that their employees participate in--all attributable 
directly to tax reform.
  Take the case of UPS. UPS employees 19,000 Pennsylvanians, and they 
announced that due to the ``favorable tax law impact''--those are their 
words--they are committing an additional $7 billion in capital spending 
over 3 years to build and renovate facilities, to acquire new aircraft 
and ground fleet vehicles, to enhance their technical platforms. They 
announced that they are going to contribute an additional $5 billion to 
their employees' pension plans as well. That comes to about $13,000 per 
participant. That is a tremendous amount of money for each of their 
employees.
  There are small companies that are sharing the benefits as well. Noah 
Bank in Elkins Park, PA, said that thanks to the passage of the new tax 
legislation, this Pennsylvania charter community bank is awarding 
$1,500 bonuses to all of its employees.
  We are seeing it up and down the country, certainly all across 
Pennsylvania--large firms, small firms, financial firms, 
manufacturers--across the board. Workers are already benefiting from 
the tax reform that we passed in December.
  Another important indicator that the benefits are likely to grow is 
in the optimism that workers and businesses have because of the 
environment they are operating in. It is a really important driver.
  UBS does research on investor and business optimism. It recently did 
a survey of business owners. It asked several questions. One of them 
was: Is your economic outlook positive? In the fourth quarter of last 
year, outlook was pretty positive as 65 percent said, yes, their 
outlook for the economy was positive. This year, it is up to 83 
percent.
  It asked the question: Is the business outlook stronger now than it 
was in the past? In the fourth quarter of last year, 77 percent said, 
yes, it was stronger. In the first quarter of this year, 87 percent 
said, yes, the business outlook was stronger.
  It asked business owners about their plans for hiring and investing. 
Thirty-six percent plan to hire more workers, and forty-four percent 
plan to invest more.
  This is really important because it is optimism about the future that 
is a necessary precondition for more investment. After all, that 
investment depends on a strong economy in going forward to make it 
worthwhile. That investment is reaching new highs because of the 
combination of a lighter regulatory touch and much more pro-growth tax 
reform.
  I think it is also important to stress that this tax reform is not 
some kind of short-term sugar high of let's throw money at people and 
then hope it goes well. It is not that at all. It is a set of different 
incentives that will lead to a structural change in the economy and, 
specifically, in a greater productive capacity on the part of our 
economy by encouraging more investment, by lowering the cost of making 
that investment, by allowing businesses to retain more of their 
earnings so that they have more to invest. All of that expands our 
economy and expands our productive capacity. It creates more of a 
demand for workers. More of a demand for workers puts upward pressure 
on workers' wages. What did we see just last week? We saw a major--in 
fact, the largest increase in average workers' wages that we have seen 
in many, many years.
  I am thrilled that our tax reform is having such a beneficial impact 
all across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and so quickly. I expected 
upward pressure on wages. I expected more job opportunities. I expected 
a higher standard of living. I didn't quite expect it to happen this 
quickly, but I am thrilled that it has, and I am convinced that this is 
just the beginning.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I expect Senator Rubio to be joining me 
here on the floor as we talk about some of the legislative fixes to 
some of the problems that have come about as a result of these 
devastating hurricanes.
  It has been 5 months since Hurricane Irma hit Florida, and it has 
been 4 months since Maria hit Puerto Rico. Irma hit Puerto Rico as 
well. Of course, before Florida's Hurricane Irma, you had all of the 
problems with the flooding from another hurricane in Texas and then, 
later on, from the wildfires in California. So I am happy to finally 
say that we have a path forward now on a disaster aid bill for all of 
these natural disasters.
  I can't count on the fingers of both hands how many times I have been 
out here. I could say the same of the letters written and the speeches 
that Senator Rubio and I have both given together about this disaster 
aid and the need for it. Finally, we are seeing some light at the end 
of the tunnel in that there is a good possibility this is going to 
happen in the Senate within the next 2 days.
  The problem is that, in Puerto Rico, American citizens have been 
living without power, and schools and businesses are closed. The 
Federal Government has been dragging its feet to help them. People have 
been waiting, and they have been suffering. Right now, over one-third 
of the people in Puerto Rico are closing in on 5 months after the 
hurricane and are without electricity. Potable water is still a problem 
in Puerto Rico.
  Can you imagine in any other mainland State, nearly 5 months after a 
hurricane, one-third of its people not having electricity restored? I 
mean, there would be such outrage and demonstration. This is what is 
going on in Puerto Rico. Finally, I think we are able to see in this 
disaster bill some assistance to the island, as well as to the Virgin 
Islands, and especially to our State of Florida, which was hit so hard.
  I will outline some of this and tell Senator Rubio that I have been 
talking about all of the things that we have done together ad infinitum 
in trying to get this disaster aid package finally to the point at 
which we can say we are so thankful we see a path forward. We have 
discussed over and over with Senate leadership Florida's agriculture 
industry, which needs help. Our schools need additional funding to deal 
with the influx of students from Puerto Rico into Florida. Our critical 
infrastructure, such as the Lake Okeechobee dike, needs funding to 
withstand a future storm.
  The agriculture industry in our State sustained significant damage 
after Irma. Citrus growers have suffered approximately $760 million of 
loss. Why?

[[Page S686]]

Because, right after the hurricane, half the crop of the citrus grove 
in central Florida that Senator Rubio and I visited was on the ground. 
If you go further south in Florida, there are groves where, actually, 
100 percent of the oranges have ended up on the ground because of the 
ferocity of the wind. That crop was a total loss, and the wind was so 
severe there that it uprooted some of the trees. The loss was crippling 
to the industry.
  Of course, this is an industry that has been battling to keep its 
lifeblood flowing because it has been battling this bacteria called 
greening, which will kill a tree in 5 years. We have another program 
going on by the Citrus Research & Development Foundation that is trying 
to find the magic cure. In the meantime, they have found some way to 
keep the trees and some different varieties of trees living longer than 
the 5 years, but we have to address the problem right now.
  If the poor citrus growers didn't have enough trouble with all of the 
citrus canker from years earlier, they are now producing 46 million 
boxes a year. By the way, 10 years ago, that used to be in excess of 
200 million boxes a year of citrus harvest. The funding in this 
disaster bill will be essential in helping the citrus industry to 
recover.
  Additionally, Senator Rubio and I, many times before, have called for 
Florida school funding in the aftermaths of Irma and Maria. We now know 
that, as of today, about 12,000 students who evacuated to Florida are 
enrolled from Puerto Rico. Others from the Virgin Islands have enrolled 
in Florida's schools. Every child has a right to a quality education, 
but that can't happen without the appropriate resources. The schools 
need help. No child should have their education hindered by a natural 
disaster. This disaster aid bill is going to be crucial for schools' 
funding in order for them to do their best in ensuring that those 
students receive the educations they deserve.
  This deal also includes $15 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers. 
It is for mitigation and resiliency projects. Likewise, the two 
Senators from Florida have been working to ensure that some of those 
funds are used to expedite the construction of the Lake Okeechobee 
dike. It is a critical public safety project, and it should be 
completed as quickly as possible. We want to see its completion 
accelerated by 3 years, from 2025 to 2022. If the Army Corps of 
Engineers will take $200 million a year out of these additional 
resources for the next several years, it will speed up the construction 
of that dike. We are going to be continuing to have sessions with the 
Army Corps of Engineers to try to accomplish just that.
  There is a long list--an exhaustive list--of Florida's needs after 
the hurricane, and as we see so many of our fellow U.S. citizens in 
Puerto Rico, you just can't keep treating U.S. citizens like this. 
Hopefully, this is going to speed up the recovery efforts. That is why, 
when the news broke last week that FEMA reportedly planned to end--get 
this--its distributing of food and water, there was, obviously, 
outrage, and there was outrage by the two Senators here. We appreciate 
FEMA making clear the next day that it would continue to provide aid to 
the people, which includes that food and water. We have discussed with 
the Senate leadership what is essential in this disaster aid bill, and 
it is an important step in the recovery of the people of Florida and 
Puerto Rico.
  There is another thing that I have to mention. Can you believe that 
the Medicaid money that was given to Puerto Rico in a lump sum, called 
a block grant, is going to end? It is going to run out next month. Yet, 
with the $4.8 billion in supplemental for Puerto Rico's Medicaid 
Program, along with the 100-percent Federal match for 2 years, we can 
guarantee that 1 million of our fellow U.S. citizens on the island will 
not be denied healthcare coverage when they need it the most. 
Otherwise, it is going to run out next month. It is long overdue. We 
can finally provide some much needed relief for disaster affected 
areas.
  So, please, let's pass this aid bill this week and let's send it to 
the President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I want to add to Senator Nelson's comments. 
First, let me just say, in a time when there is a lot of noise and news 
about the divisions in American politics, despite differences of 
opinion on issues, this is what I believe the people of Florida want us 
to do; that is, to come here and work together on the issues we can 
work together on. I must say, the ability to work with Senator Nelson 
on this has been invaluable, to have two different Senators from two 
different parties singing from the same song sheet about the priorities 
that are critical to our State.
  What is unique about this storm and disaster relief is, the impact 
wasn't just on Florida, it was also the impact on Puerto Rico.
  When the House passed its relief package at the end of December, it 
had a lot of good things in it. The President came out with his 
proposal, and it had some good things, but it needed work. The House 
took it, and the House added a few things to it.
  Over the last 2 months, we have had the ability to work in the 
Senate, not in front of the cameras and not, obviously, through a 
series of press conferences, but in the way legislation is put 
together. The way we worked together and our offices worked together, 
we were able to come out with a concise, unified position on the needs 
of both Florida and Puerto Rico, working with the leadership of the 
Democratic Party on his side and the Republican Party on ours.
  I have to tell you, in a place where it is very hard to get 60 
percent of what you want--and that is a win--when you start to go 
through some of the items that are going to be in this relief package, 
it would be hard to complain.
  With perhaps a small exception here or there, virtually all of the 
things that are critical for disaster relief for Florida--and to a 
large extent as well for Puerto Rico--are going to be included. I 
think, while a lot of us are very concerned about how long it took--we 
should have done this 4 weeks ago or 3 weeks ago--there are other 
reasons why it was held up. It wasn't disaster relief that was holding 
it up, it was the other issues at play that were holding it up. In 
fact, this was being held until the other things were agreed upon.
  Now we are able to move forward. I have to state that while no one 
wants to have a hurricane and no one wants to have a natural disaster, 
this is a response we should be happy about. I think it is a testament 
to the sorts of things we can achieve in the Senate when we can put 
aside our differences on other issues and work together on this.
  By the way, I want to state, because I don't want anyone to read into 
what I said about big differences, that although we may vote 
differently on a lot of issues, Senator Nelson and I have cooperated on 
a host of things, from judges to anything that impacts Florida. I hope 
we can get to doing that more as a Senate, not just for us in Florida. 
Maybe Senator Nelson and I are just always in a good mood because it 
doesn't snow in Florida, and it is warm when everybody else is cold, 
but I think the people of Florida should be pleased with our ability to 
work together.
  Some highlights, and Senator Nelson touched on a lot of them. I will 
start on the Puerto Rico part because it is the one we still see the 
impact of on a regular basis.
  Let me just, as an aside, say that Jenniffer Gonzalez, the Resident 
Commissioner, who is basically the Member of Congress representing 
Puerto Rico in the House, is an extraordinary advocate for Puerto 
Rico--not a good one, not a great one, an extraordinary one. She is 
tireless, nonstop. I am talking about Sunday evenings, Sunday nights, 
early Monday morning, she is constantly working. She is an incredible 
partner in this endeavor, and the things she has been able to achieve--
because even when we had agreement on many items in the Senate, we had 
to go to Jenniffer for her help to make sure the leadership in the 
House would be on board. The respect that House leadership has for her 
was instrumental.
  In the end, the way this is now lined up, no matter what we agreed to 
here, if we send it over there, and they don't want it, we couldn't do 
it. Her ability to get the House to go along with these changes is 
invaluable, and I just need to say that publicly. So much of this is 
due directly to her. She is the voice of

[[Page S687]]

Puerto Rico in Washington. To the extent these things are happening 
above and beyond what would have already happened, it is, in large 
respect, due to having her here. She is just phenomenal, and the 
ability to work with her has made this possible.
  Senator Nelson talked about the Medicaid cliff Puerto Rico faces. 
Last year, we were able to fill that gap for 1 year. This measure does 
it for 2 years, at 100 percent--called FMAP. Now, for the next 2 years, 
Puerto Rico doesn't have to worry about that. They can focus on other 
issues.
  There is money in disaster relief to repair infrastructure and money 
to repair hospitals and community health centers. There is $75 million 
for displaced college students who had to leave their school in Puerto 
Rico or in the Virgin Islands, for that matter. There is $11 billion 
for CDBG-DR funds, which will go directly to Puerto Rico and the Virgin 
Islands, including $2 billion for repairing the electrical grid. There 
is $45 million to restore the Customs House in San Juan. There is money 
for Job Corps centers to help retrain and get people going again, to 
get employment functioning.
  There is money for Coast Guard repairs. The U.S. border in the 
Caribbean is Puerto Rico, so we have the Coast Guard there not only to 
respond to disasters at sea but to be able to enforce law and prevent 
drug smuggling. If someone smuggles drugs into Puerto Rico, you are in 
the United States. There is no Customs from that point forward. It is 
so critical.
  There is also help to repair clinics that were serving women, 
infants, and children; HHS funding; transportation funding, 
particularly improvements to the FAA and the facilities at the airport 
and the Federal highways. Everything that is important is in there.
  There is more to do. Next week, we will have a new initiative--and I 
am not prepared to discuss it yet--in addition, that is separate from 
disaster relief, to help Puerto Rico not just to recover from the storm 
but to set itself up for long-term success, and I look forward to 
unveiling that next week.
  For the time being, this is perhaps the first good news the people 
from Puerto Rico have gotten from Washington since the storm hit, and I 
just want to say it is due to the partnership of Senator Nelson and 
myself but also frankly the extraordinary assistance of the leadership 
of my party in the Senate, Senator McConnell, the Appropriations staff, 
and Members on both sides of the aisle who have all, from the very 
beginning, expressed a willingness to be helpful. We don't often come 
to the floor to talk about the good news of our process, but we 
couldn't be more pleased.
  Senator Nelson talked about the impact on Florida. We will rapidly go 
through some of those.
  We have come to the floor multiple times to talk about the need to 
help the Florida citrus industry, Florida's signature crop. This has 
the money to do so. This will be an incredibly large effort for the 
Secretary of Agriculture to administer this, but I know I speak for 
Florida's growers when I say this is important work. Feeding our Nation 
is important work, and I stand committed to working with the Secretary 
and with our commissioner of agriculture, Adam Putnam, who is aware of 
this and has been instrumental in putting together this package--really 
important.
  There is important funding for the Emergency Watershed Protection 
Program, Emergency Conservation Program, rural development water and 
wastewater grants, Emergency Food Assistance Program, funding to repair 
the Agricultural Research Service facilities. There are four of these 
damaged in Florida. Those are the facilities that are going to innovate 
the cures we need to save Florida citrus in the long term.
  There is money for education, particularly educational infrastructure 
repairs to help displaced students and to hire new teachers. This is 
especially important. We have now seen thousands of U.S. citizen 
students who have come from Puerto Rico to Florida to get their 
education. There is money to help higher education facilities, to 
rebuild facilities that were damaged in the storm. There is money to 
help displaced higher education students.
  There is $35 million for Project SERV, which are education-related 
expenses for local education agencies and higher education institutions 
to help them recover from violent or traumatic events. There is $25 
million to assist homeless students, and $650 million for Head Start. I 
will note there are 45 damaged Head Start facilities in Florida.
  There is relief for the community block grant funding to the tune of 
$28 billion, of which $16 billion will be directed for unmet needs and 
$12 billion for mitigation to prevent the loss of these facilities in 
the future.
  The list goes on. There is more. We will be putting out even more 
details. The Army Corps has a lot of important projects in Florida, but 
there is one in particular that if we go through it, there is over $600 
million for repairs to the operations and maintenance funds, $810 
million in flood control and coastal emergencies funding.
  We had Everglades restoration projects going on in Florida that were 
damaged by the storm, including these large retaining ponds which are 
basically lakes--enormous bodies of water that are used to clean out 
phosphates. Some were overrun and flood-damaged. This helps.
  In addition, there is funding to expedite the completion of the 
Herbert Hoover Dike, which is critically important to the people living 
in the Glades communities just south of Lake Okeechobee. This expedites 
that. This wasn't part of the budget in the beginning. This is a 
project that has already been authorized, but the ability to move that 
forward is critical because it will help free up funds and time for all 
the other important projects in regard to restoring the Everglades and 
preventing the overflow of Lake Okeechobee, which could kill people.
  There is one project in particular, the ``South Atlantic Coastal 
Study.'' It is a Federal project that looks at vulnerabilities of 
coastal areas to sea level rise and things of that nature. That is 
going to be a part of this because ongoing in the future we will 
continue to see the threat posed by storm surge and the like, and there 
is language in there modeled after a bill I filed that gives the 
Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response direct hiring 
authority to ensure that HHS has the necessary emergency medical 
personnel to respond to another natural disaster because the hurricane 
season is about 5 months away.
  There is $60 million for community health center repairs. There are 
about 28 in Florida and nearly 100 in Puerto Rico, and $50 million for 
NIH for specific grants and infrastructure repairs. Within the topline 
numbers for FEMA in this, there will be a total of $33 billion for 
Stafford reimbursable costs, and we are involved in ongoing discussions 
with the administration, which is responsible for directly coordinating 
with the Governors in the States in regard to this, but this should be 
more than enough to pay the unmet costs for hospital repairs, medical 
services, et cetera.
  A couple more points. We have a massive debris problem, particularly 
in Monroe County. These canals in the Florida Keys have refrigerators, 
lawn furniture, sunken boats, and this has money in there to help clean 
that up. Local governments ran out of money, and they can't do it. This 
repairs Coast Guard facilities that were damaged by the storms.
  There are funds in the amount of $1.65 billion for Small Business 
Administration loans. The National Park Service--I recently toured the 
Everglades with Secretary Zinke--this has $207.6 million for 
construction that will include repairs to the destroyed facilities of 
the National Park Service. Funding under the Department of 
Transportation will include $140 million for Florida. That includes $8 
million for FAA facilities, $100 million just for Florida's Federal 
Highway Administration, $27 million for Florida's Transit 
Administration. Finally, under FEMA, the Disaster Relief Fund is fully 
funded to meet the unmet needs. This money will ensure that FEMA has 
the resources needed to assist disaster survivors as well as to repair 
and restore damaged infrastructure in Florida and in Puerto Rico.
  I hope we can get support for this. I saw the Senator from Texas here 
a few moments ago. I imagine he may speak to this at some point. Texas 
also suffered terribly. The Virgin Islands suffered. California had the 
fires.

[[Page S688]]

  I would state, it took longer than we wanted to, but I think the 
people of Florida should be very pleased with the disaster relief 
package the Senate is about to present and hopefully will pass and pass 
in the House. This is good news. I was grateful to be a part of it.
  I thank my staff. They worked incredibly hard to help advance this. 
We have been waiting for this day. We are excited this day is finally 
here. It makes our service here really meaningful when we can take our 
actions and turn them into progress and results.
  This is one of the reasons I ran for reelection, when at one point I 
didn't think I would. It was to come back and make a difference. Today, 
I know working with so many others, including Jenniffer Gonzalez in the 
House and Senator Nelson and our leadership in the Senate, we are about 
to make a real difference. It makes our time here rewarding. I am 
excited to have been a part of it, and I am looking forward to doing 
more.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


             Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to executive session for the consideration of the following 
nomination: Executive Calendar No. 387. I ask consent that the Senate 
vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; that if 
confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon 
the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's 
action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements 
relating to the nomination be printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I thank my 
friend from Iowa for his continued efforts both on behalf of Mr. 
Northey and working to find a commonsense solution to the issue that 
has thus far delayed Northey's confirmation.
  The phrase ``my friend'' is used often in this body. Sometimes it is 
used in a hollow manner, but in this instance, Senator Grassley is my 
friend. He and I have worked together closely on a great many matters, 
especially on the Judiciary Committee, and I have every confidence that 
we will continue to work together closely for many years to come.
  On this issue, Mr. Northey could have been confirmed in November. He 
could have been confirmed in January. He could have been confirmed this 
month. But that has not happened yet. It is my hope that Mr. Northey 
will be confirmed. It is my hope that he will be confirmed swiftly and 
expeditiously, but the critical element for that to happen is for us to 
find a solution to a problem that is threatening tens of thousands of 
jobs across this country. That problem arises from what is known as the 
Renewable Fuel Standard.
  The Renewable Fuel Standard established through the EPA is a system 
called RINs. Now, most people don't know what a RIN is. A RIN is a 
renewable identification number. It was something made up by the EPA. 
It didn't used to exist. They created RINs, and they sell RINs to 
refineries. RINs are designed to be an enforcement mechanism for the 
Renewable Fuel Standard, but there is a problem. When they were first 
introduced, RINs sold for a penny or two pennies each. The EPA assured 
everyone they would continue to sell for 1 cent or 2 cents each, but 
since then, we have seen the market for RINs break. RINs have 
skyrocketed in price to as high as $1.40 each. What does that mean? 
What does it mean for this fiat, governmentally created, artificial 
license to be selling at $1.40 a piece, which they hit at their high 
point? Well, it means thousands upon thousands of blue-collar union 
jobs are at risk.
  This is not a hypothetical threat. Just last month, Philadelphia 
Energy Solutions, owner of the largest refinery on the east coast, 
announced that it was going into bankruptcy, and they pointed the 
finger squarely at the broken RIN system. In their bankruptcy filing, 
they explained that ``the effect of the RFS Program on the Debtors' 
business is the primary driver behind the Debtors' decision to seek 
relief under the Bankruptcy Code.''
  That is not a surprising statement given what has happened in the 
artificial and broken RINs market. In 2012, Philadelphia Energy 
Solutions paid roughly $10 million for the RINs for the licenses they 
needed to run their company. By 2017, the Wall Street Journal was 
estimating that they would pay $300 million--that is $10 million to 
$300 million.
  Mr. President, $300 million is more than double their total payroll. 
You have spent many years in business. Can you imagine running a 
business where you spend more than double your payroll to write a 
check--not to buy anything, not to pay anybody, not to buy any 
supplies, but simply to purchase a government license, so to speak? 
That is crushing, and it is destroying jobs.
  With respect to Philadelphia Energy Solutions, now in bankruptcy, we 
are talking about 1,100 jobs. These are blue-collar, working class 
jobs, the kind that are the backbone of our economy, the kind that keep 
refineries going.
  Ryan O'Callaghan, who heads the Steelworkers local that represents 
650 refinery workers, said that the RFS is ``a lead weight around the 
company.'' He also said that a great many of the union members 
supported President Trump in the 2016 election because of his promise 
to reform harmful regulations. Indeed, the president of that union 
demonstrated great courage in supporting President Trump because he 
believed the President and the administration would stand for working-
class voters, would stand for the working man, and would pull back 
regulations that are killing jobs.
  The American people will be rightfully angry if we don't fix this 
problem because it is not just one refinery. Nationwide, experts have 
estimated that anywhere from 75,000 to 150,000 American jobs are 
potentially at risk if U.S. independent refineries go out of business--
75,000 to 150,000 jobs.
  My own State of Texas will be deeply affected if we don't take action 
immediately. Texas's oil and gas sector employs 315,000 people, 100,000 
of whom are in refining and petrochemical production. We have 29 
refineries that produce over 5.1 million barrels daily, and 22 of these 
29 refineries are hurt directly by the artificially high RINs prices. 
That is why this past December, Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote to the 
EPA asking for relief from this Federal mandate. He explained that 
``current implementation of this dated federal mandate severely impacts 
Texas' otherwise strong economy and jeopardizes the employment of 
hundreds of thousands of Texans.'' Mr. President, let me underscore 
that. It ``jeopardizes the employment of hundreds of thousands of 
Texans.''
  If you want to know why I am fighting so hard to reach a good 
solution, you need look no further than that statement. I am elected, 
like each of the Members of this body, to represent my constituents--in 
this case, 28 million Texans--and seeing hundreds of thousands of blue-
collar workers driven out of business because of a broken regulatory 
system makes no sense.
  Well, perhaps one might think this is simply an instance of parochial 
differences, of the battles between one State and another or one 
industry and another. Well, that is not the case because, on substance, 
there is a win-win solution here. I want a win for blue-collar refinery 
workers, and I want a win for Iowa corn farmers. I believe there is a 
win for both. I believe there is a policy solution that will result in 
Iowa corn farmers selling more corn and also more blue-collar jobs. 
That should be a solution that makes everybody happy.
  However, there is a third player in this equation which consists of 
Wall Street speculators who are betting on this artificial, government-
created market and driving up the prices.
  The important thing to realize is that when I talk about Philadelphia 
Energy Solutions paying $300 million, that $300 million did not go to 
Iowa farmers. It didn't go to ethanol producers. It went to speculators 
and large companies outside of Iowa. We can reach a solution that ends 
the speculating, ends the gamesmanship in this artificial government 
market, and saves jobs.
  With respect to Mr. Northey, I will say that I don't know Mr. Northey 
personally, but I have heard from a number of people who do. By all 
accounts,

[[Page S689]]

Mr. Northey has a good and strong reputation in the State of Iowa. He 
is a fourth-generation farmer. He has impressed many people with the 
job he has done as the secretary of agricultural in the State of Iowa. 
I made clear from the beginning that I would have been happy to have 
seen Mr. Northey confirmed in November, in December, in January, in 
February, and indeed I have laid out how to make that happen.
  On November 14, 2017, I wrote a letter to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds 
laying out how Mr. Northey could be confirmed, which is namely to have 
the stakeholders sit down collaboratively together and solve this 
problem in a win-win solution that helps Iowa corn farmers and also 
doesn't bankrupt refineries and drive blue-collar workers out of 
business.
  Indeed, in December, I met with both of the Senators from Iowa, along 
with Senator Toomey, to discuss exactly how we could move forward with 
Mr. Northey's confirmation promptly, efficiently, and also solve this 
problem. At that time, it was suggested that we bring the stakeholders 
together, that we actually have the players in the ethanol industry 
actually talk with the refiners and find a solution that results in 
more corn being sold and refiners not going out of business. We left 
that meeting on December 21 with a plan to have that meeting of 
stakeholders. Well, I am sorry to tell you that 48 days have passed, 
and that meeting still hasn't taken place because unfortunately a 
handful of lobbyists representing the ethanol industry have taken the 
position that they are unwilling to meet, they are unwilling to speak, 
they are unwilling to discuss anything with anybody, and apparently, if 
thousands of people lose their jobs in refineries, that is not their 
problem. Quite frankly, that is not a reasonable position. That is not 
a reasonable or rational position.
  Mr. Northey would have been confirmed long ago had the lobbyists for 
the ethanol industry been willing to come to the table and reach a 
commonsense solution that would have resulted in more money for their 
industry, more ethanol, more corn. But their position is that they are 
not interested in a win, because their position has been that they are 
not willing to talk. Well, I think that is unfortunate, but it is also 
unacceptable.
  So indeed I continue to have productive conversations with the 
President, with the EPA, with the Department of Agriculture, with the 
administration about finding a win-win solution, a solution that is 
good for everyone. And if a handful of lobbyists refuse to come to the 
table, then they should not be surprised to see the solution proceed 
without them.
  We can find a good, positive solution that benefits the farmers of 
Iowa, that sells more corn. In 2015 and 2016, I spent a lot of time in 
the great State of Iowa. Indeed, I had the great privilege and blessing 
of completing what is affectionately known in that State as the Full 
Grassley. Now, what is the Full Grassley? There are 99 counties in that 
beautiful State, and every year, the senior Senator goes to all 99. 
Now, I can tell you that the Full Grassley is a Herculean 
accomplishment, rendered all the more remarkable by the fact that the 
senior Senator does it not once but every year. Well, on election day, 
I completed the Full Grassley, having visited every county in the State 
of Iowa. I visited with many wonderful people, including many wonderful 
corn farmers whom I want to see selling more and more corn. We can have 
a solution that is a win for those corn farmers but also doesn't 
bankrupt refineries and drive a bunch of blue-collar workers out of 
work.
  It is important to understand, by the way, that these high RINs 
prices don't benefit corn farmers at all. In fact, if you look at RINs 
prices, they are not remotely correlated to the price of corn; if 
anything, they are inversely correlated. What does that mean? It means 
that when RINs were selling for 1 cent and 2 cents each, corn was way 
up here, and when RINs skyrocketed to $1.40 each, the price of corn 
plummeted. So not only is this not benefiting Iowa corn farmers, you 
could argue that it may even be hurting them.
  The money that is bankrupting refineries and costing people their 
jobs is not going to the farmers. So my hope is that we reach a 
solution that lifts regulatory barriers at the EPA so that the Iowa 
corn farmers can sell more corn in the market in response to real 
demand, not a government mandate, but there are EPA barriers that stand 
in the way that cap the sales of ethanol. I see no reason to 
artificially cap it. If there is demand in the marketplace, they should 
be able to sell more and more and more corn, expand their market. But 
they are not benefiting from crushing regulatory costs that are driving 
people out of business. We can reach a solution to do both.
  With respect to Mr. Northey, if and when we see the players come 
together in a positive way to solve this problem, I will more than 
readily lift my objection, and I hope Mr. Northey is confirmed and 
confirmed quickly.
  I look forward to working with Mr. Northey in the Department of 
Agriculture, but first, we need to stop this regulatory failure that is 
threatening thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of jobs.
  Therefore, looking to find a cooperative win-win solution for 
everyone, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Did the Senator make his formal objection?
  Mr. CRUZ. Yes.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Thank you.
  Normally, I would speak right after the Senator from Texas, but I am 
going to call on three of my colleagues who are here to speak because I 
have more time than they have. I know the Senator from Texas has to go. 
He accurately did describe our relationship, generally, in this body as 
Senators from Iowa and from Texas. I want to let everybody know that we 
have that good relationship.
  We sure disagree on this issue. I am sorry we do. With that said, I 
am going to defer to the Senator from Michigan. I want to say that she 
is the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee and represents the 
farmers of Michigan very well, but also, in her leadership position as 
former chairman of the Agriculture Committee and now the ranking 
member, she has done a great job of leadership in the area of 
agriculture.
  Would the Senator proceed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Thank you very much for those kind words from the 
senior Senator from Iowa. We have partnered on many things together 
related to agriculture.
  I rise today to support Senator Grassley and Senator Ernst in this 
motion. We need to fill this position with an eminently qualified 
person, Bill Northey, right away. It is long overdue.
  As the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I am in 
strong support of the nomination of Bill Northey to be Under Secretary 
of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services.
  Despite historic delays in receiving nominations from the 
administration, our committee has worked swiftly on a bipartisan basis 
to put qualified leaders into place at the USDA. When we get qualified 
nominees, we move them, and Under Secretary nominee Bill Northey is no 
exception. In fact, I believe that he is a bright star in terms of the 
nominees and those that will be serving in the USDA.
  He was nominated in September of last year. Our committee quickly 
held a hearing and reported his nomination with unanimous bipartisan 
support to the floor on October 19.
  Mr. Northey is a highly qualified nominee. He is currently serving 
his third term as secretary of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and 
Land Stewardship. A farmer himself, he understands what American 
agriculture needs, and has pledged to be a strong leader for our 
producers. I have confidence in him.
  Unfortunately, instead of serving our farmers and ranchers at USDA, 
his nomination has languished in partisan limbo because of an unrelated 
issue raised by a Senate Republican colleague not on the Agriculture 
Committee.
  I appreciate Members have various kinds of concerns, but it is 
important to note that Mr. Northey's leadership is needed now on a 
number of issues, including the fact that he would be in charge of 
disaster recovery for our farmers in Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, and 
all across the country, who

[[Page S690]]

are serving in the aftermath of hurricanes, wildfires, and drought.
  It is also important for him to be at the USDA to support our farmers 
struggling with low prices. For the better part of a year, I have been 
working with the leaders of the Appropriations Committee, Senator 
Cochran and Senator Leahy, to fix a few pieces of the 2014 farm bill 
that didn't quite work as we intended them--the dairy and cotton safety 
net provisions.
  I do want to indicate, while I am on the floor, that the Senate 
budget agreement contains significant improvements for both 
commodities, including more than $1 billion in support for our 
struggling dairy farmers. These much needed improvements set us up to 
continue our bipartisan work to write the next farm bill that needs to 
be done this year. I look forward to working with our chairman, Senator 
Roberts, as well as our two distinguished Members from Iowa, on 
creating the kind of farm bill that we need for our farmers and 
ranchers and families.
  Unfortunately, though, when politics get in the way, our farmers and 
our ranchers lose. So I am hopeful that we can resolve whatever issues 
or at least move them to a different debate, rather than focusing them 
on this nominee who is very much needed. His leadership is needed right 
now at the USDA. He has strong bipartisan support.
  I think it is very unfortunate that his nomination has gotten caught 
up in another issue. I am hopeful that we could ask our Senate 
colleague to choose to address that in another way without getting in 
the way of critical leadership on disaster assistance and conservation 
and critical issues on which the USDA needs to have his leadership.
  Mr. Northey has strong, bipartisan support and should be advanced 
quickly. We need his leadership skills. I am going to continue to do 
everything I can to work with my colleagues to be able to make sure he 
has the opportunity to serve farmers and ranchers as part of the USDA 
leadership.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mrs. ERNST. Mr. President, I would like to thank the ranking member 
of the Agriculture Committee for joining us here on the floor today. I 
appreciate her great bipartisan work on the Agriculture Committee.
  I am pleased to be a member of that committee. It is truly one of 
those committees where we set aside any political differences. We 
actually work for the good of our Agricultural Committee, our ranchers, 
and our farmers, regardless of the State they come from. We truly do 
work together to feed and fuel a nation.
  Thank you very much for joining us today, I say to the ranking 
member.
  I wish to thank my senior Senator from Iowa, as well.
  I am rising today to join my colleague Senator Chuck Grassley and 
others who have joined us on the floor to support the nomination of 
Bill Northey as Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation at 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or the USDA.
  I have known Bill Northey for nearly a decade and, to be honest, 
probably a little more than a decade. He is a great friend. He is a 
great Iowan. Most importantly, he is a tenacious advocate and a true 
voice for agriculture and our rural communities. He has worked in 
agricultural policy at nearly every level of government.
  At a time when we need to tackle many critical agricultural 
priorities, including the farm bill, which the ranking member just 
mentioned--that farm bill was last authorized 2 years ago, in late 
2014--at a time when the President is rightly focusing on economic 
development and strengthening rural America, and at a time when our 
government is focused on streamlining and reducing the burdens of 
environmental regulations, we must have leadership in this position--as 
I mentioned, the Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation 
at USDA. We must have leadership there that truly gets the real 
underlying concerns and priorities of America's farmers and ranchers. 
We need them addressed. Bill Northey is exactly the person to do that.
  When I think about the importance of getting someone like Bill 
Northey in this position, I reflect on the young farmer who is looking 
to begin a farming operation in rural Iowa to feed his or her family, 
grow a business, and cultivate a legacy in their own community, all 
while low commodity prices have pinched margins and extreme weather has 
decimated our crops. That young farmer needs Washington to get out of 
the way and give them an opportunity to thrive.
  Bill Northey is the right guy to work these issues. He knows his role 
in Washington will not be to empower a faceless bureaucracy but to make 
Washington work for its people and give the agriculture industry the 
tools it needs to prosper. Bill Northey is that average, everyday Iowan 
who cares about agriculture and its future.
  Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Roberts and Ranking Member 
Stabenow have made it abundantly clear that they have no objection to 
Mr. Northey, as both indicated in a joint statement that said in part: 
``Bill Northey is a qualified and respected public servant who knows 
agriculture firsthand, and he will serve rural America well at USDA.''
  The ranking member joined us earlier, and she went a step further by 
saying to Bill:

       I know that you are a farmer. You understand these 
     challenges, and know that our farmers need leaders that will 
     speak up for them when their voices are not being heard.

  He was voted out of the Ag Committee unanimously. Let me state that 
again. He was voted out of the Ag Committee unanimously. If you didn't 
hear that, let me say it a third time. He was voted out of the Ag 
Committee unanimously.
  Democrats and Republicans believe that Bill Northey is a leader, and 
he is being held hostage over an unrelated issue. Bill Northey's 
nomination has become entangled in an unrelated policy dispute. I am 
very disappointed. Bill Northey is an upstanding man, someone we 
desperately need to serve in our government. We truly want to drain the 
swamp. Bill Northey is exactly who we need. He is that everyday 
American fighting for agriculture. We need him desperately. We may not 
be able to have him serve in our government because this policy dispute 
has led to a hold on his nomination.
  Bill Northey is extremely qualified. He has the experience and the 
reputation. Most importantly, he has the voice and the heart for 
American agriculture. I am asking for a quick vote and confirmation of 
this well-respected, beloved Iowan so that we can get him in place and 
work on matters that truly are important not just to Iowans and the 
Midwest but to all of America.
  Let's free Bill. Let's free Bill, folks. Let's confirm Bill Northey.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of my 
colleagues Senator Ernst, Ranking Member Stabenow, and, of course, 
Senator Grassley. Senators Grassley and Ernst have been such leaders on 
ag issues in their State.
  I come to join Senator Grassley, not only from the other side of the 
aisle but also, as far as Iowa and Minnesota are concerned, across the 
border. Our States have rivalries in football and many other things, 
but one thing we always agree on is having strong people to be the 
voice of agriculture at the USDA.
  I supported Secretary Perdue when President Trump nominated him, and 
I believe he needs a team to be able to do the complicated work of 
agriculture. At a time when we have seen difficulty in everything from 
the dairy industry to cotton, to issues with prices for so many of our 
commodities, to just only a few years ago the avian flu that was such a 
threat to the poultry industry in Minnesota and Iowa, the thought that 
we wouldn't have an Under Secretary in place for farm production and 
conservation--such an important part of the work of the USDA right 
now--is just unbelievable to me.
  As the nominee for Under Secretary in this area, Mr. Northey would be 
tasked with guiding some of the USDA's most important agencies that 
interact with farmers and ranchers on a daily basis, including the Farm 
Service Agency--which is so important to my farmers when they have 
questions about how they are supposed to sign up for things and complex 
programs; they

[[Page S691]]

are small farmers trying to do their job, and they need that Farm 
Service Agency--the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the 
Risk Management Agency.
  As we prepare to write and pass a bipartisan farm bill, Mr. Northey's 
technical and legal assistance from the USDA is going to be critical. 
The absence of an Under Secretary for this critical mission area also 
has a domino effect that is leaving important USDA agencies without 
leadership and without guidance. This is not good governance.
  Secretary Perdue picked him because he was someone who had served as 
a State agriculture commissioner. As Senator Ernst has pointed out, he 
is not someone who has lived inside the beltway his whole life. This is 
someone who knows a State that has a lot of ag.
  When he came before the Senate Agriculture Committee last October, I 
had the opportunity to question him about his priorities for the USDA. 
He has spent his entire life in agriculture. He knows farmers, he knows 
rural economy, and he knows what is needed.
  I appreciated the fact that he honestly answered questions about the 
renewable fuel standard. He sees it, as I do in Minnesota, as a 
homegrown economic generator.
  We are a State that is right next door to North Dakota. We appreciate 
their ethanol and their oil industries. These are part and parcel of 
Minnesota and our country's energy. That being said, we see biofuel as 
an economic generator. We want to make sure we are keeping strong 
industries alive so the farmers and the workers of the Midwest are 
taking part in energy just as much as the oil industries in the 
Mideast.
  The final rule for 2018 and 2019 that went through two 
administrations kept volume requirements for ethanol steady and made 
some improvement in blend targets of advanced biofuels. The final rule 
was a declarative statement by the administration that renewable fuels 
are simply an important part of our transportation fuel supply and an 
important part of our economy, but that is not what this is about.
  Our friend from Texas, Senator Cruz, has decided to hold up the 
nomination of someone who has done nothing but serve our country and 
serve the State of Iowa as the agriculture secretary there--the 
agriculture commissioner--with merit.
  I don't believe we should be holding nominees hostage. It is not 
something I have done as a Senator. Senator Cruz and I have debated 
this in the past when he held up the Ambassadors to Norway and Sweden--
two Ambassador positions that were very important to Iowa and Minnesota 
because of our Scandinavian populations, and yet we went for years 
without Ambassadors to those really important allied countries. We went 
for years with two qualified people who could have taken over a year 
before, who had unanimously gone through--just like this nominee--the 
Foreign Relations Committee without objection. Yet Senator Cruz was 
concerned about the naming of a street in front of the Embassy of 
China, which was completely unrelated.
  So while I appreciate his representing interest in his State, and I 
appreciate the fact that we have to have legitimate debates about 
energy and energy policy, I just don't believe you should be holding 
qualified nominees hostage.
  In the case of the Ambassadors to Norway and Sweden, we were 
ultimately triumphant because people from the Republican side of the 
aisle and the Democratic side of the aisle came together and said: 
Enough is enough. We need people who are qualified to fill these 
important positions in our government.
  That is exactly what is happening again. This is a qualified nominee, 
and the Senate should not be a place where someone with his 
qualifications should be blocked for an important position just as we 
are considering the farm bill, just as we are dealing with disaster 
recovery all over the Nation, including in places like Texas and 
Florida. I just don't believe in this scorched-earth policy. I believe, 
as we do on the Agriculture Committee, in working things out. We work 
things out. We may have differences of opinion, but we let people fill 
an important position like this.
  I am glad our colleague from Texas has remained through this 
discussion, with his friend from the Midwest, and we just hope some of 
that Midwestern common sense will come his way. Like Senator Grassley, 
I visit every county in Minnesota every year--all 87 counties--and I 
can tell you that when I want to hear what the farmers think, I listen 
to Senator Grassley, but, most importantly, I listen to the people in 
my State. They want to have a USDA that is functioning and working and 
ready for all the issues we are confronting right now in agriculture 
and the United States.
  Thank you very much.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague who spoke very 
highly of the qualifications of Mr. Northey to be Under Secretary at 
the Department of Agriculture. I may say just a little bit about his 
qualifications, but I want to spend most of my time expressing my 
thoughts to my colleagues in the Senate, and to Senator Cruz primarily, 
on what I think about the argument over RINs being an impediment to 
some refineries operating efficiently, going into bankruptcy, or other 
problems they have.
  Senator Cruz has said there are some things that could be put 
together to help this situation. I will name three of them that I think 
would work, and then I will say why I disagree with the Senator from 
Texas about the RINs issue and why he thinks that is a solution to it 
and why I feel it is not a solution to it.
  First of all, my colleague from Texas said there is a problem with 
Wall Street speculators. I don't know whether that happens every day, 
but it happens sometimes, and it is something that should be taken care 
of. I recognized that back in November of 2013, when I wrote a letter 
on that very subject urging the regulators to take a position on that.
  I think greater transparency of this whole market would be very good 
as well. I think that is a possibility. That is something the Senator 
and I have discussed as being very helpful, the EPA putting out 
regulations on vapor so we could get more ethanol in the percentage of 
E15.
  I would say his idea of putting caps on RINs will not work because 
when you do that, you are getting--the marketplace isn't working. I 
suppose I am a little surprised that a free market person like Senator 
Cruz would suggest the government step in and cap that. Also, I would 
like to speak to the point that in November of last year, 2017, as an 
agency, the EPA itself said the RINs market was working, which puts the 
Agency in a little bit different position than where we think Mr. 
Pruitt, the Administrator of EPA, is coming from.
  So, with that in mind, I am going to go to my remarks right now and 
express that it is very unfortunate that there is an objection to 
advancing President Trump's nomination of Iowa secretary of agriculture 
Bill Northey to be Under Secretary at the Department of Agriculture all 
because of unrelated concerns over the renewable fuel standard, which 
is a law passed by Congress and obviously administered by the EPA.
  I am very disappointed that a highly qualified and honorable man like 
Bill Northey is being held up for an issue unrelated to his position. 
As you heard my colleague say, Secretary Northey enjoyed unanimous 
support from the Senate Agriculture Committee and has the support of 
numerous agriculture groups from around the country.
  Now I will get to the RINs issue and my feeling that this is not a 
legitimate reason for either holding up this nomination for the 
bankruptcy that has been referred to or for any other refinery that has 
trouble.
  I think it is a manufactured and baseless rumor that the RFS, the 
renewable fuel standard, has caused an oil refinery in Pennsylvania to 
file for bankruptcy. This example has been cited repeatedly as a 
justification for forcing the renewable fuel standard supporters to 
agree to sudden and drastic changes in how the renewable fuel standard 
was designed.
  I have been trying to work in good faith with the Senator from Texas 
and have offered several options--some of them I have just expressed 
here in my off-the-cuff remarks--that would result

[[Page S692]]

in lower prices on the RINs issue. As has been said, that stands for 
renewable identification number. That is what we call the compliance 
credits--to make sure the refineries use the right amount of ethanol to 
meet the renewable fuel standard.
  However, I keep being told by the Senator from Texas that I need to 
accept a proposal for a guaranteed cap on RIN prices in the short term 
to save this Philadelphia refinery. Unfortunately for those who are 
spreading the rumors that the problems the Philadelphia refinery has 
are due to high RIN prices, from my point of view--and I hope I backed 
this up in a paper that we have widely disseminated within the last 
week--the facts don't add up very well for the people making the 
argument that RIN prices are the problem.
  My staff and other analysts have read the SEC filings and the 
bankruptcy filings of the refinery in question and have come to the 
conclusion that the Philadelphia refinery cannot pin its problems on 
the renewable fuel standard. The No. 1 problem the Philadelphia 
refinery has faced is the result of the petroleum export ban being 
lifted, which cost it access to cheaper feedstocks. Another reason, and 
the second biggest problem it has, is that a pipeline opened which 
diverted rail shipment of Bakken crude oil away from the east coast 
because of the pipeline sending it someplace else, obviously raising 
the price of the feedstock to the Philadelphia refinery.
  We keep being told the refinery is facing hardship because it cannot 
afford to buy enough RINs to comply with the renewable fuel standard. 
If that is the case, then why did this Philadelphia refinery sell off a 
significant quantity of RINs just last fall? That is quite odd, 
considering the company needs to turn them in later this month for 
compliance with the renewable fuel standard.
  Some have said it is executing a market short on RINs, which is 
dependent on some sort of Federal action that will suddenly drive down 
the cost of RINs. I would point out that shorting the RIN market is 
something Carl Icahn is reportedly being investigated for by Federal 
investigators. I hope that the Philadelphia refinery is not trying to 
follow that same playbook. I certainly want nothing to do with that 
kind of chicanery.

  Finally, the Philadelphia refinery could have avoided needing to buy 
any RINs at all if it had just invested in blending infrastructure 
years ago like many of its fellow merchant refineries did. In fact, the 
Philadelphia refinery is partly owned by Sunoco, which owns blending 
infrastructure.
  We also know that refinery has an arrangement whereby it supplies 
ethanol with RINs attached to Sunoco for blending with its gasoline. 
Other independent refiners with similar arrangements have an agreement 
to return the RINs to the refiner once they are detached.
  The RFS was created to bring cleaner burning renewable fuels to 
consumers. The RINs system was developed as a flexible system that 
would allow obligated parties to choose between investing in blending 
infrastructure or buying RINs for Renewable Fuel Standard compliance. 
The Philadelphia refinery made the decision to buy RINs instead. That 
hasn't worked out very well for that refinery apparently, but that was 
the bet that refinery made. A cheaper option for Renewable Fuel 
Standard compliance exists, and the Philadelphia refinery chose to 
pursue other investments.
  None of this has anything to do with President Trump's choice to 
oversee farm programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
  Bill Northey should be confirmed by this body. He has overwhelming 
bipartisan support. Taking a nominee hostage to try to force an ill-
conceived policy change is only going to cause more problems for this 
body in the future.
  I don't know what the next step is, but I think that Bill Northey is 
such a good person for this position, I am going to continue to work as 
long as he wants me to work for his nomination to proceed.
  Before I yield the floor, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in 
the Record an article on this issue of the Philadelphia refinery.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       [From Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), Feb. 6, 2018]

                             (By Tom Kloza)

    Verleger: PES Bankruptcy Judge Could Inflict Lehman-Like Moment

       Noted oil economist Phil Verleger has read the Philadelphia 
     Energy Solutions (PES) bankruptcy filing and makes no bones 
     about his verdict. The company is scapegoating the Renewable 
     Fuel Standard for its financial woes, Verleger says, instead 
     of properly attributing the demise of the 330,000-b/d 
     refinery to the end of the long-time crude oil export ban, 
     antiquated equipment and a lack of investment that kept the 
     plant competitive with other northeastern refineries.
       But most importantly, Verleger sees a possibility that the 
     bankruptcy judge just might render a decision that could 
     wreak havoc with the RFS and throw the RINs market into utter 
     chaos. Bankruptcy papers clearly indicate that PES would like 
     to get its RIN obligation discharged in the reorganization. 
     If not, the company would have to purchase and retire RINs 
     with an aggregate market value of approximately $350 million 
     at current market prices before a compliance deadline this 
     spring. It would also need to buy about 550 million 2018 
     vintage RINs. A buyer of that quantity under current 
     circumstances might lead to a quick doubling of the renewable 
     credit asking prices.
       But if a bankruptcy judge allows cancellation of the RINs' 
     obligation, any credibility associated with the RFS program 
     might be thrown out the window.
       There is a legal obligation to blend ethanol and other 
     biocomponents into transportation fuels and the EPA might 
     have great difficulty administering the program, even though 
     the agency has been an advocate. A court decision granting 
     PES' request for relief might lead to a ``Lehman-like 
     moment'' that could completely halt RINs' trading, plunge the 
     value of accumulated RINs to near zero and bring about pure 
     chaos.
       PES' owners blame the U.S. renewable fuels' standard for 
     their woes, but Verleger disagrees. Failure came about 
     because the refinery complex is out of date and it is a 
     merchant refinery with no downstream outlets. It also 
     operates in a region where flat demand is a victory and 
     decelerating demand a probability. Financially solvent and 
     technologically advanced companies can operate under these 
     circumstances, but the noted oil economist finds no evidence 
     that critical investments were made PES in the refinery.
       The PES bankruptcy filing took place on Jan. 22, and the 
     RINs' cost of $217 million was the largest expense other than 
     crude oil costs. When the Trump administration reaffirmed the 
     government's commitment to the RFS in the autumn, it dealt a 
     blow to merchant refiners and other processors who hoped to 
     shift the compliance burden to others. PES CEO Gregory Gatta 
     told the Philadelphia Inquirer: ``It is unfortunate that the 
     company was driven to this result by the failed RFS policy 
     and excessive RIN costs.'' He added that the company ``can 
     only hope that our filing . . . will provide the necessary 
     catalyst for meaningful long-term reform of the RFS 
     program.''
       In contrast, Verleger notes that megarefiner Valero 
     reported net income of $4.1 billion for the year and saw a 
     quarterly profit of $509 million excluding the Trump tax cut 
     benefits. Expense for RINs was $311 million in the fourth 
     quarter, but the company invested $2.4 billion, with half of 
     it going to ``growth projects.''
       Some of those past investments have included logistical 
     additions and refinery tweaks so that properties could run 
     heavily discounted Canadian crude.
       ``Valero invested. Canadian producers have not. And 
     clearly, PES has not,'' notes Verleger.
       He backdates the lack of investment for several decades. 
     Some 35 years ago, the Washington Post acknowledged that the 
     refinery owner at the time (Sun Oil, and then Sunoco) bucked 
     the trend toward expensive refinery upgrades in favor of 
     keeping a light sweet more expensive feedstock dependence.
       That luck ran out for Sunoco, but PES had a run of several 
     years during which it could bring inexpensive landlocked U.S. 
     crude to Philadelphia, thanks to the U.S. export ban. An 
     investment was made in a $186 million rail-unloading 
     facility, but refineries were not upgraded. Nowadays, Bakken 
     crude trades within a few dollars of WTI, so shipping the 
     North Dakota crude to the East Coast doesn't make economic 
     sense.
       In contrast, Delta Air Lines bought the closed 
     ConocoPhillips refinery in Trainer, Pa., in 2012, renamed it 
     Monroe Energy and upgraded the refinery to meet tougher U.S. 
     specifications. In 2016, some $70 million was invested so 
     that the plant could produce the lower-sulfur gasoline 
     required by EPA.
       PES hoped to make investments in the refinery from funds 
     from a proposed IPO, but investors balked at terms. There was 
     no IPO and no investment.
       The end of the export ban on U.S. crude combined with the 
     completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline eliminated PES' 
     access to favorably priced crudes. PES had a favorable 
     position only so long as the export ban was in effect, notes 
     Verleger.
       The refinery isn't just dependent on expensive light sweet 
     crude. It also produces about 12% of low valued industrial 
     products that ultimately fetch prices beneath crude costs. It 
     is much less competitive than nearby PBF, which boasts about 
     double the PES margins.

[[Page S693]]

       ``The owners (of PES) gambled that the large discount of 
     U.S. crude to world prices would continue enabling the 
     refinery to continue earning profits.''
       Verleger concludes that PES lost the gamble and the growth 
     of U.S. crude exports has made it impractical and 
     unprofitable to move Midcontinent crude to East Coast sweet 
     refineries.
       Verleger acknowledges that the RIN market isn't a 
     particularly efficient market, with inequities incurred by 
     small marketers who don't get RIN discounts passed along. 
     Distortions can create an unequal playing field. But finding 
     the source of the problems is a difficult task, with possible 
     flaws including hoarding by large traders in the credits.
       But he suggests that rather than declaring amnesty on RIN 
     obligations, a more appropriate decision might be to scrap 
     the refinery, which was once headed for closure earlier in 
     the decade. Part-owner Carlyle Group gambled with its own 
     money (and some government funds) that it could profitably 
     rail crude to Philadelphia and make money. Instead, the 
     export ban was lifted, dooming that flawed strategy.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, a few observations about the colloquy that 
has occurred.
  No. 1, we had two friends of ours from the Democratic side of the 
aisle who spoke energetically in support of this nomination, but I 
found it striking that our Democratic friends had nothing to say to the 
union members who are faced with the risk of losing their jobs. Senate 
Democrats often portray themselves as friends of organized labor, 
friends of union members. Yet it was striking that when they came to 
the floor, they had no answer to union members in Philadelphia being 
told they are at risk of being unemployed because of a broken 
regulatory system. Instead, it is a conservative Republican Texan who 
is fighting for the jobs of those union members.
  I would also note that my efforts in this are not alone. Indeed, in 
December, I brought 12 Senators--12 Members of this body--to the White 
House to meet with the President, working to find a solution to this 
problem. Those Senators included Senator Cornyn, Senator Cassidy, 
Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, Senator Barrasso, Senator Lee, Senator 
Toomey, Senator Inhofe, and Senator Lankford. Those are Senators from a 
wide geographic array, all facing significant job losses, potentially, 
and all interested in a positive solution to this problem.
  In the remarks we just heard on the Senate floor, none of the 
Senators proposed any relief to the potentially hundreds of thousands 
of blue-collar workers being driven out of work by a broken regulatory 
system--no relief whatsoever. Indeed, none of the Senators disputed the 
fact that the RFS worked and worked just fine when RINs were selling 
for a penny.
  This debate is not about the RFS--should we continue it or not. When 
I was a candidate for President, I campaigned on ending it. I didn't 
win. I lost that election. This is not a fight about ending the RFS. 
The current administration is committed to continuing the RFS. That is 
the prerogative of this administration. This is instead a search for a 
solution that would save tens of thousands, if not hundreds of 
thousands of jobs.
  The senior Senator from Iowa said: Gosh, it is not a free-market 
solution to cap the price of RINs. Well, if RINs were an actual 
commodity that existed in the real world, I would agree with that. I 
wouldn't support capping the price of corn or the price of gasoline or 
the price of widgets or anything else that people were making. But RINs 
are an artificial, made-up government fix. They don't exist. No one 
manufactures a RIN. It is a government ID number. And it worked 
initially when they were trading at 1 and 2 cents apiece. But when it 
skyrocketed, going all the way up to $1.40 each--it is now threatening 
thousands upon thousands of blue-collar jobs.
  The Senator from Iowa suggested that RINs are not the cause of the 
bankruptcy of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery. Well, I would 
note that the explicit text of the bankruptcy filing is to the 
contrary. Indeed, this is a quote from their bankruptcy filing: ``The 
effect of the RFS Program on the Debtor's business is the primary 
driver behind the Debtor's decision to seek relief under the Bankruptcy 
Code.'' It does not say ``is a factor'' or ``is a problem'' but ``is 
the primary driver.'' That is what they wrote in their bankruptcy 
papers.
  None of the Senators who spoke disputed that for that refinery, the 
price of RINs went from $10 million in 2012 to $300 million in 2017. 
That is unreasonable. That is broken.
  The junior Senator from Iowa talked about the need to pull back job-
killing regulations. Well, there is a job-killing regulation that we 
need to pull back.
  This is a very important thing for those following this debate to 
understand: That $300 million--do you know how much of it goes to Iowa 
farmers? Zero. They are not getting that money. Instead, it is going to 
speculators and large--many foreign--integrated oil companies. It is an 
odd thing to see lobbyists for ethanol companies fighting for the 
profits of giant overseas oil companies. That doesn't make any sense.
  Unfortunately, the position of the ethanol lobbyists has been: We are 
unwilling to speak. We are unwilling to talk. We are unwilling to meet 
with anyone on the refinery side. We are unwilling to defend our 
position. We will not attend the meeting.
  We have repeatedly extended that invitation to them, and they have 
said no. That is blatantly unreasonable. Do you know whom the ethanol 
lobbyists are serving the least? Corn farmers. Repeatedly in the course 
of this negotiation, I have sought to put on the table policy options 
that would be a win for corn farmers, that would result in more corn 
being sold, more Iowa corn being sold, more ethanol being sold. The 
ethanol lobbyists are so unreasonable, they don't want to win and they 
don't want to provide any relief for thousands of blue-collar workers 
being thrown out of work. That is not a reasonable solution.
  I hope Mr. Northey will be confirmed. Indeed, I hope he is confirmed 
soon. He could be confirmed as soon as next week. In November, I laid 
out a very clear path to Mr. Northey being confirmed. In December, I 
laid out a very clear path to Mr. Northey being confirmed. The people 
blocking Mr. Northey's confirmation are the ethanol lobbyists who have 
said: We are unwilling to have a win/win solution. The answer is, let 
thousands of people lose their jobs even though doing so doesn't 
benefit Iowa corn farmers at all. That doesn't make any sense.
  Here is a ray of sunshine, a ray of hope. I believe the 
administration is going to do the right thing. I believe the President 
wants to see a win/win solution--a solution that is good for Iowa corn 
farmers. I want to see Iowa corn farmers sell more corn, a solution 
that results in Mr. Northey being confirmed, and a solution that 
doesn't bankrupt refineries and cost a bunch of blue-collar union 
members their jobs. That is a win for everybody. I believe that is 
where the President and the administration want to go, and I think that 
is where we will end up. I am hopeful we will arrive on that solution, 
which is consistent with the responsibilities of all of us.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I just need 1 minute because all of my 
colleagues are waiting to speak now.
  For the benefit of the Senator from Texas, I wish to just say one 
thing. I don't question that he accurately quoted the union leader at 
the Philadelphia refinery, but I also, maybe within the last 2 weeks, 
read a statement by the so-called president--and I believe it is the 
same person whom we are talking about--that RINs were not an issue.
  The other thing that I would add just for clarification of what the 
Senator said, that nobody has offered any relief, I have offered to 
make two offers. One of them would be the Reid vapor pressure thing, 
the issue connected with E15--that could be done by a regulation out of 
EPA--and also transparency to make sure the markets work.
  I thank the Senator from Texas for his consideration of my effort to 
get Secretary Northey confirmed. I am sorry that he has objected, but 
that is the way the Senate can work and will work, and we will have to 
keep working to get Secretary Northey confirmed.
  I thank my colleagues for their patience.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

[[Page S694]]

  

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I don't want to get in the way of a 
disagreement between two of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle. I would just say to Senator Grassley that there was a hearing 
today before the Environment and Public Works Committee, on which I 
serve as the senior Democrat. The subject of the Renewable Fuel 
Standard actually came up in the discussion. We had a number of folks 
from the agriculture community from across the country--one, the 
current secretary of agriculture from the State of Delaware. We talked 
about the Renewal Fuel Standard and its effect on the economy.
  One of the reasons we encourage farms through our Federal Government 
policies--the reason we encourage farmers to raise, say, corn is that 
we can use it, and we frankly use a lot of other substances that they 
raise to create energy, to fuel us. Not only can our farmers feed us, 
they can also fuel us. This really got underway with the George W. Bush 
administration trying to do a better job of getting farmers involved to 
reduce our dependence on foreign oil by creating biofuels, advanced 
biofuels, ethanol, and corn ethanol.
  I will mention one of the things we talked about today, and then I 
will talk about what I am really supposed to be here to talk about, 
which is DREAMers and the economic security of this country.
  In the State of Delaware, we have only three counties: New Castle 
County, Kent County, and Sussex County, the third largest county in 
America. I think we raise more chickens there than any county in 
America. The last time I checked, we raise more soybeans there. We 
raise more lima beans there. Agriculture is a big deal for us. We also 
have great beaches in Delaware. We have Rehoboth Beach, Dewey Beach, 
Bethany Beach, and others. And there are a lot of interesting people 
who live close to the beach and not so close to the beach in Sussex 
County, so there is pressure from development. Sometimes we have the 
interests of farmers and that community coming up against the interests 
of developers.

  One of the ways we decided to ensure that we still have farmland and 
don't overdevelop our counties and our State is to make sure that 
farmers can make money and support themselves. One of the ways they can 
do that is through the ability to not only feed us with the commodities 
they raise but also to fuel us.
  There is something called RINs, or renewable identification numbers, 
a commodity traded on the market. The value of the RINs should 
literally be measured in pennies. Over the last year or so, it has been 
measured in more than a dollar for RINs. The refinery that has been 
discussed, which is up in Philadelphia, spent a lot of money on 
purchasing RINs in the last year or so. That shouldn't be the case. Our 
committee has been reaching out to the Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission in order to get them involved to say: How do we make this 
RINs market less volatile? How do we bring down the price of RINs? How 
do we enable us to do both, for our ag community and farmers to feed 
us, as a nation and a world, and also to fuel us?


                                  DACA

  Mr. President, I am really here to applaud the work of a number of 
our colleagues--Senator Durbin, who is on the floor, and Senator 
Graham--for the great leadership they have provided to make sure that, 
at the end of the day, we do the morally right thing--to make sure that 
we don't send away 700,000 or 800,000 or more people who were born in 
other countries but who were brought here by their parents at very 
young ages, grew up here, were educated here, are working here, and are 
making a contribution here. Why does it make sense to send them home?
  Discover, one of the companies headquartered in Illinois--a State 
that Senator Durbin has represented for as long as I have been 
privileged to represent Delaware--has operations in my State as well. 
They sent a letter that basically says:

       One of the basic tenets of our culture is to ``Do the Right 
     Thing''--and we urge Congress to do the same, without delay . 
     . . We are proud to count Dreamers as part of the Discover 
     community and believe they should have the ability to 
     continue pursuing their American dreams.

  Every now and then we have the opportunity to do something right and 
beneficial. Some have heard the saying: It is possible to do good and 
do well. With respect to Dreamers, I think it is possible to do good 
and do well.
  These are logos of about 100 companies--large and small, from coast 
to coast, from north and south, east and west--that believe it is in 
their best interests as employers to have a strong, capable, able, 
educated workforce, where people come to work and will work a day's 
work for a day's pay, will make a contribution, and will enable the 
company to be successful. They are companies on the east coast, on west 
coast, in the north, and in the south. They are all over the place. 
Some are big; some are small.
  These companies have shared with me--and I have shared with others on 
both sides of the aisle--that they think the morally right thing to do 
with respect to Dreamers is to say: You came here not of your own 
volition. You were brought and raised here by your parents and now you 
are making a contribution.
  Again, over 100 companies are listed here, and these companies want 
their employees to be able to stay and continue making a contribution.
  Here we have a comment from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These are 
the words of Tom Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 
who is very vocal on this subject:

       A great place to reform our immigration system to meet the 
     needs of our economy is by retaining the over 1 million 
     individuals who are currently allowed to work here legally 
     but are at risk of losing that status. [This] includes the 
     Dreamers, some 690,000 young people brought here illegally as 
     children, through no fault of their own. These hard-working 
     individuals contribute their talents to our economy in 
     integral ways, and we'll lose them if Congress doesn't act 
     early this year.

  A lot of times we talk about what is the morally right thing to do. 
Sometimes we talk about what is economically smart for our economy. We 
just got the jobs report for our country for the month of January about 
a week ago, and the jobs report is encouraging. The longest running 
economic expansion in our country began, I think, in the first year of 
the Obama-Biden administration. We are now into our eighth or maybe our 
ninth year.
  One of the keys to maintaining an ongoing economic expansion is to 
make sure we have a workforce that is able, trained, and educated and 
with the work ethic and the skills needed to fill the jobs we have in 
this country.
  When the jobs report came out last Friday from the Department of 
Labor for the month of January, they reported an unemployment rate for 
the country at about 4.1 percent. We are essentially at full 
employment. There were about 2 million to 3 million jobs last month 
that went unfilled. Nobody showed up to do those jobs, in some cases 
because folks applying for those jobs didn't have the education, the 
skills, the work ethic, or the willingness to do those jobs, or maybe 
there was the inability to pass a drug test. What those people can do 
is to enable a lot of companies in our country to be successful.
  There is something I call economic insanity. We can talk all we want 
about what is the morally right thing to do with respect to the 
Dreamers. I think we ought to think about what is in our naked self-
interest as a country with an eye on our economy. We are not going to 
always have an economic expansion, but we want to keep it going for as 
long as we can and have smart policies. One of the smart policies is to 
make sure we have the right workers, who show up and do the work that 
needs to be done in the workplace.
  As it turns out, there is an impact that Dreamers have collectively 
on the annual GDP loss for the U.S. if we don't pass the Dream Act, 
authored by Senators Durbin and Graham and sponsored by a number of 
Democrats and Republicans. The annual GDP loss for the United States 
over 10 years if we don't pass the DREAM Act by March 5 is $460 
billion.

  Just in Delaware alone, we have 1,400 Dreamers. The impact on GDP in 
Delaware if Congress doesn't pass the Dream Act by March 5--in a tiny 
little State--is $88 million. That is an eye-popping number. It is in 
our naked self-interest to find a path forward to make sure these folks 
don't head back to the country where they were born years ago and maybe 
start their own businesses and compete with us rather than be 
productive citizens here.

[[Page S695]]

  This is a commentary from the Center for American Entrepreneurship, 
from earlier this year. The message that we received said:

       The reduction in immigration mandated by the RAISE Act--

  That is the administration's broad policy on immigration reform, 
which the administration has proposed--

     would reduce economic growth by two to three tenths of a 
     percentage point every year over the next decade.

  Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, does it, to reduce it every year 
by 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points for the next decade? So that would be a 
reduction in economic growth in our country over the next 10 years.
  Right now we are doing pretty well. As I said, we are in the eighth 
or ninth year of the longest running economic expansion in the history 
of our country. Right now we are doing pretty well. The stock market 
has been up and down, kind of crazy and haywire. But we can't afford to 
do this. We would be foolish to throw away 2 or 3 percentage points of 
economic growth over the next decade. That would be crazy. It means 
slower growth, fewer jobs, less opportunity, and stagnant wages--none 
of which benefits our people or our country.
  We don't have to make a foolish decision like the administration's 
proposal would have us make. I am tempted to call it economic insanity. 
I think it is morally wrong. This is one of those places where doing 
the right thing actually lines up with enabling us to do good and do 
well at the same time. That is what we should do.
  I want to thank Senator Durbin, Senator Lindsey Graham, and a bunch 
of other colleagues--Democrat and Republican, from one end of the 
spectrum to the other--who have been working very hard to do right and 
do what is in the economic best interest of our country.
  I thank my friend from Illinois for allowing me to go ahead of him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President I thank my colleague from Delaware, Senator 
Tom Carper. He and I came to the House of Representatives together many 
years ago. He went off on another assignment as Governor of his State, 
and then came back and ran for the U.S. Senate. We are lucky to have 
him. He is a great Senator, a great friend, and a great colleague. He 
takes on important issues every day on behalf of his State and the 
Nation, and I thank him for his support for this conversation about 
DACA and Dreamers.
  I would like to take a little different approach to this than I 
usually do on the floor, and I have come to the floor many times to 
talk about it.
  I would like for everyone here who is listening to this debate to 
pause and think for a minute: What is the worst job you have ever had--
the worst job? Maybe it was the worst job because it was boring, and 
boring jobs are terrible. But there are some pretty bad jobs out there.
  I could tell you my worst job. I was working my way through college 
in what we euphemistically call a packinghouse. In the old days, they 
called them slaughterhouses. What happened was that hogs came off the 
truck in one door, and two days later pork chops and bacon went out the 
back door. In between, there were some pretty awful jobs--hot, dirty, 
smelly, and dangerous jobs.
  I took it as a college student because it paid $3.65 an hour in the 
1960s--pretty darned good, in fact, better than anything else I could 
find. I raised enough money working there four different summers to go 
to college. There was never any doubt at the end of the summer that I 
was going to stay with my job and not go to college. I couldn't wait to 
go to college in the hopes that I would never have to work in a 
packinghouse or slaughterhouse again in my life.
  Take a look today at the packinghouses, slaughterhouses, and poultry 
processing places across the United States of America, and I will tell 
you, almost without exception, what you will find. Take a look at the 
workers who come out of those places at the end of the workday. They 
are tired, they are sweaty, and they are dirty, and they are, by and 
large, immigrants--people who come to this country from other places.
  In Beardstown, IL, there is a processing place, near the central part 
of my State, and the workers there are largely Hispanic and African. 
They are immigrants who have come to this country and, like generations 
of immigrants before them, were prepared to take the worst, dirtiest, 
hardest jobs available just to make it in America.
  Go to the restaurants in Chicago, if you want a contrast from what I 
just described. We are lucky. I am lucky to represent that city, but we 
are lucky to have some of the greatest restaurants, I think, in our 
country. I would put them up against any city. I sat down with a person 
who owned some of those restaurants and talked to him about the 
immigration issue.
  He said: Senator, if you took the undocumented people and the 
immigrant people out of the restaurants and hotels of Chicago, we would 
close our doors. We couldn't operate without them.
  Oh, you don't see them in the front of the house--not your waiter and 
not the maitre d' or the person who takes your reservation. But just 
look at who carried the dishes off the table, and take a look through 
that door when it swings open at who is working back there in that hot 
kitchen. Over and over, you are going to find immigrants and 
undocumented people. So they are part of America, and they are part of 
our economy and, even more, they are part of our history.
  We have had debates about immigration from the beginning. I say 
jokingly that when the Mayflower landed and they got off the boats, a 
lot of them looked over their shoulders and said: I hope no more of 
these folks are coming.
  But they kept coming. They came in the thousands, even in the 
millions, from all over the world, anxious to be a part of the future 
of the United States of America.
  A ship landed in Baltimore in July of 1911, and a woman came down the 
gangplank with three kids. She was coming from Lithuania. She landed in 
Baltimore with those three kids--one of them a 2-year-old girl she was 
holding in her arms--and tried to find her way around Baltimore, MD, 
because she didn't speak English.
  Somehow or another she found that train station, got on the Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad, and somehow or another she made it to East St. 
Louis, IL--her idea of a land of opportunity in 1911. There she was 
reunited with her husband, and there she made a life--a hard, 
challenging life but one that led to good things. The 2-year-old girl 
she was carrying was my mother, and my mother was an immigrant to this 
country. In my office upstairs behind my desk is my mother's 
naturalization certificate. I keep it there to remind myself and 
everyone visiting who I am, my family's story, and America's story.
  If you think that we have come to accept immigration as part of 
America, then you don't understand the history. We have had our ups and 
downs when it comes to immigration laws. There have been times when in 
this Chamber--in this Senate Chamber--there were debates that led to 
the decision to exclude people from certain parts of the world who were 
no longer welcome in America. The most notorious in modern times was in 
1924. The object of our immigration exclusionary law was to keep out 
undesirable people from the United States of America. Who fell into 
that category in 1924? Jewish people, Italians, people from Eastern 
Europe--people from where my family came from. We made it clear in the 
law there would be quotas, and we were not going to accept people who 
were not desirable for the future of America. That was in 1924.
  Let me read you this incredible statement that was made. When 
President Calvin Coolidge signed the 1924 law justifying the quotas 
excluding Jews, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and others, here is what 
the President of the United States said in 1924:

       There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed 
     aside. Biological laws tell us that certain people will not 
     mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. 
     With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both 
     sides.

  President Calvin Coolidge, 1924, signed that immigration law. That 
was the law in the land of America for 41 years. Our attitude toward 
parts of the world and whether people from those parts were welcome was 
determined in

[[Page S696]]

1924 and defined by this Presidential statement.
  Then, in 1965, we passed the Immigration and Nationality Act that 
established our current system. Do you know what we said was the 
bedrock of that system? Reuniting families, bringing people to this 
country and allowing them to not only make it in America but to make a 
family in America.
  How many times have those of us in politics stood up and talked about 
faith and family and flag? I believe those words. I think my colleagues 
do too. When it came to immigration, that was the bedrock of what we 
were going to do--to make sure that families could be reunited in 
America.
  That 1965 law replaced the strict national origin quotas of the 1924 
immigration law that favored Northern Europeans and excluded Asians. 
That was one of the other groups excluded under the 1924 law.
  When President Lyndon Johnson signed that 1965 law, he said: ``It 
corrects a cruel and enduring wrong. . . . For over four decades the 
immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and distorted 
by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system.''
  The Cato Institute is a research group. I don't usually quote them 
because they are on the other side of the political spectrum. I am on 
the left side, and they are on the right side. But I am going to quote 
them tonight because what they had to say about the proposal coming 
from the White House about immigration is worth hearing. The White 
House is part of changing immigration laws in America. It wants to 
dramatically reduce legal immigration by prohibiting American citizens 
from sponsoring their parents, siblings, and adult or married children 
as immigrants. We are talking literally about millions of relatives of 
American citizens who have done the right thing by following our 
immigration laws, and some have waited in line 20 years to be reunited 
with their families in America--20 years waiting for the day when their 
families could be together again. Listen to what the Cato Institute, a 
conservative think tank, says about the proposal from the White House, 
which has been introduced in the Senate by two of my colleagues. This 
is what Cato says:

       [I]n the most likely scenario, the new plan would cut the 
     number of legal immigrants by up to 44 percent or half a 
     million immigrants annually--the largest policy-driven legal 
     immigration cut since the 1920s.
       Compared to current law, it would exclude nearly 22 million 
     people from the opportunity to immigrate legally to the 
     United States over the next five decades.

  You have to go back to 1924 to find that kind of reduction in legal 
immigration in America. What is it about? Is it about security? No. 
Every single person we are talking about has to go through a serious 
criminal national security background check before they will ever be 
allowed into the United States. It isn't automatic. You have to be 
thoroughly investigated. Some of them wait 20 years with all these 
investigations for the chance.
  Is it about jobs? Think back to those jobs these immigrants take in 
the United States. How many of us would say: My son--I am so proud--
didn't know what to do with his life. I told him: Well, why don't you 
consider washing dishes at a restaurant in Chicago? Why don't you 
consider working in a packing house in Beardstown, IL? Why don't you 
consider landscaping?
  Those are not the jobs we want to see for our children, and they are 
jobs that go vacant unless immigrants and people like them are willing 
to pick our fruit and our vegetables, milk the cows, and do the hard 
work that is required in so many different parts of America.
  We have, at this point, an important decision to make, not just as a 
Senate but as a nation. On September 5, President Donald Trump 
announced the end of the DACA Program. March 5 is the deadline. As of 
March 5, 1,000 young people every single day will lose the protection 
of DACA and be subject to deportation and unable to work legally in 
America. Who are they? Twenty thousand of them are teachers--teachers 
in grade schools and high schools around America who will lose their 
jobs on March 5 as their DACA protection expires. Nine hundred of them, 
undocumented, will lose their opportunity to serve in the United States 
military. That is right--undocumented. They took the oath that they 
would risk and give their lives for America to serve in our military. 
On March 5, as their DACA protection expires, they will be asked to 
leave the military of the United States of America.

  I can't tell you how many thousands of students will find it 
impossible to continue school because they can no longer legally work 
in America. I can tell you about 30 med students, premed students at 
Loyola University in Chicago. They told me the reality. At the end of 
medical school, you finish your education with a clinical experience, a 
residency--not 40 hours a week, sometimes 80 hours a week, but it is a 
job. You better take it, and you better learn the clinical side of 
medicine if you are going to be a good doctor. When they lose their 
DACA protection, they lose their legal right to work in America, and 
they cannot apply for a residency. It is an end of their medical 
education because President Trump had a deadline that said: On March 5, 
it's over.
  Here we are. What have we done in the 5 months since the President 
challenged us to fix the problem he created? We have done absolutely 
nothing. Nothing. Not one bill has passed in the House or Senate, 
despite the President's challenge and despite the disastrous impact 
this is going to have on hundreds of thousands of people across the 
United States of America.
  I shouldn't say that we have done nothing. Some people in this debate 
have sent out a lot of tweets. Boy, that sure helps. There have been a 
lot of press releases and press conferences, but not a single bill has 
come to the floor. That is going to change. That is going to change 
very quickly. Senator McConnell, the Republican leader--and I take him 
at his word because he said it publicly, he said it privately, and I 
have told him personally ``You said it, and I believe you''--is going 
to call this measure for a vote in the Senate next week.
  For those of you who tune in to C-SPAN or visit in the Chamber here, 
please show up next week because something is going to happen on the 
Senate floor that hasn't happened in a year and a half--maybe longer. 
We are actually going to have a debate. This empty Chamber will have 
people in it. We will be considering a bill. People will be offering 
amendments. We will be debating it on the floor. For some of my Senate 
colleagues, it is the first time they will ever see this happen. We 
don't do that anymore, but we are going to do it on this important 
issue, and we should. The reason we should is not just because the 
President issued the challenge and not just because so many lives are 
hanging in the balance. It is because when we get down to this issue, 
it becomes extremely personal.
  Today for the 108th time, I am going to tell the story of a Dreamer. 
I use the word ``Dreamer'' because I am proud of it. The President said 
at the Republican retreat: Don't ever use that word ``Dreamer.''
  I use it because I introduced the DREAM Act in 2001. Before I 
introduced that bill, if you said ``Dreamer,'' people thought you were 
talking about a British rock group with a guy named Freddie. We created 
the DREAM Act, and I want to tell you the story of this Dreamer. This 
is Saba Nafees. She is the 108th Dreamer I have told the story of on 
the floor. When she was 11 years old, they brought her to the United 
States from Pakistan. She grew up in Fort Worth, TX. In high school, 
she played piano, sang in the choir, and played tennis. She then 
studied mathematics at Texas Tech. She was ineligible for any 
government assistance to go to school. She had to work, borrow money. 
That is how she went to school--a mathematics degree at Texas Tech. 
There she was, a research scholar, co-vice president of the Student 
Service Organization, president of the Texas chapter of the National 
Mathematics Honor Society. She participated in premed and math 
mentoring programs for younger students. She was awarded the Texas Tech 
department of mathematics prize for excellence in mathematics by an 
undergraduate woman.
  In 2014, Saba graduated from Texas Tech Honors College with a 
bachelor of science in mathematics, with the highest honors. Today, 
Saba is a Ph.D. candidate studying mathematical biology. Please do not 
ask me on the final what

[[Page S697]]

mathematical biology is, but she is majoring in it at Texas Tech. She 
is focusing on a better understanding of biological data and disease. 
She teaches undergraduate students as a graduate teaching assistant. 
What is her dream in America? To use mathematics to advance research to 
cure diseases like cancer.
  Let me read you what she wrote to me. She said:

       I am an aspiring scientist and hope to continue my research 
     in mathematical biology. Currently, there's an ever 
     increasing need for computational and mathematical analysis 
     of biological phenomena, specifically in the areas of 
     bioinformatics and medicine. I hope to contribute to this 
     field and give back to my country just as this country has 
     contributed to my education. . . . Without DACA, I would have 
     been forced to continue living a life in the shadows, a life 
     with constant upper bounds, and a life that is imprisoned in 
     the very country I call home.

  Saba is what this debate is all about. There are those who say: We 
are too busy to do this; we will get back to it later. There are those 
who say: Well, I am sure she is a very talented person, but she is 
illegal, you know.
  There are those who say we are fools to let a talent like this leave 
America. We are crazy to give up on such amazing young people.
  We are wrong to call them lazy, for goodness' sakes. There isn't a 
lazy bone in this young woman's body. I don't think so. What she has 
achieved is nothing short of a miracle as an undocumented student in 
America.
  Some others have argued: Well, she can stay, but you have to punish 
her parents. We have to make them leave the United States of America.
  There has to be a better way. Yes. Was it wrong? Did it, maybe, even 
violate a law for them to bring her here? What parent wouldn't do it if 
it meant survival or if it meant a future for a child? We can make them 
pay a price. In the comprehensive immigration bill, there is a fine and 
a long waiting period. All of the things could be included in here.
  For goodness' sakes, this young lady and her family can be an 
important part of America's future if and when we decide in the U.S. 
Senate that she is worth our effort. We will have that chance soon. We 
will start the debate soon. Young people like her will listen to this 
debate because they know what is at stake and whether there is any 
future for them in the United States of America.
  For goodness' sakes, in the name of justice, in the name of the 
values that made this country what it is today, we ought to stand up on 
a bipartisan basis and solve this problem in a humane and sensible way.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, once again, I rise to talk about the 
Dreamers.
  I thank Senator Durbin for his leadership. I know the leader will be 
coming in shortly, and I will yield when he arrives.
  I thank Senator Durbin for leading the Dream Act with Senator 
Graham--for negotiating for years and years to get support on the 
Republican side of the aisle, for never giving up, and for telling the 
stories, as we have just heard, to bring this home to people--so people 
understand that this is not just a number, that this is not just a 
statistic, that this is not just someone whom you call a name. These 
are people who are part of the United States of America. Ninety-seven 
percent of them work or are in school. The average age they were 
brought over was 6\1/2\ years old.
  Like Senator Durbin, Senator Graham, and many of my colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle, I am and always have been committed to passing 
a legislative solution to protect Dreamers. I appreciate the Presiding 
Officer's interest in this issue and the group that we have, the Common 
Sense Caucus, that has been working together in debating this and 
trying to come together to allow for the Dreamers to have a path to 
citizenship, to allow them to stay in our country, to stop the 
deportation of what would be something like 800,000 people--something 
the President of the United States has firmly said he does not want to 
do. He wants to see a path to citizenship along with increased border 
security.
  I see that the leader has arrived, and I will continue my remarks 
when he has completed his.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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