[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 47 (Monday, March 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1780-S1784]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

 ALLOW STATES AND VICTIMS TO FIGHT ONLINE SEX TRAFFICKING ACT OF 2017--
                      MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture having been invoked on the motion to 
proceed to H.R. 1865, the Senate will resume legislative session and 
consideration of the motion to proceed.
  The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, we just had a vote in this Chamber on a 
very significant piece of legislation. It was the motion to proceed to 
it. It was agreed to with good Republican and Democratic majorities, 
with both sides of the aisle supporting moving to this debate.
  Because we have cosponsors from both sides of the aisle, I feel 
confident that we will get to an end point, and we

[[Page S1781]]

must. This issue of trafficking human beings is something the Senate 
must stand up against, particularly because there is a Federal law that 
now permits trafficking online that otherwise would be considered a 
criminal act. I want to talk a little about that legislation tonight.
  We probably will not have the final vote until Wednesday, and some of 
the information I will provide tonight will be setting the reasons, the 
basis for doing this legislation. Then, between now and Wednesday, we 
will have to learn more about the specifics of it, what is happening 
online, and how the U.S. Senate can step in and provide the legislation 
to remediate what is an obvious problem to anyone who looks at this 
issue.
  Human trafficking is such an egregious crime. We all, I hope, agree 
with that. It is also a very lucrative crime--$150 billion a year is 
the estimate, and that is probably second only to the drug trade in 
terms of the amount of money involved. Think about this. This is 
selling human beings.
  The Senate has taken steps in this body in a bipartisan way over the 
past 6 or 7 years to focus on this issue, and I certainly commend my 
colleagues for that. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and I, as 
a Republican, started a bipartisan caucus to stop human trafficking 
about 6 years ago. We started with the two of us, and now there are a 
couple of dozen. There are many Members who are engaged and involved in 
this.
  Over those past 6 years, the Senate has passed legislation to 
increase the penalties on those who buy children for sex. For the first 
time in a decade and a half, we increased the Federal penalties.
  We have helped to stop international trafficking by U.S. Government 
contractors overseas with legislation that was signed into law.
  We have helped with regard to finding missing children by requiring 
for the first time that those missing children have a photograph 
attached to them. Unbelievably, until that legislation, most kids in my 
home State of Ohio and other States who went missing did not have the 
information provided to law enforcement and others--people who work in 
shelters, people who are in the juvenile justice system--to be able to 
find those children. Why is that so important? Because, as you can 
imagine, kids who go missing are sometimes the most vulnerable to being 
trafficked.
  We also passed legislation to improve the data on trafficking. There 
is legislation called the Sex Trafficking Data and Response Act, which 
we passed in this body to provide better information about this problem 
so we could come up with better solutions by understanding what is 
going on. Trafficking is in the shadows. It is very profitable, but it 
is an illicit activity. So that legislation was critical.
  By the way, the primary author of that legislation was Senator Ron 
Wyden of Oregon. Senator Wyden will probably be on this floor over the 
next couple of days talking about some of the concerns he has about the 
online legislation we have, but I want you to know that Senator Wyden 
has been out front on opposing trafficking through this Sex Trafficking 
Data and Response Act. I was the lead Republican on that legislation, 
so I worked with him, and I commend him for that.
  We also passed legislation to change the paradigm in Federal law and 
treat these children who are trafficked as victims rather than as 
criminals. The key is to get these young people into treatment, longer 
term recovery, and deal with what is, as you can imagine, a very 
traumatic situation--often related to drugs as well, so drug treatment. 
Something that I think is perhaps the most important thing we can do is 
to understand that these are victims who, in order to get back on their 
feet, need to be taken from the criminal justice system and put into 
the kind of treatment they need.
  Despite efforts here in the Senate--and by others around the country, 
by the way--to deal with this trafficking issue and raise an awareness 
of it, unbelievably today, as we stand here in this country, we are 
seeing an increase in one type of trafficking, and that is sex 
trafficking. You might ask, how could that be possible? We passed all 
this legislation to help. We have gotten increased consciousness about 
the issue. People are more aware of the problem, and certainly there is 
a consensus that this is something we ought to crack down on. Yet it is 
happening. I will tell you what the experts say. They say it is 
happening for one simple reason, and that is that more and more women 
and children are being sold online--the ruthless efficiency of the 
internet. So that is where this legislation focuses, and it focuses 
there because that is where we see the problem.
  Traffickers are using the internet to sell women and children, and we 
have a responsibility to act. If we don't act, we will allow a Federal 
law that was passed by this body 21 years ago, which I think 
inadvertently has created part of the problem by shielding these 
websites, to remain.
  I will talk more about this later in the week as we get into the 
specifics of our legislation and why it would address the problem, but 
the bottom line is that we have a real problem.
  The anti-trafficking group Polaris--we recently received its 2017 
report. The report illustrates the true nature of the crisis. This is 
the heat chart put up by Polaris. It shows the locations of cases 
reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline last year alone, in 
2017. As we can see--and this explains why we see such strong, 
bipartisan support for our legislation--this is happening everywhere, 
in every State in the Union. Unfortunately, it is increasing, not 
decreasing, despite all the efforts locally and even here at the 
Federal level.
  The national hotline that Polaris runs--and I hope to be at that 
hotline, by the way, later this week, as they are opening a new 
facility and expanding what they are doing--experienced a 13-percent 
increase in reported cases nationwide just last year. So despite all 
the efforts, they are actually seeing an increase. In my home State of 
Ohio alone, 371 cases of human trafficking were reported to the 
hotlines. Across the country, their hotlines handled a record 8,759 
cases in 2017, up from 7,737 reported cases in 2016. Again, these are 
only the cases that are reported. That doesn't mean there aren't many, 
many more cases out there that are not reported to the hotlines.
  In the 10 years they have operated these hotlines, by the way, human 
trafficking reports have increased 842 percent. Again, it is 
unbelievable that this is happening in this country in this century and 
increasing.
  I chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. A couple of 
years ago, being interested in this issue, we started to talk to some 
of the experts around the country. I met with people back home--
particularly the victims of trafficking and some of the survivors--and 
I kept hearing the same thing from everybody, whether it was the 
advocacy groups for those being trafficked, law enforcement, or the 
social service agencies that are helping to treat these women and girls 
who are dealing with the trauma we talked about earlier. The one thing 
I kept hearing was the word ``backpage.'' That is just one website, but 
it seemed as though there were a lot of people being trafficked on that 
one website. I certainly heard it back home, where these women and 
girls said to me: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to the 
smartphone, and backpage is where I was trafficked.
  Nearly 75 percent of all child trafficking reports that the National 
Center for Missing and Exploited Children receives from the public 
involved backpage--75 percent of the reports.
  Another anti-trafficking organization called Shared Hope 
International says that service providers working with child sex-
trafficking victims have reported that more than 80 percent of their 
clients were bought and sold on backpage.
  We talked earlier about how lucrative this business is, but one 
website seems to have practically monopolized it.
  With that knowledge, in 2015 the Permanent Subcommittee on 
Investigations, led by Ranking Member Claire McCaskill from Missouri 
and me, conducted an investigation. We spent 18 months researching 
this. We looked at every angle of this issue, and specifically we 
looked into how backpage operates. It wasn't easy because backpage was 
not willing to cooperate, as you can imagine. What we did find was that 
the company was far more complicit in these crimes than we had 
previously thought.

[[Page S1782]]

  We subpoenaed backpage for their company documents, and they refused 
to comply. When you refuse to comply with a subpoena around here, 
normally we can kind of tell people: Well, if you don't comply, we will 
bring the full weight of the criminal law on you. They still wouldn't 
comply. So we had to come to the floor of the U.S. Senate to enforce 
the subpoenas, which hadn't been done in 21 years around here. 
Fortunately, when we made our case to our colleagues here in the 
Senate, everyone in the Senate said: Yes, let's be sure they do comply 
by taking this to the criminal justice system and allowing our lawyers 
here to take this case. So we did.
  We thought, well, we will win a case at the district court level, 
which we did, and that will be it. No, they appealed that. We won a 
case at the circuit court level, and we thought that was it. No, they 
appealed that. Are you getting the drift here that they did not want to 
supply these documents and did not want to testify? Finally, we took it 
all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Supreme 
Court agreed with us and told them that they had to comply, with the 
threat of criminal sanctions if they did not.
  Having won that, we then found ourselves in possession of over 1 
million pages of documents. In other words, they flooded us with 
documents, and our lawyers did a good job going through them. Through 
this investigation, we found what some of us had kind of thought might 
be the case, which was that this company was actually complicit. In 
other words, they knew what they were doing, and they were knowingly 
facilitating criminal sex trafficking of vulnerable women and children. 
They actually coached traffickers on how to edit the adult classified 
ads to post so-called clean ads for these illegal transactions. Then, 
of course, they would cover up evidence of those crimes in order to 
increase their own profits.
  In 2006, as an example, backpage executives instructed staff to edit 
the text of adult ads--not to take them down, mind you, but to edit 
them--which is exactly how they facilitated this type of trafficking. 
By October 2010, backpage executives had a formal process in place, we 
learned through all these documents, of both manual and automated 
deletion of incriminating words and phrases in ads.
  This is an email from one of backpage's executives in 2010. It says:

       I'm attaching a spreadsheet with the most current list of 
     coded items to be stripped out. Email your lists to me by the 
     end of the day. . . . Thanks.

  In other words, they were telling these people who were posting ads: 
Oh, you can't say this word or that word because then law enforcement 
will know that we are engaged in selling underaged girls online. So 
they told them to take out those words. It is unbelievable.
  What kinds of words were stripped out of the ads, allowing sex 
trafficking posts to stay up without violating the posting words? These 
are the kinds of words they took out: ``teenage,'' ``little girl,'' 
``school girl.'' ``Cheerleader'' was one of them. For those of you who 
are literary types, one was ``Lolita,'' which is a novel about an 
underaged girl and an older man, and also ``fresh'' and ``AMBER 
Alert.''
  These are the kinds of people we are dealing with here. Once these 
incriminating words were removed, the posts could then go on the 
website. That is how backpage coached the traffickers on how to get 
away with their crimes. Again, this filter didn't stop the ads, even 
though they knew it was illegal activity; they only edited them to try 
to hide that. So it didn't change what was advertised--the fact that 
these were underaged girls; they only edited the way it was advertised. 
Of course, this did nothing to stop the criminal activity, but it 
facilitated it knowingly.
  The incentive? Why would backpage go through all of this? Quite 
simply, profits. This is a very profitable enterprise.
  What is the cost of these crimes? It is very profitable, but the cost 
is human dignity, trauma. The cost is far more than money; it is 
suffering and sometimes human life. I have heard stories about this. I 
know my colleagues in the Senate have heard stories about it, and that 
is why there is so much support for this legislation across the 
country. These individual stories are compelling, they are powerful, 
and they are heartbreaking.
  Imagine for a moment that your daughter is missing. She has been gone 
for several weeks. She is 14 years old. Someone says: You ought to look 
on this website called backpage. So you do. You look on backpage--you 
are a mom--and you find your daughter.
  This is the story of Kubiiki Pride and M.A. She told her story 
bravely before our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. She told 
us the details, and we were able to use that as part of our 
investigation and to come up with a legislative response. She said she 
actually told backpage--she called them and said: I found my daughter. 
She has been missing for weeks. She is on your website. Thank you for 
taking down the ad and helping me to connect with my daughter.
  As you can imagine, these were sexually explicit photographs of a 14-
year-old girl. She didn't know whether she was alive or dead, so she 
was excited to find her but appalled by what she saw, as any of us 
would be.
  What did backpage say? We can't take down the ad because you didn't 
pay for it, did you?
  She said: Of course, I didn't pay for it; she is my daughter.
  That is the level of evil we are talking about.
  This is another story of another brave individual who has come 
forward. This is Nacole, the mom, and J.S. Nacole also bravely 
testified in front of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 
J.S. was a 15-year-old when she ran away. She loved her family, and she 
wrote them a 5-page letter saying how much she loved them, but she 
chose to leave the safety of her family and home, and she ended up in a 
homeless shelter for teens. A 22-year-old woman who was posing as a 
teen there approached her and said, ``I can help you make some money'' 
and then introduced her to a pimp, who then sold her on backpage. For 
more than 3 months, she was sold online multiple times a day.
  Finally, an undercover police officer posing as a customer rescued 
her. Thankfully, he did, because for some many of the girls, the story 
goes on and sometimes ends in a very tragic way.

  This is Yvonne Ambrose. Yvonne actually testified before the Commerce 
Committee. She and her mom did a beautiful job talking about her 
heartbreak and her tragic encounter with backpage. Yvonne got a call on 
Christmas Eve in 2016 that every parent dreads. It was about her 
daughter Desiree. They said in the call that her 16-year-old daughter 
had been murdered after being exploited and sold for sex on 
backpage.com. One of the backpage customers apparently was the one who 
murdered her beautiful daughter.
  Yvonne is honoring Desiree's memory by working with us to try to hold 
these websites accountable, and Kubiiki and Nacole are fighting for 
justice.
  These are only three examples tonight, but there are so many others 
and so many I have experienced back home. Again, these are 
heartbreaking stories. One girl told me she started to be trafficked at 
age 9 by her father. Some others have told me of not having parents at 
home, being in foster homes and leaving the foster homes either when 
they were emancipated at age 18 or earlier and the horrible situation 
they found themselves in.
  I have had the opportunity to meet with survivors in cities around 
Ohio--in Dayton at Oasis House, in Columbus at Alvis, in Akron, Toledo, 
Cincinnati, and Cleveland. The majority of these young women tell me 
the same thing about backpage. Usually there are drugs involved as well 
that create a dependency.
  Unbelievably, for years, these websites have gotten away with this 
because when parents like Yvonne, Kubiiki, or Nacole file a lawsuit for 
damages to try to stop what is going on, they are told: We are immune. 
When the prosecutors in these local communities step up and ask: ``How 
could this illegal activity be going on? This is illegal to do on the 
street corners, certainly it is illegal to do online,'' the judges say: 
We are immune.
  We will get into this later as to why that happens, how it happens, 
and what

[[Page S1783]]

we are doing about it in this legislation. I look forward to that 
discussion. I look forward to the debate on the Senate floor as to how 
we came up with a very targeted and very specific approach to this that 
doesn't interfere with the freedom of the internet at all, but it does 
stop activity that never was imagined. When Congress passed a law 21 
years ago, it never imagined it would permit this kind of criminal 
activity online.
  Tonight I thank those families who had the courage to step forward, 
tell their stories publicly, and channel their grief into something 
constructive, which is to come up with a legislative solution that 
helps address this problem so the next 14-year-old daughter or 16-year-
old daughter does not find herself in these same horrible situations, 
with all the trauma and all the heartbreak that occurs.
  Justice cannot be seen, but its absence can be felt, and that is what 
is happening now, an absence of justice. Those who have been trafficked 
online only see the websites that knowingly facilitated it to prosper 
and escape legal consequences. That has to stop. That is an injustice 
to me.
  I look forward to further debate again this week. I look forward to 
the vote on Wednesday. If we can pass the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers 
Act, we will make a difference. We will save lives. We will save women, 
girls, and boys from going through this traumatic experience and 
instead enable them to achieve their God-given potential in life.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.


                      Yemen War Powers Resolution

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight to discuss 
America's role in the crisis in Yemen.
  I have here a picture of the fractured remains of buildings, people 
fleeing from those buildings, and a small child, probably in her 
father's arms. This represents the challenge of the bombing that is 
going on in that nation. I am here tonight to discuss America's role in 
that bombing and the fact that here in the Chamber we need to debate 
how it is we have come to the point of supporting this bombing when the 
War Powers Act clearly says we should not be.
  When our Founding Fathers wrote our Constitution, they designated the 
President as the Commander in Chief, but they gave Congress, the House, 
and the Senate the sole power to declare war. Article I, section 8 
states unequivocally: ``The Congress shall have the power . . . to 
declare war.''
  It is only Congress that can take our Nation from peace to war. If 
one has any doubt about that, consider the words of James Madison 
himself, the father of our Constitution. He said: ``In no part of the 
constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which 
confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to 
the executive department.''
  Now, the clearly stated responsibility in our Constitution was 
reinforced by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, often referred to as the 
War Powers Act. That particular piece of legislation stated as its 
purpose the following: ``It is the purpose of this joint resolution to 
fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United 
States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and 
the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed 
Forces into hostilities.'' It goes on to say: ``The constitutional 
powers of the President as Commander-in-chief to introduce United 
States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent 
involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, 
are exercised only''--and that is a critical word--``pursuant to (1) a 
declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a 
national emergency created by attack upon the United States.''
  The picture I showed you showing the fractured remains of buildings 
and people fleeing that bombing in Yemen, that activity is not taking 
place subject to a declaration of war by this body--we have done no 
such thing--nor is there any specific statutory authorization for our 
assistance in that, nor is there a national emergency created by an 
attack upon the United States where that is justified.
  Tomorrow this Chamber will take up this issue. We will be voting on a 
resolution put forward by our colleagues Senator Sanders, Senator Lee, 
and Senator Murphy calling for the removal of our Armed Forces in this 
role of supporting Saudi Arabia in this war against the Houthis.
  There are two basic components of our presence in Yemen, and those 
are very distinct and not to be confused. The first is counterterrorism 
efforts in which we are directly engaged against associated forces of 
al-Qaida. This is a role that stems from the authorization for the use 
of military force that we passed in this Chamber in 2001. Members may 
come to the floor and argue about whether that initial authorization 
for use of military force involving al-Qaida in Afghanistan has been 
stretched beyond recognition. I would argue it has been stretched 
substantially and perhaps beyond recognition, but that is not the issue 
we are debating this week.
  This week we are addressing the central issue of whether our 
involvement in supporting Saudi Arabia in its role in war against the 
Houthis in Yemen has violated our Constitution and the War Powers Act, 
and we have to confront and face how our assistance is contributing to 
a vast humanitarian crisis in that country. We may not have boots on 
the ground in support of the Saudi war against the Houthis, but we are 
very involved.
  As we judge whether this involvement is violating the Constitution 
and the War Powers Act, we should turn to section 8, the interpretation 
of the joint resolution. It says:

       Authority to introduce United States Armed Forces into 
     hostilities or into situations wherein involvement in 
     hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances shall 
     not be inferred--
       (1) from any provision of law . . . including any provision 
     contained in any appropriation Act, unless--

  This is the key--

     such provision specifically authorizes the introduction of 
     the United States Armed Forces into hostilities.

  It is very clear. The interpretation of this joint resolution says 
there is no room here to be participating in hostilities--that is a 
war--even in a supporting role, unless it has been specifically 
authorized by Congress. This interpretation of the joint resolution 
section of the War Powers Act goes on to say:

       (c) For purposes of this joint resolution, the term 
     ``introduction of United States Armed Forces'' includes--

  You see the language here--

     the assignment of member of such armed forces to command, 
     coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the 
     regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country 
     or government when such military forces are engaged.

  There is the key fact that was laid out when we passed the War Powers 
Act. This War Powers Act doesn't just address us directly engaging in 
hostilities or directly confronting an enemy on the battlefield, it 
includes these provisions of commanding, coordinating, participating in 
the movement of, or accompanying military forces of a foreign country.
  There is no question that we are coordinating and participating in 
the movement of the Saudi forces, so let's take a look at exactly how 
we are involved. The administration comes back and says: Yes, but we 
are not directly bombing the Houthis. We are not directly putting boots 
on the ground and shooting them.
  It is clear the War Powers Act includes coordinating with, 
participating with, supporting, and partnering, if you will, with a 
foreign country involved in such a war. We are very involved.
  First, we are involved by refueling Saudi planes en route to bombing 
the forces of the Houthis in Yemen. That is pretty direct involvement, 
and it goes to that language which says ``participate in the movement 
of'' those foreign forces. If we are refueling their planes en route to 
bombing the Houthis, we are participating in the movement of their 
military forces. A plane, a bomber, is a part of a military force.
  Second, we are providing intelligence and thus very directly 
supporting this war of the Saudis.
  Third, we are selling the weapons to them that they are using in this 
war on the Houthis.
  Fourth, we are providing targeting assistance. We have even 
established a

[[Page S1784]]

joint combined planning cell, an operation center, to conduct military 
intelligence activities in partnership with Saudi Arabia.
  Here is why this matters so much: It has a huge impact on the lives 
of the people in Yemen. It is very possible the planes we refueled are 
responsible for conducting a series of three airstrikes in Saada last 
month, killing 5 civilians and wounding 14 more, including 4 children, 
as well as paramedics trying to pull survivors out of the rubble after 
that first strike, or that the planes we refueled played a role in 
striking a hotel last August that turned the building's ceiling black 
with the charred blood of 50 farmers who were staying in that 
building. We know that the bombs we have sold to the Saudis are killing 
many civilians. It is time for us here to reckon with that fact.

  A lot of Americans may not even know we are involved in this war. It 
has not been widely discussed. There are so many things going on across 
the planet at this time--so much going on in Syria, for example, that 
perhaps Americans in general are not paying attention. But we should be 
paying attention because of the carnage that is occurring: 10,000 
civilians have been killed since this conflict began. The great, vast 
bulk of those civilians are dying from air strikes conducted by Saudi 
Arabia that we are supporting through intelligence and target 
assistance and refueling. Then there are the consequences of that 
bombardment. The result is just a tremendous humanitarian crisis.
  The Saudis have been involved in blockading the ability to get 
humanitarian supplies into Yemen--food and medicine and fuel. This has 
resulted in what the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for 
Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, 
has warned could become ``the largest famine the world has seen for 
many decades.'' Seven million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation 
because of this war that we are involved in and the related Saudi 
blockade of food and medicine.
  About every day, 130 Yemeni children die from extreme hunger and 
disease--130 a day. One of the factors that is killing people is 
cholera. Since October of 2016--so roughly a little less than a year 
and a half ago--1 million Yemenis have contracted cholera. More than 
2,000 have died from it. It is the largest cholera outbreak in recorded 
history. Let me say that again: 1 million Yemenis have contracted 
cholera, and it is the largest cholera outbreak in recorded history. So 
7 million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation, 1 million have 
contracted cholera, and so many are dying because of this war we are 
involved in.
  The death and destruction in Yemen is unimaginable, and the United 
States needs to take a hard look at the role we are playing--a role we 
are playing in violation of our Constitution and in violation of the 
War Powers Act of 1973. That is the issue we are going to be discussing 
here on the floor.
  I know there is some popularity in saying: Let's not look at that 
humanitarian crisis and our role in it; let's just look at the 
relationship we have with Saudi Arabia and know that they have helped 
us in other cases--for example, the war on ISIS. Let's know that they 
are a good customer for many of our products and for many of our 
military products. But I say to my colleagues: This issue is bigger 
than simply a good marketplace or a good relationship with Saudi 
Arabia. This goes to our involvement, our culpability in the deaths of 
thousands of Yemenis and 130 children a day through bombs falling on 
them, through hunger, starvation, through cholera.
  It is hard for me to think about this young child in this picture, 
this young Yemeni, who clearly is the victim either of cholera or 
starvation or some other consequence of this conflict. But imagine 130 
of these children dying every day.
  It is our responsibility to honor the Constitution, and it is our 
responsibility as humans on this planet to wrestle with the fact that 
our involvement is contributing to this vast humanitarian disaster. Let 
us not abdicate our responsibility on the basis of friendship with 
another nation based on the fact that they are a good market for our 
products or that we think they may be future partners in some other 
agenda. We have a direct responsibility in war and peace that we have 
not fulfilled, and this week, with this coming resolution tomorrow, is 
a point that we must wrestle with this. Let us wrestle with it and 
honor the Constitution and give some integrity to the 1973 War Powers 
Resolution.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that cloture on 
the motion to proceed to H.R. 1865 be vitiated, and that at a time to 
be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the 
Democratic leader, on Wednesday, March 21, the Senate proceed to the 
consideration of H.R. 1865; further, that the only amendments in order 
be Wyden amendments Nos. 2212 and 2213; finally, that there be up to 4 
hours of debate concurrently on the amendments, and that following the 
use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote in relation to the 
amendments in the order listed, with a 60-vote affirmative threshold 
required for adoption of each amendment, the bill be read a third time, 
and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, if amended, 
with no further intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.


               Unanimous Consent Agreement--S.J. Res. 54

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following 
the resumption of the motion to proceed to H.R. 1865, on Tuesday, March 
20, Senator Sanders, or his designee, be recognized to offer a motion 
to discharge S.J. Res. 54; further, that there be up to 4 hours of 
debate, equally divided between the opponents and the proponents of the 
resolution, and that following the use or yielding back of that time 
the Senate vote in relation to the motion to discharge.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________