[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 81 (Thursday, May 17, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2736-S2748]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2019--MOTION TO
PROCEED
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to the consideration of S.
Con. Res. 36.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 384, S. Con. Res. 36, a
concurrent resolution setting forth the congressional budget
for the United States Government for fiscal year 2019 and
setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal
years 2020 through 2028.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, there
will be 45 minutes under the control of Senator Paul or his designee
and 45 minutes under the control of the Democratic leader or his
designee.
The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, this year there will be no budget presented
by the Republicans or the Democrats. I think that is a bad idea. I
think the government should have a budget. There should be a document
that says what we are for, what we are against, and how we are going to
spend our money. I think it is particularly important because we are
incurring so much debt.
We may remember when Republicans campaigned against enormous spending
by President Obama and $1 trillion annual deficits. Now we are faced
with enormous spending and $1 trillion annual deficits from
Republicans. I think it is important that we have a discussion about
this.
Do we have too much debt? Some will say: Well, I have debt for my
house, and that is not bad. The country has a lot of debt that they
borrow against capital expenditures--things that don't expire. I think
there is some truth to that. You can have a manageable amount of debt,
particularly if it is against something you are borrowing that doesn't
go away. But if you are borrowing money for the grocery store or for
your apartment, that might be a bad thing. It will not last very long.
You will do it for a month or two, and pretty soon the bank will come
calling. So there is a point at which debt is too cumbersome, and there
is too much of it.
Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of
Harvard did a study linking debt to economic growth. They concluded
that when a country exceeds 90 percent of their GDP, when their debt is
almost
[[Page S2737]]
equal to their GDP, economic growth begins to slow, and you lose
probably 1 to 2 points just because of the burden of the debt. This is
all of the debt--what the government owes to the public at large and to
themselves. They said that when it exceeds 90 percent, it is a problem.
Currently, our debt is at 105 percent; our gross public debt is 105
percent of our GDP.
We now have a national debt of about $21 trillion. Historically,
Congress had sort of a cover on this. Congress would try to rein in the
debt. There would be a big debate every time we raised the debt
ceiling. Congress would have to lift it each time, and there was some
punishment out there for those who voted to raise the debt ceiling.
Now we don't raise the debt ceiling by a certain amount because that
became embarrassing and limiting, making them come back each time to
try to raise the debt ceiling. Now what we do is raise it for a period
of time.
Currently, the debt ceiling has been raised, and you can spend as
much as you want for a little over a year. We did it, I believe, back
in December. For about 1\1/2\ years, the government can borrow as much
as they can possibly borrow for that period of time. Basically, there
is no limit. The debt ceiling vote has become a meaningless vote
because we just raise it for a period of time.
Is the debt a problem? How much interest do we pay on the debt? We
pay $300 billion in interest. You say: Well, is that a problem? Paying
on the interest crowds out other things that you want from the
government. So when people come to my office and say ``I want this from
my government,'' I say ``Well, part of the problem is we are paying
$300 billion in interest, and part of the problem is we don't have
anything to give you because we are borrowing about 25 percent of every
dollar we spend.''
Every time the government spends a dollar, 25 percent of that is
borrowed. This is on current accounts of things people want. For
example, if I were to ask you: Is it a good idea to borrow money to
give to your church? People say: Well, my church is a good thing, and I
want to give money to my church. But is it a good idea and will it last
very long if you go to the bank to borrow 25 percent of every dollar
you spend and tithe 25 percent to your church? You say: My church is a
good thing. But is it a good thing to borrow that money, and will the
bank keep loaning you that money, and are there repercussions to having
so much debt?
We have a $300 billion interest payment at about a 2-percent interest
rate. The interest rate is manipulated by the Federal Reserve, and
there are those who report that the main reason the interest rates are
kept low by the Federal Reserve is not necessarily to stimulate
economic growth; it is to finance this enormous burden of debt.
What happens when interest rates normalize? Many are predicting they
will. As economic growth begins to pick up, you are going to see an
acceleration in interest rates. What happens at 5 percent? Can we even
manage our debt at 5 percent?
People have looked at what the interest will be, even saying interest
rates stay stable, and they say that within about a decade, interest
rates will exceed all other payments of the government. The estimate is
that within 10 years, interest payments alone will be about $761
billion--greater than national defense, greater than any other area of
the budget. Even now, the second biggest item in the budget after
defense is interest.
So some say: But we have to finance the military, and the military
needs more money. That is why you hear Republicans now no longer caring
about the debt. They got more money for the military, but they had to
make an unholy alliance with Democrats and give them more for social
welfare. So we have guns and butter. Everybody gets what they want--
except for the taxpayer and those of us who care about the debt.
So the debt has exploded now under Republican control. You say: Well,
don't we need it for the military?
Well, I think there are some arguments we should probably engage in
before we decide that. We have doubled the amount in nominal terms that
we spend on the military since 9/11. In real terms, there is about a
36-percent increase in national defense. We spend more on the military
than the next eight countries combined.
There is an argument that it isn't necessarily that the budget has
not grown enough, but it is that maybe the military mission is too
large. Maybe it is not that the budget is too small but that our
military mission is too large, that we are at war in too many places
around the globe and that we should reassess that.
Many Republicans will say: Well, that is all good and well, but
really the culprit is entitlements.
Entitlements are growing at 6 percent--Social Security, Medicare,
food stamps. There is truth to that, but watch closely the people who
tell you that the problem is entitlements and ask yourself if they are
doing anything to fix entitlements. Ask them whether they have put
forward a bill on the floor of the Senate to rein in spending and
entitlements. Ask them whether they have even cosponsored a bill or
whether they are agitating for a bill to rein in entitlements. No. They
are petrified of looking at entitlements. So everybody complains about
it, and nobody does anything about it.
Everybody says they are for a balanced budget. Yet, when we have a
vote in a few minutes on a budget that actually balances in 5 years,
consistent with the balanced budget amendment, I think we will get a
handful--maybe a dozen or maybe two dozen. But the majority of
Republicans will say: Oh my goodness, we could never cut spending. So
in the abstract, they are for a balanced budget. They are for a
balanced budget amendment. They will all vote for it. They will all
come down here. I think we had a unanimous vote a few years ago.
Republicans all voted for the balanced budget amendment. Just a month
ago in the House, all the people who voted to bust the budget caps, all
the people who voted for the extra spending, all these Republicans then
voted for the balanced budget amendment, which says you have to balance
in 5 years. Typically, when they have brought forward a budget, they
have tried to balance it in 10 years and struggled. So they vote for a
balanced budget amendment that balances in 5 years, and yet they
struggle to come up with a budget that is not fake to balance in 10
years.
We passed a budget last year. It was a Republican budget. I voted
against it because I think it had fake cuts in it, and it had fake
reporting, and they weren't serious about it. I will give an example.
The budget last year that the Republicans passed had about $4 trillion
in entitlement savings over 10 years. You say: Well, did they enact any
of that? Zero. Do they have any bills to do any entitlement reform?
Zero. Did we ever debate and vote on any bills that would have done
anything to entitlement spending? No. In fact, in the first year of the
Republican budget last year, there was $96 billion--that is a
significant savings--all in entitlements, and yet nobody had a bill
that even went to committee. There was never a committee vote. There
was never a floor vote. No one lifted a finger to do anything about
entitlement spending.
So it is a canard for those who say: Well, the real problem is not
military; the real problem is not nonmilitary discretionary; the real
problem is entitlements. Sure, entitlements are growing faster, but
unless we are doing something about it, it is simply saying: Oh, we
have to keep spending over here because the real problem is over here,
but we are not going to do anything over here, which runs into really
the hypocrisy that we face today.
I have often said that the Republican Party is an empty vessel unless
we imbue it with value. We say we are against big spending. We say we
are against big government. We say we are for devolving power,
structure, and money back to the States. Yet the government grows under
Democrats and it grows under Republicans.
Democrats are sometimes more honest about wanting to grow government.
They will go home and say they are going to make government big enough
to put a ham on every table, a chicken in every pot. They are a little
bit more honest about it. Republicans go home and say they believe in
the free market. They go to the Rotary Club and say: Well, I voted for
the balanced budget amendment. But the question is, Why won't they vote
for an actual budget that balances? Why won't they
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vote for a budget that actually is consistent with the balanced budget
amendment?
So what I have done is put forward my own budget. It is something I
have talked about for several years now. It wasn't originally my idea;
others have talked about it. It is called the penny plan. It says that
we would cut one penny out of every dollar the Federal Government
spends--1 percent. Could we not get to a point where we could actually
cut one penny out of every dollar? Isn't there enough waste going on in
government that we could actually cut a penny out of every dollar?
Like everything else, people argue the numbers. There is a lot of
fake math that goes on around here. Those on the left will say, oh, but
this will be cutting $13 trillion, when, in fact, it might not cut any.
For example, if we were to freeze government spending for 10 years, the
left would say: You have cut spending by $15 trillion because we were
going to increase spending by $15 trillion. So it is sort of fake
accounting. If we spend $3.2 trillion and next year we spend $32
billion less, that is a 1-percent cut, but the left will say: Oh, no,
we were going to increase spending by 6 percent, and so you are really
cutting spending by 7 percent. This enormous number comes up, but in
reality, we are taking last year's spending--3.2 trillion--and we are
going to cut it by 1 percent, $30 billion. If we do that every year for
5 years, the budget balances.
You say: Well, some people might not get all their money. Yes, there
would be some programs across government that would get less. I
challenge any American to call up my office and present proof that
there is not 1 percent waste and fraud in any program going on. I will
give an example. The earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit
are estimated to have 25 percent fraud. For years, you could get this
credit without a Social Security number. You could simply say: My kids
and I don't have one. The government would generate a taxpayer ID
number for you and give you a refund. This is to the tune of billions
of dollars. It is about $100 billion in the EITC, the earned-income tax
credit, and the additional child credit--many of those going to people
who were in our country illegally and had no Social Security number.
There is waste from top to bottom in government. How would you ever
find it? See, many people in this body on both sides of the aisle will
say: I am for rooting out waste. Yet you never find waste if you keep
giving them more money. If you reward government agencies with more
money, you are never going to get less waste.
The penny plan budget I am presenting would cut 1 percent. Does
anybody in America think government couldn't do with 1 percent less?
Many American families have had a bad year here and there and have to
deal with more than 1 percent less. One percent of this enormous
government, if it were cut each year, would go a long way toward making
us a stronger nation.
People say: Well, what about the military? I think that if the
government ran a balanced budget, we would have a stronger and more
secure nation. Admiral Mullen said he thought the No. 1 threat to our
national security was actually our debt. So there are many realistic
people, even high-ranking people in the military, who are saying: You
know what, if we want to secure our Nation, we have to make sure that
we have a sound economy and that we have a sound government that is not
borrowing so much money.
How rapidly do we borrow money? We borrow $1 million every minute--$1
million a minute. In fact, it is a little bit higher than that now. It
is about $1.5 million, and the curve over the next 10 years gets to
about $2 million a minute. Imagine how fast the money is flying out of
here. How big is $1 million? People have said that if you put hundred-
dollar bills in your hand, it is about 4 inches high to get to $1
million. We are borrowing $1 million or more every minute.
How would we get to $30 billion? How could we possibly cut $30
billion from the budget? I will give examples of where some of the
money is.
Foreign aid is about $30 billion. You say: Well, I want to help the
poor people in the world. I am all for you. If you want to give out of
your savings to help poor people around the world, all the benefit and
all the accolades for being generous, but if you want to borrow money,
you won't be able to do it for very long.
Should the U.S. Government borrow? We are going to borrow $1 trillion
this year. Should we borrow money to send it to poor countries, or
should we borrow money to send armaments to countries? I think it is a
big mistake. That is about $30 billion. So if you were to cut 1 percent
next year, you could actually cut 1 percent by simply eliminating
foreign aid.
How much do we spend in Afghanistan building their roads, building
their bridges, building their schools before they blow them up again
and then we rebuild them again? We have rebuilt some buildings in
Afghanistan seven times. That is nearly $50 billion, which is about a
year, year and a half, of the penny plan right there if we were to say:
Guess what. We won the Afghan war, and we are not going to stay
forever. We have some needs here at home that we are going to take care
of and not send all that money to Afghanistan.
Corporate welfare. Rich corporations in our country--I am all for
them. If they freely sell something to you and they make money because
you like their product and buy it, more power to them, but if they want
money from the Federal Government, that is ridiculous. I don't think
private business should be getting any money from the Federal
Government. It is estimated that corporate welfare is over $100
billion. I know for certain that we could find enough corporate welfare
that we could actually, by eliminating corporate welfare, do 1 year of
the penny plan.
Waste. Our office alone has found $3 billion in waste.
Interest. It is $300 billion, going up to $760 billion.
There are a lot of areas in our government that we could actually
look at and actually adhere to the penny plan and balance our budget. I
would like to go through a few items.
If there is anybody in America who believes their government is not
wasting their money, I would like to show them a few areas where the
government is wasting their money.
My staff recently went to Afghanistan. This is a picture of a luxury
hotel that your taxpayer dollars went to build. Your first question
might be why your taxpayer dollars would be going to a luxury hotel in
some Third World country. It is about 400 feet from our Embassy, and
this is what it looks like. They have been building it for 11 years,
and it is unfinished. Nothing was done to code, it is falling down, and
at this point, the hotel is so dangerous that we have to send our
soldiers to patrol it to make sure snipers aren't using the hotel to
shoot at our Embassy. So it is not only a waste of $90 million, never
having been completed, but it is now a danger to our troops. The talk
now is on how they are going to fix the problem.
Does anybody in Washington think we should spend less in Afghanistan?
Virtually no one. Both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats,
can't spend money fast enough in Afghanistan. No one is making a stand
and saying: Enough is enough. It is time to announce that we won, and
it is time to come home. The money just keeps going, good money after
bad--$90 million for a hotel that will never be built.
To add insult to injury, do you know what they are going to do now?
They are talking about selling the unfinished hotel. Do you know who
they are going to sell it to? Another branch of government. So
government built this--U.S. taxpayer dollars built this--and now they
are going to sell it to the State Department. Do you know what the
State Department is going to do with this luxury hotel in Kabul? They
are going to tear it down. So that is $90 million flushed down the
toilet.
You can't tell me this waste isn't rotting in our government from top
to bottom, and it is never rooted out. Why? Because we never give any
agency less money; everybody gets more money. If you are running an
agency or business and someone gives you more money, are you more
likely to root out waste or less likely to root out waste? The only way
they would ever root out waste is if they got a commandment--thou shalt
do this--from Congress, from the Senate, to say: Enough is
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enough. Let's declare victory and come home.
This hotel--$90 million flushed down the toilet. It is now a danger
to our troops, and they are going to tear it down. It was never
completed.
Also, in Afghanistan, there is brandnew equipment that we send over
there that is shredded. They have big, huge industrial shredders. My
staff saw them. They found boxes of new equipment--electrical outlet
boxes, all kinds of things--being shoved into the shredder. So we buy
brandnew equipment, and it is shoved into the shredder. There is $50
million of brandnew, never-used equipment that has been destroyed. This
doesn't even count the old stuff we are destroying. There are reports
that $7 billion--7 with a ``b,'' billion dollars--of used equipment,
such as tanks, humvees, et cetera, has been destroyed. Why? Our allies
are so unreliable, we are afraid that if we leave a tank or a humvee
there, it might be taken by the opposition and used against us. So we
have destroyed $7 billion of it because it is cheaper to destroy it
than to load it on planes and bring it over here. That is $7 billion.
The Department of Defense loses $29 million of heavy equipment. What
does that mean? They can't find it. It can't be accounted for. They
don't know where the equipment is. There is $29 million unaccounted for
in heavy equipment.
They tried to establish an Afghan equivalent for the Army Corps of
Engineers and lost $20 million of heavy equipment in the process.
There is $28 million worth of uniforms that are missing. Someone got
paid. We can't find the uniforms. We can't prove that anyone ever got
the uniforms.
Even more troubling than that, there was $700,000 worth of ammunition
missing. You would think we could at least keep up with ammunition. Do
you think that might be a danger and an insult to our young men and
women we send to Afghanistan, that we can't account for where the
ammunition is? I think if you can't account for it, there is a decent
chance the enemy has your ammunition or rogue elements in the Afghan
Government--which could be anyone--have sold it on the black market to
make money.
Where does your money go? I want you to realize as Americans where
your money is going. They spent $500,000 to study if selfies make you
happier. You take selfies of yourself smiling, then you look at them to
see if that makes you happier. Now, you may want to do this on your own
time, but do you want to spend $500,000 of taxpayer money when we are a
trillion dollars short?
This stuff has been going on with the National Science Foundation
since the 1970s. William Proxmire was a Senator back in the 1970s--a
conservative Democrat or a Democrat of some stripe. He used to do the
Golden Fleece Award. Many of them went to the National Science
Foundation around 1972. He complained about it for 10 years before he
retired. I have been complaining about it for 6 years.
What do the Republicans and Democrats do? They say: Oh, it is
science. You wouldn't know, sir, about science. We have to give them
more money. You are not smart enough to know there is a lot of science
in taking selfies. We could learn something really important, and it is
so important for the future of mankind to learn whether selfies of
people smiling will help the world in the end.
NIH. Everybody loves the NIH. They can do no wrong. NIH did a $2
million study to see whether, if you are following somebody in the
cafeteria line and the guy or woman in front of you sneezes on the
food, you are more or less likely to take the food. Really? I think we
could have polled the audience on that. I mean, how ridiculous is that?
Money like that--particularly when there are things the government
needs to do. There is a trillion-dollar deficit, and we spend $2
million studying what your reaction is to people sneezing on the food?
Then $356,000 of your money was spent studying whether Japanese quail
are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. These guys have some great
studies. This is, once again, I believe, the National Science
Foundation. Hurray for the National Science Foundation. I know I am
going to get hate mail from them. They spent $356,000 to study whether
Japanese quail are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. You can't make
this stuff up.
The reform I have proposed is that we have a taxpayer advocate on the
committee to determine who gets these grants. Do you know what they
say? We can't have any nonscientists. They wouldn't understand the
science. I want the scientist who did this to come forward and explain
why we need this study. There is no point to us spending this money.
There could have been something better.
I offered one thing to try to fix it. Put a taxpayer advocate on the
committee approving grants, and I think we should have a scientist who
isn't in that field. This is sort of behavioral science for Japanese
quail, I guess. We need to have somebody who studies diabetes, heart
disease, cancer, AIDS--some of the diseases that affect more people.
They need to be on the committee because they need to be scratching
their heads saying: We can spend it on Japanese quail and their sexual
habits or we can spend it on diabetes. The taxpayer advocate could say:
We can spend it on Japanese quail or maybe we can reduce the debt.
Maybe both could happen. Maybe we could reduce the debt and try to do
only better scientific projects.
This one looks like something you really want your government to
spend money on. They spent $150,000 to investigate supernatural events
in Alaska. They can look at unexplained lights, animals with
transformative powers, all kinds of different mythological animals,
landscape features that had special powers, and, of course, you
wouldn't want to leave out sea monsters. People say: What is $150,000?
That is the problem with government. Milton Friedman had it right when
he said: ``Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as he spends
his own.'' Why does nobody care about the $150,000? Because it wasn't
their money to spend. This is the problem with government at-large and
why the government is never good at anything they do. They are terribly
ineffective because they are spending somebody else's money.
Government should be so small that they have less room to make errors
like this. We should devolve most of the power of this place back to
the States. That is what our Founding Fathers intended, and we should
try to say we are not going to tolerate this kind of stuff.
This $250,000 was spent to send 24 kids from Pakistan to Space Camp
and Dollywood. My first question would be: Is there anybody in America
who didn't get to go to Dollywood or Space Camp last year? I think when
everybody in America has gone, we might consider sending some Pakistani
kids. Frankly, there is nothing in the Constitution that says we should
be sending Pakistani kids to Dollywood. There is nothing wrong if you
want to send your kids from Pakistan to Dollywood--by all means. You
should not take taxpayer money to do things like this.
May I ask the Presiding Officer how much time I have remaining of my
45 minutes?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hyde-Smith). There is 19 minutes.
Mr. PAUL. Thank you.
This is here in Washington, about a mile from here. We call it a
``Streetcar Named Waste.'' Spending $1.6 million to study the expansion
of the DC streetcar--and this is a streetcar that nobody is actually
riding on. It is a ghost car. Nobody is riding on it. It goes nowhere.
It goes about a mile, from nowhere to nowhere, and is much slower than
walking. I walked, and I can outwalk it. We thought about filming me in
a race with the streetcar to see who wins, me walking or it driving;
once again, going back to some technology from hundreds of years ago
that still requires wires to be running down the street, and it is
really not a useful expense of government money. DC gets a lot of
Federal money.
Where else do they spend your money? This is one of my favorites. I
just can't even imagine who spent this money. When I tell you, you will
say: Certainly, that person was fired. No way. He works for the Federal
Government. Nobody is ever fired in the Federal Government. They spent
$700,000 to study what Neil Armstrong said when he landed on the Moon.
Did he say, ``One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,'' or
did he say, ``One small step for a man''? They wanted to
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study whether the preposition ``a'' was mentioned by Neil Armstrong or
whether he said: ``One small step for man.'' Where did the money come
from? The grant was originally supposed to be for autism. We can debate
whether the Federal Government should be involved in that. It sounds
like a much more just study if it had something to do with autism than
studying Neil Armstrong's statement on the Moon.
You can't make this stuff up. This is incredibly ridiculous, but it
should be insulting. There should not be a taxpayer at home in America
who says: All right. Today they are going to vote on a budget to cut
one penny out of every dollar. We spent $700,000 on what Neil Armstrong
did or did not say on the Moon. You know what their conclusion at the
end was? They don't know. It is inconclusive. They listened to the tape
over and over again. Someone should be fired.
It also should be a message to our body that we should cut some
spending. Instead, we have done the opposite. Under Republican control
of the Senate and the House, we busted the budget caps by $300 billion
just 2 months ago. Part of what my plan would do would be to restore
the caps. They are put in place for a reason, to try to control our
proclivity to spend too much money. We put the budget caps in place,
then we cut 1 percent a year--about $30 billion every year for 5 years,
and then the government would begin to grow again at about 1 percent.
I know we could live within our means. What would happen is this guy
would be fired, and that kind of study would not happen when they have
1 percent less. Maybe a program like the National Science Foundation
would get 50 percent less or 75 percent less to really put them on
notice that we are tired, after 30 years of crazy research, of them
continuing without reform.
This was also spent in Afghanistan. This is your money. They used
$850,000 to set up a televised cricket league. The first problem is,
most people don't have TVs in Afghanistan. Really, a televised cricket
league? They don't even have TVs to watch it on. This is $850,000 to
make them feel better about their National Cricket League. Boondoggle.
It has nothing to do with national defense. It makes us weaker by
putting us further into debt.
Will this get better if we continue to increase money? No, it only
gets worse. If you give them more money, they will spend it. In fact,
we have studied spending at the end of the year. When you get to the
end of the year, the government spends money four to five times faster
than any other month in the year. The last 30 days of the fiscal year
spending increases every day. In fact, on the last day of the fiscal
year, you can watch spending accelerate as the Sun sets in the West. As
offices begin to close in the East, the spending shifts to the Midwest.
As the Sun sets farther in the western sky and the offices are still
open in California, they are spending money as fast as they can. If
they don't spend it, they will not get it next year--use it or lose it.
It is a phenomenon of government that has been going on forever. This
kind of stuff happens. As long as you give them more money, they will
do it. As long as they are rewarded for doing the spending, we should
study which agencies do it. We should study which agencies go to Las
Vegas and have their conference there for a million dollars, sipping
champagne in a hot tub. That agency should get less money. I think
those people actually did get fired--one of the few people ever fired.
We could have a debate on another occasion about climate change, but
we probably agree that a $450,000 app for your phone so you can play a
climate change game that will, I guess, attempt to convince you and
ensure that you are convinced that we are having climate change--
$450,000 for an app on a phone. Apps are everywhere. People are
developing them all the time. Government doesn't need to be spending
$450,000 for what somebody probably spends $1,000 in their garage to
develop.
Remember ObamaCare, when they tried to set up the website with
millions of dollars, and then it failed? Remember the IRS just 3 weeks
ago failing? We need to be very careful about giving government more
money.
The budget I am introducing is called the penny plan budget. It cuts
one penny out of every dollar. This is important for the country to see
we are having this vote. They are not that excited to have this vote.
We are only having this vote because the Senate rules basically mandate
it. It can't be avoided because Republicans didn't create a budget.
Democrats didn't create a budget. So I decided, what the heck, I will
create my own budget.
The penny plan budget has come forward. If we were to pass this,
there are many good things. Through a simple majority, we could do many
good things that conservative Republicans have wanted, like make the
tax cuts permanent, and get rid of more regulations. We could do the
REINS Act, which would say, new regulations that are very expensive
have to be voted on by Congress. We should cut out more waste. There
are all kinds of things we could do.
What we have chosen to do in our budget is actually give instructions
to expand health savings accounts. One of the big problems we have in
healthcare is rising costs. Costs are going up about 25 percent a year.
The answer around here has been, I think, lame, uneducated, ill-
informed, and counterproductive. Other than that, they are right on
target. What they are trying to say is: Oh, your individual rates are
going up 25 percent a year. Here is some money so you can pay for it.
It does nothing to bring the curve down. It may accelerate the curve.
If you subsidize something, it will become more expensive. You are
subsidizing the demand for it. We ought to expand health savings
accounts where people pay for their healthcare. People say: I don't
want to pay for my healthcare. When you pay--when you have skin in the
game--you ask the price of things. When the government pays or somebody
else pays, you don't ask the price of things, and the price rises.
Competition is the fundamental aspect of capitalism, but you have to
have freely fluctuating prices, which we don't in Medicare, Medicaid,
and actually mostly private insurance. We have never really adjusted
the fundamental problem of healthcare, which is that we don't have
capitalism in healthcare.
What do we do? Because we don't have enough capitalism, we take more
capitalism away and add more government, and it is more broken since we
have done Obamacare. One of the answers--since many Republicans will
not vote to repeal ObamaCare--is let us try to start expanding the
marketplace.
My budget today could pass if every Republican voted for it. If it
passes, we could move on to doing something like expanding the health
savings accounts. This gets to an argument that is an inside baseball
argument that happens in Washington. They will tell you: Young man, you
must vote for our budget because the budget is simply a vehicle to do
other good things. I look back at him and say: If it is a vehicle, and
you don't care what is in it, why not put something good in it? We
always put something crappy in it that never works, never balances, and
does not represent who we are as a party. They shove it down our throat
and say: Vote for it. You have to do it because that is the only way to
get to a tax cut. That is the only way we get to repeal ObamaCare,
although they are not really for that anymore. But the thing is, they
can do it by voting for something they actually are for. Everyone in
our caucus is for the balanced budget amendment. If we put it forward
on the floor, they will all vote for it, but there will not be enough
votes for it to be law, so it is a free vote. This would be the actual
platform, the actual symbol of what we run on and what we do next year.
Yet we will not have a chance to do that unless they are willing to do
it.
They want the budget to be meaningless. They want it to be a vehicle,
but then they want it to be their meaningless symbol, and I can't do
that. I think there has to be someone left in the Republican Party who
says enough is enough. We are not going to not tolerate the waste,
spending, and debt, and we are going to say the same things we said to
President Obama: Big government spending and debt are wrong.
I don't think we should change this because we are in power. When the
Republican Party is out of power, they are the conservative party. But
the
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problem is, when the Republican Party is in power, there is no
conservative party. What I am arguing for today is that we should be
who we say we are. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the penny plan budget.
Madam President, I will reserve the remainder of my time if I can get
an update of what I have left.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 9 minutes.
Mr. PAUL. Perfect. Thank you.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. PAUL. I will reserve the bulk of my time that is remaining and
suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Recognition of the Minority Leader
The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to use leader
time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Madam President.
Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I always listen
diligently to my friend from Kentucky. There is a number that is
missing in his charts; it is 1.5 trillion. The reason we don't like
government spending is--he thinks--a lot of it is wasteful, but,
ultimately, the reason is also that there is a huge deficit.
Our side scratches our heads not only with our friend from Kentucky,
but with everyone on the other side who rails about too much government
spending and creation of the deficit when they created the deepest hole
they could have with the tax break that could have been paid for by
closing loopholes. A group--a bipartisan group--had put something
together that would have reduced the corporate rate to 25 percent,
brought the money from overseas at 8, 9 percent, increased the child
tax credit, left the individual side alone, and would have barely
increased the deficit. So our side, at least, rankles when we hear
these budgets that relate to deficit spending when, on the tax side,
that doesn't seem to apply at all.
I say that with due respect to my good friend, who I know is sincere
in his beliefs. He will argue with me that cutting taxes increases the
economy. I would say that spending money on education and
infrastructure also increases the economy. It is a slippery slope once
you say: We can cut all the taxes we want; the deficit doesn't matter.
It would be like our side saying: You can spend all the money you want;
the deficit doesn't matter. We don't quite say that.
I thank my friend.
Net Neutrality
Madam President, yesterday was a good day for the future of the
internet. Democrats forced the Senate to take an important step closer
to restoring net neutrality. It is another step closer to ensuring that
large internet service providers don't get to hold all the cards,
another step closer to protecting equality of access to the internet.
In doing so, Senate Democrats stood with the 86 percent of Americans
who oppose the repeal of net neutrality.
I am proud to say that Senator Markey's Congressional Review Act
resolution passed yesterday afternoon with the votes of every single
Democrat, as well as three of our Republican colleagues. I thank
Senators Collins, Murkowski, and Kennedy for supporting this fine
legislation.
Here is what my friend the Republican Senator from Louisiana had to
say after the vote:
If you trust your cable company, you won't like my vote. If
you don't trust your cable company, you will like my vote.
He is right. It is that simple. So you have to wonder why 47
Republicans voted no yesterday. Do they trust the cable companies and
the large ISPs to do what is level best for the average American
family? Do they believe that cable companies are really popular with
the American people? I don't think so.
Now Republicans in the House have to take up this bipartisan
resolution. We hope they will.
This isn't some partisan stunt. Absolutely not. It is a real,
bipartisan effort to right the FCC's wrong and protect the free and
open internet. It is very crucial to the future of the country.
House Republicans don't have to choose the same path that the vast
majority of Republicans in the Senate decided to follow. Speaker Ryan
should bring this up for a vote immediately. The American people have
spoken. The Senate has spoken. Speaker Ryan should listen and bring the
net neutrality CRA to the floor of the House.
Russia Investigation
Madam President, 1 year ago, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was
appointed to lead the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in
the 2016 election. Of course, the investigation began long before that.
According to the New York Times, it began in the middle of 2016 as a
result of information we received from the Australian Ambassador, who
told the FBI that Russian intelligence was working to share information
with the Trump campaign.
At that time, we heard a lot about the FBI's investigation of Hillary
Clinton's emails, but remarkably, we heard nothing about this other
investigation. Now we know that one of those two investigations is much
more serious than the other one was. We also know that if it were a
witch hunt--as the President seems to think it is--if they were out to
get him, they certainly would have leaked information about that during
the election campaign. They didn't.
The probe led by Special Counsel Mueller, a Republican and decorated
marine veteran, concerns the campaign of a hostile foreign power to
interfere in and influence the outcome of an American election. There
is nothing--nothing--more serious to the integrity of a democracy than
the guarantee of free and fair elections.
The Founding Fathers warned about foreign interference. When I used
to read that clause in high school, I said: What do they mean? That is
not going to happen. Well, they were a lot smarter than we are--as
always. They knew this danger. Here it is, 2018, and we see how real it
is. It is the core of the special counsel's investigation.
The investigation has already yielded multiple indictments and guilty
pleas. Yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan
manner, confirmed that Russia sought to interfere with our elections,
sow discord, and tip the scales toward Donald Trump and against
Secretary Clinton. The Trump administration itself has even taken
punitive action against Russia's actors named in Mueller's
investigation.
I salute the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, the Republican
Senator from North Carolina, for being straightforward about this. Not
so many on the other side of the aisle are.
Yet, again this morning, President Trump called the investigation a
``disgusting, illegal, and unwarranted witch hunt . . . the greatest
witch hunt in American history.'' The rhetoric this man uses is
amazing.
I say to the President: It is not a witch hunt when 17 Russians have
been indicted. It is not a witch hunt when some of the most senior
members of the Trump campaign have been indicted. It is not a witch
hunt when Democrats and Republicans agree with the intelligence
community that Russia interfered in our election to aid President
Trump.
Any fair-minded citizen, even the most ardent partisan, should be
able to look at the facts and say that this investigation is not a
witch hunt. The FBI Director, Christopher Wray, appointed by President
Trump, a Republican, said as much yesterday.
Truly, we should all be aghast, on this 1-year anniversary of
Mueller's appointment, at the smear campaign by the President and his
allies. We should all be aghast at the relentless parade of
conspiracies manufactured by the most extreme elements of the
Republican Party and conservative media to distract from the special
counsel's investigation. From ``deep state'' leaks to unmasking
requests, phone taps at Trump Tower, Uranium One, Nunes's midnight run
to the White House, and the Nunes memo--these are all attempts to
derail a legitimate and important investigation.
[[Page S2742]]
Now House conservatives are badgering DOJ officials for classified
documents, hunting desperately for any scrap of information that would
help them sully the investigation. By the way, for all of their ranting
and raving and interfering, they don't have a scintilla of evidence to
support that this is a witch hunt, that this is unfair, or that this is
politically motivated.
The President and his allies don't quit with all these conspiracy
theories, with all these ridiculous fomentations. Frankly, it is
because they are afraid of what Mueller's investigation will reveal.
Every American who looks at the President's actions says that he is
afraid of what the Mueller investigation will reveal. Yet the volume of
mistruth, the weight of all the distortion and fabrication is hurting
our democracy.
The double standard is enormous. The Times article shows no leaks
when Trump was under investigation during the campaign; obviously, it
was made public when Hillary Clinton was. Again, if this were a witch
hunt, why didn't the FBI, which the President seems to feel is
politically motivated with no scintilla of proof--why wouldn't they
leak it?
One more point before I leave the floor--yesterday, the words of
former Secretary Tillerson were these: ``If our leaders seek to conceal
the truth or we as a people become accepting of alternative realities
that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are
on the pathway to relinquishing our freedom.''
He is exactly right. When distortion, lies, and intimidation come
repeatedly from the other side and some conservative news media, and
that becomes the accepted way, when it is just he said, she said, where
one side is blatantly lying, and that becomes accepted, our democracy
is at risk.
We are a beautiful thing here--founded on facts, real facts. What we
have seen from the President and some of his allies, the way they are
behaving, makes you worry about the future of this democracy.
Ultimately, I have a firm belief that they will not succeed. The
Founding Fathers were geniuses--geniuses--when they set up a system of
checks and balances that we read about in our classes and we study, but
it is almost mystical. It always rises to the occasion. It will again,
despite the efforts of the President, despite the efforts of some of
his allies who have gone way overboard; I might mention Chairman Nunes
on the other side. I believe the checks and balances of this country
will hold, and we will eventually find out the truth, no matter where
it leads.
Today is a good day to remember that the special counsel's
investigation is serious, it is nonpartisan, and it is critical to the
integrity of our democracy. We must allow it to proceed without
political interference, without intimidation, to follow all the facts
in pursuit of the unvarnished truth on such an important issue.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Measure Read the First Time--S. 2872
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, I understand there is a bill at the
desk, and I ask for its first reading.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will read the bill by title for the
first time.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 2872) to amend the Congressional Accountability
Act of 1995 to reform the procedures provided under such Act
for the initiation, investigation, and resolution of claims
alleging that employing offices of the legislative branch
have violated the rights and protections provided to their
employees under such Act, including protections against
sexual harassment and discrimination, and for other purposes.
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. I now ask for a second reading and, in order to
place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I
object to my own request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection having been heard, the bill will be
read for the second time on the next legislative day.
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, 100 days ago, the House of
Representatives voted unanimously to pass the Congressional
Accountability Act of 1995 Reform Act, the bill that would fix the way
we deal with sexual harassment and discrimination here in Congress.
The current system is broken. It makes no sense that a staffer who is
sexually harassed or discriminated against has to possibly wait months
for mediation, for counseling, or for a cooling off before she or he is
able to even file a claim.
This bill would also make sure that when a Member of Congress has
sexually harassed or discriminated against someone on their staff, the
taxpayers are not left holding the bag. That is what the bill does.
There is no reasonable excuse for anyone to stand in the way.
Our constituents do not deserve to have their hard-earned dollars
paying for these settlements. What they deserve is a vote on this
reform now. But what have we seen since the House acted? Nothing but
politics as usual, despite having significant bipartisan support on
this issue.
I thank my colleagues--Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator
Klobuchar, and Senator Murray--for their strong leadership on this
issue and all of their efforts to pass this bill in the Senate. They
have been great partners in trying to move this forward.
It is long since time that we should be acting on this issue. We need
to pass this bill and send it to the President's desk so he can sign it
into law, because what we have seen so clearly, after the several
months and years that we have been talking about this, is that sexual
harassment and discrimination in the workplace is far more pervasive
and egregious than we previously might have recognized.
We have all witnessed harassment and discrimination. We all see what
it actually does to society--whether it is happening in factories, in
restaurants, in Hollywood, in the Halls of Congress, or right here in
this building. But the difference is that while practically every other
industry in the country seems to be taking this issue far more
seriously and at least trying to make an effort to change their
workplaces, Congress is dragging its feet.
Once again, a problem is staring us right in the face, and we are
looking the other way. Enough is enough. We should do better. We have
waited 100 days, and we should not have to wait any longer.
So I urge my colleagues to do the right thing now, to support this
bill. Fix this system here in Congress that is failing our staffers on
this issue of sexual harassment. This one is as easy as it gets. So
let's have a vote and let's pass it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I appreciate being recognized. I am
going to talk about a budget proposal by my colleague from Kentucky,
Senator Paul.
To those who want to balance our budget and get us out of debt, count
me in. How do we do that? I would like to do it without destroying the
military. I would like not to open up the wound when it comes to the
effects of sequestration.
Unfortunately, Senator Paul's approach is devastating to the
military. It creates unpredictability at a time when we need
predictability. It throws us back into the old system where nobody
knows what is going to happen.
Let me tell you about how you balance the budget and get us out of
debt.
In 2008, this blue line represents discretionary spending. This is
about 30 percent of overall Federal spending. You can see that from
2008 to 2028 it has been relatively flat. In the budget agreement we
entered into just a few weeks ago, we are spending less on nondefense
discretionary spending by $2 billion than we did in 2010. This red line
represents about the 65 to 70 percent of Federal spending called
entitlements, and it is going through the roof. So if you want to
balance the budget, you have to deal with the red line. You can't take
it all out of the blue line.
Sequestration has taken about $1 trillion out of the military. I
compliment President Trump for entering into a budget agreement that
will restore funding to the military at a time when we need it the
most.
What did sequestration do to the military? According to Secretary
Mattis, ``no enemy in the field has done more to harm the combat
readiness of
[[Page S2743]]
our military than sequestration.'' What a stunning statement that is.
In other words, Congress has sunk more ships, shot down more planes,
and taken more soldiers off the battlefield than any enemy.
Under sequestration, we are at the smallest level for the Navy since
1915, the smallest Army since 1940, and the smallest Air Force in
modern history. That is about to change with the budget agreement--$700
billion for the military to retool, to buy new equipment, to have more
people so that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines can spend a
little bit of time with their families instead of being deployed all
the time. So I applaud Senator Paul's zeal to balance the budget.
What I want to do is to expose what this budget actually does. If you
are a defense hawk, you should be against this approach because it does
the one thing we can't afford to do. It creates unpredictability when
it comes to our national defense strategy.
At times like this, I miss Senator McCain because I know he would be
here with me.
Under this proposal, we are going to cut $404.8 billion next year.
How much comes out of defense? Well, we will figure that out later. We
know $6 billion has to come out of it, but it effectively sets aside
the budget agreement that plussed up defense. Over the next decade,
$13.358 trillion will be cut. Of that, how much comes out of defense?
Well, we will figure that out later.
Let me tell you what that means to the military: devastation. Here is
what Secretary Mattis said on April 26 about predictability: We need
predictability so that we can actually put a strategy into effect. If
you do not have a budget that reflects the strategy, it does not work.
Under the budget agreement, we have predictability for the next
couple of years. We are restoring the cuts, and we have to build on
what we have done in the next 2 years through the next 10 years.
What does this budget proposal do? It destroys predictability. It
requires $404.8 billion, and it doesn't tell the Department of Defense
how much they are going to have to pay. We know $6 billion.
Here is what I would suggest. If the past is any indication of the
future, our friends on the other side are not going to let us exempt
defense. Sequestration was half out of defense, half out of nondefense,
and left entitlements pretty much alone.
Senator Paul says we are not going to deal with Social Security.
Social Security is going broke. Somebody needs to deal with it. Ronald
Reagan and Tip O'Neill dealt with it by adjusting the age of retirement
to save Social Security benefits. So when you take Social Security off
the table--and let's say, magically, that everybody agreed with me that
we should not undercut the defense budget, that we should actually add
to it and give predictability--how do you get $13 trillion if you take
Social Security and defense off the table? Well, we won't because you
can't.
So to those who claim to be defense hawks--which I proudly claim to
be--this is a symbolic vote. Yes, the symbolism here is that we don't
care about predictability when it comes to defense spending, that we
are undercutting the agreement we achieved just a month ago to give the
military the funds they need to defend this Nation.
Now, if you live in a world where the military is small and we don't
have any troops deployed anywhere, this might work. On September 10,
2001, we didn't have one soldier in Afghanistan. We didn't have an
embassy, and not one dime in foreign aid went to Afghanistan. The next
day, we got attacked, coming from Afghanistan, because radical Islam
will not leave you alone just because you want to leave them alone.
President Trump is right to rebuild the military. He campaigned on
setting aside sequestration. It was dumb. It hollowed out our force. It
has been a nightmare for our military. Planes have been falling out of
the sky.
What does this budget do? It puts us back into a level of
unpredictability. It requires $404 billion out of the 2019 budget. It
says that $6 billion has to come from defense. After that, we don't
know.
Here is what I know. It is going to undercut everything we have done
to provide predictability. At the end of the day, this budget puts
everything every defense person has been hoping for in jeopardy. It
takes the efforts of President Trump to rebuild the military and throws
it in a ditch, because if you take Social Security off the table, if
you took defense off the table, then you can't get there from here. Do
you want to destroy the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Justice, the
NIH?
This is a symbolic statement. These budgets usually don't get many
votes. I am tired of symbolism at the expense of our fighting men and
women.
Here is my message. I will engage in entitlement reform. Senator Paul
had an entitlement reform bill for Medicare. I joined with him. As for
Social Security, to my friends on the other side, let's do something
like Simpson-Bowles. Let's go ahead and find a way to do entitlement
reform and deal with the discretionary budget, not in a haphazard
guessing kind of way.
Count me in for wanting to balance the budget, but you have to go
where the money is. You have to do what Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill
did. We have to do things for Medicare like the Gang of Six, Simpson-
Bowles. What I will not symbolically lend my vote to is an approach to
balance the budget that doesn't give you a clue about how much money we
are going to spend on the military for the next decade. That, by its
very nature, undercuts all of the gains we have achieved to rebuild the
military, to throw the military budget to the wolves.
I can tell you this: $404.8 billion is coming out of the fiscal year
2019 budget. If you believe we can do that without affecting the
military, then the last 7 or 8 years seems not to have meant anything,
because for the last 6 or 7 years we have been cutting the military a
lot because of a budget agreement that everybody thought would never
happen. Nobody believed that sequestration would actually hit, that we
would do $1 trillion over a decade. The sequestration clause was a
penalty clause to urge people to get it right by putting the Defense
Department at risk, with 50 percent of sequestration cuts coming out of
defense. The reason they put it on the table is because they thought
Congress wouldn't be dumb enough to actually get into sequestration.
Guess what. We were that dumb. According to General Mattis, we have
done more damage to the military than any enemy in the field since 9/
11--what a title to claim as a Congress.
This budget throws us back into that situation on steroids. So,
symbolically, I stand for balancing the budget, doing it in a
responsible way that has entitlement reform as the heart of the effort
in a bipartisan fashion.
Symbolically, I will not vote for a budget that does not give the
Department of Defense the resources they need and the predictability
they need to protect this country. That is what this budget does.
So to those of us on the Armed Services Committee, you should know
better. You should know that of the $13.5 trillion being cut over the
next decade, a lot of it is going to come out of defense if it actually
was a reality. If you take defense and Social Security off the table,
it is a joke. Now is not the time to be funny. Now is the time to be
serious. I am deadly serious about voting against any budget that
doesn't give the military the predictability they need to defend this
Nation. This budget throws our military in a ditch, and I am tired of
doing that.
I am going to vote no. I urge everyone who cares about Defense
Department funding and predictability to vote no. Balance the budget,
yes. Throw the military to the wolves, no.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Congressional Accountability and Harassment Reform Bill
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am pleased to be here on the floor in
support of my colleague Senator Gillibrand's bill, the Congressional
Accountability and Harassment Reform Act. I am pleased that so many
Members of the Senate have supported the earlier version of the bill
and are signing up to support this version as well.
It has been 100 days since the House acted on a significant and
substantive reform of the process here in Congress on how we address
sexual harassment. There have been plenty of stories about how
unacceptable the current system is.
[[Page S2744]]
In spite of how far women's rights and equality have come in America,
too many women continue to face inequality, discrimination, and
harassment day in and day out. Our congressional workplace is not
immune to that.
The world is changing, and the world is changing quickly, and
movements like the ``me too.'' campaign are finally giving women the
voice they need to stand up and say no more.
Yet, in spite of this tide of change, the Senate refuses to act on
our unacceptably obscure, complex, and difficult system for staff
members to address sexual harassment and discrimination--a system that
is difficult to navigate and void of transparency. It needs to change.
It must change. One hundred days ago, the House said absolutely it must
change, and we have seen no bill allowed to come to the floor to
address it in the Senate.
The House did its duty. They put forward a vision of updating and
strengthening procedures to protect women from sexual harassment and to
address it, should it occur. Now it is time for the Senate to act, to
hold ourselves to a much higher standard, to lead by example on Capitol
Hill and for the rest of the Nation, to give those who work on our team
who have been victimized by sexual harassment or discrimination a fair
and transparent process to tell their stories, to pursue justice, to be
free from the fear of professional or political retribution. That is
exactly what the Congressional Accountability and Harassment Reform Act
does. It requires sexual harassment awareness training. It simplifies a
process for staffers to file complaints. It eliminates a mandatory,
laborious process of required counseling and mediation. It protects a
victim's option to publicly discuss their claims. It prohibits members
found responsible for such behavior from using government funds--their
office funds--to settle the claims, and it requires all settlements to
be disclosed publicly unless the victim prefers otherwise. No longer
would we be able to silence the victims or hide the misdeeds of the
perpetrators from the American people.
I understand Members on the floor of the Senate may say: I want to
hide from my actions; I want to pay off any settlement with my
government funds, but being able to hide from your actions is
unacceptable, and using government funds to pay off the situation is
completely unacceptable.
Action is way past due. I am glad to join with my colleagues Senator
Gillibrand, Senator Warren, Senator Harris, and Senator Murray--so many
who have come into this battle of equality, fairness, and fighting for
those who have been victimized. That is what this act is about, and it
is not acceptable that for 100 days the leadership of this body has sat
on this bill, blocking it from being considered.
Let us recognize that we have a responsibility to our team members
for fairness, for transparency, and for accountability and to bring
this bill to the floor immediately.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Nomination of Gina Haspel
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I am here to express my strong opposition
to President Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel to be the next Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency. There are two reasons I oppose this
nomination: Ms. Haspel's support for torture and her willingness to
destroy evidence of the CIA's use of torture.
For years, apologists for the CIA's program have tried to redescribe
this inhumane practice to make it seem less appalling to the American
people. They have even renamed it. Torture has been rebranded as
``enhanced interrogation.''
There is no way to hide the basic facts. The techniques used by the
CIA were torture: waterboarding so the person had the repeated
sensation of drowning, confining people to small boxes for hours on
end, depriving people of sleep for days, forcing people to hold painful
stress positions.
The CIA did not invent these tactics. Listen to an American war hero
describe what he endured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
I was being forced to stand up continuously--sometimes
they'd make you stand up or sit on a stool for a long period
of time. I'd stood up for a couple of days, with a respite
only because one of the guards--the only real human being
that I ever met over there--let me lie down for a couple of
hours while he was on watch in the middle of one night.
Speaking about his captors, this former American POW said:
They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing
and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on
me and I sat that night bound with ropes.
They beat me around a little bit. I was in such bad shape
that when they hit me it would knock me unconscious. They
kept saying, ``You will not receive any medical treatment
until you talk.''
I was getting about three or four spoonfuls of food twice a
day. Sometimes I'd go for a day or so without eating.
I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has
his breaking point. I had reached mine. . . . I had been
reduced to an animal during this period of beating and
torture.
These are the words of Senator John McCain--our distinguished
colleague, the senior Senator from Arizona, a decorated Naval aviator
who was beaten, broken, and tortured for 2 years after being captured
in North Vietnam.
No matter how you dress it up, torture is torture, and it is wrong.
It is inhumane, it is infective, and it is un-American.
That was the conclusion of the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee
report on the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program during the Bush
administration. The committee drew a definitive conclusion: Torture did
not work. In fact, not only does torture not work, it makes it more
difficult for other agencies in our government to protect our national
security.
Surely a person who is seeking to be the Director of the CIA in 2018
should agree with this assessment or be able to give a really good
explanation of why not. Someone seeking to be the Director of the CIA
should be able to state clearly that torture is wrong, but when
repeatedly asked a yes-or-no question by my colleague Senator Kamala
Harris: Were the CIA's actions immoral, Ms. Haspel danced around the
answer. These are not the answers of a person who can be trusted to
administer the powerful CIA.
That question of trust goes to my second objection: The Director of
the CIA will make many decisions that will be held in secret and never
reviewed by the American people. It is critical we trust her judgment
and that we have complete confidence in her honesty and willingness to
submit to congressional oversight. I do not have that confidence in Ms.
Haspel, and here is why. As we now know from the public reports,
between October and December of 2002, Ms. Haspel oversaw a CIA prison
in Thailand. Under her leadership, at least one detainee was
waterboarded and subjected to other torture methods. As far as we know,
Ms. Haspel raised no objections.
According to news reports, in 2005, Ms. Haspel recommended that the
CIA destroy 92 videotapes of interrogations of detainees. CIA officials
remember, at the time, Ms. Haspel was one of ``the staunchest advocates
inside the building for destroying the tapes''--``the staunchest
advocates inside the building for destroying the tapes.'' She went so
far as to draft the order for her boss, the Director of the National
Clandestine Service, to sign, urging them to use ``an industrial
strength shredder,'' just to make sure they were completely destroyed.
Ms. Haspel destroyed these tapes despite Federal court orders
requiring the preservation of the CIA's records, despite the objections
of Members of Congress, and against the order of the Director of
National Intelligence, the CIA Director, two White House Counsels, and
senior Department of Justice officials. In a convenient coincidence for
Ms. Haspel, the tapes she ordered destroyed reportedly documented the
interrogation of detainees at the very same CIA prison in Thailand that
Ms. Haspel previously supervised. Even more conveniently, some of the
tapes reportedly documented the interrogation of the very detainee who
was waterboarded under Ms. Haspel's leadership.
When Senator Angus King asked about her destruction of the tapes, Ms.
Haspel could come up with no credible explanation. How can we trust her
to be fully forthright with Congress in the future if she cannot
acknowledge missteps of the past?
Ms. Haspel had numerous opportunities to question the directives she
was given during this era. According to the
[[Page S2745]]
Senate Intelligence Committee report, other CIA officers regularly
called into question the effectiveness and safety of the techniques
being used but not Gina Haspel. It was happening right before her eyes,
and she did nothing to stop it. While her colleagues questioned the
legitimacy of the CIA's program, according to public reports, Ms.
Haspel vigorously defended it. According to those same reports, the
Trump White House reviewed CIA message logs that ``made it clear just
how accepting she had been of since disavowed interrogation
techniques.''
The fact is, so far as the record indicates, the only action Ms.
Haspel has taken with regard to U.S. torture practices has been to do
her best to cover it up.
Why relitigate the choices that were made during those dark days
after 9/11? Because this matters, especially with a President like
Donald Trump. As a candidate, Donald Trump said he would ``bring back a
hell of a lot worse than waterboarding'' because even ``if it doesn't
work, they deserve it anyway.'' As President, Donald Trump pulled back
from his plan to reinstate the use of secret CIA prisons overseas only
after overwhelming bipartisan outrage.
The stakes are high. The use of torture is one of the darkest
chapters in our Nation's modern history. We cannot give this President
any reason to drag this country back. We cannot allow any room for that
mistake to occur again.
Gina Haspel has spent 33 years at the CIA. She has a decorated career
and has sacrificed for this country in many ways Americans will never
know. I have no doubt her current and former colleagues who praise her
as a patriot are sincere, but patriotism and judgment are not the same
thing. Someone who puts protecting the Agency above following the law
cannot be trusted.
When announcing his opposition to Gina Haspel's nomination, Senator
McCain recently said that ``the methods we employ to keep our nation
safe must be as right and just as the values we aspire to live up to
and promote in the world.'' I agree with Senator McCain, and I urge my
colleagues to reject her nomination.
National Police Week
Mr. President, I rise to honor the lives of six Massachusetts police
officers who lost their lives in the line of duty. On April 12, our
Commonwealth suffered a terrible loss when Sergeant Sean Gannon of the
Yarmouth Police Department was killed while serving an arrest warrant.
He was only 32 years old.
A native of New Bedford, MA, Sergeant Gannon graduated from Bishop
Stang High School in North Dartmouth and then earned a bachelor's
degree in criminal justice from Westfield State University and a
master's in emergency management from the Massachusetts Maritime
Academy.
After college, Sergeant Gannon jumped headfirst into public service,
first serving as a public safety officer and later becoming a police
officer with the Yarmouth Police Department, where he served for 8
years. Sergeant Gannon loved working with police dogs, and he was the
first full-time
K-9 narcotics officer at the Yarmouth PD. His loyal patrol dog, Near-
Oh, was seriously injured in the incident that claimed Sergeant
Gannon's life, but he is expected to recover and return to the Gannon
family.
Sergeant Gannon had a huge heart and spent his free time volunteering
with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, traveling, enjoying the outdoors, and
working with his hands.
Thousands of mourners, including law enforcement officials from
across the country, gathered to pay their respects at Sergeant Gannon's
wake--a testament to the high esteem with which his community held him
and to the power of his sacrifice.
Yarmouth police chief Frank Frederickson calls Sergeant Gannon the
``Tom Brady of our department'' and posthumously promoted him to the
rank of sergeant.
Last month, I spoke with Sergeant Gannon's wife, Dara, and his
parents, Patrick and Denise, to offer my condolences, my thoughts, and
my prayers, and I continue to hold them in my heart.
Next year, Sergeant Gannon's name will be added to the National Law
Enforcement Officers Memorial, recognizing law enforcement officers who
have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their communities. We
owe Sergeant Gannon and all of them a deep debt of gratitude. They died
as heroes.
I would also like to recognize the five Massachusetts officers whose
names were added to the memorial this year. Patrolman Seth A. Noyes, of
the Boston Police Department, died on October 18, 1870, from injuries
sustained in the line of duty. He was 41 years old. Sergeant John J.
Shanahan, of the Revere Police Department, died on November 19, 1928,
when he was hit by a truck while directing traffic around the scene of
a car accident. He was 54 years old. Patrolman Jeremiah J. O'Connor, of
the Lawrence Police Department, died on November 14, 1950, when he had
a heart attack after pursuing a subject. He was 61 years old. Patrolman
Frederick A. Bell, of the Newton Police Department, died on September
5, 1954, 4 months after he suffered severe injuries in a car crash. He
was 39 years old. Sergeant Raymond P. Cimino, of the Chelsea Police
Department, died on February 28, 1985, after suffering a heart attack.
He was 44 years old.
We honor their service, we honor their sacrifice, and most
importantly, we honor the lives they led and the legacies they leave
behind.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this morning we will be voting on a
budget resolution written by my Republican colleague Senator Rand Paul
from Kentucky.
This is a budget that would lead to devastating cuts to Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security, and education, while paving the way for even
more tax breaks to the top 1 percent and large, profitable
corporations.
Make no mistake about it: Senator Paul's budget is an immoral budget.
It is bad economic policy. While I am confident that this resolution
will be defeated in the Senate, let me be very clear.
Senator Paul's vision of America--balancing the budget on the backs
of working families, the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor
in order to make the richest people in America even richer--is the
exact same vision of the Republican Party in the House and the
Republican Party in Washington, DC.
So let me commend Senator Paul for being honest with the American
people in terms of what he believes and for putting down on paper what
a majority of Republicans in the House and billionaire campaign
contributors like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson believe.
And this is what they want.
At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, Senator Paul and
the Republicans in the House do not believe that it was good enough to
provide over $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest people and
most profitable corporations. The budget that we are debating today
would give the wealthy and the powerful an even bigger tax break.
Last year, the congressional leadership came up with a bill to throw
32 million Americans off of health insurance. Senator Paul and many
Republicans in the House do not believe that bill went far enough. The
budget we are debating today would throw up to 45 million Americans off
of Medicaid.
A few months ago, President Trump proposed a budget calling for
Medicare to be cut by nearly $500 billion. Senator Paul and a majority
of Republicans do not believe those cuts went far enough. The budget we
are debating today would cut Medicare by up to $3.3 trillion over the
next decade.
At a time when 10,000 people die each and every year waiting for
their Social Security disability benefits to be processed, Donald
Trump's budget proposed making a bad situation even worse by cutting
the Social Security Disability Insurance Program.
Senator Paul and a majority of Republicans do not believe that those
cuts went far enough. The Paul budget would not only cut Social
Security for the disabled, his budget would cut the entire Social
Security program by $442 billion over the next decade compared to
current law.
Overall, Senator Paul's resolution calls for slashing the budget by
more than 51 percent by the end of the decade.
Not too long ago, if someone proposed ending Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid as we know it so
[[Page S2746]]
that billionaires could get a huge tax break, that would have been
considered a radical and extreme agenda. Today it is the mainstream
position of the Republican Party in Washington.
The reality is that Republicans in Washington have never believed in
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal assistance in education,
or providing any direct government assistance to those in need. They
have always believed that tax breaks for the wealthy and the powerful
would somehow miraculously trickle down to every American, despite all
history and evidence to the contrary.
Needless to say, and I am only speaking for myself, I have a very
different vision of America.
In my view, we need to create a government and an economy that works
for all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.
What does that mean?
It means that instead of giving over a trillion dollars in tax breaks
to the top 1 percent and large profitable corporations, we must demand
that Wall Street, the billionaire class and large, profitable
corporations start paying their fair share in taxes.
Instead of trying to abolish the estate tax, which impacts less than
two-tenths of 1 percent, we must substantially increase the inheritance
tax not only to bring in needed revenue, but to dismantle the oligarchs
that now control so much of our economic and political lives.
Instead of making it easier for corporations to avoid paying U.S.
taxes by stashing their cash in the Cayman Islands, we need to crack
down on offshore tax haven abuse and use this revenue to create 15
million good-paying American jobs rebuilding our crumbling
infrastructure.
Instead of cutting Social Security, we need to expand Social Security
so that every American can retire with the dignity and the respect they
deserve. We pay for that by making sure everyone who makes over
$250,000 a year pays the same percentage of their income into Social
Security as the middle class.
Instead of cutting Medicare, we need to guarantee healthcare as a
right to every man, woman, and child in America through a Medicare for
all, single-payer healthcare program.
Instead of slashing Federal aid to education, we must make every
public college and university in America tuition free, and we pay for
that by imposing a tax on Wall Street speculation. If we could bail out
Wall Street 10 years ago, we can tax Wall Street so that every American
who has the desire and the ability can get a higher education
regardless of their income.
Instead of listening to the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and other
multibillionaire campaign contributors, it is time to start listening
to the overwhelming majority of Americans who want a government and an
economy that works for the many, not just the few.
Let us not only defeat the Paul resolution, but let us have the guts
to take on the greed of Wall Street, the greed of the pharmaceutical
and healthcare industry, the greed of Big Oil, and the greed of
corporate America and break up the oligarchy that is destroying the
social fabric of our society.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, shortly, we will be voting on the penny plan
budget. This is a budget that cuts one penny out of every dollar.
As we have gone through time and again, we have seen that there is so
much waste in government, from $700,000 spent studying Neil Armstrong's
statement on the Moon--did he say ``one small step for man and one
giant leap for mankind,'' or did he say ``one small step for a man''?
We spent $700,000 trying to discover whether Neil Armstrong said ``a
man'' or just ``man.'' It is a complete boondoggle, a complete waste of
money. But does it get better? No, because we keep giving people more
money.
Some have come to the floor and said: Well, this is just an end-
around attempt to cut military spending. We can't cut any military
spending.
That is simply not true. The penny plan budget says nothing about
cutting military spending. The penny plan budget says this: We cut 1
percent of the budgetary spending. Where it is cut in the budget is
left up to the appropriations committees. It could be cut equally, or
it could be cut more in some areas and less in other areas. We could
cut some from military; we could cut zero from military. It is left up
to the appropriators.
Some would argue: Well, it doesn't define where it would come from.
Well, that is the job of the appropriators and the job of the Senate
to vote up or down on it.
To those who argue that unlimited spending for the military is good
for our national security, they might want to think about whether there
is a possible problem in that China has $1 trillion worth of our debt.
Let's say for some reason there was a conflict in the South China Sea
and we were somehow involved militarily there. What if China were to
say: We are going to dump your dollars. We are going to dump your
Treasury bills.
Could they wreak havoc, dumping $1 trillion? Yes. Would it hurt their
assets? Yes, but it could be used as a weapon against the United
States.
Our insecurity is our enormous debt--$21 trillion.
In some ways, the budget vote is symbolism, but the question is
whether that symbolism will be who we are as a Republican Party or
whether that symbolism will be that we are simply the same as the
Democrats, that we simply don't care about the debt, we don't care that
interest on the debt is the second biggest item.
After the Defense Department--about $700 billion--the next biggest
item is $300 billion in interest. What happens when interest rates
rise? The Federal Reserve has artificially kept interest rates low.
What about when interest rates go to 5 percent? Could that happen? Yes.
Could it be precipitated by a foreign nation no longer buying our debt?
Yes.
If interest rates were to go to 5 percent currently, I don't know
that we would be able to manage our debt. That would probably be a
doubling of our interest payment, or more--$600 billion. If we do
nothing and the Federal Reserve is able to keep our interest rates in
the 2 percent range, interest rates will still be about the same as the
Department of Defense within 10 years. The Department of Defense is
about $700 billion, and it will grow probably to $800-and-some-odd
billion, but interest rates will be $761 billion within a decade. If
that is not a threat to our national security, I don't know what is.
Really what we have is a threat to our honor as public servants who
make promises to voters. We came to power in Washington because we said
President Obama spent too much and borrowed too much. We said it over
and over and over again until voters chose us. But what if, when we
come into power, we forget who we are? When Republicans are in the
minority, they are the conservative party. The problem is that when the
Republicans become the majority, there is no conservative party.
What I am arguing for today is to cut one penny out of every dollar.
There is waste from top to bottom in every department of government,
including the military.
Defense Logistics--they build stuff. They have $800 million they say
is missing.
Defense spending or military spending in Afghanistan--$700 million of
ammunition missing. Do we think that might be a little bit worrisome
given all the different characters in the Afghan civil war? There is
$700 million in ammunition that cannot be accounted for and $28 million
in uniforms that cannot be accounted for.
They built a $45 million gas station in Afghanistan, but it is for
natural gas. The first problem is that they don't have cars in
Afghanistan. The second problem is that none of them run on natural
gas. So how did we fix that problem? We bought them cars. We bought
them cars that run on natural gas, and they still couldn't afford the
gas, so we gave them credit cards. How moronic are we as a people to
keep flushing money down a rat hole in Afghanistan--nearly $50 billion.
What I am asking is that we cut 1 percent--1 penny out of every
dollar.
Could we save some in the military? Absolutely. Is this done to
punish the military? No. It is to make us stronger as a country. Could
the military suffer a 1-percent cut and actually become more efficient?
Absolutely. It is not a question of whether our military budget is too
big or too small; it is a question of whether our military mission is
[[Page S2747]]
too large. We are at war in half a dozen countries or more. We have
6,000 troops in Africa, and I would suspect that there is not one
person in 1,000 in America who knows whom we are fighting or why we are
fighting in Africa.
But that is not really what this is about. It is about spending in
every department of government. It is about whether one penny out of
every dollar is being wasted.
People say: I am against the waste. I am against all the waste. I am
against the study on Japanese quail to see if they are more sexually
promiscuous on cocaine. I am against the Neal Armstrong study on
whether he said one man on the Moon or just man on the Moon.
The thing is, we can't get rid of waste unless we actually reduce
top-line spending because nobody has any incentive to do it.
When the sequester first came into place, even though people didn't
like it, people throughout government began finding savings. You cannot
get rid of waste in government if you keep giving people more money.
The National Science Foundation has wasted millions and millions of
dollars over a 30-year history. William Proxmire first reported in the
early 1970s, and he said that one of the first studies was $50,000--
back then, that was more money than it is now--to study why men like
women. Really? That is a good use of taxpayer funds?
This year, we will spend $1 trillion we don't have. There will be
nearly a $1 trillion deficit this year. That is what we complained
about under President Obama, was big, annual $1 trillion deficits. Are
we going to be the party that is actually true to what we say we are
for, that we are fiscally conservative? Can we not cut one penny out of
every dollar?
So I implore my colleagues to think long and hard about this vote.
Think about how the people at home would want you to vote. You have
gone home and said you were for a balanced budget amendment to the
Constitution. The balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, which
virtually all of my Republican colleagues voted for, says we will
balance the budget in 5 years. Well, we are either honest and serious
or we are not. So if you can vote for a balanced budget amendment that
balances the budget, why would you not vote for a budget that balances
in 5 years?
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous
consent request?
Mr. PAUL. I will finish in a few minutes.
It is a canard to say that the cut is coming from the military. The
cut is a 1-percent cut. It is $3.2 trillion spent, and it is $32
billion that would be cut. Every year, we send $30 billion to foreign
countries that hate us. We spend nearly $50 billion in Afghanistan
every year. If we were simply looking at the Department of Commerce--
$14 billion--and the Department of Education--$70 billion--I think we
could find $30 billion that we would never know was gone.
The bottom line is whether the debt is threatening our national
security, whether it is threatening the security of the economic
foundation of our country, and I think without question it is.
This vote is a litmus test for conservatives. Are you a conservative?
Do you think we could cut one penny out of every dollar? I think it is
a conservative notion that we have long said we are for. Now it is time
to step up to the plate and actually vote what you say you stand for.
With that, I yield back my time and ask for the yeas and nays.
Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a moment for a unanimous
consent request?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There does not appear to be a sufficient
second at this time.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask to propound a unanimous consent
request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask that I be recognized for 1 minute.
No, I don't. I ask that I be recognized at the conclusion of this vote
to explain why the Paul amendment would be damaging to our national
security. That is my unanimous consent request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient question.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, would it be appropriate at this time for
me to ask for 1 minute prior to the vote?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, the Senator from Oklahoma is recognized for 1
minute.
Mr. INHOFE. Thank you very much.
I know the intentions are good; we have voted on the same thing for
the last 5 years. I can tell you right now what the vote result is
going to be because it has been the same for the last 5 years.
No one has had a more consistently conservative record than I have,
but I would have to say that this would undo a lot of what we have
accomplished with the last vote to allow us to start rebuilding our
systems. We got in a position where we didn't have brigade combat teams
that were adequately prepared to go to battle. Sixty percent of our F-
18s were not flying. We are trying to recover from all of these things.
We have now started that recovery.
My concern is--and I think Senator Graham said it very well--in the
event that we pass this--if it did pass; it won't, but if it did--that
is going to be a problem and a problem that we can't overcome.
Right now, our No. 1 concern should be defending this Nation. This is
the opportunity to at least let people know that there is a legitimate
vote for conservatives to vote for a strong national defense.
I don't want to send a signal to our kids overseas--our kids in
battles and in harm's way--that we are not going to take care of their
needs, as we just started just a year ago to do. We have to continue
that.
For the sake of our national security, I suggest that we vote against
the Paul proposal.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
proceed to S. Con. Res. 36.
The yeas and nays were previously ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker),
and the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth) are necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 21, nays 76, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 99 Leg.]
YEAS--21
Barrasso
Cornyn
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Flake
Grassley
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Moran
Paul
Risch
Rubio
Sasse
Scott
Toomey
NAYS--76
Alexander
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Boozman
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Corker
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Donnelly
Durbin
Feinstein
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Harris
Hassan
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Heller
Hirono
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Isakson
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Roberts
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Shelby
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young
NOT VOTING--3
Booker
Duckworth
McCain
The motion was rejected.
Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, will the Senator yield?
[[Page S2748]]
Mr. WARNER. The Senator will yield.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I thank the Senator, and I appreciate
that very much.
I just want to make a brief statement about the vote that just took
place. I tried to communicate this, and there wasn't time before the
vote. Right now, we have more threats than we have ever had in the
history of this country. I think we all realize that.
General Dunford said that we are losing our qualitative and
quantitative advantage over our adversaries. He was talking about
Russia and China, in this case. We have adversaries out there that are
actually ahead of us in terms of their capabilities in artillery and
other areas.
Here we are, and, quite frankly, we knew how this vote was going to
come out. I have a list of the same vote that has taken place for the
last 5 years, and it came out the same way it did before. The point
here is that even though it wasn't going to pass, the problem is, it is
sending a message to our kids who are out there in harm's way.
We look and we see that we have started our road to recovery, and it
has been an exciting thing because we came so close to being in a
position where one-third of our brigade combat teams didn't work. The
F-35s in the field--the Marines could use less than half of them. All
of these things were going on because of what has happened to our
military.
Finally, we turned the corner. We turned the corner on the last
vote--not the one we took today but the one we took a few months ago--
and we now are rebuilding our military.
I had breakfast this morning with the Secretary of the Army and with
the Chief of the Army, and really good things are happening. I can't
think of anything worse than to send a message to our kids in the field
that we are going to go back and undo the positive things that have
pulled us up into a competitive position.
For the sake of our military, for the sake of defending America, the
vote there was to vote against sending the wrong message to our kids in
harm's way.
I thank Senator Warner for yielding.
____________________