[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 164 (Wednesday, October 3, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6488-S6490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Bipartisanship

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, the Senate is debating right now, 
obviously, a really important issue. It is the confirmation of Judge 
Kavanaugh. It is a very serious and important debate. It is a 
contentious debate. There are a lot of emotions out there, and it is 
going to continue to be that way, but I want to talk about something 
that is not actually related to that. In some ways, it is actually 
related to something very different.
  I heard in the news this morning--actually, I hear this in the news 
all the time. I say to our friends in the media, this speech that I am 
going to give has a little bit about something I want you to focus on 
and to try a little harder in certain ways to report. There is a 
conventional wisdom out there that the Senate is the most contentious 
it has ever been--that there is hyperpartisanship, that nobody talks to 
each other, and that nobody likes each other. I have heard people talk 
about 1850, the Civil War, and that nothing gets done.
  Now, I am not a media basher. I walk out, and I do my interviews. I 
am very open. Back home in the great State of Alaska, I am open to the 
media all the time. I am respectful. I don't see the media as the enemy 
of the people or anything like that. They certainly have their biases, 
but I will say that I believe, to some degree, this narrative of ``hey, 
this place is so partisan; I haven't seen this since the 1850s; nothing 
gets done here'' is driven by the media.
  Conflict sells. We know that. Senators fighting and bashing each 
other is kind of interesting to sell newspapers or to have a place on 
social media, but bipartisan, hard work--the good work for the Nation--
let's just admit, can be a bit boring. It can be a bit boring.
  People say: Wow, these guys are working together. These men and women 
are working together.
  That is a little boring in the media space. So it doesn't get written 
about nationally and, certainly, a lot of times, locally in some of our 
home States. I think this is a shame. I think it is a shame.
  Of course, the media can write about the contentious issues. We are 
seeing a really important one right now, and it deserves a lot of print 
and a lot of press. It is getting it. That is for sure. It is a shame 
because this can be a bit dispiriting, not only for the Members of this 
body but much more importantly for the people we represent, for the 
Alaskans I represent.
  They see this when they read the newspaper, and they think: Jeez, is 
this the only thing going on there?
  So tonight what I want to do is something that is a bit of a shocker 
to some watching back home, and we still have people in the Galleries. 
It is going to be a bit of a shocker, and I am almost sure no one is 
going to write about it or do a story about it, but, nonetheless, the 
Alaskans I represent and the American people whom we all represent need 
to hear about it.
  In the past few weeks--heck, in the past few hours--this body right 
here, the U.S. Senate, has gotten some important, bipartisan work done 
for America. You might not read about it back home, but that doesn't 
mean it didn't happen.
  Some of these bills are big, important bills. Some of them are 
smaller, maybe less important bills, but they

[[Page S6489]]

all have something in common: hard work, good work, serious work, and 
bipartisan--actually, very bipartisan--work that will help America to 
address challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Yes, it is 
being done right here, today, and in the last 2, 3, or 4 weeks.
  What might some of these accomplishments be just in the past few 
weeks? Maybe our friends in the media will write about it. I hope they 
do. Let's get started. Let's get started and talk about some of these.
  Mr. President, as you know, we just had a bill that overwhelmingly 
passed the Senate dealing with the opioid crisis. This is going to the 
President's desk, and he is going to sign this. This is a huge issue 
for all of us. It is a really important issue in my State, the great 
State of Alaska.
  The numbers are staggering--staggering. There are 72,000 Americans--
rich, poor, Black, White, Native, non-Native, young, old, but, 
actually, mostly young--who have died of drug overdoses last year. This 
is hard to comprehend. In my view, this body is finally waking up to 
this challenge.
  I am not going to go through each one of these bills, but there is 
going to be significant funding--billions of dollars--in this bill we 
just passed. This bill has the STOP Act, which is the bill of my good 
friend from Ohio, Senator Portman. He has been such a leader on this. I 
was an early cosponsor of the bill. The bill focuses on stopping the 
killer drug fentanyl, which is coming from China and Mexico and killing 
all of our people. That is the STOP Act.
  This bill has a provision that I authored that gets 5 percent of the 
funding to Native health organizations. Some of the Native 
organizations in the lower 48 and in Alaska have really strong and far-
reaching access to some of our rural citizens. So these organizations 
are going to see a lot more funding.
  There is a hugely important amount of good policy. We are not going 
to get there and we are not going to fix this opioid-heroin addiction 
problem for years, but at least we are focused on it. It is good 
legislation, and it was very bipartisan legislation that just passed 
the Senate and is going to go to the President's desk for his 
signature. That happened today. That is newsworthy.
  If you are going through recovery, like so many good people I know in 
Alaska are, this is encouraging news. Hopefully, someone is going to 
write about it. This is encouraging news.
  OK, what else happened today? The FAA reauthorization happened. Some 
people will say: Well, that sounds like a yawner. But this is basic 
infrastructure. This is basic aviation security infrastructure and 
improvements in weather reporting systems. For my State, the great 
State of Alaska, this bill is enormously important--enormously 
important.
  I am not going to read all of the provisions in there that are going 
to benefit Alaska, such as essential air service, like more funding for 
airport infrastructure, and improvement programs such as streamlining 
permitting, so you can actually build airport infrastructure. This is a 
bill that is going to really help the whole country.
  Again, we are starting to get work done. From 2008 to 2012, there 
were 23 extensions of the FAA bill, or the Federal Aviation 
Administration Reauthorization Act--23 extensions. What does that mean? 
Well, essentially, it means the Senate wasn't doing its job.
  This is a 5-year extension. People back home in Alaska and other 
places can now plan for 5 years on infrastructure for airports. There 
are no more of these extensions. There were 23 in 5 years. That is the 
Senate not doing its job. We did that today.
  For some people, this is a really big deal. I hope the media will 
report on it. I am not holding my breath. What about this very 
bipartisan legislation and a lot of hard, important work to keep 
America at the cutting edge of drum technology and of aviation 
technology?
  We are the home and the most innovative place in the world for 
aviation and aircraft. This will help us to stay that way. That 
happened today also. That is going to go to the President's desk for 
his signature. It is a bipartisan bill, important for the country.

  Related to that--and I know the Presiding Officer has been a leader 
on this issue on our budget and appropriations process--with the 
enactment of the Department of Defense appropriations bill, this Senate 
has had more spending bills enacted on time since at any time since 
1997--20 years. I know a lot of people are like: Well, that is really 
boring. And isn't that what you are supposed to do, pass appropriations 
bills and get them to the President's desk so you don't have these 
giant omnibuses? That is Washington speak for a bill that is $1.5 
trillion, 2,400 pages that nobody reads because nobody knows what is in 
it. I don't vote for those, by the way. That system was broken. A lot 
of us ran on that in 2014 because the system was so broken. So we are 
going to start to work on it, and we are doing it--success.
  We have a long way to go, and, again, you are watching, and the 
American people are saying: Well, big deal, you are funding the 
government the way you are supposed to. They have a really good point, 
but we hadn't been doing that for almost two decades, and we are 
starting to do it in a serious way. By the way, it has to be bipartisan 
here in the Senate because we need 60 votes for these appropriations 
bills to pass.
  So the Appropriations Committee has passed out every bill, as I 
mentioned, at a pace that we haven't seen since 1998. Almost 90 percent 
of the discretionary spending that runs our Federal Government is done 
through the regular order--the process by which most Americans think we 
should be doing things, but we haven't been. We are starting to do it 
now. Bipartisan, important, get our budgeting process back in order--we 
are doing that. That is good news. You are probably not going to hear 
about it in the media, but that is good news.
  Let me tell you about another one that is related that we did about 5 
weeks ago--a little bit further back--the National Defense 
Authorization Act, the NDAA. I sit on the Armed Services Committee with 
the Presiding Officer. This is a really important bill. The President 
signed it about a month ago. It rebuilds our military, which the vast 
majority of Americans--certainly the vast majority of Alaskans--
support.
  People forget that from 2010 to 2016, the budget of the Department of 
Defense was cut by almost 25 percent. Despite serious national security 
challenges all over the world, we were cutting defense spending 
dramatically. Readiness plummeted.
  This bill the President just signed significantly rebuilds our 
military and implements the national defense strategy of the Pentagon, 
written by Secretary Mattis. That is a whole new strategy for America. 
Yes, we still have the threat from al-Qaida and international terrorism 
from 9/11, but this strategy starts to focus on our big challenges, 
such as the rise of great power rivalries like China and Russia. We 
need to focus on them primarily, and that is what we are doing.
  Guess how many Senators voted for that--a hugely important piece of 
legislation. Eighty-five. It was very bipartisan--one of the most 
important things this body does. I check most major newspapers; they 
didn't even write about it when the President signed it. That is really 
important. It is bipartisan, rebuilding the military, new strategy, so 
that is good news. In my State, that is really good news. The vast 
majority of Alaskans love our military, support our military. We have a 
lot of military bases. They think this is great news.
  So I hope our friends in the media will write about that. I know it 
is about 4 weeks late, but I didn't see any articles on it. That is 
important.
  Let me give a few other examples. They are not like the NDAA--huge in 
terms of their importance or the size of the bill--but they are 
important. They are bills that I authored, so I like to highlight 
those; when you get a bill that you work on with your colleagues here 
on both sides of the aisle, you pass it, you get it over to the 
President, and he signs it.
  This week, the bill Senator Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, 
and I have been working on for, gosh, almost 2 years--the Save Our Seas 
bill is all about addressing the challenge that we have not only in 
America but globally, with ocean debris, ocean pollution, ocean 
plastics littering our oceans, hurting our wonderful, sustainable 
fisheries, potentially posing health risks to humans. That bill

[[Page S6490]]

passed this week. It is going to be signed by the President, hopefully 
this week or next week.
  I want to thank Senator Whitehouse and Senator Booker. It is a very 
bipartisan bill. It passed here, passed the House--a really important 
issue.
  By the way, the Trump administration is doing a good job on this 
issue. Even the U.S.-Mexico-Canada NAFTA agreement has a provision, and 
we are pressing for that, on this ocean debris problem. This bill 
is going to do a lot to help with this challenge. It passed. A 
bipartisan group of Senators strongly supported that. It passed this 
week and is being signed into law here soon by the President. That is 
good news.

  I am pretty sure no one wrote about it, but if you look at global 
challenges for the environment--the ocean pollution, plastics, ocean 
debris challenge is a big one.
  Again, I want to thank Senator Whitehouse, in particular--great 
leadership on this issue. We are taking important strides on this. He 
and I are already working on SOS 2.0, and I guarantee that is going to 
pass.
  That is a bipartisan achievement, protecting our oceans, getting the 
world to clean up plastics, ocean debris. That is not bad for 1 week in 
the Senate, right? Hopefully someone will write about that. It was very 
bipartisan, that is for sure.
  Another one that was signed into law 3 weeks ago is a bill that is 
really important to me, and it is one of the first bills I introduced 
as a Senator when I came here 3\1/2\ years ago, called the Pro bono 
Work to Empower and Represent Act--the POWER Act. That is what it is 
called, the POWER Act.
  This is a bill that I worked on very closely with Senator Heitkamp, a 
Democrat from North Dakota. She and I worked on this bill for over 2 
years. It passed the Senate and finally passed the House and came back, 
had a couple more elements to it. We got it passed again, and the 
President signed it 3 weeks ago.
  What does the POWER Act do? Well, we all know America has big 
challenges with regard to sexual assault and domestic violence. My 
State has huge problems with this horrible, horrendous issue. The POWER 
Act, through getting lawyers to step up and help victims and survivors 
of domestic violence, is going to provide more legal resources and 
services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. That is a 
pretty important topic, a pretty important issue for America.
  Think about this: If you are an accuser--if you are someone who is a 
perpetrator of one of these horrendous crimes, a sexual assault crime--
you get a Sixth Amendment right to counsel. That is under the 
Constitution. If you are the victim, you get nothing--nothing. Well, 
our bill, which is now the law of the land, is going to help change 
that. We envision an army of lawyers all over the country helping these 
survivors. So that passed. It is bipartisan. It passed 3 weeks ago. It 
is an important issue, certainly, for Alaska but also for the country. 
We all know that we can do much better in this area, so that is going 
to help. I think it is going to help thousands of survivors personally 
as we work to implement it. That is good news. It is bipartisan.
  What else? NAFTA. This isn't in the Senate yet, but it will be coming 
our way. The President and his team announced that they have reached 
agreement with Mexico and Canada on an updated NAFTA agreement. I think 
most Americans think that is very important. We will see if it is 
bipartisan. I certainly have been one who has been encouraging the 
President and his team. I am working hard on making sure we get there 
and address some of our other economic challenges and trade challenges. 
But that was announced a couple of days ago. That is good news.
  We have to get to the details of it. We will debate it here on the 
Senate floor. It is important for the country, for our allies, for the 
American worker and American families. That is positive.
  Then, related to NAFTA, of course, is bipartisan good news that 
should make every American smile; that is, finally we are once again 
unleashing the might of the U.S. economy--something I know the 
Presiding Officer cares a lot about, and certainly it is a bipartisan 
issue. We would rather have 4.2 percent GDP growth like we had last 
quarter than 1.5 GDP growth, which was the average over the last 10 
years. There is a debate here--it is a healthy debate--on what is 
causing this robust economic growth. I think it is tax reform and 
regulatory reform and unleashing the promise and power of American 
energy. So there is a debate here, but there is no debate on the fact 
that everybody in this body, I hope, thinks that 4.2 percent GDP 
growth, thinks having the lowest unemployment rate in almost 50 years, 
thinks having wages finally start to go up after being stagnant for 20 
is good news. It is good news, and everybody here should have 
bipartisan agreement on that. We will debate how we sustain it, how we 
keep it going, but nobody debates that it is bipartisan good news.
  So I am just going to ask my friends in the media--it is not 1850; 
sorry, I know conflict sells. We are not on the verge of civil war. We 
don't all hate each other; we actually like each other. We work 
together. I certainly respect my colleagues here. Yes, we have our 
tough debates; we are having one right now. But for my friends in the 
media, it is OK to report on bipartisan successes. I just gave examples 
of a number of bipartisan initiatives that occurred over the last 4 to 
5 weeks that are actually really good for the American people. They are 
good for the people I represent back in Alaska.
  But even if you are not going to read about this or see it on TV, for 
anyone watching, for the people in the gallery, for my constituents 
back home, there is a lot going on here that is bipartisan, that is 
significant, that helps us address challenges like opioids, helps us 
take advantage of industries like the aviation industry which, for 
Alaska, is so important. So keep the faith.
  Again, to my friends in the media, it is OK to report on bipartisan 
successes. The American people care about them. You might not care 
about them, but the American people do. So let's work together and try 
to make sure everybody is understanding that there is some important 
work being done here, and a lot of it is going to help the people we 
represent.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

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