Congressional Record, Volume 165 Issue 45 (Wednesday, March 13, 2019)

[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1819-S1822]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CLOTURE MOTION

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The bill clerk read as follows:

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination
of William Beach, of Kansas, to be Commissioner of Labor
Statistics, Department of Labor, for a term of four years.
Mitch McConnell, David Perdue, John Boozman, Thom Tillis,
Mike Rounds, John Hoeven, John Barrasso, Chuck
Grassley, Roy Blunt, Johnny Isakson, Lamar Alexander,
Mike Crapo, Pat Roberts, John Cornyn, Richard Burr,
John Thune, Roger F. Wicker.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
nomination of William Beach, of Kansas, to be Commissioner of Labor
Statistics, Department of Labor, for a term of four years, shall be
brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth)
and the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) are necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 55, nays 43, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 45 Ex.]

YEAS--55

Alexander
Barrasso
Blackburn
Blunt
Boozman
Braun
Burr
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Gardner
Graham
Grassley
Hawley
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Isakson
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Manchin
McConnell
McSally
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Perdue
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Romney

[[Page S1820]]

Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shelby
Sinema
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Wicker
Young

NAYS--43

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Cortez Masto
Durbin
Feinstein
Gillibrand
Harris
Hassan
Heinrich
Hirono
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Markey
Menendez
Merkley
Murphy
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--2

Duckworth
Murray
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The clerk will report the
nomination.
The legislative clerk read the nomination of William Beach, of
Kansas, to be Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor,
for a term of four years.

Nomination Of William Beach

Mr. BLUNT. I want to talk a little about the Green New Deal, but I
can't pass up the opportunity to point out that we are now starting 30
hours of debate on the Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It is outrageous. Everybody knows it is outrageous. If you start the
clock right now, there will not be an hour of debate--there might not
be 10 minutes of debate--on the Director of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, but what our friends on the other side have done is ensure
that we can't do any other business during that 30 hours, and, at some
point, once it is too late to do anything else this week, they may even
waive some of that time back.
This has to change. I certainly would like to see Members on the
other side of the aisle work with us to make that change. The bill I
have reported out of the Rules Committee that we have reported out of
our committee to change this is given more verification every single
week, as we try to let the President put a government in place, as we
try to do our job of confirming judges to judicial vacancies. That has
to stop, and I believe it is about to stop. I would like to see some
cooperation from our friends on the other side so we can move forward
in the way the Senate should move forward.

The Green New Deal

Mr. President, the Senate has also been talking about legislation
called the Green New Deal. A dozen of our colleagues on the other side
of the aisle have put this legislation in place. When you sponsor a
piece of legislation, it usually means you are for that piece of
legislation and think it needs to be debated, and it sure does.
This is a huge piece of legislation. Anything called the green
anything would mean you would think it would be mostly about climate
change or environmental things, but actually most of it is about other
things. I want to talk for a few minutes about what it says about
healthcare.
It is estimated that one part of the Green New Deal would cost $36
trillion over the next 10 years. That is about the same amount of money
we would spend for everything else over the next 10 years of the money
we appropriate. It is such a big number; it is hard to imagine how you
would even describe it, but $36 billion would be 100 times what it
would cost to rebuild the entire Interstate Highway System. If you can
imagine the entire Interstate Highway System, and you wanted to build
it all over again--build it again, go in and tear it up, and build it
again--do that 100 times over the next 100 years or however many years
it would take, that is $36 trillion. I might have even said earlier $36
billion, but it is $36 trillion, 100 times what it would cost to build
the entire Interstate Highway System all over again.
It is an absolutely enormous figure, but the government is accepting
an absolutely enormous new obligation, an obligation that, just in
terms of the healthcare part of this bill, would again be more than all
the money we would expect to spend over the next 7 years.
That would take us through fiscal year 2025. Everything we would
spend on Social Security, everything we would spend on Medicare,
everything we would spend on Medicaid, everything we would spend on
defense, on education, on homeland security, on interest on the debt,
and everything else would be less money than we would spend in the
first decade on Medicare for All.
If you look at this legislation, it is pretty obvious that Medicare
for All would, for a lot of reasons, be Medicare for None. One is that
big of a system probably wouldn't serve anybody very well, if at all.
Two is that Medicare would be eliminated. It would just be part of a
big healthcare system. If you are planning on benefiting from Medicare
as we know it today, that will not be there if this bill passed because
everybody would have something that would be theoretically like
Medicare is now, but there wouldn't be Medicare; there wouldn't be
Medicaid; there wouldn't be military TRICARE; there wouldn't be the
Children's Health Insurance Program. None of the things we have now
would exist. They would all become part of this big system of Medicare
for All.
In fact, it actually would eliminate private health insurance. We are
in this debate way beyond the debate of the days of when President
Obama said over and over again, if you like your current healthcare
insurance, you can keep your current healthcare insurance. Nobody even
pretends with Medicare for All that would be the case. In fact, this
legislation specifically says: ``It is unlawful for a private health
insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits
provided under this Act.'' You will have no choice but to look at
Medicare for All.
So when they say Medicare for All, they really mean Medicare for All.
The other forms of healthcare coverage would be gone.
One of our colleagues who is also running for President said: ``Let's
eliminate all of that.'' ``That'' in the question was private health
insurance. ``Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.''
Well, what moving on would look like would be everybody, again,
thrown into one system. There would be a single-payer, the Federal
Government. There would be a single system. You could call it Medicare
for All or anything else you want to call it, but there would be one
place to go.
We are now spending about $6 trillion over the next 10 years on
Federal healthcare systems. This would go from $6 trillion to $36
trillion.
I could spend a lot of time talking about, how could we afford that?
What would the taxes look like? The point is, it is an outrageous
proposal, particularly for the millions and millions of Americans who
like the insurance they have, who get insurance at work. It has been a
benefit in our country that workers first started getting right after
World War II. It has been a benefit at work that workers have never
paid taxes on. It has been a benefit at work that an awful lot of
people have been well served by.
We need to fill in the gaps. We need to create more options. We need
to do lots of things. This isn't one of them. When people lose their
healthcare options, when people begin to have to stand in line for
healthcare like people do in Canada, they are quickly persuaded that,
whatever turn was made, it was made in the wrong direction.
This would be a turn in the wrong direction. It would be something
the government can't afford and individuals and families will not want.
It would be something that people who have actually depended on
Medicare being there when they qualify for Medicare--and people pay
into it all their working lives, just like they do into Social
Security, except there is no cap, so many people pay a lot more into
that fund than they do the Social Security fund--but it would be gone.
Medicare for All would be Medicare for None.
I think there is a reason sponsors of this bill aren't eager to talk
about a lot of it and don't even want to vote on it. If I had sponsored
it, I might not want to vote on it either.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

S.J. RES. 7

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am reading a book called ``These
Truths''

[[Page S1821]]

by Jill Lepore. It is a history of the United States. She is a really
gifted historian and writes quite a few things. She has an article in
the New Yorker magazine about Eugene V. Debs, an early Socialist in the
20th century who ran for President. She is a skillful historian, and
she tells a story in ``These Truths'' about how this Nation came to be.
Of course, we emerged from a colony--a colony of England, Great
Britain--and then fought for our independence. One of the reasons we
fought for independence was to take the role of Kings out of the lives
of the people who lived in what we call America and to say we aren't
going to have Kings making decisions for us here. We will make our own
decisions. Thank you. We will call it a democracy, and the people will
rule.

At that point, we sat down and tried to put it in writing. The first
time we put it in writing, it didn't work out too well. The Articles of
Confederation really didn't unite our country and move it in the
direction that most people wanted. So the constitutional convention
followed. The constitutional convention in Philadelphia sat down and
wrote this document, the Constitution of the United States, and here we
are, over 200 years later, still living by those words that were
written over 200 years ago.
There were efforts to change and amend it to reflect changes in
America. The end of slavery, for example, was one of the most
significant, but, by and large, the principles of this document have
guided us for a long time.
Article I, section 8 gives the Congress--the Senate and the House--
the power to declare war. You think to yourself: Well, it is certainly
better for the Congress to make that decision than for a President to
do it alone. Letting a President do it without the people being
involved, or Congress, really would be much like a King deciding
whether we would go forward as a nation to be involved in a war.
This week, on the floor of the Senate, we will test that provision in
the Constitution and see if the current Members of the Senate believe
that the Constitution was right and that the Congress should be
declaring war.
My colleagues, Bernie Sanders, well-known to most across America,
Mike Lee, a conservative Republican from Utah, and Chris Murphy, a
Democrat from Connecticut, have decided that we should have a test vote
as to the United States' involvement in Saudi Arabia's bloody war in
Yemen. I am glad to be a cosponsor of that legislation.
Regardless of who has been in the White House during the time that I
have served in the House and the Senate, I have tried to consistently
argue that the American people, through their elected Congress, must
play a constitutional role in declaring a war--whether it was President
Bush on the Iraq war or President Obama on the U.S. military
intervention in Syria or Libya.
I think the Constitution is very clear and very wise in saying that
the American people, before we ask their sons and daughters to give up
their lives in a war, should have a say in these decisions through
their elected Members of Congress.
What we are doing today is deeply important. It occurs in the 18th
year of a war in Afghanistan that hardly anyone could have imagined
would be the case. Did anyone here who voted, as I did, 18 years ago--
18 years ago, voting in this Chamber--for the authorization of the use
of force in Afghanistan to go after the perpetrators of 9/11 believe
that we were authorizing the longest war in the history of the United
States, in Afghanistan--I am sure not a one--or that this authorization
would be stretched by Presidents of both political parties to approve
U.S. military action in other countries around the world? It became a
blanket authorization that has been used time and again.
This brings me to the question before us in the Senate today--the
disastrous, bloody war, led by the Saudi Arabians in Yemen, which the
United States is supporting.
Has there been a vote in the Senate for that? No. In the House? No.
Does anyone here remember authorizing any U.S. military involvement in
the war in Yemen? Well, they certainly couldn't find a recorded vote to
prove it.
Did anyone who voted in 2001, as I did, to go after the terrorists
responsible for 9/11, believe that this would somehow include a Saudi-
led quagmire in Yemen?
This war in Yemen is being led by a reckless young Saudi Crown
Prince, whom I believe had direct involvement in the brutal murder of a
journalist and resident of the United States, Jamal Khashoggi. It is
highly unlikely that anybody would have argued that we gave permission
for the U.S. Military and taxpayers' dollars to be spent in support of
this Saudi Arabian cause.
Not only was this war never authorized by elected representatives or
the American people, but it is a humanitarian disaster. An estimated
85,000 children have already died of malnutrition. We have created a
famine with this war in Yemen. In a country of 28 million people,
nearly half face death through famine.
I have a photo here, which I have displayed once on the floor, but I
can't bring myself to do it again. It is a photo of a 7-year-old Yemeni
girl, Amal Hussain. It is a heartbreaking photo. It appeared in the New
York Times last November. This little girl died shortly thereafter. She
starved to death. I just can't bring myself to display this photo
again.
Do you know what her mother said after she died? It is what any
mother would say: ``My heart is broken.''
This is a reality of the war that the United States supports in
Yemen. We have not debated it. We have not approved it. Yet taxpayers'
dollars make certain that it continues day after day, week after week,
month after month, and year after year.
Now, let's take a look at Saudi Arabia, which has asked us to join in
this effort in Yemen that is causing such a humanitarian disaster. This
is the same Saudi Arabia--the nation that conducted the cold-blooded
murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a nation that is detaining and torturing
women's rights activists, including Loujain al-Hathoul and Samar
Badawi. This is a nation that is detaining and torturing U.S. citizen
Dr. Walid Fitaihi. It is jailing Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and his
lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, on charges that are ridiculous on their
face.
Saudi Arabia is accused of recruiting and using Sudanese children as
soldiers in the war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia continues to turn a blind
eye to the export of extremist teachings that have shown up and caused
great harm around the world, most recently in Bosnia and Kosovo.
There may be some who think this war is justified. I am not one of
them. There may be some who think that because Iran is the enemy, we
should be engaged in this war. But, ultimately, this war, this debate,
and this vote are not about the merits of any of the things that I have
raised. It is not about a vindication of the Houthis, whom the Iranians
have sided with, and their troubling role in this horrific civil war.
It is about whether we in the Senate, who took an oath to uphold and
defend the Constitution, believe it. If we don't believe it, we will
just ignore it, let our military wage the war, let the President look
the other way, and let this administration come up with another excuse
for Saudi Arabia killing that journalist, and we will keep sending our
tax dollars in, which prolong this terrible war.
I think the Constitution requires more of us. If you truly believe in
what the President is asking us to do in Yemen, if you truly want to
stand with Saudi Arabia at this moment in history, show the courage by
voting that way. That is all I am asking for.
Our Founding Fathers showed great wisdom. They knew that the decision
to send someone's son or daughter into a war was not to be made by a
King or a supreme executive but by the people--the people of the United
States. So our Constitution wisely rests that responsibility with us--
the Senators and Members of the House of Representatives.
Today, there will be a recorded vote--a historic vote--as to whether
we go forward with this involvement in the war in Yemen. I will be
voting against any more involvement by the United States in this war.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S1822]]

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Beach
nomination?
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray)
is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 55, nays 44, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 46 Ex.]

YEAS--55

NAYS--44

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Feinstein
Gillibrand
Harris
Hassan
Heinrich
Hirono
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Markey
Menendez
Merkley
Murphy
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--1

Murray

The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Romney). Under the previous order, the
motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and
the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.

____________________