[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 153 (Monday, September 23, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5622-S5624]
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 legislative 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 Brian McGuire, of New York, to be a Deputy Under Secretary
of the Treasury.
Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Roger F. Wicker, Rob
Portman, John Thune, Kevin Cramer, John Barrasso, James
E. Risch, Richard Burr, James M. Inhofe, Lindsey
Graham, Rick Scott, John Boozman, Mike Crapo, Tim
Scott, John Hoeven, Deb Fischer.
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 Brian McGuire, of New York, to be a Deputy Under
Secretary of the Treasury, 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. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Georgia (Mr.
Isakson), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), the Senator from Kansas
(Mr. Roberts), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis), and the
Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).
[[Page S5623]]
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet),
the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from California
(Ms. Harris), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the Senator from
Massachusetts (Ms. Warren), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr.
Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 82, nays 6, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 294 Ex.]
YEAS--82
Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Blackburn
Blumenthal
Blunt
Boozman
Braun
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Duckworth
Durbin
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Gardner
Grassley
Hassan
Hawley
Heinrich
Hirono
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Jones
Kaine
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Lee
Manchin
McConnell
McSally
Menendez
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Romney
Rosen
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Schatz
Schumer
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Shelby
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Wicker
Wyden
Young
NAYS--6
Brown
Casey
Gillibrand
Markey
Merkley
Paul
NOT VOTING--12
Bennet
Booker
Graham
Harris
Isakson
Risch
Roberts
Sanders
Tillis
Toomey
Warren
Whitehouse
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 82, the nays are 6.
The motion is agreed to.
The senior Senator from Tennessee.
Ken Burns' ``Country Music''
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Ken Burns told me last year that his 8-
part, 16-hour ``Country Music'' film, which concludes on PBS this week,
could be more popular than his Civil War film. After watching the first
episodes, I suspect he might be right. His new film plumbs the depths
of the American soul, using the one tool--music--that is the most
likely to touch the largest number of us.
As a U.S. Senator from Tennessee, I will confess my bias. The first 2
hours of ``Country Music'' a week ago Sunday were about the recordings
of hillbilly music in 1927 at the birthplace of country music in
Bristol, where the Tennessee-Virginia State line runs down the middle
of Main Street. Two years ago, the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Kaine,
and I, played a little concert--I on the keyboard and he on the
harmonica--at the end of that Main Street, at a fiddler's festival that
they had. The rest of the Ken Burns episode winds through a community
called Boogertown in Eastern Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains, where
Dolly Parton was born, to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and to Beale
Street in Memphis.
We like to say that the whole world sings with Tennessee, but country
music is more than Tennessee music. It is more than Appalachian music.
It is more than the music of poor white Americans. It comes from the
heart.
As Burns' and Duncan's storytelling reminds us, every one of us has a
heart. There is no better evidence of this than paying less than $20 to
sit at a table at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. There you listen to
three songwriters tell the stories behind their songs and play them for
a small audience who doesn't even whisper during their performances.
I sat at the Bluebird on a Saturday in 2013, listening to a young
songwriter, Jessi Alexander, sing her song, ``I Drive Your Truck.'' One
of her cowriters, Connie Harrington, had heard the story on NPR. It was
the story of Jared Monti, an American soldier killed in Afghanistan
trying to save another soldier. He won a Congressional Medal of Honor
for that. To remember his son, his father, Paul, drives Jared's Dodge
Ram truck because, the father says, ``I am alone, in the truck, with
him.'' When Jessi Alexander finished singing, everyone in the Bluebird
was weeping. I said to the person next to me, ``That has to be the song
of the year,'' and it was.
Last week, I attended the Annual Nashville Songwriter Awards show. I
looked through the program listing all of the previous songs of the
year. In 2012, it was Dolly Parton's farewell song to Porter Wagoner,
``I Will Always Love You.'' Dolly Parton is a great songwriter too. In
2003, it was ``Three Wooden Crosses.'' In 1972, it was ``Old Dogs,
Children, and Watermelon Wine,'' by Tom T. Hall. Then, in 1969, it was
``Okie from Muskogee,'' by Merle Haggard. ``Three chords and the
truth'' is how songwriter Harlan Howard defines country music.
Ken Burns has become America's storyteller, a skill much more
difficult than it would seem. He tackles the subjects that divide us,
like the Civil War and Vietnam, and he presents them in a form that
allows us to travel through those wrenching experiences, gathering the
information we need to form our own opinions.
One could argue that Ken Burns is our most effective teacher of U.S.
history, a subject woefully undertaught in our schools. The lowest
scores on high school Advanced Placement tests are not in math and
science. They are in American history. So I am glad to know that there
is more of Ken Burns' work to come.
According to a New Yorker article in 2017, during the next decade
Burns plans to produce films about the Mayo Clinic, Muhammad Ali,
Ernest Hemingway, the American Revolution, Lyndon B. Johnson, Barack
Obama, Winston Churchill, the American criminal justice system, and
African-American history from the Civil War to the Great Migration.
Producing these films must cost a lot of money, but, in my view,
every penny that the Public Broadcasting System and private
contributors have spent has been worth it. If I had the money, I would
ask Burns how much time he will spend raising funds to pay for these
next films and I would give him the amount of money that it would take
so that he could spend that time producing an extra three or four more
films before he hangs it up. Since I don't have the money, maybe
someone else will do that.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be printed in the Record an
op-ed that was in the New York Times, ``Country Music Is More Diverse
Than You Think,'' by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, Sept. 13, 2019]
Country Music Is More Diverse Than You Think
Common stereotypes overlook the roles that blacks and women have played
in shaping a uniquely American genre
(By Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan)
This spring the rapper Lil Nas X, who is black, released
``Old Town Road,'' a twang-inflected song that rocketed to
the top of the country music charts--even though Billboard
temporarily removed it from the list, saying it wasn't
sufficiently ``country.''
A few months later, when the Country Music Association
announced that three women--Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire and
Carrie Underwood--would host its annual awards show, some
people criticized the choice as political correctness, as if
``real'' country music was restricted to good old boys.
Both controversies reflect the stereotypes that chronically
surround country music. They overlook its diverse roots, its
porous boundaries and the central role that women and people
of color have played in its history.
Such narrow views would astonish the two foundational acts
of the genre--Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family--who
contributed to country music's early commercial success in
the 1920s. They knew firsthand that what has made American
music so uniquely American has been its constant mixing of
styles and influences.
It all began when the fiddle, which came from Europe, met
the banjo, which came from Africa--bringing together ballads
and hymns from the British Isles with the syncopations and
sensibilities of enslaved blacks. That mix, that ``rub,''
which occurred principally in the South, set off a chain
reaction that has reverberated in our music ever since.
The earliest country recordings were known as ``hillbilly''
music, just as African-American recordings were categorized
as ``race'' music. The names echoed a prevailing prejudice
that each genre (and its artists and its fans) was somehow
beneath consideration from society's upper rungs--and that
each one was unrelated to the other.
In truth, as the two of us learned during the eight years
we spent exploring the music and its history, they were
always intertwined. The music constantly crossed the racial
divide that a segregated nation tried to enforce.
[[Page S5624]]
Before his career took off, Rodgers worked as a water boy
in Mississippi for the mostly black crews laying railroad
track. The men he met, and their music, shaped his own
emerging style--the songs he made popular as an adult were
essentially the blues, to which he added a distinctive yodel.
In 1930, at the height of his popularity, he recorded with
Louis Armstrong, the protean jazz artist.
When A.P. Carter collected songs for the Carter Family, he
brought along Lesley Riddle, a black slide guitar player, to
help him remember the melodies. Riddle also taught the
Carters a hymn from his church, ``When the World's on Fire,''
which they recorded. They then used the same melody for
another song, ``Little Darling, Pal of Mine.'' Years later
Woody Guthrie, a fan of the Carters, borrowed the melody for
his classic ``This Land Is Your Land.'' That one song's
journey encapsulates the real, interconnected story of
American music.
Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, was mentored by an
African-American fiddle player. Hank Williams, the great
honky-tonk singer, credited Tee-Tot Payne, a black street
musician in Alabama, for ``all the music training I ever
had.'' Bob Wills created Western swing by adapting jazz's
big-band sound to fiddles and steel guitars.
In Memphis in the 1950s, when rhythm and blues and gospel
and hillbilly music began swirling together in the eddies of
the Mississippi, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and
others pioneered rockabilly, a precursor to rock 'n' roll.
The cross-fertilization went in both directions. Charley
Pride--the first postwar black artist to have a No. 1 country
hit, and the first artist of any color to win the Country
Music Association's male vocalist award two years in a row--
was discovered in a bar in Montana, singing Hank Williams's
``Lovesick Blues.'' He had grown up listening to the ``Grand
Ole Opry'' show on the radio.
When the rhythm and blues star Ray Charles was given
creative control of an album for the first time, he chose to
record a selection of country songs. ``You take country
music, you take black music,'' Charles said, and ``you got
the same goddamn thing exactly.'' The album was a sales
sensation.
``There's a truth in the music,'' the jazz musician and
composer Wynton Marsalis told us, that ``the musicians
accepted at a time when the culture did not accept. And it's
too bad that we, as a culture, have not been able to address
that truth. The art tells more of the tale of us coming
together.''
Likewise, the history of country music is filled with
strong and talented women in ways the common stereotype seems
(or chooses) to overlook. From Patsy Montana to Patsy Cline,
Kitty Wells to Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris to Rosanne Cash
to Reba McEntire, women have created some of country music's
most enduring art.
In 1926, A.P. Carter and his wife, Sara, had been turned
down by a record label on the theory that a woman singing
lead could never be popular. Instead, the Carters added
Sara's cousin Maybelle to the group and went on to make
history, centered on Sara's remarkable voice and Maybelle's
innovative guitar playing, ``the Carter scratch,'' which has
influenced generations of guitarists.
Jimmie Rodgers relied on his sister-in-law, Elsie
McWilliams, as the writer of more than a third of his songs.
(He couldn't read musical notations, so she came to his
recording sessions to teach her new compositions to him in
person.)
In 1966, the same year that the National Organization for
Women was founded and the phrase ``women's liberation'' was
first used, Loretta Lynn wrote and recorded ``Don't Come Home
A Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind),'' a statement that
dealt with spousal abuse and alcoholism and a woman's right
to her own body, with a bluntness no other musical genre
dared make at the time. Her label later held back her song
``The Pill'' because it seemed too controversial; when it was
released, some stations refused to play it--until her fans
made it a Top-5 country hit and crossed it over to the pop
charts.
``If you write the truth and you're writing about your
life,'' Ms. Lynn told us, ``it's going to be country.''
At its best, country music has never been confined to one
simple category or convenient stereotype. It sprang from many
roots and then sprouted many new branches through the 20th
century, creating a complicated chorus of American voices
joining together to tell a complicated American story, one
song at a time.
Country deals with the most basic, universal human emotions
and experiences--love and loss, hardship and dreams, failure
and the hope of redemption--and turns them into songs. The
songwriter Harlan Howard once defined country music as
``three chords and the truth.'' Three chords imply
simplicity. But the truth part is always much more complex.
And more profound.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Honoring Captain Vincent Liberto, Jr.
Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I rise today with a heavy heart to honor
the life of Mandeville police officer Captain Vincent ``Vinnie''
Liberto, Jr., who was killed in the line of duty last week. Captain
Liberto will be remembered for his life of service to the community and
country.
After graduating from Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, he
joined the U.S. Marine Corps, where he ultimately served 10 years as
sergeant.
Captain Liberto had a combined 30 years of law enforcement service, 5
with the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Department and 25 years with the
Mandeville Police Department, where he was recognized as officer of the
year.
The captain had a brilliant mind for law enforcement. He graduated
from the FBI National Academy and ran the Mandeville Police
Department's Criminal Investigations Division, where he worked as a
polygraphist and was responsible for the Department's enforcement
functions.
Those who knew him best describe him as a gentle giant, polite,
upbeat, reasonable, and fairminded--all qualities that make a great
police officer.
In his yard flies the Marine Corps flag, and mounted on the front
door are twin wreaths, one for the marines and one for the police.
Captain Liberto is survived by his wife, Tracey, and seven children.
He was 58 years old.
His passion for service was so strong that he inspired several of his
children to follow in their dad's footsteps by entering the military
and law enforcement. That is the definition of setting a great example
for children.
Captain Liberto's death is a painful reminder that our law
enforcement officers put their lives on the line to keep our community
safe. He died during a gunfire exchange when a routine traffic stop
turned into a tragedy. The other officer, Ben Cato, was also injured
but thankfully has returned to work.
Like Captain Liberto and Officer Cato, our law enforcement officers
report to work every day knowing that they might not come home at
night. They do it for us all, and for that we should always be
grateful.
I ask those who are listening to say a prayer for Tracey, their kids,
and the officers of the Mandeville Police Department, and for their
entire community that is grieving the loss of one of their own.
Vincent Liberto made Louisiana a better place and our country a
better place, and he will be sorely missed.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.