Congressional Record, Volume 165 Issue 172 (Wednesday, October 30, 2019)

[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 172 (Wednesday, October 30, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6281-S6294]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND
DRUG ADMINISTRATION, INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, MILITARY CONSTRUCTION,
VETERANS AFFAIRS, TRANSPORTATION, AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2020--Continued

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 949

Mr. UDALL. Madam President, I am very happy to be joined on the floor
with Senator Merkley, who has worked with me for a long time on the For
the People Act, and we will both be speaking here in that order.
The American people sent us here to do the people's business, but
under Republican leadership, the Senate is not responding to what the
American people need and want. We are not solving the kitchen table
issues the American people elected us to face every day.
For example, we are not making sure every American has access to
affordable, quality healthcare. We need to lower costs and take on Big
Pharma, and we are not doing that. We are not passing commonsense gun
safety legislation that 90 percent of the voters support in order to
stop shootings in the schools, on our streets, and in our communities.
If we can't pass bills that save children's lives, our democracy is not
working. We are not even taking on the most pressing issue that faces
our planet--climate change. Younger generations are urging us to act,
but this body is running away from taking any action.
The number of gravestones in the majority leader's legislative
graveyard--where urgent bills are stalled and buried--steadily mounts.
Bills keep going into the majority leader's graveyard, but Congress
will not and cannot do the people's business when the bills to fix our
democracy also rest in that graveyard.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the For the People
Act, H.R. 1. It passed it in March. At the same time, I introduced the
Senate companion to the For the People Act, which has the support of
all 47 Democrats and Independents in the Senate. Yet, along with a pile
of other good and necessary bills, Leader McConnell has buried the For
the People Act.
The For the People Act repairs our broken campaign finance system,
opens up the ballot box to all Americans, and lays waste to the
corruption in Washington. These are all reforms that the American
people support. Why will the Senate majority leader not let us vote on
them?
There is hardly a day that goes by that we don't see evidence of why
it is so important that we pass the For the People Act. Foreign
influence in our elections is only growing, and 2016 was just the
start. Associates of the President's personal lawyer have been indicted
for laundering foreign money into our elections. The President's lawyer
is under investigation for the same. Political ads from foreign sources
are flooding social media.
Our bill fights foreign tampering in our democracy. It prohibits
domestic corporations with foreign control from spending money in U.S.
elections. It cracks down on shell companies that are used in order to
launder foreign money into our elections. Our bill makes sure that
American elections

[[Page S6282]]

are decided by American voters without there being foreign
interference. It protects our democratic institutions, increases
oversight over election vendors, requires paper ballots, and supports
security upgrades for States' voting systems.
This body should have gotten serious about election security
immediately after the 2016 election, but under the majority leader's
direction, we have not done that.
At a time of increased foreign interference, the President has
invited foreign assistance in any way it might benefit him personally,
politically, or financially. Day in and day out, we see this President
taking full advantage of his position to benefit himself, his family,
and his political prospects.
The President never divested. He never formed a blind trust for his
assets. Every day, we see foreign officials and foreign nationals
currying favor with the President and padding his pocketbook, wining
and dining at the Trump properties. Indeed, Mr. Giuliani and his two
close associates lunched at the Trump International Hotel, right here
in Washington, just before these two individuals were picked up at
the Washington Dulles International Airport with their one-way tickets
abroad. The same individuals have been charged with illegally funneling
foreign money into our democracy. In addition, the President only
relented from hosting the next G7 summit at his Doral resort in Miami
after the Republicans told him that even they couldn't defend that.

All the while, the President calls the emoluments clause--intended to
stop these very abuses--phony.
The For the People Act requires the President to fully disclose his
or her financial interests and disclose the last 10 years of his or her
tax returns, which is something this President has never done. It
requires the President to fully divest and transfer all of his or her
assets to a blind trust. The American people deserve to know their
President is acting in the national interest, not in his or her own
self-interest, and not being subjected to leverage by foreign interests
that seek to corrupt our electoral process.
The intelligence community has been very clear with its disturbing
warnings. Adverse foreign interests are actively trying to manipulate
our democracy. They did so in 2016 as the Mueller report and
prosecutions from that investigation confirmed. They will try to do so
again in 2020. We are watching it happen in realtime before our eyes.
These foreign interests are not red or blue--not Democratic or
Republican. They will use whomever they can to pursue their interests--
interests that are often opposed to ours or are simply corrupt. We must
unite in the defense of our electoral system and in the defense of the
sanctity of our democracy. Like the other bills the Democrats are
seeking to pass this week, the For the People Act would provide that
protection. The House's version, H.R. 1, would do so as well.
We want to partner with the Republicans in these efforts, and we are
open to negotiation. Yet, while the American people demand that we fix
our out-of-control campaign finance system, make sure elections are
secure, and root out the corruption in Washington, bills to address
these issues gather dust on the leader's desk.
I, for one, will not stop fighting for the comprehensive democratic
reforms that we need and for bringing power back to the people--where
the Founders intended it to be. Our democracy will always be worth the
fight.
Once again, Senator Merkley has been a great partner to work with on
the For the People Act.
I yield to the Senator from Oregon.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am honored to join my colleague who
has led this battle for the vision of the For the People Act that will
restore the ``we the people'' democratic republic.
Here we are on the floor of the Senate. It is an institution that
once reverberated with great debates on the great issues our Nation
faced--issues of war and peace, of civil rights, of healthcare and
housing, of education and infrastructure, and of living-wage jobs;
issues of equal opportunity and of environmental pollution; issues that
affect the fundamental success of each family in America and our
collective success as a nation.
Yet, if you are sitting here today and are observing the Senate from
the benches up above, you will be hard-pressed to see any of that
because those debates are not happening in the U.S. Senate. This
Chamber is silent on the great issues that face America.
Before he was the majority leader, the majority leader promised that
things would be different under his leadership.
He said:

A Senate majority under my leadership would break sharply
from the practices of the Reid era in favor of a far more
free-wheeling approach to problem solving. I would work to
restore its traditional role as a place where good ideas are
generated, debated and voted upon.

Now, one of the fundamental principles is that every Senator should
be able to raise any issue and have the chance to defend it, to present
it, to see it attacked, to respond to those attacks, and to have the
American people see where we stand. But, today, the Senate is not
operating in that manner today. The reality is reflected in a different
quote by the majority leader from this past year.
He said:

Donald Trump is still in the White House, and as long as I
am Majority Leader of the Senate, I get to set the agenda.
That's why I call myself the Grim Reaper.

The majority leader is taking great pride in preventing this Chamber
from being the legislative body that was envisioned in the
Constitution, one in which we examine the issues that the citizens of
our States present to us with great concern and ask us to resolve so as
to take this Nation forward. Instead, we are deeply mired in the
legislative graveyard that the majority leader has been so proud to
create.
How about the Bipartisan Background Checks Act? It is now engraved on
a tombstone. The Paycheck Fairness Act? Engraved on a tombstone.
Violence Against Women? On a tombstone--or how about Save the Internet?
Or the Climate Action Now Act?
How about healthcare? Across my State, in rural areas and urban
areas, everybody wants the same fair price, even if they have
preexisting conditions. That is the fundamental nature of an effective
insurance strategy for healthcare, but the Protecting Americans With
Preexisting Conditions Act has never been debated on this floor.
The American Dream and Promise Act, the Securing America's Federal
Elections Act? How about the Raise the Wage Act? How about the Equality
Act that grants every member of our society, LGBTQ Americans, the full
opportunity to have the doors of opportunity opened, rather than
slammed shut--debated and passed just down the hall, each and every one
of these bills, but here, they haven't been debated. The Senate is
failing its constitutional responsibility.
In fact, during the last 2 years, there has only been three
priorities that have seemed to have arisen in this Chamber. One was the
goal of stripping healthcare from 30 million Americans. It failed by
the slimmest of margins. A second is to pack the courts with judges who
believe in a supercharged amendment to give power to the powerful,
rather than power to the people.
The third is a $2 trillion tax cut to enrich the richest Americans.
In any chamber that truly represents the people, you don't see the goal
of destroying healthcare for 30 million Americans and giving $2
trillion to the richest Americans. But that is what we have seen here,
while we fail to see the bills on healthcare, on housing, on education,
on infrastructure, on living wage jobs--the fundamentals by which the
American families prosper.
Why is it that this Chamber is now a completely owned subsidiary of
the most powerful people in this country? It is because of the
fundamental corruption of our constitutional system, starting with
gerrymandering.
Many of us hear that phrase, ``equal representation,'' and understand
we are talking about fundamental fairness of distributed power, but
gerrymandering is the opposite of that. The Supreme Court has given
complete license to extreme partisan gerrymandering, instead of
defending the constitutional vision of equal representation. It is
principle in a democracy and in a republic that the citizens choose
their legislators, the legislators don't choose

[[Page S6283]]

their citizens. But that legislation to address that, to create
nonpartisan commissions to prevent that gerrymandering, hasn't been
debated on the floor of this Chamber.
A second piece of corruption is voter suppression. The Supreme Court
opened the doors by gutting the Voting Rights Act, again failing to
defend the vision of the Constitution. But have we remedied that here
on this floor? Have we addressed that fundamental corruption in which
all kinds of tactics are created to prevent people from voting across
this country--all kinds of clever ID laws to disempower communities
that are minority communities or college communities or poor
communities or Native American communities? We have not.
There is perhaps the most vicious form of corruption, the dark money
flowing through our campaign systems. Jefferson was very clear that if
you have government by the powerful, you end up with laws for the
powerful. So you have to have distributed power so that the power of
the people results in laws that reflect the will of the people. That is
the difference between the vision of our constitutional system here in
the United States of America and the system of kingships that dominated
Europe.
But because of the corruption of dark money in our campaign system,
it has created the concentration of power, the exact opposite of what
Jefferson laid out and our Founders laid out in our Constitution. We
start our Constitution with those powerful first three words, ``We the
people,'' because that is the vision of our Constitution--not ``We the
powerful,'' not ``We the privileged.''
So a bill has been crafted, H.R. 1, the For the People Act. My
colleague from New Mexico has led this charge to address this
fundamental corruption in order to restore the vision our Nation was
founded on because, if we restore that foundation, then we would be
addressing healthcare on the floor of the Senate, making it more
affordable, stopping the price gouging of Americans, the challenges of
access in communities across this country.
We would be addressing the shortage of housing that is driving a
homeless epidemic in this country, partly because of the economics, the
structure of our economy, and partly because of unaddressed mental
illness and drug addiction.
We would be addressing education because education is the path to
full participation; yet today, we have seen a shrinkage of the
opportunities through apprenticeships for working people and through
college--affordable college for the dreams taking you in that direction
if you weren't previously burdened by a debt the size of a home
mortgage. We would be addressing infrastructure and jobs. We would be
addressing the environmental challenges our planet faces if we restore
the vision of our Constitution.
This For the People Act is the most important piece of legislation
because everything else we care about as Americans is going to fail if
we let this Chamber be controlled by powerful special interests through
this corrupted system. So let's take it on. Let's take on the
gerrymandering and the voter suppression and the dark money. Let's have
the courage to debate it on this floor because that is what we were
elected to do, was to work on the big challenges facing our Nation, and
there is perhaps no bigger challenge than this.
Madam President, I yield back to my colleague from New Mexico.
Mr. UDALL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance
Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 949, the
Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be
considered read a third time and passed; and the motion to reconsider
be made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BLUNT. Reserving the right to object, I would like to object. I
would like to talk about this bill for a minute.
In March, the House passed a bill that would give the Federal
Government unprecedented control over elections in this country,
despite the fact that, for more than 200 years, we have had a history
of State-run elections. That diversity is part of the strength of our
system. I objected to the request at that time to pass that bill.
S. 949 appears to be almost exactly the same bill. Apparently, the
powerful special interests that my friend, Mr. Merkley, talked about
are the State governments because that is where we are taking authority
from here. We are taking authority from the State governments.

The For the People Act is really the For the Federal Government Act.
It represents a one-size-fits-all Federal power grab that would take
control of election administration away from the States, at the great
expense to the American people. It requires all the States to fit into,
frankly, what House Democrats saw as a narrow view of what elections
should look like and, just as frankly, what House Democrats for 20
years have had in mind that would in every case, in their view, give
them an advantage in the election process. The security of our
elections comes, in large part, from the very diversity of the way they
are set up and the way they are administered. This bill would really
undermine that decentralized system.
I spent 20 years as an election official, part of it as the chief
election authority in what was then the third largest county in our
State, and the rest of it was as the secretary of state, the chief
election official. I know for a fact that people who conduct these
elections are unbelievably focused on a fair process before an election
day and on election day.
I also know for a fact that the very fact that they can't blame some
faraway regulator on their inability to do what needs to be done makes
a difference. I have seen that happen at 6 o'clock in the morning. I
have seen it happen at 12 midnight as the last precinct comes in. I
have seen it happen as people were doing everything they can to be sure
that people that are trying to vote are able to vote. I have seen the
development of the provisional ballot system that the States all use
now if someone for some reason believes they should vote and the
records aren't there to allow that.
So there are a lot of things that Senator Merkley understands better
than I do. I am sure there are a lot of things that Senator Udall
understands better than I do. I look forward to the times when I have
and will continue to seek advice for them on those issues. I am pretty
sure that this is an issue that, at least from the point of view of the
strength of the local election system and the State election system, I
have reason to have confidence.
In fact, former President Obama expressed the same view when he said:
``There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that
you could even rig America's elections, in part, because they are so
decentralized and the numbers of votes involved.'' He said that late
summer, early fall 2016.
I think that was true when he said it; I think it is true now. This
bill tells States how to run every aspect of their elections. It takes
away the authority of the States to determine their own process for
voter registration. In fact, it requires online voter registration. If
you are trying to focus on election security, online voter registration
would not be at the top of that list.
It requires automatic voter registration. It requires same-day
registration. It requires States to accept voter registrations from
people who are not old enough to vote yet. It dictates the criteria
that people can be removed from the voter rolls or can't be. It tells
the States what kind of election equipment they must use, how their
ballots must be counted, how the ballot counts must be audited. It even
goes so far as to tell the States as to what kinds of marks must be
made on ballot-marking devices and what kind of paper their ballots
must be printed on. It tells States they must offer early voting sites.
It tells them those early voting sites where they must be and what
hours they must operate.
The bill doesn't stop at election administration. It tells States how
they redistrict, how they establish redistricting commissions, who can
be appointed to that commission, how the lines are drawn. This would be
a major Federal takeover of a system that would not benefit from that
takeover. It also creates a program for public financing for elections,
tax dollars to politicians to run elections with.

[[Page S6284]]

And so, Madam President, I do object to the unanimous consent
request, and I think for good reason.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. UDALL. Madam President, this bill does just the opposite. It
supports States. It doesn't take over from States. The States have
asked us for help when it comes to actions like cybersecurity and other
things that are happening out there. It roots out foreign interference
in our elections which happens in Federal elections and happens in
State elections and, I think, can only be done at the Federal level.
The distinguished Senator from Missouri says that these things that
are being required, States are adopting all of these. States are moving
very aggressively forward with things like automatic registration and
moving to make it easier to vote, and we are trying to lay a consistent
basis so the States know how to operate. So this is a good bill. It is
a solid bill. It puts the American people back in charge.
I yield the floor.
Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I might just respond by saying that, if
States are adopting these things because they think they are a good
idea, that is one thing. For Washington, DC, to tell them they have to
do it because we think it is a good idea, that is another thing. If my
friend from New Mexico is right and States are adopting many of these
changes, I guess there would be no particular reason to have the bill.
I am pleased that this is a bill that is going to take further study
before it is ready to come to the Senate Floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.

H.R. 3055

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, the substitute amendment to H.R. 3055
contains the Appropriations Committee-reported versions of four bills:
Agriculture; Interior; Transportation, Housing and Urban Development,
one bill; and Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies.
I was very excited to see today's earlier cloture vote, which passed
88 to 5, which means that we can see those four bills to help fund
government move forward.
The Commerce-Justice-Science portion of this minibus, or CJS, was
reported out of the Appropriations Committee on a unanimous 31-to-0
vote. I particularly care about this bill as ranking member on that
subcommittee.
The CJS bill provides $70.8 billion to protect the Nation from
criminals and terrorists, warn us about violent storms and climate
change, enable fair trade, promote manufacturing and sustainable
fisheries, partner with State and local law enforcement, and provide
resources for the census to count every person in the United States
fairly and accurately.
CJS Subcommittee Chairman Moran and I took a collaborative approach
to drafting this important bill. The CJS Subcommittee held substantive
hearings, considered 1,564 individual and group requests from 75
Senators, and worked in a bipartisan way to meet the needs of the
Nation and our individual States.
Under the Constitution, since 1790, every 10 years the United States
has conducted the census, and we only get one chance every 10 years to
get it right. In addition to determining the number of Representatives
each State will have, Federal programs rely on census data to
distribute more than $900 billion annually, nearly $4 billion of which
goes to my home State of New Hampshire.
Chairman Moran and I have worked together to make sure the census has
the resources it needs. The bill provides $7.6 billion for the Bureau
of the Census--nearly double the amount provided in fiscal year 2019.
This fully funds the life-cycle estimate for the 2020 census, along
with contingencies that have been recommended by Secretary Ross but
were not requested in the budget.
The bill also directs the Census Bureau to invest in partnership and
communication efforts in hard-to-count areas in order to increase self-
response rates and offset the need for expensive door-to-door followup.
Once again, the subcommittee has provided increases to law
enforcement and grant programs that fight gun violence and violent
crime. The bill includes at least a 3-percent increase for Justice
Department law enforcement agencies--more than $476 million higher than
the fiscal year 2019 level for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, and the
Marshals Service.
Especially important, we have provided $131 million for the FBI's
National Instant Criminal Background Check System, NICS--$24 million
more than last year. This system is the key to making sure firearms are
purchased legally and helping keep weapons out of the hands of those
who wish to do harm. The bill includes increases for States to improve
record submission to NICS and for mental health courts.
We continue to provide the full $100 million authorized for STOP
School Violence Act grants. But as we know, gun violence isn't just
happening in schools, so we have included funding for other grant
programs, like $8 million for community-based violence prevention and
nearly 10 percent more for the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention to help keep children and their families safe in
their neighborhoods.
We are also addressing another form of violence facing our law
enforcement officers, and that is police suicide. I would really like
to provide more statistics regarding this important issue of police
suicide, but unfortunately I can't, and neither can anybody in this
body because no Federal agencies collect data on the subject. That is
why in the CJS bill, we direct the Justice Department to begin a
national data collection to report on police suicide so we can all
better understand the scope of the problem. We also direct the
Department to report on best practices for officer mental health and
wellness programs, including peer mentoring.
One thing we do know about police suicides, though, is that we lose
more police officers to suicide each year than we do to officers killed
in the line of duty. Our police officers need help now, so we have been
able to add $3 million for grants to allow State and local law
enforcement to provide improved mental health services, training to
reduce the stigma of officers seeking help, and programs to address
resiliency for departments and officers to handle repeated exposure to
stress and trauma.
This is an issue, sadly, we know all too well in New Hampshire, where
in the last couple of months, in the city of Nashua--our second-largest
city--we lost a very much appreciated, well-respected, and loved police
officer to suicide. We were lucky because the chief of the Nashua
Police Department and the family of that officer were willing to talk
about that suicide to raise concern about this issue so that we can
know and try to address it.
Another area of funding in this bill that will help our first
responders, in addition to the support to our State and local
governments and community organizations, is the $505 million in
dedicated grant programs to fight substance abuse, including opioids,
and to fight drug trafficking. This amount is $37 million higher than
the fiscal year 2019 level and $127.5 million higher than the budget
request.
In part because of the resources we have brought to bear on the
opioid crisis in New Hampshire and throughout New England, the
substance use disorder epidemic is developing and changing, and we are
now seeing a rapid rise in the use and trafficking of meth
amphetamines. When efforts are focused on preventing and stopping one
drug, sadly, we see others gain traction, and that is what is
happening.

After hearing from local law enforcement and community organizations,
this bill provides more flexibility to allow communities to respond to
a variety of substance abuse issues in addition to opioids in the
Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program.
Communities should not be turning away individuals who have substance
use disorders because we have a narrow definition of the programs that
can help.
Another way this bill seeks to keep Granite State communities
vibrant--and this helps other communities that depend on coastal
economies--is we reject the elimination of grants that help our coastal
communities and their economies. The bill keeps key weather satellites
on track and provides an increase for job-supporting coastal programs
like Sea Grant, Coastal Zone

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Management Grants, the National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund, and
the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.
The bill includes continued funding to prevent a burdensome and
costly at-sea monitoring fee from being imposed on New Hampshire and
other New England fishermen. I have heard directly from our fishermen
in New Hampshire that without this support, they would have to stop
fishing and declare bankruptcy. So many seacoast communities rely on a
strong fishing industry. That is why the bill also includes $2.5
million for New England groundfish research, including looking at
measures to improve stock assessments.
Beyond the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, the
bill also supports strong investments in research and development at
the National Science Foundation; the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, NASA; and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, NIST. The bill includes a 5-percent increase for NIST,
which is an agency that promotes U.S. innovation and competitiveness
through scientific and technological standards and measurement.
I am pleased that the bill provides $2 million for NIST to study
whether firefighters are subject to PFAS exposure, a chemical that has
been linked to serious adverse health implications.
What we have seen is that--we think the actual equipment that is used
by so many firefighters has PFAS chemicals in that equipment, so that
while risking their lives fighting fires, firefighters also may be
exposed to a dangerous chemical that can affect their health. The last
thing our firefighters need when they are on duty is to be concerned
about the safety of their own firefighting gear.
Within NASA, we have provided balanced funding that enables science
supported by decadal surveys, supports the International Space Station,
continues developing and flying new transportation systems, and allows
for an eventual return to the Moon by humans.
We have also provided more than $900 million to restore widely
supported programs that the administration proposed to eliminate--
programs like Space Grant; EPSCoR; the Wide Field Infrared Telescope or
W-FIRST; the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud ocean Ecosystem mission, PACE;
and Restore-L. What is important about these programs is that they
allow young people--students in every State--to be involved with NASA
and implement high-priority science objectives and to get excited about
space and the opportunities space investment offers us.
These are some of the highlights of just the Commerce-Justice-Science
portion of this minibus. I believe it is a strong, comprehensive bill.
I am proud it is on the floor. I hope it is going to pass with as
strong a margin as we saw this morning's vote give us, and I hope we
will be able to enact this bill into law before the current continuing
funding resolution expires on November 21.
I want to give credit to all of the members of both the majority and
the minority on the Appropriations subcommittee that helped negotiate
our CJS bill and all of the bills that are on the floor. They do
tremendous work, and they deserve our credit for all of their effort.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.

Government Funding

Mr. ROMNEY. Madam President, I rise today to talk about two problems
that are related. These two problems have been spoken about for I think
virtually decades here in this Chamber and across the political
spectrum.
One relates to preserving our extraordinary entitlement programs--
Social Security, Medicare, our highway trust fund, and the like. These
programs are very much under threat because within 13 years, each of
these trust funds, each of these programs will face insolvency.
The other problem I want to talk about is the massive overspending,
the deficit and the debt we have. That is something which Republicans
and Democrats have been speaking about for a long time, although
speaking about it less frequently as of late.
These two problems are related because two-thirds of our spending at
the Federal level is automatic. It is associated with our entitlement
programs. So let me start with the debt.
When I was running for President and when I had the chance also to
run for the Senate, the No. 1 issue among the people in my State was
the issue of whether we would stop spending more money than we take in.
We took in about $3 trillion last year in tax revenue, but we spent
about $4 trillion.
There are some people who have decided to stop thinking about the
deficit, to stop worrying about the debt, but as the debt reaches
almost $23 trillion, it is beginning to be a real issue. I don't think
we are about to face a failed auction where people won't be willing to
buy our debt. We are, after all, the reserve currency of the world, and
people want to have American dollars. But I am concerned that the
interest is beginning to have an enormous impact on our capacity to
meet our priorities.
Last year we spent almost $300 billion on interest on the Federal
debt, and over time, this debt, as we add to it year after year after
year, is going to mean that the burden of interest payments on the
American people will get larger and larger.
There is a small group of people who say: Well, this isn't a problem
because interest rates are so low.
Well, it is not a problem until it becomes a problem, because if
interest rates start creeping up at some point, it can become an
extraordinary burden on the American people.
If we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars to people like the
Chinese, when they use those dollars to confront our military, we have
a real problem leading the free world.
The issue is, how come we can't deal with the debt and the deficits,
and why haven't we been able to do so? There has been effort to talk
about that, even though more recently it has been kind of quiet. It
relates, of course, to what I started to speak about, which are our
trust funds, with Medicare, with Social Security, our retirement
programs. Social Security, the disability program, as well as the
highway trust funds--these are scheduled to run out of money within 13
years.
To deal with this issue, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Todd Young,
Senator Doug Jones, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and I have proposed
something called the TRUST Act. It is designed to save the trust funds
associated with these major programs. It is designed to make sure we
have a process for finally getting balance in Social Security--both
trust funds in Social Security, as well as Medicare, as well as the
highway trust fund.
This is an effort that has been undertaken in the past
unsuccessfully, and a lot of people say that it can't be done now. But
it has to be done now. If it is not done now, the burden that will fall
on our seniors eventually will become extraordinary. And the burden
that will fall on the next generation, as they don't know whether
Social Security and Medicare be can be depended upon, is unthinkable.
The approach that Senator Manchin and these other Senators and I have
taken is pretty straightforward. We are not laying out a specific plan
to change these programs. Instead, we have laid out a process for
modernizing these programs.
For each one of these trust funds, our bill proposes that the
leaders--Republicans and Democrats--in both Chambers, House and Senate,
put together a rescue committee. For each trust fund, there will be a
rescue committee that goes to work to see if, on a bipartisan,
bicameral basis, we can come up with a solution to get these trust
funds on a solvent basis for at least 75 years.
That is an effort that will be successful only if both parties agree.
If we do get that agreement in any one or each one of these different
rescue committees, on a privileged basis, their recommendation, their
proposal, their bill will be brought to the floor of the House and
Senate and voted upon.
On that basis, we have a process for actually resolving the
insolvency issue that faces Social Security, Medicare, and the highway
trust fund. We also have a pathway to finally get our budget balanced
and end the extraordinary growth in our debt and the burden the
interest payments are having on the American people today and in the
future.
I look forward to hearing from my colleagues on both sides of the
aisle. I hope we get great support from people who are willing to
sponsor this effort

[[Page S6286]]

to be part of these rescue committees, to go to work to resolve the
impending challenges that we have in these trust funds and in our
overall financial status.
I mentioned the names of the Senators I have been working with to put
together this TRUST Act. I also want to mention a number of
Congresspeople who are helping out and our cosponsors, original
cosponsors: Mike Gallagher, Ed Case, and Ben McAdams. Again,
Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate--together, I think we can
finally save these essential programs.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my good friend Senator
Romney for taking this initiative and, basically, all of us working
together.
Let me say this. We were Governors together--the Governor from
Massachusetts and the Governor from West Virginia. The bottom line is,
we had the same balanced budget amendment we had to work with. We had
to work on a daily basis, a weekly basis--whatever it took--to balance
our States' budgets. We had to stay within our means. We couldn't spend
more than what we had coming in, and we couldn't put our people in
debt.
That was something I thought was pretty simple because it is the same
thing you do in your personal life, the same thing you do in your small
business or large corporation: You live within your means. If you are
going to grow, then you grow, basically, in a balanced way.
As Senator Romney has said, our debt is almost $23 trillion. You can
look back through history when we have hit these numbers, but then if
you look back, during the war, we weren't worried about balancing the
budget during the war. We were worrying about whether we would survive
as nation, and we did.
Coming out of that war, we had over 100 percent debt to GDP. We were
able to bring that back down and work in a prudent manner. Then it
ballooned up.
Let me tell you how I signed on to Bowles-Simpson. If you look at
recent history, the last time--and the only time for 40 years--we
balanced the budget was in 1997, up to 2001. That was with Erskine
Bowles and John Casey working together--a Democrat working for
President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congressman from Ohio. They sat
down and worked out a plan and a tax system that worked for America. It
worked so well that we were spinning out, basically, surpluses.
We were told that by 2006 we would be debt-free on the path we were
going. We had 9/11 come up. We had two wars we never paid for--the
first time. I tell people, if you are a Democrat and you want to blame
Republicans, go ahead. They are guilty. If you are a Republican and you
want to blame Democrats, go ahead. They are just as guilty. There is
basically blame for both sides. But sooner or later, you have to do
something.
When Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson came together, Democrats and
Republicans said: We have to get our financial house in order.
It made sense to me. I had just been elected. It was in early 2011. I
was elected in November 2010. I started looking, and it made sense. We
came so close that it would have been forced to a vote, as Senator
Romney has just explained the TRUST Act.
We think that someone has to have their eye on the ball here because
when these interest rates balloon--and they will--and when people lose
confidence and faith and will not put their money in and buy our paper,
basically, for the low return we are giving them--or no return at
times--and demand more, then we are going to have to outbid, and it is
going to cost a lot more to do business in our country.

Sooner or later, we are basically writing checks our kids can't cash.
That is about it in a nutshell. If we are responsible to leave our
children and the next generation in better shape than how we received
it, we have done a very poor job. We truly have.
Again, I thank the good Senator from Utah for basically bringing this
fiscal plan we have worked together on and looking at where we are. The
roadmap is pretty clear. If you haven't learned from history, you will
make history. And it is not going to be a good kind of history you are
going to make.
Let me tell you who these recessions hit the most. In my State, I
have a very hard-working State, a very rural State, and a State that is
not of the highest per capita income in the country by any means. With
that, they are the first ones who get hurt. If we don't really care
about Social Security, if we don't care about the highway trust fund,
infrastructure, if we don't care about Medicare--this is a life-
sustaining influx of money they have because very few people who work
from paycheck to paycheck are able to put money aside so that they
don't need Social Security and they can pay their own medical bills.
I have seen the effect of this. I can tell you, it is not pleasant. I
have people on my side of the aisle who talk about Medicare for All.
That is aspirational. We can't even pay for Medicare for Some--the
``some'' who have already earned it and paid into it.
By 2026, we are going to be in default. We are going to be out of
funds. By 2032, Social Security could be out of funds. These are things
that are fixable now. They will not be fixable in 2026 for Medicare. It
will be too late. For Social Security, in 2030, 2032, it will be too
late, and that is just around the corner. For the highway trust fund,
look at the infrastructure. Everyone who has run for President within
the last decade or so basically has talked about a big infrastructure
package. It will be the first thing they have done. They get elected,
and guess what happens. Nothing. We don't see an infrastructure
package.
It is the most politically right thing you can do. A pothole doesn't
have an R's or a D's name on it. It is not partisan. It will bust your
tire, and it will break your rim. It doesn't care who you are.
These are things we can fix, and they are things we can do to gain
the trust of the public. Yet we fail to do them. We continue to divide
this country and push us apart. This TRUST Act is what will bring us
back together. It will put our priorities where they should be.
All of us have run for public office. We have put our names out
there. We can go out there and explain: We are protecting your Social
Security.
If you want to protect Social Security, then do something. The TRUST
Act does that.
We are going to take care of your Medicare. Do you want to take care
of Medicare? Support the TRUST Act. It will do that.
These are things we can do, and we can do them now. We shouldn't
wait. We should bring this back to the floor, and you should go on
record to vote. Are you really going to support Social Security? Are
you really going to support Medicare? Then vote.
If you don't have the guts to vote, that means you don't support
Social Security, and you don't support Medicare, and quit being a
hypocrite going out there campaigning and saying you do. That is really
what it comes down to.
We are just trying to fix something in an orderly fashion, where
everybody has it--bipartisan, bicameral. If we can't do this
bipartisan, bicameral, we can't do anything in a bipartisan, bicameral
way. This is where we are today.
I thank my dear friend. I really do. I thank my friend Senator Romney
for saying: Let's do this, Joe.
I said: Absolutely, Mitt, I am onboard. Count me in.
We have other Senators. Not surprisingly, we have former Governors.
This is how we had to operate. These were our day-to-day operations.
During the crisis of 2007, 2008, I used to meet once a week in West
Virginia with my finance people. They would give me the projections,
and we had to make adjustments. In 2007 and 2008, with the recession
coming on as hard it was, we were meeting twice a day, trying to stay
ahead of it and figure out how we could keep from getting in the hole.
But we made it. I have never seen that type of attention here. I have
not seen one Presidential candidate--right now with all of them out
there--talking about the finances of our country, talking about what
the children of the next generation will inherit, how they are going to
be able to manage, how their mothers and their fathers and all of them
are going to have Social Security secured and Medicare taken care of. I
haven't heard that at all. Maybe we can get the dialogue started now.

[[Page S6287]]

With that, I yield floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.

Appropriations

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to support
the funding bill for the defense of our Nation. This funding package
provides a well-earned, well-deserved pay raise for our troops--the men
and women in uniform, the men and women I had the privilege of visiting
earlier this month, part of the Wyoming National Guard deployments in
multiple places around the world.
Yet Democrats have blocked a key vote. They did it last month. I want
to make sure they don't do it again. It seems they are doing it for
purely political reasons. It is a partisan blockade of our Nation's
troops' pay raise. It is hard to believe they are doing it, but they
did it, and it seems they want to do it again.
Both parties agreed to support our military, and they support our
military families as well. They made that promise 3 months ago. Then
they went back on the promise. It was part of that bipartisan budget
deal that was signed in August.
By moving this defense funding measure, Republicans are keeping our
promises; the Democrats are breaking theirs. Now it is time once again
to vote. It is time for Democrats to stop blocking the bill. It is time
to stop playing politics, especially with our troops' paychecks.
We need to pass this bill to fully fund the Defense Department. It
honors our commitment to our troops. It delivers critical resources our
military needs to keep us safe, to keep us strong, to keep us
prosperous. The bill protects America's standing among our allies and
our adversaries.
We need to get this done. It also funds Health and Human Services.
That is what we are looking at as well. It includes our Nation's
medical research.
It is time for the Democrats to get to yes. It is time to keep our
promises to the military; it is time to honor our commitment to our
troops; and it is time to get on with the business of our Nation. It is
time to pass the bill.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). The Senator from Tennessee.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Boeing 737 MAX

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. President.
We just heard Senators Romney and Manchin talking about our Nation's
economic woes and legislation they are handling on a bipartisan basis.
I think it is always a good and positive thing when we can approach our
work in a bipartisan way. It is what the American people are expecting
us to do.
Yesterday, in our Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, we
had bipartisanship at work again. We were carrying out one of the
duties we have in Congress, which is to conduct oversight and to make
certain that not only the processes of government and the fiscal health
of our government are on a firm footing but also to look at things like
consumer protection and public safety.
Our hearing yesterday dealt with these deadly and disastrous crashes
that happened with the Boeing 737 MAX. We know that those crashes
occurred and remember that one occurred in Indonesia and one in
Ethiopia.
I will tell you that, in my opinion, the executives from the Boeing
Company tried--and they failed--to explain to members of the Senate
Commerce Committee why they allowed the 737 MAX aircraft to reach the
commercial market.
We discovered that the company's highest echelon neglected a
responsibility to ensure that the aircraft met their highest safety
standards. It was of concern to us. I don't know, and I think many of
us were left trying to figure out, whether this was something that was
a corporate culture problem, whether it was a communication problem, or
whether it was a negligence issue.
Until a few weeks ago, executives, including president and CEO Dennis
Muilenburg, had not read emails revealing how Boeing officials
convinced the FAA to approve training materials and delete troublesome
flight systems data and had not read text messages showing that
employees lied to regulators about safety problems with the plane's
MCAS system. That is the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation
System. They had not read the text messages that spelled out there was
a problem.
When asked at the hearing for technical details on the science and
systems behind the MAX's approval, Muilenburg and his cohort were
unable to even give a straight answer. We did not get the answers we
needed on questions about their process, test pilots, or simulators.
Yesterday's hearing made it clear that Boeing leadership cannot
provide the answers we are looking for, not for ourselves but on behalf
of the victims and their families and on behalf of the flying public
who, yes, safety is their priority.
The Senate really needs to look at this issue again. Our Commerce
Committee should schedule another hearing on the people and the
procedures and hear from the engineers and the test pilots behind
Boeing's MAX program.
Perhaps these engineers and pilots will be able to do a better job
than the executives did yesterday, and perhaps they can explain to the
families of these 346 crash victims how so many people ended up dead
after choosing one the world's safest modes of transportation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from North
Dakota.
Mr. CRAMER. Madam President, first of all, thank you for your
flexibility at the chair today.

Appropriations

Madam President, the purpose for rising today is to advocate on
behalf of our military, the men and women who are the bravest in the
world. I feel compelled to do so because I can imagine that in these
days of hyperpartisan politics, some of them may feel like some of us
are abandoning them, and I want them to know for sure that we are not.
We all took an oath to the Constitution, and the highest priority in
the Constitution for the Federal Government is, of course, to provide
for the Nation's defense against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Unfortunately, my Democratic colleagues seem to be shirking from this
responsibility lately. They are willing to settle for, seemingly,
mediocrity, and right now we have excellence, the best. First of all,
they are planning to come to this Chamber tomorrow to block the all-
important Defense appropriations bill; that is to say, to block the
funding for our military; that is to say, to block the largest pay
increase for the men and women of our military in over a decade--just
to name one topic that is being funded, or would be funded, by this
appropriations bill that they are going to block.
Back in July, the House and Senate, on a bipartisan basis--I say to
the Presiding Officer, you just gave a wonderful speech about the
importance of working together. On a bipartisan basis, we passed a
major budget bill. It was a win for our military and a win for our
country because it was supposed to provide them with certainty and an
important path forward as they chart that path--that strategic path--
for America's superiority.
To echo the House Speaker and the Democratic leader at the time: ``A
bipartisan agreement has been reached that will enhance our national
security.'' These aren't my words--although I agree with them--these
are the words of the Democratic leadership of Congress.
After passage, the Democratic leader went on to say: This deal would
``strengthen our national security and provide our troops with the
resources they need.'' I agree with the Democratic leader. Please--
please--change course while you still can and support this important
funding bill tomorrow.
I agreed with my colleague from New York then, and I supported that
legislation for the exact reason to ``strengthen our national security
and provide our troops with the resources they need.''
This deal passed with strong bipartisan support. It was widely
applauded.

[[Page S6288]]

Yet here we are today, this week, with our colleagues preparing to
block the funding for our troops for which they were just a couple of
months ago patting themselves on the back.
This whole process shouldn't even be this complicated. In fact, I am
convinced that the American people are tired of us complicating simple
things. We agreed to this 2-year budget agreement just a few months
ago. I voted for it. Party leadership pushed for it. The President
signed it. Then we voted for a short-term continuing resolution to get
in order before getting to the final appropriations deal.
I reluctantly voted for the short-term CR, but the only thing worse
than a CR, of course, is a government shutdown. So that was what we
were confronted with.
If one asked the military community how they feel about continuing
resolutions, they would be quick to tell you they don't work. They
don't work at all. They do not provide certainty beyond certainty. They
don't allow new programs to be launched. They don't allow the pay
increases that our appropriations bill does. So evidently it has not
been a priority for our Democratic colleagues, but they do have
priorities, as we know.
This impeachment craziness, this obsession with eliminating, getting
rid of our Commander in Chief a year before the election of the
Commander in Chief is what their priorities are, clearly, not the
priorities stated in the Constitution or that they were bragging about
a couple of months ago.
Of course, in addition, they are now standing in the way of us
passing the reconciled National Defense Authorization Act--the
authorization that provides the guidance for these priorities that are
also part of our appropriations bill.
We went through all of that, and for what? I didn't agree to the
deals we made or take these tough votes just so the Democrats could
block Defense appropriations and leave our military stuck with
political gridlock that they have imposed on us now.
By failing to pass this appropriations bill, by standing in the way
now of reconciling in the conference committee the National Defense
Authorization Act, they really are standing in the way of our military.
Now there is talk of a ``skinny NDAA''--that is to say, a watered-down
skinny version.
For 58 years in a row, we have done what you just talked about and
what the previous speakers talked about. We have worked in a bipartisan
way to pass an NDAA 58 years in a row.
As the first North Dakotan ever to sit on the Senate Armed Services
Committee, I treated this NDAA with the utmost importance and still do.
We made some significant progress, from nuclear deterrence to UAS
development, establishing a Space Force, and honoring the sailors of
the USS Frank E. Evans--a provision the Democratic leader and his
colleague from New York supported, I will add. Both the House and
Senate versions of the NDAA advanced important policies for my State,
for our country, and really for the world.
We should be working collaboratively to combine these versions and
pass the best plan possible for our military. Instead, our work is
being sacrificed at the altar of partisan politics, caught up in a
partisan impeachment process that makes no sense.
Let's make something clear about this skinny NDAA.
Our chairman is not introducing it with haste or without great
consideration. He first warned that this could happen well over a month
ago. He said it would happen if our Democratic colleagues proved to be
so incapable of setting aside their problems with President Trump that
they could not advance the interests of our Nation's military. Ever the
optimist, I thought they would. I thought they would.
Now, my Democratic colleagues are balking at any and all forward
progress on the NDAA because of their opposition to President Trump and
his priorities for border security. They want to limit his authority to
transfer anymore funds in order to build physical barriers at our
southern border.
So I want to be clear. The President would not need to use that
authority to use any military construction funds to build a wall if our
Democratic colleagues would simply provide the necessary funding
through the normal appropriations process, as they always have and as
we always have. I, for one, will not be so unreasonable in negotiating
with them. For example, if--and I mean only if--my Democratic
colleagues would fund the administration's border security request
through the appropriations process, then count me in for limiting the
President's transfer authority. I am willing to compromise, but you
can't have it both ways. You can't say we are going to take away the
President's constitutional authority on the one hand, and then, on the
other hand, make sure you don't fund the priorities that he needs to
fund, which is, again, the highest priority of our government.
To reiterate my earlier point, I applaud the chairman for his
handling of this process. He has been vigilant and focused on
completing the NDAA, and I don't blame him for where we are today. No,
House Democrats have not been willing partners and have forced the
chairman to devise a backup plan for their intransigence.
That is what I find so disappointing. Surely, our Democratic
colleagues know the threat that our foreign adversaries pose. For
crying out loud, we just came from a classified briefing. If it is not
clear enough, I don't know when it will be.
Whether it is the crisis at the southern border or the critical
missions that bring terrorists like al-Baghdadi to justice, I am sure
my colleagues want to do whatever it takes to keep our country safe.
Surely, they are capable of putting partisan politics aside in order to
pass the 59th straight National Defense Authority Act. Anything to the
contrary would be unprecedented.
Yet here we are. I find it astonishing that with all the wannabe
Commanders in Chief right here in the Senate, they are playing politics
with the funding and authorities of the troops they hope to lead.
Can you imagine one of these Presidential candidates becoming the
Commander in Chief and the first talk they have with the troops is,
``Yeah, I held up your funding and your pay raises.'' It is not a great
way to start.
If it were up to our committee, this bill would have already passed.
If it were up to our conference, this NDAA would be on its way to the
President's desk. But unfortunately, it is not. That is the unfortunate
reality we face today.
The Democratic Party is continuing to put their hatred of President
Trump and his agenda above the needs of our Nation's military, and,
thus, our Nation's defense. It is a dereliction of duty. I find it
sickening, and I find it embarrassing. We are better than this. This
institution deserves better than this. The American people expect and
deserve better than this.
I want to make one last plea before they block tomorrow's vote.
Please put our military men and women, our highest priority, ahead of
partisan politics.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

South Sudan

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will talk just for a very few minutes
today about something that has been on my mind and on my heart. We so
easily forget how fortunate we are to live in a country like America. I
wish all of our world's neighbors were as fortunate as we are, but they
are not. We can't lose sight of that fact. I don't know why bad things
happen to good people, and I am not suggesting that I have a complete
solution to it, but trying to understand it is at least a good first
step.
I am talking about the ongoing crisis in South Sudan. As you know,
South Sudan is a landlocked country in East-Central Africa, and it is a
fairly new country. In the 7 years since South Sudan was plunged into a
very bloody civil war, not only have millions of people been displaced
from their homes, but over 400,000--think about that--men, women, and
children have been killed in the crossfire--400,000.
I would like nothing more than for the recent negotiated ceasefire
between the government and the rebels

[[Page S6289]]

to hold. We all would. But if we are being honest, we have to express
our sincere doubts. I don't have any doubt that the people of South
Sudan yearn for peace.
Unfortunately, there are some who are taking advantage of the sad
situation in South Sudan. They are taking advantage of South Sudan's
conflicts and widespread corruption within its government in order to
steal the nation's and the people's natural resources. I am talking
about kleptocrats. I am talking about war criminals. I am talking about
corrupt multinational corporations that are pilfering South Sudan's
natural resources, regardless of the chaos that they are causing and
the extraordinary human cost.
Until good people in this world take a stand and say enough is
enough, the people in South Sudan will continue to be at the mercy of
the corrupt. The predatory extraction of South Sudan's resources not
only directs vital capital outside of the war-torn nation, where it is
desperately needed inside, but it makes meaningful investment in
sustained peace simply impossible.
That is why I am respectfully calling on the U.S. Senate to stand
with peace, to stand with right--not with might, with right--and to
stand with the people of South Sudan. The people of South Sudan are a
proud people. They are a resilient people. They are tired of being
ruled by a government that is ripe with corruption. They are tired of
seeing their nation torn apart by war. The U.S. Senate ought to condemn
the marauding, the stealing of resources, and the widespread corruption
within the South Sudanese Government. Furthermore, I also call on the
United States to support sanctions against those companies and those
individuals outside of South Sudan that continue to profit off of the
ongoing conflicts and instability in the region.
Now, we are a powerful nation. I just listened to your very eloquent
talk about the men and women in our military who protect our country.
Not only do we have the world's most powerful military, but let me put
it another way. We have the most powerful military in all of human
history. We also have the strongest economy the world has ever seen,
and for that, we were blessed.
It is the latter that we have to wield against the internal and the
external bad actors taking advantage of the people of South Sudan. Much
like our sanctions against the largest state sponsor of terrorism in
the world--I am, of course, talking about Iran--and much like those
sanctions have resulted in a successful economic pressure campaign, I
hope the same can be done, targeting crooked government officials and
the unethical multinational corporations that target vulnerable nations
like South Sudan.
It has been well documented that there are a number of multinational
corporations with ties to nations like China and nations like Malaysia
that have taken advantage of widespread corruption in the region, in
South Sudan and the surrounding region, to spur their own economic and
political gain. It has been reported and it has been independently
verified that one of South Sudan's largest multinational petroleum
consortiums from outside the country operating in the country, a
company called Dar Petroleum Operating Company, has actively funded
militia and paramilitary groups within the region.
In fact, when Dar Petroleum isn't funding militia or brokering
weapons deals, it keeps busy polluting local communities in South Sudan
and water supplies with its industrial waste. The petroleum company has
dumped ``high levels of heavy metals and dangerous chemical compounds''
into the surrounding countryside with no regard--none, zero, no
regard--for local populations.
In fact, the contamination from the joint Chinese-Malaysian-owned
corporation has extended well beyond merely the soil surrounding Dar
Petroleum's production and processing plants. The soil contamination is
found to be so widespread and so extensive that over 600,000 of the
good people in South Sudan are expected to be affected by it.
From bribery to pollution and even murder, these unsavory actors have
found a home in South Sudan, ruining the environment and raping the
natural resources of the country, and they are going to continue to
find a safe haven and continue business unless we act.
Unless sanctions against countries and individuals that are known to
have long taken advantage of South Sudan's weak or almost nonexistent
rule of law are implemented, stability in the region is going to be
nothing but a dream and nothing but happy talk.
The United States should not remain silent as untold billions are
stolen. The monies are being stolen, and the natural resources are
being stolen from the people in South Sudan. The people of South Sudan
are also being murdered in the process.
We should not stand by. By empowering the U.S. Government to target
the illicit financial activity that serves as the root cause for many
of the atrocities that I have talked about, the South Sudanese can
begin rebuilding their nation without fear of violence and without fear
of corruption. The United States is far from the only government on the
world stage that has the ability to do this. Now, we both know that,
but as is so often the case, we might be the only government with the
will and the moral conviction to do what is right.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Appropriations

Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the
importance of the Senate providing the resources needed by our
soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.
We are seeing increasing threats to the homeland from around the
world. We need look no further than the recent elimination of Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi by U.S. Special Operations forces to show us that there are
evil people out there who continue to devote their lives to killing
American citizens and glorifying the fall of our Nation. The rise of
ISIS proved that radical terrorist ideologies remain dangerous. Despite
the elimination of its leader, groups like ISIS will continue to remain
a serious challenge across the globe.
We have also seen the emergence of a great power competition with
China and Russia. They are investing massive amounts of resources to
erode the international order that the United States and our allies
have worked so hard to create and protect. Leaders of these nations
don't want societies based on liberty and free enterprise; instead,
they are focused on promoting the iron precepts of authoritarianism and
autocracy. Without American engagement and a strong investment in the
Nation's military, our children could live in a world transformed by
these malign forces. We cannot allow that to happen.
Clearly, the threats we face abroad are increasing. On that fact, we
have bipartisan support. These past few weeks, many of my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle have spoken about the situation in Syria
and the danger that an expansionist Russia poses to nations like
Ukraine. We agree about the need for the United States to address these
challenges, but I am not convinced that my Democratic colleagues are
truly serious about sustaining American leadership and retaining our
position in the world. If they are, it is time to show it by advancing
the defense funding legislation.
Funding the military in a timely, predictable fashion is one of the
most important things we can do in Congress. A failure to do so awards
China and Russia with an advantage at a time when we can least afford
it. We need to work together to pass our Defense appropriations bill
for the coming fiscal year and to focus on implementing the National
Defense Strategy to effectively confront these threats.
It is also worth highlighting how many provisions contained in this
bill are absolutely critical to our military. This legislation provides
significant investments in both basic research and future technologies
to allow for continued innovation within DOD. It includes

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areas pivotal to implementing the goals of the NDS, including
hypersonics, 5G, artificial intelligence, missile defense, and cyber
security.
Importantly, it provides robust funding for all three legs of the
triad and appropriates funding to enable the modernization of our
Nation's nuclear deterrent. There is no question that this is a top
priority of mine as chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of
the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In addition, we cannot forget that the Department of Defense still
has not recovered from the impacts of several natural disasters that
affected multiple installations across the country. This includes
Offutt Air Force Base and Camp Ashland in my own State of Nebraska, as
well as several others. Without the relief funding in the Defense
appropriations bill, these bases and their tenant units will not be
able to fully recover from these disasters. That poses a major threat
not just to the bases themselves but to all of the missions we rely
upon them to support. For that reason, it is critical that we move
forward with the defense funding process to allow full recovery to take
place at these bases.
All of us here also recognize that our military is about more than
hardware; it is our men and women in uniform and their families who
make our Armed Forces strong. That is why it is so essential that we
provide the pay and benefits that are critical for our servicemembers
and their families. The Defense appropriations bill delivers a military
pay increase of 3.1 percent. That is the largest in a decade.
If we are truly serious about supporting our warfighters, if we mean
what we say when we talk about supporting the troops, then step up. We
must move forward with the Defense appropriations bill. Now is the not
the time to put political grandstanding ahead of serious legislating.
I hope we can look back at the Senate's bipartisan tradition of
uniting behind the common defense as inspiration. Let's take up and
pass the Defense appropriations bill. In doing so, we honor our
commitment to America's warfighters.
We have seen over the past week how the bravery and commitment of our
servicemembers can deliver the world's most-wanted terrorist to
justice. We must honor their service and the service of all our men and
women in uniform by moving this process forward.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

Climate Change

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise to sound the alarm on the Trump
administration's expected announcement of its withdrawal of the United
States from the Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions
in an effort to limit global temperature increase in this century to 2
degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, while pursuing means to
limit it even further to 1.5 degrees.
Article 28 of the Paris Agreement that was entered into in COP 21
2015 specifies that after joining, no country can withdraw for 3 years,
after which a 1-year waiting period must occur before the withdrawal
takes effect. The United States entered into this historic agreement on
November 4, 2016; thus, the earliest date the United States can
initiate withdrawal is November 4, 2019. After the U.S. files
withdrawal documents, the 1-year waiting period begins, making November
4, 2020, the earliest possible date the United States can fully--and I
might add, recklessly--get out of this agreement.

I urge my colleagues to support a Senate resolution that I certainly
will be filing expressing our need for U.S. climate diplomacy.
Withdrawal is terrible. The cost of inaction is high.
For example, in my State of Maryland, by the year 2100, climate
change could force the Navy to relocate the U.S. Naval Academy from
where it has made its home in Annapolis, MD, since 1845.
Surrounded by water on three sides, the Naval Academy is especially
vulnerable to sea rise. The Severn River runs along the east, Spa Creek
extends to the south, and College Creek runs along the north. Parts of
the academy adjacent to the water stand 3 feet above the waterline. Sea
levels around Annapolis have risen about 1 foot over the past 100
years. The Naval Academy is only one of scores of U.S. military bases
that may be inundated by rising seas.
Unlike this administration, the academy is taking action. In 2015,
the Sea Level Rise Advisory Council formed to create an adaptation plan
and make decisions about flood-related matters. Staff are installing
door dams and flood barriers on doorways, repairing seawalls, and
installing backflow preventers in storm drain systems to reduce
funding. Newly constructed buildings will have elevated entrances and
limited first-floor openings to keep rising water out. But these
actions have high costs that are compounded by inaction.
On October 12 of this year, a combination of seasonal high tides, a
full Moon, and a tropical storm stalled off the eastern seaboard caused
a ``nuisance flood'' in downtown Annapolis, disrupting the festivities
at the annual Annapolis Boat Show, flooding booths at the city dock and
closing streets.
One week later, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation--the key nonprofit
partner in the restoration effort--announced that it will close the Fox
Island Education Center due to subsidence and rising sea levels--a
casualty of our failure to address climate change. For the past 40
years, the Fox Center has helped educate students on the importance of
a healthy Chesapeake Bay watershed. Environmental literacy is an
essential goal of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, and
institutions like the Fox Island Center serve a key role.
The marshes and wetlands the foundation is dedicated to protecting
are among Maryland's best natural defenses in mitigating the effects of
climate-related impacts like more frequent storms and rising sea
levels. The untimely closure is a reminder of the very real presence of
changes to the bay in our communities and the urgent need to prepare.
On October 17, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a
report. The collection of 18 papers by outside experts amounts to one
of the most specific and dire accountings of the dangers posed to
businesses and communities in the United States--a threat so
significant that the Nation's central banks are increasingly compelled
to act.
Climate change has begun to affect the real estate market, according
to a paper by Asaf Bernstein, an economist at the University of
Colorado in Boulder. His research shows that properties likely to be
underwater if the seas rise 1 foot now sell for 15 percent less than
comparable properties with no flood threat.
Our failure to act on climate change has a real economic impact on
American families. Coastal cities are already unable to pay for the
types of projects that could prevent them from the growing effects of
climate change.
On October 23, in a briefing for the Maryland Senate Education,
Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee, NOAA oceanographer Will
Sweet said that Annapolis is on pace for another record-breaking year
in 2019, with 10 high-tide flood days so far.
By 2030, there could be between 15 and 25 high-tide flood days a
year. By 2050, that number could rise to between 50 and 170. That
compares to how it was at the turn of the century when we only had two
such events in a year.
This is not only a coastal issue. In addition to an update from NOAA,
the committee heard from officials in Howard County--Howard County, I
would state, is a landlocked county in Maryland--about their plan to
mitigate flooding in Ellicott City, 35 miles inland from Annapolis,
where flash-flooding has claimed the lives of three people since 2016.
Officials discussed their $140 million plan, which includes demolishing
some buildings and constructing a tunnel 15 feet in diameter, 80 to 100
feet deep, and 1,600 feet long on the north side of the city's Main
Street. The tunnel would divert about two-thirds of the floodwaters.
It is an expensive project. Will it keep Ellicott City safe? It will
keep it safer, but the threat will still be there because of our
inaction as far as dealing with climate change. That is $140 million we
would not need to find as fast if we were slowing the rate of sea level
rise; that is, if we were reducing the use of carbon emissions in
accordance with the Paris Agreement.

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Many small business owners took out loans in 2016 and 2018 from the
Department of Housing and Community Development and are struggling to
repay them. These are not international competitors with an agenda
being hurt by inaction on climate change; these are local residents,
constituents, Americans.
We need to act.
I am proud to lead bipartisan legislation to help critical water
infrastructure adapt to natural hazards. We need to do adaptation. I am
for that, and it is bipartisan in this Chamber, but adaptation
mitigation must go hand in hand, from the local to the international
level.
I led the congressional delegation to COP 21 with nine of our
colleagues in the U.S. Senate. We had a delegation 10-strong in Paris
at COP 21 in 2015 when the United States agreed to lower its gas
emissions 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 levels by 2025. Entering the
25th conference of the parties, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions rose an
estimated 3.4 percent in 2018--a spike that comes as reports like the
Fourth National Climate Assessment and the IPCC special report tell us
the world needs to be aggressively cutting its emissions to avoid the
most devastating effects of climate change. The findings, published by
the independent economic research firm Rhodium Group, mean that our
Nation now has a diminishing chance of meeting the pledge it made in
Paris. This is a horrible embarrassment for our country, which was once
a global leader on climate change. When the United States doesn't lead,
other countries are going to step in and take over that leadership, as
we have seen with regard to China stepping forward in regard to climate
issues. China should be the United States.

I urge this administration to reassert strong leadership in
implementing the Paris Agreement. I urge the Senate to act to return
America's leadership to this critical global challenge.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

Climate Change

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for
up to 20 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am thrilled and delighted to follow
my outstanding colleague from Maryland coming here to talk about
climate change. That is the topic that brings me to the floor today as
well. Those of us who are from coastal States not only have the
experience of worse flooding in our coastal communities and those
coastal communities getting new conversations with their municipal bond
folks about what the flooding risk means for their bond ratings, but we
are also looking at projections like Maryland is of what happens if we
don't act, and the very maps of our State will change.
When historians look back at why the United States failed so badly to
take on climate change, they will, of course, focus on the political
efforts of the world's largest oil companies: Exxon, Chevron, BP, and
Shell. They will note the obstructive role of leading trade
associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National
Association of Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute.
They will chronicle the network of phony front groups set up by Big
Oil, Big Coal, and the Koch brothers to sow doubt of the science and
fear of climate action. Big Oil, the Kochs, the trade associations, the
front groups all will deserve plenty of blame. Their climate denial
apparatus and their capture of the modern Republican Party is a direct
and deliberate cause of America's failure.
There are other less heralded but equally bad actors. I come to the
floor today to discuss one of them. Future historians of ``anii
Trumpi,'' take note of Marathon Petroleum. Marathon Petroleum is the
largest oil refiner in the United States. It refines oil into gasoline,
other fuels, and lubricants. It owns pipelines and gas stations. Its
4,000 Speedway locations and almost 8,000 independent gas stations
selling Marathon-branded fuels reach across the country. It is No. 31
on the Fortune 500 list of U.S. companies, and it has almost $100
billion in annual revenue. This is a big company with a big stake in
blocking climate action.
What does Marathon want? Well, its annual report filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission makes one thing very clear: Marathon
sees laws and regulations that reduce carbon pollution as a threat. One
threat Marathon specifically cites in its annual report is fuel economy
or CAFE standards. Why? Marathon's 2018 annual report reads: ``Higher
CAFE standards for cars and light trucks have the potential to reduce
demand for our transportation fuels.'' It is as simple as that. Fuel-
efficient cars burn less gas, and that is bad for a big refiner.
Well, in 2012, automakers and the State of California and the
previous administration got together, and they agreed to significantly
better fuel economy standards. That was a good deal for almost
everyone. Consumers were estimated to save more than $1.7 trillion in
reduced fuel costs--up to $8,000 per vehicle for vehicles purchased in
2025. The air would be cleaner. Carbon emissions from cars and light
trucks would be cut in half by 2025, and automakers would have a
competitive spur to keep pace with new vehicle technologies being
developed in Europe and China--win, win, win, win.
Well, in 2017, these automakers came back into the Trump
administration and asked the Trump administration to revisit the fuel
economy standards. It looks, from everything I have seen, like the auto
industry primarily wanted technical changes to make the standards
easier to meet. I have found no evidence that the auto industry asked
the administration to totally freeze the standards or that they asked
the administration then to revoke California's authority to set its own
standards under the Clean Air Act.
When automakers asked the administration for these changes, someone
else was watching. The oil industry sensed opportunity. The standards
may have been good for consumers, the auto industry, States, our global
climate, but that $1.7 trillion in reduced fuel costs that consumers
would save would come directly out of oil industry revenues. So the oil
industry sprang into action to hijack the rulemaking process.
The oil industry demanded weakening of the standards to the max;
i.e., a freeze, and it even demanded revocation of California's
longstanding authority to set its own standards, leading more than a
dozen other States, including my home State of Rhode Island. We follow
the California standard. An administration marbled through with fossil
fuel lobbyists and attorneys heard the oil industry call. It must have
been a strange experience for the automakers. One minute they are
asking for technical changes to a regulation they had agreed to; the
next minute the whole process has been run off with by a completely
other industry.
Marathon was the ring leader. I obtained an electronic draft of a
letter to the Deputy Administrator of the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration urging her to weaken the fuel economy standards.
The metadata of the letter was still in the letter because I got it
electronically. According to the metadata in this document, it was
written by a Marathon Petroleum inhouse lobbyist. Marathon then shopped
this letter around to Members of the House of Representatives to
convince them to send letters backing the weakened standards that they
wanted.
We got those House letters, and we ran them through plagiarism
software against the Marathon lobbyists' draft. Here is what we got.
When we compared the Marathon letter with the letter sent by Members of
Pennsylvania's congressional delegation, it was an 80-percent match.
The red here is all the language that is identical. Members from
Indiana and West Virginia sent similar letters also with text lifted
directly from the Marathon lobbyists' draft. If you want to give this
political stunt a name, you could call it a Pruitt, after Scott Pruitt,
who distinguished himself for the Trump EPA Administrator's position by
copying a Devon Energy text onto his own official letterhead as
attorney general of his State and sending it on as if it were his
letter.
Back to Marathon. Pulling a Pruitt with these Congressmen was not
enough. We know from Marathon's own reports that it directly lobbied on
the standards, and we know that its trade association, the American
Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, AFPM,

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also lobbied on the standards. We know AFPM also launched a campaign on
social media urging people to support a freeze.
Marathon is a member of a front group that is called the American
Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC. This front group
pushes the agenda of the Koch brothers' apparatus in State
legislatures. It is the tool for the Koch brothers to try to work their
will in State legislatures. ALEC passed a resolution in favor of
weakening the standards and revoking California's State authority. We
know that senior executives from Marathon met personally with EPA
leadership and with senior officials in the White House to push for
weakening the standards and revoking California's authority.
There is a lot we don't know. We don't know which front groups
Marathon and other oil companies fund because neither of them disclose
their donations or their donors. We don't know how many other groups
were deployed in this effort. We don't know the extent to which
Marathon coordinated its campaign with the trade association and the
front groups, so we can't assess whether this lobbying effort violated
the front groups' 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. We don't know what role
Marathon or its front groups had in the mysterious antitrust letter
that came popping out of DOJ shortly after the automakers negotiated
separately with California.
When the automakers realized that their negotiations--the process
they were involved with--had been hijacked by Marathon and that they
were just passengers on the Marathon train at this point, they bailed.
When they knew the conversation was bogus, they bailed. They negotiated
directly with California, and they came up with their own deal with
California. That, obviously, really ticked off the oil guys who thought
they had this thing all scoped. Apparently, it even ticked off the
President--all the way up to President Trump.
The next thing you know comes this truly bizarre letter out of DOJ
that appears to ignore basic tenets of antitrust law, like when you are
negotiating with a State government, it is not an antitrust violation.
It appears also to violate DOJ's own very elaborate antitrust
investigation procedures.
So who pulled those strings? We don't know. More broadly, if Marathon
and other fossil fuel companies are purposefully paying a web of phony
front groups and trade associations to spread deliberate, known
disinformation about climate change in order to obstruct climate action
in Congress, does that not warrant congressional investigation? Might
it not, in fact, be fraud? It was fraud when the tobacco industry did
it.
Over the past 2 weeks, two different subcommittees of the House
Committee on Oversight and Reform held hearings that examined how the
fossil fuel industry deploys front groups and trade associations to
spread disinformation about climate change and block legislative
action.
Yesterday the Senate Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate
Crisis held our hearing on how dark money front groups hide the
industry's role in climate denial and legislative obstruction. Fat
chance we will have Senate committees investigate this masquerade in a
Chamber under Republican control, but for our friends in the House, the
time is ripe for congressional oversight. Follow the money and the
facts wherever they lead. Let the subpoenas fly.
Congressmen Henry Waxman led a successful investigation of lies and
deceit from a corrupting industry, Big Tobacco, and that precedent
served our country well. It served the American public well. It ended
up likely saving lives.

So we go back to Marathon again. Marathon's shareholders are
interesting, too, in all of this.
Last month, 200 major investors who had $6.5 trillion in assets under
management, sent a letter to 47 U.S. companies, including Marathon,
urging that the companies' lobbying align with the Paris Agreement's
goal of global average temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius and
warning the companies that lobbying against that goal is an investment
risk.
The letter went to Marathon, but, interestingly, none of Marathon's
biggest investors--BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and J.P. Morgan
Asset Management--signed the letter. Collectively, these four investors
own, roughly, 25 percent of Marathon. BlackRock lists climate risk as
one of its engagement priorities in 2019, so it says. BlackRock
published a report this year that by 2060, 58 percent of U.S. metro
areas will see annual average climate-related losses of at least 1
percent of GDP, with some projected to lose a staggering 15 percent of
GDP.
JPMorgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, has said: ``Business must play a
leadership role in creating solutions that protect the environment and
grow the economy.''
So it was interesting yesterday, in our Senate select committee
hearing, to have a witness put up this slide. This slide shows the
positions on climate change, regulation, and the legislation of a
number of companies. It is a spectrum. Green is supporting climate
regulation and legislation. Opposition is red.
We were talking about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been
identified as one of the two worst climate obstructors in America as a
trade association. The U.S. Chamber and the National Association of
Manufacturers take the prize. We were looking at how strange that is
because their memberships don't have the positions they take. So we are
going to continue to explore why it is that the board members of the
National Association of Manufacturers and the board members of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce appear to have let their organizations be run away
with by the fossil fuel industry as well.
Here is what was notable. On this graph, this is where the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce is--one of the worst climate obstructors. Yet look
who is worse. In fact, look at who is the worst of all of them--
Marathon. What do you know? You have these four investors who own 25
percent of this company that is on the worst side of this spectrum.
They claim to care about solving the climate problem. Yet they are 25-
percent owners in the most opposed of all of these entities to the
solution to the climate crisis they claim to seek.
They have to get their act together. It is not fair to be JPMorgan
CEO Jamie Dimon and say that business must play a leadership role in
creating solutions that protect the environment and grow the economy
and then to be part of the 25-percent largest shareholders of the
company that is the worst of this.
You have to line this up, guys. You can't say one thing to the public
and then do the opposite through the companies you own.
The stakes here are high. There are credible warnings of a carbon
asset bubble and of crashes in coastal property values, but BlackRock
hasn't introduced a single climate-related shareholder resolution since
2001. In 2018, BlackRock and Vanguard--two of these big Marathon
owners--voted in favor of only 10 and 12 percent of climate-related
shareholder resolutions. They say they are good at this--BlackRock 10
percent, Vanguard 12 percent. The other ones, they didn't support. In
2017, at Marathon--the worst--BlackRock voted against a shareholder
proposal for Marathon to test its business operations against the 2-
degree Celsius threshold that BlackRock claimed to target and support.
By the way, if BlackRock had voted its shares for this proposal, it
would have passed.
Just this month, Marathon finally published a report that examines
its own prospects in a carbon-contained world. In one scenario, demand
for petroleum-based liquids plummets 26 percent by 2040. With the
demand for vehicle fuels--Marathon's primary market--it falls even more
steeply. If Marathon estimates the market for its main product could
shrink by one-third or more, first, you can understand why it got in
there to manipulate the auto fuel efficiency standard process. You can
also understand why it is that economists and sovereign banks are
issuing these warnings about a carbon bubble.
We will get serious about climate change. We must. We have no choice.
The costs of inaction are, as Donald Trump once said, catastrophic.
Eventually, all of the fossil fuel money and bullying in the world
will not stave off action in the face of mounting climate calamities.
This

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should be obvious to everyone and certainly to sophisticated investors
with supposedly good climate policies like BlackRock and JPMorgan. So
why aren't they pushing Marathon to adapt to a low-carbon economy? Why
are they happy to own 25 percent of that--of the worst? That is what
they want to own?
It doesn't have to be this way. Look at DSM, a Dutch multinational,
with roughly $10 billion in revenues and over 23,000 employees around
the world, including many here in the United States. DSM began as a
coal mining company over a century ago. Its leaders realized coal
mining in the Netherlands would someday end, so they reinvented the
company. When the last mine closed in the 1970s, DSM had diversified.
It is, today, a vibrant producer of nutritional additives for food, of
pharmaceuticals, and of high-tech materials for electronics,
automobiles, and construction. By contrast, Murray Coal, which is an
American coal mining company that did not diversify, filed for
bankruptcy this week.
To the fossil fuel industry, I say that you ought to begin adapting
now. You can't ignore what is coming at you. You owe it to your
shareholders, and you owe it to your employees. By God, you owe it to
your children.
To BlackRock and the other big investors, this means you have to pay
attention too. You say you are for climate action. Show that you mean
it. Demand change at Marathon and at other fossil fuel companies that
you own. Start with mandating that these companies disclose their
climate obstruction funding. There is no excuse for that to be secret.
If they will not do it, Congress, let's investigate. We have slept
through this mess long enough--in a state of induced narcolepsy. We
have sleepwalked for far too long. It is time we woke up.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded and I be permitted to speak as in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Remembering Kay Hagan

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the passing of former Senator Kay Hagan
was sad news to all of us who were privileged to serve with her and
counted her as a friend.
In her final address to the Senate 5 years ago, Senator Kay Hagan
reminded us of our obligation to work together on behalf of the
American people with these words: ``To whom much is given, much is
expected.''
Kay Hagan was given much. She had the energy, intelligence,
dedication, and compassion, and she gave back to her home State over
many years of public service. As a person of deep faith, she fully
understood the New Testament ``Parable of the Talents.'' Its message
that gifts must be put to use in service of others guided her life.
In this time of sorrow, I offer my deep condolences to Kay's family.
I hope that they will find comfort in knowing that Kay left an
inspiring legacy. She left the world a better place for her service.
The loss felt by the people of North Carolina and by her family, in
particular, is felt by people throughout America.
I was privileged to serve with Kay for 6 years. We served together on
the Senate Armed Services Committee, and I always appreciated her focus
on solutions rather than partisan advantage. She was passionate about
many issues, particularly those affecting children.
In 2011, Kay and I introduced legislation to commemorate the work at
the March of Dimes by minting a coin to celebrate the 75th anniversary
of this organization and directing the proceeds to the March of Dimes
Prematurity Campaign. As the author of the Newborn Screening Saves
Lives Reauthorization Act, Kay reaffirmed her belief that we in
Congress must always remember whom we are advocating for.
When Kay took office in 2009, she was very proud to be one of 17
Senators who were female. It is significant that her very first speech
on the Senate floor that January was in support of the Lilly Ledbetter
Fair Pay Act to strengthen protections for women against wage
discrimination.
It was so refreshing to hear her assert that neither party had a
monopoly on good ideas. Throughout her time in this Chamber, she proved
the truth of that maxim.
In the ``Parable of the Talents,'' the master leaves on a journey and
entrusts a servant with a portion of his treasure. Upon his return, the
master is delighted to find that his wealth has been wisely invested
and multiplied.
Kay Hagan was entrusted with the great treasure of principles,
determination, and spirit. She invested that treasure wisely and
multiplied its benefits for all. Like the master in the Parable, to Kay
Hagan we say: ``Well done, good and faithful servant.''
May God bless her and her family and may we all keep her memory in
our hearts.
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.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Unanimous Consent Agreement

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am about to offer the managers' package
for the four appropriations bills currently before us: Commerce,
Justice, Science, Agriculture, Interior and the Transportation,
Housing, and Urban Development bill. This managers' package includes 45
amendments, many of which--indeed, most of which--have been offered on
a bipartisan basis. They have been cleared by both sides.
The Appropriations Committee has worked very hard with Members to
accommodate as many amendments as possible. For the T-HUD
appropriations bill, for example, both Senator Jack Reed and I worked
to review, approve, and clear managers' amendments in our part of the
bill.
This package reflects a positive step forward as we move toward final
passage of this appropriations bill. It is imperative that we move
these bills and go to conference with the House. Therefore, I urge all
Members to support this managers' package.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to offer
the following amendments: Lee amendment No. 1209 and Jones amendment
No. 1141, as modified. I further ask unanimous consent that no second-
degree amendments be in order to these amendments prior to the votes,
and that at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, October 31, the Senate vote in
relation to these amendments in the order listed.
Finally, I ask unanimous consent that upon resumption of the bill on
Thursday, October 31, the following amendments be called up and agreed
to en bloc, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid
upon the table: Tester amendment No. 953; Smith amendment No. 1023;
Hirono amendment No. 1037; Brown amendment No. 1088, as modified;
Baldwin amendment No. 1099; Whitehouse amendment No. 1121; Thune
amendment No. 1133; Jones amendment No. 1143; Smith amendment No. 1149;
Rosen

=========================== NOTE ===========================

On page S6293, October 30, 2019, third column, the following
appears: Finally, I ask unanimous consent that upon resumption of
the bill on Thursday, October 31, the following amendments be
called up and agreed to en bloc, and the motions to reconsider be
considered made and laid upon the table: Tester amendment No. 953;
Smith amendment No. 1023; Hirono amendment No. 1037; Brown
amendment No. 1088, as modified; Baldwin amendment No. 1099;
Murkowski amendment No. 1121; Thune amendment No. 1133; Capito
amendment No. 1143; Smith amendment No. 1149; Rosen

The online Record has been corrected to read: Finally, I ask
unanimous consent that upon resumption of the bill on Thursday,
October 31, the following amendments be called up and agreed to en
bloc, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid
upon the table: Tester amendment No. 953; Smith amendment No.
1023; Hirono amendment No. 1037; Brown amendment No. 1088, as
modified; Baldwin amendment No. 1099; Whitehouse amendment No.
1121; Thune amendment No. 1133; Jones amendment No. 1143; Smith
amendment No. 1149; Rosen

========================= END NOTE =========================
amendment No. 1161; McSally amendment No. 1163; Reed amendment No.
1217; Stabenow amendment No. 1223; Cornyn amendment No. 1224; Warner
amendment No. 951; Capito amendment No. 1077; Cantwell amendment No.
1094; Toomey amendment No. 1129; Durbin amendment No. 1146; Gardner
amendment No. 1150; McSally amendment No. 1234; Sinema amendment No.
1025; Ernst amendment No. 1079; Ernst amendment No. 1081; Cornyn
amendment No. 1151; Cardin amendment No. 1159; Rosen amendment No.
1160; Thune amendment No. 1162; Peters amendment No. 1182; Cornyn
amendment No. 1193; Menendez amendment No. 1199; Blunt amendment No.
1211; McSally amendment No. 1215; Collins amendment No. 1220; Schumer
amendment No. 1227; Hassan amendment No. 956; Collins amendment No.
1002; Shaheen amendment No. 1005; Kaine amendment No. 1010; Cortez
Masto amendment No. 1061; Cortez Masto amendment No. 1062; Heinrich
amendment No. 1114; Shaheen amendment No. 1130; Hoeven amendment No.
1214; and Portman amendment No. 1235.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S6294]]

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
notwithstanding rule XXII, following the disposition of the Jones
amendment, the postcloture time on amendment No. 948 expire, the
pending McConnell amendment be withdrawn, and amendment No. 948, as
amended, be agreed to; further, that the cloture motion on H.R. 3055 be
withdrawn, the bill be read a third time, and there be 2 minutes of
debate equally divided; and that following the use or yielding back of
that time, the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, with a
60-affirmative-vote threshold required for passage. Finally, I ask that
the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2740 occur at 1:45
p.m. on Thursday.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________