[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 9, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S599-S602]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Tribute to Anthony Fauci

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, our history books are filled with the 
names of great men and women who devoted their lives to others. One who 
may not be as recognizable as others is Norman Borlaug. He was an 
American biologist. He successfully developed a strain of wheat that 
grew more quickly and was disease-resistant. His work to feed the 
hungry has been credited with saving a billion lives worldwide.
  Madame Marie Curie was a Polish chemist who is remembered for her 
discovery of radium and polonium and her huge contribution toward 
finding a treatment for cancer.
  Of course, there are all the scientists throughout history who 
developed lifesaving vaccines: Edward Jenner, smallpox vaccine; Louis 
Pasteur, rabies; Albert Calmette, TB; Leila Denmark, whooping cough; 
Jonas Salk, polio. I might add Albert Sabin, too, because I was a kid 
and remember he came up with the oral version, which meant we didn't 
have to get a shot. Kids remember that.
  These men and women will be remembered for improving and saving lives 
with their breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and science.
  I want to nominate another person to be remembered in that same 
light. His name is Anthony Fauci. Born in 1940, Tony Fauci, the 
grandson of Italian immigrants, grew up a Yankees fan in Brooklyn. He 
was the captain of his high school basketball team. He worked 
construction jobs over breaks in the summer from school.
  He ultimately decided he wanted to pursue a career in medicine. Thank 
goodness he did. In 1972, Anthony Fauci accepted a senior researcher 
position at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases 
at the National Institutes of Health, and for the past 38 years, Dr. 
Fauci has been the leader of that Institute. He has advised seven 
Presidents of both political parties. He has guided our Nation and the 
world through countless public health crises--SARS, avian influenza, 
swine flu, Zika, Ebola.
  Aside from his work against COVID-19, he is best known for his work 
on HIV/AIDS. Anthony Fauci's tireless efforts on HIV/AIDS, both 
domestically and worldwide, through the creation of PEPFAR, the 
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the main reason why HIV/
AIDS is no longer a death sentence.
  Some of us can remember when HIV/AIDS was first discovered. I can 
recall coming to vote in the House and somebody stopping me on the 
sidewalk and saying: Did you hear Magic Johnson has AIDS? I can 
remember hearings in the House Budget Committee as a young Congressman 
when we thought it was a death sentence that we were all going to face 
eventually. There was ultimate panic in the air, but thank goodness 
there were talented people like Tony Fauci with the nerves of steel 
needed to confront that.
  Harold Varmus, a former NIH Director, once said:

       PEPFAR has turned around declining life expectancies in 
     many countries and likely saved some countries--even an 
     entire continent--from economic ruin.

  Larry Kramer, a prominent and well-known AIDS activist who recently 
passed away, called Dr. Fauci ``the only true and great hero'' among 
government officials of the AIDS crisis.
  For his work on HIV/AIDS, Dr. Fauci was awarded the Presidential 
Medal of Freedom in 2008--our Nation's highest civilian honor--from 
then-President George W. Bush, who called Dr. Fauci ``my hero.''
  Dr. Fauci has devoted his career and his life to improving public 
health. He has saved countless lives here and around the world. These 
days, he is working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, shuttling from the 
NIH to the White House and back home.
  He is a classic example of American excellence, a brilliant 
scientific mind. Yet, despite all this, despite all that I have told 
you about this man, some Members of today's Republican Party have 
chosen to make him a political target. They think attacking Dr. Fauci 
will cause us to forget the real history of COVID-19.

  You see, the Republican Party has consistently failed the American 
people when it has come to COVID--from President Trump's refusing to 
take it seriously, to the discouragement of mask-wearing and vaccines, 
to promoting horse tranquilizers and bleach and bizarre theories as a 
cure. They have too little courage to face their communities and to do 
the hard work of governing during this public health crisis, so they 
have invented a political target, a convenient target, on which to 
focus their blame.
  Instead of addressing this public health crisis head on, they are 
trying to deflect and distract from it in attacking Dr. Tony Fauci. 
They are, without evidence, suggesting the false narrative that Dr. 
Fauci secretly and purposely funded illicit research that caused this 
virus. They are even criticizing his government salary, for goodness' 
sakes.
  He accrued that salary, I might remind them, over four decades of 
public service, as though he wouldn't make twice or three times that 
amount in the private sector today. They are questioning his financials 
and ties to the drug industry, even though he has made every requested 
document available, and no malfeasance or conflicts have been found.
  So why do they do this? Why are they determined to run this man down? 
Why would they attack this public servant who is working around the 
clock to keep us safe?

[[Page S600]]

  It is because it is much easier to malign a person than it is to do 
the hard work of enacting policies to tackle this virus and keep 
America healthy. Their distractions have sunk so low that they are 
using these attacks to raise money for their political campaigns.
  We have Republican candidates, from Ohio to Florida, who are running 
ads entitled, ``Fire Fauci,'' who are promising to subpoena him and 
reduce his salary to zero if it is within their power, who are selling 
``Freedom over Fauci Flip-Flops,'' which comes from none other than the 
Governor of Florida. A few of my Senate Republican colleagues have 
loaded up their websites with anti-Fauci fervor, conveniently located 
next to a ``donate here'' option.
  We have FOX News' anchors and podcast comedians giving air time to 
anti-vaxxers who are hoping to get their 15 minutes of fame by leveling 
baseless claims against Dr. Fauci, baseless claims that have resulted 
in death threats and harassment against Dr. Fauci, his wife, and his 
children.
  Let me ask you this: What have Dr. Fauci's most vocal critics done to 
advance the cause of public health?
  Nothing. They have done nothing. Worse than that, their lies about 
Dr. Fauci and about COVID are creating a toxic political environment 
that is literally killing people, as 900,000 Americans have now died 
from COVID. Some of these deaths could have been prevented with 
vaccinations.
  Americans who are unvaccinated--listen to this; the Presiding Officer 
knows it--are 97 times more likely to die from COVID than their 
vaccinated and boosted counterparts--97 times more likely to die. Yet, 
instead of spending their time encouraging vaccinations and promoting 
other proven, legitimate public health measures that would end this 
pandemic, many in the Republican Party want to get their 5 or 10 
minutes of Sun on FOX TV, and they spend their time attacking Dr. 
Fauci.
  These attacks are a shameful fraud, and for what--to fundraise? to 
win another guest appearance on FOX?
  Working in politics, you get used to a lot of things--grandstanding, 
demagoguery, hypocrisy--but what some of my Republican colleagues are 
doing to Dr. Fauci is the lowest form of political life. They are lying 
about someone who has devoted his life to saving people--saving AIDS 
patients, containing and eradicating Ebola, preventing the spread of 
Zika and the avian flu. He is someone who has worked harder than anyone 
to end this COVID pandemic.
  David Relman, a microbiologist who has advised the U.S. Government 
for years on biological threats, said this of Dr. Fauci:

       Nobody is a more tireless champion of the truth and the 
     facts . . . I am not entirely sure what we would do without 
     him.

  Dr. Fauci's name is--and deserves to be--listed alongside our world's 
greatest scientific minds. History will reserve another place for those 
who lied about him for their own gain--inciting hatred, prolonging this 
pandemic, and contributing to needless pain and suffering.
  America is blessed to have the talent, dedication, and compassion of 
Anthony Fauci in the midst of this deadly pandemic.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from 
The Washington Post, entitled, ``Anthony Fauci is up against more than 
a virus,'' after these remarks.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                            [Jan. 27, 2022]

             Anthony Fauci Is Up Against More Than a Virus

                    (By Dan Zak and Roxanne Roberts)

       Two years into the pandemic, the threats and vitriol have 
     not stopped. And the many Americans who still trust him are 
     exhausted.
       The doctor opens the front door. Never mind introductions. 
     ``I know who you are. Do you think these guys would let you 
     get this close to me, if we didn't know who you are?'' Across 
     the street is a security agent in Nikes, a badge on his belt. 
     He's not the only one watching.
       ``I mean, isn't it amazing?'' the doctor says. ``Here I am, 
     with cameras around my house.''
       The house is modest for Washington: stucco and brick, cozy 
     and cramped. No obvious tokens of celebrity or esteem. 
     Icicles on the dormant hot tub out back. Bottles of red wine 
     and olive oil on the kitchen counter.
       ``It's messy because, as you know, in covid times, nobody 
     comes over. So nobody cares.''
       People are coming by outside, though. They are snapping 
     photos. Two years into the pandemic Anthony Fauci remains the 
     face of America's covid response, and on this cold Saturday 
     in January thousands of marchers are descending on the 
     capital to rally against vaccine mandates. Are some of them 
     staking out his home?
       The security agents ``usually leave at a certain time,'' 
     the doctor says. ``But tonight they're going to sleep in our 
     guest room.''
       Year 3 of covid times. Nearly 900,000 Americans are dead. 
     An average of 2,000 (mostly unvaccinated) Americans are dying 
     every day now, even though there is a simple measure to limit 
     such suffering--made possible in large part by the Vaccine 
     Research Center founded under Fauci. And yet many Americans 
     would rather take their chances with a virus than a vaccine, 
     because there's more than just a virus going around. There's 
     something else in the air. Symptoms include rage, delusion, 
     opportunism and extreme behavior--like comparing Fauci to 
     Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (as Lara Logan did on Fox News in 
     November), or setting out for Washington with an AR-15 and a 
     kill list of ``evil'' targets that included Fauci (as a 
     California man did last month).
       ``Surrealistic,'' the doctor says.
       He has not had a day off since the beginning. ``I would say 
     I'm in a state of chronic exhaustion.'' He quickly adds: 
     ``But it's not exhaustion that's interfering with my 
     function.'' He is a precise man whose tour in the information 
     war has made him extra-vigilant about his words. ``I can just 
     see, you know, Laura Ingraham: `He's exhausted! Get rid of 
     him!' ''
       Fauci has been a doctor and public servant for more than 50 
     years. He's been the country's top expert on infectious 
     diseases under seven U.S. presidents. George H.W. Bush once 
     called him his personal hero. Under George W. Bush, Fauci 
     became an architect of an AIDS-relief program that has, 
     according to the U.S. government, saved 21 million lives 
     around the world.
       He knows how a virus works. He knows how Washington works. 
     He thought he knew how people worked, too--even ones who 
     called him a murderer, as AIDS activists did decades ago 
     because they felt left for dead by a neglectful government. 
     Back then the angry people were motivated by truth and 
     science. Fauci had something to learn from them, and they had 
     something to learn from him. The shared mission was pursuing 
     facts and saving lives. Fear and uncertainty could be eased 
     by data and collaboration. Combatants, however scared or 
     passionate, shared a reality.
       Now?
       ``There is no truth,'' Fauci says, for effect. ``There is 
     no fact.'' People believe hydroxychloroquine works because an 
     Internet charlatan claims it does. People believe the 2020 
     election was stolen because a former president says so. 
     People believe that Fauci killed millions of people for the 
     good of his stock portfolio because it's implied by TV 
     pundits, Internet trolls and even elected leaders. Fauci is 
     unnerved by ``the almost incomprehensible culture of lies'' 
     that has spread among the populace, infected major organs of 
     the government, manifested as ghastly threats against him and 
     his family. His office staff, normally focused on 
     communicating science to the public, has been conscripted 
     into skirmishes over conspiracy theories and misinformation.
       ``It is very, very upending to live through this,'' Fauci 
     says, seated at his kitchen table in the midwinter light. He 
     pauses. ``I'm trying to get the right word for it.'' He is 
     examining himself now, at 81, in the shadow of the past two 
     years. ``It has shaken me a bit.''
       The way he can comprehend the situation is in the context 
     of the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol. There it was, on 
     live TV, an experiment as clear as day: The abandonment of 
     truth has seismic consequences.
       Something has been replicating in the American mind. It is 
     not microbial. It cannot be detected by nasal swab. To treat 
     an affliction, you must first identify it. But you can't 
     slide a whole country into an MRI machine.
       ``There's no diagnosis for this,'' Fauci says. ``I don't 
     know what is going on.''
       A virus is a terrifying force that hijacks civilization. A 
     bureaucracy, intricate yet imperfect, is what we have to take 
     back control. For better and worse, Fauci became the 
     personification of both. He has been sainted and satanized 
     over the past two years, since he first fact-checked 
     President Donald Trump. His inbox is a cascade of hosannas 
     and go-to-hells. His days often start at 5 a.m. His nights 
     are fitful. What more could he have done today? What fresh 
     horror awaits tomorrow? He is fighting for a best-case 
     scenario, urging preparation for the worst, and fretting that 
     nothing will ever be good enough.
       ``I do worry about him,'' says Francis Collins, until 
     recently the director of the National Institutes of Health. 
     ``He's incredibly frustrated'' by the attacks ``because it's 
     a distraction. But there is no part of Tony Fauci that's 
     ready to give up on a problem just because it's hard.''
       ``Being two years into this, and being at the tip of the 
     spear--it takes a certain person to be able to persevere 
     through that,'' says Michael T. Osterholm, director of the 
     Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the 
     University of Minnesota. ``It's almost like asking someone to 
     run a marathon every day of their life.''
       ``He's always had complete bipartisan support, up until 
     covid,'' says AIDS activist

[[Page S601]]

     Peter Staley, who once picketed NIH and is now a dear friend 
     of Fauci's. ``It's flat-Earth time. Nothing makes sense. This 
     is a guy who tries to let science dictate what he says and 
     does. Now they're turning what is a pristine record into 
     something evil. They lie, and repeat the lie 100 times until 
     people think it's true.''
       Staley calls Fauci multiple times a week to check in, ask 
     him how he's doing, discuss the covid response and the 
     resistance to it.
       ``What do I tell him?'' Staley says. ``What kind of advice 
     do I give him to win that war? It's very frustrating. It's 
     almost unwinnable.''
       Look at Fauci's Jan. 11 appearance before the Senate Health 
     Committee. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) chided Fauci and other 
     officials for spreading ``skepticism and mass confusion'' 
     with mixed messaging on covid guidelines. A harsh but fair 
     criticism. Then two senators--who each happen to have medical 
     degrees--got personal.
       ``You are the lead architect for the response from the 
     government, and now 800,000 people have died,'' said Sen. 
     Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
       Fauci scolded Paul that such an ``irresponsible'' statement 
     ``kindles the crazies.'' ``I have threats upon my life, 
     harassments of my family,'' Fauci said, suggesting that the 
     California man targeted him because he ``thinks that maybe 
     I'm killing people.''
       For years, Fauci had joked that his personal philosophy 
     comes from ``The Godfather'': ``It's not personal; it's 
     strictly business.'' The business is science. Science helped 
     him cure vasculitis. Science helped him and others transform 
     HIV from a death sentence to a condition managed by a pill.
       What he was facing now felt like it had nothing to do with 
     science.
       Later in the hearing, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) 
     displayed a giant prop paycheck depicting Fauci's $400,000-
     plus salary. Marshall accused Fauci and ``Big Tech'' of 
     hiding his financial investments, which created an 
     ``appearance that maybe some shenanigans are going on.''
       Fauci, bewildered and incensed, replied that his assets, 
     which he had disclosed for decades, were available to the 
     public. (While this statement was technically true, his 
     disclosures were not just a Google search away; after the 
     hearing, Marshall's office requested and received the 
     documents from NIH, then declared that Fauci ``lied'' about 
     the ease of their availability.)
       When Marshall finished his questioning, Fauci let his 
     frustration get the better of him. ``What a moron,'' he 
     muttered to himself, not intending it for the microphone.
       What was going on here? Senators were ``trying to troll 
     Fauci, and they're trying to bring him down to their level,'' 
     says Matthew Sheffield, a former conservative activist who 
     now runs a political commentary website called 
     Flux.community. ``They know if they can get him to call 
     people a moron, or engage in pettiness the way that they 
     engage in pettiness constantly--if he does it even once, then 
     it's a victory for them.''
       Paul disputes this characterization and claims that Fauci 
     deserves ``some culpability'' for the pandemic because a 
     grant from his agency funded research in a lab in Wuhan, the 
     Chinese city where the novel coronavirus was first detected. 
     (The exact origins of the virus remain unknown. Scientific 
     consensus points to an animal-to-human transfer, but the 
     debate is ongoing.)
       Marshall's office did not have comment on Sheffield's 
     theory. After the hearing, the senator's campaign website did 
     start selling $29 T-shirts, featuring the doctor's likeness, 
     to commemorate the moment: ``Send Fauci a message by getting 
     your own `MORON' t-shirt!''
       The way in which the United States funds and manages 
     science provides a solid foundation for skepticism and 
     conspiracy, says University of Pennsylvania professor 
     Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies science communication and 
     misinformation.
       Yes, scientific recommendations change based on available 
     data, a truth that can be exploited to make responsible 
     leaders appear inconsistent or incompetent.
       Yes, Fauci has a high salary by government standards, has 
     been in the same unelected position for 38 years and oversees 
     a budget of $6 billion that flows into grants; those are 
     truths on which a distrusting person could build a theory 
     about corruption, unaccountable elites and a nefarious flow 
     of money from this or that institution to this or that lab.
       Yes, the virus seems unaccountable to our best efforts and 
     fueled by our worst instincts. Yes, the ways it has ended and 
     upended people's lives have been undeserved, tragic, crazy-
     making. These are scary truths that you can neutralize with a 
     fantasy about how a single human villain is to blame.
       The attacks and misinformation seem to be having an effect. 
     Confidence in Fauci is softening, according to polling 
     conducted since April by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. 
     After holding steady last summer and autumn, the percentage 
     of Americans who are confident that Fauci provides 
     trustworthy information about COVID-19 is down six points 
     since April, from 71 to 65 percent.
       ``For the first time in my lifetime--and I am an elderly 
     woman--the voice that speaks on behalf of the best available 
     knowledge in science has weathered sustained attack,'' says 
     Jamieson, director of the policy center. ``Confidence [in 
     Fauci] remains high despite that attack, but the erosion is 
     worrisome.''
       With Trump long gone from the White House and public 
     exhaustion with precautions surging alongside the omicron 
     variant, Fauci may now be more useful to the pundits who need 
     a villain than those who need a hero. ``Fauci must go,'' the 
     editors of the conservative National Review demanded this 
     month. ``I'm over COVID,'' talk-show host Bill Maher told 
     Deadline before his show last week. His guest, author Bari 
     Weiss, echoed the frustration of millions: We were told ``you 
     get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven't 
     gotten back to normal.''
       ``The stalwart Fauci was the wise Oracle of Delphi to then-
     President Donald Trump's babbling brook about household 
     bleach as an injectable, anti-viral agent,'' Washington Post 
     columnist Kathleen Parker wrote this week.
       ``Maybe it's my imagination,'' she continued, ``but Fauci 
     appears less confident of late, perhaps weary of his own 
     voice and exhausted by two years of on-camera appearances.''
       Sen. Marshall exaggerated this erosion during the Jan. 11 
     hearing. ``You've lost your reputation,'' he told Fauci, 
     adding: ``The American people don't trust the words coming 
     out of your mouth.''
       ``That's a real distortion of the reality,'' Fauci 
     answered.
       Marshall replied with a truth from the world outside of 
     medical science: ``Perception is reality.''
       Fauci is not naive. He gets that a third of the country 
     won't hear him. He still understands Washington enough to see 
     how it is deteriorating in new and disturbing ways, as fringe 
     thinking spreads to the central organs. As Peter Staley puts 
     it: ``Because one party has turned so anti-science, Tony's 
     power is no longer stable.''
       Yet Fauci still thinks he is an effective messenger. And he 
     still hasn't totally given up on the people who are making 
     his life miserable. After the exchange with Marshall, and a 
     news cycle dominated by ``moron'' instead of ``omicron,'' 
     Fauci told his own incredulous staff: Maybe the senator has a 
     point. Maybe my financial investments, though disclosed and 
     available, should be much easier to see.
       As for the citizens who wish him harm, he can't help but 
     search for some signal, some symptom, that could help him 
     understand.
       ``I'm always looking for the good in people, that kernel of 
     something that's positive,'' Fauci says. ``And it's tough to 
     imagine that that many people are bad people. And, I mean, 
     it's just--has something been smoldering in their lives? 
     Something that's sociologically evasive to me?''
       He wonders: Does their resentment indicate an underlying 
     issue that needs--for lack of a better term--healing?
       ``Maybe it's pain that they're feeling, that's driving 
     it?'' he says, as if bedside with a patient. ``And we're 
     focusing on the aberrancy of their actions, but we really are 
     not fully appreciating that maybe they're suffering. And 
     they're rebelling against a failing of society, maybe, to 
     address some of their needs. Maybe we need, as a nation, to 
     address the fundamental issues that are getting, you know, 
     tens of millions of people to feel a certain way.''
       On Sunday, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, thousands of 
     people rallied against vaccine mandates. Fauci's name was 
     scrawled on many signs. The rhetoric was familiar. ``Dr. 
     Fauci is the new Jeff Mengele from World War II,'' said a 
     Long Island construction worker named Gio Nicolson, who 
     described Fauci as both ``puppet'' and ``dictator.'' A 57-
     year-old woman named Robin Field drove three hours from 
     Yorktown, Va., to hold up a homemade sign that depicted 
     Fauci's decapitated head in a noose, under the words ``HANG 
     EM HIGH.''
       Fauci is guilty of treason, according to Field. She's done 
     her own research, she says, and it's clear that his 
     recommendations have both ``killed people'' and made him 
     money.
       The violence of her sign, though--where is that coming 
     from? At a primal level, it seems to convey pain or fear.
       ``Of co--'' Field starts, then stops. ``Well . . .''
       How would she put it?
       ``I feel so bad that so many people have lost their lives. 
     That hurts, because we all have loved ones that have touched 
     our hearts and passed away.''
       Almost no one alive has experienced this kind of sudden 
     mass death, this level of widespread illness, this freezing 
     and fracturing of all life. It hurts. For much of the 1980s, 
     every single one of Fauci's AIDS patients died. Ugly deaths 
     that he was powerless to prevent. He had to suppress the pain 
     and bury the emotion to get through each day. When he recalls 
     that era, his eyes water and his throat constricts. His self-
     diagnosis is a quick aside (``post-traumatic stress'') as he 
     bridges the past and the present. In the middle of a 
     cataclysm, it's hard to see the end. But it does end.
       ``As a society, when we get out of this, you know, we're 
     going to look up and say, `Oh, my goodness, what we've been 
     through,' '' he says. ``We've had an outbreak where we've 
     lost close to 900,000 people in the last two years. That's 
     going to have a long-lasting effect.''
       In the early '70s, when he was chief resident in a 
     Manhattan hospital, Fauci remembers glancing out over the 
     East River in the middle of the night, ``Saying, you know, 
     I'm tired, but I can't stop until at least this patient is 
     stabilized.'' When he was the main attending physician at NIH 
     during the AIDS crisis, he wouldn't leave the ward until he 
     addressed every patient need. Now he views

[[Page S602]]

     the entire country as his patient--a patient afflicted by 
     both a virus and an undiagnosed condition that hampers its 
     ability to fight it.
       He could spare himself further pain and exhaustion and 
     allow America to see another doctor. He could tag out.
       ``That's not my character,'' he says. ``I don't do that.''
       The patient, you see, is not stabilized yet.
       Fauci stares out the kitchen window into his small 
     backyard. Right now he sees a crossroads for America. The 
     best-case scenario: increased vaccination, more immunity, 
     antiviral drugs, a virus under control. If we work together. 
     The worst: a new variant, as transmissible as omicron but 
     more deadly, exacerbated by that comorbidity--the 
     deterioration of our minds and politics.
       ``It's like it's 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm looking 
     out the window at the East River,'' Fauci says, ``and I got a 
     patient who's bleeding, and another patient has a myocardial 
     infarction, and another patient who has septicemia--''
       The sense memory prompts a sort of pep talk for the 
     present.
       ``There's no time to be exhausted, folks. You got a job to 
     do.''

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.