[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4865-4896]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     SAFE COMMUNITIES, SAFE SCHOOLS ACT OF 2013--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 649, 
which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 32, S. 649, a bill to 
     ensure that all individuals who should be prohibited from 
     buying a firearm are listed in the national instant criminal 
     background check system and require a background check for 
     every firearm sale, and for other purposes.

  Mr. REID. I note the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                         The President's Budget

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in about an hour the President of the 
United States will release his budget--65 days after the statutory 
deadline of February 4, the first Monday in February.
  Since taking office, President Obama has raised taxes roughly $1.7 
trillion--a number that I know none of us can actually comprehend. But 
now he wants to raise taxes once again.
  I heard the majority leader on the floor this morning advocating for 
another tax increase. The President's proposed budget will ask for 
another $800 billion, and that is on top of $600 billion that was the 
subject of the fiscal cliff negotiations at the end of last year.
  The President's budget, which will be released in an hour but which 
we have heard a lot about already, will never, ever actually balance. 
Every household in America, 49 States, every municipality, county 
government, everyone else in America has to live within their means but 
not the Federal Government.
  The President's budget, as I said, does not purport to live within 
our fiscal means, and it does not balance, but the President says this 
is a compromise. I heard his spokesman on television say this is not 
the President's ideal budget; this is what he views as a compromise. 
But here is the simple reality: America cannot afford this budget, and 
America cannot afford the President's so-called compromise.
  Let's review some recent history.
  In November and December of last year, Republicans were asking the 
President to embrace serious entitlement reform. Everyone who has 
looked at Medicare and Social Security realizes that both of those 
programs are on a path to insolvency and that they will not be there 
for future generations. And we asked for some smart reductions in 
Federal spending--what we have come to know as wasteful Washington 
spending--in exchange for more revenue. The President refused, citing 
the need for a ``balanced'' approach. But I do not want anyone to 
confuse that with a balanced budget; the President calls for a 
``balanced'' approach but never a balanced budget.
  Meanwhile, his Treasury Secretary made clear that the White House was 
absolutely prepared to go over the fiscal cliff--this was in December--
unless Republicans agreed to raise taxes. Well, we did not have much 
choice because after the expiration of the so-called Bush tax cuts, 
they were going to go up by operation of law. But now, after getting 
more than $1 trillion in new tax revenue as part of ObamaCare and after 
getting a separate $620 billion tax increase on January 2, which I have 
just talked about, as a result of the fiscal cliff negotiations, the 
President is back for more. It seems as though that is his knee-jerk 
solution to every fiscal issue: more taxes, more spending, and more 
debt.
  Not only would his proposed budget raise taxes by more than $800 
billion, it would increase annual spending by $2 trillion by 2023 and 
increase our national debt even more, by $8 trillion. For those keeping 
score, our gross debt has already increased by more than $6 trillion 
since the President was sworn into office. It is already larger than 
our entire gross domestic product--in other words, our entire economy--
and we are already spending more than $200 billion a year just on 
interest payments.
  Here is the risk--one of the risks--of this huge overhang of debt: If 
interest rates were just to go up by 1 percentage point that we had to 
pay our creditors, such as China, to buy our debt, that would be $1.7 
trillion in additional interest we would have to pay on the debt for 
each percentage point over a 10-year period of time. So you can begin 
to see very quickly how payment of interest and payment of mandatory 
programs would quickly crowd out everything else, including national 
defense expenditures.
  A serious long-term fiscal plan must include three elements: 
progrowth tax reform, which we stand ready to do; structural Medicare 
reform, which we stand ready to do because we believe we need to 
preserve and protect Medicare for future generations; and, No. 3, a 
realistic strategy for reducing our

[[Page 4866]]

long-term debt burden before we experience a European-style debt 
crisis. Unfortunately, President Obama's budget does none of that.
  Last year, speaking about America's national debt, President Obama's 
Treasury Secretary told the Republican chairman of the House Budget 
Committee:

       We're not coming before you to say we have a definitive 
     solution to our long-term [debt] problem. What we do know is 
     we don't like yours.

  Since that time, our national debt has grown by $1.4 trillion. Now 
more than ever, America needs a definitive solution to our debt 
problem. Now more than ever we need a balanced budget amendment to the 
U.S. Constitution, like one that has been cosponsored by every Member 
on this side of the aisle. Now more than ever, amid the longest stretch 
of high unemployment--the highest unemployment--since the Great 
Depression, we need innovative, progrowth tax reforms that encourage 
investment and private-sector job creation. Yet the President is still 
offering more of the same--more taxes, more spending, and more debt. To 
paraphrase a famous diplomat, it seems the President never misses an 
opportunity to miss an opportunity.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.


                   Congratulating the Lady Cardinals

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday I was proud to congratulate 
Coach Pitino and the Louisville men's basketball team for an impressive 
national championship win. Today I would like to recognize Coach Walz 
and the Lady Cardinals for playing their hearts out last night. You 
know, these women were the lowest seeded team to make it all the way to 
the title game in decades--and that is really quite an achievement.
  So my sincere congratulations to you, Lady Cards. Keep up the hustle 
for next year's tournament. And to the Connecticut Huskies, 
congratulations on your hard-fought victory last night. You earned it.


                         The President's Budget

  Mr. President, later today we will receive the President's budget. 
Like nearly every one of his budgets so far, it is late--really late. 
In the extra 2 months he has kept the country on hold, both the House 
and the Senate have actually already passed their own budgets. So it is 
hard to see what the White House plans to accomplish. I want to believe 
the intention is not to purposely blow up the budget process so the 
President can campaign against the very budget process he blew up, but 
from the reports we are seeing, it is getting harder and harder not to 
draw that conclusion. After all, the document headed our way does not 
appear designed to bridge the differences between the House- and 
Senate-passed budgets. That is the role Americans would expect the 
President to play at this stage. But his budget simply does not 
represent some grand pivot from left to center; it is really just a 
pivot from left to left.
  I mean, if these reports we are seeing are correct, it is mostly the 
same old thing that we have seen year after year after year, and that 
is really too bad because it is not as if we do not know the kinds of 
things that need to be done to get our budget back to balance and 
Americans back to work. We need to provide families and businesses a 
fairer and flatter Tax Code so they can save for the future and create 
jobs. We do not need a budget that piles on tax increase after tax 
increase. We need to get government out of the way so the private 
sector can actually grow again. We do not need a budget that spends 
more money we do not have. We need a balanced budget that encourages 
growth and job creation. We do not need an extreme, unbalanced budget 
that will not balance in your lifetime or mine.
  The White House initially made some fantastic claims about the amount 
of deficit reduction supposedly contained in its budget. But when you 
cut through the spin and get to the facts, it looks as though there is 
less than $600 billion worth of reduction in there--and that is over a 
decade--all of it coming, not surprisingly, from tax increases. In 
other words, it is not a serious plan--for the most part, just another 
leftwing wish list. Let me clarify: a wish list, actually, with an 
asterisk.
  The President seems prepared to finally concede this time that at 
least something needs to be done to save entitlements from their 
inevitable slide toward bankruptcy. I am glad to see him begin to come 
to grips with the math. It is well past time for reform, and it is 
something the President ought to want to do because he presumably cares 
about saving entitlement programs, not just because he wants yet 
another excuse to raise taxes.
  As we start to think about reforming entitlement programs, we should 
think about reform this way: Will the changes we make help modernize 
entitlements over the long term in order to eventually meet the needs 
of a rapidly aging population in a realistic way or will they just kick 
the can down the road without actually solving the problem? Remember, 
kicking the can down the road is how we got to this point in the first 
place. So we need to have the courage to finally make the tough 
decisions Americans sent us here to make.
  If the President and his allies care about Social Security and 
Medicare--and I take them at their word that they do--then they need to 
prove that commitment by proposing ambitious, forward-leaning 
structural reforms to save them. This budget is their chance to do 
that, and I hope they will. But if they choose to continue using these 
programs as campaign weapons instead, then the math points to a clear 
outcome: The entitlement programs so many Americans rely upon will go 
bankrupt, and today's Washington Democrats will have to live with that 
legacy. We cannot get to that point. But Republicans only control a 
tiny sliver of the Federal Government, so there really is not much we 
can do until the President and his allies get serious about reform. It 
is way past time they did.
  We do not need another reheated budget. We have had enough of those 
in the past few years. We need a serious reform-oriented budget. Sadly, 
I do not believe we will see that one today.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today, finally, we are going to see the 
President's budget--so we are told. When we look over the history of 
the last few decades, never has there been a budget submitted so late. 
The budget is due in February, as we know. With the exception of the 
first year of a President's term, when a new President comes in, when 
we give that new administration some time to put together its own 
budget, this will be the latest budget submission in decades.
  I hope the wait will have been worth it. In other words, I hope what 
the President submits today is something serious, that helps us address 
the central challenge of our time. I see there are some young pages on 
the floor. I also met with lots of young people from the Ohio State 
University this morning. I told them the same thing I will say today, 
which is their future is at stake.
  It is about our economy, but it is also truly about the future. Are 
we going to get control of the record debt and deficits and begin to 
turn our country toward the America that has been something we so much 
have taken for granted over the past century, which is an America that 
is growing, that is prospering, where wages are going up, where we have 
the ability to chart our own course and are a beacon of hope and 
opportunity for the rest of the world? Or, are we going to continue the 
slide we are on now, where wages have actually gone down, where 
America's deficit and debt continue to grow at unacceptable levels, 
where we risk a financial crisis as we have seen in Southern Europe, in 
countries such as Greece, places where they did not watch what was 
happening in terms of their fiscal house.
  These countries allowed their debts and deficits to grow to such a 
large extent that they became as large as the

[[Page 4867]]

entire economy of those countries. Guess what? As of this year, we are 
told our debt--our gross debt in this country--is now the size of our 
entire economy. There are studies out there that indicate that when we 
get to that kind of a level, there is a big impact on economic growth. 
We are certainly seeing it, are we not?
  We are living through the weakest economic recovery since the Great 
Depression, whether it is measured in terms of our economic growth or 
whether it is measured in terms of jobs. We just had a very 
disappointing report last month on the jobs front showing that we only 
gained about 88,000 jobs, disappointing all the projections.
  But significantly, one-half million people--almost 500,000 people 
left the workforce. We now have the lowest labor participation rate--
meaning that as a percentage of people working or seeking work--that we 
have had since the days of Jimmy Carter. That is over three decades. In 
some ways, the policies of Jimmy Carter have been replicated over the 
last few years in the sense of larger government, more taxes, more 
regulations.
  What we are seeing is, frankly, an economy that is starting to 
resemble what happened back in the Carter days. That is unacceptable. 
We need to provide opportunities for Americans who are on that first 
rung of the economic ladder to get to the second and to the third and 
to the fourth. Those are the folks who are being hurt the worst with 
this economic malaise we have with this anemic economic growth, with 
these job numbers that are so disappointing.
  They do relate back to the budget deficit and debt. There is a study 
by a couple economists named Rogoff and Reinhart that indicate we would 
have about 1 million more jobs this year alone if we did not have debt 
at these incredibly high levels.
  This year we are told we can expect a deficit of $1 trillion again or 
more. This is the fourth year in a row. Never in the history of our 
country have we had debts and annual deficits of $1 trillion. Yet the 
President's budget, it appears, will not fundamentally change the 
course we are on. I think from what I have heard from the media reports 
and so on, it is likely to add about $7 trillion to our debt over the 
next 10 years, putting our debt that is already at over $16 trillion, 
again, at a level where it is at the entire size of our economy, where 
we have unfortunately continued economic doldrums because we cannot get 
out of this huge overhang of debts and deficits.
  It is time to make a change. It is a moment for truth. It is an 
opportunity to address the challenge. My fear is the President's budget 
will not be adequate to meet the challenge.
  There are some things in the budget I think will be positive. I want 
to say that. I understand the President is likely to propose a more 
accurate measure of inflation, when we are talking about how to adjust 
for cost of living and our programs, including the important and vital 
but unsustainable program Social Security.
  Social Security this year is actually in deficit, meaning that $77 
billion is projected to be spent for benefits in Social Security 
greater than the amount of payroll taxes coming in. So people who say 
Social Security is OK, it is in fine shape--a $77 billion shortfall is 
not OK. Also, we are told the disability trust fund will be insolvent, 
bankrupt, belly up by 2016. That is just a few years from now. More 
people have gone on disability, unfortunately, than have been added to 
the work rolls in the last 4 years. Yet this trust fund is going 
bankrupt in just a few years.
  Even if we include all the IOUs in the trust fund for the Old-Age and 
Survivors Trust Fund, the fundamental trust fund for Social Security, 
that will be insolvent by 2033. That is not that long from now. Folks 
who are retiring today, many of whom are likely to live to that point, 
in other words, for retirees today, they are looking at the possibility 
of this trust fund going bankrupt.
  What happens under law when that goes bankrupt? There is a 25-percent 
cut in benefits. That is the law. So with this hemorrhaging every year, 
this year again about $77 billion with these trust funds heading toward 
insolvency, Social Security does have to be addressed. I commend the 
President for saying let's use the right measure of inflation. It also 
happens to affect the benefit side and the tax side. So it actually 
increases taxes as well because there will not be the same adjustment 
for the rates for indexing on the income tax side. So there is both 
revenue gained through this proposal and also there are some savings on 
the programmatic side because the more accurate measure of inflation is 
used.
  This is a controversial issue among some folks. I understand that. 
Again, I commend the President for putting it in the budget, as I am 
told he will. But having said that, this is just one step in the right 
direction.
  Unfortunately, even with that proposal, Social Security will continue 
to have these enormous shortfalls. On the health care side, I am told 
the President may make a proposal to reduce some spending in health 
care. That is a good thing but again not adequate to the task before 
us. I am told it will be $400 billion. We can argue about where that 
$400 billion comes from. But it looks like most of it will come out of 
providers; in other words, the people who are providing health care to 
lower their reimbursement at a time when more and more providers are 
saying, we are not interested in providing care under Medicare and 
Medicaid because the reimbursement is already too low.
  So we need to be careful how it is done. But let's assume we could 
agree on the $400 billion. What would that mean? That would mean that 
instead of rising 110 percent over the next ten years, Federal health 
care expenses would go up 100 percent.
  The point is we have a challenge in front of us that requires a much 
more aggressive approach. It requires us to be honest with the American 
people. It requires us to tell the American people: things are not 
going well. We are not turning the corner because these incredible 
debts and deficits do not enable us to do that. It is a shadow over the 
economy. It is a wet blanket on the economy today. Unfortunately, for 
the young people listening today, it is going to affect their futures 
in very significant ways if we do not address the problem.
  We will see what happens with this budget proposal today. I am 
hopeful it will have more in terms of savings than has been suggested 
in the media. Those savings that are in there, I think we ought to 
support, as Republicans and Democrats alike, and then encourage the 
President to work with us on taking it to the next level, to truly 
address this challenge.
  On the tax side, we are told the President is likely to recommend 
additional increases in tax. Remember, taxes were increased about $620 
billion already this year, just a few months ago. So the ink is barely 
dry on that huge tax increase--some would argue the largest tax 
increase in the history of our country. Yet the President is apparently 
likely to recommend taxes at about that level again, $600 billion or 
more. Some say it is more like $1.5 trillion, which was in the 
Democratic one offered on the Senate floor. But I am told maybe it is 
more like $600 billion. But whatever it is, we have to acknowledge that 
increasing taxes again is going to hurt the economy. There is no 
question about it. The question is whether it is appropriate to have a 
higher level of taxation in our economy.
  Let's think about that for a moment. We are told by the Congressional 
Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan group that analyzes all these 
budget proposals, that currently we have taxes as a percent of our 
economy, which is probably how you ought to look at it, at levels in 
2015 which would be below our historic average. So in a few short 
years, we are looking at taxes that they say are 19.1 percent of the 
economy. What does that mean? Typically, it is about 18.3 percent. So 
it is higher than the average. We are already, under current law, 
looking at higher taxes, partly because of the fiscal cliff agreement 
and the $620 billion in new taxes that were raised over 10 years.
  The spending, on the other hand, which is already at levels higher 
than the historic average--which is about 20

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percent, today it is at about 23 percent--is projected to go up and up 
and up. In fact, over the next three decades, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office, it goes from 20 percent to, on an average 
over the last 50 years, about 39 percent.
  Then, frankly, they stop counting because they cannot imagine 
spending at that level because we have no sense of how to get revenue 
at that level. No one is talking about taxes that would be increased 
that high. It would be tripling the taxes, at least. So these are 
issues we need to talk about as a country. How much taxation do we want 
to have on our economy? How much spending do we want to have? I think 
what we ought to do is come up with a plan. Ten years from now, where 
do we want to be? Republicans are calling for a balanced budget. We 
think true balance means we balance the budget. We stop spending more 
than we take in. Democrats would like to see more taxes and fewer 
spending reductions.
  We need to come up with something that makes sense for the American 
people. We need to acknowledge the fact that our issue is not the 
revenue.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Instead, it is the spending. That must be addressed. I 
say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's work together to 
get America back on track, to solve this problem which, if we do not 
deal with it, will not allow our economy to prosper. It will not allow 
America to continue to be that beacon of hope and opportunity for the 
rest of the world.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Indiana.


                               The Budget

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I find myself echoing the words of the 
previous speaker, my good friend from Ohio. I could have given his 
speech and he probably could give mine because we are both on the same 
track.
  This is an important day. The President will release his budget for 
2014. While it is late, it is welcome. We now have three budgets in 
place. The Senate has voted on a budget, the House has voted on a 
budget, and the President will be bringing his budget before us. We now 
have the outlines of the beginning of a discussion and a debate and 
action that must take place in the next several months.
  We have wide differences on of how we need to get to where we need to 
arrive, but at least now we have something from which to work. I urge 
my colleagues and the President to work together to achieve what is 
necessary to put this country on a path to fiscal health. It may be 
over a period of years. It may be measured out in terms of where we are 
now in the economy, what needs to be applied now versus what needs to 
be applied later.
  I have said over and over from this platform and others, if we do not 
incorporate discipline in our spending, we will have clearly out-of-
control spending which will continue to grow year after year. This will 
also grow the deficit and lead to more borrowing each year, putting our 
country in an ever-more difficult position. If we do not include 
disciplined spending within this budget, we will not achieve what we 
need to achieve.
  Secondly, if we do not address our out-of-control mandatory spending, 
we will never achieve what we wish to achieve and we will continue to 
find ourselves in ever deeper holes. The previous speaker, Senator 
Portman of Ohio, spoke about the need to make structural reforms in 
mandatory spending programs.
  To those who say: You can't touch this. This has been promised to the 
American people and we cannot even begin to address this issue because 
these programs should be exempt--those individuals are immune to the 
reality of the current situation which stands before us. The situation 
is these programs are going broke. Spending on these programs is 
unsustainable.
  Those organizations--and I will not name them here, but I will at 
some point in time; we all know who they are--are flooding seniors with 
mailings saying: Don't let them touch your Social Security. Don't let 
them touch one dime of your Medicare. You deserve every penny.
  They are lying to those people. They are simply telling them they 
will be in a situation where their benefits are going to need to be 
reduced dramatically a few years down the line in order to keep the 
programs from going insolvent.
  If we really want to care for and look out for those who are 
depending on Social Security and Medicare for their later years, we 
need to stand up now, tell them the truth, and do what is necessary to 
protect those programs.
  Standing by and doing nothing, standing by and listening to outside 
interest groups who are trying to scare them to death means we are 
denying those people the future income benefits they are receiving 
under Social Security and Medicare. Let's have the courage to stand up 
and do what is right, and do what is right for the very people who are 
being told we are trying to take something away from them.
  Someone said on this budget coming forward--we don't have all the 
details. There is the good, the bad, and the ugly. I would prefer to 
say there is the good, the not so good, and the why are we doing this 
in the first place. However we categorize this, first of all, let's 
give the President some credit for taking that first small step toward 
raising the issue of mandatory spending. My understanding is the 
President will suggest a modification of the Consumer Price Index, 
which is used to provide for increases each year in these various 
programs.
  Once again we get this doomsday warning: You can't touch this. This 
is an index which is not correctly applied. We are still simply trying 
to bring this in line with the actual cost of living for our seniors.
  Suggesting this gets the printing presses rolling and all of the 
interest groups saying to send us $10 to save Social Security and 
everything else. Even this correction which the President has proposed 
is being criticized, which is beyond description in terms of how people 
try to take advantage of our seniors and those on these programs.
  Let's give the President credit for putting this in play. It is a 
small step. It is not nearly as far as we need to go. There are other 
structural reforms we need to address. Let's at least acknowledge the 
President has come forward with something sustentative as a modest 
first step.
  Next is the not so good, the call for new spending, new stimulus. We 
have been through this. We have had nearly $1 trillion of stimulus, 
about nine-tenths of which is now documented as not stimulating. It is 
turning out to be a poor, government-selected, so-called investment in 
the future, which the market has basically said doesn't work.
  We have solar manufacturing plants closing all over the world. We see 
wind farms being raised through subsidies. Yet they cannot connect to 
the grid. It ignores the new discoveries in natural gas and fossil fuel 
reserves in America. The cost-to-benefit ratio is way out of balance. I 
now hear the word ``investment,'' not ``stimulus.'' ``Investment'' is 
another code word for ``stimulus.'' That means it is a code for we will 
decide where this money goes.
  The problem is the political animal puts its hands around it and the 
money goes to beneficiaries or supporters for political reasons. 
Anyway, government shouldn't be in this business.
  This is the not so good of the president's budget because it includes 
$1.5 trillion of additional net Federal spending. At a time when our 
spending is out of control, how can we come forward with a budget which 
adds more than $1.5 trillion of new spending and call it investment 
when it is really just stimulus? We have been there and done that. It 
doesn't work, so why are we going there again?
  Lastly, why are some of these proposals in this budget, such as the 
new taxes which were suggested by my colleague from Ohio? This budget 
contains well over $1 trillion of new taxes on the American people, 
after we went through this 3 months ago with one of the largest tax 
increases in history.
  Has anyone ever seen an increase in the economic growth through an 
increase in taxes? Leaving less money in people's paychecks, would this 
result in more consumer spending which helps our economy?

[[Page 4869]]

  Adding new taxes, a new tax burden to the American economy, when has 
that ever created a job? We have staggering numbers of people who are 
dropping out of the workforce and giving up the search to find jobs. 
Our unemployment rate, our so-called official rate, is phony, 
absolutely phony.
  People are withdrawing from the workforce because they have given up 
on ever finding a job. They are simply changing the numbers to make it 
look as if we are making progress, but as a result we are not making 
progress.
  I notice the majority leader has come to the floor. I wish to 
conclude by saying we are in a historic time. We are at a crossroads in 
terms of the future of this country. This is the time when we need to 
put aside partisan interests, political interests, special interest 
groups, and stand up to do what is right for the future.
  What is the future? As someone famously said: The future is now. The 
future is now for all of those people out of work. The future is now 
for all of those college kids graduating without a job to go to. The 
future is now for our senior citizens who have seen some of their 
savings eroded through this recession we experienced. The future is now 
for doing what is necessary to put this country on the right track to 
prosperity.
  Let's work together. I am willing. I informed the President and my 
colleagues that I am willing to work with them. I know we will have to 
make some compromises.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time of the Senator has 
expired.
  Mr. COATS. Let's seize this opportunity.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, it goes without saying we all do our jobs 
here and we seek a seat in the Senate for a reason. We decided to run 
for this high office because of issues which deeply motivated us, 
whether it be more affordable health care, better housing, or lower 
taxes. In a job like this we are driven to find the issues which move 
us. Then sometimes there are issues which find us.
  When I was elected to the Senate last November, I never imagined my 
maiden speech would be about guns or about gun violence. I could have 
never imagined I would be standing here in the wake of 20 young 
children dying in Sandy Hook or the six adults who protected them. 
Sometimes issues find you.
  Here I am, pleased to have the majority leader, the majority whip, 
and so many of my colleagues on the Senate floor with me here today.
  I wish to start with the unpleasant part. I think it is important for 
all of my colleagues to understand why we are having this debate this 
week and next week about gun violence, why for the first time in 
decades we were able to break the logjam to do something about the 
waves of gun violence which have plagued this Nation. It is easy to 
avert our eyes from the horror of what happened in Newtown. It is just 
easy to close our ears and pretend it didn't happen.
  We can't ignore the reality because it is here. On a disturbingly 
regular basis it is here--in Columbine, Tucson, Aurora, and Sandy Hook. 
The next town's name is just waiting to be added to the list if we do 
nothing. Here is what is happening.
  Sometime in the early morning hours of December 14, a very disturbed, 
reclusive young man named Adam Lanza went into his mother's room and 
shot her dead in her sleep. A few minutes later, maybe hours later, he 
took his mother's car and drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School. By 
9:35 he shot his way through locked doors with an AR-15 semiautomatic 
rifle, which was owned by his mother.
  He began a methodical 10-minute rampage which left 20 children, all 6 
and 7 years old, and six adults who cared for them, dead. In 10 
minutes, Adam Lanza shot off 154 rounds from a gun which could shoot up 
to six bullets a second. This high-powered gun assured every single 
child Adam Lanza shot died. Lanza shot most kids multiple times. Noah 
Pozner was shot 11 times alone.
  The State's veteran medical examiner, who had been on the job for 
decades, said he had never seen anything such as this.
  Several children did escape. Six kids were courageously hid in a 
classroom closet by their teacher, Victoria Soto, who shielded her kids 
from the bullets and died that day. Five other kids ran out of the room 
when Lanza had trouble reloading. Five kids are alive today because the 
shooter needed to stop and switch ammunition magazines. Whether it is 
because he had trouble reloading again or because the police were 
coming into the building at about 9:45, Lanza turned one of his weapons 
on himself and the massacre ended, but not before 26 people were dead.
  This is reality. The worst reality is if we don't do something right 
now, it is going to happen again.
  It is happening every day. To this country, which has become so 
callously used to gun violence, it is raindrops, background noise. The 
reality is the one in which we are losing 30 Americans a day to gun 
violence.
  This chart illustrates how many people have died since December 14 
and it is almost unreadable because it is a cast of thousands. This 
reality is just as unacceptable as what happened in Sandy Hook that 
day.
  The question is, Are we going to do anything about it or will we just 
sit on our hands as we have for 20 years and accept the status quo with 
respect to everyday gun violence and these increased incidences of mass 
shooting? If we are really serious about doing our jobs, we can.
  Outside the beltway this isn't a debate; this isn't a discussion. 
Eighty-seven percent of Americans think we should have universal 
background checks. Everybody who buys a gun should prove he or she is 
not a criminal. Two-thirds of Americans think we should restrict these 
high-capacity ammunition clips. Seventy-six percent of Americans 
believe we should crack down on people who buy guns legally and then go 
out and sell them in the community illegally.
  The American public knows we need to do something. Why have we been 
stuck for so long? First, it is because Members of Congress have been 
listening to the wrong people. We should be listening to gun owners. 
They are comprised of a lower percentage of Americans than 30 years 
ago.
  About one-third of Americans today own guns, and they are very 
important constituents. The problem is the NRA doesn't speak for gun 
owners like it used to. Yet we listen to that organization more than we 
should.
  Ten years ago the NRA came here and argued for universal background 
checks in the wake of Columbine. Today they oppose those background 
checks even though 74 percent of NRA members support universal 
background checks. I don't know the exact reason for that, but maybe it 
is because increasingly the NRA is financed not by its members--by 
everyday, commonsense gun owners--but by the gun industry. Tens of 
millions of dollars come into the NRA from the gun industry--a program 
that actually allows the NRA to make a couple bucks off of every gun 
sold in many gun stores across the country. We are not listening to gun 
owners. If we were, this wouldn't be a debate in this Chamber.
  But secondly, and maybe most importantly, we have really botched a 
conversation in this place about rights, and rights really are at the 
core of this debate. When I am back home in Connecticut, I hear a lot 
of people talking about the right to bear arms as an ``unalienable 
right'' or a ``God-given right,'' and of course the Constitution makes 
no such claim. The idea of an unalienable right is actually found in 
the Declaration of Independence, and it is a phrase we know very well.

       We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
     created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
     certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, 
     liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

  But liberty isn't just about having any gun you want anytime you want 
it; liberty has to also be about the right to be free from 
indiscriminate violence. I mean, what kind of liberty did these kids 
have in that classroom in Newtown, being trapped by an assault

[[Page 4870]]

 weapon-yielding madman? And maybe more importantly, what kind of 
liberty does a kid just up the street from here in Washington, DC, have 
when he fears for his life every time he wants to walk to the corner 
store or walk home from school? That is not the kind of life, liberty, 
and pursuit of happiness our Founding Fathers talked about.
  But even if we do accept that part of liberty is owning and using a 
gun, then we have to ask ourselves these questions: To what degree are 
our liberties really infringed upon if we just suggest there are a 
handful of weapons that are too dangerous to own? To what extent are 
our freedoms trampled upon by just saying you are going to need to 
reload your semiautomatic weapon after every 10 bullets rather than 
after every 30 bullets? How gravely do we really risk tyranny when we 
just moderately restrain the size of a legally purchasable clip?
  If liberty is really our chief concern, then preserving and 
protecting the life of little kids has to weigh pretty favorably 
against marginally restraining a weapon's payload. If we can't agree on 
that, what can we agree on?
  If we accept this balance, then the policy prescriptions are pretty 
simple:
  First, guns should be available, but they should be available to 
people of sound mind with no criminal record. We have believed that for 
a long time. Since the Brady bill was passed, we have had about 2 
million people who were stopped from buying guns because they were 
legally prohibited from doing so. The Brady bill has worked. The 
problem is that 40 percent of weapons sold in this country don't go 
through background checks. I hope we will have some good news by the 
end of the day on this front, but that is a pretty easily accepted 
premise--criminals shouldn't own guns.
  Second, a small number of guns are just too dangerous for retail 
sale. We have always accepted that premise as well. We have always 
drawn a line and said some weapons are reserved for military hands, and 
others can be in the hands of private citizens. We know assault weapons 
kill, and we know what happened when we banned them the last time: Gun 
homicides dropped by 37 percent, and nonlethal gun crimes dropped by an 
equal percentage.
  Third, some ammunition too easily enables mass slaughter. What 
legitimate reason is there for somebody to be able to walk into a movie 
theater or a religious institution or a school with a 100-round drum of 
ammunition? Why do we need that--100 rounds, never mind 30 rounds? That 
doesn't sound too radical, does it?
  So what does the gun lobby tell us about these ideas? What do they 
say is wrong with this approach that is grounded in data and supported 
by people all across the country? Well, specifically we hear two things 
over and over again: First, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun 
is to have a good guy with a gun, and second, guns don't really kill 
people, people kill people.
  As to the first argument, Newtown is part of the answer. Nancy Lanza 
probably owned guns for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons 
was that she was divorced, she lived alone, and she wanted guns to 
protect herself. She was alone a lot of the time. The guns Nancy Lanza 
used weren't used to fire upon intruders into her home; they killed 
her, and they killed 26 other boys and girls and parents. That is not 
just an anecdote, that is a reflection of a statistical trend. If you 
have a gun in your house, it is four times more likely to be used in an 
accident than it is against an intruder. If you own a gun, it is much 
more likely to be used to kill you than it is to kill someone trying to 
break into your home.
  As to the second argument, as author Dennis Henigan once put it, guns 
don't kill people; they just enable people to kill people. Guns are 
employed in only about 4 percent of felonies, but they are used in 20 
percent of all felonies involving bodily injury. Guns enable violence 
that is vastly more violent.
  How do we know this? Well, we know it by what happened at Sandy Hook 
that day, but more importantly we know it by what happened on that very 
same day on the entire other side of the world. On the same day that 20 
kids died in Newtown, in Henan, China, a madman walked into a school 
and attacked 23 schoolchildren with a deadly weapon. The same day--20 
kids in Newtown, 23 kids in China. In Newtown, all 20 kids who were 
attacked died; in China, all 23 kids who were attacked lived. Why? 
Because in Henan, the assailant had a knife, not a gun that could spray 
six bullets a second.
  So forgive me if I dismiss those--like the president of the NRA--who 
choose to ignore the effect of the laws we are debating this week and 
next week. He said all we are talking about here is feel-good 
legislation. Well, he is right about one thing: It would feel really 
good if Daniel Barden got on the bus this morning to go to school. 
Daniel was an immensely compassionate little kid. He was always sitting 
next to the kids in school who sat alone. He never left a room without 
turning the lights off. When his family would go to the grocery store, 
they would leave the store and get halfway across the parking lot and 
turn around and Daniel wouldn't be there because he was still holding 
the door open for people who needed a way out. And he loved s'mores.
  It would feel really good if Ana Marquez Greene could still sing all 
those songs she loved. She sang and performed everywhere she went. She 
came from a very musical family. Her mom said that she didn't walk 
anywhere, that her preferred mode of transportation was dancing. She 
loved most to sing and dance in church. She loved it when her parents 
read to her from the Bible.
  It would feel really good if Ben Wheeler got to enjoy this beautiful 
spring day outside today. He was a piano virtuoso. He had already done 
a recital when he was 6 years old. But what he really loved was playing 
outside with his older brother Nate. They loved to play soccer 
together. The morning he was killed, he told his mom, as they were 
leaving for school, he wanted to be a paleontologist when he grew up. 
He said, ``That's what Nate's going to be, and I want to do everything 
that Nate does.''
  So that is our task--to beat back all the naysayers who say that we 
can't do this, that we won't change the way things are. I believe we 
can. I believe we are good enough to drown out the voices of the status 
quo and the lobbyists and the political consultants. I think that in 
the next couple of weeks we are good enough to change the way things 
are.
  Finally, I want to tell you one last story to explain why I know we 
are good enough. I believe that when we see people in need, when we see 
children stripped of their dignity, we are too compassionate a people 
to close our eyes. I know sometimes we wonder what we really are 
inside. Are we truly good or is goodness a learned behavior? And it may 
sound strange, but after December 14, I just know the former to be 
true, because after enduring the shooting, as if to swallow up those 10 
minutes of evil, millions of acts of infinite kindness rained down on 
Newtown, from the teachers who protected those kids, to the 
firefighters who didn't leave that firehouse for days afterward, to the 
millions of actions of humanity and gifts and phone calls that came in 
from the rest of the world.
  And because of Anne Marie Murphy. Anne Marie was a special education 
teacher charged with the care of Dylan Hockley, this little boy, a 
wonderful, gentle little 6-year-old boy who was living with autism but 
doing great at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Anne Marie loved Dylan, 
and Dylan loved Anne Marie back. There was a picture on his 
refrigerator of Anne Marie, and almost every day he would point to Anne 
Marie with pride to his parents.
  Nicole, his mom, who is here this week, said at Dylan's funeral that 
when she realized Dylan wasn't going to show up at the firehouse that 
day with all the other kids who were returning from the school, she 
hoped she would see Mrs. Murphy, but she knew she wouldn't. She knew 
Anne Marie wouldn't leave Dylan's side if he was in danger. And she 
didn't. When the bullets started flying, she brought Dylan into her 
arms. She held him tight inside that classroom. And that is just how 
the two of them were found.

[[Page 4871]]

  On Monday, Nicole flew down here to Washington with President Obama 
and me to try to make the case that things need to change for Dylan, 
for Anne Marie, and for the thousands of other people before and after 
who have been killed by guns.
  As Nicole and the other parents walked up the steps of Air Force One, 
one mom raised a piece of paper above her head with a note she had 
scribbled on it that day, and the cameras caught the moment. The note 
simply said ``Love Wins.'' I believe today more than I ever have before 
that if we are truly doing our job in this Chamber, then love has to 
win every single time.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I wish to congratulate and thank my 
colleague from Connecticut, Senator Murphy, on his profoundly eloquent 
and powerful statement to our colleagues and join him in calling 
attention to the horrific tragedy that has brought us to this point in 
the debate on gun violence. His very eloquent and powerful summary of 
our losses, I think, is a way to begin a potential turning point after 
Newtown has given us a call to action. Newtown is a tipping point in 
this debate, and my colleague from Connecticut and I have spent 
literally days and weeks with that community and have seen the courage 
and strength they have brought to this town and to our colleagues, 
because they have been meeting with our colleagues and they are indeed 
here today.
  Benjamin Andrew Wheeler, who was 6 years old--his father David is 
here today. Ana Grace Marquez-Greene, age 6--her mother Nelba is here 
today. Dylan Hockley, age 6--his mother Nicole is here. Daniel Barden, 
age 7--his mother Jackie and his father Mark are here. Jesse Lewis, age 
6--his father Neil Heslin is here. Mary Sherlach, one of the six heroic 
educators killed at Sandy Hook--her husband Bill is here today.
  We can draw inspiration not only from the memories of those children 
and great educators who were killed but from their strength and 
resilience and resolve in coming to the Halls of this building, meeting 
with our colleagues. Indeed, at this very moment, they are with one of 
our colleagues, looking him in the eyes and saying to him: How can you 
not approve a bill that stops illegal trafficking, strengthens school 
safety, and imposes a requirement for criminal background checks? How 
can you not stop assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that were 
integral to that killing in Newtown? How can you not do something about 
gun violence that has caused more than 3,000 deaths since then? How can 
you not allow a vote? How can you deprive the American people of a vote 
on a measure that is so essential to their safety, their well-being, 
the futures of their children, and their communities?
  As the President of the United States has said so eloquently--and his 
leadership has been so important to this cause--the victims of Newtown, 
of Tucson, Aurora, Virginia Tech, they deserve a vote. The likelihood 
of a vote has been increased by the leadership of my colleagues, 
Senator Schumer, Senator Manchin, Senator Toomey, who have worked hard 
together to bring us to a very promising and profoundly constructive 
turning point in this process. I want to thank also our leader, Senator 
Harry Reid, for his determination and resolve.
  On the morning of December 14, parents throughout Connecticut and 
Newtown and Sandy Hook brought their children to school. Thinking of 
the rest of their days. When they would have play dates and snack 
breaks, holiday parties, Christmas and Hanukkah present wrapping, paper 
angels, gingerbread, songs and poems. Those are the memories. And the 
futures they brought with them. Just hours later, I was at Sandy Hook 
as 20 families of those children emerged from a firehouse, and I will 
never forget the cries of pain and grief I saw on that day. I went 
there as a public official because I felt a responsibility to be there. 
But what I saw was through the eyes of a parent, as all America did on 
that day. And I saw the families also of six heroic educators who 
perished trying to save their children. Those sights and sounds changed 
America. We are different today than we were before Sandy Hook. This 
problem is with us, the problem of gun violence is the same problem 
that has existed for decades, but we are different. Because we know we 
can and must do something about it.
  There was evil that day at Sandy Hook, but there was also great 
goodness. The goodness of the first responders who stopped the shooting 
through their bravery. When they appeared at the school, the shooter 
turned the gun on himself. They saved lives. The knowledge and courage 
and bravery of the clergy. Father Bob, Monsignor Bob, Robert Weiss, who 
that evening conducted a vigil that we attended, when many resolved to 
light candles instead of curse the darkness. The greatness of 
leadership demonstrated by many of our public officials, beginning with 
Pat Llodra, the First Selectwoman of Newtown, the legislators who 
passed in Connecticut a measure that will provide a model for the 
country in attacking the problem of gun violence and the leadership of 
our Governor, Dannel Malloy. And, of course, the great goodness of the 
educators who threw themselves at bullets, cradled the young people 
seeking to save them, and heroically gave their lives. Their models of 
courage and leadership should inspire us at this critical moment. They 
should inspire us to think better and do better and resolve that we 
will not let this moment pass, we will seize this opportunity and we 
will demonstrate the kind of leadership the majority of Americans 
expect and deserve and need at this point.
  The majority of Americans want commonsense measures to stop gun 
violence. The majority of Americans want a vote and they want action 
from this body. And we need to keep faith with them but also with the 
victims. The victims who should not be forgotten, the Connecticut 
effect is not going away. This resolve is not dissipated. We will keep 
faith with them.
  Out of the tragedy, the unspeakable loss, the unimaginable horror of 
that day and the days since then and the days to come, we resolve that 
this country will be better and safer. And so as we begin this debate, 
as colleagues of ours at this moment announce a very promising 
compromise that may lead us forward, provide us with a path toward 
bipartisan action--and it should be bipartisan; there is nothing 
Republican or Democratic about law enforcement or about law enforcement 
saving people's lives. We should resolve to go forward as one country. 
I've been working on this issue for many years. I helped to author and 
support Connecticut's first assault weapons ban in the early 1990s. I 
went to court to defend it when it was challenged constitutionally, 
argued in the trial and then in the State supreme court to uphold our 
law. I have worked with law enforcement colleagues for three decades. 
And I know they support these measures. Our State and local police, our 
prosecutors around the country support a ban on illegal trafficking. 
They support a national background check system. They support school 
safety and they support bans on military-style weapons that are simply 
designed to kill and maim innocent people and they support a ban on 
high-capacity magazines because they know, those are the weapons of 
war. They enable criminals to outgun them. They put their lives at 
risk. And so I listen to my colleagues in law enforcement who tell me 
we need to do something about gun violence. I listen to the people of 
Newtown who say: Can't we do something about the guns? And I respect 
the rights of gun owners, the second amendment is the law of the land, 
and none of these proposals would take guns out of the hands of 
responsible and lawful gun owners. But there are some people who should 
not have them.
  There are some guns that should not be in use, and there are some 
weapons of war, high-capacity magazines, that should not be sold in 
this country. In half the mass killings, high-capacity magazines 
enabled the shooting that occurred so rapidly and so lethally. In

[[Page 4872]]

Newtown, the changing of a magazine by the shooter enabled children to 
escape. In Tucson, the killing of a 9-year-old girl, Christina Taylor-
Green, by the 13th bullet, would not have happened if that magazine had 
been limited to 10 rounds because the shooter was tackled as he tried 
to change magazines. The high-capacity magazines enabled Adam Lanza to 
fire 154 bullets in 5 minutes. So these kinds of commonsense measures 
may not prevent all these tragedies. They may not enable us to stop all 
the 3,000 killings that have occurred since Newtown. We cannot look 
back and say with certainty that Newtown would not have occurred if 
these measures had been in place, but the likelihood would have been 
reduced, some or all of those children might be alive today, some of 
those heroic educators could be in their classrooms now. And the 
challenge here is to save lives, to do something to stop the carnage 
and killing on our streets, in our neighborhoods, in communities such 
as Newtown, a quintessential New England town. If it could happen in 
Newtown, it could happen anywhere in America.
  As we go forward in this debate, I hope we will listen to those brave 
and resilient and resolved families who are here today. Listen to them 
when they say to us that we must keep faith. Listen to Nicole Hockley 
and what she said when the President of the United States visited 
Connecticut just a couple days ago. She said:

       But now there is no going back for me. There is no way. If 
     you want to protect your children, if you want to avoid this 
     loss, you will not turn away either.

  I ask my colleagues, let us face this reality. Let us not turn away. 
Let us resolve to go forward and keep faith with the children and the 
educators who, by their example, provide us with an enormous and 
historic opportunity to make America safer and better. The Nation that 
we love, the Nation that we all believe is the greatest in the history 
of the world and will be greater still after we move forward to make it 
safer and better.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          Keystone XL Pipeline

  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I rise this morning to speak in regard 
to the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Much has been made recently about 
pipeline spills in Arkansas and in Texas. These spills are being used 
by opponents of the Keystone XL Pipeline project as examples or reasons 
to not approve the Keystone Pipeline. Now, no one ever wants a spill of 
any kind, but let's deal with the facts rather than misperception or 
emotion. This is an important project, and it is important that we deal 
with the facts.
  The Exxon spill in Arkansas involves a pipeline known as the Pegasus 
pipeline. This pipeline was built in the 1940s--1947 and 1948. 
Approximately 5,000 barrels of oil were spilled. The EPA considers that 
a major spill because anything above 250 barrels is considered a major 
spill. Emergency response personnel were on the ground within 30 
minutes of the leak being detected. Approximately 640 cleanup people 
have responded to the incident in addition to Federal, State, and local 
responders.
  There has been no impact to the drinking water. I will repeat that: 
There has been no impact to the drinking water, and the oil did not 
enter any lake or waterway. Fourteen vacuum trucks and sixteen storage 
tanks are on site. The claim's hotline has been established for 
residents affected by the spill to register claims and for anyone who 
wants information. As of today about 140 claims have been made. 
ExxonMobil is paying for the cleanup and they have committed to honor 
any valid claims. So that is the Arkansas spill that much is being made 
about by opponents of approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.
  The other one they talked about is in West Columbia, TX, and that is 
a pipeline owned by Shell Oil. Let's talk about that project for just a 
minute.
  There was approximately 950 barrels of oil spilled, and 50 barrels of 
that oil entered the waterway. All 50 barrels have been cleaned up. Let 
me repeat that: All 50 barrels have already been cleaned up. The 
company is now working to clean up the remaining 900 barrels of oil 
that is located on land.
  This pipeline is an oil-gathering pipeline that gathers oil from the 
gulf. It is not an oil sands pipeline. The Keystone XL Pipeline, of 
course, would be an oil sands pipeline, and that is not what this is. 
Furthermore, Shell believes the break in this pipeline happened because 
a contractor was working in this area and perforated the pipe. There 
was not a default in the pipe or the pipe leaking. They believe the 
injury to the pipeline was caused by a worker in that area.
  Let's consider some basic pipeline safety facts. Pipelines are the 
safest and most efficient way to transport oil and gas. Let's compare 
accidents at pipelines to accidents for trucks, for barges, or for 
rail. Accidents are 1,000 times more likely to occur with a truck 
hauling oil versus a pipeline. What was that number? Accidents are 
1,000 times more likely to occur when moving oil by truck than by 
pipeline. An oilspill is 13 times more likely to occur when it is moved 
by a barge versus a pipeline. Oilspills are five times more likely if 
it is moved by rail than by pipeline.
  Using a pipeline to transfer oil will result in 1,000 fewer spills 
compared to moving it by truck, 13 times fewer spills than moving it by 
barge, and five times fewer spills than moving it by rail. Those are 
the safety statistics on pipelines versus alternative methods of moving 
oil.
  The Arkansas pipeline was built in the 1940s, so actually the 
incident highlights the need to build new infrastructure using the 
latest technology. The Keystone XL Pipeline is one of the most advanced 
and most studied pipeline projects in our country's history. For 
example, the Keystone XL Pipeline will be monitored through a 
centralized high-tech center 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Satellite 
technology will send data every 5 seconds from 21,000 data points to 
the monitoring center. If a drop in pressure is detected, any section 
of the pipeline can be isolated remotely thereby closing any of the 
hundreds of valves on the system within minutes.
  After four environmental impact statements and 5 years of review, the 
State Department has determined that the Keystone XL Pipeline will 
create no significant impacts to the environment. Again, they have 
determined it will create no significant impacts to the environment, 
and that is why several weeks ago 62 Senators supported an amendment 
that was sponsored by myself, Senator Baucus, and other Senators. 
Again, 62 Senators went on record approving the Keystone XL Pipeline 
project.
  Furthermore, 66 Senators, two-thirds of the Senators, voted against 
an amendment that was put forward by Senator Boxer that would have 
further delayed the project and added more restrictions to the project. 
Two-thirds of this body went on record opposing more delays and more 
restrictions; 62 Senators then voted to approve the project. That is 
why 70 percent of Americans in a recent poll said they want the 
Keystone XL Pipeline approved.
  This project is about more energy and more jobs for this country. 
This pipeline project is about growing our economy and producing tax 
revenues to help with our debt and deficit, not by raising taxes but by 
growing the economy and stimulating more economic activity. This 
project is about eliminating our dependence on oil from places such as 
the Middle East and Venezuela. That is a national security issue.
  It is vital that when we are working on important issues, we deal 
with the facts, and those are the facts.
  I thank the Chair, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page 4873]]

  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEE. Madam President, for several weeks now Washington and the 
rest of the country have been debating several new gun control 
proposals. Along with a number of my colleagues, including the minority 
leader, I have declared my intention to resist an immediate vote on any 
new restrictions that would serve primarily to limit the freedoms of 
law-abiding citizens rather than reduce violent crime in America.
  Unfortunately, the current gun control proposals would do just that. 
More than 2 weeks ago, we informed the majority leader that we will 
exercise our procedural right to require a 60-vote threshold in order 
to bring this legislation to the floor. We have taken this step under 
our Senate rules and procedures for three principal reasons.
  First, the Senate serves an important function in our Republic by 
encouraging deliberation and making it more difficult for a temporary 
majority to impose its will unilaterally. Unlike the House of 
Representatives, the Senate's rules and procedures allow for meaningful 
debate and help ensure that a bare majority of Senators cannot impose 
controversial legislation on the American people without robust debate, 
discussion, and broad-based and bipartisan consensus.
  Contrary to the statements made by the President and by some of my 
friends across the aisle and even a few from within my own caucus, we 
have no intention of preventing debate or votes. Quite the opposite. By 
objecting to the motion to proceed, we guarantee that the Senate and 
the American people would have at least 3 additional days to assess and 
evaluate exactly how this particular bill might affect the rights of 
law-abiding citizens and whether it might have any significant impact 
on violent crime.
  Already we have seen consensus against passing any new gun 
legislation--at least not without broad bipartisan support.
  During the recent budget debate, I offered an amendment to establish 
a two-thirds vote requirement for the passage of any new gun 
legislation. Six Democratic Senators voted with a nearly united 
Republican caucus to support my amendment by a vote of 50 to 49.
  That vote demonstrated that a bare majority of Senators, including at 
least six Democrats, believe that new gun legislation should have broad 
bipartisan support in the Senate before it is passed and before it has 
the opportunity to become law.
  A 60-vote threshold will help ensure that new gun laws are not forced 
through the Senate with the narrow support of just one party.
  Second, this debate is about a lot more than just magazine clips and 
pistol grips. It is about the purpose of the second amendment and why 
our constitutionally protected right to self-defense is an essential 
part of self-government.
  At its core, the second amendment helps ensure that individuals and 
local communities can serve as the first line of defense against 
threats to our persons and our property. Any limitation on this 
fundamental right of self-defense makes us more dependent on our 
government for our own protection.
  Government cannot be everywhere at all times, so the practical effect 
of limiting our individual rights is to make us less safe. This is 
troubling to many Americans. Any legislation that would restrict our 
basic rights to self-defense deserves serious and open debate. Further, 
as we have seen just today, Washington sometimes prefers to negotiate 
backroom deals made in secret far from the eyes of the American people 
rather than engaging in thorough, open, and transparent debate right on 
the Senate floor.
  The day before the majority leader has set the vote to proceed, the 
bill's critical components are still not there. Right before we have 
set the vote for the motion to proceed to the bill, we still do not 
know what these critical components look like. We have no legislative 
text to evaluate the so-called compromise language on background 
checks. We have no sense of what amendments, if any amendments at all, 
might be allowed to be offered.
  So requiring a 60-vote threshold helps us solve some of those 
problems. It helps us ensure that we have a meaningful debate rather 
than a series of backroom deals to push controversial legislation 
through Congress with solely a bare majority to back it up.
  Finally, many of the provisions we expect to see in the bill are both 
constitutionally problematic and would serve primarily to limit the 
freedoms of law-abiding American citizens. Some of the proposals--for 
example, universal background checks--would allow the Federal 
Government to surveil law-abiding citizens who exercise their 
constitutional rights.
  One of the provisions we expect to see in the bill, based on what we 
saw in the Judiciary Committee on which I sit, would allow the Attorney 
General of the United States to promulgate regulations that could lead 
to a national registry system for guns, something my constituents in 
Utah are very concerned about, and understandably so.
  You see, the Federal Government has no business monitoring where or 
how often we go to church, what books and newspapers we read, whom we 
vote for, our health conditions, what we ate for breakfast, and the 
details of our private lives, including our lawful exercise of rights 
protected by the second amendment and other provisions of the Bill of 
Rights.
  Such limitations may, of course, at times make it harder for the 
government to do what it believes it needs to do. But we have to 
remember, the Constitution was not written to maximize or protect the 
convenience of our government. The Constitution was written to protect 
individual liberty, and thankfully so. We must not narrow the 
application of constitutional protections in haste, nor should we allow 
a bare majority to jeopardize the basic rights of the American people, 
rights protected in the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
  The Senate and the American people are engaged in an important 
debate. I look forward to this debate. I hope others will join me and 
my colleagues in demanding that our discussions take place in full view 
of the American people.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               The Budget

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, at long last today we have received the 
President's budget. It is several weeks actually months--overdue. It 
was supposed to have been out on February 4. It is generally used to 
steer or guide the budget debate we have in Washington, DC. In this 
case, it is going to be a reaction to. It is going to be an after-the-
fact discussion of the budget, as the House and the Senate have both 
passed theirs; the Senate for the first time in 4 years and the House 
has passed their budget every year on time. One would wish the 
President's budget would serve as a bridge between the House and the 
Senate. In this point of the process it is so much after the fact and 
late in the game the President's budget has come to us.
  Regrettably, much of the President's budget is going to rely on the 
same formula the Senate Democratic budget did, which is to double down, 
to increase spending, significantly and substantially raise taxes, and 
add massive amounts to the debt. It never balances.
  The budget which was passed by the House of Representatives did 
balance. It balanced in 10 years.
  The budget which was passed by the Senate did not balance in 10 
years. It never balanced. There was a real contrast in terms of trying 
to get to a balanced budget over a period of time, knowing full well it 
will not happen overnight. We got into a very big hole over a number of 
years, and it will take us a while to get out.
  Nevertheless, the House budget did balance in a 10-year window and 
10-

[[Page 4874]]

year timeframe. The Senate Democratic budget never balances, nor does 
the budget we received this morning from the President.
  For a lot of reasons this budget debate is important, not the least 
of which is it is a vision, a blueprint for the future of the country. 
This is true for each of the respective parties in the Congress, as 
well as the President, about where they wish to lead the country.
  I mentioned yesterday on the Senate floor I thought the basic 
criteria which should be used to evaluate a budget, the question which 
should be asked is, What will this budget do to grow the economy, 
create jobs, and increase the take-home pay of middle-class Americans? 
What can we do, in other words, in terms of a budget process here and a 
budget itself which actually takes us in a direction which would enable 
more Americans to work and enable the economy to grow and expand again. 
This would make these fiscal issues look much smaller by comparison.
  Last week we received employment data statistics which were due. The 
unemployment rate as a percentage actually dropped to 6.7 percent but 
only because another half million people quit looking for work. If we 
look at the real unemployment rate--which is to include the people who 
actually have stopped looking for work, people who are working part-
time because they can't find full-time employment--the actual 
unemployment rate is 13.8 percent. This is 21.7 million Americans. This 
is how many people who are either out of work, quit looking for work, 
or are looking for work part-time because they simply can't find full-
time employment. This is a great number of people.
  This is a big part of our economy. A lot of folks are out of the 
workforce today who couldn't find jobs. Many have actually just given 
up looking for jobs.
  What this has done, because there are so many Americans who have 
given up looking for jobs out of frustration, is it has lowered the 
labor participation rate to a rate we haven't seen, literally, since 
1979. The last time the labor participation rate was at the low level 
we saw in the month of March, 63.3 percent, was 1979.
  In fact, if we had a labor participation rate which was equal to what 
it was when the President took office in January 2009, the unemployment 
rate today would not be 7.6 percent, it would be 11 percent. This is 
how many people have quit looking for work as a result of this slow and 
sluggish economy.
  The President's budget, one would hope, would try to answer in an 
affirmative way the question: Does this grow the economy? Does this 
create jobs? Does this increase the take-home pay of working Americans?
  Unfortunately, rather than growing the economy, the President's 
budget, instead, grows the government. Unfortunately, this is what we 
have seen in the budget which was passed by the Senate a couple of 
weeks ago.
  I say this simply because I think there are two very different ideas 
about how to solve the fiscal crisis we face. One includes expanding 
and growing government, raising taxes, and adding even more to the 
debt. One really focuses on the issue which plagues our fiscal house in 
Washington, DC: not that we tax too little but we spend too much. It 
goes after the spending problem we have in Washington, DC, the 
addiction to spending. We have seen this as the percentage of our 
economy grow consistently over the last several years since this 
President has been in office.
  The House budget recognized this and does balance in 10 years. It 
does it without increasing taxes. The House of Representatives actually 
produced a budget which balances in 10 years and doesn't raise taxes. 
In fact, it calls for tax reform. Many of us believe this would do 
wonders in terms of unleashing economic growth in this country, 
lowering rates, reducing rates, and broadening the base. It also takes 
on what really drives Federal spending, what really contributes to the 
debt crisis we have in this country, its runaway spending.
  This is true for particular areas of the budget, the areas we call 
mandatory spending, the part of the budget which is on autopilot. It 
includes entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid. Currently, this includes about three-fifths of all Federal 
spending. At the end of the 10-year window it will represent about 91 
percent of all Federal spending. That is how fast those programs are 
growing--two to three times the rate of inflation.
  The President's budget doesn't do anything significant or meaningful 
to address that crisis. It is flatout serious.
  Having said that, there were some what I would call incremental steps 
taken. I call them baby steps. The President agreed in his budget to 
address the issue of chained CPI, which recalculates the formula under 
which certain government programs are calculated. It achieves a certain 
level of savings over time.
  They assume some savings in Medicare, most of which, again, are by 
reducing payments to providers. We have already cut payments to 
providers to the point many physicians and other health care providers 
these days are saying they are not going to serve Medicare or Medicaid 
patients because we keep cutting those reimbursements.
  This is not the way to save and protect these programs for future 
generations. We must restructure or reform these programs in a way 
which aligns those programs with the future demographics of this 
country. Unfortunately, the President's budget fails on that account.
  In terms of the direction these various budgets are headed, the 
Senate's Democratic budget, because it didn't balance in 10 years, nor 
does the President's, both use similar assumptions about spending. If 
we look at the new debt which is piled up by the President's budget, he 
adds $8.2 trillion to the debt over the next decade.
  The Senate Democratic budget added $7.3 trillion to the debt over the 
next decade. Both have net spending increases. The spending amount over 
the 10-year period in both the President's budget proposal and the 
Senate Democratic proposal is on the order of $46.5 trillion. This is 
the amount of money, the amount of taxpayer money, the Federal 
Government would spend over the next decade under the budgets proposed 
by the Senate and House Democrats.
  The House budget, passed largely by the House Republicans, spends 
about $5 trillion less than that over the same time period. How does it 
do that? It does so by reducing the rate of growth of Federal spending. 
If we limit the rate of growth in Federal spending to 3.4 percent, as 
opposed to a 4.6-percent number in the Senate Democratic budget or the 
5.2 percent-increase in mandatory spending called for in the 
President's budget, we may achieve significant savings over a period of 
time.
  This is not cutting government but simply slowing the rate of growth 
by growing government at a slower rate and moving it back into a more 
reasonable level. This would actually achieve $5 trillion in savings 
over the next decade in terms of what the Federal Government was 
spending. This is the way the House approached their budget.
  What the Senate Democrats and the President have both done is called 
for massive new tax increases. The only deficit reduction which will 
occur under the President's budget will be cut because of tax 
increases. He wipes out the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts which were 
in place as a result of sequester.
  He replaces those and achieves somewhere on the order of $600 billion 
in deficit reduction. This deficit reduction would be entirely 
accomplished by tax increases, raising taxes yet again after we put in 
place tax increases on the fiscal cliff on January 1. The President 
received a huge tax increase, something he had been wanting for some 
time, $620 billion in new taxes. Add this to the more than $1 trillion 
in new taxes which are in the ObamaCare bill passed a couple of years 
ago and this President, on his watch, has signed into law more than 
$1.7 trillion in new taxes.
  This is not a revenue problem, this is a spending problem. What we 
need to

[[Page 4875]]

be focused on is what do we need to do to rein in out-of-control 
Federal spending. How are we going to reform and restructure these 
programs in a way which protects and saves them, not only for people 
who depend upon them today but for those who will need them in the 
future. This is really the question before the House.
  Today we receive the President's budget. It will be the latest point 
at which the President has submitted a budget. Literally, it has been 
100 years, let's put it that way. Around the early 1900s was the last 
time the President submitted a budget to this Congress at this late 
date. Again, having already acted in the House and Senate, I am not 
sure what meaning it has other than to perhaps give the President the 
luxury to be able to say he actually at least presented a budget. But 
on most of the criteria we ought to be looking at, in terms of 
evaluating this budget, that I mentioned earlier, it is not a serious 
attempt. It doesn't do anything to rein in these out-of-control 
programs that are growing at two to three times the rate of inflation, 
it has a massive tax increase, a $1 trillion tax increase on top of the 
$1.7 trillion in new taxes the President has already signed into law, 
and it adds $8.2 trillion to the debt over the next decade. So for that 
reason I think it fails the fundamental test of fiscal responsibility, 
but more important perhaps even than that, it fails to answer the 
question I posed earlier, which was: Does the President's budget grow 
the economy, does it create jobs, and does it increase take-home pay 
for middle-income Americans? The answer to that is simply no.
  When you are raising taxes consistently--raising taxes on the people 
who create the jobs in our economy--it makes the economy grow at a 
slower rate, we have more sluggish growth, which is what we have seen 
now for the past several years. When we are growing at 1\1/2\ to 2 
percent as opposed to 3 to 4 percent, it makes a huge difference in 
terms of the number of people in this country who are employed, the 
number of jobs that are created, and, obviously, it makes a huge 
difference in terms of the fiscal imbalance, because when the economy 
is growing at a faster rate, it means more people are working and 
investing and, therefore, making money and paying taxes. So tax 
revenues go up when the economy is growing and expanding.
  That ought to be the goal. That ought to be our goal--not only to get 
those 21.7 million Americans who are out of work back to work but also 
to get the fiscal imbalance we face in a more manageable place. If we 
are going to get our fiscal house in order, we have to do those two 
things: We have to restrain Federal spending and we have to put 
policies in place that grow the economy.
  There is a relationship between the two. It has been well documented, 
well studied, well researched that when we have spending that is out of 
control, when we have a debt as a percentage of our GDP that exceeds a 
certain level, it harms economic growth. It reduces the amount the 
economy grows on an annual basis and, in so doing, also reduces the 
number of jobs created. So this is the question that should be asked. 
Again, when we compare or stack up the President's budget against that 
question--does it grow the economy, does it create jobs, does it 
increase the take-home pay for middle-class Americans--the answer is 
simply no.
  I would compare again the budget that was passed by both the House 
and Senate. In the case of the Senate, a study was done that suggested 
it would cost 800,000 jobs a year, again because of the tax increases 
that are included and the higher level of Federal spending. Simply 
raising taxes to fuel yet more Federal spending does nothing to grow 
the private economy. What we want to see is a smaller Federal economy 
and a bigger private economy where the real good-paying jobs are 
created. Clearly, this budget relies heavily--doubles down on Federal 
spending, adds more to the debt, doesn't achieve balance, increases 
taxes by $1 trillion, and takes us in absolutely the wrong direction.
  I hope before this is all said and done, the House of Representatives 
and the Senate--both of which have passed budgets and now that we have 
the President's budget--can somehow sit down together and figure out 
how we get a proposal that would actually deal with out-of-control 
spending and would focus on growing the economy, creating jobs, and 
increasing the take-home pay for middle-class Americans. That ought to 
be the criteria we use.
  I would hope before this is all said and done, people in this city 
would realize we don't have a taxing problem. The problem isn't that we 
tax too little, it is that we spend too much, and that is what needs to 
be addressed. I hope we can reconcile these budgets, but it will 
require the President to be engaged on a level he hasn't demonstrated 
so far. I hope he gets to what this real issue is and wants to get 
serious about reining in out-of-control government spending and we can 
make some headway yet. I have not lost hope. There were some 
incremental gains, some baby steps the President took in this, but it 
is far short of what needs to be done to get our economy back on track 
and get government spending back under control.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I am honored to stand again on the 
floor of the Senate, as I will be doing, along with my colleague 
Senator Murphy and others who are allied in this effort to make America 
safer and to stop the scourge of gun violence that has plagued this 
country for decades and has been dramatized so horrifically and 
tragically by the nightmarish, unspeakable tragedy that occurred in 
Newtown. I stand here on behalf of the families, but they are speaking 
much more eloquently and powerfully than I could ever do, as they go 
around to the offices of my colleagues and look them in the face and 
say:
  How could you not favor a ban on illegal trafficking and straw 
purchases? How could you not support strengthening school safety? How 
could you not favor a national criminal background check?
  As one police chief told me, a national background check makes sure 
we do not put criminals on the honor system. Without a criminal 
background check, criminals are on an honor system to not buy weapons. 
What kind of a guarantee of safety would that be? And how could you not 
be in favor of banning the kind of weapon that killed the children and 
educators of Newtown or the high-capacity magazine that enabled and 
facilitated that killing to take place? 154 bullets fired in 5 minutes, 
tearing apart those beautiful, innocent children and six great 
educators who perished trying to save them.
  We are on the cusp of success in this critical first step, and I am 
increasingly hopeful--in fact, I am confident that we will have a vote 
in this body on gun safety measures. We will have a vote in the United 
States Senate to impose sensible and commonsense measures to stop gun 
violence. We will have a vote in the Senate in a matter of days that 
will enable America to hold accountable its elected representatives 
here on this floor in the Senate for measures that will stop gun 
violence in this country that has killed 3,000 or more people since 
Newtown. The epidemic of gun violence is stoppable and we will have a 
vote in this body that makes sure all of us are held to answer to the 
American people. The majority of the American people favor these 
measures. Ninety percent or more say they want a national criminal 
background check. Their voice deserves a vote, and I am confident we 
will have it.
  I am confident, in part, because of the bipartisan compromise that 
has been announced today. I am going through the details, listening to 
my colleagues in law enforcement, the mayors, and others who have been 
so responsible and resolute in working over years and decades for these 
kinds of measures. And I'm listening to the families from Newtown. And 
we will make sure this compromise vindicates and upholds the vital law 
enforcement

[[Page 4876]]

and safety interests these measures are designed to vindicate and 
uphold. And I am confident this compromise is a positive and 
constructive step toward our having a vote, ending unlimited debate on 
this bill, achieving cloture, and stopping a filibuster, as we have a 
responsibility to do.
  And I want to focus for the moment on one aspect of these measures I 
consider critically important. A ban on high-capacity magazines--all 
magazines, all clips that hold more than 10 bullets--that I will be 
introducing on behalf of Senator Lautenberg, working with Senator 
Feinstein and others, to make sure this measure has a vote, whether 
it's as an amendment or a separate bill. I wish to thank Senator 
Lautenberg for his leadership on this issue. He has championed it here 
for some time, and I will be working with him and others to make sure 
this measure I have introduced has a vote, and my colleague Senator 
Murphy will be working with me in this effort.
  The statistics show the terrible impact of high-capacity magazines. A 
recent study of 62 mass shootings since 1982 shows that half involved 
high-capacity magazines. Statistics also show bans on high-capacity 
magazines actually work. The 1994 ban on these devices reduced their 
use dramatically. A study of gun violence in Virginia showed just 10 
percent of guns recovered by police in 2004 used high-capacity 
magazines, but after the ban was allowed to sunset, the prevalence of 
high-capacity magazines more than doubled. Garen Wintemute, head of the 
Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at 
Davis School of Medicine, said: ``I was skeptical that the ban would be 
effective, and I was wrong.'' He said the database analysis offers 
``about as clear an example as we could ask for of evidence that the 
ban was working.'' And the limitation I am proposing--that I will be 
working on with Senator Lautenberg and Senator Feinstein and Senator 
Murphy and others who have championed this cause--would be even more 
effective. Because unlike the 1994 law, it will prohibit imports of 
high-capacity magazines, not just production here but imports of these 
high-capacity magazines. More than ten rounds, we need to say no.
  We also have to implement a buyback program for the existing high-
capacity magazines in use and circulation today. The proposal I'm 
advocating allows for better grant funding to be used for exactly that 
purpose. It doesn't require, doesn't mandate owners of high-capacity 
magazines participate in a buyback program, but it gives them that 
option. And over time, this measure will reduce the number of high-
capacity magazines out there. The provision I am spearheading was part 
of legislation actually offered by Senator Feinstein in the Judiciary 
Committee, approved by that committee on March 14. It's supported by a 
long list of mayors as well as organizations representing law 
enforcement.
  I ask unanimous consent to have that list printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       This legislation has been approved by, among others, the 
     following groups:


                            Law Enforcement

       International Association of Campus Law Enforcement 
     Administrators
       International Association of Chiefs of Police
       Major Cities Chiefs Association
       National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives
       National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun 
     Violence
       National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives
       Police Executive Research Forum
       Police Foundation
       Women in Federal Law Enforcement


                              Health care

       American Academy of Nursing
       American Academy of Pediatrics
       American College of Surgeons
       American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
       American Medical Association
       American Public Health Association
       Association for Ambulatory Behavioral Healthcare
       Doctors for America
       National Association of School Nurses
       National Physicians Alliance
       Physicians for Social Responsibility


                      Education and child welfare

       American Federation of Teachers
       Child Welfare League of America
       Children's Defense Fund
       National Association of Social Workers
       National PTA
       National Education Association
       Save the Children


                               Gun safety

       Arizonans for Gun Safety
       Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
       Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
       Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
       Mayors Against Illegal Guns
       Newtown Action Alliance


                               Religious

       African Methodist Episcopal Church
       Alliance of Baptists
       American Friends Service Committee
       Catholic Charities USA
       Catholics United
       Faiths United To Prevent Gun Violence
       Jewish Council for Public Affairs
       National Council of Churches
       National Episcopal Health Ministries
       Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness
       United Methodist Church


                          Other organizations

       American Bar Association
       Grandmothers for Peace International
       NAACP
       Sierra Club


                               Localities

       U.S. Conference of Mayors
       National League of Cities

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. This provision is supported as well by educators, the 
civil rights community, health care providers and others. It is a 
proposal that is eminently sensible, reasonable. It's a matter of 
common sense. A majority of Americans have consistently supported a ban 
on high-capacity magazines. A poll in January of this year showed 65 
percent of Americans, including 55 percent of gun owners, support such 
a ban.
  But the most powerful argument for a ban on high-capacity magazines 
comes from the experience of Newtown, where the changing of magazines 
enabled children to escape. When the shooter changed magazines, it 
allowed time for the children to evade his nightmarish slaughter.
  In Tucson, we know from CAPT Mark Kelly, husband of Gabby Giffords, 
who testified before the Judiciary Committee, that the limitation on 
that magazine enabled spectators and bystanders to tackle the shooter. 
If there had been only 10 rounds in that magazine he was using, 
Christina-Taylor Green, shot by the 13th bullet, would be alive today. 
We know high-capacity magazines enable and facilitate these mass 
killings. They don't cause them. They don't compel them. They enable 
them. High-capacity magazines allowed Adam Lanza to fire more than 150 
rounds of ammunition in 5 minutes. And we know from men and women who 
have lost loved ones that these devices are part of the attacks too 
often.
  Bill Sherlach, the husband of Mary Sherlach, who has come to 
Washington this week to speak out against gun violence, had this to say 
about high-capacity magazines. And his wife Mary is with us in this 
picture today.

       It's just simple arithmetic. If you have to change 
     magazines 15 times instead of five times, you have three 
     times as many incidents as where something could jam, 
     something could be bobbled. You just increase the time for 
     intervention. You increase the timeframe where kids can get 
     out. And there's 11 kids out there today that are still 
     running around on the playground pretty much now at 
     lunchtime.

  Another Sandy Hook family member who is with us today, Nicole 
Hockley, mother of Dylan Hockley, said the following:

       [W]e looked at the search warrants . . . and know that [the 
     shooter] left the smaller capacity magazines at home. That 
     was a choice that the shooter made. He knew that the larger 
     capacity magazines were more lethal.

  The fact is that Adam Lanza had smaller capacity magazines that were 
found in his home at the time a search was conducted. He left those 
behind. He used the 30-round clips. He brought with him three 30-round 
magazines for that AR-15 because he knew he could fire more bullets 
more rapidly, more lethally, with a 30-round clip. David Wheeler, who 
is also here today and is the father of Benjamin Andrew Wheeler, said 
the following:

       The more bullets you can get out the end of that gun in the 
     least amount of time, that

[[Page 4877]]

     is the single area that I believe affects lethality. And the 
     size of the magazine placed in that weapon is a direct 
     contributor to that--a direct contributor to that factor. 
     There is a place for 30-round magazines, in the military, on 
     the battlefield.

  The families of Sandy Hook have shown tremendous courage and 
strength. Their resolve and resoluteness are an inspiration and a 
source of strength to all of us who have spent time with them, who have 
come to know them, the privilege of knowing them. They have come here 
to talk about something no one would want to talk about, and they have 
done it so that no mother, no father, no husband, no wife ever has to 
again experience the unspeakable and unimaginable horror and tragedy 
that has befallen them. We owe it to them to vote on this measure. I'm 
confident there will be a vote. I'm proud to offer this measure banning 
high-capacity magazines to reduce the scourge of gun violence. There is 
no turning back, as Nicole Hockley has said so eloquently. There is no 
turning back from a proposal to ban high-capacity magazines.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I wish to talk about the 
issue of gun violence.
  Our hearts are still heavy from the reminders of what happened in 
Connecticut, and I want to say that I come to this issue from a 
position of moderation and common sense. I come to this issue having 
grown up in the country as a hunter. I grew up on a ranch. I have had 
guns all my life. I am very familiar with guns. And to this day I still 
enjoy hunting quail and pheasant with my son. But is there anybody who 
realistically doesn't believe we ought to have a criminal background 
check for the person who is purchasing a gun?
  I am very encouraged to hear that Senator Manchin and Senator Toomey 
have come together to find a way to close the gun show loophole. That 
is instructive.
  In my State of Florida, years ago we amended the State constitution 
with an overwhelming vote of the people in Florida, and then there were 
ways that in practice had been found to subvert the law that was the 
will of the people in our State--that you can't purchase a gun at a gun 
show without having a criminal background check. What they do is they 
say: I will consider you a personal friend, and therefore that is an 
exception to doing a background check on you. So Senator Manchin and 
Senator Toomey have come to an agreement to find a way to close that 
gun show loophole, and that proposal will also establish a commission 
to better understand the root causes of how to prevent mass violence.
  There is simply no reason we shouldn't be able to do a criminal 
background check, which is one way to find out the intention of 
somebody who is buying a gun. If you bring it back to basics, it is all 
about common sense, and it is especially so given the circumstances in 
which we find ourselves where people are slaughtering children.
  Is there anybody who thinks we need ammunition clips for 60 rounds? 
That is not common sense. When I go hunting, if it is quail, I usually 
have two shotgun shells in the gun. If you are going to give the quail 
a chance and if it is hunting instead of killing, then let's see how 
good a marksman you are. So I can't see any reason that common sense 
would dictate that we would have more than 10 rounds in a clip. Yet 
people want to go out and buy clips for 60 rounds. I think that is 
telling us something about their intention. I voted on this back in 
2004, to extend the existing law that came out of the 1990s. We said in 
that legislation that 10 and fewer is OK. Now, is that not reasonable? 
Is that not common sense? So if we don't reasonably have a need for 
more than 10, then that is where we ought to draw it in the law.
  Then there is another element of common sense; that is, why assault 
weapons? I served, wearing the uniform of this country. The U.S. 
military has assault weapons. People are going out and buying these AK-
47s that are a derivative of the same weapon that was used by the North 
Vietnamese against us in the Vietnam war. And I simply ask this 
question: Are these guns for hunting or are they for killing? And if 
the legitimate answer is that they are not for hunting or for some 
collector's purposes, then they have another purpose. Obviously, that 
is what they were designed for--as an assault-type weapon in a combat 
circumstance.
  So how do we approach the legitimate recognition of the second 
amendment, the right to bear arms, with assault weapons? And I don't 
think we can. It seems that among people of good will, using common 
sense and moderation, that we can come to some definitions that would 
ban these types of assault weapons. Now, we are probably not going to 
have the votes to pass it here, but we need to take the vote and we 
need to see how everybody feels about this issue.
  I wish to conclude by saying that those of us who are portrayed, by 
taking this position of moderation and common sense, as if we were not 
for the second amendment, that is false. Of course I support the second 
amendment. I just gave you my history of growing up in the country with 
guns, having guns all my life and still having a number of guns in my 
home today. I support the second amendment. I do so in light of the 
circumstances in our society today that have changed.
  My final comment is that in all of this it is moderation and common 
sense that are so much the solution to facing the issues that confront 
us today, and here is another example. Let's use a little common sense.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Florida for 
those very thoughtful remarks and, of course, my colleague, the senior 
Senator from Connecticut.
  We are here on the floor today to help lead a discussion about how 
this Nation can finally own up to its responsibility to take on the 
scourge of gun violence that has certainly been highlighted by the 
massacre in Sandy Hook that I spoke about earlier today in my first 
speech before this Chamber. But it has, frankly, become too routine 
throughout the streets of this country, with 3,000 to 4,000 people 
having lost their lives to gun violence since Sandy Hook happened.
  Lost in a lot of the debate here about the particular policy 
prescriptions we are talking about, whether it be universal background 
checks supported by 90 percent of Americans or a ban on high-capacity 
magazines supported by two-thirds of Americans or a Federal law ending 
illegal gun trafficking supported by three-fourths of Americans, lost 
amidst all of the political back-and-forth over negotiations between 
Republicans and Democrats and the pronouncements of the NRA and of gun 
control groups, lost amidst all of that debate about politics and 
policy are the victims. The victims are the people--boys and girls, men 
and women, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters--who die every 
single day in this country. I described it this morning--like 
raindrops. It is just background noise to this country now, the number 
of people who are dying every day.
  I decided after having given my maiden speech this morning that I 
would come back to this floor--not to occupy the floor or commandeer 
the floor, but to the extent that there is time today and tomorrow and 
next week, to spend time on this floor telling the stories of the 
victims, telling the stories of the individual people whose lives were 
tragically cut short by guns--because it happens here more so than 
almost every other nation in the world. More people lose their lives, 
more people have their lives ended prematurely because of guns here 
than almost any other corner of the world.
  It is time that we do something about it. Yes because of the 
aggregate numbers, yes because of the horror in Sandy Hook, but also 
because every single additional life that is cut short is a failure of 
our responsibility to do something about it. So I am going to spend 
some time down on the Senate floor in between others giving speeches 
today and tomorrow and next week to talk about these victims, to just 
tell you a little bit about who they are--especially for the little 
ones, maybe who they were going to be.

[[Page 4878]]

  Let me start in Newtown. Let me start in Sandy Hook. We can put up 
some pictures of just a handful of the victims from Sandy Hook and from 
cities across this country. Let me start with the little guy in the 
middle, Daniel Barden. I talked about him this morning.
  Daniel was a pretty amazing little boy. His parents talked about the 
unbelievable compassion he had. I talked about it this morning. He 
never failed to turn off a light when he left a room. He was always the 
kid in school who was sitting with the kid who did not have anybody to 
sit with. When his parents would leave a grocery store they would get 
halfway across the grocery store parking lot, turn around, and Daniel 
wasn't with them because he was still holding the door open for other 
people who were leaving the store. He was a pretty amazing little kid. 
He loved to spend time with his family. He loved riding the waves at 
the beach. You can see with that long hair he was a beach bum.
  He played drums in a band with his brother James and sister Natalie. 
His family is very musical, so on that morning his father, who is a 
professional musician--he is here this week, actually--taught him how 
to play Jingle Bells.
  He woke up very early that morning. It was funny because he was the 
last of the three kids to go to school. They were all in separate 
schools. His parents thought it was strange that on that morning he 
woke up early. In fact it was the first day all year--this was December 
14, so they had been in school for months--it was the first day in the 
entire year that Daniel had awaken before his oldest sibling went to 
school.
  As the oldest sibling was walking down the driveway to go to school, 
Daniel ran after him to tell him that he loved him. The first time, he 
had never done that all year. It just shows what a compassionate little 
kid Daniel was. I actually wear a bracelet for Daniel. It is a bracelet 
that links to a Facebook page called ``What Would Daniel Do?'' It has 
16,000 ``likes.'' The point of this page is people can hear about a lot 
of these kids. The families have done a lot of amazing things to try to 
spread the word about who these kids were and what they were going to 
be. Daniel's page is, ``What Would Daniel Do?'' It is a forum for 
people to invest in little acts of kindness to try to live up to the 
inspiration this little 6-year-old set for his family and his 
neighborhood.
  So people posted stories on that Web site for the last several months 
about these little kind acts they performed: For example, the woman who 
bought coffee and donuts for a firehouse in her home State of New York, 
the Missouri woman who helped restock a food pantry in Daniel's honor, 
the Illinois woman who paid for a stranger's meal and on the back of 
the bill wrote: ``Love, from Daniel Barden.''
  Daniel was going to grow up to be an amazing young man. He loved 
life. He did amazing things for people. But we did not get to know 
Daniel Barden later in life because he was gunned down that day in 
Sandy Hook.
  Let me tell the story of someone equally amazing whom we got to know 
for 20 more years than the kids that she was charged with looking 
after. Her name is one that you might know, and that is Victoria Soto. 
Victoria Soto was 27 years old. She was a teacher at Sandy Hook 
Elementary School. That is what she wanted to do. She had wanted to be 
a teacher, her mom said, since she was 3 years old. Imagine knowing 
what you want to do when you are 3 years old and sticking with it. A 
lot of people think they know what they want to do when they are 3, but 
they change their minds. She did not. She worked every day from the 
time she was 13 to get ready to be a teacher. As early as 13 she was 
charting out her classes so she could ultimately be a teacher. Even 
when she got to Sandy Hook Elementary School she made time for night 
classes at Southern Connecticut State University where she was getting 
her master's degree in special education.
  A mentor of hers said she was the last one who would have wanted hero 
status, but nobody was surprised to hear what she did in that classroom 
that day. When Adam Lanza walked into her classroom, Victoria Soto was 
the only person he saw. Why? Because she had ushered her special 
education teacher, Anne Marie Murphy, and several of her kids under a 
desk. She had pushed a number of other kids into a closet to hide them. 
Lanza came into the classroom, he faced her and killed her. Then he 
killed the kids who were under the desk. The kids who hid in the 
closet, many of them lived. Many of them survived--they were discovered 
after the incident--because of the heroic actions of this one 27-year-
old teacher.
  Imagine what she could have done with the rest of her life. Students 
loved her. Parents loved her. She was made for teaching. Think of all 
of the impact. She probably had 30 more years in the classroom. She had 
hundreds if not thousands of kids she still could have touched with her 
life--gone. Victoria Soto's genius as a teacher will no longer be able 
to be realized because of what happened that day.
  If we do not do something about it, Victoria Soto will not be the 
last teacher who is going to be gunned down. If we don't take some 
steps here this will not be the last selfless educator we will mourn on 
the Senate floor.
  Let me tell a little about Charlotte Bacon, 6 years old. I lost count 
of the number of funerals and wakes that I went to, but I do remember 
Charlotte's funeral. She had this crazy head of curly red hair. She was 
described by her family as sweet and outgoing and exuberant, someone 
who was willing to argue for whatever she believed in, even at 6 years 
old. She loved the color pink, and she loved animals--any animal she 
met--but she really loved her golden retriever. She wanted to become a 
veterinarian. A lot of these kids we will hear about today knew what 
they wanted to do with their lives. These were ambitious kids, in part 
because they had special parents as well.
  She was really looking forward to Christmas because she wanted to 
show off this new pink dress and pink boots she had gotten. It was a 
Christmas outfit, so she was waiting until Christmas to be able to show 
it off. But on the morning of December 14--again, another theme we will 
hear is that these strange things happened that morning--that morning 
she woke up and she wanted to wear that pink dress. She wanted to wear 
those pink boots, and her mother let her do it. She wore that special 
pink dress and those boots to school on Friday, December 14.
  Her family has established a nonprofit called Newtown Kindness. The 
organization is comprised of community members who were trying to bring 
positivity and strength back to the Newtown community. I talked this 
morning about the fact that for many of us who have lived through this 
tragedy--not anywhere close to the way in which the victims' families 
have--but what we see Newtown defined by is not the 10 minutes of 
violence and evil, but all the millions of acts of humanity that have 
spilled forth from inside the community and from outside the community 
in the days and weeks since, and this is what Newtown Kindness is 
about. It is encouraging children to do their own acts of kindness like 
Charlotte did and submit their stories through drawings and letters to 
the organization. Newtown Kindness is going to show some light on all 
these little wonderful things that kids do every day in the same way 
that Charlotte did for the kids she loved and the family members she 
loved and for the animals she loved.
  Let me talk a little bit about another teacher, Rachel Davino. Rachel 
was very much like Victoria, in that she knew she wanted to work with 
kids. She had a lot of interests, Rachel Davino did. She was born in 
Waterbury, received her undergraduate degree from Hartford, she got her 
masters from Post University. She loved animals. That is probably why 
she connected with a lot of these kids. She loved baking and 
photography and karate. She drew lots of things, loved to draw 
animals--dogs, frogs, anything with scales or feathers or fur she loved 
to draw. But her passion was working as a behavioral therapist, working 
with

[[Page 4879]]

kids with autism. There were a number of kids in these classrooms who 
had autism. They were doing great because of the work of people like 
Rachel and Anne Marie Murphy, who reached out to work with these kids.
  Rachel was exceptional because she integrated these kids into her 
daily life. She brought the kids to her home. She involved the kids in 
her family. She treated the kids like family and they matured. They did 
better under her care.
  She probably didn't know it when she died, but her best friend and 
her boyfriend, Tony, was about to propose to her. In fact he had 
already gone to her parents to ask permission to ask to marry her. He 
was going to do it on Christmas Eve, just 10 days after the incident. 
He didn't get to ask for Rachel's hand in marriage. Instead, the 
wedding ring he had planned to present to her was placed on her finger 
before she was buried.
  Rachel was an amazing teacher, an amazing person who invested herself 
in these kids, day in and day out. It would have been great to know 
what Rachel Davino would have become as she matured as an educator.
  This is just a sampling of the stories from 1 day in Newtown, CT. 
Fewer kids and adults died in Newtown that day than die every day 
across this country. We think how exceptional it was and how awful and 
how horrific that we lost 20 kids and 6 adults--and, by the way, 2 
others in Adam Lanza and his mother--yet that number is less than the 
average number of people who are killed every day by gun violence 
across this country. So I want to talk about them too. I want to talk 
about just over the last couple of weeks and months what we have 
witnessed across this country.
  I want to talk about Hadiya Pendleton in Chicago. We have heard a lot 
about her because she was here for the Presidential inauguration. She 
was performing with her school's majorette team in the President's 
inauguration festivities. She loved performing. She was an honor 
student at King College Prep High School in Chicago. She was 15 years 
old.
  She is remembered by her friends as somebody who was always raising 
her hand in class. She had all the right answers in that chemistry 
class. She wore bright lip gloss that made her stand out. She loved to 
dance. She danced on the Praise Dance Ministry in her church, and she 
was a member of her cheerleading team as well. She liked Chinese food, 
she loved Fig Newtons. She was thinking about going to college, 
thinking about either journalism or pharmacology, two pretty different 
things. Either way, she wanted to go to Harvard. She knew where she 
wanted to go.
  She was 15 years old. She was shot and killed while standing with her 
friends in a park in Chicago after she took her final exams, just days 
after she came back from Washington, DC, probably one of the most 
amazing experiences in her life.
  I watched some of that parade, and I always think to myself whether I 
saw her performing with her majorette team. She was 15 years old. She 
was going to go to Harvard. She was going to become a journalist or a 
great dancer. All the things we missed just because she was standing in 
the way of a bullet at a park with her friends after she took her final 
exams.
  I think about Lavanial Williams, who in January of this year, was 
visiting with his mother and two sisters in Marin City, CA, to 
celebrate his 17th birthday. He was checking in on his sister April to 
make sure she was fine because there was some suspicious activity going 
on in the housing complex that day. He went downstairs to check out the 
commotion, and moments later he was shot dead just because he walked 
down some stairs to check out some commotion.
  The deputies who arrived on the scene found a group of people trying 
to revive the teenager by CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. 
He had been hit by several bullets. He was there visiting his mother 
and two sisters to celebrate his 17th birthday. Lavanial Williams died 
on January 11, 2013.
  If we talk about the connection to the background checks piece of 
this discussion, we could talk about Annemarie Bautch. She returned 
home after dropping off her kids at school on April 8--just a week or 
so ago--in Milwaukee. Her live-in boyfriend pulled in behind her in a 
taxicab he drove for hire. He walked to her van's window and shot her 
in the head. He then took his gun and turned it on himself.
  He was on probation for recent domestic violence incidences involving 
his daughter. He had beaten up his daughter. He had firearms arrests 
going back 20 years. He was a convicted felon, and he was prohibited 
from carrying weapons. I don't have in front of me why he had the 
weapon that day or how he got it, but he was not supposed to have it. 
He had a long rap sheet when it came to convictions regarding firearms.
  He was ordered to undergo anger management training after his most 
recent conviction, but it is unclear as to whether that ever happened. 
He is not here to answer those questions and neither is his girlfriend 
Annemarie who died that day at the age of 39 after dropping her kids 
off at school.
  Earlier this week in Akron, OH, there was a 28-year-old man who was 
fatally shot while taking garbage to a trash bin in the parking lot of 
a McDonald's restaurant at which he worked. He was taking garbage to a 
trash dump and he was shot and died. His name has not been released, 
but he had been working at that McDonald's for 10 years. His coworkers 
said: ``He was the kind of person who would give you his last dollar.'' 
He would give his coworkers gifts on holidays--Christmas and 
Thanksgiving. He worked in McDonald's. He could not have had a lot of 
money to go out and buy gifts for coworkers. He worked at that place 
for a decade. Because of his generous nature with whatever money he 
had, that he scraped together, he made sure people knew he loved them.
  He was 28 years old when he died earlier this week in Akron, OH.
  This stuff is happening every day. I mean, I will keep on going 
through them, but this is happening every day throughout this country. 
People are dying on our streets by casual gun violence while bringing 
garbage to a dumpster outside a McDonald's, walking down the stairs to 
check out some commotion at a sister's housing complex, and pulling 
into a driveway after dropping their kids off at school. These were not 
people who were going out and looking for trouble. These were people 
who were just doing their regular everyday business.
  President Obama came to Connecticut on Monday, and he told the story 
of a mother who was so frustrated at the phrase regarding her 
daughter's death due to gun violence that her daughter was ``in the 
wrong place at the wrong time.'' She just happened to be in the way of 
a stray bullet. Her mother's point was, no; she was in the right place 
at the right time. She was walking to school.
  This guy was bringing garbage to the dumpster. Anne Marie was coming 
home after dropping off her kids. Lavanial was just looking out for his 
sister. They were not in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were 
doing what they were supposed to be doing. Yet they were gunned down. 
We have no answer? After 20 years of this, we are not able to step up 
and do something about it? It is like raindrops. It has just become 
routine.
  Let me go back to Newtown and talk more about these kids. Olivia Rose 
Engel was a bright-eyed, brunette, 6-year-old girl. She loved school. 
She particularly loved reading and math, which is good because a lot of 
what first graders do is reading and math. If you love reading and 
math, you are probably in good shape.
  Her favorite stuffed animal was a lamb, and her favorite colors 
were--a theme we will hear often--pink and purple. She was set to play 
an angel in her church's nativity play on the night of the tragedy. She 
laughed a lot, and her parents said she just lit up a room when she 
walked in.
  Olivia played soccer and tennis, and she took art classes. She loved 
swimming and ballet classes, and she took hip-hop dance lessons. She 
was also involved in her Daisy Girl Scouts. Every

[[Page 4880]]

night when they gathered for dinner, her family would have Olivia say 
grace.
  She was a great big sister. Olivia really loved her little 3-year-old 
brother Brayden. She was killed that day in Sandy Hook Elementary 
School.
  Josephine Gay celebrated her seventh birthday just 3 days before the 
tragedy. Joey is what she was called by her family. She was a kid with 
an indomitable spirit. She was autistic, as were a handful of these 
kids, but she was still social. She was very affectionate. She was 
getting very good care from some of these paraprofessionals who were 
there.
  She grew up--actually not too far from here--in Maryland with a house 
full of Ravens fans. Josephine fell in love with the color purple. I 
don't know if she bought into the Ravens as a team yet, but she loved 
the color purple. She had a great sense of humor; she smiled all the 
time.
  She loved hugs even though she participated in rigorous therapy for 
her disability. She had treatment on a daily basis. She did it without 
complaining. She loved her Barbie dolls, her iPad, and her computer. 
She loved to sing and swim and be anywhere her sisters were. Joey Gay 
was killed that day at age 7 in Sandy Hook Elementary School.
  I want to talk about Avielle Richman. I have gotten to know Avielle's 
parents pretty well over the course of the last few months. Frankly, I 
have gotten to know a lot of these families over the last few months.
  Avielle's parents have done something remarkable, which I will 
mention, but first I will talk about Avielle.
  Guess what color Avielle loved. She loved the color pink. She loved 
to wear her pink cowboy boots and adored riding her pony Betty. She 
turned 6 years old just about 2 months before the tragedy.
  She moved from Connecticut a few years ago from San Diego. She loved 
San Diego. She was barefoot all the time. She would run on the beaches 
of San Diego until the Sun went down. Her relatives used to joke about 
how hard it was to get shoes on Avielle even after moving to 
Connecticut. When she lived in San Diego, she never used to wear shoes, 
so she certainly was not going to wear them even in a colder climate 
like Connecticut.
  She had curly brown hair and an infectious smile. Her parents kept a 
blog about her. They called her their little hummingbird. She loved 
horseback riding, swimming, ice skating, and superhero adventures. She 
loved pretending to be a superhero. She loved the movie ``Brave,'' and 
Avielle tried out archery, which is a brave thing for her parents to do 
as well. She tried out archery because of her love for the movie.
  Before her life was taken that December, Avielle was obsessed with an 
Easy Bake Oven she was hoping to get for Christmas.
  Her parents are scientists, and in the wake of Avielle's death, they 
started a nonprofit to raise money to try to get to the root cause of 
the illness that caused someone like Adam Lanza to pick up a gun. That 
is an amazing thing for the Richmans to do. I talked about a number of 
efforts that have been taken, whether it is a Facebook page for Daniel 
Barden, a Web site to try to encourage kids to engage in acts of 
kindness, or what Avielle's parents did. This is an amazing thing for 
them to do. While they are grieving, they are trying to find a silver 
lining in all of this.
  The Richmans' hope is that they can use the memory of their precious 
6-year-old daughter to go out and raise money to try to research the 
causes of the illness that led to this tragedy. It is an illness. We 
talk about it in terms of evil, and I have certainly used that term. It 
is really illness masquerading as evil.
  The Richmans are going to do their part to raise money to try to do a 
better job to figure out what is going on in the brain to cause someone 
to leave their parents' home, drive to an elementary school, and start 
shooting, or walk up to a McDonald's employee as they are delivering 
garbage to the dumpster and shoot them. It is a different kind of 
illness, I suppose, but it deserves examination nonetheless.
  The Richmans are heroic in the fact that they have decided to reach 
out and try to make this discovery.
  Another teacher to talk about is Lauren Rousseau. She wanted to be a 
teacher so badly. She was 30 years old. Up to the point she was hired 
as a full-time substitute teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, she spent 6 
years working at part-time jobs just to make ends meet so she could 
substitute teach during the day. During that 6-year period of time, she 
was looking for a full-time job, and she finally found it. That October 
she had been hired in Newtown to be a full-time substitute teacher. It 
is just what Lauren wanted to do, and she was really good at it. She 
was literally on the verge of realizing that 6-year dream when her life 
was taken.
  She was very bubbly and outgoing. She spent the morning of December 
14 looking forward to a movie she was going to see that night with her 
friends and her boyfriend, ``The Hobbit.'' She was a huge fan of 
Tolkien, so it was a big deal to see ``The Hobbit'' that evening, and 
that is what she was talking about that morning.
  She loved animals too. She was passionate about doing something about 
child poverty. Part of the reason she went into education was she 
believed she needed to live her life in a way that was going to reach 
out and eradicate the scourge of child poverty.
  Purple was her favorite color, and so everybody at her funeral wore 
the color purple.
  She was a huge UConn basketball fan. In particular, she was a big fan 
of the UConn women's basketball team. So if Lauren is looking down from 
up above, she is very happy because her UConn women are national 
champions again. She would have been watching that game last night, and 
hopefully she was.
  Lauren Rousseau was right there. Her dream was within her grasp, what 
she had worked for all of her life, and in an instant it was gone.
  Teachers, little girls, and little boys who could have been great 
people, great educators--they could have been dancers and singers. 
Daniel Barden said he wanted to be a paleontologist just like his older 
brother. He could have done great things, but he is gone.
  This isn't the first massacre we have seen. Daniel Barden and Ana 
Marquez-Green and Dylan Hockley and Benjamin Wheeler--these are all 
kids who were killed in Newtown, CT, but unfortunately Newtown is just 
the latest in a line of mass shootings. Forty percent of the mass 
shootings that have happened in this Nation's history have happened 
since the assault weapons ban expired. Forty percent of all of the mass 
shootings in this Nation's history have happened in the last 8 years--8 
years--since the assault weapons ban expired. I am not an expert in 
cause and correlation, but that cannot be a coincidence. It can't be a 
coincidence because we also know that during those 10 years of the 
assault weapons ban, along with a ban on high-capacity magazines that 
was in effect, we saw a 37-percent decrease in gun violence. We saw a 
two-thirds decrease in the crimes committed with assault weapons. Those 
are real numbers, real reductions in overall gun violence and in gun 
violence perpetrated with these dangerous assault weapons. But the 
minute that ban was lifted, a dramatic increase in these mass shootings 
occurred.
  Newtown was the second worst school shooting. It is seared in our 
memories in a different way because these were precious, young, little 
kids, and we can't help but grieve in a fundamentally different way for 
6- and 7-year-olds. But Virginia Tech was worse. Still to this day, 
Virginia Tech saw the highest number of people gunned down. So I wish 
to talk about a few of those people.
  Ross Alameddine was a Virginia Tech sophomore. He loved computer 
games, and he actually played a lot of them competitively. He was very 
much into home computer repair, and it was something he wanted to do 
with his life. His customers always loved him because they would bring 
their computers to him and he was one of the few people who knew how to 
fix them.

[[Page 4881]]

  He did a lot of stuff outside of his fascination with computers. He 
loved rollerblading, whether it was in between classes or going out for 
long rollerblading expeditions on nice days. He loved movies, and he 
loved music. He played the piano, and he actually sang at a local 
coffeehouse. He had a fondness for language. He had strong opinions 
too. He was part of the debate club at Austin Prep, where he went to 
school. He talked in every single one of these classes. We know these 
kids who always have something to say, and Ross was definitely one of 
them.
  He loved life. He sought to make other people laugh. He used his 
music to do that. One of his classmates, Liz Hardwick, remembered his 
many qualities. She said that Ross's wit, humor, and insightfulness 
made him so much fun to be around, but his caring for others was also 
always present. Ross was one of the 32 victims killed during the 
Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007.
  Christopher James Bishop--``Jamie'' Bishop--was a German teacher who 
was shot at the age of 35. He was a dedicated husband and son. He was a 
gentle colleague. He was a really generous friend.
  He had a long ponytail that he wore. That was kind of Jamie's 
signature. But he didn't keep the ponytail for long because once he 
grew it, he would regularly cut his hair and donate it to Locks of 
Love. He was doing it for style reasons, I am sure, but he saw his 
ponytail as a means to donate to other people who needed some help.
  He was another techno guru. He knew a lot about complicated gadgets, 
and one of those was cameras. He was a great technician with a camera, 
but he was also a very avid photographer. Jamie leaves behind a lot of 
wonderful art that captured the intensity and the beauty that 
surrounded him in Blacksburg.
  He hailed from a very small town--Pine Mountain, GA--and he was a big 
fan of the Atlanta Braves, so he would probably be pretty excited about 
the start the Atlanta Braves have had this year.
  He was a foreign language teacher. He was a tough teacher--``Herr 
Bishop'' is what they called him--but he really believed that 
understanding language was a way for people to engage in the world. It 
was a joy, but it was really fundamental to understanding humanity. If 
people understand languages, they understand different cultures and 
they understand something more about what it means to be a human being 
in this world. Jamie believed in what he did not just because he wanted 
to teach kids German but because he wanted to teach kids about the 
world. He died at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, at the age of 35.
  Brian Bluhm was a graduate student. He was a TA at Virginia Tech. He 
cared about water resources--something we actually are going to be 
talking about here pretty soon--something not a lot of graduate 
students think about. He cared deeply about a just distribution of 
water assets across the country, and that is what he was working on at 
Virginia Tech.
  But his real love was for God. He was dedicated to building a 
relationship through his church with his God.
  He was one of the friendliest guys one could ever meet, his friends 
said. He had a smile for everybody.
  He was a big sports fan. Brian grew up with a passion for sports, 
particularly baseball, and his favorite team was the Detroit Tigers. He 
was one of these guys who follow everything about their favorite team. 
He watched all the games, but when the Tigers weren't playing in the 
winter and in the early spring, he would be analyzing every statistic 
from the past season and getting ready for the next season. He also 
loved Virginia Tech sports, especially football and basketball. He was 
one of those people others would see on TV who came to all of the games 
with the colors on their chests to show their support.
  His family says he will be remembered for his love of God, family, 
friends, the Detroit Tigers, and Virginia Tech. He was lost that day, 
April 16, 2007, as well.
  Ryan Christopher Clark was known to his friends as ``Stack.'' He 
maintained a 4.0 GPA when he was a student at Virginia Tech, and he was 
a kid who had a mastery of science. He had a triple major. I didn't 
even know one could have a triple major, but Stack had a triple major 
in psychology, biology, and English. Can my colleagues imagine what 
Stack was going to be able to do with his life? Can we imagine what he 
would have been able to contribute in his life with a triple major?
  He was a leader on campus. He played baritone in the Marching 
Virginians university band, and he was a resident adviser. So he was 
doing great things on campus and passing along a lot of knowledge to 
kids underneath him.
  His friends said: He was a wonderful part of our baritone section. He 
was fun. He was loving. He was a delightful person to be around. He 
cared so much for other people. He would befriend anyone. He was a 
light and he was a joy.
  Ryan Christopher Clark was going to do great things with his life. He 
was a student leader. At his young age, he had already shown a 
compassion for his fellow students by being a resident adviser. He had 
shown a talent for music by going out and performing in the band, and 
he was a triple major who was probably going to do something great in 
the scientific field in this country. But Stack didn't get to live that 
dream because, along with so many others, he was gunned down that day 
at Virginia Tech.
  Virginia Tech, Newtown, Aurora, Tucson--these are just the mass 
shootings. I will keep on going, but these victims just don't end. 
Stack on top of that 40, 50, 60 people every day being killed on our 
streets. It is important to talk about these victims. That is why I 
wanted to come to the floor today to do this, because if we don't do 
something in the next 2 weeks, these lists are going to grow.
  The illegal guns used on the streets of Chicago and Bridgeport and 
New Haven and Washington, DC, and New York weren't always illegal guns. 
They were legal guns before they became illegal guns. Somewhere along 
the line, their status transferred. The question is, What can we do to 
stop that transfer from happening?
  I believe in the second amendment. I believe in the protection that 
it affords people to own a gun, to be able to hunt or to shoot for 
sport or to protect themselves. But I want to make sure guns stay in 
the ``legal'' category and don't leach into the ``illegal'' category. 
That is why 90 percent of Americans think we should have a law in this 
Nation that provides for universal, mandatory background checks for 
everybody who buys a gun. That is a really simple thing to do.
  This is just a sampling of the lives that could have been protected. 
The gun used in Newtown went through a background check, but so many of 
the guns used to kill boys and girls and young adults and men and women 
in our cities don't go through background checks. We think about 40 
percent of guns sold across this country don't go through background 
checks.
  One of the tragedies in this long line is directly relevant to this 
bill. At Columbine High School, the gun used was bought outside of the 
background check system, and the friend of the shooter's who bought the 
gun said after the incident that the reason she bought it with the 
method she did was because had she gone to a gun store, it wouldn't 
have passed the background check. That is the gun show loophole. What 
has it been--a decade-plus since Columbine, and we still haven't closed 
the gun show loophole? We still haven't made the collective decision 
that we should make sure criminals don't buy guns? She said she 
couldn't have bought the gun if she went to a licensed gun dealer 
because it would have been prohibited. So a bunch of kids died at 
Columbine High School.
  Someone could make the argument that if the gun hadn't gotten in 
their hands that way, it might have gotten in their hands another way. 
I get it. Nothing we are talking about guarantees that another Sandy 
Hook isn't going to happen, and it certainly can't guarantee that our 
streets are going to all of a sudden be safer overnight. But if we make 
it a little bit harder to get that gun, if we make it a little bit

[[Page 4882]]

more difficult for a criminal to get his hands on a weapon, the chances 
look a whole lot better to survive on the streets of our cities or in 
our schools and mosques and movie theaters.
  As Senator Blumenthal pointed out, I can absolutely make the case 
that if we had stronger laws on the books today, Newtown may not have 
happened, and even if it did happen, some of these kids would be alive 
today.
  What happened in one of those classrooms is instructive. A handful of 
kids survived because Victoria Soto put them into a closet, and when 
the shooting was over, they were discovered in that closet.
  Another set of kids survived a different way. When Lanza went to 
switch magazines, there was a delay in the shooting and a bunch of kids 
ran out of the classroom. Five of them--six were found in the closet, 
and five of them ran out of the classroom when Lanza decided to switch 
magazine clips. There are five kids who don't look much different from 
Ana and Daniel and Dylan and Benjamin who are--and Jesse, there is 
Jesse--who are alive today because Adam Lanza had to switch clips. He 
only had to do it about 6 times to get off 154 bullets. We don't 
exactly understand why, but he didn't actually discharge all of his 30-
round clips. Sometimes he only shot about 10 or 15 bullets before he 
switched, but some of them he went straight through. He only had to 
switch clips we think about 6 times to get off 154 bullets in 10 
minutes.
  If we had on the books today a law such as the law we had back in the 
1990s and early 2000s that restricted ammunition clips to 10 rounds--an 
amendment Senator Blumenthal and I will bring to the floor next week, 
either an amendment or in a separate bill--that shooter would have had 
to change ammunition clips 15 times--9 more opportunities for kids to 
run out of the classroom. I know we can't guarantee that things would 
have been different, but let me tell my colleagues there are an awful 
lot of parents in Newtown who believe their sons or daughters might 
likely be alive today had we continued to have a restriction limiting 
ammunition clips to 10 rounds.
  What we know is that in Tucson, people would be alive today because 
that incident absolutely stopped when the shooter switched clips. It 
was during the transfer of ammunition magazines that he was tackled. We 
know that if he had 10 rounds rather than a higher number, there would 
still be people alive there.
  We know what happened in the movie theater in Aurora. That guy walked 
into the movie theater with a 100-round drum. What on Earth is the 
reason why somebody needs a 100-round drum? It jammed because these 
guys are amateurs. They have not done this before. People say: It is 
not going to make a difference--10 rounds, 30 rounds--because it takes 
3 seconds to switch clips, so it is not going to provide any different 
outcome.
  For a professional shooter, it takes 3 seconds. But for a nervous 21-
year-old kid, hyped up on adrenaline, it is a different thing. Five 
kids escaped in Newtown; the shooting stopped in Tucson; the shooting 
stopped when the gun jammed upon exchange of magazines in Aurora. 
People are alive today because there is something that happens when you 
have to exchange magazines in these incidents of mass violence. More 
exchanges of magazines mean more kids alive today.
  Let me talk to you about Porshe Foster. She was 15 years old when she 
was killed over the Thanksgiving holiday last year in Chicago. She had 
five sisters--six daughters, and Porshe was the youngest of them. 
Porshe was 15, and she was shot in the back of the head when she was 
standing with her best friends in a backyard during a sleepover.
  The intended victim was a gang-related individual. They were 
targeting somebody else, but she got hit. Twenty-five shots were fired, 
by the way. Twenty-five shots were fired. Porshe was the only victim 
that was hit.
  She was a sophomore at ACE Tech. It is a charter school that 
specializes in getting kids ready for college in architecture and 
construction and engineering. This is exactly the kind of student we 
wanted, where, on the floor of the Senate and the House of 
Representatives, we are all the time clamoring for more girls to go 
into STEM education--into science, technology, engineering, and math. 
Porshe was doing it. She was living up to our expectations. She was 
going to a charter school. It was going to get her ready to go into a 
career in architecture, construction or engineering. Imagine what she 
could have done if she lived beyond the age of 15.
  She played volleyball and she played basketball. She sang in the 
church choir. She loved art. Her classmates actually honored her death 
by holding an art sale in her memory. Because funerals are expensive, 
especially in inner-city Chicago, they used the proceeds from the art 
sale to pay for Porshe's funeral.
  Let me tell you, that is no small expense. We do not think about 
that, but one of the biggest issues in Hartford, CT, today--a city that 
has had relatively low gun violence this year but on an average year 
can have a couple dozen gun deaths--is how do you pay for the funerals, 
how do you come up with the money as a community to pay for a funeral 
every other week in a small, little city such as Hartford. Porshe's 
friends decided to do an art sale to pay for her funeral.
  Her family and friends remember her as happy, as friendly, as a great 
student, always busy, someone ``you couldn't be quiet around.''
  Her five sisters had planned to give their youngest sister a guitar 
for Christmas. She was killed on November 26, 2012, about a month 
before she was going to get that guitar.
  I know there are other people who are here to speak, and so I will 
yield the floor at this time. But I will be back today and tomorrow to 
talk about more victims. I just think we need to tell their stories. I 
just think the people need to know who these people are because there 
are going to be more of them if things do not change, and we have the 
power this week and next week to do something about it--not to 
eliminate future victims. We are never, ever going to change the fact 
that people are going to pick up a gun, are going to violate the law, 
are going to shoot to kill. We are never going to stop that. But we can 
do something to reduce these numbers so next year at this time or 2 
years at this time we cannot come down to the floor with a binder full 
of victims just from the past 3 months.
  I will be back later today and tomorrow to continue to do this, but 
at this time I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized as in morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. First of all, Madam President, let me say, I certainly 
sympathize with the tragedy that took place and those who lost family 
members. Having 20 kids and grandkids myself, I am probably in a better 
position to sympathize with that than many others are.
  I have to say I think somewhat of a disservice is being done to some 
of these families. It is almost akin to saying we are looking at 
legislation that would have prevented that from happening--and that is 
not the case--or we are looking at legislation that would preclude 
something such as this happening again.
  I listened to my colleagues on the right side, on the Republican 
side, and on the left, the Democratic side, and they all have good 
ideas and they all are sincere in wanting to do something and maybe I 
am looking at it too simplistically. Because I look at the second 
amendment, I look at what historically has been our privilege in 
exercising our right to keep and bear arms--I mean since the very 
beginning--then I see and I have lived through, on the State and on the 
Federal level, all kinds of efforts of people to think: We can do 
something about gun violence, and let's do it by background checks, 
let's check everybody out there, let's do it, and let's approach the 
gun shows.

[[Page 4883]]

  Let's talk about all these things that could be done. We could 
restrict the number of the cartridges and the magazines and all these 
things, but it is all predicated on one assumption, which I cannot buy. 
That assumption is that somehow we think that the criminal element will 
single out this one law to comply with.
  Let's look at the facts. When we look at what they are trying to do, 
anything that is up that we are going to be voting on in the next 2 or 
3 weeks--however long it takes--is going to, in some way, restrict the 
number of firearms. I think we would all agree with that. Whose 
firearms will they restrict? They would restrict the firearms of law-
abiding citizens. That means the ratio between guns owned by the 
criminal element versus the law-abiding citizen is going to change.
  When they talk about the background checks, I cannot imagine anyone 
being so naive as not to know that if the criminal element is going to 
get a gun, they are going to get a gun. Sure, they would kind of like 
to have some of these restrictions. They would like to have that 
background check because that eliminates the numbers of guns in 
circulation. So the criminal element is the only one who is not 
affected.
  I was asked a question not long ago about this. It was on a national 
TV show. I was actually down at the border at the time, the Mexican 
border. They asked the question: Why is America so wrong? He talked 
about a poll that was taken where the results were 90 to 3. The 
question that was asked was: Do you believe we ought to have stronger 
background checks?
  I said: Fine. If you were to ask that same question--90 percent of 
the people, by the way, answered: Yes, we need to have stronger 
background checks. But if you asked the question: Do you believe we 
should have stronger background checks on the law-abiding citizens and 
not the criminal element, then I can assure you, it would be like 99 to 
nothing the other way.
  That is the thing. That is the one thing people just overlook. We can 
pass all the laws we want, and the criminal element is going to sit 
back and smile. Is anyone naive enough not to think, not to believe 
that regardless of background checks, a criminal element can find 
someone who can go and get a gun, make $100, and they have a gun. But 
the ratio changes and not in a healthy way.
  In a way I think it is a disservice to an awful lot of people who 
have had tragedies in their lives to believe we are doing something 
that is truly going to change that when, in fact, I do not believe it 
is.
  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I rise again to continue my attempt on the 
floor of the Senate today, without holding up the Senate or allowing 
others to speak their mind, to really draw attention to the names, 
faces, and reality behind this chart. This is probably difficult to see 
for some of my colleagues because it represents the over 3,300 people 
who have died since December 14, since the Newtown tragedy. Over 3,300 
people have died from gun violence since December 14 and are 
represented by all of these individual figurines, which are so many 
that the picture becomes muddled. It almost looks like lines going back 
and forth. Behind each one of those small, tiny figurines is a story of 
a man, woman, little boy, or little girl who had their life stolen from 
them and from their family prematurely because of gun violence.
  I wish there weren't enough material to fill today, tomorrow, and 
next week, when others aren't on the floor speaking. I wish there 
weren't 3,300 stories in the last several months alone with respect to 
people who have died from gun violence, but that is the reality.
  The reality is that this Nation has become callous over time to the 
everyday incidents of gun violence that have happened on our streets, 
in my cities of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven, and also in your 
cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Baltimore.
  We have come to believe, over the course of the last 20 years since 
we passed the last major gun violence initiative, through the Congress, 
that we can't do anything, that we are powerless. We have come to 
delude ourselves of that fact.
  I gave my first speech on the floor of the Senate this morning, and I 
have been moved to come back and spend time today talking about the 
victims as a means to try to move us to do something. We know what we 
need to do because people out there have already decided what it is. 
Ninety percent of Americans support the universal background checks. 
Two-thirds of Americans support a ban on these high-capacity magazine 
clips. We haven't figured it out for ourselves.
  I wish to speak for a few minutes about these victims. I will start 
these remarks with a school near Littleton, CO. Columbine High School, 
on the morning of April 20, 1999, was visited by two very disturbed 
young men who walked into the school. Their names were Eric Harris and 
Dylan Klebold, and they opened fire in the school. They killed and 
injured 12 more. It was at the time certainly one of the worst 
instances of mass shooting in a school this country had ever seen. Of 
course, it has now been eclipsed by what happened at Virginia Tech and 
what happened in my State last December 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary 
School. At the time, it shocked the Nation because we didn't know how 
to comprehend 10 students going about their day at Columbine High 
School being gunned down by 2 of their fellow students. Now we are 
grappling with how to comprehend the deaths of 20 kids, 6- and 7-year-
olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
  Although it has now been almost 14 years since the incident on April 
20--we are about to come up on the anniversary--we shouldn't forget the 
people who were killed. Before the next Senator comes down wishing to 
speak, I will speak about those kids who were killed in Columbine.
  Cassie Bernall was a really sweet, kind little girl. She was active 
in her church. Her work in her church meant so much to her that after 
she died her parents set up the Cassie Bernall Foundation, which 
provides support to youth ministries. I was a part of my youth group in 
my church growing up, and I know what a wonderful connection it is, 
both to God and to your fellow adolescents. It was a big deal for her. 
She also was fascinated with the United Kingdom, and she had a dream to 
attend Cambridge University. She wanted to become an obstetrician.
  Today Cassie would be about 30 years old. She would most likely have 
completed her training and would be in a residency or be a practicing 
OB/GYN. We spend a lot of time talking about the fact that we need more 
preventive care doctors practicing medicine. Cassie was gunned down 
that day. She didn't get to live her dream or contribute to a field we 
know is very important.
  That wasn't the only thing Cassie cared about. She loved the outdoors 
and spent a lot of time in Breckenridge. She had a passion for rock 
climbing, snowboarding, backpacking, camping, and taking photographs of 
everything she did so she could record her love of the outdoors.
  She was buried along with a poem her mother wrote:

       Bunny Rabbit, my friend, my daughter, my mentor, I will 
     love you and miss you forever. I promise to take good care of 
     your kitty. I know that Jesus is elated to have you in His 
     presence.

  Cassie would have been an amazing person and was an amazing person. 
She was 17 years old. She hadn't yet told us exactly who she was going 
to be, but she was going to do great things. She was killed that day at 
Columbine High School.
  Steven Robert Curnow was the youngest victim at Columbine. He was 
only 14 years old when he died. He loved his family. All of these kids 
loved

[[Page 4884]]

their families, but he was especially close with his family. He was 
pretty close to his true passion as well--``Star Wars.'' He was 14 
years old, and his parents said he watched the ``Star Wars'' movies so 
much he could speak every single line of the movies in sync with the 
actors. He was also a great athlete. He played soccer, trained very 
hard, and even worked locally at 14 years old as a part-time referee. 
He wanted to go into the Navy. He was a pretty well-rounded kid who 
loved ``Star Wars,'' was a great athlete, and wanted to go into the 
military and become a Navy pilot. He was great with young kids too. 
This is what his friends remember, how compassionate he was with young 
kids. He was 14 years old.
  We already had this window into who this kid was going to be. He 
loved having fun and watching ``Star Wars.'' He was great with kids as 
a volunteer referee. He wanted to be a Navy pilot and serve our 
country. He never was able to do these things because he was gunned 
down in Columbine High School.
  Corey DePooter is remembered as a really courageous kid. He was 17 
years old, and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong, maybe 
stronger than he needed to have. When he was growing up and played cops 
and robbers, he refused to be the robber. He needed always to be law 
enforcement in that equation. He wanted to be a marine, as Steven did. 
Steven wanted to be a Navy pilot; Corey wanted to be a marine. After he 
died, he was named an honorary marine in a ceremony in front of his 
grave.
  His friend Austin said: People said Corey was just the kind of guy 
you want to be around. He would always pick up our spirits in a gloomy 
situation.
  He was on the wrestling team. He loved playing golf. He was going to 
serve our country. He was 17 years old, and Corey never was allowed to 
live out that dream.
  Kelly Ann Fleming was a year younger when she died in Columbine. She 
was 16 years old. She was an aspiring author. At 16 years old, she had 
written a great deal of poetry, prose, and a lot of stories about her 
own life. She actually started writing her autobiography. What an 
amazing thing for a 16-year-old. She was writing an autobiography 
covering her life from age 5 until the point she died. The library was 
what Kelly loved. Her mom said it was her one true safe place. She felt 
right in that library surrounded by learning and books. Ironically, in 
school her favorite subject was math. Her favorite math teacher served 
as a pallbearer at her funeral.
  Like most teenagers, she was very much looking forward to obtaining 
her driver's license. She wanted to get out there in a Mustang or 
Corvette and drive around with her friends. She was very bright and 
very good at math. We need more mathematicians, scientists, and 
engineers in this country.
  Kelly Ann, who was 16 then, would be about 30 today. She was not 
allowed to fulfill those dreams.
  This is what happened at Columbine. The two students who walked into 
the school and started shooting couldn't get the weapons themselves. 
They had a friend buy them for them. The friend knew that if they went 
to a gun dealership, they wouldn't get them because they wouldn't be 
able to pass the background check. They went outside the background 
check to get them a different way--a way thousands of people go to buy 
their weapons. The vast majority of them do this not because they are 
trying to get around the background check system but because in private 
sales, gun shows, and on the Internet, we largely don't require 
background checks. This is one of the things we are attempting to fix 
this week.
  There is a belief among many of the family members of the Columbine 
victims that had background checks been universal, possibly the two 
shooters in the school might not have had those weapons. We can't 
guarantee that. I don't want to stand here and say that we know for 
certain that if we had universal background checks, Kelly Ann, Corey, 
Steven, Cassie, and all the rest would still be alive today. We don't 
know that, but chances are a little better. Those families want to have 
had the chance that their sons and daughters might be alive today, 
might have kids of their own today, might be an OB/GYN, a Navy pilot, a 
marine, or mathematician. They would take those chances.
  So when we think about these victims, we need to think about the real 
policy consequences of what we are debating, and while nothing we are 
talking about is going to guarantee these students who died would be 
alive today, boy, it gives it a much better chance it would have 
happened. That is just a sampling of the victims in one high school, in 
Columbine High School.
  What we know is the names reflected by these little figurines are 
largely not victims of mass shootings. These are just the victims since 
December 14. These are folks who just got killed by a stray bullet or 
as a result of a crime of passion or, as I explained in an earlier 
speech today, just because they were taking out the trash from 
McDonald's or going to check out some commotion in their housing 
complex or driving home after dropping off kids at school. They were 
doing what they normally do every day. And because somebody else had a 
gun, legally or illegally, they got killed.
  So let's talk about some of those victims as well. As I said, I am 
going to be down here as much as I can today, tomorrow, and next week 
telling these stories as a means to hopefully inspire us to some 
bipartisan action on the floor. I hope some good things are happening 
today while I am down on the Senate floor. I hope we are coming 
together on this issue. But if these stories don't move people, I am 
not sure what does.
  On January 7 of last year, 2012, a 14-year-old boy in Bridgeport, CT, 
by the name of Justin Thompson, and his friends from Barnum Middle 
School went to a Sweet 16 party for a neighborhood girl on the east end 
of Bridgeport. Justin was a popular eighth grader. His friends and his 
family thought he looked exactly like Alex Rodriguez. Down in 
Bridgeport that is a good thing; up in the rest of Connecticut, maybe 
not so much.
  The parents of the girl had rented a hall and hired a DJ. There was 
no alcohol, there was no fighting. It was just a regular Sweet 16 
party. Eventually, as more kids showed up, it kind of started to get a 
little too big and the police had to come and break it up. But Justin 
left the party and began walking down a street nearby with two other 
young people when all of a sudden two men appeared and started 
shooting. Justin was hit in the head and he was killed in the 
commotion.
  He was 14 years old. He was walking home from a Sweet 16 party. He 
didn't do anything wrong. He wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong 
time. He was in the right place at the right time. He was doing what he 
was supposed to be doing that night--walking home from a Sweet 16 
party--and he got killed by guns. That is Justin Thompson.
  Keijahnae Robinson was 15 years old when, on July 21, 2012, she was 
shot. She told her friends she wanted to be the next Mariah Carey. She 
was a big singer. She loved to sing and she loved to perform. Guess 
where she went on July 20 in Bridgeport, CT. She went to a Sweet 16 
party as well. Her 16th birthday was actually the following week, and 
she was telling friends that she couldn't wait for her party. She was 
enjoying her friend's party but she couldn't wait for her Sweet 16 
party, which was happening the following week.
  After the party, her friend's mom invited some of the girls to sort 
of take the party to her house. It was a warm, beautiful night, and the 
girls were sitting out on the porch when two men came by and opened 
fire on the porch before driving away in a car. Two hours before she 
was shot, there was a robbery just down the street, and somehow this 
was connected to it.
  She was 15 years old. She was sitting on the porch with her friends, 
basking in the afterglow of a wonderful Sweet 16 party, getting ready 
for her 16th birthday and she was gunned down by a drive-by shooting. 
That is Keijahnae Robinson.
  Blair Belcher was 17.
  This is all Bridgeport, CT. I am just giving one city in 2011 and 
2012.

[[Page 4885]]

  Blair was dreaming of one day going to college. He wanted to go into 
electronics and computing. He was walking through an east side park in 
Bridgeport on July 31--he was about to enter his senior year at Harding 
High School--when three shooters gunned him down in the middle of that 
park--a life cut short.
  He was a real talent. Blair had a penchant for fixing things. He 
could fix anything. His mom said it was like a gift, and he wanted to 
do something with it when he graduated. He was 1 year away from 
graduating. He was 17 years old and killed in Bridgeport, CT. He was 
just in a park and he got gunned down in a cross fire.
  It is hard to even figure out why these things happen, but they just 
get built into the background noise of urban gun violence.
  ``TJ'' Mathis was good at a lot of things in Bridgeport. Excuse me, 
TJ, I am sorry. TJ was from New Haven. I got to know TJ's father Lenny 
well. And Lenny will tell you that TJ was good at a lot of things, but 
basketball was at the top of the list. He was the star of Hamden High 
School's team. He led them to three division titles. He was all-State 
and he went on to play Division I basketball at Morgan State University 
and had just been signed to a minor league basketball contract with the 
ABA. He was a star. He was good at a lot of things--this was a 
multitalented kid--but basketball was his thing. He did well and led 
his team. He was going on to a career in basketball.
  On a warm Saturday night in September 2011, he and his friends went 
to a party honoring another basketball legend--someone we are really 
proud of in Connecticut, Ryan Gomes of Waterbury. Ryan went to 
Providence College, went to the NBA and had a great career. After 
leaving the party, his friends realized they were too tired to drive. 
They were responsible. This kid had a career ahead of him. He was going 
to be a basketball star. He was going to the ABA, and a lot of people 
who go to the ABA get to the NBA.
  So TJ decided he needed to get some sleep. Unfortunately, TJ never 
made it home that night. He pulled over to get a little sleep on the 
side of the road and a young man, seeing the three boys asleep on the 
side of the road, pulled up next to them and tried to rob them. When TJ 
woke up and realized he was being robbed in his car, he resisted, and 
the young man shot and killed him.
  On the verge of a career in the ABA, a basketball standout in Hamden, 
CT, and at Morgan State University, just sleeping in his car trying to 
get a few winks before he drove home, being responsible so he didn't do 
something silly like get in a car while he was tired and run off the 
road and hurt somebody else, he gets robbed and shot.
  Just part of the background noise of the people who die every day in 
this country--30, 40, 50, 60 a day. I will come down here today and 
tomorrow and next week, and I won't get through a few days' worth of 
shootings all across this country. The truth is a lot of these 
shootings in cities are happening with illegal guns.
  The opponents of gun legislation are right in one respect. They are 
right that the majority of crimes are not committed by assault weapons. 
Assault weapons have become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. 
That is true. But the reality is these kids I am talking about--Justin 
and Keijahnae and Blair and TJ--were killed by hand guns, most of them 
illegal hand guns. Why do we have so many illegal hand guns out there? 
Because we haven't done anything about it here. We allow 40 percent of 
guns to be sold in this country without background checks.
  Hopefully, we are getting closer to changing that, but we don't have 
a Federal law making gun trafficking illegal. People don't understand 
that someone can take a whole bunch of guns out of a store legally, 
then sell them on the street to people who are legally prohibited from 
purchasing guns, and they have not committed a Federal gun trafficking 
violation. Maybe they have committed a State violation, but they 
haven't committed a Federal violation.
  We can't solve this problem entirely. We are not going to stop bad 
people from taking guns out on the street and doing bad things, but we 
can substantially decrease the likelihood that another Columbine or 
Sandy Hook happens, that another TJ Mathis, a standup young kid, a 
basketball star, gets gunned down just because he is in the wrong place 
at the wrong time, or the right place at the right time with the wrong 
person with the wrong gun. We can do something about it here.
  Throughout the day I have been trying to talk about the variety of 
victims, people on the streets of our cities but also in our schools. 
So before I yield the floor again, I want to go back to the reason we 
are here. I think it is important to tell you who the victims are, but 
I think it is particularly important to tell you who the victims in 
Newtown, CT, were because while Newtown should not have been a tipping 
point, and it should not have taken this long for us to have this 
conversation, I think we all recognize we are having this conversation 
because of the 20 6- and 7-year-olds and the 6 adults who were killed 
that day. And I believe if we don't do something about it there will be 
another Newtown; that we will have another town added to the list of 
Aurora and Littleton and Tucson and Newtown in a matter of weeks or 
months--hopefully longer--if we don't take some action.
  So let me go back, before I yield the floor again today, to talk some 
more about the wonderful children and adults who were killed in 
Newtown.
  Mary Sherlach's husband is here today in DC lobbying on behalf of his 
wife, who was 1 year away from retirement as Sandy Hook's school 
psychologist when she was murdered that day in Sandy Hook Elementary 
School. He is here to talk about the insanity of not taking these high-
capacity magazines off the streets. That is his passion. He believes 
there is a chance there would be boys and girls alive today in Newtown 
had Adam Lanza had 10 bullets per magazine instead of 30 bullets per 
magazine.
  But let me tell you about Mary because Mary is pretty amazing. Mary 
had worked for years at Sandy Hook Elementary. She had actually been 
there for 18 years. She was not just the school psychologist, she was 
involved in basically every school improvement effort you can imagine. 
She was a member of the District Conflict Resolution Committee, the 
Safe School Climate Committee, ironically, the Crisis Intervention 
Team, and the Student Instructional Team. She cared so deeply about the 
school, it wasn't just a 9-to-5 or 9-to-3 or 7-to-3 job for her. She 
put in all sorts of extra hours to make the school better. She was 1 
year away from retirement, and, oh, how she and Bill were looking 
forward to retirement. They had a little cabin on the Finger Lakes--
still have a cabin in upstate New York--and they loved going up there. 
They had planned on spending a good part of their retirement up there 
when they weren't spending time with their daughters Katie and Maura.
  Mary loved gardening, reading, and she loved the theater. She was a 
great neighbor. She was a very beautiful person, who, on that day, did 
something a lot of us hope we would do, though we can't really be sure. 
About 9:30 that morning, Adam Lanza blasted his way through the locked 
doors of Sandy Hook Elementary School. The principal of the school, 
Dawn Hochsprung, and Mary were meeting, I believe, when they heard the 
bullets and the glass crash. They must have known something horrible 
had happened. There are two instincts at that point--maybe three--you 
freeze, you run the other way, or you do what Dawn and Mary did. You 
run to the bullets. That is what she did. Her school was in trouble, 
something awful was happening, and Mary and her principal ran to the 
gunfire and the gunman. They didn't run away.
  Now, plenty of people in that school did heroic and courageous things 
that day--they stowed kids in closets and classrooms, they hugged kids 
as the bullets rained down, but Mary and Dawn were the first people who 
died because they ran right to the bullets.
  Mary is a hero not just because of the 18 years she spent dedicated 
to those kids, not just because of all the efforts she put in to make 
that school a better place, but because that day she did everything in 
her power to make that

[[Page 4886]]

shooting end. She wasn't successful, but she tried, and we all hope we 
have a little bit of Mary Sherlach in us as well.
  Mary is different than those kids. Those kids had their whole life 
ahead of them. We don't know what they would have done. So at least we 
have the benefit of knowing who Mary Sherlach was. At least we have the 
benefit of knowing the wonder that was her life. But she deserved 
retirement, and Bill deserved to have his wife, who had worked so hard 
and had spent all these nights trying to make her school a better 
place--he deserved to have her for their retirement up in the Finger 
Lakes, and he doesn't.
  Ben Wheeler, whom I talked about earlier today, was a very gifted 
musician. Ben was 6 years old when he died that morning. Just before 
December 14, he had performed his first recital at 6 years old. I have 
a 4-year-old at home, and I know what an amazing thing it is to have a 
child be that dedicated to music that by 6 years old they can perform a 
recital. He loved trains. They would go to New York City a lot, and he 
was always more interested in riding the subway and the train than he 
was in visiting the museums or the zoos. That is not uncommon for kids. 
Maybe doing a recital at age 6 is but loving trains is not.
  More than music, more than trains, more than subways, though, Ben 
loved his 9-year-old brother Nate. The two of them did everything 
together. They played soccer, they swam. As I said this morning in my 
first speech before this Chamber, on the way to school that morning Ben 
told his mom he wanted to be an architect when he grew up, but he was 
going to be a paleontologist because that was what his brother Nate was 
going to be, and he wanted to do everything Nate did.
  Ben was going to be a pretty amazing man, that kind of musical talent 
at an early age, a love for his family, and, unfortunately, Ben Wheeler 
lost his life that day.
  Emilie Parker was 6 years old. The one thing you will hear about with 
respect to Emilie when you talk to the Parker family is that she had an 
infectious laugh. You know those laughs you hear once and hope you get 
to hear it again before you leave that person's presence? That was 
Emilie. Her father Robbie described her as bright, creative, and 
loving. She always wanted to try new things, so much so that at 6 years 
old she was actually learning Portuguese. Her father was trying to 
teach her that and it was part of their bond.
  She was an artist. She loved to draw with markers and she was 
talented. At 2 years old, she could write her own name and she could 
draw stick figures of her family. She loved art so much that her 
parents Robbie and Alissa have decided to spend a part of their period 
of mourning and time after that to set up a fund that honors her 
creativity. As I said earlier today, what is amazing is that so many of 
these families have dedicated big portions of their time in the 
horrible 4 months since trying to figure out ways to bring out some of 
the goodness and light from these kids' lives to the rest of the 
community. So Robbie and Alissa have set up a fund that is going to 
support art programs in schools, so art programs have a little more 
resources so other kids similar to their daughter can experience the 
joys of drawing and painting. She was learning Portuguese. This is 
somebody with a very inquisitive, thoughtful mind, and we never are 
going to get to know who Emilie Parker was going to grow up to be.
  Jack Pinto was 6 years old, and he was already a jock. He loved the 
New York Giants, and he had an idol whose name is Victor Cruz. He loved 
Victor Cruz. He followed everything Victor Cruz did. He was ecstatic 
when the Giants won the Super Bowl and Cruz played a big part. Victor 
was wonderful enough in the days following the tragedy to honor Jack's 
memory. During the game after the tragedy, he wore writing on his 
cleats and his gloves that said: Jack Pinto, my hero. Jack was buried 
in a Victor Cruz jersey.
  He was also a wrestler. I didn't even know that you wrestled at 6 
years old, but Jack did, and he was pretty good at it. To show how 
tough Jack was, in one of his practices, he lost a tooth. When a 6-
year-old loses a tooth, you would think that would start the tears 
flowing. But Jack didn't cry when he lost that tooth. He just took the 
tooth, handed it to his coach, and went back wrestling with a gapped-
tooth smile on his face. That was Jack. He was tough. He was an 
athlete. He had perseverance. Imagine who Jack Pinto was going to be 
when he grew up. We are not going to know because of what happened that 
day.
  I get it. I know there is a risk of overselling policy change. I 
don't want to make it sound like I am coming down to the floor and 
telling you these stories because these kids are going to come back to 
life if we pass some bill or that we are going to guarantee this 
doesn't happen again. I don't want to oversell what we are going to do.
  But the 3,300 people who have died since Newtown should tell us that 
enough is enough and that we should try something. Even if we are not 
absolutely, 100 percent, ironclad guaranteed that what we are going to 
do is going to work, we should try something. Because it is not OK that 
somebody can walk into a school with a military-style assault weapon 
and shoot bullets at the rate of six per second. It is not OK that a 
couple students can do an end-around on the background check system to 
buy guns so they can walk into their high school and kill 10 people and 
wound as many more. It is not all right that there are thousands of 
illegal guns on our streets that are used to kill 16- and 17-year-olds 
on their way home from Sweet 16 parties. There are no guarantees that 
what we are going to do this week and next week is going to solve 
everything, but we have to try something.
  So I am going to continue to come down to the floor over the course 
of the next few days to talk about these victims--the victims from 
Newtown, from Columbine. Hopefully, later today I will be able to talk 
about some of the victims from Virginia Tech and Wisconsin. Of course, 
there are just binders full of stories that we could put on this floor 
regarding urban gun violence that plagues our cities every day. These 
stories are important because too often we trade in this body in 
statistics, that we just talk in terms of politics. Underlying this 
debate are 20 little kids in Newtown whose lives were cut short but 
also thousands upon thousands of other kids, young adults, and adults 
whose stories deserve to be told.
  At this point, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         The President's Budget

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the President submitted his budget 
today. It is very late. It was due February 4. It is the first time 
since the Budget Act was passed in 1974 that a President submitted a 
budget after the Senate has voted on one and after the House has voted 
on one and both passed budget resolutions. That was a disappointing 
event. The President, as the Chief Executive, as any mayor, as any 
Governor normally that I have ever heard of, wants to be the one who 
lays out a financial plan for his city or State to advocate for what 
would make the State and city better and then encourage the members of 
the board of directors--the Senate and the House--to evaluate his plan 
and support it so they can put the country and the State and the city 
on a sound financial path. Once again, we have had a very irresponsible 
approach from the President on the question of budgeting.
  A few weeks ago, this Senate passed a budget for the first time in 4 
years. The law requires that the Senate bring up a budget in committee 
by April 1. It requires that it be brought to the floor and passed by 
April 15. This is the first

[[Page 4887]]

time in 4 years that process has been completed; whereas, every year 
the House of Representatives has produced a budget, a responsible 
budget that would put America on a sound financial course.
  This year the Senate passed a budget that was irresponsible, did not 
change the debt course of America, left an annual deficit virtually the 
same as if we had no budget at all. It did not improve current law. The 
Senate budget left us with a very substantial budget deficit in the 
10th year of the budget.
  On the other hand, the House, Congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the 
Budget Committee, produced a budget that balances in 10 years. We have 
heard great complaints that his plan cuts spending too much. Do you 
know that plan did not cut spending? It allows spending to increase 
every year for 10 years. It allowed spending to increase at the rate of 
3.4 percent a year, which is higher than the inflation rate is expected 
to be in America. Yet it balances.
  The Senate budget, on the other hand, has a 5-percent-plus increase 
in spending every year, leaving us on an unsustainable debt path, 
leaving us increasing deficits every year, nowhere close to balancing 
the budget. That is not the right path.
  What happened today when the President produced his budget? It is no 
better, maybe even worse, than the Senate bill. For example, in his 
budget it would add, over the 10-year period, $8.2 trillion in new debt 
to the Nation. We now have already $17 trillion in gross debt. This 
would add another $8.2 trillion to it; over $25 trillion will then be 
the debt of the United States. The 1-year interest in 2023, under the 
President's budget, would amount to $763 billion.
  The base defense budget is about $540 billion; $763 billion exceeds 
Social Security--which is the largest expenditure. It exceeds Medicare 
in spending. It would be the largest single item in the budget and the 
fastest growing. It is still assuming relatively low interest rates, 
which are extraordinarily low at this moment but could surge in the 
future and would hurt us substantially.
  How much is that? We now spend about $3.7 trillion, so $763 billion 
is a lot of money just to pay the interest. The Federal highway bill 
today is about $40 billion, a little over $40 billion. Interest on the 
debt would be $763 billion in 1 year.
  Young people, we are indeed borrowing from their future to spend and 
live high today on the theory somehow it will be paid back in the 
future by the people there. How will it be paid back, interest of $763 
billion in 1 year? This is not responsible. It is an unsustainable 
course.
  Erskine Bowles, who was chosen by President Obama to head the fiscal 
commission, former President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff, a 
successful businessman, he told us in the Budget Committee a couple 
years ago this Nation is on an unsustainable course. This Nation ``has 
never faced a more predictable financial crisis.''
  What he is saying is that if we do not change the course we are on, 
it is guaranteed we are going to have a financial crisis and we should 
avoid that. We have the opportunity to avoid that. We do not have to 
slash spending, as Congressman Ryan has made clear in his budget. You 
can allow spending to increase faster than the growth of inflation and 
still balance the budget. But, oh no, not here, not the President of 
the United States, not the Members of this Senate, the majority. They 
say we cannot live with a 3.4-percent increase in spending every year. 
We will run the risk.
  The President said recently he was not setting a balanced budget as a 
goal. That is absolutely true because his budget does not balance. It 
never comes close to balancing, has no intention of it balancing ever. 
They use the words ``sustainable balance,'' but it is not a responsible 
approach to the business of America. I will talk a minute about some of 
the dangers of this debt beyond just the fact that interest is going to 
suck huge amounts of money out of our annual budget that we ought to be 
using to invest in America.
  How do they do it? When you eliminate the accounting gimmicks and 
honestly look at the budget presented by the President today, over 10 
years, the net deficit reduction is only $119 billion. Each year that 
is about $12 billion in deficit reduction. The deficit last year, 2012, 
was 1,080 billion--1,000-plus billion, and we are going to average an 
$12 billion reduction in the deficit under this budget? That is 
virtually nothing. Properly accounted for, properly analyzed, based on 
the current law, I am correct in giving you those numbers. It is not an 
unfair number.
  What about this year that we are in, 2013, that will end September 
30? Does he cut anything from our spending level this year? No. 
Spending and debt increases. The debt is projected to increase, between 
now and September 30, by $61 billion, more than where it would be under 
current. So it increases the debt this year.
  What about next year? Does it increase or reduce the deficit? It 
increases the deficit again by approximately $100 billion-plus--$100 
billion. I believe that figure is correct. I might be incorrect on that 
figure, but it definitely increases the deficit this year by $61 
billion.
  Taxes go up by $1.1 trillion--$1,100 billion--in new taxes. So taxes 
go up $1.1 trillion, on top of the $650 billion in new taxes that were 
passed in January of this year and on top of the $1 trillion in new 
taxes passed as part of ObamaCare, the health care reform.
  That is another huge tax increase. But we are told not to worry 
because this is a balanced plan. As we talked about the budget plan 
that was on the floor--and we had 50 hours of debate, a lot of 
amendments, a lot of discussion--our colleagues kept using the word 
``balanced.'' They refer to their budget, the majority's--Democratic 
budget that they laid forward, they used ``balanced'' over and over 
again. I put up a chart. The numbers kept running up. We got to 100, 
200 times the word ``balanced'' was used in 15 or 18 hours of debate on 
their side; ``balanced,'' over 200 times.
  My staff went back and reviewed the numbers and it was 230 times. 
What do they mean by the word ``balanced''? Why did they use the word 
``balanced''? Because some pollster somewhere, some political 
consultant, said people like to hear that. They want a balanced budget.
  Their budget didn't balance, nowhere close. So they had several spins 
on it,--first, they wanted a lot of people who were not following 
closely to hear the word ``balanced'' and believed they had a balanced 
budget when they didn't come close to having a budget that balanced. 
They never said the budget balanced because they knew that was not 
true. They had deficits every year, $400 billion-plus every year. So a 
balanced approach was what I think people who kind of kept up with 
things believed--that we would raise taxes by $1 trillion, we would cut 
spending by $1 trillion, and this would be a balanced approach. This is 
the way to reduce our debt and deficit: raise taxes and cut spending. 
That is the responsible balanced approach to getting our fiscal house 
in order.
  But that is not what the budget did. The budget increased taxes by 
$1.1 trillion--$1,100 billion--but it increased spending by $964 
billion. It did not cut spending at all. It increased spending. 
Basically, we ended up with only $119 billion in deficit reduction over 
10 years--zero, basically, an insignificant amount. So it increases 
taxes and increases spending. It is the classic Democratic weakness, I 
have to say: Tax; spend. Tax more; spend more. Don't worry about the 
deficit.
  But somebody needs to be worrying about the deficit because it is a 
very important matter and we have to deal with it. This morning at the 
Budget Committee we had a new nominee, Ms. Sylvia Burwell, for the 
Director of the Office of Management and Budget, one of the most 
important positions in the entire government. She is a delightful lady 
and I know she wants to do well. She held a position in that office 
some time ago under President Clinton, a deputy position, and she had 
some experience in it, but it is a tough job. We need somebody who can 
whip these agencies and departments into shape. The OMB is the one who 
answers to the

[[Page 4888]]

President. The OMB is the one who says: Mr. Secretary of the Interior, 
Mr. Secretary of Defense, we don't have that much money. You can't 
spend that much money. I send your budget back to you. Take another $10 
billion, take another $5 billion out of it. They are the heavies. So 
she is asking for a tough job, no doubt about it.
  At that hearing, I talked a little bit about a great concern of mine. 
My concern is that our debt is so large now that it is pulling down 
economic growth in America. Let me repeat that. Our debt is so high it 
is pulling down economic growth, and slow growth means fewer jobs 
created. The difference between 2 percent growth and 3 percent growth 
is 1 million jobs, according to Christina Romer, who served President 
Obama in the White House: So the more growth we have, the more jobs are 
created. The less growth we have, fewer jobs are created.
  We had a disastrous jobs report last Friday. It was terrible and 
deeply disappointing. What it said was we added 88,000 jobs when they 
were predicting we would add about 200,000. But more significantly, 
486,000 people dropped out of the labor force, had given up finding 
work--almost one-half million, and less than 100,000 got a job. That 
was a very dangerous trend.
  It comes around to this question: Is our debt so high that it 
adversely impacts economic growth? Let me explain it this way. The 
Rogoff-Reinhart study and book that they wrote analyzes debt in America 
and it calculated it and over the world. They examined economies 
worldwide. What they found was that when debt reaches 90 percent of the 
size of your economy, 90 percent of GDP, growth begins to slow. It 
slows a median amount of 1 percent, on average much more, as much as 2 
percent. Growth--GDP growth begins to slow when debt reaches that high 
a level.
  What kind of debt level is it we are dealing with? Many people think, 
and the President keeps saying, our debt-to-GDP ratio is 77 percent.
  We have examined the Rogoff and Reinhart study. Rogoff and Reinhart 
used a higher figure because they compared countries from around the 
world, and those were the numbers they had. When the gross debt reaches 
90 percent of GDP, we begin to have an economic decline. Our percentage 
of gross debt to GDP is 104 percent.
  I contend and I believe that the projections for growth for the last 
4 years have all been higher than the growth we have actually seen. In 
fact, it has been much lower than projected--even by the President and 
the Congressional Budget Office. It appears to me that the gross debt 
figure being over 100 percent is indicative of a slowing growth.
  Rogoff and Reinhart are not the only ones who have done studies. 
Others have done studies as well. Europe has high debt rates. Per 
capita, we have more debt than any country in Europe and even more than 
Greece.
  There have been studies in Europe. The International Monetary Fund, 
the European Central Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements 
all have economists, and they are concerned about high debt in Europe. 
They have also been analyzing these figures. All three of those, 
through an independent process of analyzing the impact of high debt on 
economic growth--studies indicated that high debt slows growth. Well, 
how much? Looking at each one of those three studies, the U.S. debt is 
in the range that pulls down growth.
  I say to my colleagues today, please be aware that there is a cost to 
borrowing and spending and adding debt.
  The budget the President submitted today would add $8.2 trillion in 
debt. It would take us from $17 trillion to $25 trillion in debt. Even 
with a growing economy, we would still remain well over 90 percent GDP 
to debt, and that is an unacceptable figure.
  It is deeply disappointing that we do not have leadership in the 
White House that would lead us to get off of this path.
  Mr. President, I see the majority leader is here. I know he has 
extraordinary duties and challenges in his busy life, and I will just 
wrap up and say that I am disappointed in the President's budget. It 
does not change the debt course of America in any way. It is not a 
responsible plan for the future. It does not balance the budget ever 
and has no intention of ever balancing the budget. All he talks about 
is some sort of sustainable debt course. We cannot continue on that 
course, as Mr. Erskine Bowles, his own fiscal commission chairman, has 
told us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schatz). The majority leader is 
recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate my friend yielding. My time on 
the floor is going to be very brief.


           Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Nomination

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 4 p.m. today the 
Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 59; that 2 
hours of debate be equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use 
or yielding back of that time, the Senate proceed to vote without 
intervening action or debate on the nomination; that the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that 
any related statements be printed in the Record; and that President 
Obama be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate 
then resume legislative session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I gave my first speech on the floor of the 
Senate this morning. This week and next week, we will be debating one 
of the most fundamental issues that come to a body such as this: What 
can we do to better protect our kids and our loved ones from unexpected 
death? I care about this issue not just because it is one that is 
important to the families of victims in New Haven, Bridgeport, 
Hartford, and others who have been the victims of routine gun violence 
in Connecticut but, of course, because of what happened in Sandy Hook.
  I spoke this morning more broadly about the awful experience of being 
in Connecticut, the personal experience of having been at the firehouse 
that day, the wonderful experience of having gotten to know the 
families of the Sandy Hook victims since then, and to have witnessed 
the millions of acts of kindness that have showered down upon Newtown 
in the days and weeks and months since. That tragedy has become the 
tipping point that has brought us here to talk about a solution to at 
least some of the epidemic gun violence that for too long has plagued 
the streets of our cities but now comes to us in waves of mass 
shootings happening in our schools and in our movie theaters and in our 
places of worship.
  My hope, as a brand new Member of the Senate, as someone who has 
lived through this experience as one of the representatives of Sandy 
Hook, is to just try to tell my colleagues whom we are talking about 
here. I think we get caught up in the numbers and the policy debates 
and we forget these are real kids, these are real people.
  This is just a small sample of the victims in Newtown and the victims 
from across Connecticut, in Bridgeport and in New Haven, who have been 
gunned down prematurely. There are just too many of them. Over 3,300 
people have died from guns since those 20 kids and six adults were 
killed in Newtown. We are not powerless. We can do something about it.
  I have said over and over as I have been here on the floor today that 
there are no guarantees. We are not going to pass a law that is going 
to immediately flip a switch and assure that gun violence would not 
continue to be a problem, but it can be less of a problem. It can be 
less of a reality for kids who are walking to school fearing for their 
lives in urban America. It can be less of a reality for parents sending 
their children to elementary school, never thinking that something like 
what

[[Page 4889]]

happened at Sandy Hook could occur. We can do something about it.
  So I wanted to come back again to continue talking about the victims, 
to give them a face. I am very encouraged, as I think all of us are, to 
see some movement between both parties coming together on one element 
of this debate: background checks. Hopefully, this will be looked upon 
as a very good week in the midst of this debate. So I want to tell my 
colleagues whom we are talking about.
  Let me go back to Newtown. I think this is my fourth time on the 
Senate floor today, and I still haven't told my colleagues about 
everybody who perished in that school.
  The youngest victim that day was barely 6 years old. His name was 
Noah Pozner. He was the youngest victim and he was the first to be 
buried. His was the first funeral I went to amongst countless funerals 
I lost count of. He was young, but he was described by his uncle as 
``smart as a whip.'' He had a real rambunctious streak. He could be a 
handful for his family and for his twin sister Arielle who was also in 
that school on Friday morning. She was luckily in a different class. 
Arielle survived; her brother did not.
  He was already a very good reader. He was one of the youngest kids in 
his first grade class, but he was a very good reader and he was looking 
forward to a book he had just bought at a book fair. I will butcher the 
pronunciation, but it was a Ninjago book he bought at a fair he was 
excited about.
  He was going to a birthday party on the following day, Saturday, that 
he was just bubbling about in the hours before he went to school. As is 
true for so many of the victims, his family describes him as having a 
huge heart. The Pozners are an amazing family who have spoken out. His 
mother and his uncle have been so articulate since the shooting, 
calling on the Nation to change. They have been in Washington visiting 
my office, and I know they have visited with other Members of the 
Senate--just another one of these families who have somehow found the 
courage and the strength amidst this awful grieving to come here and 
explain why things need to change, how they will not feel any justice 
until we do something here.
  Caroline Previdi loved to draw and to dance. She was 6 years old as 
well. She had one of these big smiles that everybody loved. It brought 
happiness to everybody who saw that smile. She and her family were 
active members of the St. Rose Church. I can't tell my colleagues 
enough about St. Rose Church. About 10 of the victims were parishioners 
there. This hit that church harder than any institution save for the 
school. The monsignor there has been an absolute hero to the community, 
having buried almost a dozen of his kids. He has come down to 
Washington to try to lobby for some sense of change, and he has brought 
that community together.
  At that funeral he presided over, everybody wore pink. It was 
Caroline's favorite color. My colleagues have heard me say that about a 
number of little girls who died, a lot of whom were big fans of the 
color pink. Her mom will always remember Caroline as the shadow of her 
older brother. Sometimes to his dismay, she followed him around 
everywhere and she adored him. Her brother Walker and she were big New 
York Yankees fans. Even though she was only 6 years old, when her 
family recently went to Boston for a family trip, she refused to walk 
into Fenway Park because she was a devoted Yankees fan.
  Caroline had a wonderful spirit and we will never know exactly what 
she would grow up to be. She died that day.
  Jessica Rekos was 6 years old and, as do so many little 6-year-old 
girls, she loved everything about animals. Again, another trend. This 
was a couple of first grade classes full of animal lovers, and even 
some of their teachers were big animal lovers as well.
  Jessica loved horses. So anything having to do with a horse, she 
wanted it. She watched movies about horses, she read books about 
horses, she drew pictures about horses, and she wrote stories about 
horses. She was murdered just 11 days before Christmas. She was hoping 
that Santa would bring her a cowgirl hat and cowgirl boots, and her 
family even promised her that maybe, if she was really good, in a 
couple years she could get her own horse.
  She loved going to Cape Cod and she especially loved seeing the 
whales. She had a fondness for aquatic life as well, a big fan of the 
movie ``Free Willie,'' and she loved going to the cape to see if she 
could catch a glimpse of those whales.
  She was curious. That curiosity was going to spring forth into a 
wonderful young woman who was going to take her loves and her curiosity 
and her passion for life and make it into something great. We will 
never get to know exactly what that would be. Jessica died at age 6.
  Ana Marquez-Greene, I talked about Ana this morning in my first 
speech. Her mother Nelba, who is just amazing--Nelba is a social worker 
who has a passion for helping people. She is in DC right now as we 
speak trying to push us to change things. Her little daughter Ana grew 
up in a musical family. Ana's father Jimmy is a very well known 
saxophone player, a Hartford native. The family came back to 
Connecticut to raise their kids. So Ana was musical. She used to love 
to sing and dance. She loved most of all doing that at church. She was 
so connected to her church. She loved reading the Bible. She loved 
having the Bible read to her. She loved being part of the dance and 
singing experience at her church. Her parents said she didn't walk 
anywhere. That was not her method of transportation. Her mode of 
transport was to dance from place to place.
  She is survived by her older brother Isaiah who is a third grader at 
Sandy Hook Elementary and who survived that day. My colleagues can find 
Ana's performances on YouTube. Ana's performances have been viewed tens 
of hundreds of thousands of times online. She was a talent. She had 
talent in her blood. Who knows whether she was going to choose music 
and dance as a career, but those creative muscles she had and the 
amazing parents who were raising her were going to assure that she was 
going to be something special. She died that day, horribly, but her 
family--her mother Nelba especially--is just determined to make sure we 
honor her memory by doing something here.
  Five kids escaped Sandy Hook Elementary School that day out of those 
classrooms. Eleven kids--around that number--survived. Six of them hid 
in a closet, but five of them escaped because the shooter had to 
reload. When he reloaded, he perhaps fumbled the exchange, and five 
kids ran out of a classroom and were discovered nearby some moments 
later. Five children--unfortunately, none of those pictured in this 
poster--are alive today because as does happen in so many of these mass 
shootings, an opportunity presented itself when the shooter changed 
magazines.
  I wish we didn't have to get into the detailed nuances of how these 
mass shootings play out to try to find a way out of mass violence, but 
we do because they are happening over and over. So we now have some 
experience. We now, to our great horror, have some data.
  Empirically we know what happens. And what happened in Sandy Hook 
that killed Ana and Jessica and Noah and Caroline and so many others is 
that he had trouble reloading, five kids escaped, and either at the end 
of the 10 minutes because he had trouble reloading, or maybe just 
because the police were coming in, he decided enough was enough and 
shot himself. In Tucson, when the shooter reloaded, it was enough time 
for somebody to jump on him and end that incident. In Aurora, again, 
when the shooter had difficulty reloading--the gun jammed--the shooting 
ended.
  So 154 bullets in 10 minutes at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed 
26 people. The shooter had to reload about six times. What would have 
happened if he had to reload 15 times? How many more kids would have 
escaped? How many more opportunities would we have had for the shooting 
to go wrong? Would there have been a moment where somebody could have 
jumped on him and stopped him, as they did in Tucson? I don't know the 
answer to

[[Page 4890]]

these questions. Nobody knows the answer to these questions. But they 
are important ones to ask because they are relevant to the conversation 
we are having. If the answer is that there is a pretty good chance one 
of those three things would have happened--the gun would have jammed, 
kids would have escaped, or somebody could have stopped the shooting--
then we should think twice before dismissing the idea that a limitation 
on the size of magazines sold in this Nation wouldn't have an effect on 
future mass shootings.
  Our first job should be to stop that shooting from happening in the 
first place. But given the fact we are living in this terrible, awful 
reality in which they are happening on a regular basis, then we have to 
be talking about what we can do to limit the damage and the carnage 
when they do occur.
  I will tell my colleagues while no one is sure of the difference in 
outcome at Sandy Hook had the assault weapons ban still been in effect, 
there are plenty of parents there who do believe there is a pretty good 
chance some of their kids might still be alive had that bill still been 
in effect. Remember, these were guns and clips purchased legally. For 
all the arguments that all the laws on the books aren't going to stop 
criminals, I am not sure Nancy Lanza was going to go onto the black 
market to purchase an AR-15 or ammunition that was illegal. Things 
could have been different.
  But as we know, every day there are more people killed in this 
country by guns than were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary that day. I 
will tell my colleagues that I have heard some very visceral anger from 
parents and gun victims in the cities I represent because they 
rightfully wonder why we are talking about this issue now--after Sandy 
Hook--when, for the last 20 years, young men and women have been 
getting gunned down in our cities and it didn't seem as though this 
place stood up and cared too much about it. They welcome the 
conversation, but they wonder where all of this compassion was when 
people such as Ronnie Chambers were being killed.
  Ronnie Chambers was 33 years old when he was shot in January 2012. He 
grew up with his mom and his siblings in Chicago's notorious Cabrini-
Green housing projects and he became involved in the gang problem at a 
young age. But he had to watch something that no one should ever have 
to watch.
  You think it is terrible that Noah Pozner's twin sister has to grow 
up with the knowledge that her brother was gunned down. Think about 
what Ronnie Chambers had to grow up with, having watched his other 
three siblings die at the hands of gun violence.
  Ronnie became convinced, after watching his three other siblings die 
from gun violence, that he had to turn his life around. So he did. He 
went into the music industry and he became a music producer and he 
decided to go even further and to start to mentor young performers.
  People remember him in the industry as ``everybody's hero.'' He was 
always ``pointing kids in the right direction'' despite his own 
difficult upbringing.
  He was fun too. He loved banana milkshakes and onion rings. Then he 
was killed--the fourth of four siblings to be gunned down in and around 
Chicago. Four brothers and sisters: His brother Carlos shot in 1995; 
his brother Jerome shot in 2000; his sister LaToya shot just 3 months 
after Jerome; and then Ronnie, dead at 33.
  How about Amber Deanna Stanley, who was killed last summer in 
Kettering, MD. She was spending a nice, quiet evening at home when a 
gunman literally kicked down her door and opened fire. She was shot 
multiple times while she was in her bed. She was 17 years old--17. She 
just started her senior year at Flowers High School in Springdale, MD. 
She was enrolled in a very elite science and technology program.
  It is crazy, but this is probably the third or fourth or fifth young 
woman I have talked about here today--and I am probably into 30 or 40 
people I have talked about--another young woman who was pursuing a 
career in engineering and science. She had big dreams. She was an 
honors student. She was in AP classes, and she wanted to go to Harvard 
University and maybe become a doctor. She had the grades to do it. She 
could have gone anywhere she wanted.
  She was also very popular. She was a kid whom people were drawn to. 
She was a peer leader and she would do wonderful, magnanimous things 
for her classmates, such as she would bring cupcakes to them somewhat 
spontaneously.
  One classmate said three words: ``She was amazing''--until August 23 
of last year, a gunman kicked down her door, opened fire, and Amber was 
gone.
  How about Angela Player, 37 years old, shot on February 21 of this 
year, an avid reader who also loved the outdoors, gardening, and 
kayaking. She was a fan of everything fun and exciting--fast cars. She 
liked training dogs. She was killed by her ex-husband.
  A lot of these are random killings, but a lot of these killings are 
by somebody you know. Her ex-husband actually did not have a history of 
domestic violence but had a gun ready and available in a fit of rage, 
and she left behind a son and a daughter.
  Mr. President, 3,300 people have died since Newtown, and I think it 
is important, as we have this debate, to come down and talk about who 
these victims are. I will be doing this over the course of today and 
tomorrow and this week to try to bring a little bit of color to the 
discussion we are having.
  At this time, I yield back the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague, Senator 
Murphy, who gave his first speech on the floor of the Senate this 
morning on the same topic. He is eminently qualified to speak to this 
issue because of his unhappy circumstance of being a Senator-elect when 
the Newtown, CT, massacre occurred. I have spoken to him and Senator 
Blumenthal about their personal life experiences and memories they will 
never forget about that day and those that followed.
  I thank him for his voice on this issue, for his inspiration, and for 
speaking for many in Newtown, CT, and across the Nation who otherwise 
might not have as strong a voice on the floor of the Senate. I thank 
the Senator very much for that.
  I would like to speak as in morning business briefly and then return 
to the underlying bill on firearms. I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       Remembering Robert Remini

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in an interview with Roll Call newspaper a 
while back, Robert Remini--one of the great historians of our time--
talked about what he hoped for after he died. Professor Remini said his 
idea of Heaven would be listening with his own ears to debates 
involving congressional giants such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and 
John C. Calhoun.
  On March 28--Holy Thursday--Robert Remini died in a suburban Chicago 
hospital from complications of a recent stroke at the age of 91.
  I hope his wish comes true. I hope right now he is listening in awe 
somewhere in Heaven as the great issues are debated in the Great 
Beyond.
  Robert Remini lived a good and full life. He spent most of his career 
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he founded the 
university's respected Institute for the Humanities. He produced a 
remarkable body of work that brought important chapters of America's 
history to life.
  In 2002, at the age of 80, Professor Remini became a distinguished 
visiting scholar of American history at the Library of Congress.
  At the request of Librarian of Congress James Billington, Professor 
Remini spent the next 3 years writing the history of the House of 
Representatives. That is where I met him. What a man, a great 
historian, a great personality, with a smile on his face every minute 
of the day.
  Professor Remini was once asked how he found the stamina to start 
writing another book at the age of 80. He said he started by setting a 
goal for himself to write nine pages a day. Then he did what he had 
been taught by the Jesuits

[[Page 4891]]

who trained him. He designed a plan to reward success and punish 
failure. This historian, this writer, this man who had assigned himself 
nine pages a day, would only get his reward at the end of the day--a 
martini--if he met his goal of nine pages.
  His system worked. ``The House'' was published in the year 2006.
  In 2005, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, from Illinois, asked Professor 
Remini to become the official Historian of the U.S. House of 
Representatives. The post of House Historian had been empty for more 
than 10 years. Over the next 5 years, Professor Remini rebuilt the 
office's small staff and reestablished its reputation for impartial 
scholarship and integrity.
  He retired from the House in 2010, but he kept writing until shortly 
before his death.
  In all, he wrote and coauthored more than 20 books. His subjects 
included Presidents John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren, House 
Speaker Henry Clay, Senator and statesman Daniel Webster, and Mormon 
leader Joseph Smith.
  As one former colleague said, he wrote with such immediacy ``that you 
might think he'd had lunch . . . with Martin Van Buren. He is an 
American treasure.''
  The subject that interested him the most, though, was none of those 
great figures but Andrew Jackson. At least 10 of Professor Remini's 
books were about Jackson, including an influential three-volume 
biography, the third volume of which won the National Book Award for 
nonfiction in 1984.
  To Professor Remini, Andrew Jackson was ``the embodiment of the new 
American.'' He was:

       An orphan, poor, and yet talented, who through his own 
     abilities, raised himself to the highest office in the land. 
     He personified what the American Dream is all about. That it 
     is not class or money or bloodlines that are rewarded in 
     [America], but rather the ability of each individual to 
     achieve something worthwhile in life.

  Professor Remini did not excuse Jackson for his backward views on 
slavery or women's rights or his harsh treatment of Native Americans.
  He regarded Jackson as admirable because:

       He believed in this Union. He believed in this country. . . 
     . [H]e . . . believed that government shouldn't be for only a 
     small segment of society, but for all of us. That's what I 
     want in [a] President.

  So said Professor Remini.
  Robert Vincent Remini was born in New York City. He graduated from 
Fordham University in 1943. He wanted to be a lawyer, but that changed 
after he enlisted in the Navy during World War II. To pass the time on 
board ship, he read history, including all nine volumes of Henry Adams' 
``History of the United States of America.'' By the time the war ended, 
he knew it was history, not law, that he loved the most.
  He returned to New York to obtain his master's and doctorate in 
history from Columbia University, and he married his childhood 
sweetheart, Ruth Kuhner. He taught at Fordham University for 12 years.
  In 1965, he moved to Chicago and became the first chair of the 
history department at the newly established University of Illinois at 
Chicago's Circle Campus. He later founded the university's 
interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities. He chaired that from 
1981 to 1987. He became a professor emeritus of history and research 
professor emeritus of humanities in 1991.
  He was an institution, not only in the field of history but certainly 
in Chicago and at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  In addition to the National Book Award, his other honors include the 
Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation Award, the Carl Sandburg Award for 
Nonfiction, the University Scholar Award of the University of Illinois, 
the American Historical Association's Award for Scholarly Distinction, 
and the Freedom Award from the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.
  Professor Remini's wife Ruth passed away last year. I wish to express 
my condolences to their children, Robert, Elizabeth, and Joan, their 
three grandchildren, and to Professor Remini's friends, colleagues, and 
former students. I will close with this: In 2003, the National 
Endowment for the Humanities invited Professor Remini to deliver its 
inaugural ``Heroes of History'' lecture. He chose as his subject the 
Members of the first Congress.
  This is part of what he said of those men in whose footsteps many of 
us follow:

       Ordinary. Most of them were ordinary individuals as far as 
     the record shows, yet they performed heroically. And they 
     deserve to be called heroes because they set aside their 
     local and regional differences, their economic and personal 
     prejudices, in their effort to make the Constitution succeed 
     and thereby establish an enduring union. They had many 
     disagreements, but they resolved them in compromise. And they 
     did it for the sake of showing the world that a republican 
     government was a viable instrument for the protection of 
     liberty and betterment of its citizens.

  If Professor Remini were here today, he would tell us that the spirit 
of principled compromise is more than a noble part of our past; it is 
the best hope for our future.
  Now I will make a statement as part of the continuing debate on the 
outstanding legislation, S. 649.
  As I mentioned before when Senator Murphy spoke, I rise to speak 
about a vote the Senate is going to take tomorrow as we begin debating 
legislation to reduce gun violence.
  I am glad we are finally having this vote. There were some who 
thought we would never reach this point. It has been far too long since 
the Senate held a reasonable debate on how best to protect our children 
and families and schools and communities from violent shootings.
  When we talk to the families who have lost children to gunfire--and 
it has been my sad duty to do that over and over again--and when we 
talk to law enforcement officials who are getting outgunned by 
criminals on the streets every day, we know this debate is long 
overdue.
  Some Senators have said they do not want to touch this issue. They 
have announced their intention to filibuster in order to try to stop us 
from even debating gun safety. This is an extreme political position. 
It is an unfortunate position. But, fortunately, over the last few 
days, a growing number of Senators from both sides of the aisle have 
made it clear this debate is going to move forward.
  I hope the vote tomorrow reflects that, and when we get to the point 
where we are in debate, we can roll up our sleeves and get to work. We 
can look at our Constitution, which we have sworn to uphold, including 
the second amendment, and we can also look to the needs of America to 
protect the life, liberty, and opportunity for happiness for the people 
who live in this country.
  According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 11,000 Americans--
11,000--are murdered with guns each year. That is more each year than 
all the American lives lost in the 9/11 attacks, Iraq, and Afghanistan 
combined.
  When we count suicides and accidental shootings, more than 31,000 
Americans are killed by guns each year. That is 87 Americans killed 
every single day by guns. Another 200 are shot each day but survive. 
Think of those numbers.
  Gun violence in America is truly at epidemic levels. Gunshots now 
kill over four times more Americans per year than HIV/AIDS, and 
shooting deaths are projected to surpass car accident deaths within the 
next few years.
  These statistics should give us all pause. But numbers cannot truly 
capture the deeply personal impact of gun violence. There are too many 
families who now face an empty chair at the dinner table, too many 
parents who walk past an empty bedroom, too many husbands and wives who 
have lost the loves of their lives because of guns.
  It is heartbreaking. But, sadly, it is almost routine--in a park in 
Chicago; at a nightclub in my hometown of East St. Louis, IL; in a 
movie theater in Auroro, CO; in a shopping center in Tucson, AZ; in a 
Sikh temple in Oak Creek, WI; at military bases in Texas, Virginia, and 
Kentucky; in college lecture halls in DeKalb, IL, and Blacksburg, VA; 
sadly, in the first-grade classrooms in Newtown, CT.
  Since the Newtown shooting on December 14, more than 3,300 Americans

[[Page 4892]]

have been killed by guns, including at least 220 children and 
teenagers. The violence continues. Americans all across the country are 
saying with one voice: Enough. We have to do something. We need to 
protect our kids, our communities, our schools, and this epidemic of 
gun violence has to come to an end.
  On Thursday, we will vote to begin debate on a bill that would take 
commonsense steps to prevent gun violence. It is called the Safe 
Communities, Safe Schools Act. The Senate Judiciary Committee reported 
the parts of the bill last month. The committee held three lengthy 
hearings and four markups which I attended.
  The Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act would do three things: First, 
it makes sure that the FBI NICS background check programs are conducted 
on all gun sales with some reasonable exceptions. Currently, up to 40 
percent of all transfers of firearms include no background check. 
Someone raised the point in one of our hearings, what if you got on the 
airplane and they announced to you--the flight attendant said: Welcome 
to this flight from Washington to Chicago. The Transportation Security 
Agency has checked 60 percent of the passengers to make sure they are 
not carrying a bomb but not the other 40 percent. Have a nice flight. 
What would you think about it? You would think, for goodness' sake, we 
have to do everything we can to check everyone if we are truly 
dedicated to safety. That is what this universal background check is 
about.
  We would also create tough Federal criminal penalties for illegal 
straw purchasing and the trafficking of guns. Get the picture. If you 
are going to buy a gun from a licensed dealer, they are going to run a 
background check on you. If your background check discloses, for 
example, that you have a felony conviction or that you are under a 
domestic violence order or that have you been adjudged mentally 
incompetent, unstable, and you should not own a gun, you will not be 
sold that gun.
  Since we came up with this idea of background checks, up to 2 million 
unqualified people tried to buy them and we stopped them. That is what 
the law is supposed to do. But under the current circumstances, straw 
purchasers go in and buy a gun because they have a clean record. So the 
gangster, the mobster, the drug gang member, the thug sends his 
girlfriend in to buy the gun. She does not have a criminal record. She 
buys the gun, comes outside and hands it to him. He turns around and 
uses it to kill someone. This bill is going to change what happens to 
her. Of course, he is still going to face the full brunt of the law for 
his misdeeds. But she is now going to be held accountable, too, up to 
15 years of hard time in Federal prison for buying that gun.
  We had a press conference in Chicago and said: Girlfriend, think 
twice. He ain't worth it. To run the risk of spending 15 years in 
prison if you buy a gun to give to that boyfriend who is going to turn 
around and use it in a crime, it ain't worth it. This bill would also 
authorize additional resources to keep schools safe.
  These proposals just make sense. They have strong support from the 
American public, including a majority of gun owners. The National Rifle 
Association may speak for the gun industry, but it does not speak for 
gun owners. Gun owners, and I know them. They are part of my family. I 
have grown up with them my entire life. They are good, God-fearing, 
church-going, patriotic Americans who value their guns and use them 
properly, store them safely at home away from kids. These are people 
who will follow the law. They understand we have to stop those who 
misuse guns from getting their hands on them. A majority of those gun 
owners across America, sportsmen, hunters, those who buy guns for self-
defense support what we are doing in this bill.
  The straw purchasing and school safety proposals passed in committee 
with strong bipartisan votes. I am hopeful we will be able to adopt the 
bipartisan floor amendment from Senators Manchin and Toomey on 
background checks.
  All these proposals are also supported by law enforcement. It was 
about 3 weeks ago. I went to the Chicago Police Department 
headquarters. Superintendent McCarthy invited me in. I sat down for 
about an hour with 10 beat cops from Chicago. They are ones who 
literally get up every morning and go, usually undercover, into 
neighborhoods and try to stop the murders and violence. I sat there. 
One of them had just gotten back from his 11th surgery. He got in a 
shootout with a 15-year-old who shattered his leg. He has had 11 
surgeries trying to get back on his feet and get back on the force.
  We talked about what life was like out there. They talked about 14- 
and 15-year-olds packing guns and firing away. They are not worth a 
darn as a shot. They, sadly, kill a lot of people they do not intend to 
kill. They are as irresponsible as they come, but it is the reality of 
the mean streets of many cities. So these people in law enforcement 
agree we need to do something about the straw purchasers, for example. 
So do the prosecutors, the medical community, the faith community, 
teachers, mayors, colleges, universities, and, most important, the 
family members of gun violence victims. Many of those family members 
from Newtown are here today. Senator Murphy from Connecticut spoke 
earlier, as did Senator Blumenthal, to note their persuasive lobbying 
as they walk the Halls of Congress, hoping the sad and awful tragedy 
they went through on December 14 will at least lead to a safer America.
  I salute them. In their grief, they are standing up to make this a 
safer nation. Unfortunately, some parts of the gun lobby have had a 
long history of opposing even those commonsense ideas. They have raised 
objections to them. I want to respond to the main objections the gun 
lobby has raised. As it turns out, they just do not stand up to 
scrutiny.
  First, the gun lobby claims that requiring FBI background checks for 
gun sales will lead to the creation of a national gun registry. That 
claim is absolutely totally false. Federal law prohibits the Federal 
Government from establishing a national gun registry. We could argue 
the merits of it, but we have to acknowledge the reality. It does not 
exist today. It will not exist as a result of this bill.
  I have a copy of a letter signed by 30 Senators, including 26 
Republicans. I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                 Washington, DC, November 3, 2011.
     Hon. Daniel Inouye,
     Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Barbara Mikulski,
     Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and 
         Related Agencies, Senate Committee on Appropriations, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Harold Rogers,
     Chairman, House Committee on Appropriations,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Frank Wolf,
     Chairman, Subcommittee on Commerce, Science, and Related 
         Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Chairmen and Chairwoman: As supporters of the Second 
     Amendment and the rights of law-abiding gun owners, we are 
     writing to urge the House and Senate Appropriations 
     Committees to maintain several House-passed firearms 
     provisions in the upcoming Conference Report on H.R. 2112, 
     the legislative vehicle for the Fiscal Year 2012 Commerce, 
     Justice, Science (CJS), and Related Agencies Appropriations 
     Act. While these provisions had broad, bipartisan support in 
     the Senate, the amendments that would have reinstated these 
     provisions in the Senate version of H.R. 2112 did not receive 
     a vote.
       Over the years, Congress has taken many actions to preserve 
     Second Amendment rights and prevent undue encroachment on 
     those rights on the part of the Executive Branch. One of the 
     most common ways in which Congress has accomplished this goal 
     has been through a number of general provisions in CJS 
     Appropriations bills. Most of these protections have been in 
     place for a number of years--some going back as far as three 
     decades--and none of them have been the source of any 
     significant controversy.
       The House CJS Appropriations bill (H.R. 2596) made 
     permanent nine separate Second Amendment protections. 
     However, the Senate version of H.R. 2112 stripped the House 
     language and extended these protections

[[Page 4893]]

     only through Fiscal Year 2012. We believe these protections 
     should not be subject to yearly reinstatement, they should be 
     permanently fixed in the law.
       Specifically, the House-passed provisions would make 
     permanent the following protections:
       Firearms Database Prohibition. A prohibition on the use of 
     funds to create, maintain or administer a database of 
     firearms owners or their firearms. This prohibition has been 
     in place since FY 1979 and prevents the federal government 
     from establishing a national gun registry.
       Curio and Relic Definition. A prohibition on the use of 
     funds to change the definition of a ``curio or relic.'' This 
     provision protects the status of collectible firearms for 
     future generations of firearms collectors. This provision has 
     been included since Fiscal Year 1997.
       Physical Inventory Prohibition. Prohibition on a 
     requirement to allow a physical inventory of Federal Firearms 
     Licensees. The Clinton Administration proposed a rule in 2000 
     to require an annual inventory by all licensees, While the 
     Bush Administration eventually withdrew the proposal, 
     Congress has still passed this preventive provision every 
     year, beginning in FY 2007.
       Information Retrieval Prohibition. A prohibition on the use 
     of funds to electronically retrieve personally identifying 
     information gathered by federal firearms licensees. This 
     provision prohibits the creation of a gun registry from 
     dealers' records that are required by law to be surrendered 
     to the federal government when a dealer goes out of business. 
     This provision has been included since FY 1997.
       Business Activity. A prohibition on the use of funds to 
     deny a Federal Firearms License (FFL) or renewal of an FFL on 
     the basis of business activity. This provision prohibits 
     BATFE from denying federal firearms license applications or 
     renewals based on a dealer's low business volume alone. 
     Congress added this general provision in FY 2005.
       Information Gathering Prohibition. A prohibition on the use 
     of funds to maintain any information gathered as a part of an 
     instant background check or to maintain information for more 
     than 24 hours. This provision protects the privacy of law-
     abiding gun buyers by prohibiting information about legal gun 
     purchases from being kept by government authorities. It has 
     been included since FY 1999.
       Firearms Trace Data Disclaimer. A requirement that any 
     trace data released must include a disclaimer stating such 
     trace data cannot be used to draw broad conclusion about 
     firearms-related crime. This provision has been included 
     since FY 2005.
       Firearms Parts Export to Canada. A prohibition on the use 
     of funds to require an export license for small firearms 
     parts valued at less than $500 for export to Canada. This 
     provision removed an unnecessary and burdensome requirement 
     on U.S. gun manufacturers that was imposed under the Clinton 
     Administration, It has been included since FY 2006.
       Importation of Curios and Relics. A prohibition on the use 
     of funds to arbitrarily deny importation of qualifying curio 
     and relic firearms. This provision insures that collectible 
     firearms that meet all legal requirements for importation 
     into the United States are not prevented from import by 
     Executive Branch fiat. This provision has been included since 
     FY 2006.
       Once again, these are non-controversial protective measures 
     that have long had the support of members of both parties. 
     Had a vote taken place, they most certainly would have been 
     included in the Senate bill, Once again, we urge the House 
     and Senate Appropriations Committees, particularly those who 
     will serve on the upcoming Conference Committee on H.R. 2112, 
     to work to ensure that the language making these protections 
     permanent are included in the Conference Report.
       Thank you for your attention regarding this matter.
           Sincerely,
         Orrin G. Hatch; Johnny Isakson; Mark Begich; Jim DeMint; 
           Michael B. Enzi; Lindsey Graham; Dean Heller; Rob 
           Portman; John Barrasso; Mitch McConnell; Kelly Ayotte; 
           Tom Coburn; Olympia Snowe; Ron Johnson; James M. 
           Inhofe; Mike Johanns; Richard Burr; John Thune; Roger 
           Wicker; Pat Roberts; John Boozman; Mike Lee; Jon 
           Tester; Max Baucus; Saxby Chambliss; Chuck Grassley; 
           Marco Rubio; Lisa Murkowski; David Vitter; Joe Manchin.

  Mr. DURBIN. This letter, dated November 3, 2011, describes a number 
of longstanding prohibitions in Federal law. Let me quote the letter's 
description of two:

       Firearms database prohibition. A prohibition on the use of 
     funds to create, maintain or administer a database of firearm 
     owners or their firearms. This prohibition has been in place 
     since fiscal year 1979 and prevents the Federal Government 
     from establishing a national gun registry.
       Information gathering prohibition. A prohibition on the use 
     of funds to maintain any information gathered as part of an 
     instant background check or to maintain information for more 
     than 24 hours. This provision protects the privacy of law-
     abiding gun buyers by providing information about legal gun 
     purchases from being kept by government authorities, and has 
     been included in the law since fiscal year 1999.

  There you have it. This letter, signed by Senator McConnell, the 
Republican leader, Senators Hatch, Inhofe, Grassley, DeMint, and many 
others, showed that the claims about a national gun registry are 
baseless. There is no evidence of such a registry. Longstanding Federal 
laws prevent the creation of it. Anyone who continues to claim the FBI 
background check will lead to a national gun registry should be shown 
this letter signed by Republican Senators.
  Second, the gun lobby claims these proposals would unduly burden law-
abiding gun owners. What is the burden? In 2011, the FBI reported the 
background check system had an instant determination rate of 91.5 
percent. That means 91 percent-plus of background checks were resolved 
in a matter of minutes. For those other background checks where the 
dealer is instructed to temporarily delay the sale to allow for a more 
thorough check, the FBI must give a response within 3 days or the sale 
will be allowed to go through. In other words, a background check is, 
at most, a minor temporary inconvenience to a small percentage of law-
abiding Americans.
  Meanwhile, the public safety and law enforcement benefits of 
background checks are enormous. Background checks have stopped unlawful 
users from buying guns over 1.5 million times. There is no reason for 
law-abiding Americans to worry about tougher penalties for straw 
purchases and gun trafficking. Those activities are already illegal and 
law-abiding Americans will not be engaged in them.
  In short, the proposals before the Senate will not burden law-abiding 
gun owners. They will help to save lives, reduce crime, and keep guns 
from the hands of those who misuse them.
  Third claim by the gun lobby. They claim we should not pass any new 
gun laws until there is more enforcement of the laws on the books. I am 
all for that. But it is blatantly hypocritical of the gun lobby to say 
we should just enforce the gun laws on the books when they constantly 
work to weaken those same laws.
  For example, in the last few years, the gun lobby has gotten Congress 
to change the laws on the books to repeal the Reagan-era prohibition on 
loaded guns in national parks, to require Amtrak to allow guns to be 
transported on their trains, to give the gun industry unprecedented 
immunity from liability under civil law, and to pass appropriations 
riders which make it harder for law enforcement agencies to enforce gun 
laws, such as the ludicrous Tiahrt amendment that prevents information 
sharing about even traces of guns used in the commission of crimes.
  Not only does the gun lobby try to get Congress to undo the gun laws 
on the books, it has also supported court challenges to these same laws 
across the country.
  Here is the best example: The gun lobby claims to be outraged that 
there are not more Federal prosecutions when a person tries to buy a 
gun but is denied by the FBI NICS background check. The Federal agency 
that reviews those NICS denial cases to see whether they merit 
prosecution is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and 
Explosives, or ATF. As we all know, the gun lobby has gone to great 
political lengths to make it harder for the ATF to do its job. The gun 
lobby has blocked ATF from getting a Senate-confirmed Director for six 
straight years. They have pushed appropriations riders that limit the 
ATF's authority, and they have sought to repeal ATF regulations in 
Court.
  The best part is, at the same time the gun lobby tries to prevent ATF 
from carrying out its enforcement responsibilities, the gun lobby has 
pushed a rider into law that explicitly prevents Congress from 
transferring any of ATF's functions to any other agency, such as the 
FBI. So the gun lobby says that all we should do is enforce the gun 
laws on the books. Then they make it harder for the Federal Government 
to do that.

[[Page 4894]]

  Here is the bottom line. We are going to have votes soon, starting 
tomorrow, to see where the Members of the Senate stand. Are they going 
to stand with the police officers, the legislatures, the teachers, the 
prosecutors, the doctors, the mayors, the victims and their families, 
and the strong majority of Americans who support proposals that will 
save lives, commonsense gun safety proposals? Or are they going to 
stand with the gun lobby that refuses to compromise even when lives 
could be saved?
  I know where I am going to stand. I stand with Americans such as the 
family of Hadiya Pendleton, the promising, beautiful young teenage girl 
gunned down just weeks ago in a Chicago park. She had been out here for 
President Obama's inauguration. It was a thrilling day for her to be 
here with her high school friends and classmates. In a matter of days, 
she had been gunned down in a park after school.
  I stand with Sandra Wortham, whose brother, Chicago police officer 
Thomas Wortham, IV, was shot and killed by gang members with a straw-
purchased gun while he stood in the driveway of his father's home. The 
gun lobby would like us to forget about these victims. But there is no 
way we can.
  Sandra Wortham testified at a hearing I chaired in February on gun 
violence. She talked about how her brother, a policeman in Chicago, was 
armed and shot back, but it did not save him. She told us there is 
nothing anti-gun about doing more to keep guns out of the hands of the 
people who will misuse them. It was pretty powerful testimony.
  The NRA posted a summary of my hearing on their Web site describing 
the hearing as ``an attack on guns.'' They described the testimony 
given by five of our six witnesses, but they said nothing about Sandra 
Wortham, who lost her brother, the Chicago policeman. They pretended 
her testimony never happened. They did not want people to remember her 
story.
  It is not the only time. A few weeks ago, the NRA proposed a set of 
redline changes to the gun trafficking bill that Senators Leahy, Kirk, 
Collins, Gillibrand, and I are cosponsoring. The key section of that 
bill was named after Hadiya Pendleton of Chicago. That was Senator 
Kirk's idea and a darn good one. What was the first change the NRA 
proposed? Deleting Hadiya Pendleton's name from the bill. They did not 
want to be reminded of this young girl who lost her life to gun 
violence.
  The gun lobby may hope we forget about Americans such as the 
Pendletons and the Worthams, but we will not. None of us should.
  I urge my colleagues to join with the majority of Americans who 
support commonsense reforms that will reduce gun deaths and keep guns 
out of the hands of criminals. That is what we should do. I see my 
colleagues Senator Kaine and Senator Lee on the floor. Let me close by 
just reminding those who are following this debate what other countries 
have done when they have experienced tragic mass shootings.
  They have acted to toughen the gun laws, often going far further than 
any proposal we have before the Senate. In Australia, on April 28, 
1996, a gunman started shooting at tourists in Port Arthur. He killed 
35 people. In response, that nation dramatically toughened their 
standards for gun ownership, banned assault weapons, and launched a 
buyback of hundreds of thousands of semiautomatic rifles. I might tell 
you, that is not included in this bill we are considering.
  After these laws were passed, gun homicides and suicides decreased 
dramatically, and Australia has not had a single mass shooting since 
1996.
  In Finland, there were two mass school shootings in 2007 and 2008. 
The first involved a teenager who killed eight people at a high school, 
and the second involved a gunman who killed 10 at a culinary school.
  In response, Finland raised the minimum age for gun ownership and 
toughened their background check requirements.
  In Scotland, on March 13, 1996, a gunman entered a primary school in 
the town of Dunblane and killed 16 young children and their teacher. In 
response, the United Kingdom actually went so far as to ban virtually 
all handguns.
  The measures we are working on in the Senate today are modest in 
comparison with steps other countries took in response to mass 
shootings. Even though we have over 300 million guns in America and a 
strong tradition of gun ownership, the measures we are considering have 
overwhelming support among the majority of Americans and gun owners. We 
should move forward with these measures.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be recognized for 
up to 5 minutes as if in morning business and then Senator Lee be 
recognized for up to 5 minutes following my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. KAINE. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Kaine pertaining to the introduction of S. 700 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. KAINE. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. LEE. I thank the Senator from Virginia for his cooperation in 
allowing me this time.
  The President of the United States has spent the last several weeks 
evoking the tragedy of Sandy Hook and highlighting the voices of the 
victims in an effort to promote his gun control proposals. He has not 
explained to the American people how any of these new gun control 
measures would have prevented that or any other terrible tragedy or how 
any of these measures would reduce gun violence in any measurable way. 
Instead, his proposals would serve primarily to restrict the rights of 
law-abiding citizens.
  Recently, I launched a project called Protect2A, which is an attempt 
to reach out to those who are reluctant to see changes to our Bill of 
Rights, our Bill of Rights eroded, and believe Members of Congress 
should be doing everything in their power to protect the second 
amendment rights of citizens. This is also as we should be protecting 
all the rights protected by our Constitution.
  I am pleased to announce the response to Protect2A has been 
overwhelming. In less than 2 days, we have received well over 1,000 
responses on my Web site. The vast majority of them recognized that the 
President's proposal will not make them safer but will, rather, result 
in limiting their rights as law-abiding citizens.
  It is with this in mind I would now like to ensure their voices have 
become an important part of this debate. I have several quotes from 
Americans across the country who oppose these measures and wish 
Senators to stand up for them and their constitutional rights.
  Roger, from my home State of Utah, writes as follows:

       As a veteran, I've had too many ``brothers'' and 
     ``sisters'' make sacrifices to uphold the Constitution of the 
     United States. Their blood will not be in vain. While I 
     believe our rights are not granted by government, I believe 
     that documentation of these rights in the United States 
     Constitution has helped us maintain our freedoms. Why is the 
     Second Amendment important to me? Because without it, the 
     rest of our rights can simply be wiped away.

  Jim from Louisiana writes as follows:

       I lived through the Los Angeles riots. My wife and I were 
     living in Silver Lake. For 5 days we watched the warm glow of 
     businesses being burned on two sides. For 5 days we never saw 
     a law enforcement officer. We were on our own. My wife and I 
     were unarmed. The couple across the street had a pair of 
     shotguns, and the elderly gentleman next to them had a .38 
     service revolver from his days in the LAPD. After it became 
     clear that law enforcement had abandoned the citizens of Los 
     Angeles, we took shifts watching the street and who was 
     coming and going. Our neighbors brought us coffee in the 
     middle of the night, a night that was lit with the flames of 
     burning buildings. Twice cars came up our street, saw us 
     armed, and turned around. I have no doubt that the drivers 
     had things on their minds other than getting home to loved 
     ones.
       As soon as I could, I went out and bought my first handgun. 
     I will not be disarmed. I

[[Page 4895]]

     will not be a victim. And I will not let my boys be victims. 
     Legal or not, I am giving them my guns as they get mature 
     enough to use them. If our government is so out of touch they 
     will make law-abiding citizens criminals, it's just something 
     my family will have to deal with. But we will not disarm.

  David, from Missouri, wrote the following:

       I am a handicapped 78-year-old male living alone. I have 
     applied for and received a conceal-carry permit, which I feel 
     is my Second Amendment right. I hope and pray that I never 
     have to use my firearm, but will if challenged to do so.
       Please don't treat the subject of the Second Amendment like 
     you did with my health care, by passing legislation that you 
     didn't even read.

  Carolyn from New Jersey writes:

       Protection of the 2A is necessary in order to preserve the 
     integrity of our Constitution. The ``ruling elite'' cannot 
     pick and choose which amendments they like, and which they 
     don't. We, the people, are sovereign citizens, and we are 
     protected by the Constitution.

  Annie, from Georgia, writes the following:

       Dear Senator, how I wish we as a civilized nation did not 
     have to go through this in order to defend our 2nd Amendment 
     that has been in place for all these years. It is very 
     important that we the citizens keep our weapons to be able to 
     defend ourselves from criminals as well as to send a message 
     to the government that we are not under any dictatorship. We 
     are a free country, and we are ready to defend our position 
     against anyone who tries to take away what rights we have. To 
     me, personally, my guns are my defense to protect my family, 
     and I have had to make use of them for that reason in the 
     past and will do it again since the police cannot be 
     available fast enough . . . Please protect our rights, 
     because once we lose this amendment, we are defenseless and 
     others will follow. I do not want to live again in a country 
     where citizens have no ``voice,'' where there is no democracy 
     and the people live in fear of what they say. I am a legal 
     citizen of the USA, by choice. I am an American, and I love 
     this country like my own. Thanks so much for what you are 
     doing. Let our voices be heard.

  Mr. President these are just a few of the excerpts. I ask unanimous 
consent to have the rest of these statements printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                         Michael--Pennsylvania

       Thank You for taking This stand . . . Not only is it the 
     2nd Amendment at stake here but the right to protect my 
     family and my house . . . I have had 2 encounters since 
     living in my current house of 28 years . . . with the last 
     one . . . the police told me flat out that they couldn't stop 
     a crime all they do . . . 95% of the time is take a report on 
     the crime now some want to take this right away from me . . . 
     Guns have been a part of my family for at least 5 generations 
     and never has there been a bad instance with any of our guns 
     . . .

                         Richard--Pennsylvania

       I am a law abiding citizen who deserves the right to 
     protect my family from criminals and tyranny. I abhor 
     violence as do most law abiding citizens but the individuals 
     who commit gun crimes are by definition criminals. This 
     current ``debate'' has not been about reducing violence and I 
     am disappointed in Pro 2A politicians for allowing the 
     conversation to be dictated by politicians who neither 
     understand how guns work nor have the ability to use logic or 
     reason and use emotions and rhetoric to expand control while 
     putting law abiding citizens and freedom at risk. Gun control 
     has not and will never work because it does not address the 
     cause. When we as a country decided to reduce drunk driving 
     deaths the drivers were and are prosecuted not cars or 
     alcohol and it has been successful. Take guns away from law 
     abiding citizens and neglect to enforce and prosecute gun 
     crimes and the result is Chicago. We need to enforce current 
     laws and have a zero tolerance policy for gun crimes while 
     addressing mental illness and a culture that glorifies 
     violence.
       Please do everything in your power to protect our rights 
     and change the focus of this conversation to the criminals.

                           Leslie--Minnesota

       Because it a legal right as given by our founding fathers 
     to protect our selves, family's, state and country from harm 
     from any direction. Keep up the good work.

                             Holly--Florida

       Years ago, I was robbed at gunpoint by 2 young gang 
     bangers. A call to 911 received no response from the police--
     none. After that incident, my father gave me one of his small 
     hand guns & took me to the range to teach me how to use it. I 
     have no record of transfer, no background check paperwork, 
     just a clear memory of having a gun held to my head & the 
     knowledge that--if I ever had to--I could defend myself in my 
     home. I fear that the knee jerk gun restrictions emanating 
     from DC and state governments will expose me & others like me 
     to harm. I also fear that the contents of these proposed 
     bills are yet one more excuse for a governmental money grab. 
     I pray you will meet with success in your efforts. Thank you.

                             Rick--Kentucky

       Senator Lee, Thank you for taking a stand for our 2nd 
     Amendment rights. The 2nd Amendment not only provides the 
     American public an avenue to protect themselves and their 
     loved ones when and if the need ever arises, a means of 
     hunting to provide food for ones family, as a sport to 
     compete and enjoy the company of others, but more importantly 
     provides the American people with a means to protect itself 
     from a tyrannical government. Our Founding Fathers and 
     framers of our Constitution knew better than any of us today 
     that government in any form can easily become the enemy of 
     the inherent freedoms and rights of it's citizenry. The 2nd 
     Amendment was put in place as the protectorate and armed 
     guard for each and every other Amendment in the Bill of 
     Rights. Over the last several decades, these rights and 
     freedoms provided us through the Constitution have been 
     slowly watered or otherwise whittled down by our government, 
     and considering our current political and social climate, the 
     2nd Amendment is more important than ever. Unfortunately the 
     opponents of individual freedom are now using an axe to chop 
     away at this, our most important Amendment. I, like all 
     Americans was horrified by the recent and senseless murders 
     in Colorado & Connecticut, but in our grief, many Americans 
     are failing to realize that the problems of our society 
     cannot be washed away simply by removing the inanimate object 
     from the equation. Was it the fault of the airplane or the 
     Boeing Aircraft Company for the deaths of innocents in the 9/
     11 terrorist attack? No, it was the human beings, with evil 
     in their hearts and minds that were the cause, utilizing an 
     otherwise useful piece of machinery as the mechanism of 
     death. It's times like these when an individual needs to take 
     a stand, to be respectful of those who believe differently 
     than himself, but be resolved to fight for what he believes 
     in none the less. I believe strongly in the 2nd Amendment the 
     same way I believe that it's purpose is just as strong today 
     as it was in our Founding Father's day and I will be standing 
     up for my rights. Thank you for standing with me.

                             Michael--Utah

       More than ever we need to protect our God-given liberties 
     and freedoms. While I mourn for the loss of life from 
     whatever may be the cause, the further eroding of our 
     liberties will make us neither safer nor freer. The 
     overwhelming majority of gun owners are law abiding citizens. 
     There will always be the few that choose to live by their own 
     rules and norms.
       I am the father of a 12 year old and an 8 year old and I 
     want them to enjoy the freedoms that have been enjoyed by 
     previous generations. Do I want them safe? Of course. Do I 
     think further restrictions of firearms and/or ammunition will 
     do this? No. A mentally ill individual will do harm with a 10 
     round magazine just as they would with a 30 round magazine. I 
     would like to see us put more resources toward helping those 
     with these life changing problems. How sad and difficult it 
     must be for the loved ones.
       Press forward with protecting the freedoms and 
     responsibilities of our citizenry.

                            Jeffrey--Indiana

       The Founders understood that control of weaponry, with 
     respect to law abiding citizens, is not about gun control--it 
     is about people control. When the people are no longer in 
     control of their own destinies, then there is tyranny. The 
     Founders also feared that once power left the people's hands, 
     the only way to regain that power over their own lives would 
     be with blood. The 2nd Amendment protects against the need 
     for another revolution of blood.

                           Vitaliy--Colorado

       My family and I immigrated here, legally, from Russia/
     Soviet Union to live free and to have opportunity sadly 
     unavailable to most in the world.
       These freedoms and liberties are coming under attack, 
     starting with the 2nd amendment. There is a reason why it is 
     2nd and not 5th or 10th--it guarantees us the right to 
     protect our freedoms if they are being threatened.
       I served in the military and swore to protect the 
     constitution of the United States. The entire constitution, 
     not just parts of it I like. I feel like our president is in 
     violation of that oath.
       I understand that there is a push to get hands of criminals 
     and those mentally unstable away from weapons that can 
     potentially be used against citizens and kids, but this plan 
     that those on the Left want, do not guarantee our safety one 
     bit, instead they take rights of those who are law abiding.
       I'm also sick to my stomach that the president and those on 
     the left use kids faces and their parents to stand in front 
     of them like puppets while the politicians try to abnegate. I 
     cannot believe a human being in such power can exploit a 
     tragedy to advance his political views.

                            Walter--Florida

       This story was recent . . . On Friday April 6th, 2013 my 
     place of business received a

[[Page 4896]]

     phone call that ended with the individual threatening to kill 
     my receptionist and everyone in the building. I immediately 
     placed the building on lock down and called the police. While 
     I was waiting for police to arrive, I retrieved my fire arm 
     from my car and began to carry it in my person as I walked 
     around and checked all entry points. The police finally 
     arrived 15 minutes later and very calmly said that there was 
     no crime committed and that they can't do anything. They then 
     left. This really disturbed me as if I did not have a gun in 
     my possession my employees and I would be nothing but sitting 
     targets. The police are great and I respect them a great 
     deal, but they are reactive not proactive. I equate this to 
     if a fire breaks out, I want to put it out with an 
     extinguisher and not only wait for the fire department. At 
     the end of the day I escorted my employees out to their cars 
     and waited until they drove off, all while I was armed. I am 
     a very responsible gun owner who hopes to God that I never 
     ever have to aim my gun at someone, let alone shoot and kill 
     someone. I love my family, employees and friends too much 
     than to not be armed and just stand around if God forbid 
     something were to happen and I stand helpless watching them 
     be injured or killed. Just because I follow the laws doesn't 
     mean the person who made the death threat does. Please fight 
     for my right to protect the ones I care about most. Thank you 
     and God bless!

                            Eddie Jean--Utah

       My family for generations have fought with their lives to 
     protect the constitution of the United States. I remember as 
     a child feeling pride in my country by saying the pledge of 
     allegiance. I am still a very proud American and believe in 
     the rights of all Americans. When my husband, daughter and I 
     moved from Arkansas to Arizona (while my husband was in the 
     military) it was a shocker to my system. Moving was 
     exhausting, and like many new young couples with no money and 
     moving ourselves, we were so excited to find an affordable 
     home in a not so scary neighborhood. It was about 2 weeks 
     when we woke (we slept in our living room, we did not have a 
     bed) to someone trying to open our front door. Terrified, my 
     husband told me to go get our young daughter, while he 
     grabbed his revolver. I got our daughter, got behind my 
     husband and called the police. The lady on the line was very 
     concerned and talked to me the whole time. The person trying 
     to get in was very persistent, and moved to the window. I was 
     so scared and asked where are the police, what is taking so 
     long, she explained that they put calls in order of threat. I 
     said this is important and the person or person's are trying 
     to get in. She asked if we were armed I said yes, but we did 
     not want to hurt anyone (a crazy statement), because I did 
     not know the person on the other side, who would possibly 
     kill me and my whole family for what $10.00 and no items of 
     value. My husband finally yelled I have a gun and I know how 
     to use it; I am not sure but the person on the other side 
     must have decided not to take the chance, seeing our Arkansas 
     plate that we probably did know how to use it, or to find a 
     less threatening home. It took the officers over 45 minutes 
     to arrive to our home and when I asked what took so long, one 
     responded, if you had been shot or dying we would have been 
     here sooner. I am a law abiding citizen and have the right to 
     defend myself, that is why I believe in the 2nd amendment. 
     Criminals do believe in the laws and they will find a gun 
     with or without laws. So if you take away my rights, my death 
     and many others will be on the heads of foolish government 
     officials who do not know what they are doing. For Obama is 
     out for power not the rights of Americans. I like many 
     Americans was so saddened by the death of the children and 
     adults by the hand of a madman, but I need to be armed and 
     have done so legally, to protect my family. When are we going 
     to hold people responsible and not the objects they use? 
     Maybe we should ban cars, for they kill more people than 
     guns, or how about a baseball bat, or a hammer, or my purse 
     (now that is a deadly weapon). People are responsible for 
     their actions, not objects. Thank you Senator Lee, Eddie Jean 
     Mahurin, a proud American.

                           Maureen--New York

       As a woman a firearm is an equalizer against those bigger 
     and stronger than me. I have the right to protect myself!

                           Patricia--Nebraska

       Living in the Midwest, it allows me self-protection of 
     property and family. We live in the country and there are 
     only limited law enforcement here with extremely long 
     response times. We need the ability to defend ourselves 
     against the ever increasing influx of crime.
       We are also very much of the belief that the Constitution 
     guarantees our right to bear arms to protect us from 
     tyranny--politicians in power who seek to do our country 
     harm.
       It is your obligation to uphold our rights as per the 
     Constitution, as all elected officials took an oath to do 
     just that and We the People will not settle for less . . .

                             Melissa--Utah

       Being a military wife, my husband is away most of the time. 
     I don't believe the federal government should have the power 
     to tell me what I need and don't need in order to keep myself 
     and my family safe. They do not know my comfort level and 
     ability with firearms, so how can they decide what would be 
     best for me to use? That decision should be mine. Whether I 
     decide a rifle or handgun or none at all, is of no concern to 
     anyone else. Controlling me will not keep anyone else safe 
     from criminals. It will only make me less safe.
       Our constitutional liberties should never be up for a vote. 
     This whole thing is quite disturbing.

                          ____________________