[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13546-13579]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            USA FREEDOM ACT

  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about the 
transparency provisions in the USA FREEDOM Act. I am a proud cosponsor 
of Chairman Leahy's bill, and I am particularly proud to have written 
its key transparency provisions with my friend Senator Dean Heller of 
Nevada. As I said yesterday, both of us are indebted to Senator Leahy 
for his leadership on this issue.
  For over a year now there has been a steady stream of news stories 
about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. Yet right 
now, by law, Americans still cannot get very basic information about 
these programs.
  Americans understand that we need to give due weight to privacy on 
the one hand and national security on the other. But when they lack an 
even rough sense of the scope of the government's surveillance 
programs, they have no way to know if the government is getting that 
balance right. There needs to be more transparency.
  The controversy unleashed by Edward Snowden's disclosures has been 
going on for over a year. Yet Americans still don't know the actual 
number of people whose information has been collected under these 
programs. They don't even know how many of these people are Americans, 
and they have no way of knowing how many of these Americans had their 
information actually looked at by government officials as opposed to 
just being held in a database. This lack of transparency is pretty 
breathtaking.
  I believe the provisions Senator Heller and I wrote will go a long 
way toward addressing and fixing this. It will give Americans the 
information they need to judge the government's surveillance programs 
for themselves.
  Three programs are at the center of this debate: the telephone call 
records program, the collection, through 2011, on Americans' Internet 
communications records, and the so-called PRISM Program that targets 
the communications of foreigners abroad.
  Our provisions would require detailed annual reports for each 
program. The government will have to tell the public how many people 
have had their information collected and how many of those people are 
likely American. For the call records program and the PRISM Program, 
the government will also have to say how many times it has run a 
specific search for an American's data.
  By creating these reporting requirements, the government will have an 
incentive to also disclose the number of Americans who have actually 
had their information reviewed by government officials, and we give the 
government authority to do that too.
  We don't just require the government to issue more detailed 
transparency reports. We are also helping American Internet and phone 
companies tell their customers about the government requests for 
customer information they are receiving. For years those companies have 
been under gag orders. As a result, people around the world think the 
American Internet companies are giving up far more information to the 
government than they likely are. Those companies are losing billions of 
dollars because people think they are handing over all of their 
customers' data to the NSA.
  Our provisions expand the options that companies have to issue their 
own transparency reports, and they let companies issue those reports 
more quickly. Our provisions give the public

[[Page 13547]]

two ways to check on the government--government transparency reports 
and company reports as well.
  Like all major bills, this bill is a compromise, and we didn't get 
everything we wanted, but our provisions will go a long way toward 
giving the American people the information they need to evaluate the 
government's surveillance program.
  After 9/11, our Nation faced a security crisis. Most Americans had 
never lived through anything like that. We are now experiencing a 
crisis of trust where a big part of the American public now thinks our 
intelligence agencies are out to spy on them, not on foreign countries.
  The administration has committed to end the bulk collection of 
Americans' data, and Congress has written a bill to ban the bulk 
collection of Americans' data. But unless we pass these transparency 
provisions, Americans have no way to know if the government is making 
good on those promises. Our transparency provisions will force the 
government to prove annually and publicly that bulk collection is over. 
This is an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability which 
will allow the American people to decide for themselves whether the 
government is striking the right balance between privacy and security.
  We should take up this bill as soon as possible so that Americans are 
not in the dark a single day longer. We should take it up so that 
American companies stop losing business because of misperceptions about 
their role in domestic surveillance. We should take this bill up so 
that Americans can get the information they need to hold their 
government to account.


                        Tribute to Alvaro Bedoya

  Before I yield the floor, I wish to take a moment to recognize and 
thank Alvaro Bedoya, my chief counsel, who is to my left. This is 
Alvaro's last week on my staff. Alvaro has been a member of my team 
since my very first day in office, and I have relied on and trusted his 
counsel on so many things in the 5 years since.
  He has been instrumental in helping me launch and set the agenda for 
the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law that I chair, and 
we would not have reached this point in working to make the NSA more 
transparent and accountable to the American people if it were not for 
Alvaro.
  Alvaro's counsel has also been crucial as we have sought to improve 
our Nation's broken immigration system, as we fought for marriage 
equality and LGBT rights, including the right of all children to be 
free from bullying in schools, and as we work to ban apps that allow 
domestic abusers to stalk their victims.
  Alvaro was even at my side during my very first week in office when 
the Judiciary Committee held confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor 
to serve on the Supreme Court. That was my fifth day in the Senate, and 
I remember pulling some late nights preparing for that.
  Alvaro's departure is bittersweet for me. I am, of course, sad to see 
Alvaro leave, but I am very excited for him as well. He will soon 
become the founding executive director of Georgetown Law School's new 
Center for Privacy and Technology. I have no doubt the folks at 
Georgetown soon will learn what I already know--that Alvaro is one of 
the most talented, intelligent, hardest working, decent, good-guy 
lawyers I know.
  Thanks, Alvaro.
  And I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          Corporate Inversions

  Ms. WARREN. Madam President, our Tax Code is tilted toward the rich 
and the powerful. Huge corporations hire armies of lobbyists and 
lawyers to create, expand, and protect every last corporate loophole. 
That is how we end up with a tax code that makes small businesses and 
restaurants and construction companies pay, that makes teachers and 
truckdrivers and nurses pay, but that allows huge American corporations 
to make billions of dollars in profits and not pay a single dime in 
taxes.
  The Tax Code is rigged. Apparently, even this rigged game does not go 
far enough for some corporations. Those companies are taking advantage 
of a new move--a loophole that allows them to maintain all their 
operations in America but claim foreign citizenship so they can cut 
their U.S. taxes even further.
  Here is how the loophole works. An American company merges with a 
much smaller company located in a foreign country, usually a tax haven 
such as Ireland or Bermuda. As long as the shareholders of the foreign 
company own 20 percent of the newly merged company, our tax laws allow 
that new company to claim foreign citizenship. That means American 
companies can hire a bunch of Wall Street bankers and a bunch of 
lawyers, fill out some paperwork, keep everything the same in their 
operations, and dodge their U.S. taxes.
  Tax lawyers call this process a corporate inversion, but do not let 
that bland name fool you. These companies are renouncing their American 
citizenship, turning their backs on this country simply to boost their 
profits. They are taking advantage of all the good things our 
government helps provide--educated workers, roads and bridges, a 
dependable court system, patent and copyright protections--and then 
running out on the bill.
  If a person did that, we would call them a freeloader. We would 
insist that they pay their fair share. That is exactly what our tax 
laws do for people who renounce their American citizenship. Even if 
they do not sell their property in the United States, when they 
renounce their citizenship, we treat them as if they had sold it. If 
they try to send money back to a U.S. citizen, we tax that amount too. 
And if someone attempts to evade their tax obligations by renouncing 
their American citizenship, we bar them from coming back to this 
country.
  For a person who does not want to pay a fair share, our message is 
clear: You can renounce your citizenship but do not come back and 
expect the rest of us to pick up the tab. But we do not do that for 
corporations. Corporations can renounce their American citizenship--and 
make absolutely clear in legal documents that they are doing it to 
avoid their U.S. tax obligations--and not suffer any consequences.
  In this corner of the Tax Code we have gone way past treating 
corporations as people. In this corner of the Tax Code we are treating 
corporations better than people. That is not right. That is why I have 
teamed up with Senator Levin and more than a dozen of our Democratic 
colleagues to introduce the Stop Corporate Inversions Act. The bill is 
simple. It allows American corporations to renounce their citizenship 
only if they truly give up control of their company to a foreign 
corporation and truly move their operations overseas. The bill would 
help protect $17 billion in tax revenue--money we could spend on Head 
Start Programs, on fixing our roads and bridges, on investing in 
medical research.
  President Obama and Secretary Lew have spoken in favor of the 
proposal. I commend their leadership, and I join them in urging the 
Senate to pass this bill right away.
  Some say wait. They say we should address this loophole in the 
context only of broader tax reform. I am all for a major overhaul of 
our tangled tax system, but make no mistake, more and more companies 
are rushing to renounce their citizenship to take advantage of this 
inversion loophole before we can get to full tax reform. We cannot 
allow the larger fights over tax reform to stop us from holding these 
freeloaders accountable.
  I believe the Senate should act on this, but I am also realistic. 
Even if the Senate passes this bill today, we know that, like so many 
good Senate bills before it, it will face a tough road in the House. If 
we have learned anything

[[Page 13548]]

from the past few years, it is that House Republicans will claw, 
scratch, whimper, beg or do whatever else it takes to defend every last 
corporate tax loophole.
  But the administration does not need to wait for Congress. It can use 
its existing authority to slow down and reduce the attractiveness of 
these sham inversions right now. According to a paper published this 
week by Steve Shay, a Harvard Law School professor and former senior 
tax policy official at the Treasury Department, the administration 
could take action today to reduce the tax benefits of corporate 
inversions.
  It could use its authority under section 385 of the Tax Code to 
prevent companies that renounce their citizenship from using any other 
loopholes to shield themselves from additional taxes that they would 
otherwise be required to pay. This will not totally solve the problem, 
but it would significantly reduce the benefits of corporate inversion. 
It would be an important first step toward treating companies that 
renounce America the same way we treat people who renounce America--as 
freeloaders who get cut off from other benefits.
  America is a great place to do business because of the investments we 
have made together. In Massachusetts and across this country, we invest 
in public education, and our colleges and universities produce millions 
of skilled workers. We invest in infrastructure, in our roads and 
bridges and ports, making it easier for our companies to move their 
products across the country and beyond. We invest in scientific and 
medical research, giving our companies access to the most innovative 
and cutting-edge technology. We invest together to make America a place 
where any kid will have a chance to come up with an idea and turn it 
into the next great American corporation.
  The companies that are pursuing these corporate inversions know all 
of this. That is why they are not actually leaving America behind. They 
just do not want to pay for it. Our achievements are not magic. They 
did not simply happen on their own or through dumb luck. America works, 
our government works, our democracy works because we all pitch in and 
do our part to build that which none of us can build alone, giving 
everyone a chance to succeed.
  If these companies want to leave all of that behind, well, that is 
their right. But if they exercise that right, if they leave America 
behind, then they should not get to turn around and claim all of the 
privileges of being an American company. We have had enough of rich 
corporations taking whatever they want and expecting everyone else to 
pick up the pieces. The time for freeloading is over.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized for up to 20 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                 Israel

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, it has been 22 days now since Hamas 
began its most recent campaign of terrorist attacks against the 
innocent citizens of Israel. Since the operation began, 32 tunnels have 
been uncovered that would have been used to attack Israel. On Saturday 
and Sunday--this past Saturday and Sunday alone--almost 100 rockets 
were fired at Israel. In the Gaza strip, since the beginning of 
Operation Protective Edge--that would have been July 8--there have been 
over 2,000 Hamas rockets fired into Israel, with Tel Aviv and Jerusalem 
both targets.
  Israel has responded, as any nation protecting its people would, with 
air strikes and ground troops to silence these Hamas terrorists. 
Israelis are tough. I have to remind people all the time that since 
their independence back in the 1940s, they have been attacked--Israel 
has been attacked--six different times.
  Remember how they were outnumbered in the Six-Day War in 1967. They 
won. They prevailed. Then again, the same thing in Yom Kippur--that was 
in 1973. Again, they prevailed. I have often kidded with them--I have 
told Prime Minister Netanyahu this, that the Israelis consider a fair 
fight being outnumbered two to one. So they are a great bunch of 
people. We have got to continue to support them.
  The Hamas terrorists are not only killing Israelis; they are killing 
their own people too because they place their rocket launchers--we see 
this is happening, just yesterday we saw a picture of this--in the 
middle of their own population centers. We are talking in homes, in 
hospitals, in mosques. Like the cowards they are, they use civilians as 
human shields. Despite Israel's extensive precautionary behavior and 
measures to avoid collateral damage, casualties, unfortunately, have 
occurred. Hamas bears complete responsibility for the civilian deaths.
  As Prime Minister Netanyahu said: Israel is using missile defense to 
protect our citizens, and Hamas is using their civilians to protect 
their missiles. To date, the Israeli missile defense system, called the 
Iron Dome, has successfully intercepted over 400 Hamas rockets headed 
toward the populated areas in Israel. I was just in Israel last month. 
I visited the Iron Dome battery. You see, there has to be a place where 
they initiate these protective devices. Here they are over there. I was 
so impressed with the young Israeli troops who operate it in the 
southern city of Ashkelon. The same battery you see on TV every night 
intercepting Hamas rockets comes from the Gaza Strip, 13 kilometers 
away.
  I have a picture here I want the Presiding Officer to look at. This 
beautiful young first lieutenant in the Israeli Army I met. She is the 
one in charge of the Ashkelon battery down there. She is doing her duty 
right now as we speak, bravely protecting her fellow citizens. Her name 
is Lee Shmulevitch. I salute her.
  It gives people an idea of the commitment that is being made by the 
Israeli people and the successes they are having. As ranking member, 
which I am, of the Armed Services Committee, I am proud to say I have 
been a constant supporter of the Iron Dome, which we have done on a 
nonpartisan basis. We have put in the authorization for $175 million in 
this last authorization bill. Then we added another $176 million that 
would take care of not just the Iron Dome but also other systems that 
we have such as David's Sling and Arrow 3.
  These are jointly developed by the United States and Israel. I think 
it is important that people understand. I have heard people say: Well, 
you are just sending all this stuff over from us to Israel. If that 
were true, it would be worth doing it anyway, because they are looking 
out after our interests. Those things which they are not able to do in 
the Middle East we would have to be doing with our equipment, with your 
young people.
  This is not the case. They have a lot of brave people over there. In 
the case of the Iron Dome, of David's Sling, of Arrow 3, and of a lot 
of the UAVs, their technology is technology that we use. So it is not 
something that we are doing for them. We are doing it mutually for each 
other.
  I think it is important also to note at this point that--and nobody 
seems to put this together--Hamas would not have the rockets and 
capability of trying to kill all of these Israelis if it were not for 
Israel's greatest threat, and that is the country of Iran. Quite 
frankly, I think Iran is the greatest threat to the United States also. 
A lot of people do not realize this, but back in 2007 our--at that time 
it was classified--Our intelligence said that by 2015, Iran would have 
the weapon and a delivery system. Well, that is only 6 months from now.
  That has been reconfirmed in our unclassified intelligence starting 
in about 2010. So right now it is really Iran that is responsible for 
what Hamas has been able to do. I might ask the question: What is 
President Obama doing? His rush to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran 
has undermined years of bipartisan sanctions that were working. We have 
sanctions, not just by us but by European countries and other countries 
that have really brought Iran

[[Page 13549]]

down--not to their knees, because they are still developing their 
weapons. But nonetheless, they were working.
  As part of the President's agreement--this is what he is doing right 
now. His agreement is to reduce Iran's sanctions, as he announced in 
January. He has endorsed Iran's right to enrich uranium. So let's stop 
and think about it. This is a deal he has cut. He said: All right. We 
will pull off our sanctions so you will be able to receive the benefit 
of that. At the same time we are going to let you go ahead and continue 
to enrich uranium.
  He has allowed Iran to keep 19,000 centrifuges while unlocking $7 
billion in assets. These are assets that were held which they can now 
use to their benefit. He has just extended the deal by agreeing to 
provide Iran with an additional $2.8 billion in frozen assets. That 
brings the $7 billion up to almost $10 billion. While Iran is building 
a bomb, Obama is releasing sanctions.
  I believe the Iranians are using negotiations to buy time as they are 
developing their nuclear weapon. Again, Netanyahu called the 
President's agreement a ``historic mistake'' that is making the world a 
much more dangerous place. History is going to prove that he is right. 
Obama should demand Iran dismantle its nuclear program, but he will not 
do it. We should reinstate full sanctions now and consider additional 
sanctions. But President Obama will not do it.
  Does anyone really believe Iran is not involved with Hamas and its 
attacks?
  Today, Obama is rewarding Iran by releasing more financial assets to 
Iran, funding that will be used to support more terrorism against 
Israel. There is little to show for the administration's reckless 
gamble for Israel. President Obama is negotiating with an Iranian 
regime that has repeatedly deceived us and concealed its nuclear 
program for over 2 decades.
  I see nothing different in this deal. Israel lives in a dangerous 
neighborhood, surrounded by terrorists who refuse to even acknowledge 
the Jewish state's right to exist. They need all the friends they can 
get. I keep hearing people talk about the two-state solution. The two-
state solution between Hamas and Israel is kind of interesting because 
Hamas does not consider Israel to be a state. So how can you have a 
two-state solution if you only have one state? That is the situation.
  That is why I want to salute the country of Egypt. There are some 
other friends that we have over there. I have been upset with some of 
the Members here in this body because they do not have an appreciation 
for what Egypt does and the part they play in the Middle East and their 
support for Israel. Let me tell you, this started a long time ago. The 
Camp David Accords was in 1979. In the Camp David Accords they made a 
deal with Israel. Now, you have to keep in mind that this was the 
military of Egypt. It is hard for people in this country to see that 
sometimes there is a difference between the administration in a country 
and the military.
  So it is the military here that has said: We will be protecting 
Israel. We had, not too long ago, an effort from this body to try to 
stop the shipment of some F-16s that Egypt had already bought. Now, 
granted, that was back during President Morsi and his radical Muslim 
Brotherhood. But nonetheless, these were going not to him but to the 
military. The newly elected President Sisi has destroyed--he is working 
right along with the Israelis. He has been involved, and his people and 
his military, in destroying over 90 percent of the tunnels that are 
going from the Sinai to Gaza.
  So I only mention this because those individuals who do not 
understand this might consider punishing Egypt. If you punish Egypt, 
you are punishing, to the same degree, Israel.
  The turbulent times we face serve as a reminder why the United States 
and Israel have to continue to work together. The same enemies that 
threaten the existence of Israel also want to destroy America. Over the 
years the United States has greatly benefited from the cooperation with 
Israel on missile defense technologies. We have to continue that 
critical partnership. Israel is our most faithful ally, our most 
critical partner in the region, and acts as a roadblock against 
terrorism, terrorism that would be hitting the United States of 
America.
  The United States stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel and 
supports its right to defend itself.
  Since his first budget, President Obama has been degrading our 
military while also making the world more dangerous through an 
apologetic and reactive foreign policy of appeasement. I often quote 
Hiram Mann, who said:

     No man escapes
     When freedom fails,
     The best men rot in filthy jails;
     And they who cried: ``Appease, Appease!''
     Are hanged by men they tried to please.

  We have to get out of that system. We have to stand by Israel and 
hang tough with our best friend. We can't survive without them.
  I often look back wistfully at the days of the Cold War. That was 
back when they had two superpowers in the world, the USSR and the 
United States. We knew what they had, and they knew what we had. We 
knew what their capacities were, they knew ours.
  They had a system called MAD, mutually assured destruction. It meant: 
You shoot at you, we will shoot at you. You die, we all die, and 
everyone is happy.
  That doesn't work anymore. Now we have these rogue elements out there 
that are developing weapons that can wipe out an entire U.S. city. I am 
about not just the Middle East but about North Korea also.
  So we are looking at the Middle East. We are looking at our only way 
of defending our allies there and working to stop the capabilities of 
countries such as Iran to have a weapon that would reach the United 
States of America. So we have to hang tough with our best friend 
Israel, and I pray that we do.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.


                      49th Anniversary of Medicare

  Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise in honor of a birthday.
  Forty-nine years ago, Medicare was signed into law. Every year, the 
trustees prepare a report about the fiscal health of Medicare and 
Social Security, and that report was issued earlier this week. On this 
49th birthday of Medicare, I wish to talk about Medicare's health 
because there is some good news.
  The 2014 trustees' report released earlier this week looks at the 
trust fund financing for Medicare hospital coverage and indicates that 
trust fund, under current projections, will remain solvent until 2030. 
Last year the 2013 report indicated that solvency period would go to 
2026. So in 1 year the fiscal projections for Medicare and Medicaid 
improved by 4 years--solvency until 2030.
  In addition, the projected Part B premiums, the Part B portion of 
Medicare, which is the prescription drug premium program for seniors, 
for the second year in a row the premiums will not increase one penny.
  This improved health of Medicare is significant. The health of it has 
improved dramatically, even in the last year. But where the improvement 
truly looks significant is if we compare the 2014 report with the 2009 
report, the report that was done on Medicare's 44th birthday 5 years 
ago. The 2009 report said the hospital insurance trust fund was not 
adequately financed for the next 10 years, and it would be exhausted in 
2017.
  Again, just to compare, 2009 Medicare trustees' report, the trust 
fund will be exhausted by 2017; 2014 Medicare trustees' report, the 
trust fund will be solvent all the way through 2030. There is a 
difference of 13 years of additional solvency in Medicare, according to 
the projections and the change just from 2009 to 2014.
  I think we know where I am going with this subject. What explains the 
improving solvency of the Medicare trust fund? Why would it have 
changed so dramatically from the 2009 to the 2014 projection and added 
13 years of solvency to the trust fund?
  The Congressional Budget Office and others have indicated it was not 
the 2009 recession that was the primary driver for Medicare spending 
reduction.

[[Page 13550]]

Instead, the CBO and others are indicating that a large part of the 
improved solvency of Medicare is because of the reforms that were 
included by Congress when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 
2010. When it comes to reducing costs, bending the cost curve, the 
Affordable Care Act is working.
  That is not the only reason Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. 
Coverage is expanding. Certain health care indicators are improving. 
More people have access because they are not denied insurance because 
of preexisting conditions. Kids can stay on family policies. Businesses 
can get tax credits if they are small.
  But one of the areas--and that was why the first day the ACA was 
affordable. It was to try to do things that would control health care 
costs.
  This Medicare trustees' report on Medicare's 49th birthday shows on 
cost reforms the ACA is working. The innovative systems of changing the 
payment model from pay-for-procedure to pay for quality, paying for 
value over volume, for reducing costs and improving health care 
delivery systems are extending the solvency of Medicare.
  Not only is this cost containment good for the Federal Government, 
for the Federal Treasury, it is also good for Medicare recipients: 8.2 
million Medicare recipients saved more than $11.5 billion on 
prescription drugs thanks to closing the Medicare Part D doughnut hole.
  In Virginia, people with Medicare saved $254 million on prescription 
drugs because the Medicare Part D doughnut hole was closed just since 
the ACA was enacted--$254 million since the 2010 enactment. In 2013 
alone, 37.2 million Medicare recipients received free preventive 
benefits, including more than 900,000 in Virginia, because of the 
Affordable Care Act.
  The work obviously needs to continue to bend the cost curve the right 
way, but the trustees' report from Monday is not the only evidence of 
the improving health of our fiscal expenditures.
  Just this month CBO again revised downward its 10-year estimate for 
spending on Medicare and our Nation's major health care programs. Since 
2010 CBO has lowered its estimates for Medicare and Medicaid and other 
health care programs by $1.23 trillion--lowered projections of health 
care spending since the Affordable Care Act was passed.
  The CBO said in a recently issued long-term budget outlook that the 
government will spend 1.6 percent of GDP less on health care programs 
than estimated in 2010 before the ACA was passed. A report released 
this week by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and 
Evaluation at HHS reported essentially no growth in Medicare 
expenditures on a per capita basis last year.
  That report also said Medicare spending between 2009 and 2012--for 
beneficiaries in the traditional program--was approximately $116 
billion lower than it would have been if the average growth rates from 
years 2004 to 2008 had been projected forward.
  So there are many reasons we should be thankful the Affordable Care 
Act passed, that we should be absolutely committed to maintaining it, 
and that we should also be committed to maintaining it wherever we can. 
But as we celebrate the 49th anniversary of Medicare today, one of the 
reasons we should be thankful is it is clear that the ACA is helping us 
make health care more affordable.
  To conclude, the report that was issued this week was not all good 
news because it also had challenges with respect to Social Security. 
The Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2033, and that 
represents no change from last year. The solvency of the trust fund was 
not changed at all in the interim year.
  But in the area of Social Security disability income, that insurance 
program--at current projections--will be completed by 2016.
  Secretary Lew indicated this week that measures need to be taken to 
make sure that program--which is of critical importance to millions of 
Americans who are on disabilities--requires that we take action to fix 
that program so they can count on it.
  So what we see is when Congress in the Affordable Care Act acted in a 
smart way to deal with Medicare, we have improved the area of Medicare 
costs and we are saving money. Congress has not acted with respect to 
Social Security and the Social Security disability insurance program, 
which is critical to folks with disabilities. It is going to need some 
quick fix.
  I conclude and just say it is good for Congress to act. We can 
filibuster. We can debate. We can consider nominations. We can do a 
bill in one House and send it over and wait--as with immigration reform 
for 1-year-plus--for the other House to do something about it. None of 
that is action. None of that will fix any of the challenges that face 
us.
  But when we do act and we are willing to tackle tough problems such 
as Medicare cost growth, we do it in both Houses and take the risk, we 
will find we will be better off than if we don't act. Social Security 
needs to have the same kind of focused and careful attention to it, 
especially the disability insurance program, as we paid to Medicare in 
2010.
  Medicare is one of the best programs this Nation has ever embraced. I 
wish it a happy 49th birthday today and congratulate those who were in 
the Senate in 2010 for being willing to risk action and thereby found a 
way to save costs and make Medicare work better.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I rise to speak on the urgent supplemental bill, and I 
rise as the chair of the full Committee on Appropriations that is 
actually trying to move the urgent supplemental.
  ``Supplemental'' is an important word. It means it is in addition to 
fiscal year 2014 funding. There are elements where we make requests for 
an urgent supplemental because of unexpected emergencies, either within 
our own country or affecting a treasured ally--such as the State of 
Israel--or the crisis at our border because of what is going on in 
Central America. Remember, it is the crisis in Central America that is 
creating the humanitarian surge at our border.
  Although I rise now to speak about one element. I have spoken about 
the fires in our Western States and later today I will speak about the 
children and actually try to paint a picture for people about what is 
going on in Honduras, El Salvador, and other countries that are also 
affected, but now I am going to speak about Israel.
  Israel is under attack, and it is under attack by a terrorist group 
that denies its very right to exist. It is under attack by an 
organization called Hamas that is sending thousands of rockets to 
Israeli cities and towns targeting innocent civilians. Its very 
survivability is being defended by missile defense technology. The most 
crucial for short-range missiles is a technology called Iron Dome. This 
missile defense technology has saved hundreds of lives.
  I can speak to this--when I say personally, not because I am in 
Israel and see the horrific attacks, but because I have a classmate 
from college, a very dear friend, and we have stayed in contact over a 
number of years. She is a psychiatric nurse. When she married, they 
made aliyah and moved to Israel, where she has taught at Hebrew 
University and her husband is a distinguished psychiatrist. They live 
in a town called Ashkelon.
  She sent me the most poignant of emails. I will not read it to my 
colleagues, but she did tell me what is going on. Every day there are 
these rockets going on. They spend their lives going to shelters. They 
can only move around in a small patch because they have to be, under 
safety rules, within 2 or 3 minutes from a shelter. She said in her 
email to me that it is literally Iron Dome that is saving their lives.
  Iron Dome is a technology that needs to be replenished. It needs to 
be replenished, and the State of Israel has discussed this with our 
government. Secretary Chuck Hagel wrote to our committee asking that 
this be in the supplemental essentially because of this war or 
terrorist attack against Israel.
  The committee has responded by placing $225 million in there, but in

[[Page 13551]]

order to replenish it. There are many who say: I don't know if I am 
going to vote for this. What is Iron Dome, and is this an attack 
technology?
  Let me say what Iron Dome is.
  Iron Dome is a high-tech defensive system. It is not an offensive 
system. It is used as a missile defense system. How does it work? 
Approximately 10-feet-long missiles intercept rockets. Their rockets 
aren't designed to shoot out; they are designed to shoot rockets at 
rockets that are being fired on Israel from a range of between 2.5 and 
43 miles. Each interceptor missile--remember, they intercept another 
rocket--costs about $50,000. Stunning, isn't it? Israel has invested 
over $1 billion of its own money in Iron Dome. Our government has 
worked with them on Iron Dome so they can maintain their qualitative 
edge. But just think. In order to protect themselves, every rocket 
going off costs $50,000.
  As of July 30, over 2,730 rocket launches have been directed at 
Israel itself. Iron Dome has sent over 515 interceptions; 9 batteries 
have been deployed; more than 4,100 targets were attacked since the 
beginning of the operation.
  But remember, over 2,700 rockets have been directed at Israel. Iron 
Dome has deployed 515 at the cost of $50,000 apiece. Now what they are 
saying is, help us replenish our interceptor rockets because we are 
using them up. Essentially, it is bullets--not directed at people--it 
is rockets in the air.
  Israel has a 90-percent success rate in intercepting these rockets 
coming from the Gaza. What they are asking for is help from us, the 
ability to replenish these rockets. I hope we do this in order for them 
to continue to be able to defend themselves. It is absolutely crucial 
that Israel has the opportunity to defend itself while others are 
working on cease-fires or political solutions. Those are excellent 
diplomatic and humanitarian goals, but right now we have to make sure 
that Israel can defend itself.
  This is important because Israel is a treasured ally. It is important 
that we enable them to guard themselves against a terrorist 
organization.
  We all know that the long-range solution is that the Hamas 
infrastructure must be eliminated. That is absolutely so. These so-
called--well, they are not so-called. As a member of the Intelligence 
Committee, I have had many briefings on this. I can't go into detail, 
but there are tunnels that go right through Gaza and into the edge or, 
actually, in some instances into Israel itself. During this conflict 
Israel has discovered 31 tunnels. This is extremely disturbing. And 
they are big. When we think of a tunnel--this isn't like a little pipe 
for water. This is a tunnel where as many as two people could cross 
side-by-side going through and, in some instances, actually weapons 
being able to be put through. These tunnels are a very threat to 
Israel's existence.
  In addition to the tunnels, the rockets that are pummeling Israel 
continue to be fired every single day.
  We believe, for our allies, in the right to self-defense. We have 
signed memorandums of agreement to enable them, with their missile 
defense system, to maintain their qualitative edge.
  Now, when they are in the very struggle for their safety and perhaps 
their future, we need to be able to pass this important legislation.
  We also know that when we pass this legislation, Iron Dome should 
stand alone. Many people who support the Iron Dome legislation, such as 
myself, want to also support those people who are also under threat.
  That takes me to the children, because right now the children in 
Central America are under threat. And what are they under threat of? 
Well, I will talk more about that around 5:00. But what are they under 
threat of? They are under threat because of the narco drug dealers who 
have created the most vicious and violent gangs that have now almost 
taken over some of these Central American countries. They want to 
recruit the young men to be part of the gang, part of the drug trade, 
part of the couriers, part of what is involved in doing a drug trade. 
Then, when they refuse, they either threaten them with death or the 
most grisly and ghoulish of torture.
  There are reported incidents, not in our classified briefings but in 
public media, of children being tortured to death because they refused 
to join a gang. They are literally fighting for their lives. These 
children coming to our border are fighting for their lives, and the way 
they fight for their life is to flee. They are fleeing the violence.
  I know people are dismissive of some of this and they say: Oh, there 
you go. You are a soft-hearted social worker, you are a liberal, you 
love children. The answer is: Yes. Yes to all that. Yes, you betcha, I 
claim it; I own it; that is who I am.
  But I don't do this because of some ``gushy-poo'' feeling here. I am 
doing this because of the actual documented violence in these 
countries, and I believe we need to respond to the needs of the 
children. Let them tell their case not only to a social worker--which 
is a good step, in my mind--but also to an immigration judge, and using 
the laws of our country, the legal criteria for asylum and refugee 
status, let's listen to the stories of the children. And if those 
children qualify for asylum and refugee status, then they should remain 
in this country. If they don't, there are other avenues for them to 
return home. But for gosh sakes, could we stop punishing the children 
for the crimes of the drug dealers and the human traffickers? Don't 
punish the children.
  There are those who want to further militarize our border by calling 
out the National Guard. Well, what are they going to do when the 
children present themselves with little strips of paper saying what 
their name and their hometown is, and where their aunt is living in 
Langley Park, MD? That is not the job of the National Guard.
  And if we want to use guns at the border, yes--don't use them about 
the children, use them about the drug dealers. And by the way, it is 
our insatiable, vociferous desire and appetite for drugs that has 
fueled this whole economy in these countries.
  I am going to say more about this, but I do want to say that what is 
in this supplemental is the tools for people to defend themselves. For 
our friends in the Western States, this is money to protect themselves; 
and for firefighters--and gosh knows our local communities need that 
help; it is for a great nation such as Israel, our treasured ally, to 
continue to have the interceptor rockets to be able to defend itself; 
and it is also here that we take a look at the border, we honor our law 
in terms of determining refugee status for those fleeing from violence 
in their home country; and then we go after what is creating the 
violence which is right there in Central America against the 
narcotraffickers, because remember--and the Presiding Officer is very 
knowledgeable in this--if someone is willing to trade in drugs, they 
are also willing to view everything like a commodity. So they view 
drugs as a commodity and they view women and children, girls and boys, 
as a commodity, and they are then moved into human trafficking in the 
most vile, repugnant sexual trafficking.
  We need to get some of our darker appetites under control, and we 
need to be able to fight. If we want to fight with guns, join with 
Central America and fight against the narcotraffickers.
  I hope that clarifies the intellectual underpinnings of this bill, 
the compelling financial necessity, and humanitarian issues that are 
facing people in our own country, at our own border, and with a 
treasured ally.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


             International Convention on Disability Rights

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I come before the Senate to call again for 
the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of 
Persons with Disabilities.

[[Page 13552]]

  I would like to give a little history. We passed the Americans with 
Disabilities Act here in 1990. It was signed into law by President 
George Herbert Walker Bush on July 26, 1990--24 years ago last 
Saturday. That changed the face of America. Anywhere you go, you can 
see ramps and curb cuts and automatic door openers and accessible 
bathrooms and in education kids being integrated fully into schools 
under the IDEA and ADA. It really did change accessibility and also 
opportunity in the workplace, for example, for people with 
disabilities.
  Some years after the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, the 
United Nations set up a committee to study whether there should be a 
treaty, an international convention on the rights of people with 
disabilities. That committee drafted it after consultation with us here 
in the Senate. In looking at the ADA, in fact--I was told by one of the 
persons instrumental in this that the Americans with Disabilities Act, 
which we refer to as ADA, informed them on what they needed to put into 
the convention. That convention was sent out to member states for 
ratification in 2008. Since that time, 148 nations have ratified it, 
with one exception--well, there has been more than one exception, but 
one glaring exception is the United States.
  Under our constitutional system, this treaty was sent to the 
President. The President sent it to all of his Departments to find out 
what laws we had that needed to be changed. So it goes to the 
Department of Commerce, the Department of State, the Department of 
Agriculture perhaps, and everywhere else to see what laws we would have 
to change to comply with this treaty. Well, it came back after about a 
year, and because the Americans with Disabilities Act was so good, we 
didn't have to change any of our laws--none--because we are the best in 
the world on it. It was sent to OMB to see if there would be any budget 
implications, and OMB said there were no budget implications either.
  After that, the President sent it to the Senate for ratification 
under our Constitution. It was sent to the Committee On Foreign 
Relations. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was then the chairman of 
the committee. They had hearings. In fact, the first two witnesses at 
the hearings were Senator John McCain and I. There were a lot of other 
people who testified, both Republicans and Democrats, disabilities 
leaders, disability rights advocates, and others. This was in 2011.
  Then it was brought to the floor in December of 2012, and that was a 
lameduck session. It turned out that 38 Senators--all on the Republican 
side--had signed a letter that we should not vote on a treaty in a 
lameduck session. There were some other issues raised, but that was the 
big one. So we brought it up for a vote. In the Constitution, a treaty 
requires a two-thirds vote of those present and voting, and so we fell 
five votes short.
  That Congress ended, so the treaty had to be resubmitted from the 
administration to the Senate. It went through another hearing process. 
I spoke with the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee 
about what we could do to advance it, and they wanted more hearings. So 
we did that. Senator Menendez from New Jersey is now the chair of the 
Foreign Relations Committee, and he had more hearings on it.
  Thanks to the leadership of Senator Menendez, the bill was reported 
out of the committee last week and it was put on the Executive Calendar 
yesterday. There has to be 3 days before they can send it to the floor. 
They sent it to the floor on Monday, 24-hour layover, and it is now on 
the Executive Calendar ready to be brought up.
  I understand we have a busy week this week and there are a lot of 
things happening. I suppose people could look around and say: What? 
There is not much happening around here today.
  But we are in postcloture, and under the rules there is 30 hours of 
postcloture time unless time is yielded back, and evidently--I don't 
know if that is going to happen. I am hopeful that sometime today or 
late today maybe or tomorrow, we will have a unanimous consent request 
in terms of bringing up this treaty, this convention on the rights of 
people with disabilities.
  So that is what I wanted to talk about today, but I wanted to give a 
brief history of where we are and why we are at this point.
  During the past week we have seen extraordinary efforts to move 
forward with this treaty. As I said, Senator Menendez, the chair of the 
Foreign Relations Committee, has marked up the treaty and brought it 
out with a 12-to-6 bipartisan vote. The committee added new 
reservations, understandings, and declarations that thoughtfully 
addressed the concerns that have been raised, including the matter of a 
parent's right to decide how their children are schooled as well as 
issues related to federalism and sovereignty.
  This week we are hearing from disability advocates from across the 
country. Yesterday afternoon there was a big rally on the Mall calling 
for passage of the treaty. Many of our offices have been flooded with 
calls and visits from people with disabilities, veterans groups, and 
business leaders asking us to vote on and pass this treaty. Businesses 
such as Walmart, AT&T, Sprint, and Coca-Cola have urged passage of this 
treaty. In the days ahead we will hear from many more calling for its 
passage.
  Now let me talk about a few of the issues that have been raised. 
First, I will talk about the issue of sovereignty. Some of our 
colleagues continue to express concern about some aspects, particularly 
with regard to sovereignty and reproductive health. Let me talk about 
sovereignty first, but I want to say this first of all: It is important 
to address these issues thoughtfully and respectfully. The Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee in a bipartisan fashion did so last week 
when it approved a series of new reservations, understandings, and 
declarations.
  For those who don't know what that means, every treaty we adopt has 
what are called RUDs--reservations, understandings, and declarations. 
What are those? Those inform other free nations on how we will adopt 
this treaty, how under our laws and the Constitution we will comport 
with that treaty. Just about every treaty we have has some reservation 
or understanding or declaration.
  So the Foreign Relations Committee adopted new reservations, 
declarations, and understandings, but concerns remain.
  Last week my good friend the senior Senator from Utah spoke 
eloquently about his genuine concerns about the loss of or possible 
loss of U.S. sovereignty. In answering my question as to why this 
convention is different from the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child 
Labor treaty, he expressed his fear that the disabilities convention 
would ``threaten American sovereignty and self-government.'' The 
Senator from Utah stated that the child labor convention we passed in 
1999 is the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. The Senate 
adopted it in 1999. So the Senator from Utah says that convention gives 
authority to ratifying countries to determine whether they are in 
compliance with the convention while under the disabilities 
convention--the CRPD, as it is known--the U.N. determines whether 
ratifying countries are in compliance with their treaty obligations. On 
the Senate floor, my good friend from Utah stated that ``the Disability 
Treaty gives the last word on whether a nation is in compliance to the 
UN, the child labor treaty leaves that entirely up to each nation.''
  Well, the fact is that the review process of compliance is 
essentially identical in both the Worst Forms of Child Labor treaty 
that we adopted in 1999 and the CRPD that we are discussing right now.
  Let me further explain that. When an ILO member--that is the 
International Labor Organization, under which that treaty was signed--
when an ILO member state ratifies this convention, it is required to 
submit regular reports. Those reports are reviewed by the ILO's 
independent committee of experts. Keep that phrase in mind--``committee 
of experts.'' It is reviewed by

[[Page 13553]]

them on the application of conventions and recommendations, and they 
are known as the committee of experts. The task of the committee of 
experts is to assess the extent to which the ratifying member's 
legislation and practices are in conformity with the ratified treaty. 
This is an external review committee, and the United States has always 
supported this type of review. The process guarantees fairness and 
openness in the implementation of treaty obligations.
  While it has been suggested that the United States should conduct its 
own compliance with treaty obligations, I ask my colleagues, would we 
be comfortable with all countries assessing their own compliance with 
important international standards? I don't think so.
  For example, take any treaty--take the START treaty, the arms control 
reduction treaty. Would we be content to say to Russia ``Tell us how 
you are in compliance with that'' and just accept their word for it? We 
wouldn't do that. We wouldn't do that with any country with which we 
have a treaty. That is why there is always an external review process 
to see whether country A, B, C or D that has signed on to any treaty is 
in fact in compliance with it. You wouldn't make a treaty and say: OK, 
Country X, tell us whether you are in compliance and we will just 
accept that. No one would do that. It goes back to Ronald Reagan's 
phrase: Trust but verify. We will trust, but we want verification.
  The Worst Forms of Child Labour treaty, the one we adopted here in 
1999, has the same conclusions and recommendations as this committee of 
experts as far as external reviews. It is the same in the CRPD, the 
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and sets up a 
``committee of experts,'' just as it is under the Worst Forms of Child 
Labour treaty, to review whether a country is basically in compliance. 
Are they really implementing the treaty as they said in the treaty?
  Again, we have the two committees of experts--the one in the CRPD and 
in the Worst Forms of Child Labour treaty, which was adopted here 
unanimously in 1999. The Senator from Utah supported that. The 
recommendations and conclusions of that committee of experts under the 
Worst Forms of Child Labour treaty that was set up in 1999 are not 
legally binding on the United States or any other country. Although 
these recommendations often have great moral weight and persuasive 
value, the findings cannot be imposed on any government. It is up to 
each ratifying member to determine whether and to what extent it will 
act upon those recommendations. That is the same as the Convention on 
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
  This committee of experts will certainly go in and do external 
reviews of whether a country is in compliance or working to be in 
compliance. They may issue findings and conclusions and 
recommendations, but they are not binding on any country. They are not 
binding on the United States. Let me repeat: It is up to each ratifying 
member to determine whether and to what extent it will act upon those 
recommendations.
  A review of practices is common whenever a nation undertakes an 
international obligation, whether it is by treaty or any other 
international agreement. This does not equate to forfeiture by the 
American people of our right to govern or of our sovereignty. It does 
not relate to any abandonment of our cultural and social values in 
America.
  In terms of this external review of compliance, there is no 
substantive difference between the child labor convention we passed in 
1999 and the U.N. disabilities convention that we hope to bring up. 
Both treaties have much the same reporting requirements, oversight 
mechanisms, recommendation process, and ``committee of experts.'' And 
just as in 1999 with that earlier treaty, the United States is in no 
danger of losing any of its sovereignty with the disability treaty--
none whatsoever. If we weren't before, we aren't now. These are 
recommendations.
  Why should we be afraid of an external review by a committee of 
experts to see whether we are in compliance with this treaty on the 
rights of people with disabilities? It was modeled after the Americans 
with Disabilities Act, for crying out loud, and we were already in 
compliance. We are far ahead, quite frankly, of any other country. Why 
should we be afraid of any review of our laws and practices in terms of 
people with disabilities? We should not be. We ought to be proud of it. 
In fact, we ought to be proud of exporting the Americans with 
Disabilities Act.
  Given these facts, I ask my colleagues: Why is it acceptable to have 
sufficient reservations to protect our sovereignty for a treaty about 
the worst forms of child labor and a treaty on torture and a treaty on 
degrading punishment and not be able to have sufficient reservations 
that protect our sovereignty when it comes to a treaty regarding people 
with disabilities? What is the difference? From my review of this 
issue, and the review of legal experts, there is no substantive 
difference to the threat to our sovereignty. As I have stated 
previously here, scores of Republican policymakers agree with me.
  I have heard that some of my fellow Republicans are concerned about 
losing our sovereignty under this treaty. I will point out that former 
President George Herbert Walker Bush, who signed the Americans with 
Disabilities Act, is in strong support of this treaty. Are you telling 
me he doesn't care about our sovereignty? I don't think so. Former 
President Bush was a strong supporter. I kind of think he cares about 
our sovereignty. Since the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, 
every former Republican leader of this Senate--I am talking about 
Senator Dole, Senator Lott, and Senator Frist--supported this treaty. I 
kind of think they care about our sovereignty a lot too. I know every 
one of them.
  Dick Thornburgh, former Attorney General of the United States under 
George Herbert Walker Bush, is in strong support of this treaty. Don't 
tell me he doesn't know what is in the treaty. He knows every legal 
part of it. He cares deeply about our sovereignty, and he says this is 
no threat to our sovereignty whatsoever.
  The American Legion is a big supporter. Are you telling me the 
American Legion commander and all of those veterans are not concerned 
about our sovereignty? You bet they are. They know this treaty and have 
read the treaty, and they said it doesn't affect our sovereignty. Every 
veterans group supports this bill, and they do care about our 
sovereignty.
  I hope we can lay that issue aside. This does not impinge or threaten 
our sovereignty any more than other treaties. Every treaty we have 
signed has a reservation that basically says a treaty shall be applied 
in the United States in accordance with the Constitution as interpreted 
by the United States. That is in every treaty we sign, and it says, 
basically, we are sovereign and our Constitution is sovereign.
  There was a court case called the Bond case which was recently 
decided, I think in May, by the Supreme Court. A lot of people wondered 
whether that would affect this treaty. It was a case that was brought 
up by the United States against a woman for violating the chemical 
weapons ban treaty because she had been trying to poison one of her 
husband's lovers or something like that. The Supreme Court said: That 
is nonsense. Get out of here. Those laws are covered by the State of 
Pennsylvania, not by a treaty. So that kind of put to rest any idea 
that somehow this treaty overrode our Constitution--our federalism--and 
the fact that these criminal laws are State laws. That just happened in 
May.
  The other issue that has come up is reproductive health. Some of our 
colleagues have also voiced concern regarding the provision on sexual 
and reproductive health of women with disabilities as it was mentioned 
in article 25 of the treaty. For those not familiar with this 
provision, the treaty simply says ``persons with disabilities have the 
right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health 
without discrimination on the basis of disability.''

[[Page 13554]]

  The article goes further and says that those countries ratifying the 
treaty shall ``provide persons with disabilities with the same range, 
quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes 
as provided to other persons, including in the area of sexual and 
reproductive health . . . ''
  Critics of the treaty say this phrase ``creates and expands rights to 
abortion.'' That is not correct. This phrase has nothing to do with 
abortion. What it is about is equality and access.
  Historically, people with disabilities have been disproportionately 
discriminated against when it comes to health care--especially women 
with disabilities around the world--because they are blind or have 
cerebral palsy or autism or any number of physical or mental 
impairments. They were often viewed as not being able to be mothers or 
wives or partners in a family.
  In fact, because of this prejudiced attitude--which still exists in 
so many places around the world, and probably some places here in 
America too--women with disabilities were, and in many cases still are, 
denied such vital services as Pap smears, gynecological exams, breast 
cancer screenings, and cervical cancer screenings simply because they 
are disabled. Denying women with disabilities the same health 
prevention, screening, and intervention services that are provided to 
women without disabilities is blatant discrimination, prejudicial, and 
unethical.
  The entire purpose of article 25 of the U.N. convention is to address 
this prejudiced view of the world that has led to thousands of 
unnecessary deaths of women because they have not been afforded the 
same access to reproductive health care as women without disabilities. 
That is why that was put in there. It has nothing to do with abortion. 
Article 25 simply reflects the underlying principles of the treaty: 
equality and access for all. These same principles are the bedrock of 
our own Americans with Disabilities Act. It has nothing to do with 
abortion, but some people have whipped it up and said it does.
  In some countries women with disabilities have been the most preyed 
upon. It is women with disabilities--physical and intellectual 
disabilities--who are the subject of maltreatment, mistreatment, and 
sexual abuse. All we are saying is they have to be treated the same as 
any other woman without a disability under the laws of that country. So 
if a country banned all abortions, that is their right to do so. They 
cannot then say: Oh, you may have an abortion if your unborn child is 
disabled. They can't do that. They can't make exceptions.
  If they provide any kind of services, they can't say to one woman: 
Because you are not disabled, you get this service, but if you are 
disabled, you don't get it. No, no. Equality of access.
  There are 71 countries that have absolute prohibitions, or 
significant restrictions on abortion, that have signed the treaty 
without reservations about reproductive health. Imagine that--71. They 
felt no harm would come from a reservation because they correctly 
determined that the treaty is no threat whatsoever to their sovereignty 
and their national laws limiting access to abortion.
  Poland, a country with strict abortion limitations, was not going to 
sign this treaty because they were concerned about article 25. I will 
read the exact language of the reservation put in by the Nation of 
Poland:

       The Republic of Poland understands that Article 23.1(b) and 
     Article 25(a) shall not be interpreted in a way conferring an 
     individual right to abortion or mandating state party to 
     provide access thereto, unless that right is guaranteed by 
     the national law.

  Well, when they adopted that reservation, Poland signed it on the 
treaty. Poland's reservation states exactly what this treaty is about, 
a guarantee that women with disabilities will have access to the same 
health care services guaranteed to all other citizens by their national 
law. To say the treaty is about creating and expanding abortion rights 
is just plain wrong, and to make such a claim is utterly unfounded and 
unfair. It is unfair to women with disabilities around the globe. It is 
creating a false claim out of thin air with no other purpose but to 
prevent ratification of this important treaty.
  Most of the concerns raised by my colleagues are serious concerns. 
They are also concerns that can be addressed by thoughtful 
reservations, understandings, and declarations to the treaty. Indeed, 
they have been addressed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 
They have acted, and now it is time for the full Senate to act.
  Let us bring the treaty to the floor of the Senate. Listen to 
Senators' concerns, address those concerns, and then vote on the 
treaty. We owe this to millions of Americans with disabilities--our 
veterans and others who want the same rights and access afforded by our 
own Americans with Disabilities Act. They want it to apply to the 
globe. We owe this to our veterans who want to be able to travel and 
pursue opportunities in other countries, knowing they can enjoy the 
same rights and access they have here in America.
  Senator Mark Kirk from Illinois said it very eloquently in a press 
conference we had with the veterans groups last week. He said: ``Our 
veterans fought for freedom around the globe. They ought to be able to 
move freely around the globe.''
  We owe this to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, 
and countless companies that know that not only is this the right thing 
to do for veterans, it is the right thing to do for business. There are 
all kinds of markets opening all around the world for people with 
disabilities--new software, new kinds of equipment, new devices that 
are helping people with disabilities live more full and meaningful 
lives. A lot of that was developed here in America. I know our 
businesses would like to be involved with this treaty, to be able to be 
involved in raising the level of accessibility and opportunity for 
people with disabilities around the globe. Scores of religious groups 
want to see this treaty ratified.
  In closing, it is time to bring this to the floor. As I say, I know 
Members have serious concerns and those concerns should be addressed. I 
believe the Foreign Relations Committee has addressed them. If not, 
then let's have a discussion about how we meet those reservations. We 
shouldn't just say I don't like the U.N., so therefore we shouldn't 
adopt it.
  I think there are some people who maybe don't like the U.N. OK, fine. 
I remember when we passed the convention on the worst forms of child 
labor. I was in Geneva with President Clinton when he signed it. We 
came back, resubmitted it to the Senate, and I went to see Senator 
Jesse Helms to ask him to move this. There was probably no one in my 30 
years of history in the Senate who disliked the United Nations more 
than Jesse Helms of North Carolina. So he went on to tell me just how 
bad the United Nations was but he would bring the treaty to the 
committee and have hearings and a markup. He called me as the first 
witness. I always appreciated that.
  So Senator Helms, the chairman of the committee--the Republicans were 
in charge of the Senate at the time--brought the convention to the 
committee and reported it out. I remember him saying one time he didn't 
like the United Nations, but if this makes them do something good for a 
change, he would be all right with it, and it passed the floor 
unanimously.
  I say to those who maybe don't like the United Nations: Fine, that is 
their right; perhaps they have good and sufficient reasons not to like 
the United Nations. I have some problems with the United Nations myself 
at certain times with some of the things they do or don't do. But I see 
this in the same light as the convention on the worst forms of child 
labor. This makes countries change for the better through persuasion, 
not through mandate. No country has to change their laws because of 
what the committee on experts says, but through moral weight, through 
persuasion, through working with other countries under this umbrella on 
the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. If this 
causes countries to change their policies and make life better for 
people with disabilities around the globe, shouldn't we do it, even 
though we may not like the United Nations? As Jesse

[[Page 13555]]

Helms said, if this makes them do something good for a change, we ought 
to be for it.
  So I hope colleagues will listen to the veterans groups who are for 
it. All business groups I have met with support it strongly. Religious 
groups and disability groups are united behind this. Listen to our 
former Republican leaders, including former President George Herbert 
Walker Bush, President Bush; former Senator Bob Dole, the majority 
leader of the Senate, worked his heart out on this. He cares about 
sovereignty. He knows this is not going to take away our sovereignty. 
Every former Republican leader of the Senate--Senator John McCain--
colleagues tell me Senator John McCain doesn't care about our 
sovereignty? I happen to think he cares a lot about our sovereignty. He 
gave a lot of his life protecting our sovereignty. Mark Kirk, Senator 
Kelly Ayotte, Senator John Barrasso, Senator Murkowski, and Senator 
Collins are all strong supporters of this.
  I have been involved in disability policy since I first got here in 
1975, starting in the House. Everything I have ever worked on, 
including Education of All Handicapped Children Act, the Television 
Decoder Circuitry Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with 
Disabilities Act, the ADA Act Amendments later on in 2008--these were 
all nonpartisan. They didn't devolve into any kind of partisan issue. 
Now, that didn't mean that everybody voted for it, but it passed 
overwhelmingly with both Republican and Democrat support. That ought to 
be the case with this too. Yes, we should address the legitimate and 
honest concerns people have about home schooling, abortion, and 
sovereignty. I believe we can do that with reservations, but I want 
every Senator to know that nothing this committee on experts will ever 
do under the CRPD takes precedence over our Constitution or over our 
laws. It does nothing to take away our sovereignty, and we can spell 
that out just as we have in every other treaty we have signed in the 
past.
  So I hope we can bring this to the floor, and I hope we can have a 
discussion. I hope we can work these areas out and have strong support 
from both sides to pass this treaty and help change the face of the 
globe as we have changed the face of America for people with 
disabilities.
  I see the Senator from Wyoming is on the floor. I was listing all the 
people who support the treaty, and one of the strongest supporters of 
this treaty from the very beginning has been Senator John Barrasso from 
Wyoming. I inadvertently, going through the names, left it off, but I 
see him here, and I apologize because he has been such a strong 
advocate for people with disabilities in this country and a strong 
advocate for people with disabilities in the world. I personally want 
to publicly thank Senator Barrasso for his great leadership on this 
issue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. I thank my colleague from Iowa for his kind comments. 
We have worked on this issue, and I do this as a physician who has 
taken care of patients in Wyoming for a quarter of a century. I have so 
many friends and there are so many folks who have had extra challenges 
in life, and I was happy to stand with Senator Dole and Senator McCain 
and others in this effort. So I thank my colleague for his comments.


                              HEALTH CARE

  As a physician, I come to the floor today as I have week after week 
since the President's health care law was passed because I have many 
concerns about the way this health care law is impacting families in my 
home State of Wyoming, as well as across the country--people who find 
out their rates are going up, they are paying higher deductibles, 
higher copays, higher premiums. They feel the government is in control, 
Washington is in control rather than them, when Washington decides if 
the insurance policy they have had and that worked for them is 
something they will be able to keep, and many times they weren't 
because the President's law said no, it wasn't good enough for them, 
even though the families in Wyoming are better able to make the 
decision about what is better and more important for them. They don't 
like it when the President tells them they need to buy insurance they 
don't want or need or can afford, in many ways, with a long list of 
provisions that Washington mandates be included.
  I hear every week, as I did last weekend in Wyoming, from folks who 
have had work hours cut, resulting in lower take-home pay because of 
the impact of part of the law that resulted in bipartisan opposition 
that says the work week is 30 hours. So people who are working part-
time have had their hours cut to below 30 hours and have lower take-
home pay.
  I talked to ER doctors at home and around the country where I have 
trained and where I have gone to medical school. The Wall Street 
Journal even wrote about it last month: ``ER visits rise despite the 
law. Health act isn't cutting volume.'' On the front page the lead 
paragraph said: ``Early evidence suggests that emergency rooms have 
become busier since the Affordable Care Act expanded insurance coverage 
this year, despite the law's goal of reducing unnecessary care in 
ERs.'' It says: Democrats who designed that law hoped it would do the 
opposite, but that hasn't been the case.
  I heard last weekend in Wyoming the story about all of these fake 
applications that--actually I guess the Government Accountability 
Office said let's see how well this works; is the Obama health care law 
working? So they made up 10 fake applications, sent them in, and they 
found out that actually a dozen fictitious applicants, online or by 
phone, using invalid or missing Social Security numbers--this is the 
Washington Post writing about this, but it was in stories across the 
country--invalid or missing Social Security numbers, inaccurate 
citizenship information--all but one of the fake applicants ended up 
getting subsidized coverage.
  So here we are, a health care law that is supposed to provide a 
number of things, including integrity, and we find out that when the 
Government Accountability Office says, let's just put in a number of 
applications and see what happens, it is not working.
  The administration set up the Health Insurance Marketplace in ways--
we are hearing from the Government Accountability Act--that leave it 
vulnerable to fraud and a waste of taxpayer money. That is what we are 
dealing with in this health care law.
  I know many Senators are preparing to head home, and they will be 
traveling around their home States in the month of August. I expect 
every Senator who goes home will hear from people in their State about 
very damaging side effects that so many people across America are 
feeling from the President's health care law. I hear it every weekend, 
but I hear it when I travel as well. As chairman of the Republican 
policy committee, one of my responsibilities is to study how policies 
that come out of Washington, such as the President's health care law, 
affect people all across America, and that is what I try to look at. So 
in looking around the country, here is what I found in Louisiana.
  Last month, the Shreveport Times in Louisiana had an op-ed written by 
a Dr. Regina Fakner. The headline was: ``Washington ties doctors' 
hands''--not the doctor, not the hospital, not the patients--
``Washington ties doctors' hands.'' The doctor who wrote this op-ed 
says she has practiced pediatric medicine in Shreveport since the early 
1990s.
  We need pediatricians. We need people to take care of children. We 
need primary care physicians. There is a gross shortage of nurses, of 
physicians, of additional health care personnel.
  She says health care was and is impossible to navigate because it is 
wrapped in layers of red tape and government regulations. This doctor 
knows America's health care system needed reform. We needed to do 
something.
  That is what Republicans here in the Senate have been saying too: We 
need to do something. The American people wanted reform that gave them 
access to high-quality, affordable care. That is not what people got.

[[Page 13556]]

  As this doctor writes in the Shreveport Times: ObamaCare only adds to 
the mess, she said. This is a pediatrician who takes care of lots of 
children. She says ``patients and health care providers suffer for 
it.'' The government does not suffer. The Senate Democrats who voted 
for it do not suffer. Patients and health care providers are suffering. 
She puts patients first, which is what doctors do.
  The President's health care law has added tens of thousands of pages 
of redtape and Washington mandates--thousands of pages of redtape and 
mandates. The doctor says in her op-ed that ``this one-size-fits all 
approach limits patient freedom, while picking their pockets.'' This is 
a doctor who talks to her patients every day. She says she has seen for 
herself in Louisiana how Washington is standing between her and her 
patients. Nothing should be between a patient and that person's 
doctor--nothing--not a government bureaucrat, not an insurance company 
bureaucrat, no one. The doctor-patient relationship is one that is 
sacred.
  This doctor's experience is typical of what I am hearing and what we 
are hearing from all across the country from doctors.
  Every Democrat in the Senate voted to pass this terrible health care 
law. President Obama says Democrats who voted for the health care law 
should, as he said, ``forcefully defend and be proud of'' the law.
  Is the President proud that patients and health care providers such 
as this pediatrician are suffering because of his health care law and 
all of its dangerous side effects? Where are the Democrats ready to 
forcefully defend standing between Louisiana doctors and their 
patients? Where are they? I do not see them coming to the floor.
  Democrats in Washington were so eager to pass the President's health 
care law that they made a lot of promises, and they were not true. They 
said people could keep their insurance. That was not true. It seems as 
though 5 million people received letters saying their insurance had 
been canceled, in spite of what the President had promised them.
  People in Wyoming, people in Louisiana, people all across the country 
lost the insurance they had because it did not include all the 
unnecessary coverage the President's health care law mandated.
  Democrats said people could keep their doctor. That was not true. 
People in Wyoming, Louisiana, all across America lost their doctor 
because the new, narrow provider networks made people lose the doctor 
they had worked with, who treated them, who treated members of their 
family, whom they knew and trusted.
  The President said the American people would save $2,500 per year, 
per family on insurance premiums. Democrats in the Senate who voted for 
the law promised the same. I remember them standing here. I can see one 
after another saying that. It was not true.
  People all across America are paying more than ever because of the 
health care law. Well, people in Louisiana specifically, where this 
pediatrician lives and works and takes care of patients, are paying a 
lot more.
  There is an article from the Associated Press newspaper in Lake 
Charles, LA, last Thursday: ``Health insurance price increases could 
top 10 percent for thousands in Louisiana.'' That was the headline on 
the front page above the fold.
  According to the article, Blue Cross--that is the largest health 
insurer in Louisiana--is planning to raise rates by more than 18 
percent next year.
  Is President Obama ready to forcefully defend these premium increases 
because of the law? He is the one who said premiums were going to go 
down. The American people see what has happened. The President did not 
say, well, they are just not going to kind of go up as fast. He said 
they were going to go down $2,500 per year, per family. So we are 
seeing large increases all across the country.
  Are the Democrats in the Senate proud that families in Louisiana are 
getting hit with another 18-percent premium increase in some locations? 
Higher premiums, higher copays, higher deductibles--all to pay for 
coverage that people do not want, do not need, cannot afford, but were 
mandated to have.
  People in Louisiana were already paying more because of the 
President's health care law. There is a recent study which found that 
health insurance premiums for an average 27-year-old man in Louisiana 
are over 100 percent higher this year than last year--double, double 
this year from last year. That is before they were forced into the 
ObamaCare exchange. Premiums for an average 64-year-old woman are 
$2,000 more this year than they were last year. These are very 
expensive side effects for families in Louisiana as a result of the 
President's health care law.
  What does the President have to say about these outrageous rate hikes 
that he caused because of his health care law? What does he have to say 
to the people suffering from the costly side effects of the health care 
law?
  Well, the President went to Kansas City, MO, in the last couple days. 
I think when he travels outside of Washington, the President should 
actually meet with doctors who live in those communities, doctors such 
as this woman, this pediatrician, who practices in Louisiana. He should 
sit down with the women whose children are patients of doctors such as 
this one, talk to the parents of these children about what the impact 
of his health care law has been on them.
  The President should hear directly--directly--from these people about 
the devastating side effects of his health care law and how it is 
hurting them and hurting their families.
  Every Democrat in the Senate voted for this health care law--every 
one of them.
  Where are the Democrats willing to forcefully defend these costly and 
damaging side effects of their health care law? Democrats do not want 
to defend this terrible law and all of its devastating side effects.
  Republicans are going to keep talking about this law. We are going to 
keep standing for American families who are being hurt by this law. We 
are going to continue to come to the floor to talk about stories that 
we hear from back home, what we hear from families in our home States, 
people who have lost their insurance and end up having to get insurance 
they do not need or do not want or are never going to use that is much 
more expensive than what they had before because the insurance that 
worked for their families the President said was not good enough.
  We are going to continue to come and talk about the families who have 
seen their take-home pay go down because instead of being able to take 
that money home and working the hours they want, they have had their 
hours cut, not because they were not needed at work, not because there 
was not a demand for their services, but because of the health care law 
that says anybody working over 30 hours a week is then considered full 
time, and by the President's mandate, they have to be supplied with 
health insurance at work.
  So what happens? Businesses--and it is not just businesses--what we 
are seeing are school districts, counties, county governments, the 
whole State of Virginia--the different governing bodies--as to any 
part-time workers, they are saying: Well, we have to keep them below 30 
hours because we cannot afford the insurance for these folks. So these 
folks are saying: Well, I lose my take-home pay. And the reason is the 
President's health care law. School districts are having to say: Well, 
we can keep them above 30 hours and then have to pay for their 
insurance, but then we are going to have to fire a number of reading 
teachers, fire the coach, fire the bus driver, fire someone else who 
works in the school.
  That is not a way to help people in a community. That is not good for 
anybody's health. But those are the side effects of the President's 
health care law--a bill that so few people actually read before they 
voted for it because, as Nancy Pelosi famously said: First you have to 
pass it before you get to find out what is in it.

[[Page 13557]]

  So we are going to continue to talk about patient-centered reforms, 
reforms that get people the care they need from a doctor they choose at 
lower cost. We are going to talk about restoring people's freedom, 
freedom to buy health insurance that works for them and their families 
because they know what is best for them. It is not Washington 
controlled; it is local decisions, families making decisions for 
themselves. And we are going to talk about giving people choices, not 
Washington mandates. Republicans are going to keep offering real 
solutions for better health care without all of these tragic side 
effects.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, there is a long list of items on the 
Senate agenda that are important to our country, including reforming 
the VA health system, addressing the crisis at our border, and ensuring 
funding is available for improvements to our roads and bridges.
  While it may seem as though other issues are on the back burner, they 
are not. I want Arkansans to know I hear you loudly and clearly about 
your dislike for ObamaCare. Recent court rulings confirm ObamaCare is 
unworkable. Americans understand how the law infringes on our rights. 
The Supreme Court reserved the right for business owners to object to 
overbearing government mandates that would violate our religious 
beliefs.
  The promises that were made were not true--like the law will lower 
our premiums. The reality is ObamaCare drives up health insurance 
premiums and copays, and that is what hurts our wallets.
  Sean from Hackett, AR, wrote to me about a blood test his fiancee 
needed to help diagnose her illness. In the past, she had a copayment 
and the rest of the bill was paid by her insurance. But Sean wrote:

       Normally it would only cost $25 for a co-payment. Now she 
     received a $200 bill.

  You remember the other promises, such as you can keep your doctors 
and Medicare will not be cut.
  Cyndi, who lives in rural Arkansas, detailed the problem she is 
having with Medicare because of ObamaCare. The changes made through 
ObamaCare have cost her both time and money. ``Not everyone lives in 
the big city where clinics, doctors and hospitals are easily 
available,'' she wrote. ``Many of these facilities have closed their 
doors or the doctors are not accepting Medicare patients.''
  Connie, a registered nurse in Arkansas, told me that she is sick of 
ObamaCare and sees the problems her patients and family have to deal 
with under the law, which includes losing their doctors and the use of 
the local hospital. She wrote that the cost of the insurance payments 
increased and customers have to pay such high deductibles that they 
cannot afford to go to the doctor.
  These failed promises are negatively impacting Arkansans. The ugly 
reality is people are struggling under this law. Amanda's story is what 
so many middle-class families are experiencing. Her family is already 
trying to make ends meet, but she says ObamaCare is not affordable. 
``There is no way humanly possible that my family can afford a monthly 
fee of $654,'' she wrote.
  ObamaCare costs American taxpayers more than $2 trillion, but like in 
the case with Amanda's family, health care is more unaffordable.
  I believe we need to start over by creating real reforms that lower 
costs, increase choice, and eliminate Washington's control of our 
health care. We need health care reform, but ObamaCare is not the 
answer. We need to transition the employer-based private insurance 
market toward one that allows for flexibility, choice, portability, and 
fairness.
  Let's allow small business owners to pool together to purchase group 
insurance. Let's allow individuals to purchase insurance across State 
lines to increase competition. Let's expand health savings accounts and 
flexible savings accounts. Let's address medical malpractice reform and 
prevent lawsuit abuse.
  I want you to know that unraveling ObamaCare and starting over is at 
the top of my agenda because health care needs to be much more 
affordable than it currently is under ObamaCare.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I join my colleagues here to talk about 
some of the stories we are hearing from the people we work for. I have 
been to the floor many times talking about the stories we are getting 
from families, from moms, from people trying to get that first job, 
from people who suddenly are no longer working the 40 hours they used 
to work because of the impact this has had on the 40-hour workweek.
  Let me mention, as I am here between Senator Boozman and Senator 
Johanns, just two recent contacts we have had. We have had one from 
Joanne in Fulton, MO. She said her premiums went up from $110 a month 
to $311 a month--an increase of $201 a month. She said:

       Our monthly premium has gone up to $311 a month. It is a 
     large increase for us--it is nearly triple of what we paid 
     before my husband's retirement. It really takes a bite out of 
     our budget.

  She believes this would not have happened without what is happening 
in our health care system. I had a list of employees from one of our 
counties in Missouri the other day. Because it is a small county, they 
rate their employees. Each one of them pays a different premium, even 
though the county helps some with that premium. Everybody who is over 
50 had their premium--that is going to be the premium next year--at 
least doubled. If you were 19, 20, 21, your premium was about what it 
had been the year before. If you were 51 or 61, your premium was twice 
what it had been before.
  Then we got a letter from Jerrold of Kansas City, who said he has 
seen significant increases in his out-of-pocket costs, both for what he 
pays in premiums and what he pays for prescriptions. Jerrold said that 
instead of retiring at 65, he has had to keep working to help pay for 
his medical and prescription costs. Jerrold says:

       I started paying $131.00 a month for health and $31 for 
     prescriptions. As soon as ObamaCare was phased in my premiums 
     went up to $149.00 for health coverage and my prescription 
     plan went to $49.

  Like many other people, he expects his plan to go up even more next 
year.
  So these are real impacts on the lives of families, people who are 
paying more for the care they get and finding the choices they have as 
to where they get their care are less than they have ever been before. 
These stories keep coming. This is affecting the health care needs and 
the health care of individuals and families. We need to do something 
about it.
  I thank Senator Johanns for letting me tell those two stories before 
he took time to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I was here during the days when the 
Affordable Care Act was being debated, if you could call it that. I was 
here during the time when the effort of Senate Democrats was simply to 
keep 60 together so they could pass this bill under any circumstances. 
There were all kinds of promises made as to what this bill was going to 
do.
  President Obama himself, when he talked about his plan for health 
care, said: My plan is going to reduce your premiums by $2,500 a year.
  But I could go on and on. I could spend the whole afternoon talking 
about the promises that were made. Now it is time though to take stock 
and determine whether those promises were in fact kept. The people of 
our States tell that story. A Nebraskan from the central part of the 
State wrote to me recently and said this: He and his wife are losing 
the health insurance they have had for over 21 years. Their premiums 
had doubled, threatening their retirement savings.
  He went on to say, ``ObamaCare has ruined the lives we planned and we 
worked so hard for.'' So let me compare what this gentleman from 
Central Nebraska has seen with the promises that were made. Remember 
that promise the President made over and over

[[Page 13558]]

again. Members on the Democratic side of this body made the same 
promise. The promise was, if you like your plan, you are going to get 
to keep it--and the promise that your health insurance premiums would 
go down.
  This gentleman from Central Nebraska is living proof that those 
promises were not kept.
  Another Central Nebraskan wrote to me about the effect of the health 
care law on his wife's job and on his family: ``Because of the ACA she 
was cut back to less than 25 hours a week and lost our health 
insurance.''
  He went on to say that their new premium is twice as much as the plan 
they liked and the one they lost because of ObamaCare.
  So you see again we have a situation where we can compare reality 
with the promises that were made. The promises that your premium would 
go down, that you could keep the plan you had if you liked it went out 
the window for those two families.
  A small construction company from the western part of Nebraska shared 
this with me: They will be paying an additional $5,000 in ObamaCare 
fees this year. They expect to dedicate over 52 hours to report and 
comply. To them this is incredibly frustrating because these fees and 
hours of compliance have no direct benefit on their employees, their 
employees' benefits or their business mission. It is just the Federal 
Government has now taken this small company and forced upon them 
additional costs and additional compliance requirements.
  One of the most compelling stories comes from the mother of a family 
in Omaha, NE. She explained in her letter that they qualify for a 
subsidy on the exchange, but the options on healthcare.gov were still 
unaffordable for this family. The lowest cost plan had a $9,600 
deductible. Does the Presiding Officer know what a $9,600 deductible 
means to most Americans and to most Nebraskans? It means that if they 
have the kind of illness or accident or whatever it is that requires 
significant medical care and if they have to eat through a $9,600 
deductible, that means bankruptcy.
  When considering this massive deductible, she wrote to me and said, 
``It makes more sense to put more money away in savings and just pay 
for the whole doctor's visit.'' Due to the high cost of plans and their 
other expenses, she said, ``We are forced to make the choice to go with 
no insurance.''
  I was on the floor during this debate. Democrat after Democrat 
promised: You are going to have insurance now, promised that premiums 
would go down, promised that if you liked your plan, you got to keep 
it. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.
  With the new enrollment period on the horizon, the stories will of 
course continue to roll in. The supporters of ObamaCare, just as when 
this bill was being debated, would like us to believe their train wreck 
has been cleaned up, the train cars are no longer lying next to the 
tracks, and this law is finally on track. But that is not consistent 
with recent headlines, reality, court decisions, inspectors general 
reports or just the average American who takes the time to write to us.
  Politico reported earlier this month: ``Most state health insurance 
rates for 2015 are scheduled to be approved by early fall, and most are 
likely to rise.''
  This law should have never been passed, but now it is time to scrap 
this law and its Washington-knows-best mandates; instead, work toward 
solutions that truly do address the cost of care and give Americans the 
flexibility to choose a plan that makes sense for their families.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, we are now several months into the 
implementation of ObamaCare. The dust has settled. People from my 
State, Hoosiers, continue to see the reality of this law. Unfortunately 
what they see is not what they had hoped for. Earlier this month a news 
report revealed that health insurance rates will increase fairly 
dramatically in ``most States''--not just a few, not some but most. 
They said they are likely to rise in the coming year.
  Unfortunately, my State is one of those States. Unfortunately, 
``likely to rise'' is an understatement. ``Dramatic increase'' would be 
a better phrase. The recent headline from the Indianapolis Business 
Journal reads, ``Indiana's ObamaCare rates for 2015 are all over the 
map.'' The first sentence of the article states, ``Initial 2015 
premiums filed for the ObamaCare exchanges in Indiana range from as 
high as a 46-percent hike to as low as a 9-percent cut.''
  The article continues: ``Those are the average changes in premiums 
proposed by the four health insurers that sold plans on the ObamaCare 
exchanges for 2014.'' One of those insurance companies providing health 
care to the State exchange we now learn is requesting rates that range 
from a 31-percent to a 59-percent increase in premiums. So the picture 
ahead for those who have been incorporated into ObamaCare in my State 
is the shock of double-digit and significant double-digit increases in 
their health care costs, not to mention that under their current plans 
they are paying higher deductibles, which result in higher costs they 
first have to put out before they are reimbursed. But now there is an 
increase of significance for their premiums going into next year.
  I know the majority leader said all the stories we have been telling 
about real people and their reactions to the Affordable Care Act, 
ObamaCare, are fiction. I was on the floor when he said that. We all 
did a double take because we have been receiving thousands--literally 
thousands--of emails, physical mail, and phone calls. The phones are 
ringing off the hook about people alarmed over what they were 
experiencing signing up for ObamaCare, and, secondly, what the terms 
were going to be.
  So we collected all of these. We have hundreds if not thousands of 
real live examples, not made up, not fiction, basically describing the 
impact on them and their families as Obamacare was put in place. Let me 
state one of those incidents. I will use just the first name. I do not 
want to put this person at risk for some kind of pushback. But Charles 
from Auburn, IN, emailed me and shared that his wife had just received 
a cancellation notice from her insurance provider. Charles said the 
notice indicated that the wife--he said:

       They said my wife's policy did not comply with the 
     requirements of ObamaCare and the replacement policy--

  Which she would have to take if she wanted the coverage.

     --would be $695.38 a month as compared to her current policy 
     premium of $316 a month.

  By my math, that is over a 100-percent increase. That is more than a 
doubling of what he had paid before. Also, the notice said, ``Your 
deductible will be $6,000.'' That is every medical expense that she has 
will have to be paid for before Charles and his wife can get any 
reimbursement. Now I wish these stories were fiction, but unfortunately 
I receive emails such as this on a regular basis.
  Thousands of Hoosiers have lost their coverage that they liked, that 
they chose and relied on because of the implementation of Obamacare.
  We have been talking about replacing this act with something far more 
sensible and something far more reasonable. Yet we have been denied the 
opportunity to go forward with offering any kind of amendments, 
modifications, repeal or any other process. That is unfortunate but not 
just for us. It is unfortunate for the country and unfortunate for all 
of those people whom we represent who would like to see modifications 
and a much more affordable and much better range of choices for the 
provisions of health care.
  The 2,000-page ObamaCare law was sold to the American people on what 
now has turned out to be false pretenses. I believe we owe it to them 
to replace this law with some commonsense solutions that increase 
access to quality care without increasing costs. It is doable if we had 
the opportunity to do it. Unfortunately, we have been denied that, but 
the American people are speaking. I think they will continue to speak 
about the need for those reforms that will have to take place if we are 
going to provide affordable care for Americans.

[[Page 13559]]

  I yield the floor and I 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. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       Wildfire Disaster Funding

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today there are wildfires burning across 
the West. I wish to speak for a few moments about some very important 
work that Chair Mikulski and her colleagues have done on the 
Appropriations Committee that is really built on a bipartisan proposal 
that Senator Crapo, our colleague from Idaho, and I, with a large group 
of bipartisan Senators, are proposing to change the way in which 
forests are managed and reduce the likelihood of some of--what I call--
these infernos. These are fires that are bigger, hotter, more damaging, 
and they act like a wrecking ball pounding at the rural West.
  What has happened over the years is that the preventive efforts in 
the West in terms of our forests are underfunded. There isn't enough 
effort that goes to hazardous fuels management and thinning and 
programs that reduce the huge load of fuels on the forest floor.
  Just this past weekend I was in Medford in rural southern Oregon and 
in Portland, meeting with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land 
Management. They told me about the problems that Senator Crapo and I 
are trying to address in bipartisan legislation that Chairman Mikulski 
has included in her appropriations bill.
  The heart of the problem is that these prevention efforts are 
underfunded. When it gets very dry and very hot, and particularly when 
there is a lightning strike or a series of lightning strikes, what we 
have is an enormous fire in a hurry. All through the West there is an 
effort to try to share resources, and communities work together and try 
to share efforts--aerial resources and others--but the reality is there 
is not enough money in the agency's budgets to put out those huge 
fires.
  What happens then is the bureaucracy borrows from the prevention fund 
in order to have funds to put the fire out. Then we are on our way to 
two bigger problems. We are on our way again to a lack of preventive 
dollars because of this fire borrowing. Some of our colleagues call it 
fire robbery, but I am trying to be diplomatic. It is fire borrowing, I 
guess, if we want to be diplomatic. But we underfund prevention. Then, 
of course, we don't have enough money needed for suppression as well.
  This trend that I have described is getting more and more pronounced 
and more and more serious. So what Senator Crapo and I are proposing to 
do in order to put the focus on wildfire prevention is in effect to say 
that the most serious fires, especially in the West--the kind of fires 
that are dominating our TV screens night after night--1 percent of 
those infernos ought to be treated like the major natural disasters 
they are and would be funded in the same way as other natural 
disasters, such as floods and hurricanes.
  Specifically, the legislation that Senator Crapo and I and others are 
advancing would move any spending above 70 percent of the 10-year 
rolling average for fire suppression outside of the Agency's baseline 
budget by making these additional costs eligible to be funded under a 
separate disaster account.
  So far this year, more than 33,000 fires have burned a total of 1.6 
million acres nationwide, and the numbers are growing by the minute.
  Just this past weekend, visiting with our wonderfully talented folks 
at the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in Medford, they 
were telling me that their concern is that in southern Oregon it is 
very hot and very dry and there can be lightning strikes. They were 
concerned about the prospect of another Biscuit Fire, which we had at 
the beginning of the century and which burned 500,000 acres--really, 
our most destructive fire ever. That was what was on the mind of the 
firefighting professionals when I visited with them in Medford last 
Friday.
  This year the administration already expects to exceed its 
firefighting budget by more than $600 million, and that isn't going to 
surprise anybody in the West. In 8 of the past 10 years, the Forest 
Service has spent more than its wildfire suppression budget, requiring 
the Agency to engage in what I have just called ``fire borrowing'' to 
cover these wildfire suppression costs. The reality is that, in many 
cases, the borrowed monies are not repaid. In the cases where the funds 
are repaid, it is only through costly supplemental spending bills that 
Congress has to enact or by taking money out of future years' budgets.
  So what we have is this kind of borrowing that is extraordinarily 
disruptive to the ongoing work the Forest Service and their contractors 
are in the middle of performing. And, I might add, what all this does 
is it makes it more expensive in the future and makes it less likely 
that we are going to get the important prevention work that is so 
necessary.
  In our part of the world, I think it is fair to say that westerners 
are coming to consider that the Forest Service charged with managing 
the Nation's forests for multiple uses and users has really become 
something that more appropriately should be called the U.S. Fire 
Service, because in effect that is what this agency is month after 
month using more of its resources on.
  What I was told in Portland last Saturday, having visited rural 
Oregon on Friday and Portland on Saturday--the specialists in Portland 
on Saturday told me that the fire season is 70 days longer than it was 
until recently.
  So we have this challenge of more fuel load built up on the forest 
floor, drier conditions, lightning strikes, and fire seasons lasting 
longer. That is a prescription for trouble in the rural West, and in 
fact that is what we are seeing.
  My hope is that, as a result of the work that Senator Crapo and I and 
others are seeking to do, we can have more hazardous fuel treatment, 
more preventive work that will be effective at reducing fire risks and 
lowering costs.
  A fire in central Oregon this year slowed to a halt when it reached 
treated areas outside the city of Bend. I saw that when I was in Bend 
looking at the difference between treated areas--this preventative kind 
of approach--and areas that were untreated.
  A study published by Northern Arizona University's Ecological 
Restoration Institute concluded that treatments ``can reduce fire 
severity'' and ``successfully reduce fire risk to communities.''
  Based on Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture 
analysis, 1 percent of wildland fires represents 30 percent of 
firefighting costs. That is what Senator Crapo and I want to address in 
our bill.
  What we are saying is, for that 1 percent, the 1 percent that is 
really driving up costs, let's handle those fires as what they are, 
which are natural disasters. And then, instead of raiding the 
prevention money to put the fires out, we will be able to cause less 
problems in the future because we will have the kind of preventive work 
that is so effective that I saw in Bend and elsewhere.
  It seems to me, as we see in a lot of parts of government, there is a 
choice. We can spend modest sums up front on prevention in order to 
generate significant savings down the road. If we have $1 to spend, we 
ought always to try to put it in prevention and then target scarce 
resources to fight fires. To the greatest extent possible, we must 
target disaster money on those infernos that are bigger and hotter and 
more damaging and cost about 30 percent of the overall budget.
  In summary, the legislation that Senator Crapo and I and others are 
pursuing would fund the true catastrophic fire events under separate 
natural disaster programs. Routine wildland firefighting costs would be 
funded through the normal budget and appropriations process.
  Oversight hearings, letters, and numerous discussions with the 
administration and colleagues helped to

[[Page 13560]]

produce the approach that Chairman Mikulski has included. I remember 
not long ago being in Idaho, being hosted by our colleagues Senator 
Crapo and Senator Risch. We had Members from across the political 
spectrum. Congressman Labrador from the other body was there. We had 
progressive Members. This is something that is common sense. It just 
makes sense to make sure that the small number of fires, these infernos 
which are dominating our news accounts, that we handle them from the 
natural disaster fund. Then let's put most of the money and allow the 
Forest Service, BLM, and professionals to put their focus and their 
resources where we can prevent as much of the problem as possible--and 
prevent it early on.
  That is the point of our legislation. We are very grateful to 
Chairman Mikulski for her effort. I thank Senator Crapo for his 
support. He and I have been at this with Senator Risch, Senator 
Merkley, Senator Cantwell, Senator Murray, Senator Bennet--Western 
Senators and others such as Senator Baldwin and Manchin that understand 
the importance of national forests. Senator Udall has been doing 
important work on this in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. 
All of the Western Senators are of like mind here. Chair Mikulski 
recognizes what we are looking at and the prospect that we would be 
leaving this week without this change to make better use of our 
resources. I call it legislative malpractice because we have an 
opportunity in a bipartisan way to make a real difference here. If our 
colleagues are outside the West, I would say it is a chance to spend 
scarce dollars more effectively. For us in the West, it is nothing 
short of survival.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Oregon, his 
leadership, along with Senator Crapo, on this firefighting budgeting 
and fire borrowing issue--that is really what it is--is critical to all 
of us in Western States. Every single one of us has seen communities 
touched by these catastrophic wildfires as our climate is changing and 
we see fires get bigger and bigger. But we have solutions, and the 
solutions are bipartisan and common sense.
  I can only hope that we are able to move quickly to make these budget 
changes. They will make a real difference for all of us up and down in 
the Intermountain West.


                             Border Crisis

  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I thank all of my colleagues who have 
been vocal about their commitment to address the Central American 
refugee crisis along our southern border.
  We have heard the stories of unimaginable violence, of corruption, of 
instability in places such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala--
factors that are driving many children to the United States and to 
other neighboring countries in Central America. In some cases these 
children are literally fleeing for their lives.
  Our Nation has responded with a spectrum of attitudes toward 
immigrants ranging from hostile to downright hospitable. It is my hope 
that our attitude as a nation continues to be defined by the image of 
the Statue of Liberty and not by shouting protesters holding signs 
labeled ``Return to Sender'' as they stand in front of buses full of 
Central American children.
  I recently received a letter from a constituent in my home State of 
New Mexico whose grandmother, as a result of extreme poverty, left her 
family and emigrated by herself to the United States from Ireland at 
the age of 14 at the end of World War I. Brendan said that when he was 
growing up, his grandmother frequently shared this Irish proverb with 
him. She said, ``Courage is the trust that your feet will bring you to 
where your heart is.'' Brendan asked that I continue to remind my 
colleagues that the immigrants who arrive at our borders come by foot 
following their hearts and do so in the hope of building a better life.
  Last week I sat down with Ambassadors from Honduras, El Salvador, and 
Guatemala, and we discussed how our Nation's approach to stemming the 
influx of unaccompanied children to the United States must be 
collaborative and get at the root cause of the dire situation in these 
countries. With out-of-control drug cartels and nearly 90 murders for 
every 100,000 persons annually, Honduras now has the highest murder 
rate in the world. Similarly, El Salvador and Guatemala have the 
world's fourth and fifth highest murder rates. There is no easy 
solution to these problems, but Congress has an opportunity and a 
responsibility to act on pragmatic measures before time and resources 
run out.
  Secretary Johnson has warned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement 
will run out of money in August and Customs and Border Protection will 
run out of money in mid-September if nothing is done. With resources 
already running scarcer by the day, Customs and Border Protection won't 
have any other choice but to direct border agents away from other 
sectors of our southern border and into the Rio Grande Valley.
  So let's be clear. Those who would choose not to support this 
emergency supplemental are putting our border security at risk. New 
Mexico, California, Arizona, and West Texas will all see fewer agents 
and fewer resources on our border if the House and Senate do not act.
  This is no way to address a crisis. We must pass the Senate's 
emergency supplemental funding bill introduced by Senate Appropriations 
Committee chairwoman Barbara Mikulski. This emergency funding bill 
includes important resources to help stem the current refugee crisis 
while continuing to treat these refugee children humanely as required 
by the law. This situation is an emergency, and we need emergency 
funding.
  Passing the emergency supplemental would also allow the Departments 
of Homeland Security and Justice to deploy additional enforcement 
resources, including immigration judges, Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement attorneys, and asylum officers, as well as expanding the 
use of the alternatives to detention program.
  Instead of ensuring that we provide these necessary resources to 
address this crisis on our border, some of our colleagues are actually 
proposing that the solution is to actually weaken Federal child 
trafficking law and to roll back protections for unaccompanied child 
refugees seeking asylum. The proposal introduced by our colleague from 
Texas Senator Cornyn would weaken the 2008 William Wilberforce 
Trafficking Victims Protection Act and short-circuit justice in order 
to deport refugee children faster and without the due process afforded 
under our law.
  According to a poll released Tuesday by the Public Relations Research 
Institute, 69 percent of those surveyed believe that U.S. authorities 
should treat the children as refugees and allow them to stay in the 
country if it is determined it is not safe for them to return to their 
home country.
  Some would use this crisis to eliminate crucial child trafficking 
protection, punish some of our Nation's brightest DREAM Act students, 
and promote a narrow border-enforcement-only agenda. I believe we are a 
better nation than that, frankly.
  Let's step back and remember that just 1 year ago the Senate passed a 
comprehensive immigration reform bill that included provisions to 
further strengthen the border but that would also protect refugee 
children and crack down on smugglers and transnational criminal 
organizations. Notably, the bill was widely supported by both Democrats 
and Republicans in the Senate. Public support and good economics have 
not been enough to convince House Republican leaders to hold a vote on 
immigration reform, but they cannot turn a blind eye to the current 
humanitarian crisis along our southern border.
  The bipartisan Senate bill that passed more than a year ago includes 
provisions for family reunification and for the protection of children 
who have been the victims of human trafficking. The bill also includes 
measures that would address refugee and asylum laws.

[[Page 13561]]

  The public, including faith-based organizations, educators, local 
elected officials, small businesses, and many others, overwhelmingly 
supports this balanced approach to immigration reform. However, here we 
are more than 1 year later, and House Republicans are still unwilling 
to even hold an up-or-down vote on the Senate's proposal. Each day the 
House fails to act on serious solutions to our broken immigration 
system is another day our Nation and our economy suffer.
  The Congressional Budget Office reported that last year's bipartisan 
immigration reform bill that passed this body would reduce the budget 
deficit by $197 billion--billion with a ``b''--over the next decade and 
about $700 billion in the second decade. In a companion analysis, CBO 
also estimated that fixing our broken immigration system would increase 
our country's GDP--our economic output--by 3.3 percent in 10 years and 
5.4 percent after 20 years.
  The evidence is clear. Immigration reform is good for our economy, 
good for our workforce, and it is good for the future of the American 
middle class.
  I am familiar with the promise America represents to its families. My 
father fled from Nazi Germany in the 1930s as a young boy. As the son 
of an immigrant, I know how hard immigrants work and how much they 
believe in this country and how much they are willing to give back to 
our Nation. Those of us who represent border communities understand the 
difficult challenges we face, but there are solutions before us that 
are pragmatic, bipartisan, and that uphold rather than compromise our 
American values.
  In the short term we must approve the Senate's emergency supplemental 
bill, and in the long-term we should partner with Honduras, Guatemala, 
and El Salvador to stabilize their nations and end the cycle of gang 
violence we see there. A key part of our long-term solution is for 
House Republicans to finally put the Senate's immigration reform bill 
on the floor for an up-or-down vote.
  We in Congress have a historic opportunity to pass comprehensive 
immigration reform and to address root causes rather than just symptoms 
for a change. I believe we will have failed if the only immigration 
legislation we pass as a body in this Congress is to weaken legal 
protections for refugee children. With this in mind, I will continue to 
work with my colleagues to ensure that we address this humanitarian 
crisis and fix our immigration system once and for all. Let's seize 
this opportunity.
  Mr. President, I see that I have been joined on the floor by the 
Senator from Florida, and I would ask unanimous consent to engage in a 
colloquy with Senator Nelson.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his leadership, 
and I wish to ask my colleague if he is aware of the testimony the 
commanding general of U.S. Southern Command, General Kelly--a marine 
four-star general--gave to the Armed Services Committee and to the 
Foreign Relations Committee recently, in the last couple of weeks?
  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I am aware of the testimony of General 
Kelly, but given his role at SOUTHCOM and in particular its location in 
Florida and the fact that the Senator from Florida was there for the 
testimony, I would ask him to remind us exactly what General Kelly had 
to say about how we are or in some cases are not interdicting and 
dealing with the flow of narcotics and particularly cocaine that has 
been at the root of so much of the instability and violence we see in 
these three Central American countries today.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, the Senator from New Mexico has put his 
finger on exactly the root cause of the problem. It is the substantial 
loads of cocaine that are coming into these three Central American 
countries; that because of the violence, because of the killing, the 
parents have three choices when their child gets on up toward their 
teenage years. Their first choice is to let their kid join the gang.
  These gangs are criminal gangs, and they are tied in with the drug 
lords. The drug lords have taken over the country because of all the 
money that is being made from these big shipments that come in.
  The parents have three choices: No. 1, let their kid join the gang; 
No. 2, go to their child's funeral; or No. 3, they become subject to 
the subtle and direct plea by the coyotes: Oh, for $1,500, $5,000, we 
can get your kid to the border and your child will be safe in America.
  Why those three countries? Why are the children who have been showing 
up in the last several months at the border not coming from Belize, 
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama? They are coming from three countries--El 
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras--because that is where the big 
shipments of drugs are coming from--from South America into those areas 
in a boat with 1 to 3 tons of cocaine. Once they get on land, they 
break them down into small packages, and they go through a very 
efficient distribution system that is drugs and criminal elements--they 
can distribute just about anything they want, including trafficking in 
humans. And they are going north.
  So if Honduras is the murder capital of the world and if El Salvador 
and Guatemala are not far behind, how do you get at that immediately to 
stop the flow of children going north? You more effectively interdict 
the drug shipments. That is why the United States has been so 
successful.
  General Kelly, the commanding general of Southern Command, tells us 
that sadly he has to sit there with his Joint Interagency Task Force--
all the agencies of the U.S. Government arrayed together and 
headquartered in Key West--and they have to watch 74 percent of 
primarily these boats--not so much the flights; primarily boats because 
they can carry big loads of cocaine--get through.
  If it gets to the point of voting for the supplemental, I would 
certainly vote for it, but it doesn't get to the root cause of the 
problem. What we have done--and I have shared this with as many people 
as I can, consulting with General Kelly. They boiled this down to $122 
million out of the President's request of $3.7 billion, and the Senate 
Appropriations Committee has pared that down to $2.7 billion.
  This Senator is asking for $122 million, and it will cover such 
things as $31 million for U.S. Government interagency task force 
maritime patrol craft; $40 million for maritime patrol requirements to 
deploy U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement detachments; $15 million for 
intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance by putting up contractor-
owned Predators 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. That contract is being 
drawn up. If we did this, General Kelly could execute that contract 
immediately, and then you would start to see some results.
  Mr. HEINRICH. If I understand the Senator from Florida correctly, 
General Kelly simply does not have the resources to do the job we have 
done historically in terms of interdicting cocaine moving north for the 
market that, frankly, is in North America--
  Mr. NELSON. That is correct.
  Mr. HEINRICH. --in the United States and Canada. They have to 
literally sit there and watch these narcotics go by without having the 
resources to stop them in their tracks.
  Mr. NELSON. The Senator is correct. Whereas General Kelly--and I am 
just using him as the symbol since he is a four-star general. It is the 
Joint Interagency Task Force in Key West that is actually headed by a 
Coast Guard admiral. They can interdict, and do interdict, about 25 
percent of those big shipments coming from South America. They go 
through the Caribbean on the east and also through the Pacific on the 
west. And because they have been effective at 25 percent of the 
shipments, what we are seeing is a shifting of those shipments. They 
are now actually sending more of them to the east--not only to the 
Dominican Republic and Haiti, but now to Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. 
territory. When they get those drugs into Puerto Rico--and that is 
American territory--they can ship them by mail from there to the

[[Page 13562]]

rest of the United States and avoid detection.
  Mr. HEINRICH. My understanding is that the resource situation in 
Southern Command has changed so dramatically in recent years that not 
only is this interagency task force limited, but they have literally 
canceled more than 200 engagement activities and multilateral exercises 
with our partners in the region who can multiply that effect and 
interdict even more narcotics as they are moving forward.
  Mr. NELSON. The Senator is correct. As a matter of fact, the staff of 
the Senate Appropriations Committee, with whom I have consulted, is 
very familiar with the great operation of the Joint Interagency Task 
Force to go after these drugs. As the Senator from New Mexico said, you 
can imagine their frustration when they know about the boat shipment, 
and sometimes they can watch it from their overhead assets, and they 
can't do anything about it.
  As a result, look at what has happened over the last several months. 
We are trying to solve the problem on the border. We have all of these 
children showing up at the border. We ought to solve that problem. We 
need to go back to the very beginning and stop what is causing this 
problem.
  Mr. HEINRICH. The Senator from Florida also brought up another issue 
that I think is worth exploring. It is my understanding that he was 
recently briefed on the relationship that exists between these drug 
cartels and the entities that are actually engaging in human 
trafficking and moving people, for a fee, through Central America and 
Mexico and to the U.S. border. Can the Senator tell us a little bit 
about the nature of that relationship?
  Mr. NELSON. The Senator is correct on how all of these things are 
interlocked. You can imagine how a sufficient quantity of drugs, which 
is worth so much, is a corrupting influence on any kind of law and 
order. As a result, the systems of governments--and Senator Kaine and I 
both met with the President of Honduras. He is trying as hard as he 
can. He has a bounty on his head by these drug lords because he is 
opposing them. The judicial system is corrupted. The local police are 
corrupted. When that happens, then you can imagine when other criminal 
activities occur, in addition to other drug activities, such as human 
trafficking, and terrorists potentially being utilized in these 
efficient delivery networks, then it is all the more a threat to the 
national security interests of the United States.
  I think the U.S. Congress and the U.S. administration better wake up 
to the fact of what is happening right under our nose and get at this, 
in addition to solving the problems that we see that are a symptom, 
ultimately, of the root cause--the creation of a whole criminal network 
that is, in large part, fueled by the drug trade.
  Mr. HEINRICH. If the Senator from Florida will yield for a minute, 
the sad thing is it didn't used to be that way in this part of Central 
America, and I know that for a fact because my wife and I traveled 
there 15, 16 years ago. We traveled extensively in Honduras, and at 
that time these gangs simply did not have the influence. They did not 
have this level of destabilization and they did not have this murder 
rate.
  I always joke about trying to drive into Tegucigalpa, and I would not 
recommend it to anybody who has not had time to acclimate to the speed 
and crush of cars in that capital city, but it was a completely 
different country at the time. We traveled extensively in urban areas 
in San Pedro Sula and rural areas such as Santa Rosa de Copan, and it 
was an economically challenged country.
  For those folks who have claimed that all of these immigrants are 
simply heading north out of economic desperation, the economic 
situation has not changed all that much. It is worth looking at the 
rest of Central America. The surrounding countries, such as Belize and 
Costa Rica and other countries in Central America, are also seeing 
refugees from these countries.
  Nicaragua, which has substantial economic challenges right now, is 
losing economic immigrants, and those immigrants are not making it to 
our southern border in any substantial numbers. In fact, less than a 
year ago, I was in Costa Rica and many Nicaraguans are working in Costa 
Rica because the economy is better there. Yet we don't see them showing 
up--especially the unaccompanied minors, 7, 8, 12-year-olds--at our 
border by themselves. They are not being driven out by the extreme 
violence we have seen in these three nations where the drug cartels 
have such a disproportionate influence on their country's stability.
  Mr. NELSON. If the Senator will yield, to underscore his point, we 
can look at the extraordinary success of Plan Colombia. Outside of 
Central America--if you go a little further south, you are on the 
continent of South America. And lo and behold, 15, 20 years ago, a 
large part of Colombia was controlled by elements that were controlled 
by the drug lords. With the assistance of the United States and 
extraordinary heroism on the part of the Government of Colombia, we 
have seen the Government of Colombia take back control of most of its 
country. Even though cocaine is still grown there and the FARC is still 
operating, their criminal element is a diminished insurrection of what 
it used to be. If you visited a place like Bogota, the capital city, it 
was not safe to go out alone and walk on the streets. Now you can 
easily walk on the streets. The situation there has changed.
  We are seeing the same replicated now in Central America where the 
drug lords have basically taken over by buying off people with 
considerable money, and therefore it makes it very difficult to have 
the rule of law in those struggling governments, as it is for the 
President of Honduras, who is trying so hard to bring back his country.
  Mr. HEINRICH. If the Senator from Florida will yield for a moment, 
having formerly served on the House Armed Services Committee, I know 
the Department of Defense budget is somewhere in the order of $550 
billion. Surely SOUTHCOM must have a substantial amount of resources to 
be able to meet this, right?
  Of that $550 billion, does the Senator from Florida know how much 
actually goes to Southern Command?
  Mr. NELSON. What this Senator knows is that before the sequester 
started hitting the defense budget--even though we were conducting a 
war in two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq--with all of the 
multiplicity of threats that are around in the region, including what 
we see now with ISIS between Syria and northern and western Iraq, the 
Department of Defense had to make some hard choices. They had to cut 
back because of this mindless budgetary meat ax called the sequester, 
and as a result they had to set their priorities.
  When they came down to it, they had to support the troops out in the 
field and had to cut back on other commands. The U.S. Southern Command 
is one of those commands that was cut back. But now we are seeing the 
lack of wisdom to these budgetary policies--sequester--and the scarcity 
when you cannot allocate the defense resources to other agencies. 
Remember, this is a Joint Interagency Task Force. We are now seeing the 
effects of that in what has been on the front pages of the newspapers 
which is reporting all of the children coming to the border.
  By the way, the children are just a diminutive percentage of the 
total people still coming to the border. I can't remember if it is 20 
percent or 40 percent, but it is something well less than half of all 
of the people who are still coming to the border. But, of course, the 
children, because of the humanitarian crisis for them, are the ones who 
have received the attention.
  If we know there is a problem, how do we fix the problem? Well, we 
need to go back to the root cause, and that is the case I have been 
making on that side of the aisle and on this side of the aisle. Yet we 
are at this point of impasse, and needless to say, it is very 
frustrating to this Senator.
  Mr. HEINRICH. I thank the Senator from Florida for continuing to be 
an advocate for this cause. I know that Southern Command's annual 
budget now is about $1 billion--literally $1 billion out of $550 
billion in the Department of Defense. Given the necessity of

[[Page 13563]]

engaging with Central and South America on these issues, I think it is 
time to reevaluate, in terms of resources but also in terms of 
priorities, how we look at Central and South America, to reengage with 
our neighbors and try to address some of these issues at the root level 
instead of always at the symptom level.
  I see we have been joined by our esteemed chair of the Appropriations 
Committee, Senator Mikulski of Maryland. So I thank the Chair for 
allowing the Senator from Florida and I to indulge in this colloquy. 
And, once again, I wish to say how much I hope we take this opportunity 
to do something, not just about the symptoms of the current crisis 
which has to be dealt with, but also the underlying causes of this 
crisis.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I think we have just heard something 
really interesting and I think--excuse me. The way the Senator from New 
Mexico concluded--was the Senator from California scheduled to speak 
next?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I believe so.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I thought I was at 4:52. I didn't mean to jump the 
line. I really do want to hear from the Senator from California, the 
chair of the intelligence committee, as well as the chair of the 
Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security of the 
Judiciary Committee. She is a Senator with a lot of experience, and I 
look forward to her remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator. I wish to begin by saying the 
Appropriations Committee is in very good hands. Chairman Mikulski has 
done an excellent job, and I strongly support this supplemental that 
she has put together.
  I wish to give my colleagues just some brief background of my 
involvement in the unaccompanied alien children issue. It began around 
1999. On Thanksgiving Day, a 5-year-old in an inner tube off the coast 
of Florida, 3 miles out, was picked up by a fisherman. His name was 
Elian Gonzalez. The fisherman rescued him and he was taken to a 
hospital, but his mother and 11 others on the raft had drowned in their 
attempt to come to the United States from Cuba. That launched in this 
country a major debate about an unaccompanied alien child, whether he 
goes back to his father or whether he remains with his uncle in Miami.
  Then, secondly, I am home one day and I turn on the television set, 
and I see a 15-year-old Chinese girl who had been placed on a container 
ship from China by her parents to flee China's rigid family planning 
laws. She came to this country. She was alone. She was desperate. She 
was picked up.
  I saw her asylum hearing. She was unrepresented. She was shackled, 
her wrists were bound, and big tears were rolling down her face. She 
couldn't understand a single word that was spoken. She was held in a 
jail cell for eight months and in another detention facility for 
another four months after that. She eventually received asylum in our 
country, but she unnecessarily faced an ordeal no child should undergo.
  At the time, she was only one of 5,000 other foreign-born children 
who were apprehended in the United States in need of protection. I 
remember thinking that that such treatment was terrible, and I had to 
do something.
  In 2000, I introduced the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act. I 
also pushed for the change in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which 
successfully transferred the responsibility for the care of 
unaccompanied alien children from the former Immigration and 
Naturalization Service to the Department of Health and Human Services.
  However, that change by itself was not enough to ensure that 
unaccompanied children were properly treated. Therefore, over the next 
6 years, I continued to consult with relevant Federal agencies, 
children's advocates, immigration attorneys, House Members such as Zoe 
Lofgren on the House Judiciary Committee, and fellow Senators.
  Finally, in 2008 the legislation was included, amazingly enough, by 
voice vote in both Houses, as part of a larger trafficking bill, the 
William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. 
It was signed into law by President Bush on December 23, 2008. It took 
effect 6 months later. That year, the number of children was in the 
vicinity of 8,000. It provided the framework for how unaccompanied 
children would be treated while in the United States and for their safe 
and orderly return to their home countries without undue delay if they 
did not qualify to stay.
  We now have a dramatically escalated situation that was not 
foreseeable at that time. Last fiscal year 2013, 24,000 unaccompanied 
children arrived in our country. This year more than 62,000 
unaccompanied children have arrived in our country, and the Department 
of Homeland Security is preparing for as many as 90,000 such children 
to arrive in the country by the end of this year.
  The numbers are so great and so unprecedented that our Federal 
agencies understandably are having difficulty carrying out the 
procedures and timelines in place. I have sent members of my staff in 
California to every Office and Refugee Services shelter in the State, 
and they have sent me photos and their impressions. I wish to take a 
moment to thank all our people, whether it is Border Patrol or ICE of 
Homeland Security or anybody else--such as Health and Human Services--
for the excellent job they are doing. I saw 8 to 10 facilities through 
pictures and reports, where children were in bright rooms, had beds 
with covers, and a day program. So, every effort has been made.
  But the numbers are so great and unprecedented that the difficulties 
continue. When we run out of money, there is going to be a different 
story.
  But we must remember that the children at issue, who are 
unaccompanied, are primarily from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, 
three Central American countries which are deeply troubled. Many have 
entered as victims, I am sorry to say, of rape, abuse, poverty, and 
above all, violence.
  They are alone, subject to abuse and exploitation. Many are young and 
unable to articulate their fears, their views, or testify about their 
needs as accurately as adults can. Considering this, there is no other 
option but for us to help and continue to treat them humanely, with 
compassion and due process. That is what this supplemental does.
  I have met with Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, and the 
head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Burwell, 
and both tell us their agencies run out of funds by September. We must 
responsibly fund these agencies, for not only are they managing the 
current humanitarian crisis at our border, but they are also charged 
with protecting human life and our homeland security.
  With this funding, not only can we preserve our commitment to treat 
children as the children that they are, we can improve the way that the 
current law is being administered and more efficiently put our 
resources to work.
  Earlier today, I met with immigration judges from the U.S. Department 
of Justice's Executive Office of Immigration Review. They informed me 
they are desperate for increased resources with which to handle not 
only the influx of children's cases but also a current backlog of 
375,000 cases. Due to there being only 243 immigration judges across 
the country, immigrants today wait 587 average days for a hearing. That 
is one year and 7 months before they have the opportunity to come 
before an immigration judge.
  With adequate funding from this supplemental, which provides for 
immigration judge teams, legal representation and services, government 
immigration litigation attorneys and courtroom equipment, among other 
things, this crisis can be managed and make the processing of children 
more efficient.
  One of the judges who sits in Miami told me that through her court 
where a child has representation, a voluntary return to the country of 
origin was able to be achieved in a majority of her

[[Page 13564]]

cases. So the majority of children actually took voluntary departure 
and returned to their countries. A judge can't make a phone call, but a 
counsel can--the attorneys could make the calls to do the necessary 
preparation and see that a safe home could be arranged. Because of this 
representation, cases are processed more quickly and children could 
safely return.
  I understand there has been concern that unaccompanied children will 
not appear for their immigration court proceedings. That is simply not 
true. The fact is, whether represented or not, 60.9 percent do appear, 
and the number increases to 92.5 percent when represented by counsel. 
So these children do get before a judge--60.9 percent of them, and if 
they have a lawyer, 92 percent.
  With this supplemental funding, the immigration courts, with help 
from legal representatives, would be able to hear more quickly 
immigration cases and determine with justice who may stay and who must 
go.
  I was contacted recently by Winston Lord, a former U.S. Ambassador 
and Assistant Secretary of State, who is all too familiar with managing 
situations of international crises while preserving our national 
interest. In reflecting on the current crisis, he acknowledged the need 
for effective border control and immigration enforcement to ensure 
national security and a comprehensive solution. However, he also 
identified the heart of the matter here: ``These challenges . . . need 
not be met by using ineffective and indiscriminate approaches that harm 
innocent children.''
  He is right.
  We are a great Nation, capable of safeguarding our national security 
while simultaneously proceeding with humanity in addressing this 
crisis, and any future challenges that this country faces. This problem 
demands action now to provide these agencies with the funds they need 
to meet this crisis.
  Now, if we don't pass this, and if these departments run out of 
money, and if facilities have to be closed, and if there is nowhere for 
these children to go, let us think for a moment what happens to them. 
Should they experience the same thing in this country they have back 
home? What will they do? And what does that do to our conscience?
  I think this supplemental is well put together. The chairman of our 
committee has gone through it with a fine tooth comb. She has reduced 
it in size. I think it is well representative of the situation that 
dramatically needs funding. So I really hope there is a heart in this 
body and that this supplemental appropriation is approved.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, to the Senator from California, I thank 
her for her excellent statement. She brings such experience and 
expertise. It is very much appreciated. Has the Senator looked at my 
supplemental recommendations where we have actually added money for 
judges and then support to pro bono lawyers willing to represent 
children?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Well, that is exactly right. The chairwoman's 
supplemental does that. That is really what makes the difference for 
the child. If a child can't speak the language and if a child is held 
in a jail cell and if a child is shackled and handcuffed before a 
judge, and a child has nobody to help them and no one they know in this 
country, what can they do except cry? That is what I saw directly 
myself, and that is what sort of awakened me then to a problem, which 
was just 5,000 a year in the start of this. Now we are at 54,000, and 
probably 90,000 before the end of the year.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. That is right.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. So I thank the Senator for her support and her energy 
and effort that she has put forward.
  I hope this body does the right thing.


                    Remembering Admiral Chuck Larson

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I would like to continue the discussion 
on the urgent supplemental. But before I do, I want to say that the 
senior Senator from Arizona is on the floor, and I want to say 
something heartwarming to my colleague. I say to the Senator from 
Arizona, you are a graduate of the Naval Academy, class of 1958. We 
both have a very dear friend who has passed away, ADM Chuck Larson.
  Admiral Larson served with distinction in the Navy. He did many tours 
of duty in the defense of our country but also did two tours of duty at 
the U.S. Naval Academy, where I came to know him, and then subsequent 
to that there was the wonderful role that he played in education and 
transformational leadership.
  I know he was a good friend of the Senator from Arizona too. So I 
would like to express my condolences to you and to the--of course, then 
it was guys only at the Naval Academy--class of 1958. I was the class 
of 1958 at Mount Saint Agnes College. We probably saw each other at a 
tea dance or two. I was the chunky one over there, not in the corner, 
though. But I just wanted to express my condolences. What a great class 
that seems to be. I hope we can work together on something that would 
truly recognize Chuck Larson and the great transformational leader he 
was.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a colloquy 
with the Senator from Maryland.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. I would say first of all to the Senator from Maryland, on 
behalf of all Naval Academy graduates and all of us who love the Naval 
Academy, your support of the Naval Academy has been consistent, 
unswerving. You have been probably the staunchest supporter of the U.S. 
Naval Academy I have ever had the privilege of encountering. I want to 
also tell the Senator that the devotion she has extended to the Naval 
Academy is reciprocated by the Naval Academy and its graduates to her. 
I thank her for that.
  Yes, Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Maryland, a dear and 
beloved friend, ADM Chuck Larson passed away. I would be honored to 
join with her in any way that we could to honor his memory. I would 
just like to point out that the Senator from Maryland was heavily 
involved when there was a very serious cheating scandal at the Naval 
Academy. Senator Mikulski led the investigation and demand for 
correcting that situation, and Admiral Larson was called back from 
retirement to be the Superintendent of the Naval Academy, on the 
recommendation of the Senator from Maryland--the only naval officer in 
history who served as Superintendent twice. And he put the Naval 
Academy back on the right track.
  I would like to say, again, that he mentioned to me often the 
consistent support for reform, for the institution, and they are 
incredibly proud of her representation not just of the people of 
Maryland but specifically of that wonderful institution. I know I speak 
for Chuck Larson when I say that.
  I thank you.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Senator very much. I love our U.S. Naval 
Academy. But when you have great leaders, we want to in some way be 
able to memorialize them in a way that they inspired this ongoing, this 
next generation, and the generations to come about really what a great 
leader is and what value-driven leadership is all about.
  So I look forward to working with the Senator from the Naval Academy 
and the State of Arizona.
  Mr. President, I would also like to continue the discussion on the 
urgent supplemental and the crisis--many people call it the crisis--at 
our border. Well, we have a surge of children at our border because of 
the crisis in Central America. The crisis is in Central America, 
creating a surge of children desperately coming across our borders to 
seek political asylum.
  I would hope that when we look at this urgent supplemental, we 
understand what we are trying to do. Yes, provide humane care for the 
children, real support for judges and other legal assistance to 
determine their legal and asylum status and, at the same time, to do 
the prevention in Central America, by going after what the surge is all

[[Page 13565]]

about. The surge is about the escalating narco criminal-driven violence 
in these countries.
  People will say: Well, what does that mean? It means that when you 
look at where the children are coming from, they are not coming from 
every country in Central America. They are coming from three countries 
in Central America. They are coming from Honduras, Guatemala, and El 
Salvador, but they are not coming from Nicaragua and they are not 
coming from Panama and they are not coming from Costa Rica. Why is 
that? The reason is because the violence rate is not as high. Yes, in 
these countries, particularly in Nicaragua, the poverty rate is the 
same as the other three. So why are they coming? They are coming 
because of the violence, and this is what we need to be able to deal 
with.
  Last week, along with many Senators, I met with the Ambassadors from 
the three countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. At the 
invitation of Senator Menendez, the chair of the Foreign Relations 
Committee, I met with the President of Honduras, the President of 
Guatemala, and the President of El Salvador to talk about these issues, 
to say: What is it that we need to do to deal with these issues?
  This is what they talked about. They talked about the violence coming 
from the drug cartels and organized crime--organized crime--drug 
cartels fueled by America's insatiable demand for drugs. They have 
worsened in these three countries.
  Then there is the recruitment. The narco criminals have gone after 
the children to recruit them, either for their profit or for their 
pleasure. I have to talk about this in a way that civilized people 
should not have to hear that this is going on against children in our 
own hemisphere. This is our own hemisphere. When I talk about the 
recruitment of children for profit or for pleasure, that is exactly 
what they are talking about--to recruit the children to be part of 
gangs, violent gangs, gangs to engage in narco trafficking, to engage 
in extortion, to engage in murder, to engage in intimidation. This is 
the particular targeting of boys--the particular targeting of boys to 
recruit them for the gangs. And if the boys do not want to join the 
gang and they resist, they hide, they try to run away, they are often 
grabbed, many sometimes are kidnapped, threatened with torture or their 
mother or their grandmother or their sister is threatened with either 
death or violent sexual attack. All sexual attack is violent, but they 
talk about it in ways that I will not discuss on the Senate floor.
  Then there is the recruitment for profit--yes, to make sure that 
maybe they are couriers for the drug trade, but also to recruit, nab or 
force young children to be involved in human trafficking and sexual 
slavery.
  But we have to deal with this. We have to stop the violence with a 
tough battle. We have to go after the cartels, and we have to also 
really begin to deal seriously with our addiction to cocaine and to 
heroin.
  When you talk to the President of Honduras about the drugs in his own 
country bound for the United States, he talks about how they smuggle 
drugs, and they smuggle children along the same trade routes. It is 
good trade to traffic in drugs and it is also good trade to traffic in 
women and children. You see, to the drug dealers, to the narco 
traffickers, to the seven organized crime units--and, yes, we know who 
they are and where they are; we just need to marshal the resources of 
our country and the hemisphere to go after them. We know who they are, 
where they are, what they do, and how they do it. They look at women 
and children, boys, as well as girls, as commodities to be sold across 
countries and across borders. My God. And we want to blame the 
children?
  We hear: Let's send them back. Send them back to what? This is why 
these children are on the go. This is why these children are on the 
march. And the children do not care how they get here, as long as they 
escape the violence.
  This is why we have included money of over $112 million to the 
Department of Homeland Security for enforcement--no, not National Guard 
at our border, but really moving assets to Central America to deal with 
law enforcement, to strengthen the courts, and to be able to deal with 
the issues of narco trafficking and organized crime in their own 
country.
  We also know that while we are doing this type of intervention down 
there to go after the smugglers, coyotes, and human traffickers, we 
also need to deal with the fact that when these children are here, they 
have the right to seek legal asylum. Now, as Senator Feinstein pointed 
out, there are only 240 immigration judges in the country. The fact is 
there is a backlog of over 100,000 cases. These kids move to the front 
of the line, but even if they move to the front of the line, it could 
be as much as 2 or 3 years before their cases are heard. This is not 
right. It is not right for them and it is not right for our country.
  So I have more money in this bill for more immigration judges to 
resolve the asylum cases, additional legal representation for the 
children, including bilingual representation, and the kind of backup 
and support where pro bono lawyers are coming to the aid to be able to 
do this.
  I hope we pass this supplemental so we can do this.
  Second, I made the trip to the border. I will talk about this on 
another day. I know my time is exceeded, but what I wanted to emphasize 
today is why these children are coming, the legal services we need to 
present here, and I look forward to talking more about this. I know my 
time is up, and I do want to be courteous to my colleague from the 
other side of the aisle.
  So let's pass this bill. Let's do the interdiction in Central 
America. And let's enforce our laws here and provide the legal 
representation the law requires.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senate as in morning business for as much time as I may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                 Syria

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, quite often--on numerous occasions--I have 
come to the floor of the Senate to talk about the ongoing tragedy of 
Syria, not in the belief that any action may be taken of any real 
impact, although it has always been my hope and prayer, but because my 
conscience dictates that I come to the floor of the Senate and discuss 
one of the great and unfortunate and shameful chapters in our history.
  Last February I came to the floor to appeal to the conscience of my 
colleagues and fellow citizens about the mass atrocities that the Assad 
regime is perpetuating in Syria. I brought with me at that time a 
series of gruesome images that documented the horrors the Assad regime 
has committed against political prisoners in its jails across that 
country. Those images were smuggled out of the country by Caesar--
Caesar--a Syrian military policeman who risked his life and the lives 
of his family and friends to show the world the real face of human 
suffering in Syria today.
  At the time I had hoped that those images would cry out to our 
national conscience and compel our great Nation to help end the 
suffering and genocide of the Syrian people. How could anyone--how 
could anyone--look at those pictures and not press for immediate 
accountability and an end to those mass atrocities?
  In the months since those images were first made public, United 
States and European investigators have pored over the images and 
concluded that not only are these images genuine but they are evidence 
of an industrial-scale campaign by the Assad regime against its 
political opponents. According to the State Department, these 
photographs are evidence of systematic atrocities not seen since 
Hitler's Nazi regime exterminated millions during World War II.
  Stephen Rapp, the State Department's Ambassador-at-Large for War 
Crimes, stated that:

       This is solid evidence of the kind of machinery of cruel 
     death that we haven't seen frankly since the Nazis. It's 
     shocking to me.


[[Page 13566]]


  U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, after a 
briefing to the U.N. Security Council members, stated, ``The gruesome 
images of corpses bearing marks of starvation, strangulation and 
beatings and today's chilling briefing indicate that the Assad regime 
has carried out systematic, widespread and industrial killing.''
  Despite the statements from these and other senior officials, the 
administration has yet to finish its investigation. Perhaps when the 
administration does complete its forensic analysis of the evidence 
provided by Caesar, President Obama will decide it is finally time to 
take action in Syria and prevent the continuation of mass atrocities 
that according to his Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities 
is ``a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility 
of the United States.''
  I have to tell my colleagues I am not hopeful. In the time that the 
investigation to prove what we all know to be true has been underway, 
approximately 40,000 more people have died, another 1 million people 
have been forced from their homes, and over half of Syria's population 
is now believed to be in dire need of food, water, and medicine.
  The Assad regime continues to bomb northern Syria, using crude 
cluster munitions known as barrel bombs with the sole purpose of 
terrorizing and killing as many people as possible when 
indiscriminately dropped from Syrian Government aircraft on schools, 
factories, and mosques. It continues to raze entire neighborhoods for 
no military purpose whatsoever, simply as a form of collective 
punishment of Syrian civilians.
  It continues its ``surrender or starve'' famine campaign, starving 
people to death by denying entire neighborhoods any access to food or 
water. Just last month the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical 
Weapons, which has been tasked with destroying Syria's chemical 
stockpiles, announced there is credible evidence that toxic chemicals 
are still being used in a systematic manner in Syria.
  Indeed, this kind of inhumane cruelty is a pattern of behavior for 
the Syrian government. As early as August 2011, a damning 22-page 
report was issued by the United Nations human rights office, which 
concluded that Syrian Government forces had committed crimes against 
humanity by carrying out summary executions, torturing prisoners and 
harming children, the evidence of which we now see clearly in those 
images.
  The report prompted President Obama to issue a statement calling for 
President Assad to step down. The President declared:

       We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a 
     Democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. 
     For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for 
     President Assad to step aside.

  That was 2 years ago. The President ended this statement by saying, 
``It is clear that President Assad believes that he can silence the 
voices of his people by resorting to the repressive tactics of the 
past, but he is wrong.''
  Following the President's statement, there was no shortage of 
administration officials publicly professing that President Assad's 
days were numbered. In December 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary 
Clinton told a NATO gathering that Assad's fall was ``inevitable.'' She 
later repeated, ``It is time for Assad to get out of the way.'' That 
was from our then-Secretary of State.
  That same month White House spokesman Jay Carney echoed Clinton's 
proclamation stating:

       Assad's fall is inevitable. As governments make decisions 
     about where they stand on this issue and what steps need to 
     be taken with regards to brutality of Assad's regime, it is 
     important to calculate into your consideration the fact that 
     he will go.

  He went on to say, ``The regime has lost control of the country and 
he will eventually fall.'' In May 2012, the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey told FOX News that ``escalating 
atrocities would likely trigger a military intervention following a 
massacre that left more than 100 dead.''
  One hundred dead--that was back when we were talking about Syria's 
dead in hundreds rather than thousands and tens of thousands. One month 
later, in June 2012, then-Secretary of Defense Panetta stated:

       I think it's important when Assad leaves--and he will 
     leave--to try to preserve stability in that country . . . I'm 
     sure that deep down Assad knows he's in trouble, and it's 
     just a matter of time before he has to go. I would say, if 
     you [Assad] want to be able to protect yourself and your 
     family, you better get the hell out now.

  That was in June of 2012 by our Secretary of Defense.
  Where are we now? Three years after President Obama and his 
administration rightly decided it was time for him to go, President 
Assad remains in power, and I know of no one who believes Bashar Assad 
is going to negotiate his departure. In fact, he just orchestrated 
another ``reelection.'' I remember when an American President said that 
a foreign leader must go, it conveyed a commitment to doing something 
about it. But instead of taking decisive action in support of the 
President's declared policy, the administration has simply moved away 
from calls for Assad to step down over the past year.
  In fact, instead of being forced to step down, Assad has continuously 
gotten the administration to treat his regime as a central 
interlocutor, first with the chemical weapons agreement through which 
Assad forced the United States into acknowledging its legitimacy and 
ensuring that he would remain in place until the agreement was carried 
out, then by serving as the sole authority on distribution of aid 
within the country, and now by presenting himself as critical to the 
fight against terrorism and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of 
Iraq and Syria.
  So as it turns out, President Obama was right that Assad's violence 
and repressive tactics could not silence the voices of the Syrian 
people who even in the worst imaginable conditions have continued to 
fight for freedom and a Democratic Syria. Instead, it has been the 
voice of President Obama and other administration officials that 
President Assad has managed to silence. We cannot be silent, but we 
cannot allow words to replace action either.
  What has become exceedingly clear in the wake of recent events is 
that even if we can ignore the moral imperative to act, the growing 
threat to American national security interests means that doing nothing 
is now out of the question. The conflict in Syria is largely to blame 
for the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has grown into the even 
more dangerous and lethal Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, commonly 
referred to by the acronym ISIS or ISIL.
  Top officials testified in last week's Foreign Relations Committee 
hearing that ISIS represents a threat that is ``worse than Al-Qaeda.''
  Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran Brett McGurk 
stated that ISIS is no longer simply a terrorist organization but ``a 
full blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the 
Tigris and Euphrates Valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.''
  The Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the FBI, the 
Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General have all 
warned repeatedly about the threat posed by ISIS's state-like sanctuary 
in Syria and Iraq and the largest safe haven for global terrorism in 
the world.
  If the September 11 attack should have taught us anything, it is that 
global terrorists who occupy ungoverned spaces and seek to plot and 
plan attacks against us can pose a direct threat to our national 
security. That was Afghanistan on September 10, 2001. That is what 
these top officials are now warning us that Syria is becoming today.
  Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said, ``Syria is now a 
matter of homeland security.'' FBI Director James Comey recently warned 
Congress that the terrorist threat from Syria against the United States 
is ``metastasizing.'' Their assessments were confirmed earlier this 
month by Attorney General Eric Holder, who said that recent 
intelligence reports of terrorists from Syria partnering with Yemeni 
bombmakers are ``more frightening than anything I think I've seen

[[Page 13567]]

as attorney general. It's something that gives us really extreme, 
extreme concern.''
  He added:

       If they--

  Meaning ISIS--

     are able to consolidate their gains in that area, Iraq and 
     Syria, I think it's just a matter of time before they start 
     looking outward and start looking at the West and at the 
     United States in particular. So this is something that we 
     have to get on top of and get on top of now.

  It is clear President Assad's strategy is to convince the 
administration that we only have two options, him or Al Qaeda-linked 
terrorists. It is a sad testament to the administration's leadership on 
Syria that Assad's strategy seems to be working. According to a report 
by the Daily Beast, administration officials are debating whether to 
abandon the President's goal of toppling Assad and enter into a de 
facto alliance with the Assad regime to fight ISIS or other Sunni 
extremists in the region.
  Such a decision would represent the height of folly. Nobody--nobody--
should believe Assad is an ally in the fight against terrorism. Former 
Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who resigned in May after asserting 
that he could no longer defend American policy in Syria, made it clear 
how foolish such thinking is. He said:

       The people who think Bashar Assad's regime is the answer to 
     containing and eventually eliminating the Islamic-based 
     threat do not understand the historic relationship between 
     the regime and ISIS. They do not understand the current 
     relationship between Assad and ISIS and how they are working 
     on the ground together directly and indirectly inside Syria.

  He added,

       If this administration wants to contain the Islamic State 
     on the ground, they are going to have to help the Free Syrian 
     Army.

  After more than 3 years of horror and suffering and devastation and 
growing threats to our national security, the conflict in Syria 
continues to get worse and worse, both for Syria and for the world, but 
the United States has no effective policy to bring this conflict to a 
responsible end. The outcome of the administration's disengagement has 
been a consistent failure to support more responsible forces in Syria 
when that support would have mattered.
  The descent of Syria into chaos and growing regional instability, the 
use of Syria as a training ground for Al Qaeda affiliates and other 
terrorist organizations, the ceding of regional leadership to our 
adversaries, and the shameful tolerance of war crimes and crimes 
against humanity--in short, all of the horrible things the critics said 
would happen if we got more involved in Syria--have happened because we 
have not gotten more involved. Now President Obama finds himself in a 
position where the United States will have to do far more today to 
stave off disaster in Syria than we would have needed to do in 2012. 
The administration seems to have finally come around to the idea that 
we must arm, train, and equip the moderate opposition in Syria. But 
arming moderate FSA units is only one element of what must be done for 
a much broader strategy that includes both Syria and Iraq.
  I will be the first to admit there are no good options left, if good 
options ever existed to begin with. But as bad as our options are, we 
still have options to do something meaningful in Syria.
  The conflict in Syria is reaching a critical point. Government forces 
are advancing on Aleppo, effectively cutting off routes into and out of 
the city from the south and west, exercising a stranglehold on the 
people of Aleppo. More than 6 months of punishing daily air strikes 
have killed thousands of residents and forced tens of thousands more to 
flee. But at least 500,000 residents remain in Aleppo, and they are 
being slowly asphyxiated by Assad's forces as they brace for Aleppo's 
upcoming siege.
  Meanwhile, disillusioned fighters, starved of the resources and 
equipment they need, have been drifting from the front lines and, in 
some cases, joining the better funded and equipped extremist groups.
  It is a moral outrage to watch the destruction of what remains of 
Aleppo and refuse to do more to help those fight against our enemies in 
the region. Worse still, the government's campaign has been aided and 
abetted by ISIS, which is attacking the Free Syrian Army from the 
northeast in an attempt to take control of two vital supply lines from 
Turkey and forcing the moderate opposition to fight simultaneously on 
two fronts.
  Such activists are suggesting that the fall of Aleppo could be the 
nail in the coffin for the modern opposition, and the situation for 
civilians still living in Aleppo has become so disastrous that the 
United States recently authorized the delivery of cross-border 
humanitarian aid without prior approval from the Assad regime.
  These efforts are a bandaid on a bullet wound. It will not be enough 
to mitigate the dire crisis unfolding in the city, and we must offer 
quick support to the moderate opposition as they battle the Assad 
regime and extremists from the Islamic state before it is too late.
  The rise of ISIS, combined with the events in Gaza and Ukraine, has 
placed Assad's assault on Aleppo safely outside of the headlines. With 
the international community distracted by these disturbing events in 
other parts of the word, Assad will again manipulate time and terror in 
his favor.
  President Obama, who spent much of his time in recent weeks at 
fundraising events, said nothing about Syria or Iraq during recent 
appearances to discuss Gaza and Ukraine.
  Worse still, details of the sole initiative proposed by the 
administration on Syria since the collapse of the Geneva peace talks 
reveals a plan that would train less than a battalion-sized unit of 
2,300 individuals and wouldn't begin until the middle of next year. By 
that time Aleppo may be lost and there may be no more units left in 
Syria to support.
  The conflict in Syria is a threat to our national interests, but it 
is more than that. It is an affront to our conscience. Images such as 
these should not just be a source of heartbreak and sympathy, they 
should be a call to action. For the sake of our national security we 
must move quickly to help the moderate opposition now before it is too 
late. For the sake of our national conscience, we must do more to help 
the 150,000 political prisoners who remain in Assad's prisons and put 
an end to the suffering of the Syrian people.
  It is with great sadness that I met with Caesar yesterday and had to 
tell him the truth: that although our great Nation could have done more 
to stop the suffering of others, that we could have used the power we 
possess--limited and imperfect as it may be--to prevent massive 
atrocities and the killing of innocents, it is with everlasting shame 
that we have not.
  Shame on all of us for our current failure. If there ever was a case 
that should remind us that our interests are indivisible from our 
values, it is Syria, and we cannot afford to go numb to this human 
tragedy.
  I have seen my fair share of suffering and death in the world, but 
the images and stories coming out of Syria haunt me most. But it is not 
too late. The United States is still the most powerful Nation in the 
world today, and we have the power and capabilities to act when brutal 
tyrants slaughter their people with impunity. No one should believe 
that we are without options even now. I pray that we will finally 
recognize the costs of inaction and take the necessary actions to end 
Assad's mass atrocities and to help the Syrian people write a better 
ending to this sad chapter in world affairs.
  I note the presence of our distinguished chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee. I urge my colleagues--among many reasons--to 
support him in his effort to bring the National Defense Authorization 
Act before this body. Part of that act also authorizes for the training 
and equipping of the Free Syrian forces.
  I thank my friend and colleague the Senator from Michigan and the 
chairman of our committee, whose unstinting effort has made this 
National Defense Authorization Act something that deserves the 
attention, debate, amending, and passage from the Senate.

[[Page 13568]]

  I thank my colleague from Michigan.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record my statement on 
the National Defense Authorization Act following the remarks of Senator 
Levin and Senator Inhofe.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. LEVIN. Would the Senator from Pennsylvania yield for a unanimous 
consent request?
  Mr. CASEY. I yield to the Senator from Michigan.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. May I inquire of the Senator from Pennsylvania how long he 
intends to speak?
  Mr. CASEY. About 10 minutes.
  Mr. LEVIN. After the Senator from Pennsylvania concludes, I would ask 
that the Senator from Oklahoma and I be recognized for 20 minutes, 
evenly divided, to talk about the need to get the Defense authorization 
bill to the floor, and each one of us would control 10 minutes under 
this unanimous consent request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Pennsylvania.


                              Afghanistan

  Mr. CASEY. I rise to speak about a topic that we don't talk about 
enough, which is what is happening in Afghanistan with regard to women 
and girls.
  I know the senior Senator from Arizona was speaking about Syria 
before I had recognition, and I am grateful to him for the work we have 
done together. He is working with me and others on the best way forward 
for us to have a constructive impact on what is happening, working to 
get more dollars and more efforts in the direction of supporting the 
well-vetted Syrian opposition. I am grateful to him for his compassion 
and his commitment on this issue, and we look forward to working with 
him going forward.
  I rise today to talk about an issue that we don't focus on enough 
here and that is the outlook for Afghan women and the children who have 
grown up during the past 13 years of war in Afghanistan. Children all 
too often are the innocent victims of the conflict.
  According to a recent report by the U.N. Secretary General to the 
Security Council in Afghanistan, child casualties increased by 30 
percent between 2012 and 2013.
  While reporting was limited by the security environment, there were 
at least 790 documented incidents in which 545 children were killed and 
1,149 were injured. That is just a snapshot of the horror that so many 
children have suffered in Afghanistan. Armed opposition groups such as 
the Taliban are responsible for a majority of the recorded child 
casualties.
  I have spoken on the floor a number of times about the substantial 
improvements that have been made in Afghanistan, with significant 
United States support. Our tax dollars, our people, and our government 
have helped enormously to get greater numbers of Afghan children, 
especially girls, into school. Where there were once only a few 
educational opportunities, now more than 8.3 million children are in 
school, boys and girls. By one assessment, up to 40 percent of those 
8.3 million children are girls.
  The security situation and persistent Taliban aggression in 
Afghanistan continue to threaten this progress. According to the same 
U.N. report, there were at least 73 reported attacks on schools. In 
some especially horrifying incidents, improvised explosive devices--we 
know them as IEDs--were planted inside school premises. The American 
people should be proud of the sacrifices that have already been made by 
our fighting men and women and our diplomats who have served in 
Afghanistan and the progress--which I have just mentioned--that has 
been made. As the political transition approaches and we prepare for a 
full security transition, this issue merits continued focus.
  In 2013 and 2014, I led a bipartisan effort with Senator Ayotte to 
include language in the National Defense Authorization Act that 
highlights the security issues Afghan women and girls face and promotes 
the recruitment and retention of women in the Afghan National Security 
Forces.
  I focused on the issue because I believe the future of women and 
girls is critical, essential, to the stability of Afghanistan going 
forward and consequently our own national security interests in the 
region. According to the Institute for Inclusive Security: ``There is 
evidence that women in uniform are more likely than their male 
colleagues to de-escalate tensions and less likely to use excessive 
force.''
  Some improvements have been made to recruit and retain women in the 
Afghan National Security Forces. For example, earlier this month, 51 
women graduated from the Afghan National Police Academy. These women 
defy the Taliban's threats by serving as police officers.
  During the elections earlier this year, female police officers and 
searchers helped secure polling stations for women, and their effect 
was tangible: significant turnout by female voters despite serious 
security threats.
  Although significant progress has been made in women's rights and 
security, there are still far too many horrific incidents of violence 
against women and children.
  I was particularly disturbed, as I know many women were, by an 
article that ran in the New York Times on July 19 entitled: 
``Struggling to Keep Afghan Girl Safe After a Mullah is Accused of 
Rape.'' That is the name of the article dated July 19.
  The article describes how a 10-year-old Afghan girl was raped by a 
mullah in a mosque. A local women's shelter took in the young girl 
after the attack to protect her from her own family, who were planning 
to carry out an honor killing. The activists at the shelter received 
death threats in addition to the threats to the girl.
  Once the young girl recovered, she was returned to her family. 
However, as the article concludes: ``Those caring for the girl said she 
had been terribly homesick and wanted to return to her family, but no 
one had the heart to tell her they had been conspiring to kill her.''
  To say that this story is heartbreaking doesn't begin to translate 
the horror of what some young girls have to face in Afghanistan and 
other parts of the world as well. Extremists will no doubt continue to 
threaten women leaders and target innocent children in an effort to 
terrorize the Afghan people during this transition. We should send an 
unequivocal message that the United States continues to stand with 
Afghan women and children and that we see them as an important part of 
building a stable and secure Afghanistan.
  In an effort to honor the sacrifices of the American people and our 
service men and women, and to make sure those sacrifices are 
remembered, we have to make sure that we take steps in the Senate. I 
filed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, and I am 
grateful again for the work Senator Ayotte has done with me. We were 
joined most recently by several cosponsors, Senator Shaheen, Senator 
Warner, and Senator Boxer.
  This amendment will address three main issues:
  No. 1, continue to prioritize recruitment and retention of women in 
the Afghan National Security Forces.
  No. 2. Support police units that are specially trained to work with 
female or adolescent victims and increase the number of female security 
officers specifically trained to address cases of gender-based 
violence. This would include ensuring Afghan National Police's Family 
Response Units have the necessary resources and are available to women 
across Afghanistan.
  No. 3. Finally, emphasize the need to maintain the female searcher 
capabilities that were established in the April 2014 Presidential 
elections and for the 2015 parliamentary elections.
  We must ensure that the gains made by Afghan women in every sector of 
society are preserved in a post-2014 Afghanistan. It is in our national 
security interests to help prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming 
a safe haven and training ground for international terrorism.
  We have seen from the recent events in Iraq what happens after a 
security transition if some groups are

[[Page 13569]]

marginalized. As we approach transition in Afghanistan, women and young 
people should not just be the target of Taliban violence; they should 
be full partners in building a stable Afghanistan.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.


                         Defense Authorization

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, along with 
Senator Inhofe--Senator McCain was here before--to express the hope 
that the Senate will be able to take up the National Defense 
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 during our September work 
period.
  In June Senator Inhofe and I came here to urge Senators to begin the 
process to file amendments to our bill, and many amendments have been 
filed. We have been working to clear as many amendments as possible in 
preparation for Senate consideration of our bill. The amendment 
described just a few moments ago by the Senator from Pennsylvania is 
the type of amendment that we believe we can clear and would strengthen 
our bill and strengthen the position of our Nation.
  When the Defense authorization bill is brought to the floor, our goal 
is first to be in a position to offer a package of cleared amendments. 
Our second goal--probably as important, perhaps more important than our 
first--is to see if we can identify specific relevant amendments that 
could be included in a unanimous consent agreement ready to be debated 
and voted on or, in the alternative, to craft the unanimous consent 
agreement with a limited number of relevant amendments, leaving it to 
the managers and the leaders to identify which relevant amendments 
would be brought to a vote.
  Given the small number of days that are left for legislative action 
in this Congress, we must all--all of us individually and as a body--
pull together if we are going to get our Defense bill completed. In my 
judgment, the course I have outlined will facilitate that conclusion.
  I know there is a backlog of important nominations the Senate must 
still address, and these nominations have been taking up much of the 
Senate's time. But we have enacted a national defense authorization act 
every year for 52 years.
  The bill this year--S. 2410--was reported out of the Senate Armed 
Services Committee on the 2nd day of June with a strong bipartisan vote 
of 25 to 1. It provides critical authorities, funding, assistance, and 
guidance for our military, for our men and women in uniform and their 
families, at a time when they face a wide array of threats around the 
world.
  In our national defense authorization bill, we enact authorities and 
programs that would create important initiatives that would be 
unnecessarily delayed if we do not adopt this bill.
  If we fail to enact this bill, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and 
marines will not receive many important special pays and bonuses. These 
include the critical skills retention bonus; enlistment and 
reenlistment bonuses; bonus and special pays for health professions, 
including those in critically short wartime specialties; and many other 
bonus and special pays that enable the military services to shape the 
force as we draw down that force.
  If we fail to enact this bill, we will not be able to slow the growth 
of military personnel costs and the Department will not be able to use 
the savings, as planned, to make up for readiness shortfalls that 
undermine our military's ability to respond to emerging national 
security crises. The committee-reported bill includes over $1.8 billion 
in savings in 2015 and over $20 billion in savings over the Future 
Years Defense Program. If this bill doesn't pass, those savings will 
not be achieved and the readiness and modernization accounts will be 
even further depleted.
  If we fail to enact this bill, we will risk delaying the 
implementation of programs to address the mental health of our Armed 
Forces by developing a standard method for collecting, reporting, and 
assessing suicide and attempted suicide data for members of the 
National Guard and Reserves. Our Presiding Officer is very active in 
that particular area, in trying to address the suicide problems we have 
in our Armed Forces.
  If we fail to enact this bill, we will delay a much needed 
reorganization of the Department's prisoner of war/missing in action 
community to enable the Department to more effectively accomplish its 
mission of accounting for POWs and MIAs.
  If we fail to enact this bill, school districts all over the United 
States that rely on our supplemental impact aid to help them educate 
military children will no longer receive that money.
  If we fail to enact this bill, we are unlikely to authorize the 
National Commission on the Future of the Army--a critical step to 
enable the Army to ensure that its forces--including its Active-Duty, 
Reserves, and Army National Guard components--are properly structured 
and supported to meet current and future threats.
  If we fail to enact this bill, no new military construction projects 
will be authorized for fiscal year 2015 and our Armed Forces will too 
often continue to live, train, and work in substandard facilities.
  Previous years' national defense authorization acts have been 
strengthened and enhanced through a debate on the Senate floor, and 
that includes the opportunity for Members to offer amendments. Debating 
and enacting those authorizations are critical not only to our national 
security but to ensure that our Nation keeps its sacred vow to provide 
for our armed servicemembers and their families.
  Senator Inhofe and I will do our part, but we urge our colleagues to 
continue to file amendments colleagues would like to see in the bill, 
and we will do our best to clear them. We will also do our utmost to 
draft a unanimous consent agreement for consideration by our leadership 
that would provide for some contested relevant amendments so that we 
can show our leaders we can deal with this bill in a day or two.
  We will do all that we can, but we need 98 other Senators to help us. 
So we urge our colleagues, please continue to bring amendments to us. 
Please help us craft a unanimous consent agreement that would allow for 
a reasonable number of contested relevant amendments to be debated and 
voted on. This is the best way we are going to be able to persuade our 
leaders and our colleagues that we can bring the bill to the floor, 
have a reasonable period for debate, dispose of at least some relevant 
amendments, and pass the critically needed National Defense 
Authorization Act.
  Our troops and their families deserve maximum effort on the part of 
all of us. I hope that will be forthcoming so we will not miss in the 
53rd year a passage of a bill that is so critical to our national 
security.
  Before I yield, I wish to thank my good friend from Oklahoma, our 
ranking member, who has worked so closely with me. Our staffs worked so 
hard on this bill. Together, as partners, we have been able to bring 
this bill to the floor. I thank him for the very strong leadership he 
has shown in the security area and on this bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, I thank my good friend, the 
chairman of the committee, Senator Levin.
  It is true that we have worked so closely together--not just the two 
of us but our staffs directly, the minority and majority staff. It is 
rare that we have a difference of opinion. When we do, we sit down and 
work things out, debate, and get things done. So there is a reason, as 
Senator Levin said, that we have passed this bill for 52 consecutive 
years.
  There are a lot of bills that hit the floor, and some are important, 
some are not. Some are more important to different Members than others. 
This is important to everybody. There is not one Senator here who 
doesn't want to pass a defense authorization bill. When Senator Levin 
mentioned that it passed by 25 to 1--we have been ready to go since 
that time. That is why we are encouraging people and have been

[[Page 13570]]

encouraging people to bring amendments down.
  Let me mention that I personally went--as did Senator Levin--to both 
the majority and the minority leader.
  They said: Well, go ahead. You have our go-ahead to get these people 
to bring down their amendments.
  This is very important. And I have to say that one of the problems we 
had last year was there are a lot of Republicans--and I am on the 
Republican side. A lot of Republicans had amendments that they didn't 
think were going to be able to get heard. Well, this is their chance to 
do that right now.
  The count as of today is that 94 amendments have been filed. Of that, 
73 are Democratic amendments and only 21 are Republican amendments. So 
I appeal now to the Republicans because what I don't want to happen is 
for us to come back and maybe go into some type of lameduck session and 
find ourselves in the same position we were in last year. Now is the 
time to preclude that from happening by getting their amendments down. 
I think we can do it. We have 4 or 5 weeks during this August recess 
for our staff to work on these. As the chairman said, a lot of these 
are going to be put together and are going to be accepted and be in the 
manager's amendment--but not unless Members get them down right now.
  We know that right now we are probably in the most perilous situation 
we have ever been in as a country. I sometimes say that I look 
wistfully back to the days of the Cold War when we had two superpowers 
and we knew what they had and they knew what we had and we assured 
certain destruction if they did anything to us. Now there are places 
led by people with certainly questionable character and abilities. We 
have North Korea, Iran, and all these countries developing nuclear 
weapons. Our intelligence is good but not good enough to be able to 
know when it is going to come our way. So we have to be ready. That is 
the primary function of this committee.
  We rely on all the people making our Nation safe right now, and they 
are looking at what we are doing. We need to take care of them in 
training, readiness, pay, benefits. These are things that are going to 
happen.
  The other day the President came out with the OCO request for $59 
billion. In there, he mentioned two programs that--frankly, I have 
never heard of--either one of them. One was $4 billion to go to the 
Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund, and the other was $1 billion for 
the European Reassurance Fund. I don't know what these are.
  This is the forum we will use when we start debating the NDAA. It is 
going to be to get to all these programs that are new on the horizon, 
to see whether we really want to devote any of our scarce resources to 
some of these programs. We don't know. When we get the bill on the 
floor, we will know.
  It is too important to our troops to do what we did last year. Not 
passing it will send a terrible signal to them. But I think it is more 
important to realize how close we came last year to not having the bill 
by December 31. If we didn't have it by December 31, just think of what 
would have happened. If we could not have corrected the situation, we 
would have had combat pay stopping. We would have had incentive pay for 
some of the doctors and all that come to a conclusion.
  We also would have reenlistment bonuses. Looking at some of our 
airmen who are flying sophisticated equipment, people don't realize 
that to train a new person to get to the level of an F-22 costs about 
$15 million. However, a reenlistment bonus is about $250,000.
  So we look at what we can do by doing the right thing and passing the 
bill.
  We have a lot of serious questions we need to debate on problems in 
Syria, as Senator McCain was talking about a few minutes ago, and Iraq 
and Ukraine and Afghanistan. That is why we need to have the NDAA 
tended to, hopefully as soon as we get back from this recess. The later 
we put it into the year to act, the more likely many of these 
provisions could be rolled into one massive Omnibus appropriations 
bill. We all know how that would play out. It would be rammed through 
the Senate without amendments and open debate. We want transparency. We 
want people to have an opportunity to bring their amendments out, and 
the more we can get between now and when we go into this recess, the 
more it can be worked out by the staff because they are going to be 
working all during the recess to get this done. We have all these 
people risking their lives on our behalf. They certainly deserve to 
have this bill in a well-thought-out manner.
  Right before we came on, Senator Casey was talking about the Afghan 
women and girls, some of the real tragedies that are taking place right 
now over there. These are things, the language of which we can correct 
in this bill. So there is no reason to put it off. We don't want to go 
through what we went through last time, and now is the time to prepare 
for that, and all we have to do is get the amendments in. No one should 
complain later on in November or December about not being able to have 
their amendments heard if they are not out there right now, bringing 
their amendments now.
  With that, it is my understanding that Senator McCain was going to 
participate in this plea we are making, but he has a statement he will 
be submitting for the Record.
  There being no objection, the statement was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today to urge the 
majority leader to bring to the floor for debate one of the most 
important pieces of legislation that comes before this body each year--
the National Defense Authorization Act.
  The Senate Armed Services Committee version of the Fiscal Year 2015 
National Defense Authorization Act provides $514 billion for national 
defense in Fiscal Year 2015. This includes $496 billion for the 
Department of Defense, DOD, base budget and $17.7 billion for national 
security programs.
  This bill contains several important provisions. It includes a 
provision to keep the A-10, a vital close air support combat aircraft. 
This provision would strictly prohibit the U.S. Air Force from retiring 
A-10 airplanes for 1 year and fully fund the flight hours, pilot 
training, fuel, maintenance, and operations for all A-10 pilots and 
crew through 2015.
  Additionally, this bill contains three different provisions that 
would improve the prospects of competition for military space launch 
and help move the Pentagon away from using taxpayer dollars to purchase 
rocket engines from Russia.
  Finally, this bill includes a provision that would eliminate wasteful 
spending in Department of Defense, DOD, IT systems. Before DOD is 
allowed to spend millions of dollars on new IT projects, the department 
must identify and eliminate old IT systems first.
  These are just a few of the important provisions that have been 
included in this year's NDAA.
  The Senate Armed Services Committee began consideration of the 
defense authorization bill immediately after the President submitted 
his fiscal year 2015 budget request. Over the course of 4 months, the 
committee conducted several hearings, held countless briefings, and 
then met for 3 solid days in markup to produce this legislation. The 
bill was approved by the committee on May 22 and is ready to be 
debated, amended, and passed so that we may conference with the House 
on their version of the bill.
  I strongly urge the majority leader to bring this important bill to 
the Senate floor for debate. A failure to move to the defense 
authorization bill as soon as possible is a failure to recognize the 
critical national security importance signified through the strong 
bipartisan support this bill has enjoyed in this Chamber over the past 
five decades.
  Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page 13571]]




                           Highway Trust Fund

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about an amendment 
that I filed with the Highway and Transportation Funding Act. While my 
amendment did not get a vote, the issue it addresses is very important 
to my home State so I want to take a minute today to talk about the 
issue and the need to address a situation that was created when we 
passed the MAP-21 conference report in 2012.
  The conference report undid a carefully constructed compromise on the 
Abandoned Mine Land Program that was put together in 2006. It took 
apart the work that we had done by limiting the total annual payments 
of AML funds to $15 million per year. That is a change that only 
affected the State of Wyoming. We usually don't do legislation that 
only affects one State when a number of them receive funds.
  What was worse, the provision was not in the House or Senate highway 
bill. It was added in the dead of night without consulting anyone from 
the Wyoming congressional delegation. I was extremely disappointed that 
the provision was included in the conference report because Senators 
from other coal-producing States and I spent years working on this 
issue.
  When the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed in 
1977, a tax was levied on each ton of coal that was produced. The 
purpose of that tax was to reclaim the coal mines that had been 
abandoned before the enactment of the reclamation laws. Half of that 
tax was promised to the States where the coal was mined. That was known 
as the State share. The other half went to the Federal Government to 
administer the reclamation program and to provide additional funding to 
the States with the most abandoned coal mines.
  It was a simple enough concept. Unfortunately, like many things in 
Washington, while the concept was good, clear, and well-intentioned, 
its implementation was a nightmare and the program did not work as 
Congress intended. For years States were shortchanged and the 
reclamation work was not done or the States did it themselves at their 
own expense, expecting to get reimbursed. That is the case in Wyoming. 
At one point the Federal Government owed the States more than $1.2 
billion, while more than $3 billion in reclamation programs remained 
incomplete and unfinished.
  The issued pitted the East against the West and the debate was always 
the same. When Members from the East would argue that we should send 
more money to the States to support reclamation efforts, my colleagues 
from the West were just as certain that we needed to keep the Federal 
Government's promise to the States to provide the revenue they were 
entitled to under the provisions of the Surface Mining Control and 
Reclamation Act.
  In 2006, a bipartisan coalition of Senators--including me--fixed the 
broken AML structure. It started with Senator Santorum approaching me 
with a proposal that had the support of a number of local coal 
companies, also the United Mine Workers of America, several 
environmental groups, and other businesses. After listening to the 
proposal, I laid out a set of principles that had to be included in 
their proposal if they were going to gain my support.
  First I wanted to see the return of the money owed to the States, 
which included $550 million owed to my State. Because Wyoming is a 
certified State, I also wanted to see the money that came from the 
Federal Government with no strings attached. The legislation 
accomplished that goal by guaranteeing that Wyoming was to receive the 
money owed from the Federal Government over a 7-year period.
  This is money in a trust fund. Trust funds are kind of interesting to 
the Federal Government. We put money in the drawer and then we take 
money out and put bonds in the drawer. Think about that in Social 
Security. It is another one of our trust funds, and I am one of the 
protectors.
  This was a trust fund but there were only bonds in there, so it was 
difficult for us to get any money. I wanted to guarantee that future 
moneys would be paid to States such as Wyoming where significant 
amounts of coal were produced. We are where most of the Federal half of 
the tax comes from.
  Third, it was important that more money be directed toward 
reclamation in the States where it was needed. More money was needed.
  And fourth, there had to be a provision for orphan miners' health. 
Sometimes that is kind of overlooked, but Senator Byrd and Senator 
Rockefeller were very adamant on that.
  What is an orphan miner? That was a miner who was promised health 
care and then their mine went out of business. So there is no company 
to pay in anymore so they can get their health care, and we made a 
provision to take care of that.
  The legislation that we put together accomplished all four of those 
goals. We continued our efforts as a bipartisan group, and in December 
2006 we passed the AML reauthorization as part of the Tax Relief and 
Health Care Act of 2006. The coal industry and the United Mine Workers 
of America supported the bill. Members from certified States less 
Wyoming supported the compromise, as did members from uncertified 
States such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
  As a Senator, President Obama voted in favor of the legislation that 
included this compromise. From all signs it appeared we had finally 
fixed our problem and helped strengthen our State economies at the same 
time. Unfortunately, appearances are often deceiving.
  By limited AML payments in the MAP-21 conference report, Congress 
once again made clear that taxpayers could not count on a Federal trust 
fund to meet its obligations to administer the tax dollars it collected 
each year in a proper and legislatively mandated manner. This has been 
contested and successfully defended year after year to preserve this 
money, and it was supported by a supermajority from this body until--
until--it was included in this highway bill and included in the highway 
bill in the conference report, not when we had an amendment on the 
floor that we could once again successfully defeat with a 
supermajority. It came in the middle of the night, and the next day we 
had an opportunity to vote for the highway bill.
  The highway bill is probably one of the most crucial bills to any 
State in the Nation, and if all you get to do is vote yes or no, you 
are not going to take a look at a little portion of the bill where we 
steal a trust fund from one State--Wyoming--and that is exactly what 
happened, and it passed.
  My amendment to the highway bill this time will address the problem 
and put things back together the way they were meant to be. Simply put, 
it will ensure that when a State has been promised it will receive AML 
funds, it will receive them. Fortunately, I have the intent of Congress 
and the support of many colleagues on this matter of such great concern 
to Wyoming and to all the coal-producing States.
  I want to particularly thank Senators Hatch and Wyden for their 
commitment to address this issue created by the MAP-21 conference 
report. This isn't just a problem for Wyoming, because the next time a 
conference committee goes looking for some money, they can steal it 
from another AML State.
  My amendment also encouraged the production of energy right here at 
home by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. The 
Congressional Budget Office estimates such an effort will increase 
gross Federal receipts by $5 billion over 10 years. That is more than 
we need to make this payment. There are other possibilities for offsets 
as well, but that is one that is rather meaty, and that is more than 
enough to pay the funds that were stolen from Wyoming over 10 years and 
to pay for 2 years' worth of transportation projects, not just a short-
term fix on transportation.
  I know my colleagues will see the importance of this matter for 
Wyoming and to all the coal-producing States. It is important we take a 
look at this and protect the validity of trust funds that we set up and 
not redo them without adequate debate or an actual vote on the trust 
fund that we are violating. We have done that on a couple of other 
trust funds as well.
  One of the ones that we also did was to impose an additional tax on 
those

[[Page 13572]]

companies that have private pension funds, because we have a Pension 
Benefit Guaranty trust fund that is designed so that if a company goes 
out of business a worker who works for one of those businesses will get 
at least 60 percent of what they were supposed to get in their 
retirement. That is why it is called the Pension Benefit Guaranty trust 
fund. We increased the amount that had to be put in by $80 per employee 
for each of the companies involved, and that was going to the trust 
fund to make sure those funds would be available. But we diverted those 
funds before they got to the trust fund because the actual money could 
be replaced by bonds in the drawer of the trust fund. That money went 
to highways, and that is just another example of how we are taking 
money from 10 years' worth of trust funds and using it for 2-year 
projects. We have to change that, and my amendment will be one of the 
ways of making that change.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Does the distinguished Senator from Utah seek 
recognition?
  Mr. HATCH. I was told 6 p.m.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The Senator from Utah may proceed, if he wishes.
  Mr. HATCH. How long will the Senator from Rhode Island take?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I will take approximately 20 minutes.
  I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized after the Senator from 
Utah, Mr. Hatch.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. HATCH. I thank my gracious colleague. He is one of the better 
people here, and I have a great friendship with him as well. I 
appreciate it.


                             Patent Trolls

  Mr. President, I rise to speak about the importance of our patent 
system and how it continues to be abused by patent trolls.
  Most Members in this body are fully aware of the crippling effect 
patent trolls are having on innovation and growth upon all areas of our 
economy--ranging from Main Street businesses to America's largest 
technology companies. Through abusive and meritless litigation, patent 
trolls--often shell companies that do not make or sell anything--extort 
settlements from innovators throughout the country.
  How do they do it? Take, for example, the small coffee shop down the 
street that provides Wi-Fi service to its customers. The shop owners 
are using a technology exactly as it is intended to be used, but 
thousands of miles away a patent troll purchases broad patents 
previously issued to someone else. Next, the patent troll sends vague 
and hostile demand letters to the coffee shop, and thousands of similar 
businesses, accusing them, often improperly, of infringing their 
questionable patents.
  Many trolls target small businesses that they hope will agree to 
settle even though they have done nothing wrong simply because they do 
not have the resources to defend themselves in court. These settlements 
divert capital that could otherwise be used for research and 
development or to create jobs. In many cases, it costs around $2 
million to fight one of these cases. So they are forced into settling 
with whatever they can pay rather than doing what they would hope to 
do; that is, prove that there was an unmeritorious claim.
  The sad reality is that many businesses often have little choice 
other than to settle rather than to expend the far greater resources 
required to fight them in court. Those who do fight back are forced to 
spend millions in litigation costs, often with no chance of enforcing a 
court-ordered award against a judgment-proof plaintiff.
  How big of a problem is this? Mr. James Bessen, writing in the 
Harvard Business Review, confirms that ``the economic burden of today's 
patent lawsuits is, in fact, historically unprecedented. Research shows 
that patent trolls cost defendant firms $29 billion per year in direct 
out-of-pocket costs; in aggregate, patent litigation destroys over $60 
billion in firm wealth each year.''
  Mr. Bessen further cites three studies on patent lawsuits currently 
in the works by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, Rutgers, Harvard, and the University of Texas. Based upon 
preliminary findings, Mr. Bessen states:

       A consistent picture is emerging about the effects of 
     patent litigation: it costs innovators money; many innovators 
     and venture capitalists report that it significantly impacts 
     their businesses; innovators respond by investing less in 
     R&D and venture capitalists respond by investing less in 
     startups.

  I agree with Mr. Bessen. The evidence from these studies cannot be 
ignored. Patent trolls do hurt innovation, and it is past time for 
Congress to do something about it.
  For the better part of a year, Congress worked toward a legislative 
solution to combat patent trolls. In December we overcame the first 
legislative hurdle when the House of Representatives passed the 
Innovation Act by a vote of 325 to 91. The White House endorsed the 
bipartisan legislation by stating: ``The bill would improve incentives 
for future innovation while protecting the overall integrity of the 
patent system.''
  Here in the Senate, I worked closely with a bipartisan group of 
Senators to craft a compromise bill that could pass the Senate. 
Countless hours of negotiation yielded encouraging results on key 
litigation reform provisions, including fee shifting, heightened 
pleading and discovery standards, and a mechanism to ensure that 
recovery of fees will be possible against shell companies.
  In the spirit of bipartisanship, my Republican colleagues and I were 
willing--albeit very reluctantly--to lower the bar on fee shifting if 
we maintained strong litigation reforms elsewhere. I continue to 
believe mandatory fee shifting is the best way to discourage patent 
litigation in cases where a plaintiff's or defendant's case is so weak 
it should never have been brought or defended in the first instance. 
That is why I included mandatory fee shifting in the Hatch-Leahy Patent 
Reform Act of 2006 and why I will insist on its inclusion in future 
legislation.
  Fee shifting alone gives a prevailing party little relief against 
patent trolls who litigate in the name of shell companies while their 
financial backers or interested parties purposefully remain beyond the 
court's jurisdiction.
  Thus, there must be a mechanism to ensure that recovery of fees will 
be possible even against judgment-proof shell companies. The recovery 
of award provision I drafted is intended to ensure that shell companies 
primarily in the business of asserting and enforcing patents and 
litigation cannot escape potential liability for attorneys fees if they 
are found to have pursued an unreasonable case. Those deemed interested 
parties may either voluntarily submit to the court's jurisdiction and 
become liable for any unsatisfied fees awarded in the case or opt out 
by renouncing sufficient interest related to the litigation or do 
nothing.
  In my view fee shifting without such a recovery provision is akin to 
writing a check on an empty account. You are purporting to convey 
something that is not there. Fee shifting, coupled with this recovery 
provision, would stop patent trolls from litigating and dashing--
dashing away, I might say.
  There is no question that America's ingenuity fuels our economy. We 
must ensure that our patent system is as strong and vibrant as 
possible, not only to protect our country's premier position as a world 
leader in innovation but also to secure our own economic future. 
Patents encourage technological advancement by providing incentives to 
invent, invest in, and of course develop new technology.
  It bears repeating that the governance of patents and copyrights is 
one of the essential, specifically enumerated powers given to the 
Federal Government and our Nation's founding. In my view it is one of 
the most visionary, forward-looking provisions in the entire U.S. 
Constitution. Unfortunately, at least in the 113th Congress, it is 
unlikely that this body will act to end the abuses by patent trolls.
  It is shameful that even intellectual property bills are now among 
the latest

[[Page 13573]]

casualties of our current partisan gridlock.
  As Senators prepare to return to their home States for the August 
recess, I hope they will hear from people who represent the hotel, 
restaurant, retail, real estate, financial services, and high-tech 
industries--just to mention a few--about the urgent need to pass patent 
troll legislation.
  I hope Senators will be reminded about the opportunity the Senate 
abandoned to pass important bipartisan, bicameral legislation that was 
supported by the White House but pulled from the Senate's agenda by the 
majority leader.
  I hope Senators will recognize we must end the multibillion-dollar 
assault on American businesses and workers--because that is what it is.
  Through commonsense reforms to our patent laws, we can ensure that 
American resources are used to innovate and create jobs and not wasted 
to settle or litigate frivolous claims.
  I am disappointed that during the 113th Congress the Senate has 
failed to act to address this critical challenge. Legislation to combat 
abusive patent litigation will be among my top priorities in the next 
Congress. I intend to do everything in my power to get such legislation 
passed for the good of the economy and the good of this country.


                                 Israel

  Mr. President, I rise to speak out in strong support of Israel's 
right to self-defense. This is not a partisan issue. Whether Republican 
or Democrat, we should all stand behind America's loyal ally as it 
faces Hamas's cowardly terrorism. In this time of frequent domestic 
political division, it is encouraging to witness the remarkable degree 
of unanimity among my colleagues on this issue.
  The wide support for Israel's self-defense here in Congress reflects 
the unique bond between the United States and Israel. It is an interest 
we share for many reasons, including our kinship with Israel as a free 
society and a democracy, our close economic and cultural ties, 
especially for those of us who consider support for Israel a deeply 
spiritual matter, our respect for the many virtues of the Israeli 
society--from its industriousness to its tolerance--our appreciation 
for Israel's unique stability in an unstable region full of failed and 
stressed states, and our recognition that Israel wants nothing more 
than to live in peace with its neighbors.
  When Hamas fires constant rocket barrages indiscriminately at 
Israel's cities and seeks to infiltrate Israel with teams of murderers 
and kidnappers, Israel has every right to defend itself against this 
terrorist threat.
  In the realities of urban warfare against a guerrilla opponent, some 
civilian casualties are unavoidable. But in its military actions, 
Israel has acted with admirable and unprecedented concern for 
Palestinian civilians--making phone calls, sending text messages, 
dropping leaflets to warn of impending attacks against military 
targets, aborting critical airstrips to avoid civilian casualties, and 
undertaking numerous other measures to protect Palestinian civilians, 
even at the expense of Israeli military objectives.
  While the Israeli Defense Forces act with great courage not only to 
protect Israeli civilians but also to avoid harming Palestinian 
civilians, what does Hamas do?
  Similar to all terrorists, they hide behind civilians--building 
bunkers and tunnels to protect its fighters but refusing to shelter 
civilians; using civilian buildings, including schools, hospitals, and 
places of worship, to launch rockets and hide other weapons; and even 
ordering civilians to ignore Israeli warnings and instead turning them 
into human shields.
  In the face of this barbarism, Israel deserves our strongest support 
as it seeks to root out the infrastructure of terror Hamas has built in 
and around Gaza. The Israeli people have a right to live free from fear 
of constant rocket attack. While we should applaud the success of the 
Iron Dome system in protecting Israeli citizens from the Hamas rocket 
threat, Israel is acting responsibly by seeking to eliminate the means 
by which Hamas perpetuates that threat.
  Above all else, we must recognize that supporting Israel is truly 
about supporting peace in the Middle East. Israel wants peace--not 
peace at any price but a just, secure, and enduring peace. As long as 
Hamas terrorists hate Israel more than they love their own children--to 
paraphrase Golda Meir--Israel must occasionally resort to force of arms 
in self-defense. In this endeavor our ally deserves our strongest 
support.
  I thank my dear colleague from Rhode Island for allowing me to 
proceed on these two short but very important sets of remarks. I 
appreciate that and wish him well in every way.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The distinguished Senator from Utah is one of the 
most distinguished and ablest lawyers ever to serve in this Senate, and 
his comments about the patent trolls and patent litigation are entitled 
to great weight.
  I thoroughly agree with him that the use of these shell corporations 
is something we could and should act quickly to get rid of. I think the 
protection of an end user, such as a coffee shop or a florist or 
somebody who is not a competitor with a manufacturer or the patent 
holder, is something we could and should address. I think policing 
these often extortionate demand letters is something we could and 
should address. I look forward to working with the distinguished 
Senator in those areas.
  I think when it comes to fee-shifting, that is a very significant 
step. The principle in the American system of justice that a party pays 
his or her own lawyer is so deeply engrained in our system of justice 
that it is actually known as the American rule. To depart from that is 
something that I think we should do only with a very--let's put it this 
way. It is a very grave step and I am not sure it is justified in this 
case. But certainly we could move on the bill that got rid of shell 
corporations, that protected end users, and that went after these 
demand letters, and get into conference and, with any luck, something 
could be done there. But I very much appreciate Senator Hatch's long 
and sincere interest in this issue.
  Mr. HATCH. I wish to thank my colleague for those comments.


                             Global Warming

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today for the 76th time to urge 
my colleagues that it is time for us to wake up to the growing threats 
of climate change. Not a single State remains unaffected by the 
unprecedented changes we are already seeing, driven by the excessive 
carbon pollution we continue to dump into our oceans and atmosphere.
  Yet in Washington, our Republican colleagues either parrot the 
polluter line that climate change is just a hoax, or stay silent. No 
one will step forward.
  It was not always this way. Environmental protection was once a top 
priority of the Republican Party. It seems remarkable now, but it is 
true. In the early 1970s, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and 
the Endangered Species Act were all passed with broad bipartisan 
support and signed by a Republican President. In the 1980s and 1990s, 
bipartisan majorities voted to strengthen those laws, led by Rhode 
Island's Republican Senator, John Chafee, who served as chairman of the 
Environment and Public Works Committee and whose seat I now have the 
honor to hold.
  Conservation and stewardship were once fundamental principles of 
American conservatism. From seminal thinkers of the conservative 
movement to great Republican leaders of the 20th century, the 
conservative ideal included a commitment to the interests of future 
generations. Today, under a relentless barrage of unlimited corporate 
spending in our elections, much and perhaps most of it by polluters, 
the interests of future generations have taken a backseat to the 
interests of the oil companies and coal barons.
  The disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision let polluters 
cast their dark shadow over Republicans in Congress who might otherwise 
work with Democrats on curbing their carbon pollution.

[[Page 13574]]

  Edmund Burke, an Irish-born member of the British Parliament, is 
considered by many the father of modern conservatism. Sir Winston 
Churchill called him ``a foremost apostle of liberty.'' Burke was a 
staunch defender of our American Colonies and his statue stands here in 
Washington today. His 1790 conservative manifesto, ``Reflections on the 
Revolution in France,'' cautioned that we are but ``temporary 
possessors'' of our society. If individuals are ``unmindful of what 
they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their 
posterity,'' he wrote, ``no one generation could link with another. Men 
would become little better than flies of summer.''
  In our case, flies of a carbon-fueled summer.
  Russell Kirk was a distinguished scholar at the Heritage Foundation 
who none other than President Ronald Reagan dubbed ``the prophet of 
American conservatism.'' He wrote a 1970 piece for the Baltimore Sun: 
``Conservation Activism Is a Healthy Sign.'' Kirk wrote: ``Nothing is 
more conservative than conservation.''
  The noted essayist and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, known for what 
the American Conservative magazine called his ``unshakeable devotion to 
the land, to localism, and to the dignity of traditional life,'' wrote 
in 1993:

       Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or 
     stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it 
     is the most horrid blasphemy.

  Berry would also remind us in this Chamber that ``[w]hether we and 
our politicians know it or not, Nature is a party to all our deals and 
decisions, and she has more votes.''
  No figure in American history embodied the conservative value of 
conservation more than President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt resented 
the ``malefactors of wealth,'' as he called them, the timber and mining 
interests whose ``selfish and shortsighted greed seeks to exploit our 
natural resources in such fashion as to ruin them and thereby to leave 
our children and our children's children heirs only to an exhausted and 
impoverished inheritance.'' To Roosevelt, this great land of ours was 
the birthright of all Americans--past, present, and future--to be used, 
to be sure, in achieving our destiny, but not wasted.
  He wrote to Congress in 1907:

       To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and 
     exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its 
     usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our 
     children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand 
     down to them.

  That is a sentiment echoed by Republican Presidents throughout our 
history, including President Dwight Eisenhower, whose 1961 farewell 
address invoked this national legacy. Here is what he said:

       As we peer into society's future, we--you and I, and our 
     government--must avoid the impulse to live only for today, 
     plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious 
     resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets 
     of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their 
     political and spiritual heritage.

  Republican President Gerald Ford, who once worked actually as a 
National Park ranger, said this in 1975:

       We have too long treated the natural world as an adversary 
     rather than as a life-sustaining gift from the Almighty. If 
     man has the genius to build, which he has, he must also have 
     the ability and the responsibility to preserve.

  And, of course, no one is more revered by today's Republican Party 
than Ronald Reagan. His conservative credentials are unassailable and 
GOP candidates for elected office strive mightily to out-Reagan each 
other at every turn. In 1984, Reagan put this question to his fellow 
Republicans:

       What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one 
     who is committed to protecting and holding close the things 
     by which we live? . . . And we want to protect and conserve 
     the land on which we live--our countryside, our rivers and 
     mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. That is our 
     patrimony. That is what we leave to our children. And our 
     great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as 
     we found it or better than we found it.

  President Ronald Reagan's words would make him a fringe liberal 
candidate in today's extremist Republican Party.
  In Congress, we have been boxed in by a barricade of special interest 
propaganda and we refuse to admit the plain evidence piling up before 
our eyes. We know with ever greater certainty what our carbon pollution 
is doing to the climate, what it is doing to our atmosphere, what it is 
doing to our oceans. And we know with ever greater certainty what that 
means for the planet and future generations. What do Republicans in 
Congress today have to say to our heirs, to our children and 
grandchildren?
  ``Catastrophic global warming is a hoax,'' says one of my Republican 
colleagues.
  ``It's not proven by any stretch of the imagination,'' says another.
  A third dismisses the issue altogether, saying, ``A lot of this is 
condescending elitism.'' That is the voice of today's Republican Party.
  But what does the next generation have to say back to these 
Republican voices of denial? More than half of young Republican voters 
said they would describe a politician who denies climate change is 
happening as ignorant, out of touch, or crazy--not my words, their 
words in the poll: ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. That is what the 
next generation says back to the Republican voices of denial.
  Unfortunately, if one is a Republican in Congress today, it is more 
likely than not that one either holds that view or is afraid to say 
otherwise. According to one analysis, 58 percent of congressional 
Republicans in the 113th Congress have denied or questioned the 
overwhelming scientific consensus that the Earth's oceans and 
atmosphere are changing in unprecedented ways, driven by our carbon 
pollution. This includes, I am sad to report, every single Republican 
member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. And 
where there is not denial, there is silence.
  Outside these barricaded walls, it is different. Outside Congress, 
more and more Republicans acknowledge the threat of climate change and 
call for responsible solutions. Former Members of Congress, free now 
from the polluters' thrall, implore their colleagues to return to their 
conservative principles. Former Representative Bob Inglis, for example, 
invokes the tenets of conservative economics. Here is his quote:

       If you're a conservative, it is time to step forward and 
     engage in the climate and energy debate because we have the 
     answer--free enterprise. . . . Conservatives understand that 
     we must set the correct incentives, and this should include 
     internalizing pollution and other environmental costs in our 
     market system. We tax income but we don't tax emissions. It 
     makes sense to conservatives to take the tax off something we 
     want more of, income, and shift the tax to something we want 
     less of, emissions.

  Sherwood Boehlert and Wayne Gilchrest, former Republican 
representatives from New York and Maryland, also argue for a market-
based approach to reducing carbon pollution. Here is what they said:

       We could slash our debt by making powerplants and oil 
     refineries pay for the carbon emissions that endanger our 
     health and environment. This policy would strengthen our 
     economy, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, keep our skies 
     clean, and raise a lot of revenue.

  Top advisors to former Republican Presidents have joined the chorus. 
William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly, Christine 
Todd Whitman all headed the Environmental Protection Agency during 
Republican administrations. They all recently testified before the 
Environment and Public Works Committee that it is time to get serious 
about climate change. Here is how they put it in a New York Times op-
ed. They wrote:

       As administrators of the EPA under Presidents Richard M. 
     Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held 
     fast to common-sense conservative principles--protecting the 
     health of the American people, working with the best 
     technology available and trusting in the innovation of 
     American business and in the market to find the best 
     solutions for the least cost.

  These former officials recognize both the wisdom of properly pricing 
carbon and the truculence of the opponents who stand in the way of 
progress. ``A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the 
best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,'' they say--``the best 
path''--``but that is

[[Page 13575]]

unachievable in the current political gridlock in Washington. . . .'' I 
would interject that political gridlock is the product of big-spending 
polluters who profit from the gridlock that they create. But let me 
continue with what the EPA Administrators said: ``But we must continue 
efforts to reduce the climate-altering pollutants that threaten our 
planet. The only uncertainty about our warming world,'' they wrote, 
``is how bad the changes will get, and how soon. What is most clear is 
that there is no time to waste.'' Four Republican EPA Administrators.
  One day folks are going to look back at this time and we are all 
going to be judged very harshly with all the dread power that history 
has to inflict on wrong. The polluters and their instruments will be 
judged harshly, and the Republican Party will be judged harshly for 
letting itself be led astray by polluters from its most basic 
conservative values. Unless they step up, Republicans will leave--to 
borrow language from Russell Kirk--``[t]he principle of real leadership 
ignored, the immortal objects of society forgotten, practical 
conservatism degenerated into mere laudation of private enterprise, 
economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests.'' That 
is about as good a description of where they are right now as I could 
muster, and it comes from the conservative Russell Kirk.
  We cannot do this alone, not with the numbers that we have. 
Republicans and Democrats alike must approach this climate problem head 
on with the full conviction of our ideals, but working together, 
working in good faith, and working on a common platform of fact and 
common sense to protect the American people and our American economy 
from the looming effects of carbon pollution.
  We must rise to our duty here and place our own natural resources, 
our own American international reputation, and our legacy to future 
American generations first, ahead of the poisonous influence of the 
polluters that so dominates this debate now.
  I yield the floor.
  I 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. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, thank you very much for recognizing 
me.
  I also wish to thank the Presiding Officer for his leadership on 
environmental issues which are so immensely pressing and important for 
our country, and I am proud and honored to join with him in that cause, 
which he has helped to lead so often on the floor, but also privately 
amongst our colleagues and in so many ways across the country. I hope 
to continue our work together on that issue, and I thank him for 
presiding now and for continuing that leadership.
  Mr. President, I am speaking today, after listening to the people of 
my State, on an issue that perplexes and challenges us in so many ways. 
The situation on our southern border perplexes us because it is a 
problem without easy or ready solutions. It is a challenge to America 
in the resources that it requires and the spirit that it evokes. Our 
resources are scarce. Our spirit and our inner strength are boundless. 
Many have expressed to me in my State of Connecticut concerns about 
those resources, about the limits on those resources, in facing a 
seemingly endless challenge, as children come to our borders and 
stretch the capacity of this Nation to accept them. I am sympathetic 
with the folks who wonder whether we are capable, very simply, of 
caring for these children--but I know we can--the children who are 
coming here because of the humanitarian crisis they face in their 
countries.
  Our supplemental legislation, so ably guided by Senator Mikulski, 
provides a path for providing the resources that are necessary. This 
supplemental is a thoughtful and significant document that addresses 
this situation without either breaking the bank or sacrificing American 
values.
  I am immensely impressed and inspired by the spirit that has been 
evoked, again, among citizens of Connecticut in saying: We must care 
for those individual children who need asylum because returning them to 
the countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala would be a death 
sentence for many of them. And we must respect our law which provides 
for individual consideration and assessment of those children in 
whether they deserve and need asylum and that status of fleeing 
persecution and death that many of them, in fact, have faced in those 
lands.
  We must place those individuals, according to law, with their 
families, if possible. Many of them have parents here, and the vast 
majority have some family, moms and dads, aunts and uncles. They need 
to be screened under the law. Their placement has to be in a safe and 
secure home with people, in my view, who are here legally. That 
screening has to be, as the law requires, to assure their safety and 
security as children. The United States has a responsibility to follow 
the law, and so do we as citizens and as lawmakers. As torn as we may 
be, as conflicted as we may feel, as vehement as those conflicting 
feelings may be felt and expressed by fellow citizens, let us uphold 
the law and afford due process and individual consideration to those 
children who, under the law, deserve that individual assessment, 
individual treatment, individual consideration for the status of asylum 
in this Nation.
  People speak about these children as if they were a mass, 
indistinguishable, a single societal challenge or problem. A Member of 
the House of Representatives even referred to them as an ``invasion.'' 
What I saw at the border when I visited there with two of my 
colleagues, Senator Hirono and Senator Murkowski, joined by a third, 
Senator Cornyn, all friends and distinguished colleagues, hammered home 
for me that these children are individuals and they should be treated 
as such.
  The vast outpouring of spirit and generosity in this country is 
mirrored by countless organizations--we heard about them during our 
visit--that want to help these children, want to volunteer and give of 
themselves, their time, money, goods and services, everything from 
blankets, to furniture, to pizza, to you name it. America is pouring 
out its heart for these children.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to 
Secretary Johnson and Commissioner Kerlikowske from Save the Children, 
a Connecticut organization that has offered, very generously, its help 
and support in very specific and concrete ways, along with a briefing 
note that outlines what it perceives the children's needs at the border 
to be.
  Let's end one doubt: the need for and the urgent justification for 
individual due process consideration and the full and adequate 
screening of these children and a fair judicial proceeding. I would 
describe just a few stories.
  Girls are fleeing sexual violence at the hands of gangs in Honduras 
and El Salvador. I will give just a few examples.
  Ms. L was raped by more than a dozen gang members in Honduras. After 
reporting the gang rape to police, her family began to receive death 
threats.
  There are only three shelters in Honduras for rape survivors, and two 
of them actually operate as brothels. The one remaining shelter 
declined to take Ms. L because it could not protect her or the other 
shelter residents from gang violence. She had no choice but to flee 
Honduras.
  Carlita is a 13-year-old who fled gang violence in El Salvador. She 
was kidnapped by the Zetas in Mexico, used for sex, and forced to be a 
drug mule for them before escaping and ultimately reaching the United 
States.
  Ms. H survived multiple rapes in Honduras. After she fled she was 
kidnapped by a Mexican gang and raped and tortured. She eventually 
reached the United States.
  Ms. N and Ms. O, ages 15 and 8, fled El Salvador. Their older female 
cousins

[[Page 13576]]

had been forced to work as sex slaves for gang leaders. The gangs 
threatened to kill Ms. N and were placed in removal proceedings.
  Ms. E fled El Salvador when she was 8 years old. Gang members had 
kidnapped her and two older sisters. The girl's mother did not want her 
8-year-old daughter to suffer the same fate, so she arranged for her 
daughter to be brought to the United States.
  Many gangs use sexual violence as a part of the price or rent 
demanded of girls.
  Ms. X fled an area of El Salvador controlled by gangs. Her brother 
was killed for refusing to join a gang that forcibly tried to recruit 
him. She was raped by two men, became pregnant as a result, and then 
was required to pay ``renta'' to the rapists, which increased over 
time. She fled El Salvador and was attacked by Mexican robbers during 
her journey, before arriving in the United States.
  Many of these girls are victims of forced prostitution and human 
trafficking. I have other stories that will be printed in the Record. 
These stories come from personal experiences of advocates and others 
who have interviewed them at length as well as our own officials. Many 
of these girls are sexually assaulted during the treacherous journey 
northward. Those stories are not imagined or fictionalize; they are 
graphic and dramatic. Rape is so prevalent that many girls begin the 
journey by taking birth control injections before they leave home from 
Central America as a precaution against pregnancy.
  I refer to these stories because they illustrate and illuminate the 
need for a thoughtful humanitarian approach, especially to these young 
girls whose stories are so real and so inspiring, not just in the 
treacherous journey they overcome, not just in the torture and abuse 
they suffer, but in the dignity and self-worth and strength and 
resoluteness they continue to have. A thoughtful humanitarian approach 
is what is required. It is the approach that this supplemental 
exemplifies in providing resources.
  There is an oath that doctors take: ``First do no harm.'' Let that be 
the approach of this body in approving basic amounts of money, reduced 
by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, so that it meets 
appropriately and frugally the needs of these children to be placed in 
humane circumstances with families who are screened for their safety 
and security and their being here legally.
  I will close with one last experience. In one interview I watched at 
the border, I saw a 7-year-old girl crying quietly as she tried to 
answer the questions of an armed border guard. The border guard did his 
best. He was obviously caring in his approach. But neither his training 
nor the experience of any border guard equips them really to play this 
role with a 7-year-old-girl. They are in uniform, a police uniform, 
which for this girl's whole life has meant fear, potential rape, bodily 
harm. These children have learned from hard experience that that fear 
is often justified. They are distrustful of adults generally and 
authority figures in particular.
  Nobody could watch this scene without feeling a sense of compassion 
for those guards and, of course, most especially the girl, separated 
from her family, sitting on a bench, her legs swinging free because she 
was not big enough to reach the floor. The look on her face revealed 
not just terror but a fervent desire to please, inspired by fear. She 
could not communicate openly with the border guard.
  What she needed was someone trained and equipped to elicit the facts 
of her background, the reason she had fled, the motivation for her 
escape, the facts and her feelings about it. That kind of individual 
assessment is the reason we have the law passed by Congress in 2008, 
unanimously. This Trafficking Victims Protection Act was designed for 
these girls and boys coming from noncontiguous countries facing those 
fears, those threatening conditions if they were to be returned. They 
face a near certain death, many of them, if they are returned without 
the individual assessment and consideration. Call it due process, call 
it judicial, call it humane questioning--the title matters less than 
what happens.
  I know this Nation cannot be expected to rescue all of the children 
of the world from all of the harsh and inhumane conditions they may 
face. We are not limitless in our capacity to do good. But I know and I 
believe we have the resources to do what is just and right under the 
law considering every one of those children and every one of the 
potential threats they face if they are returned to their countries.
  It is an American value that we follow the rule of law, that we grant 
asylum under the law to people who deserve it and need it. That much we 
can do. I know we have the resources to do it. I believe we have the 
will to do it. The heart of America and its citizens is big. We are a 
big country. We are not limitless in our resources, but we are 
boundless in our capacity for generosity and doing what is right.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                            Save the Children,

                                                    July 22, 2014.
       Dear Secretary Johnson and Commissioner Kerlikowske: Like 
     you and your team, we are deeply concerned about the 
     thousands of unaccompanied minor children crossing our 
     southern border. To address the humanitarian crisis, I am 
     writing to offer our support and propose ways that Save the 
     Children can be of immediate assistance to improve the 
     conditions for children.
       Save the Children has nearly a century of experience 
     working with displaced children around the world and has 
     responded to serve children in the face of every natural 
     disaster in the US for the past decade. In the US, we have 
     been a leading partner of the Federal Emergency Management 
     Agency (FEMA), supporting the needs of children. We have been 
     operating for the past month in McAllen, TX serving children 
     and mothers after their release from Customs and Border 
     Patrol (CBP) custody and have trained more than 80 FEMA Corps 
     members to begin offering basic child programming within the 
     CBP detention and overflow sites. However, we know we can do 
     more to improve the conditions and outcomes for these 
     children.
       Your Rio Grande Valley CBP Team, under the leadership of 
     Chief Kevin Oaks, has been a great ally to us as we try to 
     support and assist in this unprecedented situation, offering 
     us tours and being open to dialogue about the needs of 
     children in their custody. However, he has been unable to 
     grant us permission to provide technical assistance and 
     professional child programming onsite without higher 
     authority--it is to you we appeal for this permission.
       The conditions in which the children and mothers are being 
     detained are designed for accused criminals, not mothers and 
     children. Save the Children would like to work with you and 
     your team to be a part of the solution. We have the expertise 
     needed to give the children the unique support needed under 
     the current difficult circumstances.
       I am writing to propose that Save the Children work with 
     you to immediately help improve conditions for children and 
     address children's urgent needs for care and mental health 
     supports. This would support the safety, protection and 
     wellbeing of the children--and it would relieve stress on the 
     CBP agents. All of these programs could be established at no 
     cost to you--or, if required through DHS/CBP policies and 
     procedures, Save the Children could be reimbursed for this 
     support.
       Here is what Save the Children is proposing:
       1. Save the Children is offering to immediately provide 
     care for the young children at the CBP detention sites, 
     including the new McAllen overflow site, while their cases 
     are being processed.
       Save the Children would provide our Child-Friendly Spaces 
     program, a signature program that we use to support 
     children's mental health and safety in crisis in the U.S. and 
     around the world. This care would be customized to fit the 
     CBP space availability in each border detention site. We 
     would be able to provide basic programs directly in the 
     holding cells or in whatever space may be available. Our 
     teams are trained to provide this program in the U.S. and in 
     challenging, high-risk environments all over the world. For 
     example, we are currently providing this program in Iraq, 
     South Sudan, and the countries bordering Syria.
       2. Save the Children is requesting your permission to 
     provide professional staff at each site that has FEMA Corps 
     members, whom we are now supporting to provide urgently 
     needed programming for children in custody. Our professional 
     staff would lead the work with children and provide ongoing 
     support and guidance to the FEMA Corps members while they are 
     in the CBP stations. This will help ensure that there is 
     consistent quality and safety for the children while they 
     participate in the program activities.
       Through our partnership with FEMA, the Corporation for 
     National and Community

[[Page 13577]]

     Service and FEMA Corps, this week, Save the Children is 
     training the FEMA Corps teams who are deployed to serve in 
     the CBP stations. Until now, the FEMA Corps members were not 
     trained to work with children and have not been supplied with 
     materials or program activities, specifically activities that 
     support children's emotional wellbeing. We know that many of 
     the children had arduous journeys at the hands of smugglers 
     and traffickers. The children need to receive psychosocial 
     support from the moment of their arrival to ensure their 
     wellbeing. Save the Children will be training and providing 
     ongoing technical support to the FEMA Corps members to help 
     them in their mission assignment to support the children in 
     CBP custody.
       3. Save the Children is also offering to provide 
     psychosocial support programs to the CBP agents and their 
     families to help relieve their stress and support their 
     emotional wellbeing during this crisis. We know that many of 
     the border agents are heavily stressed by this crisis. By 
     supporting the psychosocial and mental health needs, and the 
     needs of their families, you will help ensure their longer-
     term wellbeing. I am attaching a fact sheet about our Journey 
     of Hope program.
       4. Save the Children is offering to distribute comfort kits 
     to the mothers and children. We have customized the kits to 
     be age appropriate for mothers, infants and toddlers, young 
     children and school-aged children. They include items such as 
     pacifiers, wipes, baby blankets, plush toys, and bilingual 
     storybooks. We would be happy to work with CBP to ensure that 
     the items provided meet with CBP security regulations. We are 
     ready to immediately provide 5,000 comfort kits for the 
     children, 1,000 infant and toddler kits, and 2,000 kits for 
     the mothers.
       5. Save the Children is offering to conduct a multi-sector 
     assessment of needs and provide ongoing monitoring to ensure 
     the programs for children support CBP's mission and the 
     children's needs.
       Save the Children is uniquely qualified to address the 
     needs of these children in collaboration with CBP and the 
     U.S. government during this crisis. We are reaching out 
     across all relevant federal and state agencies to both 
     advocate for the needs of these children and to offer our 
     support. Thank you again for your attention to this 
     humanitarian crisis and I appreciate your review of our 
     request to work with you and your team for the benefit of 
     all.
           I look forward to working together,
                                                    Carolyn Miles,
     President & CEO, Save the Children USA.
                                  ____


    Briefing Note: Meeting the Needs of Children on the U.S. Border


                               The Crisis

       For years, children and minors from Guatemala, Mexico, El 
     Salvador, Honduras and other Central American nations have 
     sought refuge in the United States. However, their numbers 
     have increased dramatically since late 2013 because of 
     violence, extreme poverty and other factors that make their 
     and their families' lives untenable. Between October 2013 and 
     May of this year, nearly 50,000 children, many unaccompanied 
     by a parent or guardian, arrived at the U.S. border. This is 
     a 92 percent increase from the prior year, according to U.S. 
     Customs and Border Protection. Projections suggest that the 
     number of children arriving will increase to between 60,000 
     and 90,000 by the end of 2014.


                         The Impact on Children

       Children are always among the most vulnerable in any 
     emergency. Many of the children arriving at the border are 
     suffering from physical illnesses, diarrhea and dehydration, 
     and some have been victimized during their long and arduous 
     journey. They are in urgent need of protective adult care, 
     supportive supervision, medical and hygiene care, and 
     nutritious meals.
       With intensive overcrowding at the border stations, reports 
     about sanitation and living conditions for children are 
     extremely disturbing. We have heard stories that children as 
     young as age six are being separated from their mothers for 
     days and kept in border detention sites that are ill-equipped 
     to meet the basic needs of children. Our staff in Texas has 
     also heard first-hand from women that they are fleeing 
     communities because of threats that have been made by gangs 
     to harm their families.


                            Recommendations

       The large influx of migrants poses huge challenges for 
     local communities and Border Patrol agents charged with 
     protecting the border. Despite these challenges, it is 
     critical for local communities and U.S. government agencies 
     to:
       Provide adequate sanitary conditions, and basic needs such 
     as food, water, blankets and places to sleep in the shelters, 
     detention centers and transit centers housing children;
       Prevent traumatic separation of mothers from young children 
     where at all possible; and
       Facilitate basic health services and mental health support 
     for children who are in need of psychosocial support.
       NGOs like Save the Children have decades of experience in 
     addressing the needs of fleeing children in some of the 
     hardest hit areas of the world. In order to ensure that 
     children are receiving treatment and care that is up to 
     international standards, we urge the U.S. government to:
       Allow NGOs with expertise in child protection issues to 
     gain access to border detention sites; and
       Permit NGOs with expertise in child protection issues to 
     assess the needs of children and their families to devise 
     strategies that will ensure their well-being.
       It is both important and obligatory under current U.S. and 
     international law to uphold the legal rights of children, 
     especially those with a possible claim to refugee status. To 
     this end, we ask the U.S. government to:
       Provide unaccompanied children with adequate screenings and 
     a fair judicial process to ensure that they are not being 
     returned to life-threatening situations;
       Uphold provisions in existing laws that provide due process 
     for unaccompanied children so that those with the right to 
     stay are not short-changed and lost in the shuffle; and
       Ensure children and their families are made aware of their 
     legal protections and options.
       Finally, any viable long term strategy must include a 
     robust effort to address the root causes for the surge and 
     not focus only on its symptoms. To this end, we request that 
     the U.S. government:
       Dedicate funding to address issues of violence and poverty 
     that drive migration from the countries of origin and not 
     only on border security and deterrence.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            Children in Need

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I am especially grateful to the senior 
Senator from Connecticut for his words tonight and the challenge those 
words present to us. We are grateful for his efforts to stand for 
children.
  I rise tonight to speak about children here in the United States. I 
spoke earlier about issues that related to women and girls and children 
generally in Afghanistan. But I wanted to highlight a report that came 
out recently by one of the leading organizations in the country that 
charts the well-being of children over time and advocates on their 
behalf. The name of the organization that many here have heard of, I am 
sure, is the Annie E. Casey Foundation--no relation to me--a foundation 
that has made it its mission to advocate on behalf of children. We 
cannot be an effective advocate--none of us--unless we chart their 
progress and find out what is working. So I am going to briefly 
summarize tonight the findings of the 2014 Kids County Report by the 
Casey Foundation.
  I have here at the lectern kind of a color-coded chart which I will 
not hold up because I do not have an enlarged version of it. I will not 
be able to have it printed in the Record.
  I want to summarize it. Basically, what is in front of me is a 
summary of various categories that the Annie E. Casey Foundation has 
developed to chart the well-being of children. They separate the 
comparisons into four sections, and then they determine whether over 
time--whether it is over 4 or 5 years or over a longer period of time--
whether for children the indicators have worsened or improved. It is a 
very basic set of metrics.
  The categories they track for children are the following four 
categories: first, economic well-being, and I will talk about some of 
the indicators there; second, education; third, health; and fourth, a 
category they call family and community.
  The basic indicators for the entire United States--of course, they 
have a breakdown for how the children in every State are doing on those 
indicators. For example, in terms of what is getting better, we should 
highlight and note when there are improvements made. I think the fact 
that we have improvements on these indicators for children over time 
indicates that public policy matters, what happens here in the Congress 
matters, what happens across the country in nonprofit organizations and 
advocacy organizations that fight every day for children and say over 
and over again, as the advocates tell us, that children are not small 
adults--we need specific strategies for children, whether it is for 
health care or for early education or to make sure they get enough to 
eat or to protect them from predators. Whatever the issue, we have to 
have specific strategies for children.

[[Page 13578]]

  Let's go through a couple of areas where there has been improvement--
not dramatic improvement, not enough improvement for us to say we have 
achieved a measure of success on one metric and we can move on.
  In the area of education, just by way of example, eighth grade 
children--eighth graders not proficient in math, so it is kind of 
almost a negative indicator the way it is phrased. In 2005, across the 
United States, 72 percent of eighth graders were not proficient in 
math--a very high number, 72 percent. When they looked at it again in 
2013, it was down to 66. So it has improved by 6 percentage points, but 
thankfully it is moving in the right direction. But we can't be 
satisfied with 66 percent of eighth graders not--not--proficient in 
math, but it is good news it is moving in the right direction.
  Another bit of good news and maybe a more urgent issue in terms of 
what happens to very young children--in this case, low birth weight 
babies--there is an improvement there from 2005 to 2012. So over 7 
years, the percentage of low birth weight babies, according to this 
data, has gotten better, but the unfortunate part is it only went from 
8.2 percent to 8 percent--not much of an improvement but an 
improvement.
  We have a long way to go in the greatest country in the world when we 
say that there has been an improvement but still 8 percent of babies 
are low birth weight. So there is an improvement, but there is a lot 
more work to do.
  Maybe the best area indicator of improvement--and then I will move on 
to areas where there has been a worsening--children without health 
insurance. We hear a lot of discussion about health insurance, health 
care, and the Affordable Care Act in Congress, but in 2008 when that 
measurement was taken, 18 percent of children did not have health care. 
So in 2008 it was 10 percent, and as of 2012 it is down to 7 percent. 
So there is a substantial diminution or reduction in the number of 
children without health insurance. But if we do the math, 7 percent of 
the children of the country don't have health insurance. That is a big 
number. So it is getting better, substantially better, better than 
almost any other metric in terms of growth or progress, but we have to 
do a lot more to make sure that it is not 7 percent--that number should 
be zero--make sure that every child has health insurance. That has to 
be the goal, and that has to be what we are determined to achieve in 
the Senate.
  I will go through a couple of areas that have worsened, but 
thankfully, of what is 16 categories, there are more improvement 
categories than worsening categories. Unfortunately, we have to go 
through some of the areas where it is worse.
  One that is particularly disturbing is children in poverty. That has 
worsened between the years 2005 and 2012--19 percent in 2005 was the 
percentage of children in poverty. As of 2012 that went up to 23 
percent. So prior to the great recession and then some time after the 
recession ended, the 2012 number was 23 percent. So that is a worsening 
number, and it should give us not just pause, but it should be an 
impetus to action to reduce that number--23 percent of the children in 
the country in poverty as of 2012. Children whose parents lack secure 
employment--that number got worse. Children living in households with 
high-housing-cost burden--that number got worse, unfortunately.
  I will give two more, and then I will conclude my remarks. Children 
in single-parent families--that number got worse between 2005 and 2012. 
Finally, children living in high-poverty areas--that was measured over 
a different time period--2000 versus a time period between 2008 and 
2012. That number got worse as well.
  What this report indicates--and I won't go through the State 
numbers--is that first and foremost we have to keep records and we have 
to track progress. But it also indicates that even when there is an 
improving metric, when the numbers are getting better, say, for 
example, on low birth weight babies, that improvement is in many cases 
very slight and not nearly adequate or acceptable.
  I think both on the worsening numbers and on the improvement numbers, 
it should be a call to action. I believe that if we are doing the right 
thing for our children, if we are living up to what the Scriptures tell 
us about justice, where the Scriptures talk about ``Blessed are they 
who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied,'' if we 
think of how we treat children as a measure or as an indicator of 
justice and our commitment to justice, we cannot say that these numbers 
are in any way acceptable, that our hunger and our thirst for that kind 
of justice cannot be satisfied with these numbers.
  We should be committed to not just tracking and making marginal or 
incremental progress, we should be committed to the full measure of 
justice for our children.
  Hubert Humphrey said--and he may have said it on this floor when he 
represented Minnesota--``It was once said that the moral test of a 
government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of 
life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; 
and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the 
handicapped.'' He said that was the moral test of a government.
  So if we are talking about what Humphrey said about children in the 
dawn of their life, we have to reflect upon and be motivated by the 
findings of the Annie E. Casey Foundation report. It is one of those 
reports that remind us how we can improve when it comes to the well-
being of our children, but it also reminds us and I think alarms us 
about areas where we have not improved and we have a ways to go.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the 
President's emergency supplemental request of $615 million to fight 
wildfires throughout the United States.
  We have witnessed increasingly large and devastating wildfires over 
the last few decades.
  Nationwide, the costs of fighting wildfires has increased from $200 
million in 1986 to $1.7 billion in 2013. In that same time, the amount 
of acres burned has increased from 2.7 million acres in 1986 to 4.3 
million acres in 2013.
  In many parts of the U.S., fire seasons are now 60 to 80 days longer 
compared to three decades ago and in some places like Southern 
California, the fire season never ends.
  This is leading to seasonal firefighters being hired several months 
earlier than normal and federal agencies spending more to make sure our 
firefighters are prepared and have the necessary resources available 
for the entire year.
  So far this year, California has experienced a 35 percent increase in 
fire activity and a 16 percent increase in acres burned over an average 
year. These alarming statistics translate to more than 4,000 wildfires 
in my State already that have burned more than 52,000 acres since the 
beginning of the year.
  Right now, brave firefighters in California are battling five 
different large fires. The largest is the Sand Fire, which has burned 
over 4,000 acres east of Sacramento. This fire has already destroyed 19 
homes.
  Although it has already been an unprecedented fire season in 
California, we are not at all out of danger yet as the significant 
wildland fire potential remains above normal for most of the State 
through October of this year. It is also above normal in Oregon, 
Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and parts of Arizona.
  Adding to the difficulty of battling these enormous fires is the 
constrained fire suppression budget we are currently operating under.
  Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the 
Department of Interior announced that wildfire-fighting costs this 
summer are projected to run about $400 million over budget.
  In fact, since 2002, the United States has overspent its wildfire 
suppression budget every year except one--and in three of those years, 
went over the suppression budget by nearly $1 billion. This chronic 
underfunding of our firefighting accounts cannot continue.

[[Page 13579]]

  When we fail to budget for fire suppression, the Forest Service and 
the Department of Interior are forced to transfer money from fire 
prevention accounts to make up the difference. That makes no sense!
  We are taking money from the very programs that help reduce the 
threat of wildfires--such as hazardous fuel removal programs.
  In my State, plans to remove dry brush and dead trees in the Tahoe 
National Forest and the Plumas National Forest have been delayed 
because wildfire prevention funding is not available.
  The President's supplemental request not only adds funding for fire 
suppression during this fiscal year, it solves the problem in the 
future by creating a Wildfire Suppression Cap Adjustment so that 
extraordinary fire costs are treated in the same way as destructive 
hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes are funded.
  This means that money to fight the largest fires would not be subject 
to discretionary budget caps much like FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund.
  As our fire seasons become longer, hotter, and endanger more 
communities, we must act now to change how wildfire suppression is 
funded so that we can reduce fire risk and increase the resiliency of 
the Nation's public lands, forests, and the surrounding communities.
  I urge my colleagues to support this emergency supplemental funding 
and address the growing crisis of wildfires.
  I yield the floor. I 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. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________