[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11745-11752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




TERRORISM RISK INSURANCE PROGRAM AUTHORIZATION ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
                               Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, the Senator from Minnesota was going to 
be recognized first. She is not in the Chamber, so I will go first and 
then we will get back in order.
  I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             FOREIGN POLICY

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, now that the results are in, I think it 
is time to talk again--as we did 5 years ago--about what is happening 
on what I consider to be the greatest failed foreign policy we have 
experienced.
  When we look around the world and we see what happened and what is 
going on now--and this may be a narrow opinion--it is a result of the 
apology tour President Obama took immediately after becoming President 
of the United States.
  I remember standing at this podium at that time and saying you don't 
go to the Muslim world and say: I will not make a speech until we have 
the Muslim Brotherhood coming with their required numbers. That was not 
good. This is a deviation from what we always stood for and that was 
certainly a slap in the face of our best friends in the Middle East, 
Israel.
  Two weeks ago, three Israeli teenagers were found dead in shallow 
graves in a West Bank village, and it was such a tragedy, and, of 
course, reciprocity has taken place since then. Hamas has launched over 
365 rockets indiscriminately into the Israeli civilian population. I 
have to say that when I look at some of the things we have worked on 
together with Israel--for example, the iron dome has performed very 
well during that period of time. Also, I will say that Prime Minister 
Netanyahu responded with some 700 or so airstrikes primarily using F-
16s and doing it very well. This started 5 years ago, and we have had 
unrest in that area ever since then.
  The Israeli Defense Minister said this week: ``We are preparing for a 
battle against Hamas which will not end within a few days.''
  Obviously, I strongly support our greatest ally in the Middle East, 
and so often we do what we can to directly and indirectly continue that 
support. There has been unrest in Israel for the past 5 or 6 years.
  We sent letters to the President some time ago regarding Iraq in 
2013. We said when you leave Iraq, be sure to leave the intelligence 
and the logistics. You cannot just walk out. Yes, we have great trained 
fighters in the Iraqi security force, but they cannot be totally on 
their own. They needed to have ISR support. ISR is intelligence and 
reconnaissance. We have to learn a lesson from this so we don't make 
the same mistake in Afghanistan. But nonetheless, we did. So now Al 
Qaeda-inspired terrorists have returned and have overtaken key cities.
  ISIS is the most terrifying terrorist group out there. They have 
taken over towns such as Mosul, Tikrit, Ramadi, and Fallujah.
  I have a guy who works for me as a field representative in my State 
of Oklahoma. His name is Brian Hackler. Prior to the time he came to 
work for me, he was in the Marines. He was actually deployed twice to 
Fallujah. If you will remember, Fallujah was the closest thing we had 
to door-to-door combat like we had in World War II, and we lost a lot 
of lives.
  When I called him, he had not yet heard that we lost Fallujah after 
they took it over. He actually physically cried. He said, the blood, 
the sweat, and the tears of all of my friends. He said, we had that 
secured, and we have now lost it.
  We are doing everything we can now to rectify that situation. I am 
glad the Obama administration is doing what we asked them to do 2 years 
ago. While we will lose lives, hopefully we can keep the terrorists 
from having a safe haven in that area.
  I am very much concerned about what has happened in Iraq. While the 
President continues his assessments, it leads me to wonder what the 
people in our embassy have been doing over there. We are empowering 
Russia and Iran to lead and become key influences in the region.
  Iran reportedly has two battalions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard 
Corps, the IRGC, in Iraq. It is kind of funny. Right now a lot of 
people are saying Iran is our friend. Let's keep in mind that our 
intelligence determined quite a number of years ago that Iran will have 
the weapon and the delivery system for that weapon by 2015. Well, 2015 
is on us now, so I think if anyone out there is naive enough to think 
we can depend on Iran to help our situation, they are sadly mistaken.
  We have a very serious problem now in Iraq. While the United States 
has most recently provided some equipment intelligence, this is what we 
should have been doing and preparing for 2 years ago. Since January, 
Prime Minister Maliki has asked for help, and the President waited 
until it became a dire crisis.
  Then there is Afghanistan. We know what is happening in Afghanistan. 
Currently the Presidential election in Afghanistan has taken place. The 
primary took place and the runoff took place, but the problem is it is 
obviously a sham. The election is not an honest, transparent election. 
I believe there is no greater threat that can be imposed on us than by 
allowing the people of Afghanistan to look at an election and find out 
it is a rigged election.
  I will give an example. While we have not taken sides in this country 
between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, I personally would fall 
down on the side of Abdullah. It seems as though all of the real 
problems in that election ended up benefiting Ghani as opposed to 
Abdullah.
  For example, in one province--it was Wardak Province--17,000 votes 
were cast in April. Now the runoff came along and 170,000 votes were 
cast. If you stop to think about it, that is mathematically impossible, 
so we know that is rigged. While everyone agrees that Ghani's support 
is in the rural areas, I would defy anyone to come down to the Senate 
floor and point out an election that has ever taken place where you 
have a much larger percentage of rural votes as opposed to urban votes. 
There is a logical reason--rural voters have to walk a long way to get 
to the polls and some voters can't get there as easily.
  The results of the runoff: There was a 75-percent turnout from the 
rural areas as opposed to a 24-percent turnout in the urban areas. That 
couldn't happen. We have to have an audit. I think everybody agrees we 
have to have an audit, but it has to be a thorough and transparent 
audit. We have to be sure the Afghan people, when they determine the 
outcome of this election, know it was a legitimate election so they can 
rejoice in it.
  I think most everyone knows a few hours ago Abdullah declared victory 
in spite of the fact that the first count I described showed him as 
losing.

[[Page 11746]]

  We have this problem right now. It is a problem I hang on President 
Obama and his administration because we told them in advance what 
needed to be done to avoid this type of situation from happening.
  We are now looking at a situation there that is one where we can act 
now and preclude something from happening there and is happening as we 
speak in Iraq.
  Remember what took place in terms of the five Taliban terrorists who 
were released. We thought--and I felt all the time--that was a very 
controversial issue. A lot of people wanted to close Gitmo, and I have 
strong feelings against that. We need to have that facility and that 
resource, which I will explain in a moment.
  When the President turned the five Taliban leaders loose--these were 
the most brutal and heinous of all the terrorists who were in Gitmo. 
There were five of them. When they found out, they were celebrating. 
One of the terrorists released was referred to as the toughest of all 
of them. One of the top people who was on the other side of the Taliban 
said in response to the release of the terrorists that this is the 
Taliban rejoicing that the President has turned loose five of the 
terrorists who were incarcerated in Gitmo. They said it is like putting 
10,000 Taliban fighters into battle on the side of jihad. Now the 
Taliban have the right to lead them into the final moments before 
victory in Afghanistan.
  We all knew the President should not have done it. Anticipating that 
the President was going to do this, the last bill we passed before the 
current one, which is on here, we put language in there anticipating 
that the President, in order to reach his goal and ultimately close 
Gitmo, might take some of the worst individuals and turn them loose. We 
put language in there from section 1035(d) of the Defense Authorization 
Act. He said the President had to notify us 30 days in advance if he 
was going to release or make any transfers from Gitmo. He blatantly 
broke that law and did not do it. Everyone was on our side in terms of 
why we should not let this, what they referred to as the ``Taliban 
dream team,'' be turned loose. Right now, supposedly, there is some 
kind of a deal made where they are in Qatar for a period of a year, but 
even if they were able to enforce that--stop and think about the theory 
behind this. The President is saying in essence we are going to turn 
you guys loose but you have to promise not to kill Americans for a 
period of a year. Because it says for 1 year they have to remain under 
some level of control by a country that hasn't even told us how they 
are going to do that. Consequently, I have no doubt they are free to go 
anywhere they want.
  We had reviews conducted by the Department of Defense, Department of 
State, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the National 
Intelligence, and all the rest of them saying these five people are too 
dangerous to release. Leon Panetta, who was the Secretary of Defense at 
that time, made the same statement. He said these people are too 
dangerous, as did General Dunford. By the way, General Dunford, who is 
the commander in Afghanistan, was not even notified in advance this was 
going to take place.
  So we have all of these circumstances that are going on right now. We 
have the law that was broken. My feeling has always been, as we are 
getting down midway into the President's second term, looking at what 
he is going to have for a legacy, one of his desired legacies would be 
to close Gitmo. He has talked about that for a long period of time. I 
think the American people have now caught on, because there is a poll 
on June 13 by Gallup that shows 66 percent of Americans oppose the 
closing of Gitmo. So this has changed now.
  Why is it important? There is no place else anywhere in the world 
where we can put these enemy combatants. These guys are not criminals; 
they are enemy combatants. They are terrorists. And when the President 
came up with the original idea of putting them into our prison system, 
we had to go and make sure everyone was aware they are terrorists and 
not criminals. By definition, they teach other people to be terrorists. 
If there is anything we don't want in our prison system, it is for all 
of those criminals to learn how to become terrorists.
  We have had Gitmo since 1903. It is one of the few good deals we have 
wherein we pay a little over $4,000 a year for that facility. We should 
stop and see the advantages we have in Gitmo as opposed to putting them 
someplace else where they can either get out through jail breaks, as 
has been happening, or if they were to be intermingled in the United 
States with our prison population.
  One of the places, incidentally, that the President first wanted to 
send the Gitmo inmates was to Fort Sill in my State of Oklahoma. I went 
to Fort Sill and they said, We don't have the capability here to get 
this done. So what we want to do is--in fact, the lady who runs the 
facility at Fort Sill said, I don't know what it is that individuals 
don't understand. She said she had three deployments to Gitmo. It is 
the perfect institution for these people. They are well taken care of. 
The Red Cross and everyone who goes down there says, Yes, the health 
facilities are better than they have ever had before, the food is the 
best they have ever had. So it is a facility we need to continue to 
use.


                                Benghazi

  Lastly, before I completely run out of time, I want to jump ahead a 
little bit and mention Benghazi. I think it is important for us to 
understand there are four people in our system who advise the President 
of the United States. We have the CIA Director who, at the time this 
happened in Benghazi, was John--anyway, the CIA Director; the Director 
of National Intelligence, that was James Clapper; the Secretary of 
Defense, who was Leon Panetta; and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, General Dempsey. All of those people said they knew 
unequivocally, in Benghazi, when they bombed the annex, it was an 
organized terrorist activity. I think right now people are realizing 
that was the real issue. It is not who is responsible for it; it is the 
fact that we knew it was going to happen. Our Ambassador, who was 
killed, gave us ample warning for well over a month and a half before 
it took place that it was going to take place.
  So I think we understand now why Gitmo is important and we understand 
the whole reason this is taking place. I am certainly hoping we can 
stick together and make sure we don't end up losing one of the most 
valuable facilities we have in this day of terrorists by having to 
close it down.
  We have a serious problem. I think if there is anything we should 
learn from this, it is, No. 1, we have a valuable institution called 
Gitmo. No. 2, what is important is that we don't let happen this year 
what happened last year. Last year we didn't get the NDAA bill until 
December. If we had gone to December 31, there would not have been 
hazard pay and a number of bad things would have happened, but we ended 
up finally at the last minute getting it done. I have talked to both 
the majority and minority leaders about the advisability of bringing 
the NDAA to the floor of the Senate, and consequently we now have 
invited Members to send their amendments down. We have almost 100 
amendments already on the floor. So I am hoping during the next week, 
we can come down with a specific date--hopefully before the August 
recess--where we can bring up the NDAA and let the people know who go 
over there risking their lives that we are going to be here to support 
them. We are going to be putting together an NDAA bill.
  I know my time has expired. I will not suggest the absence of a 
quorum quite yet because no one has arrived.
  Going back to Benghazi, everybody had the information on Benghazi. I 
neglected to mention we also had General Hamm come in and testify 
before us, again, that he was one of several who was fully aware of 
what happened.
  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page 11747]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           Minnesota Flooding

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the Senate floor today to 
speak about the recent heavy rain storms in Minnesota that have caused 
significant flooding in our State. This was not a one-day disaster. 
This was not a sudden flash flood such as we saw in Duluth a few years 
ago or a tornado coming in. This was, in fact, a disaster that occurred 
over a series of weeks where we had rainfall after rainfall after 
rainfall. From International Falls on the Canadian border down to 
Luverne, MN, on the Iowa border, torrential rains have washed out 
roads, bridges, and culverts, damaged infrastructure and caused 
significant crop damage. In some of our counties, 40 percent of the 
farmlands are under water.
  These storms have led to states of emergency being declared for 51 of 
Minnesota's 87 counties. We have not seen anything like this for a 
while. It tended to be, in the past, that we had a corner of our State 
that would see trouble, but here we have 51 of Minnesota's 87 counties 
being declared a state of emergency.
  Over the past few weeks I have visited many of these affected areas 
and seen the damage firsthand.
  The city of Norwood Young America saw nearly 9 inches of rain in one 
night that caused more than $1 million in damage to its wastewater 
treatment facility. I saw how water-covered roads strained rural 
communities, how washed-out rail beds have caused another setback for 
our already-strained rail system, and how closed township bridges have 
further delayed shipments of agricultural products.
  In southwest Minnesota, along with Senator Franken and Governor 
Dayton, I met with farmers who were among those hardest hit by the 
storms. Up until a month ago, the same crop and pasture land in 
southern Minnesota that is now completely under water had been under 
drought conditions since 2011. And now not only are these farmers 
dealing with damage to crops, buildings, and fences due to the 
flooding, they also experienced losses in the past from a devastating 
hail storm.
  In Rock County in southwestern Minnesota initial estimates indicate 
100,000 acres of corn and soybeans are damaged, and the official U.S. 
Department of Agriculture number will likely be even greater. The 
extent of the crop damage is really not yet known. Excessive moisture 
can kill crops altogether or stunt their growth or put them at risk of 
diseases at lower yields. This disaster has repercussions that will be 
felt for months to come.
  I talked with farmers in Luverne and in Mankato who are worried about 
how they will recover these losses and make ends meet. Farmers who were 
trying to finish planting now may have no hope of getting a crop into 
their flooded fields at all this summer, and those who did get a crop 
in are now watching their fields fill with water.
  U.S. Department of Agriculture officials are still assessing the 
damage, and crop insurance adjusters are out in full force so that 
accurate reports can be filed with county FSA offices. This is a 
critical step to ensure that farmers and ranchers are not left out of 
the disaster assistance process.
  Farmers operate at the mercy of the weather. Listening to stories of 
the great financial risk these small business owners face every single 
day--our State is a State of many small farms--it makes me proud of the 
work we did in the Senate and the work I did as a member of the Senate 
Agriculture Committee and conference committee to fight for permanent 
disaster programs with mandatory funding in the farm bill that we 
reauthorized earlier this year. If that were not in place, these 
farmers and, as a result, our food supply would be facing--Minnesota 
being one of the top agricultural producers in the country--a very 
uncertain future. These programs, in addition to the farm bill's 
improvements to crop insurance, will help provide a safety net for the 
farmers and the ranchers affected by the flood.
  Last week Secretary Vilsack visited our State. He was up in the 
Moorhead area, and Senator Hoeven, Senator Heitkamp, Congressman 
Peterson, and I met with him about some conservation issues up there 
with flooding. They are one of the areas of the State that have some 
flooding, but not as much right now; they usually have the most 
flooding. But when he was there he committed to me that the Farm 
Service Agency will do everything they can to provide any necessary 
resources and support for our farmers and ranchers.
  Just yesterday the Minnesota FSA executive director informed me that 
she has directed county FSA offices to immediately begin holding 
community meetings to ensure that farmers and ranchers impacted by 
these floodwaters have the information they need. Because here we have 
a new farm bill, and while it is very similar to the last one, there 
are new rules in place. They have to make critical decisions about if 
they replant, if they can get emergency loans; what they should plant, 
if their fields have been devastated, including cover crop; and what is 
going to be happening in the next few months. They need the 
information.
  Floods have a devastating impact not only on farmers but also on 
families and small businesses. The damage that these storms caused will 
not be undone overnight. There is still a lot of hard work ahead of us, 
and the long cleanup process has already begun. But we have already 
seen a swift and efficient response on the part of State and local 
officials. And in our State, FEMA may be a four-letter word, but it is 
a good four-letter word. When we saw what had happened in Grand Forks, 
the Nation was riveted many, many years ago by the flooding in North 
Dakota and Minnesota. That has recovered. Those are booming areas now. 
Fargo-Moorhead also experienced significant funding, and FEMA was 
involved and helped us there. We appreciate the work they are doing in 
assessing the damage now and the help we know will be coming.
  It is critical that the Federal Government do its part to ensure that 
the resources these families, businesses, and communities need are 
there to get them back on their feet. Two weeks ago I spoke directly 
with the President in the White House about the flood damage across the 
State, and he assured me there would be an immediate Federal response.
  That is why the action by Governor Dayton yesterday to formally 
request that the President issue a major disaster declaration was so 
important. That is why we sent a letter to the President--our entire 
congressional delegation; all of the eight House Members and the two 
Senators--urging swift approval of this request.
  Although work to assess the damage remains ongoing, so far nearly $11 
million in eligible damages has been documented in just eight counties. 
That is just eight counties. One county alone, we know, has $9 million 
in damage. This is well above the $7.5 million threshold that Minnesota 
has to meet to get the 75-percent Federal match for those counties that 
have $3.50 per capita damage. So we imagine that a lot of these 
counties will be getting Federal help for infrastructure damage at that 
75-percent mark.
  Believe me when I say Minnesotans just are not sitting around waiting 
for help. The hard work of assessing the damage continues this week and 
is even expected to extend into the following week. Even though the 
damage across the State has reached a level high enough to trigger 
eligibility, each county is doing its damage assessment.
  In some States, as I say, they have had problems with FEMA, but in 
our State for the most part we have been happy with the work they have 
done. In my time as a Senator, I have seen the 35W bridge collapse, I 
have seen the Federal Government step in with inordinate help to get 
that bridge rebuilt in less than a year.
  I saw a tornado come into Wadena, MN, and literally pick up a high 
school like it was in the ``Wizard of Oz,'' the bleachers landing a 
mile away. In that town--because of Federal assistance in alerting 
those citizens about how to use their emergency systems--because

[[Page 11748]]

of an alarm system and a siren that worked, despite the fact that their 
high school looked like a bomb had hit it, a major, large high school--
not one person was killed. There was a high school lifeguard watching 
over 40 little kids at a swimming pool. The sirens went off. The 
parents got there within 10 minutes and had them all gone, and the few 
kids that were left ran over with the lifeguard, who had the presence 
of mind to stay in a neighbor's basement who they did not even know. 
Not one person died because that siren system worked, because people 
had practiced, because they knew what to do, and because we had the 
emergency system in place.
  That high school is now rebuilt. Along with that high school being 
rebuilt, there is a beautiful new company that was rebuilt that is in 
the farming area, in the farm financing area. Their company was 
devastated. They did not have a basement. All they had was one safe 
that the man had bought, and he had joked that it was big enough to 
hold a few employees. That day when that tornado hit, there were four 
employees on duty. They went into that safe. That was the only thing 
that remained of that business. When that man rebuilt, he bought a big 
enough safe for all 20 of his employees--a true story.
  But this is how Minnesota responds to disasters. Few things are more 
humbling than standing in those kinds of wreckages. Natural disasters 
are humbling because they remind us that nature is still more powerful 
than all the technology we have. But they are also humbling because 
they bring out the best in our communities. From what I have seen in 
our State--from those emergency responders diving into the Mississippi 
River over and over to look for survivors in the 35W bridge disaster or 
what I saw in Fargo-Moorhead, where a man was volunteering to give out 
food and lunches at the emergency center and I said to him: Oh, thank 
you for volunteering. What brings you here? He said: I lost my entire 
house. I said: And you came to volunteer? He said: It is the best thing 
I could do with my time--those are the things that I remember.
  What I remember from these floods across the State--where, again, 
despite this incredible damage not one person died in our State from 
this flooding--I remember, again, those first responders and the normal 
citizens who just got up and helped their neighbors.
  We saw this spirit of solidarity when a 911 call came in from a woman 
who was driving home to Anoka, MN, from Sioux Falls, SD, when her car 
spun out of control and was swept away. Water was inching up to the 
windows.
  State Trooper Brian Beuning pushed through the rushing water when she 
called for help. He got her out of the car and held on to her until 
help arrived. The car ended up in a field a quarter of a mile away. A 
boat tried to rescue them, but the current was too swift. Finally, two 
firefighters from Luverne, MN, tied themselves to a semitruck and got 
the woman and the trooper to safety. Rather than running from disaster, 
those first responders bravely ran toward it; and that is my State for 
you.
  In the face of ice storms, historic floods, tornadoes, even the 
collapse of that bridge, Minnesota does not fall apart. Minnesota comes 
together. When disaster hits our State, we hit the ground running and 
do not stop until we have the resources in place to ensure our 
communities are made whole. That means local and State help, but that 
also means Federal help.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  Madam President, 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. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed for the next 30 minutes to engage in a colloquy between myself, 
Senator McCain, and Senator Barrasso.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Hoeven, Mr. McCain, and Mr. Barrasso pertaining 
to the introduction of S. 2592 are printed in today's Record under 
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, what is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is S. 2363, the 
sportsmen's bill.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 5 
minutes as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Preserving an Open Internet

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, last week I chaired a field hearing of 
the Senate Judiciary Committee in Burlington, VT, on an issue of 
critical importance: preserving an open Internet. Our committee heard 
testimony about the need for concrete, fundamental protections to 
ensure that the Internet is not abused by those who control how we 
connect to the Internet.
  The timing of the hearing was not a coincidence. I convened it during 
a week when Americans were gathering to celebrate what our Founders put 
in motion more than 200 years ago. While no one then could have 
imagined how important the Internet would become, the sentiment and 
priorities expressed at the hearing would have made our Founders proud. 
We heard from hard-working business owners and consumers about the role 
of the Internet in enhancing free expression, and also as a free and 
open marketplace where competition drives innovation.
  I brought the Judiciary Committee to Burlington to show the Federal 
Communications Commission and Congress that the decisions we make on 
this issue will have deep and wide impact far outside of the Nation's 
capital, and in the economies of our local communities.
  Witnesses at this field hearing warned of how the FCC's proposed 
approach to new Net neutrality rules would actually harm small 
businesses, community institutions, and consumers--the people we have 
in every one of our States whom we represent. I will give an example. 
Cabot Orton, the proprietor of the Vermont Country Store, testified 
that they started off as just a local general store in Vermont and now 
have an e-commerce site that accounts for 40 percent of their overall 
revenue. One-third of their 450 employees support those Internet 
transactions. These are a lot of people hired in our little State of 
Vermont because they have open access to the Internet.
  Mr. Orton was clear about his concerns. He said:

       We're not asking for special treatment, incentives or 
     subsidies. All the small business community asks is simply to 
     preserve and protect Internet commerce as it exists today, 
     which has served all businesses remarkably well.

  I have to agree with him.
  Another Vermont small business owner, Lisa Groeneveld, explained that 
her company Logic Supply spent money building a quality product, not 
purchasing preferential Internet access. She said that ``without an 
Open and Fair Internet based on the equal access, our business wouldn't 
even exist today.'' This successful company is an amazing example of 
how the Internet can help grow small businesses in Vermont.
  Both of these witnesses testified that the success they have achieved 
with their online businesses would have been difficult to accomplish if 
the Internet had been a pay-to-play world when they initially launched 
their sites.
  Think of all the companies, whether in Vermont, Massachusetts, or any 
other State, next year or the year after that want to launch online if 
suddenly the rules were different for them than for a company that has 
a lot of money.
  We heard other perspectives too. Vermont's State librarian, Martha 
Reid, testified about the need to ensure equal access for those who 
rely on public libraries for their Internet access,

[[Page 11749]]

which includes many people in rural areas.
  Vermonters know of my love for the library I frequented growing up, 
the Kellogg Hubbard Library. I received my first library card there, in 
Montpelier, when I was 4. I went there to learn, not just to read.
  Ms. Reid testified that ``all Americans--including the most 
disenfranchised citizens, those who would have no way to access the 
Internet without the library--need to be able to use Internet resources 
on an equal footing.''
  Ms. Reid's testimony was supported by former FCC Commissioner Michael 
Copps, who explained that ``an Internet controlled and managed for the 
benefit of the `haves' discriminates against our rights not just as 
consumers but, more importantly, as citizens.''
  The testimony from these individuals offers a relevant selection of 
the real-world experiences that have to be heard by the FCC and 
Congress as this debate continues. That is why I took the hearing 500 
miles from the Senate--so they could be heard.
  I don't want to see an Internet that is divided into the haves and 
have-nots. I agree with the Vermonters who testified: I don't want to 
see an Internet where those who can afford to pay muffle the voices of 
those who cannot.
  An online world that is split into fast lanes and slow lanes, where 
pay-to-play deals dictate who can reach consumers, runs counter to 
everything on which the Internet was founded.
  Last month I joined Congresswoman Doris Matsui to introduce the 
Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act that requires the FCC to ban 
online pay-to-play deals. Open Internet principles are the bill of 
rights for the online world. We must get this right. If we fail to get 
it right, I guarantee that we will not get another chance and we will 
not have these companies growing and starting up throughout all our 
States.
  I see the distinguished Senator from Montana here. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.


                        Constitutional Amendment

  Mr. TESTER. Madam President, back in 2012 the people of Montana stood 
up against the influence of corporations and big money in elections. By 
a 3-to-1 margin, they called on their congressional delegation to 
introduce a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's 
Citizens United decision. That ruling paved the way for more secret 
money in politics. It allowed corporations to make contributions to 
political campaigns on the grounds that corporations should have the 
same right to freedom of speech as any individual.
  In response to the overwhelming vote by the people of Montana, I 
proudly introduced this amendment, which affirms what we all know: 
Corporations are not people, and they do not have the same rights as 
you or I.
  Two years later Americans are realizing that Montanans were pretty 
forward-looking. That is because in Montana we value independence. We 
value our individual rights. And we don't think a faceless entity 
should be able to tell us what to do. We don't like it when secretive, 
shadowy groups try to tell us how to vote, and we don't like it when 
corporations dictate our health care decisions. But that is exactly 
what happened with last week's Hobby Lobby decision. The Supreme Court 
decided corporations can limit their employees' health care options, 
thereby restricting our individual freedoms. That is un-American. 
Affording corporations the same constitutional rights to speech--and 
now to religion--that Montanans and all American people cherish is the 
exact opposite of what our Founding Fathers envisioned. This is not 
freedom. It is a slippery slope to granting large corporations greater 
power over everyday Americans' lives.
  With the Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court found that 
corporations can hold religious-based objections to providing insurance 
coverage for certain medical care. The corporations do not have 
religions; people do. The First Amendment was meant to protect 
individuals' religious freedoms, not those of corporations. Now, the 
religious beliefs of corporations will dictate the health care options 
of people. It starts with contraceptive care, but where does it end?
  It is clear that the Supreme Court is putting the rights of 
corporations over the rights of people. So much for treating all 
Americans equally. If you are a corporation with money, you could 
influence our elections to a far greater extent than ever before. Now, 
if you have a corporation, you can influence our access to health care 
too.
  Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent:

       The decision would deny legions of women who do not hold 
     their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive coverage.

  Let me say that again. These are Justice Ginsburg's words:

       The decision would deny legions of women who do not hold 
     their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive care.

  Where will this end?
  Being a woman cannot be a preexisting condition. Contraception is 
basic health care, and 99 percent of American women currently use or 
have used birth control at some point in their lives. But now a 
manless, faceless corporation can stand between women and their access 
to this basic care, all because an activist Supreme Court thinks 
corporations have the same rights as people.
  This Supreme Court continues to redefine individual rights as 
corporate rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion. We have to 
ask ourselves, where will this end? It seems as if anything is possible 
when it comes to this Supreme Court, where five men can determine a 
woman's health care. But it doesn't need to be this way. My 
constitutional amendment makes it 100 percent clear that the rights 
enshrined in our Constitution are meant for the American people--real 
folks who work day in and day out to put food on the table--not 
corporate entities.
  My amendment also allows the American people to once again regulate 
corporations through the representatives they elect in State and 
Federal government.
  I encourage all my colleagues to join me and Senators Murphy, Begich, 
Walsh, Markey, and Whitehouse in supporting this commonsense step. But 
it is going to take a comprehensive approach to make sure real people, 
not corporations, are in charge. Whether it is elections or health 
care, people should be free to make their own choices without the undue 
influence of corporate entities.
  Montanans voted in 2012 to limit constitutional rights to individual 
people, but it was 100 years earlier that we also voted to limit 
corporate influence in elections after wealthy mining companies bought 
influence and even paid for a U.S. Senate seat. We recognized the 
negative impact wealthy corporations were having on our electoral 
process. But this Supreme Court, using its Citizens United decision as 
justification, overturned our century-old law just 2 years ago, 
creating the same kind of election-spending free-for-all in Montana 
that we are witnessing nationwide.
  Before the Hobby Lobby decision, the fight against corporate 
influence was mainly about making sure real people and their ideas were 
in charge of elections. But now it is no longer just about a democracy; 
it is about keeping corporations out of our private lives, out of our 
bedrooms, and out of our religious decisions. It is an even bigger 
fight now.
  If you don't want to find out where corporate influence and the 
Supreme Court will go next, I would encourage you to join me and fight 
back with smart, responsible measures that will put real people back in 
charge of our lives. Our democracy has been under attack before but 
never to this extent.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I would suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. 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 11750]]




                            Executive Power

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, the great pamphleteer of the American 
Revolution, Thomas Paine, famously characterized our Nation at its 
founding by asserting that in America the law is king. This sentiment 
has undergirded centuries of our Nation's political culture: The rule 
of law protects us from arbitrary government actions. It is what 
guarantees our liberties, it is what fosters our prosperity and our 
flourishing as a free people, and it is a source of our Republic's 
legitimacy. For as the Declaration of Independence teaches, governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
  For these reasons, when drafting the Constitution, the Framers 
obligated the President to take care that our laws be faithfully 
executed, but they were careful not to give the President the authority 
to make or change the law on his own.
  Our Nation's Founders knew, in the sage words of Montesquieu, that 
``in all tyrannical governments . . . the right both of making and of 
enforcing the laws is vested in one and the same man, or . . . body of 
men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no 
public liberty.''
  To safeguard our liberties as the Constitution requires, the 
Constitution vests Federal legislative powers in the Congress--the 
House of Representatives and the Senate--which were designed to engage 
in a particularly thorough and deliberative legislative process. By 
ratifying the Constitution, the American people established this system 
as the supreme law of the land applying to all of us--including the 
President.
  Despite these Constitutional foundations, President Obama has simply 
decided that he ``won't take no for an answer'' when Congress refuses 
to go along with his far left agenda. In direct opposition to our 
centuries-old system of legislation and the binding authority of the 
Constitution, the President has audaciously declared that ``when 
Congress won't act, I will.'' And he has followed up these threats with 
a variety of unilateral executive actions, many of which are flatly 
inconsistent with the law and the Constitution.
  Over the past weeks and months I have come to the Senate floor to 
speak out about a series of specific instances that exemplified the 
brazen lawlessness of this administration. This pervasive and 
illegitimate outreach has come in many different forms. We have seen 
the President regulate contrary to the plain text of the law, simply 
ignoring the clear commands of duly enacted Federal statutes. For 
example, a hallmark of the President's so-called pen-and-phone strategy 
has been an Executive order forcing contractors to raise their minimum 
wage. He issued this directive despite the fact that a Federal statute 
already governs the minimum wage for Federal contractors.
  Although a different statute gives the President some discretion in 
the area of Federal procurement, its plain language demands, as courts 
of law have upheld, that there be a sufficient nexus between the 
President's orders and the statute's stated goal of efficiency and 
economy in Federal procurement. President Obama's order increasing 
contractors' labor costs by hiking their minimum wage is thus wholly 
inconsistent with the law.
  We have seen the Obama administration seek to rewrite existing law 
and thereby usurp Congress's legislative authority through the use of 
conditioned waivers. Consider how the Department of Education has 
issued waivers of No Child Left Behind's requirements to 43 of the 50 
States and the District of Columbia.
  Even when Democrats had large majorities in both the House of 
Representatives and the Senate, President Obama refused to pursue 
legislative reauthorization of the statute to set realistic goals going 
forward. Apparently, he wanted to avoid spending his energies and 
political capital on a legislative process that might expose divisions 
within his own party or force him to compromise.
  The President chose simply to establish an entirely different set of 
education policies by attaching his own conditions to the waivers that 
States need to receive Federal money. His administration has not been 
shy about enforcing conditions that bear little resemblance to 
provisions of the law itself.
  The State of Washington learned this recently when it became the 
first to lose its waiver and much of its Federal funding primarily 
because it did not meet the administration's mandate for teacher and 
principal evaluation--a mandate that has no grounding in the actual 
statute.
  We have seen President Obama and his subordinates stretch what lawful 
authorities the executive branch does have beyond recognition to 
advance its preferred policies. Take, for example, the Nation's drug 
laws, an area in which the Obama administration decided it disagrees 
with the criminal statutes on the books and wants to implement a 
different policy. The President has demonstrated an eagerness to do so 
unilaterally, no matter the governing Federal law, and no matter the 
broad and bipartisan support for sentencing reform in Congress. The 
administration's new clemency push for drug offenders seeks to employ 
the President's specific constitutional power--one limited to relieve 
individual instances of injustice--to provide relief to large swaths of 
criminals who fit a few broad criteria. The President has also directed 
major changes over which Federal drug crimes are charged and at what 
level to do this. His administration has cited prosecutorial 
discretion--a limited authority derived from the power to adapt 
enforcement for an individual's specific circumstances--to implement 
what are, in fact, broad standards affecting thousands upon thousands 
of prosecutions.
  Given the scope of these actions, compared to the Executive's 
narrowly tailored authorities, the administration's invocation of 
prosecutorial discretion and the clemency power have become transparent 
excuses to justify flouting existing Federal law.
  We have seen President Obama claim the power to gut the law by 
unilaterally creating gaping enforcement carve-outs, thereby 
effectively rewriting policy set by legislation. Take immigration, an 
area in which many of us--myself included--support reform but which is 
currently governed by existing law. For years the Obama administration 
has advanced a growing number of enforcement carve-outs for 
increasingly expansive classes of illegal immigrants. First, it 
exempted those brought here as children, then veterans, then their 
families. Now the administration is contemplating excluding from the 
application of duly enacted immigration law anyone who has not 
committed serious felonies. While nearly everyone agrees that violent 
criminals should be our highest priority, the administration has gone 
much further and essentially declared its intention to make current 
immigration law a dead letter in virtually every other case.
  We have seen the Obama administration openly ignore its statutory 
obligations without meaningful justification. Consider the President's 
decision to release the top five Taliban leaders in U.S. custody 
without notifying Congress, as required by Federal law. The 
administration's excuses for delaying notification could not stand up 
to scrutiny under the President's own rationales. Indeed, the 
administration's own statements demonstrate that it deliberately 
withheld advance notification of the release from Congress for the 
illegitimate purpose of minimizing congressional opposition.
  We have seen some of the Obama administration's worst abuses of 
executive power in creating and implementing its signature legislative 
programs. In Dodd-Frank, for example, the administration created a new 
agency with unprecedented and unchecked power--no meaningful 
administrative controls on its power, no congressional control over its 
budget, and no effective judicial review of its far-reaching decisions.
  And of course, any discussion of executive overreach by this 
administration must include ObamaCare. Back when the administration was 
writing that 2,000-plus page monstrosity, the bill's proponents argued 
that its length and

[[Page 11751]]

complexity were necessary evils--that its many intricate parts were 
essential to achieving the bill's promised objectives.
  The individual mandate, the employer mandate, the minimum coverage 
requirements, the cuts to Medicare Advantage, and the limits for 
subsidies to State-run exchanges--we were promised these provisions and 
others were both critical and carefully timed to expand coverage and 
rein in costs. Yet, when the time came to implement the law, the 
administration's tune changed. To justify violating a number of clear 
statutory mandates, the administration has mustered a weak and 
unconvincing hodgepodge of legal acrobatics--all for the purpose of 
allowing the administration to avoid enforcing the central provisions 
of its own signature law.
  Consider some of these particularly egregious justifications: 
claiming that limited transition authority exercised by one agency 
justified another agency exerting that power even more broadly; or 
asserting that subjective impressions of excessive cost could justify a 
hardship exemption, when the statute specifically defines excessive 
costs in objective terms; or defining explicit, carefully timed 
deadlines written into the law by Congress, the timing of which is 
supposed to anchor the whole statutory scheme; or abusing a small pilot 
program to mitigate the law's vast cuts to Medicare Advantage; or 
simply ignoring a critical provision limiting how billions of dollars 
in tax subsidies are to be spent.
  These are only a few examples of this administration's lawlessness in 
implementing ObamaCare. I could continue on about the significant legal 
concerns surrounding this administration's abusive handling of high-
risk pools, its dubious actions involving the small business exchange, 
its sweetheart deals granting unauthorized exemptions for labor unions, 
and many other similarly problematic actions.
  But the point is clear: Time and again, the Obama administration has 
flouted its constitutional responsibilities, exceeded its legitimate 
authority, ignored duly enacted law, and sought to escape any 
accountability for its unilateralism.
  Today I have simply scratched the surface of the Obama 
administration's legally dubious actions. I could also discuss the way 
the administration is manipulating the Endangered Species Act to assert 
control over private property, or the EPA's many abuses: its existing 
source rule, its cross-State air pollution rule, its waters of the 
United States rule, and its CAFE standards. Or I could catalog the 
illegal actions of the President's appointees to the National Labor 
Relations Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Federal 
Communications Commission.
  In each of these areas, the Obama administration's executive 
overreach simply cannot stand--and it won't. The President is rightly 
facing increased scrutiny and criticism in a range of areas for his 
illegitimate approach. Over the past two weeks, the Supreme Court 
strongly rebuked the President's lawlessness in three key cases.
  The Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA case involves one of the most 
controversial issues debated today: regulating carbon dioxide emissions 
in an effort to stop global warming. Americans and their elected 
representatives have been seriously debating whether and how to pursue 
that, just as we should when weighty matters of national policy are 
considered. Congress has considered various pieces of legislation over 
the years to grant Federal authority to regulate carbon dioxide 
emissions, most notably President Obama's 2009 cap-and-trade bill. Each 
time we have considered such legislation, the majority of us have made 
the careful choice that the purported benefits are not worth the 
undeniably massive costs: hundreds of thousands of jobs destroyed and 
gas and electricity prices sent soaring.
  President Obama, though, told us again that he ``won't take no for an 
answer''--or, in other words, that he refuses to accept that the 
Constitution delegates to the people's representatives in Congress--and 
not to him alone--the power to make or change the law. Defying Congress 
and the law, he claimed authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate 
carbon emissions from powerplants. But the Clean Air Act plainly does 
not provide him that authority.
  In attempting to provide a shred of legal justification for its 
actions, the Obama administration took a detailed provision of the law, 
complete with precise numerical thresholds, and unilaterally rewrote it 
through regulation to claim power Congress never, in fact, gave.
  The Supreme Court rightly struck down the administration's abuse of 
authority in this instance, as it has done in past cases. But, 
unfortunately, such regulatory overreach has become so common in the 
Obama administration that Federal bureaucrats have become experts in 
manufacturing supposed legal authority out of thin air. And the courts 
are simply unable to keep up with the explosion of executive overreach 
by President Obama's administration.
  Perhaps the most extreme example of such executive abuse was at issue 
in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case. Under the auspices of ObamaCare, 
the Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation 
requiring employers to pay for a full complement of birth control 
methods for every employee. The Obama administration applied this 
mandate to almost all employers--even those who run small, closely-held 
businesses and whose deeply-held religious beliefs conflict with the 
mandate.
  Some media outlets have focused on the conflict between this latest 
ObamaCare abuse and the principles enshrined in the First Amendment's 
protection of the free exercise of religion. Others have focused on the 
Obama administration's argument that corporations are not people--as if 
the particular form of how individuals organize themselves to do 
business somehow allows the Federal Government to trample their 
religious liberties.
  But in all of the sound and the fury, a central point has been lost: 
The Hobby Lobby case was actually about a direct threat to the 
separation of powers. It pitted the Obama administration's unilateral 
mandate against a law passed by Congress.
  In issuing this regulation, the Obama administration completely 
disregarded a duly enacted Federal statute, the Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act, which specifically bars such government infringement 
on Americans' right to exercise their religious beliefs. The ObamaCare 
contraception mandate flies in the face of the law's requirement that 
the government not substantially burden the exercise of religion unless 
it is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government 
purpose. I know. I was the prime sponsor of that bill in the Senate, 
and I got my friend Senator Kennedy to go along with me. The President 
said it was one of the most important bills in history, that religious 
freedom may be the most important of all of our freedoms.
  As a lead author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it has 
been particularly frustrating to see the Justices of the Supreme Court 
wrongly criticized for supposedly limiting access to birth control. In 
reality, all the Court did was hold the Obama administration 
accountable to the law--specifically, a law that passed Congress with 
near unanimity and was signed by President Clinton, who lauded the law. 
I was there. I was on the south lawn when he signed that. So were many 
others.
  In the NLRB v. Noel Canning case, by contrast, the administration 
violated one of the Constitution's central checks on Presidential 
power, the requirement that nominations of principal officers receive 
the advice and consent of the Senate except during the recess of the 
Senate.
  Concern about Executive appointment abuse was on the minds of our 
Fathers when they devised the Senate's role in the process. Their fears 
were strikingly similar to what President Obama has sought to make 
reality: a radical set of National Labor Relations Board appointees who 
promised to tip

[[Page 11752]]

the balance of the Board toward an extreme and divisive agenda and a 
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director nominee endowed with 
unprecedented power--no checks on his removal, no congressional control 
over his budget, and no effective judicial review of his actions.
  But President Obama again proclaimed he would not take no for an 
answer and claimed the power to use the recess appointment power to 
install these four nominees, even though the Senate had completely 
different rules. But even the Department of Justice admitted that a 3-
day adjournment was too short to give the President lawful authority to 
bypass the Senate.
  Instead, the President audaciously claimed the power to decide that, 
in his opinion, our so-called pro forma sessions during this period did 
not count as sessions of the Senate, even though they had always 
counted, and the Senate should decide its own rules, and that has 
always been the rule around here.
  Not only, as Hamilton explained in Federalist 69, did the Framers 
specifically deny our President the King's power to deem the 
legislature out of session, but during these sessions the Senate was 
fully capable of engaging in its business. In fact, during similar 
sessions the previous fall, the Senate had twice passed legislation 
that President Obama himself signed.
  So extreme were the administration's arguments that the Supreme Court 
unanimously held President Obama's actions unconstitutional. In doing 
so, the Court confirmed that the Constitution does not create in the 
President an endlessly flexible power to bypass Congress when he 
happens to disagree with us--as if our advice-and-consent role were 
merely an inconvenience to be avoided, rather than the organizing 
principle of how the constitutional process is designed to work.
  Taken together, these three cases represent a resounding victory for 
the rule of law and the Constitution over the President's 
unilateralism, and they are far from unique examples. The Court has 
ruled unanimously, by a vote of 9 to 0, against the Obama 
administration 20 times--20 times, 9 to zip. These include many 
significant cases, such as the Hosanna-Tabor case, in which the Obama 
administration tried to control a religious organization's hiring of 
its ministers; the Sackett case, in which the Obama administration 
tried to take away the lawful right to challenge unlawful EPA fines of 
up to $75,000 a day on a poor couple who were just trying to improve 
their property; and the Arizona case, in which the Obama administration 
tried to displace State law with mere Federal enforcement priorities.
  But instead of taking these rebukes to heart, the President has 
doubled down on his go-it-alone attitude. He has vowed more Executive 
orders of questionable legality, he has reaffirmed his commitment to an 
extreme anti-energy agenda and a willingness to abuse his legal 
authorities to unleash an onslaught of new regulations, and he has used 
the mistrust he created by refusing to enforce existing immigration law 
to justify further nonenforcement.
  President Obama's shameful defiance in the face of the Supreme 
Court's rulings means our fight against his lawless overreach has only 
just begun. While we should applaud the Court's recent decisions, we 
should also realize the limits of courtroom litigation to check 
executive branch abuse. Indeed, the Obama administration has gone to 
great lengths to shield its lawlessness from judicial review by 
surreptitiously crafting many of such actions to prevent any plaintiff 
from having legal standing to launch a challenge in court, by 
aggressively challenging the legitimacy of suits that have been filed, 
by significantly curtailing the availability of judicial review, and by 
brazenly packing the DC Circuit--the Nation's most important court for 
most regulatory cases--with compliant judges.
  The Speaker of the House has announced plans to vote on a measure to 
authorize a lawsuit against President Obama for his unfaithful 
execution of the law. While I support the legislative branch using 
every tool at our disposal to hold this President accountable to his 
constitutional obligations, we should also be mindful of our decades-
long fight to limit the judicial power to its proper role under the 
Constitution. We should not seek to replace one constitutional 
travesty--the lawlessness of this President--with another by breaking 
down the structural limits on the judicial power. On the other hand, 
the House may very well succeed because of the actions of this 
President because something has to be done to curtail these 
inappropriate, unilateral, illegal actions.
  In the end, we cannot rely on the courts alone. With such a powerful 
and aggressive President, all of us must stand and fight back against 
this executive lawlessness. I urge all my colleagues--both Democratic 
and Republican--to use the rightful and legitimate constitutional 
authorities the Framers gave us to stand and resist the President's 
recklessness.
  But whether blinded by partisan loyalty to the President or too 
inexperienced to understand this body from any other perspective than 
having a like-minded Senate majority and President, my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle have allowed--even facilitated--this 
administration's attempts to break down the constitutional checks on 
Executive power.
  I urge them to change course. That is the tradition of some of the 
greatest Senators on both sides of the aisle--of Mike Mansfield, Howard 
Baker, and Robert Byrd. That is the purpose of the Constitution's 
division of powers, for as Madison counseled in Federalist 51, 
``. . . the great security against a gradual concentration of the 
several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who 
administer each department the necessary constitutional means and 
personal motives to resist encroachment of the others.''
  If this body is to maintain a meaningful role in preserving liberty 
and prosperity, we must dutifully fulfill our constitutional obligation 
of checking the President's unlawful attempts to assert illegitimate 
power.
  I began my service here in 1977. Bob Byrd was the newly elected 
majority leader. R.C. Byrd was one of the alltime procedural experts in 
this body. He was a very strong personality. He would not be putting up 
with what this President is doing. He would not be putting up with the 
usurpation of the Senate's power or of the legislature's power, the 
Congress's power.
  I call on my Democratic friends on the other side to start standing 
up. If they do not start standing up, I think the people are going to 
hold them accountable because these are separated powers and the 
legislative body is supposed to handle these matters and not some 
President unilaterally changing the law at his whimsy.
  With that, 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.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________