[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11974-11991]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

PROTECT WOMEN'S HEALTH FROM CORPORATE INTERFERENCE ACT OF 2014--MOTION 
                         TO PROCEED--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume legislative session.
  The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today in 
support of the Not My Boss's Business Act. I thank Senator Murray and 
Senator Udall for introducing this legislation to help address the 
recent Supreme Court decision.
  Women have gone to the tops of the mountains and to outer space. 
Women are serving as CEOs, as scientists, and starting our own 
companies. Here in the Senate we have gone from no women to 20, and 
that is a great accomplishment.
  But for all of our progress--and there has been a lot--this stubborn 
fact remains: Women still struggle to attain the basic health care 
services that allow them to plan their families, protect their health, 
and contribute to our

[[Page 11975]]

economy. This is fundamentally an issue of fairness and an issue of 
equality.
  I have always said that the Affordable Care Act is a beginning and 
not an end. I would like to see changes to that bill. I have sponsored 
changes to that bill. But the law does take significant steps forward 
on health care for women. One that is of particular importance to women 
is requiring that all health insurance plans cover FDA-approved forms 
of contraception. This decision was based on the recommendations of the 
Institute of Medicine.
  The Institute of Medicine had good reason to include contraception as 
an essential preventive service. We know that pregnancies that are 
planned are good for moms; they are good for babies. Better access to 
contraception prevents unintended pregnancies--something we can all 
agree we want. We do not want unintended pregnancies. We do not want to 
have abortions. So better access to contraception, as has been proven 
time and time again, brings down those numbers. And access to birth 
control is essential for women to meet their career and their education 
and their family goals.
  Not every employer was required to provide contraceptive coverage. 
Certain nonprofit religious employers were allowed an exemption. It 
protected the beliefs of religious nonprofits but could be implemented 
in a way that still ensured all women could receive the same preventive 
services in their health insurance.
  What I do not believe is sensible, however, is allowing any for-
profit business to ask for an exemption. That, in practice, is what the 
Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling could do and what the bill we are 
considering today would correct.
  First, what this bill will not do: It will not force churches or 
religiously affiliated nonprofits to offer contraception coverage. This 
bill maintains their exemption. It will not force anyone to use 
contraception. That decision is and must remain with each person.
  What this bill will do, however, is to add a provision to the 
Affordable Care Act's requirements that would prohibit an employer from 
denying coverage of a health care service that is required under 
Federal law. It clarifies that this requirement applies even under the 
Religious Freedom Restoration Act--the law that the Supreme Court ruled 
was violated by the contraception coverage requirement.
  In other words, it says if you work for an American corporation, you 
can expect that your health insurance--which you work for and receive 
as part of your compensation--will cover the same basic preventive 
health benefits everyone else receives. It says that your boss--
regardless of his or her religious beliefs--cannot pick and choose what 
benefits your health insurance covers.
  This is common sense. A woman's decision about her birth control is 
between her and her doctor, not her employer. What she chooses to use 
her compensation for is really not her boss's business, whether we are 
talking about a salary or other compensation, including health 
insurance.
  There is no doubt that women have come a long way. But when a woman's 
boss can step in, as a result of this narrowly decided Court decision--
a 5-4 ruling--and prevent her from making the best health care 
decisions for her health, her career, and her future, it makes me 
wonder just how far we have actually come.
  Mr. President, that is why I urge you to support this bill. I urge my 
colleagues to support this bill. This important legislation will help 
preserve the rights of employees while protecting religious employers. 
It will help women access the preventive services they need and it will 
prevent unintended pregnancies and improve the health of both women and 
their children. That is not just good for women; that is good for 
families, that is good for business, that is good for our economy, and 
that is good for our future.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted 
to finish my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Religious Liberty

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today in defense of the most 
fundamental principle on which our Republic was founded--what is 
rightly recognized as our first freedom--religious liberty.
  Our fellow citizens today do not think much of Congress. The Gallup 
organization, whose results are actually less grim than some other 
polls, gives Congress a job approval rating of just 15 percent. That 
figure has not risen above the teens in more than 3 years.
  Now and then, however, Congress does rise to the occasion, putting 
aside partisan or ideological differences to achieve something 
important for our Nation and its citizens.
  One example occurred in 1993--I had a lot to do with it--when 
liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, stood to defend 
a fundamental human right. On October 27, 1993, this body passed the 
Religious Freedom Restoration Act by a vote of 97 to 3.
  It went through the House by a unanimous vote. By mid-November the 
House had passed it unanimously and President Bill Clinton had signed 
it into law. I was there at the signing ceremony on the south lawn. 
Despite the overwhelming bipartisan support for final passage of RFRA, 
it took Congress 3 years to achieve that defense of religious freedom.
  The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights 
held hearings in 1990 and 1992, and the full Senate Judiciary Committee 
held a hearing in 1992. Concerned citizens and groups came together to 
form the Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion--a grassroots 
effort more diverse than any I have ever seen in all of my 38 years 
here. Americans of every political stripe joined hands to defend the 
first freedom mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The resulting 
legislation, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, allows the Federal 
Government to interfere with the exercise of religion only for the most 
compelling reason and only in the least restrictive way. This law was 
necessary because in 1990 the Supreme Court had changed the legal 
standard, making it easy, rather than difficult, for the government to 
burden religious exercise.
  A bill recently introduced here in the Senate, S. 2578, would turn 
the clock back, requiring that Federal laws and regulations ignore 
rather than respect religious freedom. This is the first time in 
American history that the Congress will consider a bill intended to 
diminish the protections for the religious liberty of all Americans. It 
is part of a broader campaign to demonize religious freedom as the 
enemy, as an obstacle to certain political goals.
  It is important for the American people to know the truth about how 
we got here. The Affordable Care Act requires that most employers 
provide insurance coverage at no cost to employees for what it calls 
preventive services. Regulations from the Department of Health and 
Human Services define that category as covering all forms of birth 
control approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including both 
contraceptives and methods that can act after conception.
  The difference between a contraceptive and an abortifacient is the 
difference between preventing and taking human life. That discrepancy 
may be meaningless to some, but it is very important to many and can be 
a matter of the most profound moral and religious significance. As a 
result of the birth control mandate, many religious employers faced 
massive fines if they followed their religious beliefs, so some of them 
filed suit to prevent its enforcement.
  This is exactly the kind of situation that the Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act was enacted to address, the kind of situation that 
should require the government to justify why it wants to interfere with 
the exercise of religion.
  Cases brought by two companies owned by religious families made it to 
the Supreme Court. These companies do provide insurance coverage for 
the FDA's 16 methods of contraception, but they believe that doing so 
for its 4 methods of birth control that can

[[Page 11976]]

cause abortion violates their deeply held religious beliefs.
  Two weeks ago, in a case titled ``Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores,'' 
the Supreme Court ruled that the HHS birth control mandate does not 
sufficiently accommodate these employers' exercise of religion as 
required by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
  It took a lot of work to establish RFRA's defense of religious 
freedom, but it would not take much work to destroy it. The bill we 
will soon consider, S. 2578, would in one fell swoop reduce the free 
exercise of religion from a fundamental human right to a cheap 
election-year prop.
  RFRA was developed after months of discussion and debate. It was the 
product of bipartisan deliberation and considered judgment. I know. I 
was there. I was the one who talked Senator Kennedy into coming on this 
bill. When it was signed on the south lawn--when President Clinton 
signed it, Senator Kennedy was one of the most proud people there. This 
bill represents vindication of the fundamental and natural rights that 
we originally established government to protect.
  By contrast, S. 2578 was thrown together in a matter of days. It has 
not received a single committee hearing in either Chamber. In fact, 
here in the Senate it is not even being sent to a legislative 
committee. The majority has put their finger to the political wind and 
decided that all they want is a show vote they can spin to their 
advantage in the election this fall. That is ridiculous. They ought to 
be ashamed.
  One sign of what is really going on is the fact that the bill's 
``findings'' are about four times as long as its actual provisions, and 
it reads more like a series of press releases than serious legislative 
language. The bill's supporters wish to ram it through Congress without 
meaningful deliberation, without hearings, without the kind of scrutiny 
that would expose this effort for what it is. The bill's findings, for 
example, say not one word about the exercise of religion that gave rise 
to the Hobby Lobby litigation in the first place. Instead, one of the 
bill's findings claims that those lawsuits were filed by employers who 
simply wanted to deny their employees health insurance coverage for 
birth control. I guess you can call it contraception. In reality, the 
employers do not want to take anything away from anyone. They simply 
ask, as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires, that laws and 
regulations about health insurance coverage also consider and balance 
their basic right to religious exercise.
  I have heard proponents of this legislation make wild claims that 
corporations are denying access to health care, intruding into people's 
bedrooms, and even taking away their freedoms. Nonsense. Such claims do 
not even pass the laugh test. They are so clearly false that those who 
peddle such fiction must ignore both RFRA and the Supreme Court's 
decision in the Hobby Lobby case or deliberately distort them beyond 
recognition.
  Just yesterday the Washington Post Fact Checker listed example after 
example of what it charitably described as the rhetoric getting way 
ahead of the facts as Democrats have made one outlandish claim after 
another.
  Finding 19 in this bill is perhaps its most outrageous, claiming that 
legislation ``is intended to be consistent with the Congressional 
intent in enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.'' But of 
course that claim is absurd on its face. Congress expressed its purpose 
in enacting RFRA in the text of that statute, including RFRA's finding 
that its legal standard applies ``in all cases where the free exercise 
of religion is substantially burdened.'' RFRA's most prominent backers 
in Congress also expressed its intent. Over in the House, for example, 
then-Representative Charles Schumer said that RFRA would restore the 
American tradition of ``allowing maximum religious freedom''--spoke 
about this bill, spoke glowingly about what it means on both sides of 
the floor.
  The bill before us today does the opposite, requiring employers to 
provide insurance coverage ``notwithstanding any other provision of 
Federal law,'' including specifically the Religious Freedom Restoration 
Act. If a bill prohibiting consideration of religious exercise is 
consistent with the law requiring consideration of religious exercise, 
such as RFRA, then words have no meaning whatsoever.
  We are also told that S. 2578 simply responds to the Supreme Court's 
recent decision in Hobby Lobby, but in reality it goes much further. 
The Supreme Court's decision involved only the Affordable Care Act and 
the HHS birth control mandate, but this bill prohibits consideration of 
the Religious Freedom Restoration Act regarding insurance coverage of 
any health care item or service required by any Federal law or 
regulation. The Affordable Care Act and the HHS birth control mandate 
apply to employers with at least 50 employees, but this bill's much 
broader mandate applies to any employer regardless of size. The Hobby 
Lobby case involved a for-profit corporation, but this bill applies to 
any employer. This bill appears to be not so much a response to the 
Supreme Court's decision in Hobby Lobby as the attempt to broaden and 
extend the Affordable Care Act and the HHS birth control mandate.
  The bill's mandate that health insurance coverage for any health care 
item or service under any Federal law or regulation be provided 
notwithstanding any other provision of Federal law seems to reach 
beyond the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Does it include, for 
example, the Hyde-Weldon amendment or other laws that have for more 
than 40 years protected health care providers and facilities from being 
forced to participate in abortion? Before you answer no, remember that 
no one thought RFRA's protections for religious freedom would ever be 
attacked as they are today.
  Under S. 2578, the lone protections for the fundamental right of 
religious exercise would be the narrow statutory exemption for churches 
and houses of worship and the weak administrative accommodation for 
religious nonprofits that could be revoked at any time. Even worse, the 
bill would allow for a future reduction or elimination of this so-
called accommodation but not for its expansion. Not only would 
religious freedom be diminished immediately but what is left would be 
subject to a one-way ratchet toward elimination.
  Earlier this summer I spoke here on the Senate floor about how 
religious freedom in America has three key dimensions: It includes 
religious behavior as well as belief. It applies collectively as well 
as individually. It is public as well as private in scope.
  The Religious Freedom Restoration Act represents the full 
understanding of religious freedom. It requires that when Congress 
considers legislation or executive branch agencies consider 
regulations, they must take this fundamental freedom into account and 
give it the respect it deserves. S. 2578 would be the first bill to 
create an exemption from RFRA and the first bill explicitly to prohibit 
consideration of the fundamental right of religious exercise.
  Five years after enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 
Congress enacted the International Religious Freedom Act, which 
established the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. 
That legislation declared that the ``right to freedom of religion 
undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.'' The 
Senate passed that legislation by a vote of 98 to 0, including 10 
Democrats who have today cosponsored the bill before us that would 
disregard freedom of religion. Those Democrats include the majority 
leader and the sponsor of S. 2578. They cannot have it both ways.
  Like his predecessors, President Obama designated January 16 as 
Religious Freedom Day. In his proclamation, the President declared that 
``my administration will remain committed to promoting religious 
freedom both at home and across the globe. We urge every country to 
recognize religious freedom as both a religious right and a key to a 
stable, prosperous and peaceful future.'' Actions speak louder than 
words. Either religious freedom undergirds the origin and existence of 
America or it does not. Religious freedom is either a universal right 
or it is

[[Page 11977]]

not. Religious freedom is either a key to a stable and prosperous 
future or it is not.
  If America is about allowing maximum religious freedoms, as my 
colleague the senior Senator from New York once said, then it should 
continue to do so.
  It is time for this body to choose whether it will protect religious 
liberty or whether it will seek to destroy it.
  In 1993, Congress stood up to defend the free exercise of religion 
after a Supreme Court decision undermined it. The bill before us today 
would undermine the free exercise of religion after a Supreme Court 
decision defended it.
  In 1993, the free exercise of religion was offered as a solution. The 
bill before us today targets religious freedom as the problem. It 
treats certain religious beliefs as simply unworthy of recognition and 
religious exercise in general as a second- or even a third-rate value. 
I believe we can both uphold fundamental rights and find solutions to 
public policy issues.
  I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, even though we have 
differences about policy, will once again join together for the common 
good by recommitting ourselves and our Nation to the fundamental right 
of religious freedom. We have to do this. It is the first freedom 
mentioned in the Bill of Rights. One would think everybody here would 
be absolutely on the side of upholding it.
  This bill is anything but that, and I hope my colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle start to realize how important this is and vote 
against this terrible bill that has been slapped together for political 
purposes.
  I 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 Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, Republicans are on the attack once again, 
trying to put women's fundamental rights on the chopping block. I stand 
with my colleagues to fight back. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, 
Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, and 40 other Senators have stood to 
sponsor new legislation to reverse the Supreme Court's shocking 
decision in Hobby Lobby, where the Court gave corporations the power to 
deny their employees access to birth control. We will vote on this 
legislation tomorrow morning, and I urge my colleagues to pass it 
without delay.
  Right now, with millions of Americans still out of work and 
struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great 
Depression, with 40 million Americans dealing with student loans, with 
millions of people working full time at minimum wage and still living 
in poverty, with the big banks getting bigger, workers getting poorer, 
and seniors struggling to make ends meet, Republicans in Washington 
have decided that the most important thing for them to focus on is how 
to deny women access to birth control.
  I will be honest: I cannot believe we are even having a debate about 
whether employers can deny women access to birth control. Guys, this is 
2014, not 1914. Most Americans thought this was settled long, long ago. 
But for some reason Republicans keep dragging us back here over and 
over again.
  After all, the Hobby Lobby case is just the most recent battle in an 
all-out Republican assault on women's access to basic health care. In 
2012 the Republicans tried to pass the Blunt amendment, a proposal that 
would have allowed employers and insurance companies to deny women 
access to health care services based on any vague moral objection. 
Democrats said no, the President said no, and the American people said 
no to this offensive idea.
  But instead of listening to the American people, Republicans in 
Washington doubled down. Remember last year's government shutdown that 
nearly tanked our economy? That fight started with a GOP effort to hold 
the whole operation of the Federal Government hostage in order to try 
to force Democrats and the President to let employers deny their 
workers access to birth control. Well, we rejected the hostage taking. 
Democrats said no, the President said no, and the American people said 
no to this offensive idea.
  But instead of listening to the American people, Republicans turned 
to their rightwing friends on the Supreme Court, and those Justices did 
what Congress would not do, what the President would not do, and what 
the American people would not do. Those Justices decided that 
corporations have the right to ignore the law and determine for 
themselves whether their employees can access basic health care 
coverage.
  The Hobby Lobby decision is a stunning case. As Justice Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg noted in her dissent, the result of this case could be to deny 
``legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to 
contraceptive coverage that the ACA would otherwise secure.''
  The case is the first step on a slippery slope that could eventually 
allow corporations to deny health care coverage to employees for other 
medical care including immunizations that protect our children from 
deadly disease, HIV treatment that saves lives or blood transfusions 
needed in surgeries.
  The Hobby Lobby case is stunning, but not entirely surprising. Giant 
corporations and their rightwing allies fight every day in Congress to 
protect their own privileges and to bend the laws to benefit 
themselves. They devote enormous resources to the task. Sometimes we 
beat them anyway. We beat them when they tried to pass the Blunt 
amendment, and we beat them when they tried to shut down the government 
over birth control. But when corporations lose in Congress, they don't 
just give up. They know they can often turn defeat into victory if they 
can get a favorable court decision. So while they push hard on 
Congress, they also devote enormous resources to influencing the 
courts, trying to transform our judiciary from a neutral, fair and 
impartial forum into just one more rigged Washington game. Nowhere has 
the success of this strategy to rig the courts been more obvious than 
with the U.S. Supreme Court. Three well-respected legal scholars 
recently examined 20,000 Supreme Court cases from the last 65 years, 
and they listed the top 10 most procorporate Justices in that entire 
time. The results? The five conservative Justices sitting on the Court 
today were all in the top 10, and Justices Alito and Roberts are 
numbers 1 and 2.
  So it is no surprise that those five Justices banded together in the 
Hobby Lobby case to decide that corporations have more rights than the 
women who work for them. They decided that corporations are people who 
matter more than real living men and women who work hard everyday and 
who are entitled to the protection of our laws.
  Now we can fight back against this decision and against the corporate 
capture of our Federal courts. We can fight back by appointing judges 
who are fair, judges who are impartial, judges who won't show up on any 
``top 10'' list for putting a thumb on the scales in favor of big 
business. We can fight back tomorrow by passing legislation to overturn 
this terrible Supreme Court decision.
  The proposed law, called the Protect Women's Health From Corporate 
Interference Act is simple. It does not require any person, any church, 
any house of worship, any faith or any religious nonprofit to endorse 
or provide insurance coverage for contraception. It does just one 
thing: It prevents ordinary for-profit corporations from ignoring the 
law and imposing their own religious beliefs on their employees by 
refusing to provide basic health benefits that are legally required. 
That was the law before Hobby Lobby, and it should be the law again.
  Senators will have a chance to vote tomorrow, and I urge every 
Senator to do the right thing. But whatever happens, we have won this 
fight many times before, and I am confident that sooner or later we 
will win it again, because no matter how many resources the other side 
pours into this battle,

[[Page 11978]]

they will never convince Americans that their bosses should be in 
charge of their most intimate health care decisions, and they will 
never convince Americans that corporations are people whose imagined 
rights are somehow more important than the health of real living, 
breathing people.
  I have a daughter, I have granddaughters, and I will never stop 
fighting the efforts of backward-looking ideologues who want to cut 
women's access to birth control. We have lived in that world, and we 
are not going back--not ever.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.


                            Border Security

  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, according to the Border Patrol, more than 
57,000 unaccompanied children have entered the United States illegally 
this year. That number is expected to grow to 90,000 by the end of the 
year and 140,000 by the end of next year. These startling facts speak 
for themselves. Swift and dramatic action, both on the part of Congress 
and the administration is needed.
  We know why most children are coming. America offers more opportunity 
than the country from which they are fleeing. Most of these children 
hope to be reunited with a parent or a relative. Many just hope to 
blend into the United States and to stay for an indefinite period of 
time. I understand that.
  I understand the incentive to be in the United States, but we cannot 
simply allow this to continue. According to reports about a recent 
White House meeting the President had with some people concerned about 
this wave of people coming from Central America, the President said 
that sometimes there is an inherent injustice in where you are born, 
and no President can solve that. He reportedly said that Presidents 
must send the message that you just cannot show up at the border, plead 
for asylum or refugee status and hope to get it.
  The President is quoted as saying:

     . . . then anyone can come in, and it means that, 
     effectively, we don't have any kind of system. We are a 
     Nation with borders that must be enforced.

  The President is right. If the reckless journey from Central America 
or Mexico or any other country to the United States is met with, at 
worst, long stays in the United States and, at best, long stays coupled 
with family reunification, these crossings will continue. It is just 
human nature. Even if every child and every adult is ultimately 
deported 6 months or a year from now, it will be too late, for in the 
intervening months the message is: Make it to the United States and you 
can stay.
  The incentives must change. When planes full of those who crossed are 
returned, people in those countries will stop paying smugglers 
thousands of dollars to take their children north. Incentives work, and 
in this case it may be the only way.
  So what are we to do? At one point the President asked Congress for 
some legal authority. Congress should give it to him. In addition, 
Senator McCain and I will offer a bill that will hinge U.S. foreign aid 
to Central American countries on their response to this situation, 
providing for refugee processing in those countries. They will heighten 
penalties for human trafficking and it will expedite the removal of 
those who are here without a legitimate claim.
  The President did ask for funds to deal with the crisis, although he 
asked for those funds without reforms. I am pleased to say that there 
appears to be a growing consensus that any funding request in a 
supplemental bill should include substantive reforms that deal with the 
existing circumstances that we are in as well as heading off future 
impacts. In the meantime the administration has at its discretion the 
ability to dramatically stem this wave of crossings.
  I will talk about a few of the options that the President clearly has 
right now. First and foremost, the Department of Homeland Security is 
not required to release unaccompanied children after they have been 
apprehended. While requiring DHS to transfer them to Health and Human 
Services within 72 hours, the 2008 trafficking law provides flexibility 
in ``exceptional circumstances.''
  Second, the administration has at its discretion the ability to 
expedite or trim the timelines of hearings for unaccompanied children. 
For example, the President can direct the Department of Justice to not 
agree to continuances for these hearings. He should do that as well.
  Third, for children already released to HHS, the President can direct 
HHS to not place children automatically with their parents or family 
members. The 2008 trafficking protection law requires the 
administration to place children in the ``least restrictive setting'' 
in their best interest. The administration has discretion as to what 
constitutes least restrictive setting. If we acknowledge, as the 
President has, that most of these children will not be able to stay in 
the United States, why would we place them with a parent or a guardian 
only to take them from that parent or guardian months or years later? 
That, I would submit, is not in their best interest.
  I am certain that there are those who will object to these actions if 
taken by the President, but I will submit that we should do everything 
we can to ensure that another 30,000 or 60,000 or 100,000 children do 
not stream north on this dangerous journey. The real question is, What 
wouldn't we do to prevent that from happening? The current situation is 
not humane at all. It is not humane to allow these children to come 
forward this way.
  Let me be clear. For those seeking asylum, there will be many who 
will have a legitimate claim of persecution. Nobody is talking about 
shutting down the avenues to submit or to have such a claim. There will 
still be protections for genuine asylum seekers. It is best for those 
who seek refuge to do so in their own home country at an American 
embassy or consulate. That should, at best, be done in their own 
country. The legislation we will put forward will provide more 
resources for that to happen.
  Earlier this month the President's spokesman indicated that ``it's 
unlikely that most of the kids who go through this process will qualify 
for humanitarian relief, which is to say that most of them will not 
have a legal basis . . . to remain in the country.''
  Cecilia Munoz, the Director of the White House Domestic Policy 
Council, made it clear: ``If you look at the history of these kinds of 
cases and apply them to the situation, it seems very unlikely that the 
majority of these children are going to have the ability to stay in the 
United States.''
  Here is my primary concern: Despite discretion to do otherwise, the 
administration continues to provide precisely the goal of those 
crossing illegally--being allowed to enter the United States, reuniting 
with their families, and staying for an extended period of time. They 
are allowing these incentives to continue. Despite firm quotes and 
statements otherwise, the administration's response to the crisis is a 
case study in sending the wrong message.
  In his July 8 request for $3.7 billion in supplemental spending 
related to this crisis, the President stated that his administration 
would work with Congress to ``ensure that [they] have the legal 
authority'' they need, including ``providing the Secretary of Homeland 
Security additional authority to exercise discretion in processing the 
return and removal of unaccompanied children from these Central 
American countries.'' More than a week later, with the wave of children 
crossing illegally every day and increased anger pointed at the issue, 
it remains anyone's guess as to what the President is actually seeking. 
He didn't ask for any new authority in the funding request that was 
just sent up. In the days after the supplemental request was made, it 
became clear that nearly $2 billion of the funding request is for the 
Department of Health and Human Services--a department that plays no 
role in deportation and a department that the administration permits to 
place those who cross illegally with families inside the United States.
  Congress needs to do what it can to provide the statutory tools to 
address this crisis. As I mentioned earlier, the

[[Page 11979]]

senior Senator from Arizona and I will offer a bill in the coming days 
to do that. In the meantime, the President has the discretion and the 
authority to act within the law, follow the law, and offer the right 
incentives so we don't have this situation continuing as it is today. I 
encourage the President to do so.
  With that, I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). The senior Senator from New 
Jersey.


                           Iran Negotiations

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I come again to the floor to speak 
about one of our greatest national security challenges, which is a 
nuclear-armed Iran and the latest conflicting remarks coming from 
Iran's leaders.
  I will say at the outset, as I have said in the past, I support the 
administration's diplomatic efforts. I have always supported a 
bipartisan, two-track policy of diplomacy and sanctions. At the same 
time, I am convinced that we should only relieve pressure on Iran in 
exchange for very verifiable concessions that will fundamentally 
dismantle Iran's illicit nuclear program and that any deal be 
structured in such a way that alarm bells will sound from Vienna to 
Washington to Moscow and Beijing should Iran restart its program 
anytime in the next 20 or 30 years.
  I am gravely concerned by the recent remarks of Iran's Supreme 
Leader, the Ayatollah, whose views about what Iran is willing to give 
up in a deal seem to deliberately undermine the positions of Iran's 
negotiators in Vienna and clearly curtail their flexibility as we enter 
into a critical stage of the talks.
  Yesterday, Foreign Minister Zarif gave an interview that went public 
with Iran's negotiating position. Let's break down exactly what it is 
he offered. He said Iran will freeze its nuclear fuel program for 
several years in exchange for being treated like other peaceful nuclear 
nations and for sanctions relief. Let's be clear. This will leave 
19,000 centrifuges spinning in Iran. It would not, from what I can 
tell, require Iran to dismantle anything. In my view, that is not a 
starting place for an end game. It is the same obfuscation and the same 
Iranian tactics we have seen for years and decades. Iran puts offers on 
the table that appear to be concessions but in reality are designed to 
preserve Iranian illicit nuclear infrastructure and enrichment so that 
the capacity to break out and rush toward a nuclear weapon is still 
very much within reach. That is not an end game; it is a nonstarter.
  Essentially what Zarif is offering is the same concessions as what 
Iran made for the interim agreement over 6 months ago. In exchange, 
Iran gets sanction relief--except we know Iran is not like any other 
nation, and its history of cheating, lying, and evading inspections 
proves it.
  One commentator said this morning: ``So it seems that Iran is trying 
to protect its nuclear breakout capacity while trying to appear 
moderate.''
  Zarif's proposal last night is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. 
It is more moderate than the Ayatollah's outlandish demand for 190,000 
centrifuges last week, but at its core it is an offer to not give 
anything in terms of enrichment capacity and in exchange receive 
sanctions relief, and that is unacceptable.
  The Zarif proposal will extend the joint plan of action, allowing 
Iran's nuclear program to run in place subject to inspections but will 
not make a single concession--none--that would demonstrably set back 
Iran's nuclear ambitions in the long term, including no concessions on 
the number of centrifuges in the secret Fordow enrichment facility. 
Iran would get the relief it wants while retaining the infrastructure 
to quickly rebuild its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. That is 
straight out of the North Korea handbook--freeze and preserve your 
ability for a future date.
  I remind my colleagues in the Senate that in October of 1994, the 
United States and North Korea signed an agreed framework which the 
international community hoped would end the ongoing crisis over North 
Korea's nuclear program. The agreement froze the operation and 
construction of North Korea's nuclear reactors which were part of its 
covert nuclear weapons program. In exchange, the United States agreed 
to provide two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors. There 
were high hopes for the agreement. Many called it a first step in the 
full normalization of political and economic relations with North 
Korea.
  While North Korea carried out some of the measures in the agreement, 
it simultaneously continued its ballistic missile program by improving 
the range and accuracy of its missiles, and it secretly began to pursue 
a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons separate 
from the plutonium program which the agreement had frozen.
  Once again, international tensions came to a head in January of 2003 
when North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 
and following its withdrawal from the NPT, North Korea kicked out IAEA 
inspectors, restarted the nuclear reactor that had been frozen under 
the 1994 agreed framework, and began moving spent fuel rods to a 
reprocessing center that could produce plutonium.
  At the time of its withdrawal, North Korea, like Iran, said it ``had 
no intention of making nuclear weapons'' and that its nuclear 
activities ``would be confined only to power production and other 
peaceful purposes.'' Of course, as we know now, North Korea would 
conduct a nuclear test establishing its potential to build nuclear 
weapons.
  This history should serve as a warning about what could happen if we 
allow Iran to maintain a robust nuclear infrastructure.
  The fact is that Iran is simply agreeing to freeze and to temporarily 
lock the door on its nuclear weapons program as is and walk away. 
Should they later walk away from the deal, as they have in the past, 
they can simply unlock the door and continue their nuclear weapons 
program from where they are today. That is exactly what the talks--in 
my mind--were intended to avoid.
  As I stand here, there is a rush for our negotiators in Vienna and 
Secretary Kerry to go and try to save the essence of what seems to be a 
significant distance between the parties. I know our side is working in 
good faith to reach an agreement. Our terms have been on the table for 
months, and now, at the critical hour, the Supreme Leader throws a 
monkey wrench into the negotiations and even surprises his own 
negotiating team by demanding that 190,000 centrifuges remain for any 
final deal.
  At this point it is our obligation to ask some very pointed 
questions. Are Zarif and President Ruhani truly empowered to make this 
deal? Even though Zarif and Ruhani's intentions seem sincere, can we 
say the same about the ultimate decisionmaker in Tehran, Supreme Leader 
Khamenei? Does the Supreme Leader truly want a deal or are his redlines 
an attempt to undermine the negotiations?
  Secretary Kerry said this morning that ``the U.S. believes Iran has 
the right to a peaceful nuclear program under the NPT.''
  Let's remind ourselves of first principles. No country has a right to 
enrichment. They may have the ability to enrichment or a desire to 
enrich, but they do not have the right to enrich, and certainly not 
Iran given its past behavior.
  Let's remember how we reached this point. Over a period of decades, 
Iran has deceived the international community about its nuclear 
program, breaching its international commitment in what everyone agrees 
was an attempt to make Iran a nuclear weapons state or at least a 
threshold state. Experts such as those at the Institute for Science and 
International Security believe that Iran began building a secret 
uranium enrichment centrifuge facility underground at Fordow in 2006--3 
years--3 years--before it was declared to the International Atomic 
Energy Administration. Now Iran is seeking to turn the tables on the 
negotiation to again convince the international community--through 
words rather than deeds--that it seeks a peaceful nuclear energy 
program. The Supreme Leader called the idea of closing Fordow 
``laughable.'' For my colleagues, this is a facility built under a 
mountain, declared only after Iran was caught

[[Page 11980]]

cheating, and designed to withstand a military strike. It does not take 
a nuclear expert to draw the obvious conclusion about Iran's 
intentions.
  If Iran can't even agree to close the facility that is at the heart 
of its covert enrichment program, what concessions can it possibly make 
that would address international concerns? Are we supposed to take Iran 
at its word when its actions have demonstrated over years that it is 
not a good-faith actor? Are we supposed to believe that Iran wants 
190,000 centrifuges--about 171,000 more than it has right now--for 
peaceful purposes? That is truly laughable.
  Even for a country that doesn't have the world's third largest oil 
reserves--which Iran does--that would be an absurd position. Iran can--
and in fact already does--get cheaper and better nuclear fuel for the 
Bushehr reactor from Russia than it could make at home. Let me repeat 
that. It gets cheaper and better fuel from Russia for its nuclear 
reactor at the Bushehr facility than what it can make at home.
  Experts agree that centrifuges must be a part of the deal. David 
Albright, a respected former International Atomic Energy Administration 
inspector, has said for Iran's move from an interim to a final 
agreement, it would have to close the Fordow facility and remove 
between 15,000 and 16,000 of its existing 20,000 centrifuges. Even 
then, we are looking at a breakout time of about 6 to 8 months, 
depending on whether Iran has access to uranium enriched to just 3.5 
percent or access to 20-percent enriched uranium.
  Dennis Ross, one of America's preeminent diplomats and foreign policy 
analysts, who has served under both Democratic and Republican 
Presidents, has said Iran should retain no more than 10 percent of its 
centrifuges. That is no more than 2,000.
  So maybe the comments we have heard from the Supreme Leader were, as 
some analysts have suggested, an effort by the Supreme Leader to 
superimpose limitations on the negotiating team so at some point they 
would be free to say these issues are out of their hands, in the hope 
of somehow forcing a better deal this week in Vienna. So I suggest that 
we are either seeing a not so clever game of good cop-bad cop or Iran's 
negotiators in Vienna have done a poor job of communicating what their 
boss believes is the bottom line at the negotiating table or maybe we 
just haven't been listening to what we don't want to hear. From the 
onset of the talks, Iran's Foreign Minister Zarif and President Rouhani 
have said they would not dismantle any centrifuges. President Rouhani 
was adamant in an interview on CNN that Iran would not be dismantling 
its centrifuges.
  Let me quote from that interview with Mr. Zakaria.
  President Rouhani:

       We are determined to provide for the nuclear fuel of such 
     plants inside the country, at the hands of local Iranian 
     scientists. We are going to follow on this path.

  Zakaria said:

       So there will be no destruction of centrifuges, of existing 
     centrifuges?

  President Rouhani said:

       No, no, not at all.

  Let's remember that the onus in these talks is on Iran, not the P5+1. 
Iran is the party at fault. Iran is the party that came to these talks 
with unclean hands. Iran is the party that has been consistently and 
overwhelmingly rebuffed by the United Nations and the international 
community for its nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism, the 
subject of six U.N. Security Council resolutions and a multitude of 
sanctions regimes.
  Just last week the U.S. courts agreed to a landmark payment of $1.7 
billion to the families of Iranian terror victims, including families 
of the 241 servicemembers who died in the bombing of the Marine Corps 
barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983--31 years ago--and 19 who died in 
the Khobar Towers bombing in eastern Saudi Arabia in 1996--both 
bombings perpetrated by Iran. Iran's duplicity has been going on for 
decades.
  So who is the bad guy here? Now commentators may choose to see the 
U.S. Congress as the antagonist here, but I suggest they look across 
the table and decide whether they want to take a deal with Iran on a 
nod and a handshake. In my view, through its history, through its 
actions, through its false words and deeds for decades, Iran has 
forgone the ability for us to shake on a deal that freezes their 
program. The only option on the table can be a long-term deal that 
dismantles Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program--a deal that clearly 
provides for a long-term verification, inspection, and enforcement 
regime, and incentives for compliance in the form of sanctions relief--
based on Iranian actions that are verifiable, not on what Iran claims 
to be the truth.
  The fact is, from my perspective, there is no sanctions relief 
signing bonus. If Iran wants relief from sanctions, then it needs to 
tangibly demonstrate to the world it is giving up its quest for nuclear 
weapons--period.
  Let's remember that, although none of us in this Chamber are at the 
negotiating table, we have a tremendous stake in the outcome. Without 
Congress's bipartisan action on a clear sanctions regime, there would 
have been no talks and we would not even have had the hope of ending 
Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. As a separate and coequal branch of 
government representing the American people, Congress has an obligation 
to provide oversight and a duty to express our views of what a 
comprehensive deal should look like. I will continue to come to this 
floor to express my views and my concerns given what we have heard and 
seen in the past from Iran.
  Iran has a history of duplicity with respect to its nuclear program, 
using past negotiations to cover advances in its nuclear program. And 
let's not forget that President Rouhani, as the former negotiator for 
Iran, said, in no uncertain terms:

       The day that we invited the three European ministers to the 
     talks, only 10 centrifuges were spinning at Natanz. We could 
     not produce one gram of U4 or U6. We did not have the heavy 
     water production. We could not produce yellowcake. Our total 
     production of centrifuges inside the country was 150. We 
     wanted to complete all of these. We needed time. We did not 
     stop. We completed the program.

  That is his quote.
  The simple truth is he admitted to deceiving the West.
  Everyone knows my history on this issue. Everyone knows where I 
stand. It is the same place I have always stood. For 20 years I have 
worked on Iran's nuclear issues, starting when I was a junior Member of 
the House, pressing for sanctions to prevent Iran from building the 
Bushehr nuclear powerplant and to halt IAEA support for Iranian mining 
and enrichment programs. For a decade I was told that my concern had no 
basis, that Iran would never be able to bring the Bushehr plant on 
line, and that Iran's activities were not a concern.
  Well, history has shown those assessments about Iran's abilities and 
intentions were simply wrong. The fact is Iran's nuclear aspirations 
have been a long and deliberate process. They did not materialize 
overnight, and they will not end simply with a good word and a 
handshake. We need verification.
  If Iran's nuclear weapons capability is frozen rather than largely 
dismantled, they will remain at the threshold of becoming a declared 
nuclear State should they choose to start again, because nothing will 
have changed if nothing is dismantled.
  Make no mistake. Iran views developing a nuclear capability as 
fundamental to its existence. It has seen the development of nuclear 
weapons as part of a regional hegemonic strategy to make Tehran the 
center of power throughout the region. That is why our allies and 
partners in the region--not just Israelis, but the Emiratis and the 
Saudis--are so skeptical and so concerned about having a leak-proof 
deal. Quite simply, our allies and partners do not trust Iranian 
leaders, nor do they believe that Iran has any intention of verifiably 
ending its nuclear weapons program.
  So while I welcome diplomatic efforts as what we have worked toward 
and I share the hope that the administration can achieve a final 
comprehensive agreement that eliminates this threat to global peace and 
security, for the U.S. Congress to support the relief that Iran is 
looking for, we will need a deal that doesn't just freeze Iran's 
nuclear weapons program, but a deal--

[[Page 11981]]

demonstrated through verifiable action by Iran over years--that in fact 
turns back the clock and makes the world a safer place.
  Let me say the fact is there are those who have created a false 
narrative over the last 6 months that now seems to be self-
perpetuating, that anyone who expresses an opinion different than the 
desire to have a deal--almost a deal at any cost--is a warmonger. For 
those who now say, Well, if we don't have a deal, then what? I would 
remind them of what the administration has said time and time again: No 
deal is better than a bad deal. I agree with that sentiment. But I am 
concerned that there are forces that would accept a deal even if it is 
a bad deal. This doesn't serve the interests of the negotiators at the 
table in Vienna, and it doesn't serve the interests of the American 
people who want to ensure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon, and 
that any deal permanently eliminates the possibility that Iran could 
develop a nuclear weapon that threatens the international order. One 
mistake is all it takes.
  At the end of the day, keeping the pressure on Iran to completely 
satisfy the United Nations and the international community's demands to 
halt and reverse its illicit nuclear activities is the best way to 
avoid war in the first place.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I wish to commend the senior Senator from 
New Jersey for the powerful remarks he has just given about the threat 
posed both to the United States and to the world of Iran acquiring 
nuclear weapons capabilities. I wish to commend the Senator from New 
Jersey for his leadership, along with Senator Mark Kirk, on Iran 
sanctions legislation--legislation that enjoys wide bipartisan 
support--and indeed that would have passed into law months ago were it 
not for the majority leader of this Chamber refusing to allow a vote on 
it. Even to this day, we should vote on Kirk-Menendez, because a 
substantial majority of Members of this body and of the House of 
Representatives would pass this legislation to make clear what the 
senior Senator from New Jersey just made clear: that no deal is not 
nearly as bad as a bad deal, which all of us fear we are on the verge 
of entering into in Vienna.


                      Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

  I rise today to address the misguided foreign policy of the Obama 
administration, which is wreaking catastrophic consequences across the 
globe. The Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy has profoundly undermined 
our national security, along with that of our friend and ally, the 
Nation of Israel.
  Just last week the White House coordinator for the Middle East, 
Phillip Gordon, gave an astonishing speech at an international 
conference from Tel Aviv to try yet again to revive the Israeli-
Palestinian peace process. In his remarks, Mr. Gordon criticized Israel 
for the failure of the most recent round of attacks, urging yet further 
concessions to the Palestinians. He asserted that the United States, as 
Israel's ``greatest defender and closest friend,'' had the obligation 
to ask ``fundamental questions'' about Israel's very viability as a 
democratic Jewish State after the breakdown of negotiations.
  I am not sure about the role Mr. Gordon suggests friends should play, 
but undermining our allies is not one of them.
  Mr. Gordon threatened that America would not be able to prevent the 
international isolation of Israel--what Secretary of State John Kerry 
shockingly recently referred to as Israel becoming an ``apartheid'' 
state--if Israel did not return to the table on terms he found 
acceptable.
  Mr. Gordon warned that the clock is ticking and that Israel should 
not take for granted the Palestinian Authority's willingness to 
negotiate. He claimed that the administration's negotiations with Iran 
had halted that country's nuclear program and made Israel safer.
  Mr. Gordon's comments are belied by the facts given that, No. 1, this 
conference took place under the direct threat of rocket attack from the 
Palestinian-sanctioned terrorist group Hamas--indeed, delegates 
literally had to, at one point, scatter for shelter--given that, No. 2, 
these rockets were fired by the very same terrorist actors who abducted 
and then brutally murdered three Jewish boys 3 weeks ago near Hebron, 
and given that, No. 3, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan announced just days 
later that it was working closely with Iran in its attacks on Israel, 
declaring Hamas's ``connection with Hezbollah and Iran is much stronger 
today than what people tend to think.''
  Given these facts, Mr. Gordon's remarks seem utterly detached from 
reality.
  Even more disturbing, the speech did not take place in a vacuum but, 
rather, was part of a coordinated messaging effort. It was accompanied 
by an op-ed by President Obama in Ha'aretz, which sponsored the 
conference, repeating Mr. Gordon's main themes. Taken as a whole, these 
statements demonstrate that the administration's longstanding policy of 
pressuring Israel into a peace deal with the Palestinians remains 
unchanged by the harsh reality in which Israel finds herself.
  In the hopes of demonstrating that there are some in the U.S. 
Government who do not share this policy, I would like to offer an 
alternative approach.
  As Israel's greatest partner and ally, the United States has 
weathered with Israel relentless attacks from terrorist organizations 
like Hamas and Hezbollah, belligerents from rogue nations like Iran, 
and unremitting hostility from international organizations like the 
United Nations.
  As such, we are veritable brothers in arms--and who better than a 
brother to tell the truth about you?
  The truth is that Israel is the one country in the Middle East that 
fully shares America's fundamental values and interests.
  The truth is that Israel is a vibrant, inclusive democracy that 
respects the rights of its citizens--Jewish and Arab alike.
  The truth is that Israel has for more than six decades wanted nothing 
more than peace and has repeatedly made significant concessions to 
achieve it.
  The truth is that Israel can never be isolated on the international 
stage because the United States, with or without the President, will 
continue to stand with Israel.
  And the truth is that for the United States to abandon Israel would 
be to abandon the very moral principles that have made our Nation 
exceptional.
  These basic truths should inform any discussion of the current 
conflict taking place between Israel and the Palestinians.
  We also need to recognize that the circumstances leading to the 2012 
cease-fire between Hamas and Israel are not the circumstances in which 
we find ourselves today, and that the terms of that agreement have 
proven inadequate to the current reality. Both Israel and the United 
States had hoped that the relative calm following the 2012 cease-fire 
would lead to peace and that the increasing prosperity of the West Bank 
would lead the Palestinians to renounce war. Sadly, those hopes proved 
illusory. That cease-fire did not change the fact that the Palestinians 
have remained implacably hostile and, indeed, their government is 
actively indoctrinating yet another generation in vicious genocidal 
hatred toward Israel and the West.
  That simmering hatred burst into flame last month when three innocent 
teenagers--Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrah--were 
kidnapped and murdered by Hamas agents. In a stark reminder of how 
intertwined our nations are, Naftali was a duel Israel-American 
citizen. This was a vicious attack against innocent Jews, regardless of 
their nationality, and Americans as well as Israelis were considered 
legitimate targets.
  There is a temptation to refer to the murder of three teenagers as a 
senseless tragedy that should be handled by law enforcement. But this 
attack was nothing of the sort. It was a terrorist atrocity coldly 
plotted and executed by vicious killers whose only motivation was to 
murder teenage Jews regardless of their citizenship, and whose larger

[[Page 11982]]

mission is the annihilation first of Israel and then of the United 
States.
  It was therefore my privilege last week to file S. 2577, a bill that 
would direct the Secretary of State to offer a reward of up to $5 
million for the capture or killing of Naftali's killers--and by 
extension those of Gilad and Eyal as well.
  No one doubts Israel's ability to handle this matter on her own, but 
the Hamas terrorists need to be perfectly clear that the United States 
understands that kidnapping and murdering a U.S. citizen is an attack 
on us as well and we will actively support Israel's response to this 
atrocity.
  I am gratified by the support this bill has gotten in the Senate from 
both sides of the aisle and, in particular, I am gratified that this 
bill is cosponsored by the senior Senator from New Jersey, the chairman 
of the Foreign Relations Committee, and I look forward to that 
committee's markup of the bill this week and then, hopefully, to its 
passage through both Houses of Congress. There is also a bipartisan 
version of this bill in the House of Representatives led by 
Representative Doug Lamborn of Colorado and Representative Brad Sherman 
of California.
  Following the discovery of the murdered teens, the Israeli Government 
has moved decisively against Hamas in a just and appropriate action to 
both bring the terrorists responsible to justice and to degrade Hamas's 
capability to launch further attacks.
  Now is not the moment to suggest that Israel open itself to further 
terrorist attack by, for example, withdrawing from the West Bank.
  Now is not the moment to urge restraint or to try to broker yet 
another temporary cease-fire that does not stop the threat of Hamas 
murdering innocent civilians. Now is the moment to support Israel in 
the effort to eliminate the intolerable threat of Hamas, and given 
Hamas's commitment to terrorist violence, the Israeli response is by 
necessity military and it must be decisive.
  This conflict is not of Israel's choice; it is Hamas's choice, and to 
argue that there is some sort of viable diplomatic alternative, as Mr. 
Gordon and President Obama did last week, is denying the truth.
  In addition to the current military offensive, there are a number of 
important long-term steps that the Government of Israel has taken to 
reduce the threat of terrorist attacks and so to secure the civilian 
population. One is the security barrier in the West Bank initiated by 
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during the second intifada. Necessitated by 
waves of Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israel, this fence was 
immediately decried as an abuse of the Palestinian people and, indeed, 
declared illegal by the International Court of Justice. But since the 
fencing began, attacks have declined by 90 percent--90 percent. No 
apology should be required for securing a nation's border and for 
saving innocent civilian lives.
  The Israeli missile defense system that protects against short-range 
rockets coming out of Gaza is an equally remarkable success story. In 
partnership with the United States, Israel has conceived, designed, and 
implemented Iron Dome, which enjoyed a remarkable 87 percent success 
rate during the 2012 operation Pillar of Defense and to all appearances 
is exceeding that performance in this most recent action. Iron Dome has 
dramatically changed Israel's ability to determine the future on its 
own terms, not because the Palestinians have in any way modified their 
eagerness to fire rockets at their neighbors in an attempt to murder 
innocent civilians but, rather, because the Israelis now have a system 
capable of neutralizing the vast majority of those rockets and 
protecting the hospitals and schools and homes that the Palestinians 
seek to destroy.
  President Obama wrote in his Ha'aretz op-ed that ``[w]hile walls and 
missile defense systems can help protect against some threats, true 
safety will only come with a comprehensive negotiated settlement.'' But 
that can only be true when both sides genuinely seek peaceful 
coexistence, which at this time, sadly, the Palestinians do not. 
Projects like the security barrier and Iron Dome may well be, both 
practically and philosophically, Israel's only real option. That the 
Israel response to hostility out of the territories has been primarily 
defensive is an important illustration of their preferred approach to 
this problem, which is not to attack or destroy but, rather, to protect 
and defend.
  This posture illustrates the fundamental difference between the 
Israelis, who have pledged they will stop fighting when the 
Palestinians stop fighting, and the Palestinians who swear they will 
stop fighting only when Israel ceases to exist. As Prime Minister 
Netanyahu recently said: Israel uses missiles to protect its citizens; 
whereas Hamas uses its citizens to protect its missiles.
  We must reject any assertion of moral equivalence between the 
Palestinians who seek to attack Israel and the Israelis who are trying 
to defend themselves from terrorist attack.
  Nowhere was the contrast between these two sides more clear than in 
the two investigations that are taking place into the murders that 
occurred in Israel in recent weeks. After the bodies of Naftali, Gilad, 
and Eyal were discovered, an Arab teen, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was 
tragically, savagely murdered by Jewish extremists in a perverted 
attempt at retribution. Prime Minister Netanyahu rightly, quickly, and 
emphatically condemned this act and he called the victim's father 
personally to offer condolences. Naftali's mother Rachael stated her 
sympathy publicly saying:

       No mother or father [should] go through what we are going 
     through now. We share the pain of the parents of Muhammad Abu 
     Khdeir. . . . Even in the depth of the mourning over our son, 
     it is hard for me to describe how distressed we were over the 
     outrage that happened in Jerusalem--the shedding of innocent 
     blood is against morality, it is against the Torah and 
     Judaism, it is against the basis of our life in this country. 
     The murderers of our children, who ever sent them, who ever 
     helped them and who ever incited toward that murder--will all 
     be brought to justice, but it will be them, and no innocent 
     people, it will be done [by] the government, the police, the 
     justice department and not by vigilantes.

  Contrast Racheal Fraenkel's powerful statement with that of the 
mother of one of the Hamas suspects in Naftali's abduction and murder, 
who while the boys were still missing and before their executed bodies 
had been discovered, publicly announced: ``They're throwing the guilt 
on him by accusing him of kidnapping. If he truly did it--I'll be proud 
of him until my final day . . . If he did the kidnapping, I'll be proud 
of him. I raised my children on the knees of the religion, they are 
religious guys, honest and clean-handed, and their goal is to bring the 
victory of Islam.''
  Contrast those two statements. One is serious law enforcement 
responding to the wrongful murder of a teenager. The other is a society 
that celebrates, that glorifies, that lionizes vicious criminals who 
kidnap and murder innocent teenagers. Further highlighting the contrast 
is the fact that the murderers of Mohammed Abu Khdeir were apprehended 
in less than a week. The Israeli police moved and moved expeditiously.
  Almost a month after the abduction of Naftali, Gilad and Eyal, their 
Hamas murderers are still at large because they are being protected by 
those who consider them heroes rather than terrorists. When Mr. Gordon 
asserted in his speech that Israel's ``military control of another 
people,'' for ``recurring instability,'' and for ``embolden[ing] 
extremists'' were to blame for the regions problems, he ignored the 
facts that the Palestinian Authority bears the real responsibility for 
the crisis by including Hamas in their so-called ``unity government,'' 
and then urging the international community to officially sanction this 
deal with the devil.
  This should not be surprising as the PA is headed by Mahmoud Abbas, a 
Holocaust denier who was Yasser Arafat's right-hand man for 3 decades. 
Ever since Arafat and Abbas were given autonomy to run the Palestinian 
territories 20 years ago through the Oslo Accords, they have used that 
power to radicalize their population and to harden opposition to the 
very idea of peaceful existence with the Jewish State of Israel.

[[Page 11983]]

  Palestinian children are bombarded with heavy-handed propaganda 
praising the virtues of suicide bombers and other mass murderers. 
Sesame Street-style puppets and cartoon characters are horrifically 
used to encourage children to grow up to become terrorists. Yet 
President Obama hails President Abbas as a man who can help broker a 
peace deal. Phillip Gordon called him in his speech last week a 
``reliable partner'' for peace. Holocaust deniers are not reliable 
partners. Leaders who incite hatred and bigotry and the murder of 
innocent children are not reliable partners.
  Just 2 months ago I was back in the nation of Israel. I traveled to 
the north of Israel, to the Ziv hospital, a hospital in the north of 
Israel that has treated over 1,000 Syrians wounded in the horrific 
civil war waging in that country. I met with those Israeli physicians 
and nurses as they described how they have given over $8 million in 
free medical care, uncompensated.
  One person in particular I spoke with there was a social worker who 
described the shock and trauma of young children. Imagine, you are a 
little boy, you are a little girl in Syria. You go to bed in your 
bedroom. A bomb, a missile, a mortar comes through the ceiling and 
explodes. When you awake, you have been horrifically wounded. You find 
yourself in the nation of Israel in a hospital surrounded by Israeli 
doctors and nurses.
  What this social worker told us was that as horrifying as being the 
victim of terrorism, as horrifying as some of these little boys or 
girls discovering limbs of their body had been blown off, that 
consistently the greatest terror of these children was finding 
themselves in Israel because their entire time they had been told that 
Israel was the devil. This social worker who is fluent in Arabic would 
spend time talking and reassuring these children and comforting them, 
because they were sure horrible things would happen to them.
  Why were they sure of this? Because they had been taught those lies 
from the moment they could learn. One Israeli physician described to me 
a comment that a Syrian woman made to her. She said: My entire life the 
Army that I had been told was there to protect me--now they are trying 
to kill me. My entire life the Army I had been told wanted to kill me--
now they are the only people protecting me and my family.
  We will not see peace between Israel and the Palestinians until the 
Palestinian Government stops incitement, stops systematically training 
its children to hate and to kill. Neither Hamas nor its partner, the 
Palestinian Authority, has displayed any interest in peace. The so-
called Hamas-affiliated technocrats that Abbas has embraced have done 
nothing to curb Hamas's violence, as missiles continue to rain down on 
innocent civilians in Israel or even to express sympathy for the 
murdered Jewish teenagers. Even that is a bridge too far given the 
hatred that the Palestinian Government promotes.
  The incessant campaign of incitement carried but out by the PA lays 
bear the myth that Abbas is in any way a moderate or possesses any real 
desire for peace with the Jewish state. In his speech, Mr. Gordon 
asserted that ``Israel should not take for granted the opportunity to 
negotiate peace with President Abbas, who has shown time and again that 
he is committed to nonviolence and coexistence with Israel.'' How can 
any rational sentient person utter that sentence--that Mr. Abbas has 
shown time and again that he is committed to nonviolence and 
coexistence with Israel, while he partners with Hamas, a terrorist 
organization that is raining rockets on Israel as we speak, when he is 
directly responsible for a pattern of incitement that is training young 
Palestinians in vicious, racial bigotry and hatred, that is celebrating 
murderers and kidnappers as heroes and martyrs?
  Anyone who utters a statement like Mr. Gordon uttered is being 
willfully blind to the facts on the ground. Given that it was Mr. 
Abbas, not Israel, who accepted Hamas into the PA's Government, the 
burden should be on the PA, not Israel, to unequivocally condemn not 
only Hamas but also their fellow terrorist groups, the Islamic Jihad 
and Abbas' own Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
  The PA should not take for granted the limitless patience, not only 
of Israel but also the United States, and, indeed, any responsible 
members of the civilized world for the legitimization of these 
terrorist groups.
  While the PA harbors Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs 
Brigade or any other terrorist group and supports their vicious 
activity, it should forfeit its position as a legitimate negotiating 
partner with Israel. It is the height of delusion to suggest that 
Israel should accommodate the Palestinian Authority with any further 
security concessions until this activity stops.
  While the PA harbors Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs 
Brigade or any other terrorist groups, and supports their vicious 
activity, it should forfeit any and all material support from the 
taxpayers of the United States--not one penny. Only when the PA takes 
significant and affirmative steps to stop the incitement, eradicate 
terrorism, and demonstrate its leadership ability to honor their 
pledged commitments in the past, including the Oslo Accords, and 
affirms Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state should this aid be 
reconsidered.
  It must also be recognized that Hamas is not acting alone in the 
current crisis. In an alarming escalation of the rocket attacks out of 
Gaza, Hamas militants recently fired an M-302 type rocket an 
unprecedented 70 miles north, some 30 miles north of Tel Aviv, meaning 
that now 6 million Israelis are vulnerable to the rocket attacks.
  Israel has intercepted a shipment of these weapons bound for Gaza 
from Iran earlier this year. It now appears that some of them have 
gotten through by other means. As Osama Hamdan's celebrating their 
close collaboration demonstrates, neither Hamas nor Iran is even trying 
to hide the connection. In the face of this blatant hostility from the 
Islamic Republic of Iran, it seems the height of foolishness for the 
United States to be participating in nuclear negotiations with Tehran 
at this time. Iran's leaders are actively engaged in inciting and 
supplying violent terrorists. Indeed, Iran is the chief state sponsor 
of terrorism on the globe today.
  Our focus should be on thwarting Iran's behavior in Gaza and across 
the world, not in engaging in diplomatic niceties over Chardonnay in 
Vienna. Given Iran's ongoing pattern of arming Hamas with increasingly 
sophisticated weapons, it is simply unacceptable to risk their 
achieving nuclear capability by exploiting the eagerness--the utterly 
unexplainable eagerness--of the Obama administration to get a deal--any 
deal--any deal at all it seems--by the July 20, 2014, deadline.
  We need to recognize that the arbitrary decision to relax sanctions 
and to engage in 6 months of negotiations under the joint plan of 
action last year was a historic mistake. We need to dramatically 
reverse course, and we should immediately reimpose sanctions until Iran 
makes fundamental concessions by ceasing all uranium enrichment, 
handing over its stockpiles of enriched uranium, and destroying its 
19,000 centrifuges.
  The Obama, Clinton, Kerry foreign policy is setting the stage for 
Iran to acquire nuclear weapon capability. If Iran acquires that 
capability, it will pose a grave if not mortal threat to the nation of 
Israel and to the United States. The strategy of the Obama 
administration--relaxing sanctions first and then hoping to get some 
concessions later--is putting the proverbial cart before the horse.
  You do not negotiate with bullies and tyrants by conceding everything 
at the outset and then hoping for good faith. Instead, we should 
reimpose those sanctions and additionally, as a further condition, we 
should demand that Iran stop its state sponsorship of terrorist attacks 
against our allies. Only then should Iran see a relaxation of 
sanctions.
  In the coming days, I will be filing legislation which will do 
exactly that: reimpose strong sanctions on Iran immediately, strengthen 
those sanctions, include an enforcement mechanism to ensure that these 
measures are implemented, and call for the dismantling of

[[Page 11984]]

Iran's nuclear program, which should be the only path to relaxing 
sanctions in the future.
  This legislation will lay out a clear path that Iran can follow to 
evade the sanctions: Simply behave in good faith and stop its 
relentless march towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability.
  The connection between Hamas and Iran is a sobering reminder of a 
larger context in which the events of the past month have taken place. 
They are not an isolated local issue that could be managed if only 
Israel would act with restraint. Both the United States and Israel want 
the Palestinian people to have a secure and prosperous future free from 
the corrosive hatred that has so far prevented them from thriving. But 
as has been demonstrated time and time again, the simple truth is that 
concessions from Israel are not going to alleviate that hatred. The 
truth is that aid from the United States is not going to alleviate that 
hatred. The truth is that even the establishment of a Palestinian State 
would not alleviate that hatred while the avowed policy of the 
Palestinian Government is the destruction of Israel.
  Only when the Palestinians take it upon themselves to embrace their 
neighbors and to eradicate terrorist violence from their society can a 
real and just peace be possible. Until then, there should be no 
question of the firm solidarity of the United States with Israel in the 
mutual defense of our fundamental values and interests. This is nothing 
less than the defense of our very exceptionalism as a nation--that same 
exceptionalism fueled by those God-given rights of life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness to which Israel aspires.
  Writing in the New York Times last September, Russian President 
Vladimir Putin warned that it is ``extremely dangerous to encourage 
people to see themselves as exceptional.''
  In a very odd echo of President Putin's sentiment, Secretary Kerry 
said just today, in Vienna, that hearing politicians talk about 
American exceptionalism makes him quite uptight because it is ``in-
your-face'' and so might offend other nations. Secretary Kerry should 
know, as President Putin clearly fears, it is indeed discomforting for 
bullies and tyrants such as Hamas and their Iranian sponsors to see 
free people boldly assert their exceptionalism. Indeed, in modern 
history it has been dangerous for totalitarian despots when the 
American people rise and defend our exceptionalism.
  I would encourage Secretary Kerry to unambiguously explain American 
exceptionalism to his colleagues across the negotiating table. They 
might benefit from hearing that one of the most exceptional things 
about America is that we will robustly support our allies when they are 
engaged with the radical terrorist enemy that targets us both.
  It is not enough, as Mr. Gordon seems to think sufficient, to ``fight 
for it [Israel] every day in the United Nations.'' We shouldn't just 
``have Israel's back.'' We should be proud to stand beside Israel, to 
make sure that both Hamas and Iran know that the United States is ready 
to provide whatever moral support or military resupply Israel might 
need.
  It is true we might risk a little of the criticism from the 
international community that seems to be of such concern to Mr. Gordon 
and to President Obama, but the United Nations should be the least of 
our worries at this point.
  In any event, threats of Israel finding herself isolated--threats 
sadly emanating, in part, from the administration of this government--
appear empty, as many of our closest friends, including Canada, Great 
Britain, France, and Germany, have spoken out in the strongest of terms 
supporting Israel's right to self-defense.
  I add my voice to theirs and urge President Obama to reconsider the 
counterproductive policies laid out by Mr. Gordon last week. The White 
House should explicitly disavow Mr. Gordon's misguided speech, 
haranguing, and attacking our friend and ally in the nation of Israel.
  A negotiated settlement is not an absolute prerequisite to Israel's 
security, as the administration has claimed but, rather, establishing 
Israel's security may be the only way to eventually reach any such 
settlement. Israel's fight against radical Islamic terrorism and by 
extension the radical Iranian regime that supports it is our fight as 
well.
  There is a reason they call Israel the little Satan and America the 
great Satan. This menace does not discriminate between Israelis and 
Americans, and it cannot be placated or appeased even by the deftist 
diplomacy. It must be diligently defended against and at times, when 
necessary, it must be directly confronted.
  This is difficult, dangerous work that Israel's Government and the 
brave men and women who serve in its Armed Forces are doing right now 
for the sake of both nations. I hope and I pray for their continuing 
success as America stands, unashamedly, alongside the nation of Israel.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. I rise to describe my concerns with the recent U.S. 
Supreme Court ruling of the Hobby Lobby case and also to describe my 
support for the Murray-Udall legislation which I am cosponsoring and 
which we will act on later this week.
  First, just a word about one item in the case that is not my main 
concern but is worthy of a passing comment; that is, whether a 
corporation can have religious rights.
  Of course, individuals can have religious rights. Churches can have 
religious rights. Religiously affiliated organizations have religious 
rights. That has been recognized often. But do corporations have 
religious rights?
  I would argue that the Supreme Court's decision in Hobby Lobby that 
they do is sort of fundamentally at odds with what notion a corporation 
is. Corporations exist for many reasons, but fundamentally the core of 
a corporation is the creation of a fictional entity that is supposed to 
stand apart from the individual owners. That fictional entity has 
rights and responsibilities that are different than the rights and 
responsibilities of the owners. In fact, we create the corporate forum 
to protect the individual owners. The individual owners, once a 
corporate forum is created, as you know, are generally protected 
against legal liability. A corporation's actions, if they are illegal, 
can only be held against the corporation and except in very rare 
instances the individuals who own the corporation are free from the 
liability that might flow from a corporation's acts.
  So the basic question is, if individuals decide to form a corporation 
to distance themselves and to protect themselves from liability for a 
cooperation's acts, how can they also presume to exercise their 
religious viewpoints--their personal, intimate, religious viewpoints--
through the very form of the corporation? It is allowing the owners to 
have it both ways--complete protection from legal liability but 
continued ability to exercise their personal and intimate religious 
viewpoints through the corporate forum.
  I think the notion of corporate religious freedom is almost an 
oxymoron. The statute at question in the Supreme Court case, the RFRA 
statute, refers to the sincerely held religious beliefs of a person.
  What are the sincerely held religious beliefs of a person of the 
corporation under the corporate charter that would be granted by the 
States? In order to determine that, should we inquire in this instance, 
for example, whether the families of the owners ever use contraception? 
If in fact they did, would that undermine a claim that they have a 
sincerely held religious belief against contraception?
  What if it could be shown that the owners invested in stocks in 
companies that produced contraception, would that undermine the claim 
that a corporation has a sincerely held religious belief against 
contraception? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I think 
the mere raising of the questions demonstrates again that the notion of 
a corporation exercising religious beliefs is highly suspect.
  But I don't think the Hobby Lobby case was about religious freedom. I 
read the opinion. I practiced law, including constitutional law for 17 
years.

[[Page 11985]]

I have read the opinion. I don't think this is a case about religious 
freedom.
  I think the opinion in the Hobby Lobby case is, instead, part of an 
anticontraception movement where the political goal is not just to 
encourage women or families to not use contraception but instead it is 
geared toward the reduction of social access to contraception for all.
  This isn't a case about religious freedom. It is a case that is very 
focused on attempts to reduce access to contraception throughout 
American society.
  The Court does something in the opinion that is fascinating. There is 
a phrase--I am not a poker player, but there is a phrase that if you 
play a lot of poker, a poker player should watch for their tell. If 
they reveal by knocking on the table or something that, oh, well, they 
are bluffing now, you watch for the tell. I think the Hobby Lobby 
majority opinion has a tell that tells us this case is not about 
religious freedom.
  In response to a notion raised in the dissent: Well, hold on a 
second. If you allow this corporation to deny coverage for 
contraception because it has a sincerely held religious belief against 
contraception, there are other religions and other corporations that 
might have a sincerely held religious belief against transfusion. That 
is a sincere belief of certain religions commonly practiced in America; 
against vaccination, that is a sincerely held religious belief in 
certain religions in America. There are other sincerely held religious 
beliefs, but the majority in this opinion says: Oh, don't worry. This 
is just about contraception. You don't need to worry that the rationale 
in this case would be used to allow an employer to exclude vaccination 
or to exclude transfusions.
  If those are religious beliefs every bit as sincere as some who think 
contraception is bad, why wouldn't this ruling apply to those kinds of 
coverage?
  The fact that the Supreme Court took such care in the majority 
opinion to say: Don't worry. It is not going to apply to that, tells me 
this is not a case about religious freedom. Because if it were a case 
about religious freedom, a sincerely held religious belief about 
transfusions or vaccinations would be equally implicated by this case. 
The Court instead is very clearly telling people: Don't worry. You 
don't need to worry about this stuff.
  So it is not about religious freedom. I read this case as a very 
candid admission that what the case is truly about is contraception 
access.
  There is an unfortunate legal movement in this country--that is kind 
of surprising--where the focus is to deny women access to 
contraception, even though access to contraception has been 
constitutionally protected in this country since 1967, nearly 50 years.
  I am stunned. I am reluctant as a lawyer to criticize court opinions. 
Lawyers always have different points of view. You always have to give 
some latitude that the court might decide something in a different way 
than you think. But I am stunned to see in the rationale expressed by 
the majority that the Court is joining an ideological, anti-access 
movement.
  Contraception access is important to women, it is important to 
families, and it is important to society. For women, contraception is 
important not only surrounding the planning of pregnancy but the 
hormones in contraception are often prescribed for all manner of other 
conditions, some related to pregnancy and reproduction and some 
unconnected to pregnancy and reproduction. The access to contraception 
is critically important, and that is why the panel that looked at 
implementing the Affordable Care Act found that contraception was an 
important active goal of prevention. Prevention is good. Contraception 
is part of prevention.
  Contraception is also costly. So when a company strips that coverage 
from employees and says, ``You can just buy it yourself if you want,'' 
let's be clear. That is not a minor expense, especially in a time where 
wages have been stagnant. It is a significant expense, and the notion 
that coverage would be stripped away from thousands and thousands of 
employees is not a minor burden at all, it is a significant burden on 
their lives.
  Contraception is not only important for women, it is important for 
society. Contraception and the access to contraception are achieving 
important social goals. From 2008 to 2011, in 3 years, the number of 
abortions in the United States fell by 13 percent, and teen pregnancy 
in this Nation has been falling steadily since 1991. Why are both of 
these things happening? Those who study these laudable trends conclude 
that access to contraception is one of the main reasons abortion is 
falling and that teen pregnancy is falling.
  It would seem those are laudable trends that we would want to 
continue and that access to contraception therefore is very important, 
but the Court instead finds otherwise.
  I want to conclude and say I don't think this is a case about 
religious freedom. I think the Court has strangely joined an 
anticontraception ideological crusade. But I want to say a word about 
religious freedom. It is critically important. I am a lifelong 
Catholic. I served as a missionary with Jesuit missionaries in 1981. I 
am a Virginian, and it was a Virginian, James Madison, who wrote the 
draft of the Constitution, including the First Amendment, the Bill of 
Rights that protects our rights to religious freedom.
  Gary Wills, the great American historian, said, ``Every wonderful 
idea in the American Constitution was already part of somebody else's 
Constitution or laws.'' Our drafters did a great job of finding the 
best and putting it in. But there was only one unique provision in the 
American Constitution that wasn't part of any organic law before us and 
that was freedom of religion. Jefferson wrote it into Virginia law, the 
Statute of Religious Freedom, in 1780. The basic idea was no one can be 
punished or preferred for their choice of worship or for their choice 
not to worship. That has been a critical component of American life for 
a very long time. So religious freedom is incredibly important.
  There was nothing about the bill we will take up on the floor 
tomorrow that impinges upon religious freedom because, as you know, if 
a church or a religiously affiliated institution or an individual or 
even a corporation has as their view that contraception is wrong, they 
can take to the airways. They can run a newspaper ad. They can go stand 
on a street corner. They can encourage anyone they want by explaining 
the merits of their view and hoping to persuade someone that they are 
right, and they are protected in doing that. They are protected in 
their religious liberty to try to encourage people to follow their 
points of view. But when these entities try to go beyond that, and in 
this case corporations, and use legal mechanisms not just to encourage 
people but whether it is lawsuits or personhood amendments or other 
things that we see popping up in States and here in this body, not just 
to discourage use of contraception but instead to reduce access to 
contraception for women--even women who do not share their moral point 
of view, who do not share their particular religion--then I view that 
as extremely troubling and actually contrary to the notion of religious 
freedom that is established in the First Amendment. Advocate your moral 
position, but don't force it onto people who have a different moral 
viewpoint.
  In conclusion, I support the bill we will debate tomorrow because it 
will protect the access to contraception. Whether people choose to use 
contraception or not will be up to them and to their own medical and 
their own moral calculation, and that is as it should be in a society 
that is supposed to protect the rights of all.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, thank you.
  Before I get into the business I have come to address, let me thank 
the distinguished Senator from Virginia for his remarks. I was a lawyer 
at a time when the previous case on this subject came out of the 
Supreme Court that said something very different. It said if you were a 
Native American and if as a Native American you had a sincerely held 
religious belief that peyote was actually a part of your religion's 
sacrament, that in pursuing that ritual

[[Page 11986]]

and that tradition you could utilize peyote notwithstanding the laws of 
the State to the contrary. That was the argument they made. It was 
protected by the free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court said 
absolutely not. No way. If you are a Native American, your sincerely 
held belief that peyote is an appropriate part of your religious 
sacrament is overruled because of society's interest in enforcing the 
law generally.
  Now if you are a corporate CEO, a completely different set of rules 
applies. Remember, in the case of the Native Americans the question was 
whether that individual could ingest the peyote themselves and they 
were told no, the interest of the State prevailed. In this case, if you 
are a corporate CEO, you are being told that you are free to exercise a 
right to control what other people do. And in this case the Supreme 
Court completely reversed itself and said no, the State has to back off 
if you are a corporate CEO telling other people what they have to do. 
But if you are a Native American seeking to honor your own tradition, 
well, there the State can butt in and move around.
  So in addition to the distinctions the Senator so eloquently and 
properly described, certain of this might have been influential with 
the Court in the fact that these were corporate CEOs, and there is very 
little the corporate CEO can do that the five activists on the 
conservative side of this Court won't encourage them to do and let them 
do.
  I will reserve for another day statistics of how this Court has over 
and over again turned itself over to corporate interests and over and 
over again ruled in favor of corporate interests and over and over 
again reversed precedent to give precedence to corporate interests in 
this country.
  I thank the Senator.


                             Climate Change

  My original topic of being here before I got into the subject is this 
is my 74th visit to the floor to urge my colleagues that it is truly 
time to wake up to the threats of climate change.
  The reports keep rolling in. The latest one for coastal States such 
as ours is a study called ``Risky Business'' that was commissioned by 
former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who knows something about 
coastal issues, having been flooded by Sandy, former George W. Bush 
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and former hedge fund manager Tom 
Steyer. This report calculated the economic effects of climate change 
throughout the United States and it found that along our coast between 
$66 billion and $106 billion worth of existing property--property that 
Americans own right now--will likely be below sea level by 2050. By 
2100, $238 billion to $507 billion worth of Americans' hard-earned 
property will be underwater.
  Now, everything doesn't happen just as you guess. Sometimes you get 
bad news that there are long odds and you need to be prepared for those 
long odds. The report found there are 1 in 20 odds that by 2100, the 
end of this century, there would be around $700 billion of 
infrastructure below sea level and nearly $730 billion more of 
infrastructure that would be potentially in trouble during high tides. 
So our landlocked colleagues may laugh this off, but if a similar 
threat were looming at their State's door, they would, I submit, be 
paying attention. For coastal States such as ours, this is deadly 
serious. The Atlantic coast, including Rhode Island--a coastal State 
named the Ocean State, the second most heavily populated State in terms 
of population density in the country--we have a lot of people living 
along that coastline. Our coast will see the worst of it.
  Climate change, unfortunately, has become, mostly since Citizens 
United for reasons I have elaborated on before, a taboo subject now for 
Republicans in Congress. So the discussion here of climate change is 
somewhat one-sided, but Americans who are witnessing climate change's 
effects firsthand in every State around the country know--and if they 
don't know they are learning--that climate change is a real problem.
  I have discussed my travels to Florida, to Iowa, to North and South 
Carolina, to Georgia, to New Hampshire, and of the actions these people 
are taking in their home States to stave off the worst effects of their 
changing oceans and climate. But at the local level folks truly aren't 
denying climate change. That is something that is unique to Congress 
and the peculiar world we inhabit. They are not denying, they are 
paying attention. And it is not just in coastal States that people are 
paying attention.
  This week I am going to look at Utah. Utah is right here on this 
section of the map of the southwest corridor of our country. This is a 
map of temperature trends. Temperature is not complicated. It is not 
some difficult theory that people have to try to get their minds 
around. We measure it with thermometers. It is pretty straightforward 
stuff.
  On this chart we see that average temperatures over the last 13 years 
compared to the long-term average over a century show there has been an 
increase in temperature across the entire State of Utah. Down here, 
this region, the average has increased 2 full degrees Fahrenheit. In 
the southeastern part of the State there are actually spots where the 
temperature has risen as much as 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
  Southern Utah is home to iconic national parks including Zion, Bryce 
Canyon, and Arches National Park. In Utah, park officials aren't 
denying climate change. Just last week the Park Service released a 
report called ``Climate Exposure of U.S. National Parks in a New Era of 
Change.'' This report studied dozens of climate variables in 289 
national parks. In Bryce, Zion, and Arches, the report shows higher 
year-round temperatures, hotter summers and warmer winters. Such 
significant shifts in temperature can mean less snowpack, worse 
wildfire seasons, and abnormal conditions for the plants and animals 
that reside in those parks.
  Utah is getting warmer and it is getting drier. The U.S. Geological 
Survey shows a significant drop in the size and scope of floods in 
rivers and streams all across the Southwest in this area from 1920 to 
2008, and that of course includes southern Utah.
  Indeed, here are the symbols for the negative trends, and the biggest 
symbol for a negative trend in river and stream flooding is this one. 
If you cannot see the map very clearly, that is southern Utah. Here is 
the State of Utah right here and there is the location where the 
highest drying trend in streams is taking place--again, not 
complicated. This isn't a theory, this is based on simple rainfall 
measurements and simple flooding measurement.
  If you look at it, you will see another place that is going up a lot. 
We New Englanders are seeing an increase, although in the Southwest 
they are seeing a substantial decrease. So when those characters come 
into our hearings and give testimony saying, oh, you don't have to 
worry about this because there isn't an overall increase in flooding or 
anything, yeah, because they offset each other--but go to Utah and you 
see a very distinct trend and it is drier. Other factors, such as 
population growth and water management policies, play a role, but Lake 
Powell in Utah is about half full right now. Lake Mead, farther down 
the Colorado River in Nevada, has drained down to just 39 percent of 
its capacity. That is the lowest level Lake Mead has ever been since it 
was first filled behind the Hoover Dam. Scientists at Colorado State 
University, at Princeton, and at the U.S. Forest Service predict that 
unless we take major action climate change may lead to water shortages 
so severe that Lake Powell and Lake Mead dry up completely.
  The drying of the Western United States and of southern Utah means 
less water for drinking, fighting fires, farming, wildlife, and 
recreation. Salt Lake City gets 80 percent of its water supply from 
snowpack in the Uinta and Wasatch Mountains. If predictions hold true, 
local water managers in Utah will no longer be able to depend on 
historical data to predict and manage how much water the mountains will 
yield. Utah will be in a brave new world--a dry new world.
  The prolonged drought conditions in the Western United States, 
compared

[[Page 11987]]

to the last century, make it ripe for forest fires, and indeed a recent 
study of western wildfire trends--led by Dr. Philip Dennison of the 
University of Utah--from 1984 to 2011, fires have become larger and 
more frequent. The total area burned by these fires is increasing over 
this time period at roughly 90,000 acres burned per year. That is the 
rate of increase.
  The recent National Climate Assessment similarly shows that ``between 
1970 and 2003, warmer and drier conditions increased burned area in 
western U.S. mid-elevation conifer forests by 650 percent.'' That 
report is quite clear about the link between climate change and these 
forest fires in the region, noting that ``climate outweighed other 
factors in determining burned area in the western U.S.''
  These changes in temperature and precipitation are putting Utah's 
iconic desert sagebrush at risk, according to Peter Alder, an ecologist 
at Utah State University. Sagebrush is grazed by livestock, and it is 
important to Utah's ranching industry. Dr. Alder is working with 
faculty and students from seven area universities to better understand 
the vulnerability of sagebrush ecosystems to climate change.
  These Utah scientists are not denying climate change, and neither is, 
for instance, Utah State University. Utah State has entire new courses 
of study to train the next generation of students to predict and combat 
climate change. Utah State has its own climate action plan. Utah State 
has an active climate center, and it is not the only one. The 
University of Utah has an active sustainability center and an army of 
students and researchers working on addressing climate change. Each 
year, the University of Utah publishes an annual report on climate 
change.
  Members of Utah's delegation may be pretending climate change is not 
real, but Utah's universities are not. They are not denying. They are 
acting. Utah's capital city is not denying climate change.
  There may be a barricade of polluter influence around Congress, but 
mayors all across the country are taking action, including in Utah, as 
we saw with the unanimous resolution of the Conference of Mayors 
recently. The United States Conference of Mayors ranked Salt Lake City, 
UT, and its mayor Ralph Becker first place in the Mayors Climate 
Protection Center rankings because of the impressive work being done in 
Salt Lake City. For example, the Salt Lake City Public Safety Building 
will be the first public safety building in the Nation to achieve a net 
zero rating, which means it generates as much electricity as it uses.
  Utah also has energy investors who are wide awake, building a growing 
number of solar installations. Community Solar has a pilot project in 
Salt Lake that allows homeowner groups to purchase solar energy. It is 
estimated that over its 25-year lifetime, this installation will avoid 
5,500 tons of carbon dioxide pollution.
  Renewable energy is integral in Utah's energy portfolio moving 
forward. In this chart, we can see this display showing that by 2050, 
Utah will rely mostly on wind, solar, geothermal, and natural gas to 
achieve carbon dioxide emission reductions of 80 percent compared to 
1990 levels. As we can see, the yellow is solar. Solar is projected to 
account for more than half of this shift.
  Utah-based businesses, such as EBay, are enhancing renewable energy. 
EBay built a data center in South Jordan, UT, and wanted to make sure 
it used only clean energy to run that facility. To accomplish this, 
EBay worked with GOP State senator Mark Madsen, Rocky Mountain Power--
the State's largest electric utility--and a local renewable energy 
generator on legislation to make renewable energy available to Utah 
electricity consumers. None of them were denying climate change. The 
renewable energy bill was unanimously passed by the Utah State Senate 
and House of Representatives and signed into law by Republican Governor 
Gary Herbert. EBay employs 1,500 people in Utah, including its 400-
member group in Salt Lake City known as the Green Team, dedicated to 
making the company environmentally responsible. They are not denying 
climate change in Utah. EBay is actually looking to add another data 
facility and more jobs using that same clean energy framework.
  The faith community in Utah is taking action as well. Utah Interfaith 
Power and Light is a network of nearly 30 Christian, Jewish, and 
nondenominational congregations, representing thousands of Utahans 
seeking ``to promote earth stewardship, clean energy, and climate 
justice.'' In addition to conducting free energy audits for new-member 
churches and offering plans to increase energy efficiency in their 
buildings, Utah Interfaith Power and Light also works to educate its 
members about climate change and advocates at the local and State level 
for moral and responsible climate policy.
  Then, of course, there is the famous Utah ski industry. The operators 
of Utah's great ski resorts have been outspoken about the threat 
climate change poses to their business. Five of them--Alta Ski Area, 
Canyons Resort, Deer Crest Private Trails, Deer Valley, and Park City 
Mountain Resort--signed the BICEP coalition's Climate Declaration in 
support of national action on climate change. They are not denying 
climate change.
  Indeed, the Park City Foundation in Utah issued a report explaining 
that as drought and increasing temperatures reduced the snowpack in the 
Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains, the future of skiing and 
snowboarding in those ranges is at risk. This Utah report predicts a 
local temperature increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075, which 
could cause a total loss of snowpack in the lower Park City resort 
area. Beyond the loss to the skiing tradition in Park City, this will 
result in thousands of lost jobs, tens of millions in lost earnings, 
and hundreds of millions in lost economic output, and that is according 
this Utah report.
  In Utah as in other States there is a groundswell coming from local 
communities asking for action on climate change. There are scientists, 
public health advocates, business owners and corporate leaders, 
outdoorsmen, faith leaders, State and local officials, and countless 
others demanding action on climate change and leading the charge.
  David Folland is a retired pediatrician, and he is the co-leader of 
the Salt Lake City Citizens Climate Lobby, which recently joined 7 
other Utahans and 600 volunteers from around the country to come to 
Congress to push us for swift passage of a proper carbon fee. In a Salt 
Lake City Tribune op-ed last week, Dr. Folland wrote: ``[p]lacing a fee 
on carbon sources and returning the proceeds to households would create 
jobs, build the economy, improve public health, and help stabilize the 
climate.''
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have Dr. Folland's op-ed 
printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Outside these walls, climate change is an issue 
Republicans can actually discuss. Outside these walls, 2012 Republican 
Presidential candidate John Huntsman, who won reelection as Utah's 
Republican Governor in 2008 with almost 80 percent of the vote--this is 
a popular guy in Utah--wrote a New York Times op-ed this year entitled 
``The G.O.P. Can't Ignore Climate Change.'' That is the title of 
Governor Huntsman's article.
  He wrote:

       While there is room for some skepticism given the 
     uncertainty about the magnitude of climate change, the fact 
     is that the planet is warming, and failing to deal with this 
     reality will leave us vulnerable--and possibly worse. Hedging 
     against risk is an enduring theme of conservative thought. It 
     is also a concept diverse groups can embrace.

  That is from Utah's former Governor.
  By the way, when he ran for reelection and won by that near 80-
percent margin, he was running on a pretty good environmental platform. 
He was not denying. But in Congress there is silence from the 
Republican Party--except those who come and say that climate change is 
just a big old hoax. It would have to be the most complicated hoax in 
the world, with most of our corporations, the Conference of Catholic 
Bishops, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--NOAA--

[[Page 11988]]

and innumerable other groups involved in it, and it would be pretty 
impressive to actually raise the level of the seas 8 to 10 inches as a 
part of that complicated hoax, but I guess that is their notion of why 
that is happening.
  Here, other than that hoax argument, there is silence. No Republican 
comes to the floor to say: You are right. This is a problem. We should 
do something about it. Let's work together. We may not agree on the 
solution right now, but let's at least work on it as a serious problem.
  They won't do that. The Republican Party has taken the position and 
followed the direction of the polluters. It is as simple as that. I, 
for one, believe they will be judged very harshly for that choice 
because Americans know better. Utahns know better. More and more people 
across America see what is happening before them, and they are no 
longer fooled by the phony campaign of denial.
  I hope this Congress will listen to the people in our home States and 
the people across this country and wake up to what has now become a 
clear and present danger. We need to do what the people who elected us 
sent us here to do, which is face reality, make sensible choices, work 
together, and solve problems, not stick our heads in the sand and 
pretend problems don't exist.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From The Salt Lake Tribune, July 11, 2014]

   Op-Ed: Carbon Tax Provides Market-Based Solution to Climate Change

                           (By David Folland)

       Imagine receiving a check for $390 each month, deposited 
     directly into your checking account, through no effort of 
     yours except that you had previously voted for visionary 
     members of Congress. Indeed that is what a family of 4 would 
     receive if carbon fee and dividend legislation were to be 
     enacted by the Congress, according to a new study by the 
     highly-respected economic analysis firm REMI (Regional 
     Economic Models, Inc.). The study was commissioned by 
     Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL).
       Last week I joined 7 other CCL volunteers from Utah in 
     Washington, D.C., to ask our federal elected officials to 
     support such a carbon fee and dividend (F&D) policy. We were 
     among 600 other volunteers who together visited over 500 
     members of Congress or their aides. Our visits were all part 
     of actions by the non-partisan, non-profit Citizens Climate 
     Lobby, a rapidly growing organization of committed volunteers 
     who are creating the political will for a stable climate. We 
     are taking democracy into our own hands and not leaving our 
     future to the paid lobbyists and special interest groups.
       The REMI study modeled the effect of a fee and dividend 
     policy. In this plan, a fee would be charged on the carbon-
     based fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) at the point they 
     enter the economy (the mine well head, or port of entry) 
     based on the amount of carbon dioxide they produce when 
     burned. The fee would increase by a defined amount yearly for 
     20 years. The revenues would be distributed to households 
     equally.
       The results after 20 years are striking: 2.8 million jobs 
     would be created; the economy would grow by $1.375 trillion 
     more than the economy with no carbon fee; 227,000 lives would 
     be spared due to reduced air pollution; and carbon dioxide 
     emissions would be reduced by 52 percent.
       Sound too good to be true? Not really. By returning all 
     revenues to households, consumers would spend their dividend, 
     adding to demand for goods and services. And energy prices 
     actually decrease after the 11th year, as less-expensive 
     energy sources come on line. Americans would enjoy better 
     health as coal-fired power plants and other dirty energy 
     sources are phased out and their toxic fumes eliminated.
       This market-based solution contrasts quite markedly to the 
     EPA regulations proposed by President Obama. The EPA 
     regulations pertain only to coal-fired power plants. By 
     contrast, F&D's effects would ripple through the entire 
     economy. Also, the elevated cost of electricity from EPA 
     regulations would affect the poorest citizens most severely. 
     By returning the dividend to households, two thirds of people 
     would receive more in their dividend checks than they would 
     pay for the increased cost of energy and goods, and that 
     would include the poorest among us. Also our proposal would 
     not grow government, thus could appeal to both political 
     parties.
       After a long day of lobbying, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon 
     Whitehouse addressed the CCL volunteers. He suggested that 
     the tipping point that will lead to action and policy on 
     global warming is probably closer than most people think Many 
     who attended the conference have the same feeling. Our 
     members of Congress and/or their aides listened carefully and 
     responded thoughtfully to our proposal.
       There is ample reason for our elected federal officials to 
     support carbon fee and dividend legislation whether or not 
     they are concerned about the threats of global warming. 
     Placing a fee on carbon sources and returning the proceeds to 
     households would create jobs, build the economy, improve 
     public health, and help stabilize the climate.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor, and I note the absence after 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Immigration Crisis

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, yesterday I went to Chicago to a 
residential neighborhood, and I went into a building and saw a piece of 
American history and an American humanitarian challenge, the likes of 
which we have seldom seen. In this building were 70 children. They were 
children who just hours and days ago were at the border of the United 
States in Mexico. They had turned themselves in to the border officials 
and they were being processed. Our law says that within 72 hours they 
need to be moved from the law enforcement world to the world of 
protection or at least a secure environment. That is the right thing to 
do. It was a law passed years ago when President Bush was in the White 
House, signed by him, and I believe unanimously passed by at least one 
of the Chambers, so it was not controversial at the time. It was 
thoughtful. It basically said if it is an unaccompanied child at the 
border, within 72 hours put them in a safe place.
  This is one of the safe places across America. It is a shelter in the 
city of Chicago. It is not the only one. It is protected from the 
public. If someone went by it in a car, they wouldn't even know it was 
a shelter with 70 children inside, in a residential neighborhood where 
for 19 years the shelter has been welcome, because it is clear, 
secure--no problems.
  But now we face a challenge because the number of children 
unaccompanied coming into the United States is reaching recordbreaking 
proportions.
  America, primarily because of location and other circumstances, 
seldom has faced anything like a refugee crisis. We can remember 
efforts by the Haitians or the Cubans, maybe the Vietnamese, the Hmong 
people, to come to the United States, but our experience pales in 
comparison to countries such as Jordan. Ten percent of the population 
of Jordan today is refugees who come to that country from all over the 
Middle East. With Syria collapsed under the weight of war and all of 
the horrors that it brought, 2.3 million, maybe 3 million left Syria 
for countries such as Jordan and Turkey and Lebanon. For these 
countries, refugees are part of their daily lives. For the United 
States, it is rare. It is rare to see one. It is rare to speak to one.
  That is why yesterday's experience for me was so important. I had 
heard all of these stories about these children and a lot of 
speculation about why they are here and what we should do with them, 
and I wanted to see them firsthand.
  Let me tell my colleagues, of the 70 children, there were some who 
were newborns, babies being held by their mothers. I have reached a 
point where it is hard for me to guess anyone's age, particularly young 
people. It is harder still when they are from countries in Central 
America because they are smaller in stature, many of them malnourished, 
and they are usually a little older than one might think. They look 
younger. But five women walked into this dining hall carrying their 
babies, and I don't believe a single one of them was 15 years old. They 
had brought these babies, many of them on buses, for 8 days to the 
border of the United States to try to escape. Cases of rape and assault 
had led to these pregnancies and these babies, and they were trying to 
get away from drug gangs and threats on their lives. And here they 
were, in this neighborhood in Chicago, in a safe place, with others 
just like them.
  Then I went among the children--90 percent of them from Central 
America; some from Africa, some from China; 90

[[Page 11989]]

percent of them from Central America--and I would speak to them and 
hear their stories. For many of them, there was a relative in the 
United States they were hoping to find so they could finally find a 
safe place. This situation is a terrible humanitarian crisis involving 
vulnerable children.
  The United States is about to be tested. We are going to be tested as 
a people--our generation--as to how we respond. I hope we pass that 
test.
  Remember, our country--the United States--issues a report card every 
year. The State Department issues a human rights report card on the 
world. The United States stands in judgment of the world and their 
record on human rights, and we take into consideration the way they 
treat women, how other countries treat children, how they treat 
refugees, and we grade them. That is a pretty bold position for us to 
stand in judgment of other countries, but we do, hoping we can set a 
standard they will follow and hoping we can hold them to those 
standards. Now we are going to be graded. The United States will be 
graded as to how we respond to this crisis.
  The President has sent a bill to Congress. He is asking for a 
substantial sum of money so we can not only deal with this issue at the 
border but beyond, in places such as the shelter I visited in Chicago.
  There is a lot of speculation among Senators and Congressmen about 
how our laws are going to deal with this current flood of children 
coming into the United States. We know why they are coming. Many are 
being pushed out of their country by drug gangs and violence--girls who 
are threatened with sexual assault if they don't give in to a gang 
leader and then, if they do, killed and left in plastic bags by the 
side of the road. Young boys are drafted into these gangs at the point 
of a gun; they are going to comply or be shot and killed. That is the 
reality, not to mention the horrible poverty which is endemic to these 
three countries--Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
  So now we have to decide what we will do. There are several things 
that are obvious. First, I am glad President Obama and Vice President 
Biden are going to Central America and telling these families: Please, 
do not send any more children. It is just too dangerous. They don't 
automatically come into the United States and receive citizenship. If 
people have heard that, it is wrong.
  We have told these countries, begged their leaders to help us in 
discouraging these children from coming. But in many cases desperate 
parents, desperate families are doing desperate things.
  I asked yesterday at the shelter: Is it true that some of the teenage 
girls who arrive here--and they all go through a physical exam--are on 
birth control pills? They said: Yes. Before they start the journey, 
their families will give the girls birth control pills as a protection 
from pregnancy because they fear they will be assaulted and raped. I 
can't imagine--I cannot imagine a family situation so desperate where 
they would make that decision, but it is happening.
  I looked too at some of the comments that have been made. There are 
people who have said we need to flood the border of the United States 
with National Guard troops. It doesn't make sense because these 
children are not trying to sneak past border guards; they are turning 
themselves in as soon as they cross the border because they have a 
little piece of paper with the name of someone in the United States to 
contact. So more troops and guards on the border won't change those 
desperate children.
  One of them I saw from Guatemala with his little sister. She is a 
cute little thing but too shy to say anything to me. He, through a 
translator, said a few words, and he carried her on his shoulders 
across the Rio Grande River. That is what his responsibility was, and 
he was going to get across that river with his little sister. He did. 
That is why we need to look at this in human terms as well.
  Before I came to Congress, I used to be a lawyer in Central Illinois, 
the small town of Springfield. It is not a big city, I guess, by our 
State's terms, but we are proud of our population--but not a major 
city. I practiced law there, and I knew what it was like in a small 
town to practice law. I also knew this: No one in good conscience with 
an ethical bone in their body would put a 6-year-old kid in a courtroom 
and say: Good luck. We never did that. It was inconceivable. If there 
was a child whose fate was going to be decided in a courtroom, there 
was a guardian ad litem appointed to represent that child's interests--
not the interests of any other party, just that child. There may have 
been an attorney appointed in addition to represent that child because 
we realize they cannot make decisions for themselves.
  Now we are faced with a suggestion by some that when it comes to 
these children, within a few days after their arrival in the United 
States, they will be put in a courtroom. If Members of the U.S. Senate 
and the House of Representatives came to that shelter in Chicago and 
saw those little children sitting at the table, they would be 
embarrassed by that suggestion. We can't do that. It isn't fair to 
them, and it doesn't reflect well on our values if it is even 
suggested. We have to have a process that is fair and one that reflects 
our values in the United States.
  This is a human tragedy. These children have made it through this 
death-defying journey. I can tell my colleagues it broke my heart when 
I heard them tell their stories. A little girl--she was there with her 
little brother. She was 12; her little brother was 6. He had Down 
syndrome, and she brought him from Honduras to the United States. She 
said she came by bus and she was on that bus for 6 or 7 days before she 
made it to the border. Can my colleagues imagine turning a child loose 
to catch a bus ride that would last 6 or 7 days to go to a country in 
the hopes they might be safer and also take their disabled little 
brother with her? Every time that little boy would get up and scramble 
around the room, she was right after him. She wasn't going to let him 
out of her sight. That is what her life is and what it has been, and it 
is an indication of the kind of children we are now facing and need to 
deal with.
  This is not a political issue, although politics are involved. It is 
much more. It is humanitarian--testing who we are, what we believe. It 
is a challenge to us to deal with immigration in the 21st century. It 
is a challenge to us as well to make sure that at the end of the day, 
history writes this chapter about the American people and says they 
were good and caring people, compassionate and caring people.
  Today I received a press release that was put out by a religious 
group, the Evangelical Leaders of America. This is not my religion, but 
I respect very much what they had to say. I would like to read what one 
of the ministers said:

       As a former Texan, my heart goes to the border of Texas. As 
     a born-again Christian, the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls me 
     to compassionate action for those who are suffering right now 
     as a result of the immigration crisis, especially the 
     children.

  This was written by Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist 
Convention and pastor of the multicampus Cross Church in northwest 
Arkansas. His Friday Baptist Press op-ed continues:

       This is an emergency situation that requires the best of 
     each of us in America . . . The gospel of Jesus Christ moves 
     me to call on all of us to demonstrate compassionate action 
     toward the immigrant.

  As I said, he is not a member of my religion, but I respect very much 
that he would stand up and speak out and remind people that this really 
is a test. Regardless of whether one is a Christian or some other 
denomination or one has no religion, it is a test of who we are and our 
human values.
  When I read the suggestion that these young children need to be 
placed in a hearing room or a courtroom within a few days with the 
possibility of someone standing by their side--that is wrong. That is 
just wrong. We can't let that happen.
  Many years ago we signed a refugee convention saying that when it 
came to refugees, countries in the world should accept and adopt the 
same humane standards.

[[Page 11990]]

  Now we are facing our refugee crisis here in the United States. We 
need to make it clear to these countries that these children are not 
coming in to be citizens of the United States. That is not in the 
cards. But we never want to be in a position where these children are 
returned to dangerous situations, harmed, and it is on our conscience, 
on our watch. That is unacceptable.
  I want to say one thing in closing. We need to solve this problem, 
but God forbid that is the end of the conversation. We passed an 
immigration bill, a comprehensive immigration bill, to clean up this 
broken immigration system over a year ago on the Senate floor. 
Democrats and Republicans agreed on it, and we sent it to the House of 
Representatives. But for over a year they have refused to even call the 
bill, refused to even debate the bill, refused to even come up with a 
substitute to the bill. They are ignoring the broken immigration system 
in America and criticizing this President when the breakdown is 
obvious.
  The President is ready. He has said over and over he will step aside 
and let them work it out and come up with a congressional answer. But 
there is no excuse for this. For Congress to refuse to accept its 
responsibility when it comes to immigration reform is just wrong. I am 
glad the Senate met its responsibility, and now I call on my colleagues 
over in the House to do the same.
  (Mr. DONNELLY assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. President, on June 30, five conservative Justices of the Supreme 
Court held that certain for-profit corporations--closely held 
corporations--could refuse to provide their female employees with 
coverage for health care benefits that are guaranteed by law. This 
Hobby Lobby decision, some estimates suggest, would apply to as many as 
90 percent of American businesses, depending on what the courts define 
as a ``closely held'' corporation.
  This was an activist decision by an activist Supreme Court. Congress 
never intended for for-profit corporate entities to claim religious 
beliefs or to use religious objections to deny their employees rights 
guaranteed by law.
  For-profit corporations, for the record, are not people, and they are 
not created for a religious or charitable purpose. They are created to 
make a profit while giving their owners protections from liability 
under the law. I have been to a lot of churches. I have yet to see a 
corporation in a pew in a church.
  Moreover, previous cases ruled on by the Supreme Court have 
established a tradition of privacy--one that permits women, not the 
government or their employers, to make their own decisions about birth 
control and family planning.
  The ruling in Hobby Lobby violates that tradition by empowering for-
profit corporations to claim religious objections to a law that 
guarantees access to cost-free contraceptive coverage. As a result of 
this decision, women across America are at risk of losing access to 
elements of their health care coverage, including coverage for 
prescription birth control pills and more.
  Birth control is an important part of a woman's health care, and 
millions--99 percent of child-bearing-age women--rely on these 
benefits.
  The Affordable Care Act and its regulations provide for insurance 
coverage for birth control, allowing for a woman, her family, and her 
doctor to decide what is best. As a result, about 30 million women have 
gained access to cost-free insurance coverage for contraceptive 
services, including 1.1 million in my State of Illinois--almost 10 
percent of the population.
  This is coverage that nearly all women use. In 2013 the Centers for 
Disease Control reported that 99 percent of sexually active women 
between the ages of 15 and 44 have used birth control at some point in 
their lives.
  So here is the bottom line: No for-profit corporate entity should be 
allowed to discriminate against women and take away an insurance 
benefit that a woman is entitled to just because the owner of the 
company does not agree with it. A woman's personal health choices are 
none of her boss's business.
  Last week my colleagues and I introduced legislation that would 
ensure that women affected by this decision can continue to get 
contraceptive coverage they need and that the law provides regardless 
of who signs their paycheck.
  Importantly, this bill being offered by Senators Patty Murray and 
Mark Udall prevents any corporation from using the Supreme Court 
decision to deny women access to services guaranteed to them under 
Federal law.
  Although the Supreme Court ruling focused primarily on contraceptive 
coverage, it left the door open for future litigation challenging other 
basic health care benefits--vaccines, blood transfusions. This is 
unacceptable, and the legislation before us would stop this 
discrimination once and for all.
  This legislation is not about overriding the religious beliefs of any 
living person or any nonprofit charity. Our legislation respects and 
accommodates the beliefs of individuals and nonprofits. Remember, the 
Hobby Lobby case involved for-profit companies which are not human 
beings but are legal entities that are incorporated for a profit-making 
purpose.
  When people decide to incorporate a for-profit entity, they agree 
that the entity will be subject to basic laws that protect the rights 
of their employees, including laws that prevent discrimination and laws 
that enable women who work for them to access adequate health care.
  The decision of the activist Hobby Lobby majority suddenly allows 
these for-profit corporations to declare themselves exempt from these 
basic laws and discriminate against women's health care coverage. That 
is a significant change in the law and, as a result, untold thousands 
of American women will end up losing access to affordable health care 
that they had been guaranteed.
  This is a problem, and it is a challenge. We need to protect women's 
access to affordable prescription contraception and prevent corporate 
entities--for-profit corporations--from interfering with their 
employees' health care decisions.
  This week in the Senate my colleagues and I will have a chance to 
vote on it. I think it is a critical vote. I might add another element 
here. Many people want to discuss the issue of birth control in the 
context of abortion, a hot-button issue, and it has been for years 
across America. The record is pretty clear. If there are more unplanned 
pregnancies, there are more likely more abortions. Reducing the number 
of unplanned pregnancies reduces the number of abortions. It is simple 
math. There are some who disagree on theological grounds. They cannot 
disagree on biological grounds. So standing up for family planning and 
birth control to avoid unplanned and unwanted pregnancies is going to 
reduce the incidence of abortion in this country--something I hope all 
of us feel would be a positive development. I certainly do.
  So I hope we can stand together this week on a bipartisan basis and 
tell the Supreme Court they are wrong and pass this new law that takes 
away the power of bosses to determine the health care of the women who 
work for them.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator withhold his suggestion?
  Mr. DURBIN. I do. I am sorry; I did not see my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I am honored to follow those eloquent and powerful remarks by my 
friend and colleague from Illinois, and I am particularly impressed and 
moved by his comments on young people coming across the border that 
deserve better from this Nation--better in the care they receive when 
they are here, better in the due process and the justice this country 
gives them once they have arrived. But I am here to talk about the 
Hobby Lobby decision by the Supreme Court and to second in every single 
respect the remarks that Senator Durbin has just made.
  I went to the site of a new Hobby Lobby store in the State of 
Connecticut, being built in Manchester--

[[Page 11991]]

the second in Connecticut--where its goods and services will be 
available to consumers in Connecticut. It is an impressive new 
structure. But it was not a groundbreaking or ribbon cutting. I went 
there to call on Hobby Lobby to do right for its employees and for its 
customers in the State of Connecticut.
  I went there to make public a letter that I have written to the chief 
executive of Hobby Lobby, asking that he and his company respect the 
law, history, and policy of our State and also of the United States.
  The U.S. Supreme Court has made its decision interpreting the 
Religious Freedom Restoration Act in giving this corporation--a for-
profit entity--the right to tell its women employees that they have no 
access to certain kinds of contraceptive care approved by the FDA. That 
is a legal decision that cannot be overturned by my speaking on the 
floor of the Senate or in my writing to the CEO of Hobby Lobby. But it 
can be overturned by a law that changes that opinion--changes the 
opinion, in effect, by overruling it.
  That is the purpose of the Not My Boss's Business Act, as well as the 
Protect Women's Health From Corporate Interference Act, and that is the 
reason I am going to vote for it because I feel that women should be 
making these decisions with their doctors, and that neither politicians 
nor business executives nor their corporate entities should be 
interfering and intruding in that decision.
  We can debate whether corporations ought to have these rights under 
the law, whether they are entitled to use the law, in effect, to assert 
legal claims, whether to the First Amendment or to the Religious 
Freedom Restoration Act. This decision was a statutory one. We can 
disagree with it all we want. But the way to overturn it is to legally 
adopt a new statute here.
  That is why I am so strongly supporting this change in the law that I 
hope will be adopted on a bipartisan basis, because there ought to be 
nothing partisan about women's health care, about preventing 
unnecessary abortion, as Senator Durbin has said so well, and about 
providing a form of health care that really is in the interests of 
families as well as women. It is in all of our interests.
  I called on Hobby Lobby to put aside the technical distinctions that 
it can assert and the legal principles that it may invoke because it is 
a self-funded plan under the law, but simply do the right thing and 
follow Connecticut's law, policy, and history.
  Connecticut has a law. It is a State statute that was adopted in 
1999. I vigorously advocated for it. It requires that contraceptive 
care be covered by insurance plans--any contraceptive method approved 
by the FDA. That is the law of Connecticut--well established, long 
accepted, and strongly supported, and Hobby Lobby is flouting it. Maybe 
in letter it has a leg to stand on, but in spirit it is thumbing its 
nose at the people of the State of Connecticut. My message to Hobby 
Lobby is, if you want Connecticut customers, respect Connecticut's law.
  Now, this principle of privacy--of women following their conscience 
and their conviction, making these decisions on their own, one way or 
the other, to use contraceptives or not, after consulting with their 
doctor or other medical experts and their family, their clergy, 
personal advisors--this principle of personal privacy is enshrined not 
only in Connecticut law but in our history. In fact, Connecticut has 
led the Nation in asserting and respecting the right of privacy. 
Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down a prohibition on the sale of 
contraceptives, arose in Connecticut, argued by a great renowned 
Connecticut lawyer Catherine Roraback.
  The right of privacy, as one of our Supreme Court Justices said, is 
essentially and fundamentally the right to be let alone. It is the 
right to be let alone from unwarranted government interference and 
intrusion. This interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act 
by the Supreme Court contravenes that basic principle embodied and 
enshrined in Connecticut history as well as law.
  I call on Hobby Lobby to respect that law and our policy of 
respecting that right of privacy that is embedded and respected in the 
way that law enforcement as well as our statutes and our courts 
interpret their role in Connecticut, and their authorities and their 
powers. The fundamental principle here is that religious liberty should 
be respected.
  It is the religious liberty of those executives at Hobby Lobby, its 
owners and private corporation shareholders, for-profit entity owners. 
They deserve respect for their religious liberty. But religious liberty 
is about the right to practice your religion; it is not the right to 
impose your religion on someone else. This country was founded on that 
fundamental principle of religious liberty and the right of privacy, 
the right to be let alone from unnecessary and unwarranted 
interference. It is the right of privacy and religious liberty that is 
at stake here in this activist, erroneous Supreme Court decision, which 
we have the power to overturn here, and to restore religious freedom, 
truly restore the liberty of conscience and conviction that is so 
fundamental to American life and American exceptionalism.
  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. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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