[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15952-15964]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  STOP SANCTUARY POLICIES AND PROTECT AMERICANS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 252, 
S. 2146.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 252, S. 2146, a bill to 
     hold sanctuary jurisdictions accountable for defying Federal 
     law, to increase penalties for individuals who illegally 
     reenter the United States after being removed, and to provide 
     liability protection for State and local law enforcement who 
     cooperate with Federal law enforcement and for other 
     purposes.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented

[[Page 15953]]

under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 252, S. 2146, a bill to hold 
     sanctuary jurisdictions accountable for defying Federal law, 
     to increase penalties for individuals who illegally reenter 
     the United States after being removed, and to provide 
     liability protection for State and local law enforcement who 
     cooperate with Federal law enforcement and for other 
     purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, David Vitter, John Barrasso, Dan 
           Sullivan, David Perdue, Bill Cassidy, Ron Johnson, 
           Steve Daines, James Lankford, James E. Risch, John 
           Boozman, Mike Lee, Richard C. Shelby, John Cornyn, Jeff 
           Sessions, Johnny Isakson, Patrick J. Toomey.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
mandatory quorum call be waived and that notwithstanding the provisions 
of rule XXII, the cloture vote occur at 2:15 p.m., on Tuesday, October 
20.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, Senators will soon travel to their home 
States for the State work period. I ask colleagues to consider some 
important questions as they meet with constituents and take time to 
reflect.
  In a time of limited Federal resources and tough choices, is it fair 
to treat localities that cooperate with Federal law enforcement or work 
hard to follow Federal law no better than localities that refuse to 
help or actively flout the law? When a deputy sheriff puts her life on 
the line every day, is it fair to make her live in constant fear of 
being sued for simply trying to keep us safe? When felons enter our 
country illegally and repeatedly, is it fair to victims and families to 
not do what we can now to stop them? The answer to all of these 
questions is no. No, it isn't fair--not to citizens and governments 
that do the right thing, not to law enforcement officers who risk 
everything for our safety, not to victims and their families.
  The proponents of so-called ``sanctuary cities'' seem to callously 
disregard how their policies can hurt other people. That is not right. 
The bill I just filed cloture on this afternoon aims to ensure more 
fairness on this issue.
  The ideas underpinning the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect 
Americans Act are supported by a great many Americans. The bill is 
supported by many law enforcement organizations as well. They have had 
some really positive things to say about it, such as this letter:

       Thank you for introducing the Stop Sanctuary Policies and 
     Protect Americans Act which will empower Federal and local 
     law enforcement officers' cooperative efforts to better 
     protect our communities and our citizens. Your proposal will 
     ensure we do not dishonor the memory of Kate Steinle and the 
     immeasurable grief her family is enduring.

  The letter went on:

       Ms. Steinle was killed in San Francisco by an illegal 
     immigrant who had previously been deported from the United 
     States five times, and had been convicted of seven felonies. 
     The shooter chose to live in San Francisco because he knew it 
     was a sanctuary city that would shield him from Federal 
     immigration law. Tragically, his ``sanctuary'' gambit proved 
     fatal for the Steinle family. Federal officials requested 
     that San Francisco detain the shooter until immigration 
     authorities could pick him up, but San Francisco officials 
     refused to cooperate and released Sanchez three months before 
     Kate's murder. We owe it to Kate and the American citizenry 
     to fix this community safety issue now.

  That is what the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association had to 
say about the bill that we will be voting on when we get back. Groups 
like the National Sheriffs' Association and the National Association of 
Police Organizations have sent letters in support as well.
  I thank the sponsors of this legislation for all their hard work on 
this bill. I hope Senators will reflect on the questions I have raised 
over the State work period. The Senate will consider this bill when we 
reconvene.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


            60th Anniversary of Crispus Attucks Championship

  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, earlier this year I was incredibly 
fortunate to be part of the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a moving 
and meaningful experience in Selma, AL. Fifty years ago, during the 
marches from Selma to Montgomery, civil rights leaders and everyday 
citizens of this country put their lives at risk in a passionate, 
nonviolent demonstration for a more equal and more just society. The 
passion and courage for equality reflected in the historic marches in 
Selma were the culmination of decades of struggle shown by men and 
women across this country.
  In my home State of Indiana, a place that takes great pride in high 
school basketball, it is fitting that 60 years ago the civil rights 
movement played out on the hardwood of Indiana basketball courts. On 
March 19, 1955, at the Butler Fieldhouse, the Flying Tigers of Crispus 
Attucks High School became not only the first all-African-American high 
school team to win a State championship in Indiana but the first all-
African-American high school athletic team to win a State championship 
in the United States. Led by future NBA Hall of Famer--and maybe the 
best basketball player of all time--Oscar Robertson, the Flying Tigers 
finished their 1955 season with a 30-and-1 record, capped with a 97-to-
74 victory over Gary Roosevelt High School in the State final.
  Before Crispus Attucks' historic 1955 season, no Indianapolis 
basketball team had won a State championship
in the tournament's 45-year history. Attucks' win was a source of 
pride, particularly for the African-American community.
  Crispus Attucks High School was founded in 1927 as a segregated high 
school for Black students. The Indiana High School Athletic Association 
initially refused to grant Crispus Attucks membership, and the school 
could not play in the State tournament until 1942. Even then, many of 
the all-White schools refused to play Crispus Attucks. The Crispus 
Attucks team would often have to travel dozens or even hundreds of 
miles to find teams willing to play against them. Because the school's 
gym was built too small for home games, every game was an away game for 
the Flying Tigers.
  Despite the segregation and racism, Crispus Attucks thrived. African-
American educators could not teach in White schools, so Crispus Attucks 
attracted an elite African-American community. Nearly every teacher had 
either a doctorate or master's degree. Teachers at Crispus Attucks 
included former Tuskegee Airmen and members of the Golden 13, the first 
African-American U.S. Naval officers.
  One of those teachers was Ray Crowe. A native of Johnson County, IN, 
Crowe became head coach of the basketball team in 1950. He instituted a 
new fast-paced style of offense and was a coach who cared deeply about 
his players. Crowe's coaching style brought enormous success to the 
team.
  Soon, the same White schools that refused to play Crispus Attucks 
wanted to schedule games with them. Lacking a home court, the team 
would frequently play at Butler Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler 
University. The Flying Tigers packed the house, regularly attracting 
10,000 fans or more to a high school basketball game. Still the team 
was not treated fairly. When traveling for games, the players were 
unable to stay at hotels or to eat in

[[Page 15954]]

restaurants that only served White people.
  That wasn't the only challenge the Flying Tigers confronted. They 
also had to contend with bias from the referees. Coach Crowe used to 
tell the team they had to play against seven people every game--the 
five players and the two refs. Yet the Flying Tigers kept winning. In 
1954, the team made it all the way to the State semifinals, even with 
several key players missing from injuries. The stage was set for the 
1955 season, when a junior forward named Oscar Robertson was ready to 
lead the team. He had some of the most amazing teammates you could ever 
find.
  Coach Crowe and the Flying Tigers finished the regular season with 
one loss. They breezed through the first four games of the tournament, 
winning by an average of 28 points per game. Then they faced Muncie 
Central, another powerhouse basketball program, and the Flying Tigers 
won by a single point--but all you need to win by is one point. Over 
15,000 fans came to the Butler Fieldhouse to watch Crispus Attucks beat 
New Albany in the State semifinal and then again to witness history as 
Crispus Attucks defeated another all-African-American team, Gary 
Roosevelt, 97-to-74 to become State champs.
  The trailblazing players who made it possible included Johnny Mack 
Brown, Bill Brown, Willie Burnley, John Clemons, John Gipson, Bill 
Hampton, Willie Merriweather, Sam Milton, Sheddrick Mitchell, Stanford 
Patton, Oscar Robertson, and Bill Scott.
  It was a crowning achievement. The ``Big O'' Oscar Robertson said:

       I remember that night. They called us Indianapolis Attucks, 
     not Crispus Attucks. . . . To me, that sort of meant we 
     arrived. They just wanted you to win; they didn't care what 
     color you were.

  There was a tradition in Indiana that after every State championship 
the winning team would climb onto a firetruck and then be taken around 
the city of Indianapolis for a victory parade. The parade route always 
included a stop at Monument Circle for pictures and celebration, 
followed by a tour of downtown Indianapolis, but as the firetruck 
carrying the Flying Tigers approached Monument Circle, it didn't stop, 
and it didn't continue through downtown. Instead, the firetruck brought 
the players and fans to a park in the city's African-American 
neighborhood.
  Crispus Attucks, the team that had just made American history, didn't 
receive the celebration they deserved simply because of the color of 
their skin. When Attucks repeated in 1956 and again won the State 
championship, the firetruck took the same detour.
  Change did not come overnight, but the Crispus Attucks basketball 
team inspired many schools to begin recruiting African-American players 
along with starting to end their long-held policies of segregation. 
Oscar Robertson later said:

       By us winning, it sped up the integration. I truly believe 
     that us winning the state championship brought Indianapolis 
     together.

  In March, members of the Indianapolis-based Family Girls Youth 
Mentoring Program honored the seven living members of the 1955 
championship team and the celebration included the traditional victory 
tour through the streets of Indianapolis, an honor that was denied to 
these players 60 years ago.
  At this year's Indy 500, the 1955 Crispus Attucks basketball team 
served as the grand marshals of the Indy 500 Festival Parade. For the 
first time in the parade's history, there was a stop at Monument 
Circle, where the Flying Tigers got the celebration they had rightfully 
earned so long ago.
  Today I am proud to join my friend Congressman Andre Carson in 
honoring the legacy of the 1955 Crispus Attucks basketball team. As 
Indiana's Senator, on behalf of Hoosiers, I want to recognize the 
Crispus Attucks team not only for their amazing accomplishments on the 
court but for the powerful message they always sent throughout the 
State of Indiana and for the pride that is still present in 
Indianapolis today for them and for all their accomplishments and for 
all they mean to us.
  The members of the 1955 State championship Crispus Attucks basketball 
team, their coaches, the teachers who taught them, the community that 
supported them, and the families who loved them--they were an 
inspiration in 1955 to all of us, and they are an inspiration today. 
God bless all of those young players, God bless Indiana, and God bless 
America.
  Mr. HATCH. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DONNELLY. Yes.
  Mr. HATCH. I graduated from high school in 1952. I was the captain of 
the high school basketball team. I followed this Crispus Attucks team. 
It was fantastic, almost every player.
  Mr. DONNELLY. Extraordinary people.
  Mr. HATCH. They were extraordinary, and they inspired all of us, 
especially in the way they conducted themselves and carried through. 
What a bunch of great athletes they were.
  Mr. DONNELLY. To my colleague, the leader of the Senate, our 
President pro tempore, I am so honored for you to speak of our fine 
young men that way. Every citizen of Indiana is grateful. They were an 
extraordinary group. I met them when I was back home. As fine a people 
as they were when they were young, they are even more extraordinary 
citizens for our State and for our country.
  Mr. HATCH. Thank you. They were all winners, I will tell you that.
  Mr. DONNELLY. Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The Senator from Utah.


                        Defend Trade Secrets Act

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about an important 
form of intellectual property: trade secrets. I am pleased to be 
participating in this colloquy with my friend from Delaware, Senator 
Chris Coons.
  Earlier this year, we introduced the Defend Trade Secrets Act, a bill 
that will create a harmonized Federal standard for protecting trade 
secrets. Trade secrets such as customer lists, formulas, and 
manufacturing processes are an essential form of intellectual property, 
yet trade secrets are the only form of U.S. intellectual property where 
misuse does not provide the owner with a Federal private right of 
action. Instead, trade secret owners must rely on State courts or 
Federal prosecutors to protect their rights. The multistate procedural 
and jurisdictional issues that arise from such cases are costly and 
complicated, and the Department of Justice lacks the resources to 
prosecute many trade secret cases. Those systemic issues put companies 
at a great disadvantage since the victims of the trade secret theft 
need to recover information quickly before it crosses State lines and 
leaves the country.
  At a time when cyber theft of trade secrets is at an alltime high, 
particularly as it involves Chinese competitors, it is critically 
important that U.S. companies have the ability to protect their trade 
secrets in Federal court. Senator Coons, trade secret theft has hit 
some of the nation's best known companies, including Delaware-based 
DuPont and its popular Kevlar synthetic fiber products.
  I would like to ask how trade secret theft has impacted DuPont.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Hatch for his leadership on 
this important issue. As the Senator from Utah has mentioned, trade 
secrets are the only form of intellectual property not protected from 
theft under Federal civil law, which is particularly striking when one 
considers the value of trade secrets to the economy. According to some 
estimates, they are worth $5 trillion for the U.S. economy, on par with 
IP protected by patent. The scope of the loss due to theft or 
misappropriation is huge, somewhere between $160 and $480 billion 
annually.
  I submit that there is not a State in the country that has not been 
affected by this problem, and Delaware is no exception. In the 1960s, 
DuPont--one of our signature manufacturing chemistry-based companies--
invented Kevlar, a para-aramid fiber with extraordinary strength that 
is also very lightweight. These properties make Kevlar versatile, but 
its best known use is in lifesaving body armor worn by our police 
officers and the brave men and

[[Page 15955]]

women in the American Armed Forces. It has saved thousands of lives, 
including more than 3,000 police officers here in the United States 
whose lives have been saved by Kevlar vests.
  About 10 years ago, DuPont developed the next generation of Kevlar, 
which is even lighter and better able to withstand penetrating trauma 
from a broader range of rifle rounds and IED-generated shrapnel. It 
represented a real breakthrough in safety, but it cost millions of 
dollars to develop.
  Chemically, para-aramid fibers are not that complicated, but the 
fabrication method, the manufacturing technique, which is what gives 
them their strength and flexibility, is actually incredibly difficult 
to develop and implement. So one day about 6 years ago, a rogue 
employee of DuPont took the know-how behind DuPont's creation of next-
generation Kevlar and began to work with a rival manufacturing company 
in Korea, using DuPont trade secrets. The potential loss to DuPont 
alone from this one instance of trade secret theft or misappropriation 
approaches $1 billion.
  So I ask Senator Hatch, if you were a CEO and your employees were 
ripping off your trade secrets, your intellectual property, and taking 
it to another country at the cost of $1 billion a pop, would that 
affect your willingness to invest the resources in future R&D here in 
the United States that are needed to make similar lifesaving 
technological breakthroughs?
  Mr. HATCH. Well, of course it would. I thank Senator Coons. He has 
asked what really is the critical question. If I were a CEO responsible 
to my shareholders, I could not, according to my fiduciary duties, make 
those investments if rogue employees could just take off and render 
those investments worthless.
  Trade secret theft does not just affect manufacturing. I read 
recently an interesting article in the New Republic titled ``Corn 
Wars'' that provides a detailed account of how China is stealing 
proprietary corn seeds from America's farms.
  Most corn in China is used as a feed for livestock. That was not a 
problem until the country's middle class acquired an appetite for meat. 
Given this new demand, China is trying desperately to increase corn 
production amidst its water shortage and lack of arable land.
  That is where our country's intellectual property comes in. Rather 
than spend the time and resources to develop a hybrid corn seed of its 
own, China would rather steal, literally right out of the ground, 
America's high-performing seeds. Experts from America's top seed 
producers confirmed that acquiring the technology behind a specially 
designed line of seed is equivalent to 5 to 8 years of research and at 
least $40 million. You better believe the Chinese know the value of the 
seeds they steal and the numerous crimes they are committing while in 
our country.
  Let me read an excerpt from the New Republic article that details an 
encounter a DuPont Pioneer field manager had with industrial spies from 
a Chinese agricultural company:

       It was early May 2011 and Mo [Hailong] and Wang Lei, vice 
     chairman of Kings Nower Seed at the time, were driving roads 
     in Tama County, Iowa, allegedly searching for a DuPont 
     Pioneer test field. But apparently uncertain if he was in the 
     right place or unsure of what kind of seed DuPont Pioneer was 
     testing, Mo had Wang pull to the edge of the field, so they 
     could question a farmer in the midst of spring planting. . . 
     . How had these two men chanced upon his field on the very 
     day he happened to be planting an experimental and top-secret 
     seed under development by DuPont Pioneer?
       The next day, a DuPont Pioneer field manager spotted the 
     same car. He watched Mo scramble up a ditch bank, and then 
     kneel down in the dirt and begin digging corn seeds out of 
     the ground. When confronted by the field manager, Mo grew 
     flustered and red-faced. . . . But before the field manager 
     could question him further, Mo fled.

  There is no doubt that China and other foreign competitors are 
working furiously to steal American innovation not just from 
manufacturing and agriculture but from all sectors of the economy, 
including high-tech, life sciences, aeronautics, financial services, 
and the energy sector. That is why Congress must act now to pass the 
bipartisan, bicameral Defend Trade Secrets Act.
  I ask Senator Coons, what exactly does this bill that you and I are 
cosponsoring do?
  Mr. COONS. I thank Senator Hatch for the opportunity to go into more 
detail about this terrific bipartisan, bicameral Defend Trade Secrets 
Act. It is actually relatively simple. It creates a Federal private 
right of action for misappropriation of trade secrets. It uses an 
existing Federal criminal law, the Economic Espionage Act, to define 
trade secrets. It draws heavily from the Uniform Trade Secrets Act 
which has been enacted by many States to define what is 
misappropriation.
  Simply put, our bill harmonizes U.S. law. Each State has a different 
trade secret law, and they vary in a range of different ways. Not all 
of these differences are major, but they affect in small but real ways 
the definition of a trade secret, what an owner must do to keep a trade 
secret a secret, what constitutes misappropriation, and what damages 
are available.
  So our Defend Trade Secrets Act creates a single, national baseline 
or a minimum level of protection and gives trade secret owners access 
to both a uniform national law and our excellent Federal courts, which 
provide nationwide service of process and execution of judgments. It is 
important to note that this bill does not preempt State law because 
States are free to add further protections on top of what is in this 
bill. The proposed legislation does one more thing, and trade secret 
owners tell us this is a critical component of the law not available in 
States. It creates an ex parte seizure ability. Trade secrets are 
different from other forms of intellectual property because they are 
protected under the law only if they remain a secret. Once the public 
learns of a trade secret, even if it does so wrongfully, the trade 
secret loses its legal protection. So this bill provides a limited 
right of action for the owner of a trade secret to go to court ex parte 
and get it back before the misappropriator, the thief of the trade 
secret, has a chance to share it with a competitor or the world, thus 
exposing it.
  This is a commonsense idea to help address a very serious problem, 
but when talking about Federal private rights of action and ex parte 
injunctive relief, we had to be very careful to avoid any unintended 
consequences. So, Senator Hatch, would you address how you took 
concerns about unintended consequences into account as we worked 
together to draft this bill?
  Mr. HATCH. Sure. I want to thank Senator Coons for that helpful 
overview. As a Republican, I was initially cautious when he approached 
me about expanding Federal civil law to create a new private right of 
action for trade secret theft. After all, some have suggested that 
State law is sufficient, but after consulting with many in the business 
community, I was convinced that creating a Federal trade secrets law is 
the right approach.
  Soon after its introduction, the Heritage Foundation confirmed the 
need for Federal legislation. Mr. Alden Abbott from the Heritage 
Foundation writes:

       The lack of a federal civil remedy for victims of trade 
     secret theft precludes owners of trade secrets from 
     vindicating their rights under certain circumstances. 
     Enjoining and sanctioning trade secret thieves who cross 
     state lines is often difficult. . . . [A] federal civil 
     statutory remedy would make Federal tribunals instantly 
     available to aggrieved businesses that seek injunctions, 
     which is particularly important when time is of the essence 
     due to flight risks.

  Another problem we faced was ensuring that the ex parte seizure 
authority could not be used abusively or for anticompetitive purposes.
  When we began the drafting process last Congress, we started from 
scratch and asked for input from all interested stakeholders, 
especially in regard to the ex parte provision. We received many 
helpful suggestions and included them in the bill. That is correct, 
isn't it, Senator Coons?
  Mr. COONS. Yes, it is, I say to Senator Hatch. After all that work 
together, all that consultation, when we introduced this bill last 
Congress, we wanted to make sure the ex parte provision couldn't be 
used for abuse, so we

[[Page 15956]]

required that the party seeking ex parte review must make a rigorous 
showing that they owned the trade secret, that the trade secret had 
been stolen, and that third parties would not be harmed if an ex parte 
order were granted. We also included damages for wrongful seizure, 
including attorneys' fees. And with that whole combination of important 
measures to ensure that the ex parte seizure capabilities under the 
statute are not misused, I think we achieved real consensus at that 
time. Isn't that right, Senator Hatch?
  Mr. HATCH. That is right, I say to Senator Coons.
  As we prepared to reintroduce our bill in this Congress, we were 
fortunate to join forces with Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. He was 
invaluable in fine-tuning the ex parte seizure language.
  Because of Senator Flake's good work, I believe the ex parte 
provisions are where they need to be--strong, fair, and not susceptible 
to abuse.
  Would the Senator agree with that?
  Mr. COONS. Yes, I would, thanks in no small part to you, I say to 
Senator Hatch, and to Senator Flake, who insisted both last Congress 
and this Congress that we put everything on the table and invite all 
stakeholders to come forward and share their concerns. We worked 
together, we did that, and we found an incredible consensus.
  In addition to talking with industry, we have gone to think tanks and 
academic institutions about this bill. Some people with whom we have 
spoken raised concerns that our bill, as previously drafted, could harm 
employee mobility.
  So, Senator Hatch, I don't want to restrict employee mobility, and I 
don't think you want to either; is that right?
  Mr. HATCH. That is right, I say to Senator Coons. I never thought our 
bill harmed employee mobility. But when I heard these concerns, I 
wanted to make sure that we addressed this particular issue. So we 
included language in the bill this Congress that states explicitly that 
a person cannot be prevented from accepting an offer of employment 
because of his or her prior exposure to trade secrets.
  I think we have struck the right balance with this bill. I am not 
aware of any stakeholder opposition to this bill. Those who operate 
businesses in the real world and have to protect their trade secrets on 
a regular basis are strong supporters of the Defend Trade Secrets Act.
  The list of companies and associations that have endorsed the act is 
diverse and impressive. Let me read the names of some of the businesses 
and organizations that support this bill: Adobe, AdvaMed, American Bar 
Association Section of Intellectual Property Law, American Intellectual 
Property Law Association, Association of Global Automakers, 
Biotechnology Industry Organization, Boeing Company, Boston Scientific, 
BSA-The Software Alliance, Caterpillar, Corning, DuPont, Eli Lilly and 
Company, General Electric, Honda, IBM, Illinois Tool Works, Information 
Technology Industry Council, Intel, International Fragrance Association 
of North America, Johnson & Johnson, Medical Device Manufacturers 
Association, Medtronic, Michelin North America, Micron, Microsoft, 
National Alliance for Jobs and Innovation, National Association of 
Manufacturers, New England Council, Nike, Pfizer, Philips, Intellectual 
Property Owners Association, Procter & Gamble, Semiconductor Industry 
Association, SAS, Software & Information Industry Association, U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce, and United Technologies Corporation. And let me 
mention just one more, but there are others: 3M.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
letters of support from these organizations.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                     American Bar Association,

                                                  October 5, 2015.
     Re S. 1890, the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015

     Hon. Charles E. Grassley,
     Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary,
     U.S. Senate, Washington DC.
     Hon. Patrick J. Leahy,
     Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary,
     U.S. Senate, Washington DC.
       Dear Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Leahy: I write to 
     express the views of the American Bar Association Section of 
     Intellectual Property Law on S. 1890, the ``Defend Trade 
     Secrets Act of 2015.'' These views have not been submitted to 
     or approved by the ABA House of Delegates or Board of 
     Governors, and should not be considered to be views of the 
     Association.
       There is no generally applicable federal private cause of 
     action whereby an owner of a trade secret can seek redress 
     for misappropriation of a trade secret. Relief must be sought 
     under state law, and most states and the District of Columbia 
     have in effect some version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act 
     (UTSA).
       Congress recognized the need for federal protection of 
     trade secrets when it enacted the Economic Espionage Act of 
     1996. That law authorizes criminal penalties of imprisonment 
     for up to 15 years and a fine of not more than $10,000,000 
     for the theft of trade secrets for the benefit of a foreign 
     government or other foreign interest. Lesser penalties are 
     provided for misappropriation not benefiting foreign 
     interests but which relate to products in interstate or 
     foreign commerce. The Attorney General of the United States 
     has the authority to seek injunctive relief against the theft 
     of trade secrets, but the Act does not contemplate a private 
     cause of action by the owners of those trade secrets. The 
     Section of Intellectual Property Law supports establishment 
     of such a cause of action, and urges the enactment of S. 1890 
     for this purpose.
       Currently in the United States, trade secrets are protected 
     under an un-harmonized patchwork of trade secret laws that is 
     ill-equipped to provide an effective civil remedy for 
     companies whose trade secrets are stolen. Not all states have 
     adopted the UTSA, and many differ in the interpretation and 
     implementation of existing laws. For instance, many states 
     define protectable trade secrets differently and also have 
     different requirements for the maintenance of claims for 
     trade secret misappropriation. To give but two examples, some 
     states have found a novelty requirement for information to be 
     considered a trade secret, and some are more protective than 
     others of customer lists.
       States have differing statutes of limitations for trade 
     secret claims, and there are also significant differences in 
     the availability of monetary relief. Many states have not 
     enacted Section 8 of the UTSA, which calls upon each state to 
     construe and apply the law to achieve uniformity among 
     states. Moreover, victims of trade secret theft can face 
     lengthy and costly procedural obstacles in obtaining evidence 
     when the misappropriator flees to another state or country or 
     transfers evidence outside the state.
       S. 1890 is the product of several years of congressional 
     consideration and development. The Section of Intellectual 
     Property Law has followed these developments and, in doing 
     so, has identified essential components that should be 
     included in a bill to establish a federal private cause of 
     action for misappropriation a of a trade secret. These 
     components include:
       a definition of trade secret that is clear and effective 
     and not unduly restrictive or overly technical;
       a clear delineation of the requirements for a federal cause 
     of action;
       the availability of remedies that are comparable to those 
     available under the UTSA, including provisions providing for 
     injunctive relief and monetary relief in the form of 
     royalties, disgorgement of the proceeds of unjust enrichment, 
     and exemplary damages;
       provisions for seizure orders that adequately limit the 
     circumstances in which they may be issued and executed and 
     that provide for the custody, security, and access to seized 
     property; and
       confirmation that the bill's enactment will not preempt 
     state trade secret laws.
       Because S. 1890 contains these essential components, the 
     Section of Intellectual Property Law supports its enactment.
           Very truly yours,
                                            Theodore H. Davis Jr.,
              Section Chair, American Bar Association, Section of 
     Intellectual Property Law.
                                  ____


  Resolution adopted by the Intellectual Property Owners Association 
             Board of Directors Sunday, September 27, 2015

       RESOLVED, that IPO supports the enactment of legislation, 
     such as the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015, to establish a 
     federal civil cause of action for trade secret 
     misappropriation to protect trade secrets from domestic and 
     foreign theft, including an ex parte seizure provision, while 
     providing adequate safeguards against improper use of such ex 
     parte seizure provision.
                                  ____

                                                    July 29, 2015.
     Hon. Orrin Hatch,
     U.S. Senator, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Christopher Coons,
     U.S. Senator, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Jeff Flake,
     U.S. Senator, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Hatch, Senator Coons, and Senator Flake: The 
     undersigned companies

[[Page 15957]]

     and organizations write to express our support for the Defend 
     Trade Secrets Act of 2015. We appreciate your leadership on 
     this issue.
       The Defend Trade Secrets Act will create a harmonized, 
     uniform standard and system for companies to protect their 
     trade secrets. Your bipartisan legislation will establish a 
     strong standard for trade secret protection.
       Trade secrets are an essential form of intellectual 
     property. Trade secrets include information as broad-ranging 
     as manufacturing processes, product development, industrial 
     techniques, formulas, and customer lists. The protection of 
     this form of intellectual property is critical to driving the 
     innovation and creativity at the heart of the American 
     economy. Companies in America, however, are increasingly the 
     targets of sophisticated efforts to steal proprietary 
     information, harming our global competitiveness.
       Existing state trade secret laws are inadequate to address 
     the interstate and international nature of trade secret theft 
     today. Federal law protects trade secrets through the 
     Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (``EEA''), which provides 
     criminal sanctions for trade secret misappropriation. While 
     the EEA is a critical tool for law enforcement to protect the 
     clear theft of our intellectual property, U.S. trade secret 
     owners also need access to a federal civil remedy and the 
     full spectrum of legal options available to owners of other 
     forms of intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, 
     and copyrights.
       The Defend Trade Secrets Act will create a federal remedy 
     that will provide a consistent, harmonized legal framework 
     and help avoid the commercial injury and loss of employment 
     that can occur when trade secrets are stolen. We are proud to 
     support it.
           Sincerely,
       Association of Global Automakers, Inc., Biotechnology 
     Industry Organization (BIO), The Boeing Company, Boston 
     Scientific, BSA/The Software Alliance (BSA), Caterpillar 
     Inc., Corning Incorporated, Eli Lilly and Company, General 
     Electric, Honda, IBM, Illinois Tool Works Inc., Information 
     Technology Industry Council (ITI), Intel, International 
     Fragrance Association, North America.
       Johnson & Johnson, Medical Device Manufacturers Association 
     (MDMA), Medtronic, Micron, Microsoft, National Alliance for 
     Jobs and Innovation (NAJI), National Association of 
     Manufacturers (NAM), The New England Council, NIKE, Pfizer, 
     The Procter & Gamble Company, Siemens Corporation, Software & 
     Information Industry Association (SIIA), U.S. Chamber of 
     Commerce, United Technologies Corporation, 3M.
                                  ____

                                                     Semiconductor


                                         Industry Association,

                                  Washington, DC, October 7, 2015.
     Hon. Orrin Hatch,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Chris Coons,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Doug Collins,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Jerry Nadler,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Hatch, Senator Coons, Congressman Collins, and 
     Congressman Nadler: On behalf of the Semiconductor Industry 
     Association (SIA), I am writing to express our support for 
     the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015 (S. 1890; H.R. 3326).
       The U.S. semiconductor industry supports the strong 
     protection of all forms of intellectual property, including 
     trade secrets. Our industry invests 18 percent of revenue on 
     average on research and development--the highest of any U.S. 
     industry. Protecting the valuable intellectual property that 
     results from this significant investment is critical to our 
     industry's continued success.
       In the semiconductor industry, trade secrets include 
     essential intellectual property such as manufacturing 
     processes and techniques, circuit designs, software source 
     code, and business strategies and customer lists. The ability 
     to protect these types of trade secrets has contributed to 
     advances in semiconductor design and manufacturing that have 
     helped enable technological advancements in sectors 
     throughout the economy.
       Unfortunately, existing laws are inadequate to address the 
     theft of trade secrets in today's environment. Federal law 
     currently provides criminal sanctions for trade secret 
     misappropriation, but owners of trade secrets currently lack 
     a federal civil remedy for the theft of their trade secrets. 
     State laws provide a civil remedy, but the state courts lack 
     the authority to act effectively against trade secret theft 
     that crosses state and national borders.
       The Defend Trade Secrets Act would strengthen the 
     protection of trade secrets by providing for a federal civil 
     cause of action. The bills would provide a consistent, 
     harmonized legal framework and help avoid the commercial 
     injury, diminished competitiveness, and loss of employment 
     that can occur when trade secrets are stolen.
       We appreciate your leadership in introducing this 
     bipartisan legislation that will strengthen U.S. 
     competitiveness and innovation.
           Sincerely,
                                                     John Neuffer,
                                                  President & CEO.

  Mr. HATCH. I ask Senator Coons, don't you think it is time that 
Congress acted on trade secret theft?
  Mr. COONS. Absolutely, Senator Hatch, I do. I think when you talk 
about an important issue such as trade secret theft, which poses such a 
great threat to American innovation, economic growth, and 
competitiveness, it really is past time that we act on this issue.
  This bill is truly bipartisan. I was the lead sponsor in the last 
Congress, and you are the lead sponsor in this Congress. Along the way 
we have worked closely together and undertaken an inclusive and 
iterative process to make sure we have heard from all stakeholder 
perspectives so that we have legislation that creates winners only, not 
winners and losers.
  Senator Hatch, it has been an honor to work with you on this. You 
have been a big part of the reason we were able to undertake such a 
successful and constructive process.
  I would ask, Senator Hatch, in your view, has this process now 
produced a bill that is ready to move in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, on which we both serve?
  Mr. HATCH. First, I thank you for your work on this bill, Senator 
Coons. You have been a great partner in advancing this bill.
  I agree with you that the Defend Trade Secrets Act is ready to move--
not just through the Senate Judiciary Committee but also on the Senate 
floor. In fact, I think this is the type of bill that could move by 
unanimous consent.
  At the same time, we are not closing the door or turning a deaf ear 
to anyone who has thoughts on this legislation. Let me say, if my of my 
colleagues have concerns or questions about the bill, come talk to me 
or Senator Coons. Now is the time to resolve your concerns, and we will 
resolve them.
  If you talk to any of the companies that were initially on the 
fringes and that are now supporters of the bill, I think they will 
agree that you and I are willing to address all legitimate concerns. So 
work with us.
  I am pleased with the momentum we have already seen on this bill 
through industry support and in the Senate. One way that is happening 
is that Senators on both sides of the aisle want to support this bill.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators James Risch, 
Mike Crapo, and Roy Blunt be added as cosponsors to the Defend Trade 
Secrets Act, S. 1890.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. I am pleased with the support we have already seen and 
encourage many more of my colleagues to support and help us pass this 
bill. Help us make this happen. It is the right thing to do.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.


                 Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, over the past several months, law 
enforcement officers across our country have been shot, shot at, and 
killed without provocation, too often simply because they wear a badge. 
Violent crime and murders have increased across the country at almost 
alarming rates in some areas. Drug use and overdoses are occurring and 
dramatically increasing. It is against this backdrop that we are 
considering a bill, or will be, to cut prison sentences for drug 
traffickers and even other violent criminals, including those currently 
in Federal prisons.
  So we need to be asking about this carefully and with real caution, 
because as a prosecutor for a number of years, I know there are reasons 
we have people in jail. One is that it is just desserts. When somebody 
assaults another person, breaks into their house and robs them, uses 
weapons to rob a person of a thing of value, steals their automobiles, 
murders, rapes, and those kinds of things, they have to have a certain 
punishment or there is no real justice in the world. Just desserts is a 
legitimate reason to have punishment. It is not all economics. It is 
not all about whether they might or might not commit another crime. If 
you do a serious crime, you should do some time for it.

[[Page 15958]]

  Another one is incapacitation. This is too little appreciated, but 
when you take a person who is committing crimes--and many of them 
commit many crimes--a study in California of their State prison system 
showed there was a huge number of those criminals who admitted 
committing as many as 170 crimes a year. We say that is not possible, 
but people would break into two or three cars a night. They would break 
into businesses, break into Coke machines, break into other things and 
cause all kinds of issues, such as lost time from work, costs to 
repair, disrupting lives, making people change the very nature of their 
business affairs because they are afraid of being robbed or 
burglarized. So those are things that occur.
  Rehabilitation is a factor. The original idea was that in prison--we 
called it a penitentiary--where people do penance and hopefully they 
try to change their lives.
  So I would just point out that those are some of the things we need 
to be aware of when we are talking about sentencing and what is 
appropriate, particularly in a time of rising crime.
  People want Congress to represent their best interests and to protect 
them--people who do the right thing. They want their children to be 
able to play in the streets, walk around the block, see their friends, 
and not be afraid of some drug dealer or some gang member. Too often 
that is not possible in America. It got better, but it is getting 
worse, and we need to be aware of that as we consider legislation to 
improve our criminal justice system.
  According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the amount of 
heroin seized at the southwest border has increased nearly 300 percent 
from 2008 to 2013, and I suspect the numbers are still going up. Heroin 
overdose deaths have increased 45 percent. That is huge. We went 
through a period of decline in all of this. It took 20 years. I was 
there. I worked with the Coalition for a Drug-Free Mobile, the 
Partnership for Youth. They volunteered hours and hours--teachers, 
school systems, gave their time and effort. We went from a period when 
50 percent of high school seniors in 1980, according to a University of 
Michigan study, admitted to using an illegal drug, to less than 25 
percent. It was cut by half. How many young people's lives stayed on 
track? How many people's lives were not led astray and destroyed by 
drug addiction as a result of that significant decline in drug use?
  I think it needs to be said that the President should never have said 
smoking marijuana is like smoking cigarettes: Oh, I wish I hadn't done 
it. That is the kind of message people hear. Now we have States 
legalizing it, and they are already talking about decriminalizing it. 
It is a mistake. We have seen that experiment before. Lives are at 
stake.
  The Drug Enforcement Administration called me recently and told me 
that 120 people a day are dying of a drug overdose in America. How many 
of them have serious brain injuries as a result of those overdoses? Our 
Presiding Officer, Dr. Cassidy, has been around emergency rooms. How 
many people are taken to emergency rooms and at what great cost to our 
communities? How many lives are disrupted? How many children are in 
broken homes? How many people had to leave their home because one 
spouse or the other has spent all the family money on drugs to support 
a habit? How many children have been abandoned, went to bed without 
food because of addiction in their family?
  These are serious matters. We made tremendous progress. The murder 
rate in America dropped by over 50 percent since the 1980s when Ronald 
Reagan said ``just say no'' and started a War on Drugs. He appointed me 
as the U.S. attorney in Alabama. I know what we did. And the Federal 
Government led the way with tough sentencing, eliminating parole, 
targeting dangerous drugs in effective ways, and States and local 
governments followed.
  I am worried about it. It is just tragic to me that we are making the 
same mistakes we made in the 1960s and 1970s. According to new data, 
4.3 million people abuse or are dependent on marijuana. Marijuana is 
stronger today--several times stronger--than the marijuana of the 
1960s, and it does impact people adversely.
  The American Medical Association has issued a report that is 
unequivocal about the danger and the ramifications of the use of 
marijuana. According to the 2014 ``Monitoring the Future'' study, since 
2007, lifetime, past year, past month, and daily drug use among 8th, 
10th, and 12th graders combined have all increased.
  Meanwhile, over the last several years, Congress, the President, the 
Supreme Court, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission all have taken steps 
to lessen punishment for, or altogether stop, the enforcement of laws 
that we passed over the years that led to this decline. They have been 
eliminated and weakened. I supported one of the big ones in Congress. I 
worked with Senator Durbin and we passed a bill that I think was 
justified and would not have done anything other than make the system 
better, in my opinion, and fairer, but now we need to ask ourselves, 
what do we do next, if anything?
  In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the sentencing guidelines that 
were enacted by Congress were not mandatory. This was a huge thing. In 
the early 1980s we passed sentencing guidelines and, depending on the 
severity of the crime and what the aggravating factors were at work, a 
person got more time or less time. It involved aggravating factors and 
mitigating factors, and it ended this idea that if you went to one 
judge, he would give you probation and if you went to another judge for 
the same crime, you would get 10 years, 15 years in jail.
  So I think that is to be noted. This is a very significant reduction 
as a practical matter in the amount of time that a person would serve 
because of eliminating the mandatory requirement of the sentencing 
guidelines.
  Then in 2010--this is a bill I worked on, the Fair Sentencing Act, 
which reduced the disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine 
and made other changes that in many ways reduced sentences overall. It 
reduced sentences. It was designed because minority groups, 
particularly the African-American community--the drug of choice too 
often was crack and that had much higher sentences and it seemed to be 
unfair, and we fixed that to a large degree. It eliminated the 
mandatory 5-year minimum sentence--the mandatory 5 years without parole 
for possession of crack cocaine. I didn't think that was legitimate, 
Congress agreed, and we eliminated that requirement. It was being 
gotten around, and not many times were people being sentenced for 
simple possession of a small amount of cocaine. That was changed, and 
the Sentencing Commission then implemented an amendment to the 
sentencing guidelines that applied this retroactively. So people who 
had been sentenced under the previous procedures had those procedures 
reversed and then they got out of jail early--and a lot of people did. 
It resulted in early release of thousands of offenders.
  In August of 2013, in a dramatic event too little appreciated, 
Attorney General Eric Holder ordered Federal prosecutors not to charge 
certain drug offenders with mandatory minimums, regardless of the 
quantity of drugs involved. He directed the prosecutors not to follow 
the law. Under the law, if you have a certain amount of drug use, you 
are supposed to serve at least a minimum mandatory sentence. This is 
different from the guidelines. This is a statutory requirement. And 
Attorney General Holder reversed previous attorneys general memoranda 
which directed that prosecutors should charge the main offense and they 
should be subject to the main penalty. That further reduced the number 
of people convicted and the amount of time they served.
  Then the administration has declined to enforce Federal drug laws 
regarding marijuana in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. It is still a 
Federal offense to deal marijuana in the United States. So even though 
a State doesn't have that law, the Federal Government does. They said: 
Well, if you don't enforce it, we won't enforce it--another relaxation 
of Federal law.

[[Page 15959]]

  Then, according to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, 
prosecutions for drug trafficking--the number of people actually tried 
and prosecuted for drug trafficking under the primary drug law, 21 U.S. 
Code section 841, has declined over 16 percent since 2009, and since 
President Obama took office, prosecutions under 21 U.S. Code section 
960, the Import-Export Act, have declined by 30 percent over that time 
period.
  We haven't had those kinds of reductions in drugs that are imported 
into the United States. We don't have fewer drug distribution networks. 
We have more. Those prosecutions shouldn't be declining. We didn't 
reduce the number of prosecutors working in the U.S. Attorneys' 
offices.
  Attorney General Holder ordered Federal prosecutors to refrain from 
objecting to defendants' requests in court for shorter sentences. He 
said: Don't object to their requests for shorter sentences. Less than a 
month later, the Sentencing Commission voted to reduce sentences for an 
estimated 70 percent of Federal drug trafficking offenders, including 
those who possessed a firearm, committed a violent crime or had a prior 
conviction, decreasing their sentence an average of 11 months--almost 1 
year. An estimated 6,000 will be released from Federal prison beginning 
November 1, and about 40,000 will be eligible for early release in the 
coming years.
  President Obama has commuted the sentences of 89 Federal drug 
offenders, including crack cocaine distributors--some convicted of 
dealing more than 10 pounds of crack, which is hundreds of thousands of 
dollars in value, while others were convicted of possession of a 
firearm in relation to a drug offense.
  One of the things my office always did was it was sure to prosecute 
drug dealers who used guns while they were doing their nefarious 
crimes. I think it had an impact on the murder rate in America. Fewer 
dangerous drug dealers were carrying guns on a regular basis because 
they knew if they got caught, they would be taken to Federal court and 
be held another 5 years without parole for carrying a gun on top of 
their drug offense.
  The President has announced that he plans to continue to grant 
clemency to Federal drug offenders through the end of his Presidency. 
Are we talking about thousands more?
  All of this has led the Federal prison population to fall.
  Now you have heard it said that we have this ever-growing number of 
people in the Federal prisons and that somehow it is wrong--there are 
about 200,000 people in Federal prisons.
  We should talk about that. It is OK to talk about it, but we have to 
be careful. What I would say to you and what is too little appreciated, 
colleagues, is that we have already seen dramatic reductions in 
sentences in the last several years, far unlike what we had done in the 
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
  So the prison population has now started dropping. It has reached the 
lowest levels since 2005, 10 years ago. According to the Bureau of 
Prisons, the prison population of 200,000 has decreased over the last 2 
years--by 5,300 in fiscal year 2014, last year. They project the 
population to ``further drop by 14,987 between FY2015 and FY2016''--
another 15,000 decline--``particularly as a result of the retroactive 
sentencing guidelines change.'' Admissions to Federal prisons have 
declined every year since 2011. The number of people being admitted to 
the Federal prisons is going down, driven, I suspect, by the 
prosecutorial policies set by Attorney General Holder. They will 
continue to decline given the President's policy of directing 
prosecutors not to charge certain criminal offenses.
  This is a very serious matter. We need to be careful as we analyze 
the legislation today. Crime is already rising at an alarming rate, so 
much so that it has prompted an emergency meeting of the Major Cities 
Chiefs Association in August. The New York Times recently reported that 
murders have increased sharply in many cities across the country since 
2014, including Atlanta, up 32 percent--these are murders--Baltimore, 
up 56 percent, nearby; Chicago, up 20 percent; Houston, up 44 percent; 
Los Angeles, up 11 percent; New York, up 9 percent; Milwaukee, up 76 
percent; Minneapolis, up 50 percent; New Orleans, up 22 percent; 
Philadelphia, up 4 percent; Dallas, up 17 percent; and Washington, DC, 
where we are, up 47 percent--murders. This trend, in my opinion, will 
continue.
  Property crimes have also risen sharply throughout the country and 
even in small cities such as Abilene, Carson City, Portland, Ithaca, 
and Binghamton, NY.
  I am afraid we are watching a repeat of history. A couple of 
generations ago, when we had an indeterminate sentencing system with no 
guidelines or required minimum sentences, virtually identical 
defendants received totally different sentences depending on the judge, 
and many received little or no incarceration. A nationwide crime wave 
ensued. It was a revolving door. People were arrested. They were 
released on bail. They came to court, and the case got continued. It 
got continued again, it got continued again, and the witnesses 
disappeared. They had a plea bargain, they got a little bit of time, 
and they served less than a third of the time they got. That is what 
was happening.
  People say: Prison makes them worse. Do you remember those arguments? 
Well, in 1980, one out of four households in the United States had 
suffered a rape, robbery, burglary, assault, larceny or auto theft in 
the previous year. Crime was increasing in double-digits per year in 
the 1960s and 1970s, and we did not respond to it.
  So then the Congress passed legislation that imposed mandatory 
minimum sentences on criminals convicted of the most serious Federal 
crimes and drug crimes to ensure that these perpetrators served at 
least a fixed amount of time in prison. Every drug dealer knew it and 
came to know that if they were caught, they were going to serve real 
time and they were not going to talk their way out of it. The Anti-Drug 
Abuse Act was passed, and the Armed Career Criminal Act, which had 
mandatory 15-year penalties. Career criminals carrying guns and 
committing serious crimes were hammered. It targeted career criminals--
the kind of people who kill people to carry out their crimes. Drug 
trafficking fell into that category. Congress also established 
sentencing guidelines that required judges to sentence within certain 
ranges and calculate factors and create objectivity, so that one poor 
person got the same sentence as some rich person with a highly paid 
lawyer. The rationale was and remains three-fold: to deter offenders 
from engaging in further criminal behavior, to ensure that a meaningful 
period of time elapsed for the offender to become rehabilitated, and to 
incapacitate the offender from harming law-abiding citizens.
  How many people do you know that would rape someone? How many people 
do you know that would likely take a gun and murder somebody? The more 
of those that are in jail serving time, the less people are going to 
get murdered. It is mathematics, and that is really what happened since 
1980 with the increasing number of people being incarcerated. This idea 
worked.
  According to the FBI statistics, the rate of violent crimes--murder, 
rape, robbery, and aggravated assault--was reduced by more than 50 
percent from 1991 to 2013. That is when these sentences were beginning 
to be understood and were impactful. Property crimes, burglary, murder, 
larceny, and motor vehicle thefts dropped by a similar measure.
  Over time, prison penalties fairly and systematically applied mean 
that less crime and fewer innocent people are burglarized, robbed, 
raped or murdered. Scholars have estimated that the increase in the 
size of our prison population has driven down crime rates by at least 
25 percent.
  Professor Matt DeLisi of Iowa State University testified before the 
Senate Judiciary Committee that criminal justice research shows that 
``releasing 1 percent of the current [Federal prison] population would 
result in approximately 32,850 additional murders, rapes, robberies, 
aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts, auto thefts, and incidents of 
arson.''

[[Page 15960]]

  Well, we have had more than a 1 percent increase already. The great 
criminologist and Professor James Q. Wilson said:

       A high risk of punishment reduces crime. It just does.

  If you are talking about the classroom or on the football field, if 
the flag is thrown every time somebody clips, they quit clipping. If it 
is not thrown, you will still see it.
  In 2011 the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling in Brown v. 
Plata, that California was required to reduce its prison population to 
ease overcrowding. In dissent in that case, Justice Alito recalled a 
prisoner-release program in Philadelphia in the 1990s:

       Although efforts were made to release only those prisoners 
     who were least likely to commit violent crimes, that attempt 
     was spectacularly unsuccessful. During an 18-month period, 
     the Philadelphia police arrested thousands of these prisoners 
     for committing 9,732 new crimes. Those defendants were 
     charged with 79 murders, 90 rapes, 1,113 assaults, 959 
     robberies, 701 burglaries, 2,748 thefts, not to mention 
     thousands of drug offenses.

  I wish it weren't so. I wish we could have these programs. I have 
seen them since my time in law enforcement in 1975, as a young 
prosecutor. Year after year, people have come forward with plans that 
sound so good, and they have been tried before. But they never work out 
nearly as well as people promote. Trust me. If there was any quick fix, 
it would already have been done all over America. People don't--States 
don't want to spend money on prisons. But the truth is that people who 
tend to be criminals tend to continue to be criminals and commit 
crimes. We ignore too often the pain, the destruction and the damage it 
does to innocent people who are afraid to have their children 
experience the turmoil of crime.
  Now is not the time to move too fast to further reduce penalties 
without careful thought. Before we rush to judgment about undoing 
Federal sentencing laws, we must consider the results of what has 
already happened--how much reduction we have already seen. We have a 
responsibility to the public to examine every aspect of the legislation 
that may be coming forward and be introduced in committee, which could 
greatly impact the everyday lives of Americans for years to come. To 
that end, we must have a good hearing on it. We need to study what 
experts have told us and what history tells us about crime.
  It would be so wonderful if we could do a drug treatment program and 
people would not commit crimes again. It would be so wonderful if we 
could have an in-prison educational program that people could take and 
somehow have a significant reduction of crime rates. There are all 
kinds of ideas that have been tried over the years, and some of them 
may have a benefit. Some of them have some benefit, but none of them 
have produced dramatic alterations in the rate of recidivism or repeat 
of criminal acts. One study a number of years ago concluded that when a 
person comes out of prison, they make a decision. It is an individual, 
personal decision about whether they are going to continue with 
criminal activity or not. Some of them make it because the prison was a 
bad place and they don't want to go back. Some of them make it because 
they have had a religious experience. Some of them make it because they 
took advantage of an online or education course and decided they are 
going to do something better for their lives. But it is an individual 
decision, and we have not found it possible to somehow impact the 
psyche of people in prison so that we can consistently reduce the 
likelihood that they will return to crime. We have to understand that.
  If somebody has a plan that shows me that, I would like to see it.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair for allowing me to share these 
thoughts. We are at a very important time in criminal justice, and we 
need to get it right.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.


                           Pension Protection

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I want to speak on the floor today about 
something that is incredibly important to families all across Michigan 
and all across the country--what we have talked about in terms of the 
importance of having a middle class in this country. Folks who are 
working all their lives, who get a good wage, and who pay into a 
pension and expect it to be there. Those fundamentals are falling apart 
for far too many people. Specifically, I want to speak about what is 
happening regarding pensions and pension protections in this country.
  I think all of us would agree that a pension is a promise and it is 
earned. A pension is earned over a lifetime of hard work, and it is the 
foundation of retirement security for tens of millions of American 
workers who have a pension and for their families. There is no question 
that a number of pension funds in our country are suffering, due 
largely to factors that they cannot control, such as what happened with 
the Wall Street financial crisis, which took billions of dollars and 
wasn't the fault of any of the workers involved or of the businesses, 
for that matter, that found themselves going out of business because of 
what happened during that financial crisis.
  This took a huge toll on middle-class families. We have focused on 
homes and the loss of homes, which was a disaster. But a second 
disaster is now beginning to be felt, and that is the question of 
pensions and the loss of pension benefits. Workers are now at risk of 
losing their pensions because of cuts that are beginning to be 
announced. This already includes 30,000 workers in Michigan--30,000 
workers in Michigan.
  I understand the dilemma the pension funds are facing. Their funding 
is in critical status. They are becoming increasingly insolvent over 
time. I understand the tough decisions they are having to make, but 
they would not have to be making those decisions if protecting pensions 
were a priority for Congress. This is a matter of whether we are going 
to continue to have a middle class in this country.
  Frankly, it is an issue of fairness for the people who have paid in 
their whole lives and expect, as they come to retirement age--or they 
are already retired--as a matter of fairness, that their funds are 
going to be available for them, and they should be.
  One of the things that is so outrageous when we look at the lack of 
fairness around priorities in this country is that we see companies 
taking advantage of tax loopholes to move jobs overseas and avoid 
paying taxes. I have a bill called the Bring Jobs Home Act, which 
simply closes one of those loopholes and says: If you are going to 
move, at least you should not be able to write off the cost of the 
move, and the workers who are losing their jobs and taxpayers should 
not have to pay for the cost of the move.
  We have not been able to close that loophole, so we see tens of 
millions of dollars, billions of dollars, going overseas sometimes 
because companies stay here, they just move overseas on paper. So they 
are still breathing the air and drinking the water and driving on 
roads, but on paper they have moved so they don't have to pay taxes, 
and we have another gigantic tax loophole.
  On the one hand, while we see the system rigged over and over again 
for the wealthy and the well connected who pay less in taxes, we have 
hard-working citizens--whether they are truck drivers or teachers or 
police officers or men and women in uniform or people all across our 
country--who are paying into pension systems, and we have not been able 
to get the support to fully fund those systems, to fully fund the PBGC, 
the pension guarantee fund. So there is an issue around pensions and 
people knowing their pensions will be protected going forward.
  I believe it is up to us in Congress to put in place the resources 
necessary to help protect the financial security of workers and 
retirees and their families. This is a matter of priorities. There are 
ways for us to do that--by closing tax loopholes for special interests, 
for the wealthy, for folks who want to avoid paying their taxes in a 
wide variety of ways. Take those dollars and make sure we shore up 
pension protection in this country. It is pretty basic. People

[[Page 15961]]

are counting on us to take action. We need to fully commit to make sure 
every worker gets the pension benefits they need, they deserve, and, 
most importantly, they have earned.
  That is why I am cosponsoring important legislation that Senator 
Sanders has put forward. There are a number of us who are cosponsoring 
this. Let me mention a few of the cosponsors. We have a number of 
different people: Senator Baldwin, Senator Brown, Senator Franken, 
Senator Jack Reed, and others. I know my colleague Senator Peters cares 
deeply about this as well.
  There are a number of us who are coming together on legislation that 
would prevent the proposed cuts to workers' earned pension benefits. 
This bill would set our priorities straight by closing the tax 
loopholes, many of which I have talked about, to make sure we have the 
resources to put back into protecting workers' pensions. It would also 
make sure workers and retirees in the Central State Pension Fund 
system, the largest pension fund facing severe and growing financial 
difficulties, would be able to receive the full benefits they have 
earned--again, the full benefits they have earned.
  It is outrageous to me to think that a promise as basic as a pension, 
a lifetime of work paying into a pension--that that pension would not 
be there and that we would not as a Congress consider it a priority to 
do everything possible to protect pensions people have earned.
  I am going to keep doing everything I can, looking for ways to stop 
these cuts to the earned pension benefits. It is a basic issue of 
financial security. We have legislation, if passed right away, that 
would make a big difference. We need to get that bill passed so we can 
put in place the pension protections and send a message to people 
across our country that we get it, that we understand what is at stake 
for so many families.
  A pension is a promise that needs to be kept. We have a way to do 
that in legislation before this body. I hope the leadership--the 
Republican leadership--will view it as a priority and take it up so we 
can get this passed as soon as possible.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         Transportation Funding

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I have come to the floor--I don't come to 
the floor every day, but every day that I come here you are presiding. 
Either I am coming here more often than I thought or you are presiding 
more than most people do. Maybe you just drew the short straw, but at 
the end of the day, I enjoy having these conversations with you, even 
when most of our colleagues have packed up and headed for places near 
and far--mostly far.
  I have a couple of charts here today I would like for us to go over. 
The first one is--I like these bar graphs. This is an interesting one. 
We have Great Britain on this axis right here. We have information 
about the relative amount of fuel taxes countries have. Great Britain 
is the world champ. They have the biggest fuel taxes of anybody, and 
they have had for quite a while.
  All the way over here is the U.S.A. There is an outfit called the 
OECD, which I would say is the Organization for Economic Cooperation 
and Development. It doesn't have 41 nations; maybe it has about 37 or 
38. They are arrayed right here. There are Russia, India, and Brazil. 
This gives you some sense of how different nations pay for their 
transportation infrastructure.
  A bunch of nations, like Great Britain, use their fuel taxes to help 
balance the budget. Great Britain is here, and then we have these other 
countries--Luxembourg, Spain, Argentina. You get all the way down here, 
and there is Brazil. They are like off the charts. They must not have 
any fuel taxes to pay for their transportation infrastructure at all. 
We are pretty close to them. We are right here, the United States. We 
are right between Canada and Mexico.
  I wanted to show that to give people a sense of--people think: Boy, 
we charge a lot of money for a gasoline tax and diesel tax. Well, as it 
turns out, not so much.
  Some people think we spend a lot of money in the Federal budget on 
foreign aid. A lot of time in my townhall meetings, people complain and 
say: Well, we spend way too much money on foreign aid.
  I say: Well, what percentage of the budget do you think actually goes 
to foreign aid?
  People say about 20, 25 percent. And the answer is 1 percent. So that 
is a misperception.
  I think the perception here is that we charge very high fuel taxes 
compared to the rest of the world. No. We have among the very lowest 
fuel taxes when you combine State and local with all of the developed 
nations of the world.
  Let's see what is next here. It says: How much do we pay in fuel 
taxes? This is the cost of regular gasoline right here, August 2015, 
about a month and a half ago. This right over here is diesel fuel in 
about August of this year, a month and a half ago. The retail price at 
that time, I guess on average across the country, was about $2.64 for 
gasoline, and the retail price for diesel was about the same, $2.60 a 
gallon.
  It is interesting to see how much tax is collected in a $2.64 gallon 
of gas. In our State, in Delaware, I pulled up for gas last week. I 
went to Wawa. I paid about $2.11 for gas. There are a bunch of 
stations--probably 1,000 or more--several thousand stations across the 
country last week where people paid less than two bucks a gallon. But 
this was the average. We have a couple of big States where the prices 
are higher, California among them.
  Anyway, what makes up the price of gas at $2.64? This was back in 
August. About 40 percent of that was the cost of crude oil. About 
another 25 percent of that $2.64 was attributable to refining costs. 
Another almost 20 percent--19 percent, actually--was for the cost of 
distribution, for distributing and marketing. Add that all up, and it 
adds up to about 82 percent, 83 percent of the cost of gasoline was 
crude oil, and refining, distribution, and taxes was about 17 percent.
  Again, when you look at our taxes in this country, State and local, 
we have among the lowest in the developed world. We just saw that in 
our first chart.
  The numbers on diesel are pretty much the same--40 percent of the 
cost of the diesel when you fill up tanks if you have a car or a truck 
that uses diesel. It is about 18 percent for refining and another 22 
percent. So about 80 percent of the cost for a gallon of diesel fuel 
1\1/2\ or 2 months ago was, again, crude oil, the cost of crude, the 
cost of refining, and the cost of distribution and marketing.
  Let's see what is on our next chart. It strikes me that gasoline 
prices are going down nationwide. Well, are they or are they not? Let's 
look. The average price of gas on October 5, 2015--what is today? Today 
is October 8, my sister's birthday. Three days before that birthday--
October 5--gas nationwide was about $2.32 a gallon. Compared to last 
year, it is down by 98 cents again.
  On the east coast, the price of gas where I come from in Delaware--I 
said I bought gas last week at Wawa for $2.11. The average price up and 
down the east coast is about $2.17 a gallon, and that is down by over 
$1 from a year ago. In New England, the price is just about the same as 
the Northeast--$2.23 a gallon. The Central Atlantic is pretty much 
Virginia, Maryland, and maybe North Carolina and South Carolina. In the 
Central Atlantic, it is $2.22 a gallon. These are all down by over $1 a 
gallon from last year. The Lower Atlantic is pretty much the same. The 
Midwest is a little bit more. Gulf Coast States--down very close to $2 
here. The gulf coast is down to $2.03 a gallon. That is down by roughly 
$1 from a year ago. Go out to the Rocky Mountain States--if you move 
farther to the West, prices go up a little bit. The Rocky Mountain 
States are $2.47, $2.48.

[[Page 15962]]

That is down by $1. The west coast is about $2.79. That is almost $1. 
Finally, the Pacific Northeast is about $2.50, again, down by $1. So I 
would say prices are down by about a third across the country.
  I like this poster. For folks who can't read it, there are a couple 
of guys who are sitting in a gas station. The passenger says to the 
driver, ``I just found some loose change in the cup holder.'' And the 
driver says, ``Awesome. Fill 'er up.'' Well, we are not quite at that 
point, but we are getting a lot more for the loose change we find in 
our cup holder than used to be the case. Now the question is, Is that 
going to continue?
  Look at this next chart and see what it shows. It shows that the 
global price of oil continues to drop. Again, keep in mind that about 
40 percent of the cost of gas--40 percent at the pump, 40 percent of 
the cost of diesel at the pump--is attributable to the price at the 
wellhead. This is the price of crude oil over a few years--2011, 2012, 
2013, 2014, and 2015. Here we are. This is starting at about the middle 
of 2014. There is a precipitous drop, some recovery, and then another 
precipitous drop.
  This is even better. This is the price of crude oil over the past 6 
months. There is a big drop starting about in June. You see what we 
have down here. It is about midforties per barrel.
  That is history. The question is, Looking forward, what can we expect 
prices to look like?
  I don't have a magic solar ball or anything like that, but I do know 
this: The world in which we live is awash in oil, and the United States 
has been a big contributor to that because of what we are bringing up 
out of the ground, on the land, and in the seas beside us, beside our 
country.
  But there is another country that is, I think, No. 4 in the world in 
terms of their strategic reserves compared to the rest of the world. It 
is a country that has not been pumping a lot of late, but it is a 
country that has the ability to pump a lot of oil, and that country is 
Iran. Today, this month, next month, they can pump maybe 100,000 
barrels a day, maybe 200,000 barrels a day. But if they abide by the 
agreement we struck with them, the Brits, the French, the Germans, the 
Russians, the Chinese, and us--if the Iranians keep their agreement, 
which is designed to ensure they don't end up with a nuclear weapon--if 
they keep that agreement and the sanctions are lifted, they will be 
able to, probably starting more next year than this, begin to pump more 
oil out of the ground. They have a lot of it to pump. They have a big 
reason to want to pump a lot of it because, as bad as our 
transportation and infrastructure is, theirs is a whole lot worse. They 
need to generate the money, and one of the ways they are going to do it 
is to pump a lot of oil.
  Looking forward, can we say the price of gasoline is going to go 
down? Is it going to stay the same? I would just say this: One of the 
big factors for us to consider is that the fourth biggest oil reserve 
country in the world is going to start--all things being equal, they 
are going to start pumping a lot of oil, and that is going to come into 
a world market of oil where, frankly, we are awash in oil. It is not 
going to drive the price up, I can assure you. It may keep it steady. 
It could actually drive it down further.
  All right. Let's take a look at the next chart. This is a chart that 
focuses on what we are investing as a nation in our transportation 
systems, our roads, our highways, our bridges. We are looking at, 
actually, some numbers provided by an outfit called the American 
Society of Civil Engineers. These are people who make a living by 
building infrastructure and helping design and figure out what we 
should build and how we should build it. It is not just transportation, 
it is all kinds of infrastructure, but it certainly includes 
transportation.
  They actually grade how we are doing on transportation in this 
country on roads, highways, and bridges. I think the last time I saw, 
the grade they gave us was a D-plus. The only thing I can say was good 
about that is it was not a D-minus. But it hasn't been a C or even a C-
minus for a long time. It certainly hasn't been a B for a lot longer. 
And one of the things that happens is when you have a transportation 
system--when our investments are at about a D-plus--``d'' as in 
``dog''--we end up spending a lot of time in traffic just sitting 
there.
  Every year, Texas A&M comes up with a study that says how much time 
we spend in traffic just pretty much sitting there, barely moving. The 
average across the country for the average driver is 42 hours a year. 
Think about that. That is pretty much almost 2 days that you just 
sitting there, maybe moving a little bit but not much.
  For the bigger cities, such as Washington, DC; Houston, TX; Dallas; 
Denver; or L.A., the numbers are more like 82 hours per year. That is 
almost 4 days just sitting there in traffic in your car, truck, van, 
big truck, your diesel, rig, whatever, waiting to move.
  The American Society of Civil Engineers says our investment needs are 
about $228 billion. Is that per year? That is per year. That is a lot 
of money. If we were pumping that kind of money into roads, highways, 
and bridges in our transit system, we wouldn't have a D-plus anymore; 
we would have a B-plus--``b'' as in ``bravo'' as opposed to ``d'' as in 
``dog.'' So that is what $228 billion a year would get us. That would 
be new revenues on top of the current revenues we are already 
generating from roads, highways, and bridges.
  Over at the U.S. Department of Transportation, they have said their 
magic number is $171 billion per year. They are talking about $171 
billion per year. They say that is just enough to begin to improve our 
transportation system. Instead of seeing it continue to be degraded, if 
we put in about $171 billion, we would see that is just enough to begin 
to improve our transportation system.
  Over here, these are our civil engineers. These are smart people who 
help design roads. This is the U.S. Department of Transportation. One 
says we need to put in about $228 billion a year and the U.S. 
Department of Transportation says about $171 billion a year. Our 
current highway trust fund spending out of our trust fund is $50 
billion a year. It is not even 20 percent, maybe not even 25 percent of 
what the engineers who build these systems are telling us, and it is 
not even a third of what the Department of Transportation says we ought 
to be doing. We could begin--just begin to improve our transportation 
system.
  What this chart says to me is we are going nowhere fast and we are 
woefully underfunding. If we want to get better; if we want to reduce 
the amount of time we are just sitting, going nowhere; if we want to 
reduce the amount of money we are spending to replace our tires or have 
our front ends aligned and other repairs on our vehicles--that adds up 
to about, on average, between $350 to $500 per driver. That is what we 
are spending now.
  Let's see what this poster says:

       The U.S. highway trust fund running out due to political 
     gridlock.
       Where the highway ends.

  Let me just say that we have had over the last, I don't know, 5, 6, 
7, 8 years any number of blue ribbon commissions that have been 
commissioned. We commissioned them in the Transportation bill we passed 
maybe 6 years ago. We said to all these smart people: We want you to go 
out and figure out how we ought to pay for transportation.
  They came back and said: Well, here is why we think a big part of it 
ought to be user fees, some for tolling and some for figuring out how 
many miles are actually traveled, vehicle miles traveled, kind of 
migrating toward that of system, but for the most part it should be 
user fees.
  A big piece of that, at least for now, should be user fees for the 
amount of gas we buy and for the amount of diesel fuel we buy because 
that generally ensures that the folks who are using our roads, 
highways, and bridges are actually paying for them.
  So there has not really been a lot of question among people a lot 
smarter than I and even smarter than my colleagues--most of them, at 
least--the folks who are most knowledgeable about this say this is the 
way we ought

[[Page 15963]]

to pay for it, and it should be a user-fee approach.
  The reason we are not doing that is because of political courage--not 
an overabundance of that; maybe a lack of it.
  All right. Let's see what is next. The TRAFFIC Relief Act, which is 
the Tax Relief And #FixTheTrustFund For Infrastructure Certainty Act of 
2015--that is a mouthful--was introduced by a fellow from Illinois 
named Senator Durbin and a fellow from Delaware. That would be me.
  Dick Durbin and I came to Washington. I was a Navy guy for many years 
before I was treasurer of Delaware, Congressman for a while, Governor, 
and now in the Senate. Dick came to Washington in 1982. We both were 
elected to the House in 1982. We found out on the first day on the 
job--we were sworn in January 3, 1983--the Social Security trust fund 
was about to run out of money, I mean entirely. But in 1983 we were not 
going to be talking about reducing Social Security benefits by 5 
percent, 10 percent, or 20 percent; by the end of 1983, we were going 
to run out of money and we wouldn't be able to pay anything for Social 
Security benefits.
  Fortunately, in 1982 some very smart people got together. A blue 
ribbon commission was chaired by Alan Greenspan, who went on to became 
Federal Reserve Chairman. They said: Here is how we ought to pay for 
it.
  Dick Durbin and I--a lot of Democrats and a lot of Republicans--all 
of us together said: That makes sense. Let's do it.
  It was a combination of reductions in benefits and additional 
revenues. We got the job done. Social Security is not set forever, but 
it has lasted for another 30 years, 40 years. We need to do some more 
to fix it, but that is the kind of bipartisan resolve we need.
  The legislation Senator Durbin and I introduced in this instance--
maybe a little more than a month ago--raises about $220 billion for the 
highway trust fund over 10 years, and that is on top of the amount of 
money we are already going to spend anyway over the next 10 years. I 
think that would be another maybe $400 billion, roughly, $450 billion, 
$350 billion. Add that to $220 billion, and that gives us $570 billion.
  Does this get us from D-plus to an A or A-minus or even a B-plus? No, 
it doesn't, but it moves us in the right direction. It moves the needle 
in the direction it needs to go. It provides for $90 billion to fully 
fund the highways and transit programs and about $130 billion for new 
investments in repairs and upgrades. We need to do those new 
investments, and we certainly need to do the repairs and upgrades.
  Let me close by thanking Senator Durbin for joining me in this 
effort. People vote for us to come to Congress and to make tough 
decisions. People expect us to work together. People especially expect 
us to get things done. People especially expect us to do things that 
help strengthen the economic recovery, which is underway, to make it 
more robust going forward in the future. We can do that. It doesn't 
take a rocket scientist to figure out how.
  A lot of smart people on these blue ribbon commissions have been 
telling us for years that the way to do it is move toward tolling, 
eventually move toward some kind of vehicle-miles-traveled system where 
based on the actual miles we travel we pay some find of fee. But they 
have also said for now, because those other two ideas are not fully 
realized--and especially for vehicle miles traveled, we are not going 
to be there for probably 10 years, 20 years. In the meantime, we have 
all this work that needs to be done and to be paid for, and they have 
said the best way to do it is to ensure that we pay--those of us who 
are using the roads, highways, and bridges pay for that, and we have 
been using gas taxes and diesel taxes to do that.
  I will close with this. I am not a big coffee drinker, but I stopped 
by a carryout we have downstairs in the basement. They are open 
whenever we are in session, and you can go get a sandwich or some soup 
or yogurt or something, and they also sell coffee. Some days, 
especially when we are in session late at night--we have not been doing 
that much lately--but at night when we are in session late, they sell a 
lot of coffee. The coffee is anywhere from the smallest cup costing 
like 70 cents, and the middle-sized maybe $2, $2.50, and the largest 
cups are maybe $3 or something like that. If you go to Starbucks you 
pay a lot more for a cup of coffee than that. You pay as much as $5 at 
Starbucks, I am told by a friend of mine who buys his coffee there, but 
I bought a cup of coffee here today and it was a little more than $2 
for a middle-sized cup of coffee.
  As it turns out, if we actually raised the user fee--the gas tax and 
the diesel tax--for 4 cents a year, which is what Dick Durbin and I are 
calling for, 4 cents a year for 4 years, and the Federal gas tax has 
been 18 cents for 22 years. Since 1993 it has been 18 cents. It is not 
worth 18 cents anymore because of inflation. It is worth less than a 
dime. The diesel tax is about 23 cents. It is not worth 23 cents 
anymore. It has been that since 1993. It is worth less than 15 cents. 
In the meantime, the price of concrete is up, asphalt is up, steel is 
up, labor is up, and the major way, the principal way we pay for roads, 
highways, bridges, and transit frankly has greatly diminished in value.
  If we were to actually raise, as Senator Durbin and I are suggesting, 
the price of these user fees--gas tax, diesel tax--by 4 cents a year 
for 4 years, that would add 16 cents to the price of gasoline. For the 
average driver, that turns out to be on a weekly basis just about the 
price of a cup of coffee. It works out to be just about the price of a 
cup of coffee.
  Here is a question I would ask. I think if we asked most drivers in 
this country of ours today when they are sitting in traffic trying to 
get someplace--whether here in the Mid-Atlantic area, up in the 
Northeast, out on the West Coast or other places--would you be willing, 
4 years from now, to be paying an amount of money equal to the price of 
a cup of coffee in order to spend a lot less time sitting in traffic 
going nowhere or running into potholes that destroy your tires and your 
front-end alignment? Would you be willing to pay on a weekly basis the 
amount of money you spend on a cup of coffee? My guess is most people 
would say that doesn't seem like a bad deal. You know what. They would 
be right because it is not a bad deal.
  I will close with this. I am from Delaware. People here are from all 
over the country representing their States. Guess what 12 of the 50 
States have done in the last 2 years--2013, 2014--and those States are 
mostly red States, with Republican Governors and Republican 
legislatures. One dozen of those States have raised their user fees. 
They have raised their user fees and not by a dollar all at once or 
even a half dollar or a quarter, but they have raised them in some 
places by pennies, a nickel or more over a couple of years.
  Then last November in those 12 States they had elections. This is an 
interesting story. Guess what happened to the State legislators who 
voted to raise their user fees to actually pay for their roads, 
highways, and bridges. When they ran for reelection they got reelected. 
Amazing. They showed political courage. They did the hard thing. 
Ninety-five percent of them, Republicans, who were running for 
reelection last November, in those States where they raised the user 
fees--gas tax, diesel tax--they got reelected.
  Do you know who didn't get reelected in some of those States? The 
legislators who voted against raising the user fees, who did not 
support making investments in transportation.
  How about the Democrats in those States? Well, the Democrats in 
States where they raised the user fees to pay for their transportation 
investments, almost 90 percent of them won their primary last November, 
won the general election, and they got reelected too. They did better 
than the legislators who voted against those increases. Think about 
that.
  I like to quote Thomas Jefferson from time to time, and Jefferson 
used to say: If people know the truth, they won't make a mistake. I 
would like to think the same thing is true here. If my colleagues and I 
know the truth, we

[[Page 15964]]

won't make a mistake either. People think it is political suicide to 
vote to raise these user fees and you can't get reelected by doing the 
right thing. But you know what. You can. You can, and there is a lot of 
evidence to show it can happen.
  I will close not with the words of Jefferson but of Mark Twain, who 
said a lot of things--a lot of funny things--and one of the things he 
said that I think is especially appropriate is: In the end, tell the 
truth. You will confound your critics and amaze your friends.
  The truth is we need to make these investments. The other truth is 
this is not political suicide. At the end of the day, we are actually 
going to get, I think more often than not, rewarded for doing the hard 
thing and the right thing. My hope is we will do that, and I will 
continue to make that case.
  One last great quote, Mr. President. Wayne Gretzky--I don't know if 
you play much hockey down your way, we play some in Delaware--but Wayne 
Gretzky said a lot of memorable things in his life--a great hockey 
player, now retired--and when people would say to him: Mr. Gretzky, why 
are you such a good hockey player? He would say: I go where the puck 
will be, not where the puck is. Think about that. I go where the puck 
will be, not where the puck is.
  One of the other things Wayne Gretzky said that I especially like is: 
I miss 100 percent of the shots--talking about taking a shot on the 
goal--he said: I miss 100 percent of the shots that I never take. Think 
about that. I miss 100 percent of the shots I never take.
  I am convinced this is a shot worth taking. I am going to push very 
hard to make sure somebody is here, and Dick Durbin and my guess is 
some others, too, will come along and will encourage folks to join us 
in this effort. This is a just cause.
  I don't see anybody else waiting in line to speak, so with that, I 
suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________