[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 371-382]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      FEDERAL RESERVE TRANSPARENCY ACT OF 2015--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2232, which the 
clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 289, S. 2232, a bill to 
     require a full audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal 
     Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks by the 
     Comptroller General of the United States, and for other 
     purposes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 2:30 
p.m. will be equally divided between the two leaders or their 
designees.
  The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to secrecy. I 
rise today in support of auditing the Federal Reserve. I rise in 
opposition to the lack of accountability at the Reserve, an institution 
that has for too long been shrouded in secrecy. The objective of the 
Federal Reserve Transparency Act is simple: to protect the interests of 
the average American by finding out where hundreds of billions' worth 
of our dollars are going.
  The Federal Reserve has the ability to create new money and to spend 
it on whatever financial assets it wants, whenever it wants, while 
giving the new money to whichever banks it wants. Yet if the average 
Joe and Jane from Main Street printed their own money, they would be 
imprisoned as counterfeiters.
  Nowhere else but in Washington, DC, would you find an institution 
with so much unchecked power. Creating new money naturally lowers 
interest rates, or the price of using money. Put another way, the 
Federal Reserve's unchecked printing press creates a price control on 
the cost of using money.
  Throughout our country's history, price controls have never worked, 
and the Fed's price control on interest rates has also not worked. 
Think back to the housing bubble. Artificially low interest rates led 
to many individuals buying, selling, and investing in the housing 
industry. This in turn led prices to soar, which ultimately led the 
economy to spiral down to the great recession of 2008.
  Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed has increased its balance 
sheet from less than $1 trillion to over $4 trillion. Although the Fed 
has created trillions of new dollars, it has become apparent that most 
of this money is not finding its way into the hands of average 
Americans. From 2009 to 2012, the incomes of the top 1 percent 
increased by a whopping 31 percent, while everyone else's income 
increased by only 0.4 percent. The reason for this is simple: Big 
banks, corporations, and government entities receive the Federal 
Reserve's money long before anyone else, and they bid up the price of 
assets before any of the rest of us can get to purchase them.
  Former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh once referred to the 
Fed's easy-money policies as the reverse Robin Hood effect. ``If you 
have access to credit--if you've got a big balance sheet--the Fed has 
made you richer,'' he said in an interview. ``This is a way to make the 
well-to-do even more well-to-do.''
  The side effect of this uneven distribution of money is painfully 
apparent to anyone who shops at a grocery store. Over the past 15 
years, the price of white bread has increased by over 50 percent, while 
the price of eggs has more than doubled. The cost of housing has also 
appreciated significantly in many areas. When adjusting for inflation, 
the price of housing in San Francisco has increased by 58 percent over 
just 25 years.
  Real household income for regular Americans has declined 10 percent 
over the past 15 years. Higher rent and higher grocery bills cause low-
income workers to incur more loans and credit card debt, which involve 
far higher interest rates than what the banks and Wall Street are 
currently paying. These low-income workers do not get the luxury of 
receiving the Fed's newly created money first, nor do they have the 
luxury of receiving the near-zero interest rates the wealthy do. As a 
result, one thing is for certain: The Fed's price control on interest 
rates acts as a hidden tax on the less well-to-do.
  The Fed also exacerbates income inequality by paying large commercial 
banks $12 billion in interest. This is a departure from nearly a 
century of practice. While individual savers earn practically no 
interest, the big banks are given $12 billion per year in interest. 
There often is a revolving door between the Fed, the Treasury, and Wall 
Street. It is a revolving door in a building that is all too eager to 
enrich big banks and asset holders at the expense of everyone else.
  I think it is about time we pull back the curtain to uncover this 
cloak of secrecy once and for all. Who is receiving the loans from the 
Fed today? To whom is the Fed paying interest? Are there any conflicts 
of interest about how these payments are determined? Are there any 
checks and balances on the size of these payments?
  The Federal Reserve Act actually forbids the Fed from buying some of 
the troubled assets they bought in 2008; yet they did it anyway.
  Given all of these unanswered questions and given the sharp increase 
in the risk of the Fed's balance sheet, it is unquestionably necessary 
for the Fed to be audited more thoroughly than it has been in the past. 
Audit the Fed is just 3 pages long, and it simply says that the 
Government Accountability Office, the GAO, which is a nonpartisan, 
apolitical agency in charge--that they be allowed to audit the Fed, a 
full and thorough audit.
  Currently the GAO is not allowed to audit the Fed's monetary policy 
deliberations or the Fed's Open Market Committee transactions. The GAO 
was also forbidden from reviewing agreements with foreign central 
banks. During the downturn in 2008, trillions of dollars were spent, 
much of it or quite a bit of it on foreign banks, and we are not 
allowed to know what occurred, to whom it was given, and for what 
purpose. The Fed audit in its current form is virtually futile.
  When these restrictions were added to the audit in the 1970s, the GAO 
testified before Congress, saying: ``We do not see how we can 
satisfactorily audit the Federal Reserve System without the authority 
to examine [its] largest single category of financial transactions and 
assets. . . .''
  To grasp just how limited the current audit is, recall that in 2009 
Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson asked then-Fed Chairman Ben 
Bernanke which foreign countries received $500 billion in loans from 
the Fed. Bernanke was unwilling to name which countries or banks 
received half a trillion dollars' worth of funds.
  That is right. The Feds swapped half a trillion dollars to foreign 
countries in secret and did not even have the decency, under testimony 
before Congress, to report the details. But it gets worse. Democratic 
Senator Bernie Sanders asked Bernanke: Who received $2.2 trillion that 
the Fed lent out during the financial crisis? Again, Bernanke refused 
to give an answer.
  In the 2011 Dodd-Frank law, Congress ordered a limited, one-time GAO 
audit of Fed actions. During the financial crisis, that audit uncovered 
that the Fed lent out over $16 trillion to domestic and foreign banks 
during the financial crisis.

[[Page 372]]

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an extra 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, does Senator Paul--how much time do we 
have?
  Mr. PAUL. I would be happy to ask unanimous consent for equal time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senator Paul's time has expired. The time of 
the majority has expired.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I only need 5 minutes, so I am willing to 
cede whatever remains so he can have enough time, but I would like to 
reserve 5 minutes, and I lift my objection.
  Mr. PAUL. Well, the unanimous consent would be to have 5 extra 
minutes and to give the Senator as much time as he needs to conclude.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that it is absurd that 
we do not know where hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of our 
money is going. In fact, last year my audit the Fed bill received the 
support of nearly every Republican in the House and over 100 Democrats.
  Some say an audit will politicize the Fed. I find this claim odd 
given the support of both sides of the aisle for the bill. The GAO is 
nonpartisan, independent, and works for Congress. It does not lean 
Republican or Democratic, and it is not interested in influencing 
policy. I can't seem to understand how a simple check by the GAO to 
ensure that there are no conflicts of interest will politicize 
anything.
  Instead of criticizing a standard audit, though, maybe the 
individuals who work at the Fed and within our central bank should 
begin curbing their own actions. Unlike the actions of current Fed 
officials, my bipartisan bill will not politicize anything. I simply 
want the Fed overseen to ensure that our central bank isn't picking 
favorites, and I want to ensure that it remains solvent.
  Like every agency, the Federal Reserve was created by Congress and is 
supposed to be overseen by Congress.
  Auditing the Fed should not be a partisan issue. Regardless of one's 
monetary policy views, regardless of whether one thinks interest rates 
should be higher or lower, everyone can and should agree that for the 
sake of the country's economic well-being, we need to know what has 
been going on behind the Federal Reserve's cloak of secrecy. It is time 
we quit this guessing game. It is time we audit the Federal Reserve 
once and for all to restore transparency to our Nation's checkbook.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I do not support Senator Paul's bill to 
audit the Federal Reserve.
  In 2010, I supported an amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial reform 
legislation included in the final law which required an audit of the 
Federal Reserve's actions during the financial crisis. That report was 
released in 2011 and found no significant problems with the Fed's 
activities.
  Dodd-Frank not only authorized the 2011 audit, it also expanded the 
scope for future GAO audits which any Member of Congress can request. 
Also, the Fed includes an independent audit of its financial statements 
within its annual report to Congress.
  The Federal Reserve has taken independent actions in recent years to 
be more transparent about its operations. Since 2009, the Fed has 
publicly released its economic projections, and since 2011, the 
chairman has held quarterly press conferences following Federal Open 
Market Committee meetings. Two recent studies found the Fed to be one 
of the most transparent central banks in the world.
  Transparency and openness in government is essential to a healthy 
democracy, but by requiring more audits and more disclosures, we risk 
politicizing a nonpartisan institution that plays a uniquely 
significant role in the global economy.
  Fed Chairman Janet Yellen recently wrote that a similar bill that 
passed the House of Representatives ``would politicize monetary policy 
and bring short-term political pressures in the deliberations of the 
FOMC by putting into place real-time second guessing of policy 
decisions. . . . The provision is based on a false premise--that the 
Fed is not subject to an audit.''.
  Since there are already many means for audits, disclosure, and 
transparency at our disposal, I do not support Senator Paul's bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the audit the Fed bill.
  One of the things that we learned around here as new Members of the 
House and Senate--and I served with the Presiding Officer almost my 
entire time in the House, and we learned this--is that if you can name 
the bills here, you have a tremendous advantage. You call the estate 
tax the death tax, even though about 1 percent of Americans pay it, and 
you may have won the debate. Calling this bill audit the Fed--and how 
can you be against auditing the Fed--may win the debate, but this time 
I don't think so.
  I am concerned in this way. It won't make the Fed stronger. It won't 
make the Fed more effective. It won't make the Fed more accountable. It 
will impair the Fed's functions. It will give conservative Members of 
Congress more tools to second-guess the Fed's decisionmaking. It will 
make the system ultimately less sound, flexible, and responsive.
  Think about what happened in 2009. President Obama took office. We 
were losing 800,000 jobs a month. Congress passed the Recovery Act, 
passed the auto rescue, which mattered so much to the Presiding 
Officer's State, to my State, and, frankly, to the Senator from 
Kentucky and his State too, but then, with the changing time and the 
elections of 2010, this Congress engaged in austerity, and we saw what 
that meant. It took a Bush-appointed Federal Reserve Chair, Ben 
Bernanke, who engaged in enough pump priming, if you will, through low 
interest rates and then QE to get the economy going.
  I think we asked ourselves, would we have wanted a Federal Reserve 
then where Congress had its tentacles in monetary policy? Congress 
failed on fiscal policy. Chairman Bernanke and now Chair Yellen have 
had to move on monetary policy in that way. I don't want to 
straitjacket this Congress and straitjacket the Federal Reserve by 
doing that with Congress.
  I know some of you have supported audit bills in the past. Many 
supported the Dodd-Sanders amendment during Wall Street reform. But 
this one is different. It doesn't include provisions to review the 
Independent Foreclosure Review Program process, and it doesn't include 
protections on some of the sensitive information that GAO could review, 
such as transcripts.
  What this is about, in addition to Congress meddling in monetary 
policy, is ultimately this: We know the Fed is charged with a dual 
mandate--to deal with the tension between combatting inflation and 
combatting unemployment. We know that in past years the Fed has leaned 
far more toward the bondholders and Wall Street in combatting inflation 
than it has toward Main Street in employment and combatting 
unemployment.
  We also know that with the pressures in this town, when President 
Obama signed Wall Street reform, the chief lobbyist for the financial 
services industry said it is now half time, meaning that conservative 
Members of this Congress, people in this Congress influenced by Wall 
Street, would immediately go and try to weaken these rules going 
directly to the agencies.
  We will see the same thing here. We will see many Members of Congress 
pushing the Fed to side with the bondholders and Wall Street on 
combatting inflation rather than siding with Main Street and small 
businesses and workers in dealing with unemployment. That is 
fundamentally the biggest problem with the Paul proposal. I ask my 
colleagues to defeat it.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has been yielded back.

[[Page 373]]




                             Cloture Motion

  Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending 
cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The senior assistant 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. 289, S. 2232, a bill to require a 
     full audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 
     System and the Federal reserve banks by the Comptroller 
     General of the United States, and for other purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, John Barrasso, Roy Blunt, John Cornyn, 
           Cory Gardner, David Vitter, Shelley Moore Capito, Rand 
           Paul, Johnny Isakson, Steve Daines, Patrick J. Toomey, 
           John Boozman, Chuck Grassley, Mike Crapo, Mike Lee, 
           David Perdue, Rob Portman.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to S. 2232, a bill to require a full audit of the 
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal 
reserve banks by the Comptroller General of the United States, and for 
other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Franken) 
is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 44, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 2 Leg.]

                                YEAS--53

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--44

     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Corker
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Reid
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Coats
     Cruz
     Franken
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays are 
44.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted 
to complete my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Scrub Act

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to take up a 
piece of legislation that I am sponsoring which has recently passed the 
House of Representatives, the Searching for and Cutting Regulations 
that are Unnecessarily Burdensome Act--or SCRUB Act.
  Federal regulations today impose--by some estimates--a crushing 
burden of $1.88 trillion on our economy. That is roughly $15,000 per 
household and more than the entire country's corporate and individual 
income taxes combined. Excessive and often unnecessary rules imposed by 
unaccountable Washington bureaucrats strain family budgets and create 
conditions where small businesses struggle to create jobs.
  Nevertheless, the regulatory burden keeps growing year after year. 
The Code of Federal Regulations is now more than 175,000 pages long and 
contains more than 200 volumes. Since 2008, regulators have added on 
average more than $107 billion in annual regulatory costs. And as we 
near the end of President Obama's time in office, Americans should be 
prepared for a deluge of new rules. As has been widely reported, about 
4,000 regulations are working their way through the Federal 
bureaucracy, with some experts predicting their costs to exceed well 
over $100 billion.
  Every President since Jimmy Carter has affirmed the need to review 
our existing regulations to make sure that they are efficient and no 
more intrusive and burdensome than is absolutely necessary. 
Nevertheless, administrations of both parties have failed to make 
meaningful reductions in the regulatory burden, with some retrospective 
review efforts even adding costs to the economy. Most notably, 
according to a study by the American Action Forum, the Obama 
administration's much-touted efforts to review old rules actually added 
more than $23 billion in costs on the economy and mandated nearly 9 
million additional hours of paperwork.
  With family budgets stretched thin and our economy badly in need of 
job creation, we need to act to turn this longstanding bipartisan 
commitment to effective retrospective review into a reality. But to do 
so, we need to take the responsibility of reviewing old rules away from 
the bureaucrats who keep failing to make the reductions to the 
regulatory burden. That is why I have joined my colleagues, the junior 
Senators from Iowa and Missouri, to introduce the SCRUB Act.
  The SCRUB Act establishes a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to 
review existing Federal regulations and identify those that should be 
repealed to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens. It prioritizes for 
review regulations where major rules have been in effect more than 15 
years, impose paperwork burdens that could be reduced substantially 
without significantly diminishing regulatory effectiveness, impose 
disproportionately high costs on small businesses, or could be 
strengthened in their effectiveness while reducing regulatory costs. It 
also sets other basic, commonsense criteria for recommending repeal of 
regulations, such as: whether they have been rendered obsolete by 
technological or market changes; whether they have achieved their goals 
and can be repealed without target problems recurring; whether they are 
ineffective; whether they overlap, duplicate, or conflict with other 
Federal regulations or with State and local regulations; or whether 
they impose costs that are not justified by benefits produced for 
society within the United States.
  Once the commission develops a set of recommendations, our bill 
requires that these recommendations be presented to the House and the 
Senate for approval by joint resolution. If Congress votes to approve 
the commission's recommendations, repeal must take place.
  Mr. President, I have served long enough to know that Washington's 
preferred solution to a tough problem is to create a commission that, 
once established, is rarely seen or heard from again, no matter how 
compelling its recommendations. Therefore, I want to lay out a few key 
features of how SCRUB avoids the pitfalls of so many do-nothing 
commissions as well as the problems encountered with other attempts to 
implement retrospective review.
  First, our bill sets a hard target for the commission: the reduction 
of at least 15 percent in the cumulative costs of Federal regulation 
with a minimal reduction in the overall effectiveness of such 
regulation. The Obama administration's efforts at retrospective 
review--perhaps by mistake, perhaps by design--lacked a quantified cost 
reduction mandate. The result was the manipulation of the review 
process into a charade in which highly suspect new

[[Page 374]]

benefits were touted as a reason for adding costs. Our bill structures 
the retrospective review process in a way that prioritizes cost cutting 
while maintaining a responsible respect for benefits by calling for a 
minimal reduction in general overall effectiveness.
  Second, our bill does not artificially limit what costly and 
unjustified regulations could be repealed. Under some superficially 
similar but fundamentally unsound proposals for retrospective review, 
review would be arbitrarily limited by time or subject. Such limits 
would not only seriously hinder the prospect of meeting a meaningful 
cost reduction target, but also put numerous regulations off limits for 
review just because they have seen minor tweaks after a certain 
arbitrary cutoff.
  Third, our bill guarantees an up-or-down vote on the Commission's 
package of recommendations as a single package. This element of our 
bill represents the single most important feature that distinguishes it 
from a do-nothing commission that far too often characterizes 
Washington's approach to intractable problems. We should be under no 
illusions that every single special interest in town is going to fight 
to preserve the favors they have won by manipulating the regulatory 
process over the years, and gathering the votes to get the Commission's 
recommendations enacted will certainly be a difficult endeavor.
  Following the models of other successful means by which Congress has 
addressed situations in which the costs are concentrated but benefits 
are widely dispersed, it is absolutely vital that the Commission's 
recommendations be packed together as a single bill and not subject to 
dismemberment by amendment.
  Further, to put it simply, an up-or-down simple majority vote 
requires an actual viable pathway to repealing these regulations. 
Subjecting the package to the supermajority threshold would represent 
nothing but a death knell for the prospect of repealing these onerous 
rules. Moreover, because extended debate in the Senate exists to allow 
Senators to modify a proposal under debate, the lack of amendment 
opportunities seriously undermines the rationale for subjecting it to 
the supermajority threshold typically required to end debate. And this 
carefully tailored exception to the cloture rule is hardly a wild 
departure from precedent; rather, it follows the precedents set by 
numerous other pieces of legislation such as trade promotion authority 
and the Congressional Review Act, both of which have long earned 
bipartisan support.
  Fourth, for any given regulation, the Commission is authorized to 
recommend either immediate repeal or repeal through what we call cut-go 
procedures, whereby agencies, on a forward basis, would have to offset 
the costs of new regulations by repealing Commission-identified 
regulations of equal or greater cost. These procedures allow immediate 
repeal in the most urgent cases and staggered repeals of other 
regulations to assure a smoother process for agencies and affected 
entities.
  Mr. President, a process such as cut-go proves critical for two 
particular reasons. First, it provides an avenue for addressing the 
many regulations on the books that impose unjustifiable costs in 
pursuit of a legitimate goal. While some regulations on the books could 
undoubtedly be repealed without any meaningful negative consequences, 
numerous others provide important protections but in an inefficient and 
costly manner. The cut-go process allows agencies to repeal costly 
rules and replace them with more sensible ones--for example, 
prescribing performance standards instead of specific, oftentimes 
outdated technology--in a manner that reduces costs on the economy 
while maintaining or even improving regulatory effectiveness.
  Second, the cut-go process holds agencies accountable to Congress's 
laws, a perennial problem in the regulatory process. Bureaucratic 
agencies--so often devoted to increasing their own power and 
insensitive to the costs they impose on the economy--frequently use the 
excuse of limited resources to avoid retrospective review. By imposing 
a reasonable limit on prospective rulemaking until an agency complies 
with congressionally enacted repeal recommendations, cut-go ensures 
that the agency cannot simply ignore its duty to repeal.
  Mr. President, these are just a handful of the numerous reasons why 
the SCRUB Act provides a uniquely visible pathway to accomplishing the 
longstanding bipartisan goal of repealing outdated and ineffective 
regulations. I wish to thank my colleagues from both sides of the 
aisle--and both sides of the Capitol, by the way--who have joined in 
support of this bill, especially Senator Ernst for her leadership on 
this issue on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. 
Even though she has only been in the Senate for a year, her strong and 
effective leadership on this issue has been a model for how to hit the 
ground running. I call on my colleagues in the Senate to follow the 
House's lead and pass this effective, commonsense approach to rooting 
out unjustifiably burdensome regulations. Also, as I understand it, the 
House has passed this bill just today.


                           Religious Liberty

  Mr. President, I also wish to address another subject--the subject of 
religious liberty. Congress is convening for the second session of the 
114th Congress at a moment in time rich with significance for religious 
freedoms. January 6, for example, marked the 75th anniversary of 
President Franklin Roosevelt's famous ``Four Freedoms'' speech. During 
the depths of World War II, President Roosevelt used his 1941 State of 
the Union Address to describe a world founded on what he called ``four 
essential human freedoms.'' One of these is the ``freedom of every 
person to worship God in his own way.''
  At the end of the week, on January 16, it is Religious Freedom Day. 
It commemorates the 230th anniversary of the Virginia General 
Assembly's enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. 
Thomas Jefferson authored the legislation and, after he left to serve 
as U.S. Minister to France, his colleague James Madison secured its 
enactment.
  Of his many accomplishments--and Jefferson had a lot of 
accomplishments--Jefferson directed that three of what he called 
``things that he had given the people'' be listed on his tombstone. One 
of them was the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which laid the 
foundation for the protection of religious freedom in the First 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  Mr. President, last fall I delivered a series of eight speeches on 
the Senate floor presenting the story of religious freedom. I explained 
why religious freedom itself is uniquely important and requires special 
protection. At no time in world history has religious freedom been such 
an integral part of a Nation's character as it is here in the United 
States.
  The story of religious freedom includes understanding both its status 
and its substance. The status of religious freedom can be summarized as 
both inalienable and preeminent. As James Madison put it, religious 
freedom is ``precedent, both in order of time and in degree of 
obligation, to the claims of civil society.''
  Madison also explained that religious freedom is the freely chosen 
manner of discharging a duty an individual believes he or she owes to 
God. As we have affirmed so many times in statutes, declarations, and 
treaties, it includes both belief and behavior in public and in 
private, individually and collectively.
  Tonight, President Obama delivers his final State of the Union 
Address. According to the Washington Post this morning, President Obama 
will speak about unity, about coming together as one American family. 
Until very recently, religious freedom was such a unifying priority. 
Last month, I described to my colleagues the unifying statement about 
religious freedom called the Williamsburg Charter. Published in 1988, 
it brought together Presidents and other leaders in both political 
parties, the heads of business and labor, universities and bar 
associations, and diverse communities to endorse the first principles 
of religious freedom.

[[Page 375]]

  The charter boldly proclaims that religious freedom is an inalienable 
right that is ``premised upon the inviolable dignity of the human 
person. It is the foundation of, and is integrally related to, all 
other rights and freedoms secured by the Constitution.'' It asserts 
that the chief menace to religious freedom is the expanding power of 
government--especially government control over personal behavior and 
the institutions of society. And the charter also declares that 
limiting religious freedom ``is allowable only where the State has 
borne a heavy burden of proof that the limitation is justified--not by 
any ordinary public interest, but by a supreme public necessity--and 
that no less restrictive alternative to limitation exists.''
  Congress made these principles law 5 years later by almost 
unanimously enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act--an act that 
I had a great deal to do with. One way to know the value of something 
is by the effort made to protect it. In RFRA, government may burden the 
exercise of religion only if it is the least restrictive means of 
furthering a compelling government purpose. That is the toughest 
standard found anywhere in American law. By this statute, we declared 
that religious freedom is fundamental, it is more important than other 
values and priorities, and government must properly accommodate it. The 
Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion supporting RFRA was the 
most diverse grassroots effort I have ever seen in all of my years in 
the U.S. Senate.
  Five years after RFRA, Congress unanimously enacted the International 
Religious Freedom Act. Twenty-one Senators serving today voted for it--
12 Republicans and 9 Democrats. So did Vice President Joe Biden and 
Secretary of State John Kerry when they served here. That law declares 
that religious freedom ``undergirds the very origin and existence of 
the United States.'' It calls religious freedom a universal human 
right, a pillar of our Nation, and a fundamental freedom.
  That is what unity looks like. With a Presidency no less than any 
other aspect of life, however, actions speak louder than words. While 
President Obama has paid lip service to religious freedom, as I assume 
he will in his annual Religious Freedom Day proclamation this week, the 
actions of his administration tell a different story.
  In 2011, the Obama administration argued to the Supreme Court that 
the First Amendment provides no special protection for churches, even 
in choosing their own ministers. The Court unanimously rejected that 
bizarre theory. The administration ignored religious freedom and RFRA 
altogether when developing the Affordable Care Act and its implementing 
regulations. When religious employers argued that the administration's 
birth control mandate did not adequately accommodate their religious 
freedom, the administration fought them all the way to the Supreme 
Court. The Court again rejected the administration's attempt to 
restrict religious freedom.
  Yesterday, 32 Members of the Senate and 175 Members of the House of 
Representatives filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court supporting 
religious organizations that are again arguing that the Obama 
administration's birth control mandate violates the Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act. I want to thank my friend from Oklahoma, Senator 
Lankford, for working with me on this important project. I know 
religious freedom was important to him when he served in the House and 
he is already a leader on this critical issue in the Senate and I am 
pleased to see him in the chair today.
  This mandate requires religious organizations to violate their deeply 
held religious beliefs or pay crushing monetary fines. The plaintiffs 
in these cases include Christian colleges, Catholic dioceses, and many 
organizations that minister to the elderly and disadvantaged as part of 
their religious mission. They want to provide health insurance for 
their employees and students in a manner that is consistent with their 
religious beliefs.
  The Obama administration, however, is working hard to make those 
religious groups knuckle under to its political agenda. It provides 
blanket exemptions for churches that do not object to the birth control 
mandate but denies exemption to religious employers that do object. The 
administration exempts for-profit companies employing more than 44 
million workers, including some of America's largest corporations, even 
if they have no objection to the mandate. Yet it is fighting to force 
compliance by religious nonprofit organizations that do object to the 
mandate on the basis of deeply held religious beliefs. Not only is that 
policy simply irrational, but it treats religious freedom as optional.
  Here is how I put it last month: Subjugating religious beliefs to 
government decrees is not the price of citizenship. To the contrary, 
respecting and honoring the fundamental rights of all Americans is the 
price our government pays to enjoy the continued consent of the 
American people.
  If that is true, then religious freedom must be properly respected 
and accommodated. And I believe it is true.
  Religious freedom should be a primary consideration, not an 
afterthought. Religious freedom should be given the accommodation that 
a preeminent right requires, rather than begrudgingly be given the 
least attention politically possible.
  If our leaders wish to abandon the religious freedom that undergirds 
America's origin and existence, they should say so. If Members of 
Congress now reject what they once supported and insist that religious 
freedom is less important than the political reference of the moment, 
they should make that case.
  If the Obama administration wants to repudiate treaties we have 
ratified, asserting that religious freedom is a fundamental human 
right, the President should be upfront about it.
  As with many things that happen in the twilight of a Presidency, I 
expect to hear much in the State of the Union Address tonight that 
speaks to President Obama's legacy. What will he be remembered for? 
What great principles or causes will be associated with the Obama 
Presidency?
  Part of President Roosevelt's legacy is that State of the Union 
Address 75 years ago that affirmed that practicing one's faith is an 
essential human freedom. What a tragedy to have President Obama be 
remembered for hostility to--rather than protection of--religious 
freedom.
  In the coming days, I will be presenting to each of my Senate 
colleagues the collection of speeches on religious freedom that I 
offered on the floor last fall. I hope they will encourage us in 
Congress, as well as our fellow citizens, to unite in our commitment to 
this fundamental right.
  This is important. Even though we may agree or disagree with certain 
religious beliefs, they still ought to have the right to believe them. 
They still ought to have the right to worship the way they want to. The 
fact of the matter is that is what has made America the greatest 
country in the world--bar none. I don't want to see it destroyed 
because we are doing everything we can to undermine religious freedom 
in this country. I refuse to allow that to happen, and I hope my 
colleagues will take this seriously as well. I know a number of them 
do, including the current Presiding Officer.
  I just want everybody to know that as long as I am in the Senate, I 
am going to be fighting for religious freedom and I hope that all of us 
will also.
  God bless America.
  I yield the floor.
  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. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               ObamaCare

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, tonight President Obama will be coming 
to Congress to deliver his final State of the Union Address. His 
advisers have been all over television talking about what the President 
is planning to say. Tonight, I expect President Obama will talk a 
little about the health care law.

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Last year in his State of the Union Address, the President bragged--he 
actually bragged--that more people have insurance now than when he took 
office. I expect he will probably say something similar tonight.
  I wish to talk a little bit about the other side of the story. I want 
to talk about what President Obama is not going to say tonight to the 
American people. The President is not going to admit that many 
Americans are actually worse under his health care law. He is not going 
to say that under the health care law there is a very big difference 
between health law insurance and being able to actually get health 
care. The President focuses on the word ``coverage'' and, as a doctor, 
I focus on the word ``care.''
  The New York Times had an article about this just the other day. The 
article on page 1 of Monday, January 4, says: ``Many Holdouts Roll the 
Dice And Pay I.R.S., Not an Insurer.'' They would rather pay the 
penalty to the Internal Revenue Service rather than pay the insurance 
company. Why?
  Turn to page A9 of the same day, January 4, 2016: ``Many Who Refuse 
Insurance See I.R.S. Penalty as Most Affordable Option.'' The most 
affordable option for the American people is not the Obama health law 
insurance. It is actually paying the IRS the penalty. The article tells 
the story about a number of different people. One is named Tim Fescoe 
from Culver City, CA. He and his wife had an insurance plan that cost 
them more than $5,000 a year, but it came with a deductible of over 
$6,000 for each of them--$5,000 for the policy, $6,000 for the 
deductible for him and another $6,000 for her. Well, they decided to 
drop the insurance last year.
  Mr. Fescoe told the New York Times: ``It literally covered zero 
medical expenses.''
  I wonder if President Obama is going to talk about this man tonight, 
Tim Fescoe. Will we hear anything about him in his speech tonight? Will 
the President point to him in the gallery as somebody who the President 
claims to have helped by making insurance so expensive and so 
unaffordable that it was much better to just pay the penalty than deal 
with what the mandates of the President's health care law call into 
play? Is he going to talk about the deductibles and how the out-of-
pocket costs have become so high for Americans all across the country?
  The article also talks about Clint Murphy of Sulfur Springs, TX. 
Clint Murphy expects that he will have to pay a penalty of about $1,800 
for being uninsured this year. The article says that in his view, 
paying the penalty is worth it if he can avoid buying the President's 
law health insurance, a policy that costs $2,900 or more.
  This man in Texas went on to say: ``I don't see the logic behind 
that, and I'm just not going to do it.''
  Is President Obama going to talk about these people--people who think 
that it is better to pay the steep IRS penalty than buy the President's 
expensive and, in many ways, useless insurance? There are millions of 
Americans in this same situation as Clint Murphy, as Tim Fescoe, and 
other people who are mentioned in a story in the New York Times. If the 
New York Times is writing about it--they are supporters of the health 
care law--even they are pointing to the damage that this very unpopular 
law continues to do to the American people.
  According to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 7 
million Americans were finding it cheaper to pay the tax penalty than 
to pay for this unusable insurance. Look at this chart. Of those people 
who don't get subsidies and are not eligible for subsidies, 95 percent 
would pay--all of these people--less for the tax penalty than for an 
ObamaCare bronze plan, which is the cheapest level of plan that there 
is.
  So for people who don't get a subsidy from Washington, 95 percent of 
them would pay less by paying the tax penalty than they would for an 
ObamaCare bronze-level plan with high deductibles and high copays--so 
high that the people who look at it say: It is unusable.
  Now, remember, again, these bronze plans are the cheapest option, and 
the people are just saying no because even the cheapest option under 
ObamaCare is more expensive than dropping insurance and paying the 
penalty. Bronze plans are the ones most likely to have a $5,000 to 
$6,000 deductible per individual on the plan.
  Do we expect President Obama to talk about any of these things 
tonight or any of these people who have been harmed by his law?
  After the President gives his State of the Union Address, much has 
been made that he is going on a tour of America. He is going to visit 
Baton Rouge, LA, and Omaha, NE. What the President may not know and 
certainly won't mention is how much ObamaCare premiums have increased 
in those States he is going to visit.
  In Louisiana, prices for the benchmark silver plan on the ObamaCare 
exchange went up over 9 percent this year. In Nebraska, the same 
benchmark silver plan rates went up almost 12 percent this past year. 
Now that is for the people who are willing to actually shop around and 
switch their insurance from last year to try to hold down the costs.
  Remember when the President said this: If you like your plan, you can 
keep your plan. Well, if you only want a 9-percent or a 12-percent 
increase, you can't keep your plan. You have to try to shop around and 
switch to a different plan, maybe even change your doctors and the 
hospital you go to. That is the only way you can find rates of 
insurance that still go up a lot but don't go up even higher by staying 
with what you had.
  The President probably won't mention that when he goes to Louisiana 
or Nebraska. He probably won't mention either that the ObamaCare co-ops 
in both of the States that he is visiting collapsed last year--
fundamentally collapsed. Tens of thousands of people lost the insurance 
they had in those States, and now the taxpayers are on the hook for 
over $100 million.
  The law has not come anywhere near what President Obama promised the 
people of Louisiana or the people of Nebraska or the people of America. 
All across the country, the American people know that ObamaCare was not 
what they wanted. They know that it has never been the right answer for 
the problems in our health care system. That is why majorities in both 
Houses of Congress voted recently to repeal the key parts of the Obama 
health care law. We passed the legislation, and we sent it to the 
President's desk. When President Obama vetoed the bill, he rejected the 
judgment of the American people.
  In his speech tonight, I expect the President to continue to pretend 
that there are no problems at all with American health care under his 
law. Well, Republicans are going to keep offering solutions to fix 
health care in America. Almost 6 years ago President Obama sat down 
with Members of Congress to try to sell us his health care law. I was 
part of that roundtable discussion. I told the President at the time 
that low-cost catastrophic plans could be a good option for people as 
long as they could use health savings accounts to help pay their day to 
day medical bills.
  The President had no interest in that idea or in any of the 
Republican ideas that we brought forward that day.
  So now, under his law, people are left with the equivalent of 
catastrophic coverage and they are paying far too much for it because 
of all of the law's mandates. On top of that, the law cuts back on 
health savings accounts. The law specifically cut back on that so 
people all across the country have fewer options to help them pay for 
their care.
  Republicans are going to continue to bring up better ideas. We will 
talk about real solutions that give people more options, not more 
mandates. We will talk about the ideas that help people get the care 
they need from a doctor they want at lower costs, not just as the 
President talks about coverage--coverage that most Americans find they 
cannot use.
  Tonight President Obama is probably going to make a lot more 
promises. When he does, I think everybody should remember Clint Murphy 
from Sulfur Springs, TX, who doesn't see the logic in paying for 
overpriced

[[Page 377]]

ObamaCare insurance. They should remember all of the broken promises 
from the health care law and all of the hardworking Americans who have 
been hurt by the Obama health care law. Even though President Obama 
won't admit it tonight, America can do much better. If the President 
won't say it, then it will be up to Congress to lead on the issue. That 
is exactly what Republicans intend to do. President Obama's speech 
tonight will be looking to define his legacy. Tonight and for the rest 
of the year, Republicans will be offering solutions for the American 
people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to enter 
into a colloquy with a number of my colleagues, including Senators from 
Virginia, Florida, and New Jersey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


 Delegation To The Middle East and Implementing the Nuclear Agreement 
                               With Iran

  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I have just returned from a trip to the 
Middle East--an absolutely important and eye-opening trip at this vital 
moment when the threat of extremism, the threat of violence, and the 
risks posed to regional stability by Iran and its regional ambitions 
could not be clearer. Senator Gillibrand of New York led this 
delegation, and a group of eight of us had an opportunity to visit 
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Austria.
  Let me begin by saying that all of us were deeply moved and concerned 
when we heard this morning news of a terrorist attack in Istanbul, 
literally in an area we had just visited Saturday morning. I reached 
out, as have a number of others on this trip, to express our 
condolences and concerns both to the Turkish Ambassador, the American 
Ambassador, and to others we met with on our visit there.
  This is just another brazen reminder of the instability raging 
throughout the Middle East and of the threats to our concerns and 
interests and to regional stability posed by terrorism.
  I invite the Senator from Virginia to join me in making some comments 
based on his insights and his experience on this trip. The very first 
place we visited left an important and lasting impression on me. We 
visited with the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in 
Vienna to hear about their progress towards implementing the nuclear 
deal with Iran and what they are going to be doing, now and in the 
future, to ensure full, thorough, and valuable inspections of the 
entire cycle of Iran's nuclear efforts.
  If Senator Kaine would offer any additional comments as a member of 
the delegation and someone who joined in the trip, what were some of 
the things that the Senator saw and what were some of the concerns that 
the Senator came home with that we ought to share with our constituents 
and colleagues?
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware for the 
opportunity to engage in a colloquy. It was a remarkable visit with 
eight Senators to Israel, Vienna, Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, to 
dig into two issues that I would like to address. The issues are Iran 
and the war against ISIL.
  With respect to Iran, since the conclusion of the negotiation and the 
green light for the deal to go forward, there have been some positive 
developments and there have been some troubling developments. I wish to 
spend time talking about both.
  On the positive development side, because of the deal that the United 
States and other nations entered into with Iran, as of yesterday they 
have permanently decommissioned the plutonium reactor at Arak, which is 
one half for them to make a nuclear weapon. That is a very positive 
result of the negotiation.
  Second, they have disabled a huge percentage of the centrifuges, 
which was also a requirement under the agreement--the centrifuges that 
are used to enrich uranium, another path to nuclear weapons.
  Third, Iran has worked with the IAEA to structure the level of 
inspections. Under the inspections required by the agreement, Iran will 
be the most inspected nation in the world, because the inspections will 
not only go to nuclear sites, but they will go to the entire supply 
chain of uranium mills and uranium mines. Those are inspections not 
required of any other nation. The IAEA is ready to move forward on 
those inspections.
  Finally, there is the last bit of positive news, which in my view, 
personally, is the most compelling. Iran took more than 28,000 pounds 
of low-enriched uranium, which is sufficient for multiple nuclear 
weapons. Because of this deal, they have shipped that uranium out of 
Iran. It is held in a facility in Russia that is closely monitored 
24/7, 365 by the IAEA. So any movement of that material will be 
understood.
  Having that nuclear material--sufficient for multiple nuclear 
weapons--out of Iran's hands and out of that country would not have 
happened without this deal, and it makes the world safer.
  There are some challenges. In October, Iran fired a missile, and a 
number of us on the Foreign Relations Committee immediately wrote to 
the President and Secretary of State that we think this violates a 
separate U.N. Security Council resolution. The United Nations empaneled 
a team of exports to dig into the factual and technical evidence, and 
they concluded in mid-December that Iran had in fact fired a missile in 
violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution separate from this 
deal. We all think it is very important--for both Congress and the 
administration and our global partners--to make sure that there is a 
consequence for that. Whether we supported the deal or didn't, the 
strategy should be strict enforcement and strict implementation, 
requiring that Iran meet every last detail--not only of the deal but of 
their other international obligations. We need to continue to press the 
administration and Congress to do that.
  So on Iran, that was basically the gist of the conversation. We had a 
lengthy discussion with Prime Minister Netanyahu, where we said: Look, 
we disagreed on the deal. But now the important thing is to make sure 
we implement it and we are strong and united on implementation issues. 
I think that is critically important.
  Finally, I have a word about ISIL. Everywhere we went in the region 
we heard about the threat of ISIL. The bombing this morning in a 
tourist square in Istanbul, where some of us were standing just 72 
hours ago, although all of the investigative work hasn't yet been done, 
clearly has the earmarks of an ISIL-related bombing, much as the 
bombings in the Sinai, in Beirut, and the attacks in Paris. So it is 
very critical that we take this seriously because we are not only 
seeing ISIL extend their field of battle beyond Syria and Iraq; we are 
seeing them engage in one-off or rogue terrorist activities around the 
globe.
  The U.S. is at war with ISIL, and we have been at war since August 8, 
2014. We are in the 17th month of that war. We have spent billions of 
dollars, we have deployed thousands of troops, and we have seen both 
American hostages and servicemembers killed in this war. But as I hand 
it back to my colleague, I will conclude and say that Congress has been 
strangely silent during this war. It is Congress under article I that 
should declare war, and yet we have not been willing to have a debate 
and vote--even as we are deploying people, even as Americans are being 
killed, even as we are spending billions of taxpayer dollars. The only 
vote that has taken place in this body on the war directly on the 
authorization question was in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 
December of 2014. It was a vote to move forward to an authorization. 
But when it came to the floor, it got no action.
  I am reminded of the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats, who talked about a 
time where ``the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of 
passionate intensity.'' We see every day efforts that ISIL is, at 
worst, filled with passionate intensity. I believe America is the best. 
I believe Congress should be the best. Yet we have been strangely 
silent and have lacked conviction in

[[Page 378]]

the face of an enemy that is dangerous and threatens us abroad and at 
home.
  With that, I hand it back to my colleague, the Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Virginia for his 
service on the Foreign Relations Committee and for his real leadership 
on the question of our prosecution the war against ISIL and the roll of 
this Senate in confirming that we are in fact engaged in a conflict, 
for his role on the Armed Services Committee, and for the important and 
tough questions he asked on our visit to the four countries that I just 
referenced in opening. I appreciate the Senator detailing the four 
different, big positive moves forward that are happening as the JCPOA, 
the Iran nuclear deal, moves towards into full implementation.
  I wish to encourage my colleague from Florida, the second-most senior 
Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, to also offer his thoughts on 
how this deal contributes to our security and what concerns are 
remaining.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President and my fellow Senators, I just want to 
point out what the Senator has already brought up and underscore that 
the fact is that the plutonium reactor in Arak has now been filled with 
concrete. The fact is that 12 tons--or 24,000 pounds--of enriched 
uranium has been shipped out of Arak to another destination, mostly to 
Russia.
  Before the agreement, it would only take 3 months to build a nuclear 
weapon. Now, it would take at least 12 months. So we would have a 1-
year advance notice in order to determine what we needed to do to deter 
Iran.
  May I say it is irritating that we are going to continue to deal with 
an Iran that is going to do things that are going to provoke us. And 
they have certainly done this in the Strait of Hormuz just a few days 
ago, doing a live-fire exercise while we have the aircraft carrier 
battle group going through the Strait of Hormuz--not even 29 miles 
wide. That is a provocation. There is the provocation of shooting off 
two missile tests, which is a violation of U.N. sanctions. I hope the 
President will follow through and sanction them for that, regardless of 
their protests that say: Oh well, then, you are violating our nuclear 
agreement.
  No, it is a nuclear agreement. They have now stretched the time to 12 
months before, if they decided today that they wanted to build a 
nuclear weapon. That was the whole purpose of the nuclear negotiations 
in the first place--to take off the table that Iran would be a nuclear 
power and upset the balance of power in that part of the world.
  I thank my colleague for yielding. I thank all of my colleagues for 
making these insightful comments.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Florida.
  I would invite my colleague from New Jersey, who also joined us in 
the Middle East and is on the homeland security committee, to offer his 
comments on how the Iran deal actually contributes to regional and 
global security, and I ask what remaining concerns there are that we 
have to tackle together.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, first, I echo the concerns of my 
colleagues here. It was extremely valuable to be able to travel with 
Senators Heitkamp, Kaine, and Coons as part of the eight-Member 
delegation to the IAEA, and meet with the individuals in charge of the 
inspections, as well as to go to Israel, and meet with Benjamin 
Netanyahu in a private setting about the concerns Senator Kaine 
articulated. In addition to that, we visited with other allies: Saudi 
Arabia, as well as Turkey.
  Let's be clear. As has been said already, we are seeing important 
steps being taken that, in the immediate term, reduce the threat of a 
nuclear-armed Iran. The steps they are taking are definitive, 
measurable, and specifically aligned with the JCPOA.
  It is important to understand--whether it is moving uranium out, 
blocking their plutonium pathway, and setting up the inspections regime 
along the entire supply chain--that these are all important steps 
toward implementing the JCPOA. But I want to make two very clear 
points.
  The first point is that last summer, as I and many of my colleagues 
were immersed in evaluating the JCPOA, the Administration promised 
clear and firm responses to even the smallest violation. Like many of 
my colleagues, this played a role in my decision to support the nuclear 
agreement. We expect to see a follow-through on that promise of 
accountability. We expect enforcement. If we allow Iran--as this 
agreement goes on--to push the bounds and cross the lines laid out in 
this deal without a response, we are undermining the strength of this 
agreement and, I believe, actually putting in jeopardy the security of 
the region.
  The second point I want to make relates to the provocative behavior 
Iran is engaging in right now. Separate and apart from the nuclear 
sanctions that will be lifted, there are other sanctions in place for 
other issues related to Iran's behavior. Iran is a dangerous actor and 
has proven so throughout that region. They are a state sponsor of 
terrorism and other destabilizing activities in that region. While the 
immediate threat of the nuclear issue might be off the table, they are 
still a regional threat.
  So when we have clear transgressions that are measurable, that have 
been done in violation of international law--such as two separate 
instances of ballistic missile testing--there must be a response. I am 
calling on the administration not to hesitate any longer. We must 
respond with sanctions appropriate to these violations of international 
law. To not do so, to me, is unacceptable.
  The U.S. must make the consequences for Iranian regional aggression 
clear and follow with robust response, if necessary. We cannot lose 
sight of Iran's use of surrogates and proxies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, 
and Yemen to further undermine the security of the region. Let's not 
lose sight of the fact that there are Americans being held in Iran 
right now, such as Siamak Namazi, a graduate of Rutgers University in 
New Jersey, arrested in October, and being held by the Iranian 
Revolutionary Guard for, as of yet, unspecified reasons. Let's not 
forget about Jason Rezaian, who continues to languish in jail without a 
clear and justifiable rationale for his imprisonment, as well as Saeed 
Abedini, Amir Hekmati, and Robert Levinson. These Americans are being 
held by a regime for no justifiable reason.
  These are particularly egregious violations. In my opinion, Iran 
should be held accountable. So I repeat, the Senate should collectively 
call on the administration to take action against Iran and to sanction 
Iran for their violation of Security Council Resolution 1929.
  I want to finally say that my colleagues and I observed in our 
meetings with Israeli officials, as Senator Kaine mentioned, an Israeli 
administration that understands the nuclear deal will go into effect. 
Let's make sure it is enforced. Let's make sure we have the eyes and 
ears in place so we can make sure the nuclear threat is removed. But 
let's stay united with Israel and our other allies in holding this 
dangerous actor to account if they violate international law, if they 
threaten their neighbors, if they engage in destabilizing activities, 
if they support terrorism. We must share intelligence. We must double 
down our efforts to interdict the movement of arms. And we must work 
together for a larger piece in that region.
  With that, I will turn it back to Senator Coons.
  Mr. COONS. I wish to thank my colleague from the State of New Jersey 
and to briefly recognize a success in the fall, in September--a raid 
off the coast of Yemen that seized a large cache of Iranian arms 
destined for the Houthi rebels who are working to undermine the 
legitimate Government of Yemen. This massive weapons shipment of 56 
tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided TOW missiles, and the 
associated sights, mounts, tubes, and batteries--those are all the 
different components for these advanced and sophisticated anti-tank 
weapons--was successfully interdicted in international water. This is 
an example of what my colleague the Senator from

[[Page 379]]

New Jersey was just talking about, which is the need for more and more 
aggressive and more successful interdiction to push back on Iran's 
destabilizing actions in the region.
  I am grateful now to be joined on the floor by my colleague from the 
State of New Hampshire, who is also my colleague on the Foreign 
Relations Committee, who wants to contribute to our conversation today 
about the positive progress that is being made in the implementation of 
this deal and what remains ahead in the work we have to do to make sure 
we are implementing it effectively.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague 
Senator Coons and others on the floor today, especially those of you 
who had a chance to travel to the Middle East. I didn't get a chance to 
go with you on this trip. But, like Senator Kaine, I do serve on both 
the Armed Services and the Foreign Relations Committees, and I 
supported the nuclear deal with Iran because I was convinced and 
continue to be convinced that it is the best available option for 
preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
  As my colleagues have already spoken to, to some extent, we already 
see the effects of this nuclear deal in Iran's actions. On December 28, 
Iran shipped over 25,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia, 
including the removal of all of Iran's nuclear material enriched to 20 
percent that was not already fabricated into reactive fuel. We know 
this was one path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. They have removed 
this low-enriched uranium. It is in Russia.
  The IAEA has increased the number of its inspectors on the ground in 
Iran. They are deploying modern technologies to monitor Iran's nuclear 
facilities, and they have set up a comprehensive oversight program of 
Iran's nuclear facilities. The IAEA is now inspecting all of Iran's 
declared nuclear facilities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they 
will have access not just to the facilities where we know Iran was 
trying to build a weapon but also to the uranium mines and mills, which 
will give the IAEA and the rest of the world complete access to the 
entire nuclear fuel cycle.
  The Iraq reactor, which has been spoken to already, will be 
completely disabled. Its core is being filled with concrete. Once the 
IAEA verifies that Iran has completed the steps related to the Arak 
reactor, Iran's plutonium pathway to a bomb will have effectively been 
blocked. Iran has been dismantling its uranium enrichment 
infrastructure, including the removal of thousands of centrifuges.
  Again, taken together, these and other steps will effectively cut off 
Iran's four pathways to a nuclear weapon, and they will push its 
breakout time to at least a year for the next 10 years.
  What should Congress be doing? My colleague from New Jersey, Senator 
Booker, was very eloquent in talking about some of the actions that we 
need to take, both Congress and the administration, to continue to 
address Iran's terrorist activities throughout the region. But I think 
one of the other things we ought to be doing as a Congress is 
confirming key Obama administration foreign policy and national 
security nominees because many of these nominees are critical as we 
look at the implementation of the Iran agreement. They are critical as 
we think about what we need to protect this country, to protect our 
national security.
  I would ask my colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator 
Murphy, what does it mean that we have failed to confirm Adam Szubin as 
the Treasury Department's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial 
Crimes? I was a cosponsor, with Senator Rubio, of the Hezbollah 
sanctions bill, the additional sanctions we can put on Hezbollah to 
limit their activities, and yet we are still missing one of the key 
players in making that work at the Treasury Department. What does that 
mean, I ask Senator Murphy, the fact that Congress has failed to 
confirm these nominees?
  Mr. MURPHY. I thank Senator Shaheen for the question. I would hope 
that regardless of how any individual Senator voted on this deal, we 
would all be rooting for its success because success in the end is an 
assurance that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon. But the results of 
this Senate failing to confirm Adam Szubin as the Under Secretary for 
Terrorism and Financial Crimes undermine the implementation of not only 
this important achievement but also of all our efforts to try to root 
out the financial sources of terrorism all around the world.
  The fact is that this gentleman, Adam Szubin, is particularly 
qualified for the job. There is no one on the Republican side who has 
raised any individual objection to him. He has been doing the job very 
well for the United States under President Obama. He was the senior 
advisor to this appointee under President Bush's administration. He has 
done and worked in this field under both Republican and Democratic 
Presidents. It seems as if it is just politics that are holding this 
up. He is not the only one who is on that list. Laura Holgate has been 
appointed to be our U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. offices in Vienna, 
which includes the IAEA. She was nominated on August 5. Her nomination 
hasn't even gotten out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Wendy 
Sherman's replacement, Tom Shannon, was nominated on September 18. His 
nomination is on the floor today. We could vote on that this week if it 
was our pleasure.
  If we want this agreement to succeed, if we want to make sure Iran 
does not get a nuclear weapon, if we want to cut off the flow of funds 
from Iran to groups like Hezbollah, then we actually have to have 
people in place to do those jobs.
  I wanted to quickly come to the floor to make the point that in 
addition to the important points that are being made by my colleagues 
about the success so far of the agreement with respect to 
implementation, if we all are hoping that the end result of this is 
despite the predictions of many Republicans that Iran doesn't obtain a 
nuclear weapon, then we have to have these people in these important 
roles.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Would my colleague yield for another question briefly? 
I didn't give the date that Adam Szubin was nominated, and he has been 
before the banking committee. Does the Senator have that information to 
share with everybody?
  Mr. MURPHY. I said that Holgate was August 5, and Shannon was 
September 18. Adam Szubin has been before the banking committee since 
April 16. He is a few months away from being before the Senate for 
almost a full year in a job that we can all agree is one of the most 
important when it comes to protecting the national security of this 
country. That is pretty astounding.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. I thank all three of my colleagues on the Foreign 
Relations Committee. I will close and yield back to Senator Coons with 
saying that I would hope that one of the things we would all agree to, 
as Senator Murphy has said, is that regardless of where we stood on the 
Iran nuclear agreement, the goal now is to make sure that is 
implemented in a way that makes sure that at least 10 years from now we 
have at least a year's breakout before Iran--if they decided to do 
that--could go back and have a nuclear weapon. I would hope that we all 
share that as our most important priority with respect to Iran.
  I yield back to my colleague Senator Coons.
  Mr. COONS. I thank my colleagues from Connecticut and from New 
Hampshire. I invite my colleague from North Dakota, who also serves on 
the homeland security committee and who was part of our delegation that 
just had the opportunity to travel to Israel, to Saudi Arabia, to 
Turkey, and to Austria, and in Austria to hear from the IAEA.
  The references just made by my colleagues on the Foreign Relations 
Committee were in one part to the vacancy in the position of the U.S. 
Ambassador to the U.N. offices in Vienna. I want to reemphasize that. 
Ever since August 5 of last year, that mission the Senator from North 
Dakota and I just visited that is responsible for directing and

[[Page 380]]

supporting the work of the IAEA to the extent the United States helps 
fund it and supports it and is a participating member--they have been 
waiting for a new confirmed ambassador for more than 6 months.
  I wish to invite my colleague to make comments based on her 
experiences and her reflections based on this recent trip.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, thank you to my great friend from the 
State of Delaware. I wish to first make a comment on Adam Szubin 
because I also serve on the banking committee and have had a chance not 
only to meet with him personally but to witness the excellent testimony 
he provided during his confirmation hearing.
  We all see very smart people. They come through and they agree to 
serve their country in these appointed positions which frequently get 
bogged down here. And not taking anything away from anyone else who has 
ever appeared before the banking committee, I would say that he is one 
of the brightest America has to offer. He has a wonderful family, he is 
deeply devout in his religion--he is Jewish--and a friend to Israel, a 
friend to this country, using his enormous talents to keep this country 
safe. There is nothing that would recommend that we not confirm Adam 
Szubin in one of the most critical positions we have in the Treasury 
Department. If we are serious about stopping Iran from getting a 
weapon, if we are serious about enforcing a regime of sanctions, then 
we need our best and brightest. He clearly is our best and brightest.
  One of the points I want to make coming to the floor is that we 
cannot allow incremental creep, incremental violations, small, little 
violations. You know how it is. We are all parents, and we watch kids 
take advantage and take advantage until pretty soon we don't really 
have the role anymore of a parent. We want to make sure that when we 
are enforcing this agreement and when we are looking at this agreement, 
we send a clear message from the very beginning, which is we will not 
tolerate a breach.
  I think it is disturbing that somehow this has become such a partisan 
issue. We should all be on the floor today encouraging the 
administration to not let this agreement be eroded by the failure to 
enforce.
  An agreement is only as good as the enforcement capability, and we 
need to fund the IAEA. We need to make sure they have adequate 
resources. My great friend from Delaware has suggested a long-term 
strategy for funding. We need to make sure they have the political 
support, not just in this body, but across the world to do the right 
thing.
  We have been talking about the reason we, in fact, agreed to allow 
this agreement to go forward, and the biggest agreement was the 
enforcement regime. We believed that because of the unprecedented 
access that the IAEA would have in Iran, we would know more about this 
program and we would have access to more. We were reassured about that 
access when we went to Vienna. We were reassured that, yes, they were 
not going to back down, but if they do back down and don't give access, 
we need enforcement. We should all be joining together to talk about 
what that enforcement should look like, how we fund that enforcement, 
and what a difference it could make.
  I share a level of optimism that we are moving in the right 
direction, but being someone who has negotiated deals, I know it is not 
over when you sign on to the agreement. It is never over when you sign 
on to the agreement. It is going to take a level of absolute myopic 
focus on enforcement to make sure we realize the promise of this 
international agreement and that we work with our allies and work with 
our colleagues. We can't do that if we don't have people in those 
positions who can have a dialogue and speak for the administration, and 
we certainly can't do it if we allow an incremental breach.
  I am joining with my colleagues to provide a unified voice that says: 
We stand ready to do what it takes to enforce this agreement and 
prevent breach and make sure we realize the promise of the joint 
agreement.
  Mr. BOOKER. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Ms. HEITKAMP. I will be glad to yield to the Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. I was with the Senator when you heard from Prime Minister 
Netanyahu about the priorities and the partnership between our two 
nations, including support for the Iron Dome and David's Sling. What 
was also critical, was our cooperation to prevent terror tunnels. One 
of the other challenges we had before this deal was even executed, was 
Hezbollah's vast arsenal of rockets that could be fired toward Israel. 
Those missiles are getting more sophisticated and their range is 
getting longer.
  I don't think people put the connection together between the 
importance of us doing the work of the Treasury Department to stop the 
flow of money that can purchase those weapons and have Israeli citizens 
scrambling for bomb shelters. When we say a name like Adam Szubin, most 
folks in America have no idea who he is and the work that he is doing. 
Now that the Senator has been to Israel, I wonder if she can make the 
connection as to why the work he is doing is so important to stop the 
growing sophistication and source of those missiles.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. I thank my good friend from New Jersey for that 
question. The surest way to prevent acts of terror is to make sure acts 
of terror are never funded. That takes an international banking 
sophistication and an understanding of every potential loophole you 
have in every country out there, and that is what Adam Szubin does. He 
spends all day getting briefings and reports about where those 
potential failures could be and how to plug those holes. How do we do 
what is necessary to unfund terrorism? Whether it is ISIL--ISIS--
Hezbollah or Hamas, we need to take away the money. That is the surest 
way toward success.
  If we do not confirm someone in this critical position, what is the 
message? I will be the first person to say that if he is not up to the 
job, let's find somebody else, but after having met him and watched his 
testimony and the level of dialogue he has not only with the Democrats 
but also with the Republicans--this isn't about the caliber of this 
gentleman to serve our country. It is about a political fight over this 
deal. The deal is done--not done, but the deal is in its infancy. If we 
are going to realize the promise of this deal and the commitment this 
country made, we absolutely need people in place to make sure this deal 
is enforced, and that is in fact Adam Szubin.
  My colleagues who were on the trip with me know we received a number 
of briefings that went to the heart of taking a look at the 
international banking system, where the weakest links are, and how we 
can attack those weakest links in shutting down the terrorist network 
for financing this terrible behavior.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues who have come to the 
floor to join with one voice in recognizing the very strong progress 
that is being made so far in implementing the JCPOA, in implementing 
the nuclear deal with Iran.
  I wish to particularly thank my colleague from North Dakota who has 
taken her experience on the banking committee to help us understand why 
it is so important to have confirmed senior administration figures who 
can enforce the sanctions that were on the books before this deal, were 
enforced during this deal, and should be enforced going forward.
  In closing, let me briefly make some reference as to what that means. 
The JCPOA was an agreement about constraining Iran's nuclear program, 
but the sanctions the United States has on the books to stop Iran's 
support for terrorism, to stop Iran's ballistic missile program, and to 
stop Iran's human rights abuses or to hold them accountable and 
sanction them for those abuses will remain on the books.
  I will briefly mention that during the negotiation of the JCPOA, the 
Treasury Department, where Adam Szubin is the nominee to be the top 
sanction enforcement person, utilized multiple authorities and 
sanctioned more than 100

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Iranians and Iran-linked entities, including more than 40, under its 
ongoing terrorism sanction authorities.
  Just this past July, three senior Hezbollah military officials were 
sanctioned in Syria and Lebanon because they provided military support 
to the Assad regime. In November, the Treasury Department designated 
procurement agents and companies in Lebanon, China, and Hong Kong, and 
just this last week, on January 7, the Treasury Department targeted a 
key Hezbollah support network by designating a Hezbollah financier and 
member, Ali Youssef Charara, and Spectrum Investment Group.
  As my colleague from New Jersey has said, we are all optimistic that 
the administration will take the next step and soon impose sanctions in 
response to recent ballistic missile launches.
  I celebrated earlier because I recognized the success the 
administration had in interdicting a weapons shipment from Iran to the 
Houthis rebels, their proxies in the region. The fundamental point is 
this. If we want to have the positive successes of the JCPOA, and if we 
want to continue to have the opportunity to constrain Iran's nuclear 
program and its bad behavior in the region, we have to be vigilantly 
engaged in oversight and in support for the enforcement of that 
agreement and for our exercise of the prerogatives and capabilities the 
American Government has to push back on Iran.
  I think by working together in a bipartisan and responsible way, we 
can get this done. There are folks in this Chamber who opposed the deal 
and folks who supported it, but what we heard on our recent delegation 
trip to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey was that our regional allies 
are looking for clarity--clarity that the United States stands together 
in fighting Iran's regional ambitions to support terror and in 
constraining Iran's nuclear program. We can do that best by confirming 
these nominees, by funding the IAEA, by exercising the sanction 
authorities that this administration and this Congress have put in 
place, and by continuing to make progress under this agreement.
  With that, I thank my colleagues and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.


             The President's Economic and Foreign Policies

  Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, tonight President Obama will deliver his 
final State of the Union Address, a closing argument for his 
Presidency. This President, who promised change, will attempt to point 
to his administration's accomplishments, as many Presidents have done 
in the past. However, this will prove to be difficult because Georgians 
and Americans have seen change but in the wrong direction.
  When President Obama took the White House, he promised fiscal 
responsibility, but right now he is on track to more than double the 
debt in his tenure. He promised to work together in a bipartisan way, 
but he used the Democratic supermajority in those first 2 years to 
force through ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank on the American people. He 
promised to bring us together, but he has served to divide us as a 
country. He promised to focus on defeating terrorism, but he created a 
power vacuum in the Middle East for others who wish to do us harm. 
There is no denying it, under this President's failed leadership, the 
American people have had a tough several years.
  Today more Americans have fallen into poverty under this Presidency. 
Too many individuals and families have seen their health care premiums 
and their deductibles rise to points where they can no longer afford 
them. Our national debt is almost $19 trillion, which is well past any 
reasonable tipping point, and we have a global security crisis on our 
hands that makes the world possibly more dangerous than at any point in 
my lifetime. These are all symptoms of the President's failed economic 
policies as well as a lack of leadership in foreign policy.
  Even by his own accord, the President has saddled our country with an 
irresponsible amount of debt which he described in the past as 
unpatriotic. Before he took office, then-Senator Barack Obama reviewed 
President Bush's tenure in office saying:

       The way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to 
     take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of 
     our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion 
     for the first 42 presidents--number 43 added $4 trillion by 
     his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt 
     that we are going to have to pay back--$30,000 for every man, 
     woman, and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

  Those are the words of this President, Barack Hussein Obama.
  Let's be clear, under this President, our national debt has ballooned 
to almost $19 trillion from $10 trillion. That means that President 
Obama has added almost $9 trillion already and is on track to more than 
double this debt before he is through.
  Before President Obama leaves office, he will have nearly added as 
much debt as all of the other Presidents before him. This is even more 
outrageous when you factor in how much revenue or tax dollars the 
Federal Government has collected.
  In 2015, we collected over $3.4 trillion in taxes for our Federal 
Government. This is more than any year in our history. Washington does 
not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem, and it is 
focused on the wrong priorities.
  Equally concerning, this massive debt isn't interest free. If 
interest rates were to rise to the 30-year average of only 5.5 percent, 
the interest on this debt would amount to over $1 trillion each year. 
That is more than twice what we spent on all nonmilitary discretionary 
spending. It is more than twice what we spend on our military and 
defending our country. It is totally out of control and this is 
unmanageable.
  In reality, this debt crisis will only get worse because this 
President and Washington have not tackled the government's largest 
expense--mandatory spending programs such as Social Security and 
Medicare. This debt crisis does not only present a fiscal problem, it 
is inextricably linked to the global security concerns we are seeing 
today.
  In order to have a strong foreign policy, we have to have a strong 
military, but to have a strong military we have to have a vibrant and 
growing strong economy. There is no secret that down through history 
the countries that have had the strongest militaries, and therefore the 
most secure foreign policy, are those that had the most vibrant 
economies of their day. Under this President's foreign policy 
decisions, he has created a power vacuum and put the country in a much 
weaker position.
  Today our enemies don't fear us and our allies don't trust us. Just 
three decades ago we brought down the Soviet Union with the power of 
our ideas and the strength of our economy. Look at the world today. 
Over the past 7 years, we have seen the rise of a global security 
crisis that is unrivaled in my lifetime. We have seen the rise of 
traditional rivals such as China and Russia grow more aggressive. We 
have seen North Korea and Iran actually collaborate on nuclear 
proliferation. We have seen Syria cross red lines and terrorism fill 
power vacuums in the Middle East and around the world.
  Last week North Korea claimed to have successfully completed its 
fourth nuclear weapons test with a much more powerful weapon than they 
possessed before. This is a sobering and stark reminder of the true 
consequences our country faces when our President shows weakness in the 
face of these radical regimes. And not only have we witnessed 
weaknesses, but we have also seen this President naively trust a 
country like Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism 
today.
  Since President Obama announced his dangerous Iran deal in July 
despite strong bipartisan opposition, Iran has actively accelerated its 
ballistic missile program and continued financial support for terrorism 
in the region, in violation of the very sanction we just heard on this 
floor.
  Iran has fired rockets near U.S. warships, fomented unrest in Yemen, 
taken more Americans hostages, refused to release an American passenger 
who has been held for 3 years, convicted an American journalist of 
spying, banned American products from

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being sold in Iran, and renewed its support for Hamas and Hezbollah 
terrorists.
  From the beginning, President Obama didn't listen to military advice 
and prematurely pulled our troops out of Iraq, creating another power 
vacuum. ISIS, of course, we now know, grew into that power vacuum and 
sprouted influence not only in the Middle East but in Africa and Asia 
as well.
  Last November, this President told the American people in a news 
interview:

       We have contained them. They have not gained ground in 
     Iraq. And in Syria if they'll come in, they'll leave. But you 
     don't see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain.

  Well, we now know ISIS is not being contained in their ability to 
wage war against the West and will stop at nothing to deliver terrorism 
even to the shores of America. The President's plan has failed, it is 
plain and simple, and we sit here today with no strategy to defeat 
ISIS.
  The world needs to see decisive action from the United States, not 
empty rhetoric that can't be backed up. We need a new leader who takes 
every threat of any size seriously. Moving forward, nothing can go 
unchecked and unmet without relentless American resolve.
  No matter how we measure it, President Obama's economic and foreign 
policies have indeed failed. Time and again, he has refused to change 
course when his policies didn't work, when they didn't help the 
American people, whom he claims to champion. Instead, this President 
has created the fourth arm of government--the regulators--and they are 
sucking the very life out of our free enterprise system today. Now, 
fewer people are working, wages are stagnant, incomes aren't growing, 
the debt is soaring, and the world is much more dangerous than it was 8 
years ago.
  But tonight we will also hear from this President about his optimism 
for the future. Well, I get that. I share that optimism but only 
because I believe we can do better. We can do a lot better. We can 
tackle our national debt crisis. We can save Social Security and 
Medicare. We can defeat terrorism once and for all. We cannot do it 
without bold leadership, however. We cannot do it without a sense of 
urgency or responsibility. We cannot do it unless the political class 
in this town--Washington, DC--finally puts national interests in front 
of self-interests. We cannot do it without the will and support of the 
American people.
  I believe in America. Georgians believe in America. Americans believe 
in America. Americans have always risen to the crisis of the day, and I 
believe we will rise to this crisis. But Washington needs to really 
listen to the American people, focus on solutions they support, and 
unite our Nation to make sure our best days are indeed ahead of us. We 
owe it to our children and our children's children, and the time to 
move is right now. The time for rhetoric has ended.
  We need to face up to the two crises we have today: the global 
security crisis and our own debt crisis, which are interwoven together.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  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. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I withdraw the motion to proceed to 
S. 2232.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is withdrawn.

                          ____________________