[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3954-3970]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            AMERICA'S SMALL BUSINESS TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2015

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 636, which the clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 636) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 
     1986 to permanently extend increased expensing limitations, 
     and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Thune/Nelson amendment No. 3464, in the nature of a 
     substitute.
       Thune (for Gardner) amendment No. 3460 (to amendment No. 
     3464), to require the FAA Administrator to consider the 
     operational history of a person before authorizing the person 
     to operate certain unmanned aircraft systems.
       Cantwell amendment No. 3490 (to amendment No. 3464), to 
     extend protections against physical assault to air carrier 
     customer service representatives.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         National Equal Pay Day

  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, after another whole year, a very 
unfortunate milestone has once again arrived. Today is Equal Pay Day. 
This is the day in 2016 when the average working woman, after all last 
year and the first 3 months of this year, finally earns as much money 
as the average man did only during last year. So if we started the 
clock in 2015, the average woman had to work an extra 103 days to earn 
the same amount of money as a man.
  Imagine two people were both hired at a company. They both work hard. 
They have the same amount of experience and the same qualifications, 
but they have one very important difference: One of those workers is a 
man, and the other is a woman. As a result, they will not be paid the 
same.
  Right now, on average, for every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 
only 79 cents. That is the average for all women. Many other groups of 
women have it even worse. Working mothers earn only 75 cents for every 
dollar working fathers make. African-American women earn just 60 cents 
for every dollar a white male makes. And our Latina women have it the 
worst. They earn just 55 cents for every dollar a white male makes. The 
United States of America still doesn't pay its men and women equally 
for the same exact work, and it is unacceptable that in the year 2016 
we are still fighting to fix this basic problem.
  Think about how this pay gap affects our families. More women than 
ever are earning their family's paycheck. Four out of every ten mothers 
are either the primary breadwinner of the family or the only 
breadwinner in their family. Because of this pay gap, their children 
are getting shortchanged.
  We need equal pay for equal work. It shouldn't matter if you are a 
nurse or a lawyer or even one of the best female athletes in the world. 
Just a couple weeks ago, the women's national soccer team filed a 
Federal lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation over wage 
discrimination. I strongly support these women, and they are doing the 
right thing. They are raising their voices about a serious injustice, 
and I urge all of my colleagues in this Chamber to listen to these 
women--listen to the women in their States, and listen to the women in 
this country that deserve equal pay for equal work. The women on our 
national soccer team are some of the most successful American athletes 
alive, and even they have to deal with this pay gap.
  It is shameful and inexcusable that women are still paid less than 
men for the exact same work in this country. I urge everyone here to 
support the Paycheck Fairness Act. Let's get with the times. Let's 
finally make it illegal to pay our women less than our men for the very 
same work.
  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. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise today to address the Senate's 
ongoing effort to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. The 
bill before us today was described in the Washington Post as ``one of 
the most passenger-friendly FAA reauthorization bills in a generation'' 
thanks to its robust new consumer protections. But even more 
importantly, this bill includes strong new security measures that 
address the threat ISIS and other terrorist groups pose to airline 
passengers.
  In the wake of the Brussels attacks, travelers are understandably 
nervous about the threats they face when flying, especially given 
terrorists' preference for targeting transportation. Here in the 
Senate, we are doing everything we can to address that threat. I am 
proud that this bill includes new protections to prevent an attack like 
the one in Brussels from happening at a U.S. airport.
  The FAA Reauthorization Act includes the most comprehensive set of 
aviation security reforms since President Obama first took office. To 
prevent airport insiders from helping terrorists, we have included 
measures to improve scrutiny of individuals applying to work in secure 
airport areas. This is especially critical as many experts believe the 
bombing of a Russian passenger jet leaving Egypt had help from an 
aviation insider.
  We have also included provisions to better safeguard public areas 
outside security in airports and to help reduce passenger backups. 
These reforms could help prevent a future attack like the one in the 
Brussels terminal last month, which targeted a crowd of passengers in 
an area where the attackers didn't even need tickets.
  Because staying ahead of threats needs to be a priority, we also 
included additional cyber security provisions and added anti-terrorism 
security features for new aircraft.
  The security reforms in this legislation were actually developed 
months ago as followups to congressional oversight, independent 
evaluations of agencies, and the study of existing problems. But these 
reforms have gained new urgency in the wake of recent attacks by ISIS. 
We need to constantly monitor and stay ahead of threats so that we can 
continue to ensure that our air transportation system is the safest in 
the world.
  More than any other reason, I support the Federal Aviation 
Administration Reauthorization Act of 2016 because it will make the 
traveling public safer. For all of the many ways it improves our air 
transportation system, the provisions to keep Americans safe stand out 
as especially deserving of our support and as heightening the need to 
send this legislation on to the House.
  I yield back.
  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. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

[[Page 3955]]




                         National Equal Pay Day

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, today is Equal Pay Day. I am proud of the 
fact that one of our Members on this side of the aisle, Senator Deb 
Fischer, is taking the lead and pointing out that this is not a 
partisan issue. I know people find that hard to believe here in 
Washington, where everything seems like a partisan issue, but the fact 
is, both Republicans and Democrats and the unaffiliated believe that 
people who perform the same work ought to be compensated in the same 
way. So I am proud of the work Senator Fischer is doing.
  I just wanted to make note of the fact that this is Equal Pay Day. I 
know some of our colleagues across the aisle maybe have a different 
view and think they have a better way to deal with this, but it is 
purely a difference in tactics, not in terms of goals, which is equal 
pay for equal work.


                  National Crime Victims' Rights Week

  Mr. President, yesterday I spoke about the fact that this is also 
Crime Victims' Week, and that is what I want to talk about now a little 
bit more.
  There are a lot of people who come to Washington--big companies, 
people can hire lobbyists, lawyers, accountants, other experts--to try 
to make their case to Congress, but we don't have a crime victims' 
lobby per se. We have organizations--volunteer organizations, by and 
large--that try and provide a voice to the voiceless and people who 
need to be represented here, but the fact is, by listening to those 
victims of crime and to those who volunteer to help them here in the 
Nation's Capital, we can make a big difference in the lives of crime 
victims in this country.
  I highlighted the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act as an 
example of what we can accomplish when we get past the partisan talking 
points and instead focus on a common goal. I pointed out that 
legislation, which is the most--I think the major--the most significant 
human trafficking legislation passed in the last 25 years, actually 
broke important ground. It uses the penalties and the fines paid by 
people on the purchasing side of the sex slave trade to be able to fund 
the resources to help heal the victims, typically a girl the age of 12 
to 14, somebody who has maybe run away from home, who thinks maybe they 
have fallen in love with somebody new, only to find themselves trapped 
in modern-day human slavery. We were able to pass that legislation by a 
vote of 99 to 0 in the Senate, and now it is the law of the land.
  I mentioned yesterday that some of the provisions, including the hero 
program, which was designed to provide incentives for returning 
veterans of the gulf war, Iraq, and Afghanistan--some of them bearing 
the wounds of those wars--to be able to use the skills they have 
acquired in the military to help go after child predators and other 
people who would take advantage of the most vulnerable in our society. 
But I wish to talk about another opportunity where I believe Congress 
can come together to rally behind victims and move legislation that 
could help save lives.
  On the first day of December 2013, Kari Hunt Dunn brought her three 
young children to a hotel in Marshall, TX, a city east of Dallas near 
the border with Louisiana, to visit with her estranged husband. Sadly, 
this visit turned into tragedy. According to reports, Kari's estranged 
husband started to attack her and while he did, one of Kari's daughters 
did what her parents and family taught her to do in an emergency, which 
is to dial 9-1-1. She called for help repeatedly, but she didn't 
realize that, as in many hotels, first you need to dial 9 before you 
can dial out. So she kept dialing 9-1-1 to no avail, not recognizing 
that she needed to dial 9 to get an outside line. By the time help 
finally arrived, Kari was unresponsive and later died, leaving her 
three young children behind.
  Obviously this is a terrible, heart-wrenching story, and I wish I 
could say it was an isolated event, but it is made that much more 
tragic because the family will never know what the outcome might have 
been had that first 9-1-1 call actually made its way to the proper 
authorities.
  Following her death, Kari's father Hank decided he had to do 
something to correct the problem so tragedies like this could hopefully 
become a thing of the past. This is where we have a role to play. I 
know some people might say: Well, there are a lot more important things 
for Congress to be doing than dealing with this issue, but this is 
something we can do. It is not partisan, and we should do it on an 
expedited basis.
  So earlier this year, I joined with several of my colleagues, 
including the senior Senators from Nebraska and Minnesota, to introduce 
legislation called Kari's Law, a bipartisan bill that already has a 
companion in the House. This legislation builds on a law passed last 
year by the Texas legislature, and several other States have followed 
suit as well.
  Before us we have a clearer, albeit a discrete, problem, and we have 
an obvious solution. This bill would ensure that people have the 
ability to directly call 9-1-1, even in hotels and office buildings, 
without having to dial an extra number. By making this simple change, 
we can ensure that children, like Kari's daughter, can make the call 
for help, to call for the assistance of law enforcement and emergency 
personnel to save valuable time that can make the difference between 
life and death and the prevention of another tragedy.
  We should follow the example of States like Texas that have already 
done this. We could do this on a national basis. We know there are 
lives at stake, like Kari's, and I believe we have an obligation to act 
to keep tragedies like Kari's from happening again.
  So as we continue to look for ways to better support victims of crime 
this week, I hope we will take another small step to help victims by 
advancing this legislation. In so many instances, they are what seem 
like small steps that can have tremendous ramifications.
  I mentioned yesterday the reforms we have been able to do in terms of 
testing the rape kit backlog. It had been reported that as many as 
400,000 untested rape kits are sitting in evidence lockers in police 
stations or perhaps in labs untested, and I talked a little bit about 
the fact that in Houston alone, thanks to the leadership of the then 
mayor and the city council, working with State and Federal authorities, 
they were able to eliminate the rape kit backlog testing and come up 
with 850 hits on the database that showed there were individuals whose 
DNA was tested and located on this forensic evidence that was already 
in this FBI background database known as CODIS. There are things we can 
do that may seem small but can have a dramatic impact on the lives of 
our constituents.
  So I suggest that we don't give up and we continue to do what we can, 
where we can, when we can, and passing Kari's Law would be another 
important step in that direction.
  Mr. President, 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. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       Tribute to Beverly Cleary

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today Beverly Cleary, a storied and award-
winning author, is going to be celebrating her 100th birthday. 
Throughout her 66-year career, Beverly Cleary has written more than 40 
children's books, selling over 90 million copies by enchanting readers 
of all ages with the escapades of Ramona, Henry, Ralph S. Mouse, and so 
many wonderful characters. With enduring and relatable themes of 
adventure, adolescence, and friendship, Ms. Cleary's novels have 
withstood the test of time and have established their place in the 
pages of Oregon's cultural heritage.
  Beverly Cleary was born on April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, OR. At an 
early age, she moved to Portland, where she developed a passion for 
Oregon that shines throughout the pages of her stories. For years, 
Beverly Cleary's characters have called Portland home, and

[[Page 3956]]

for the countless children who grew up with her writing, Ms. Cleary's 
stories have been their haven. Her book series ``Ramona'' and ``Henry 
Huggins'' are both set in Portland and continue to serve as important 
threads throughout Oregon's literary fabric.
  Ms. Cleary's impact on the State of Oregon and the city of Portland 
have not gone unnoticed. Her honors include a public K-8 school in 
Portland, the Beverly Cleary School, which some of my staff actually 
attended, and a public art installation at the Hollywood branch of the 
Multnomah County Library which features many of her books' neighborhood 
landmarks. Portland's Grant Park is home to a public sculpture garden 
with bronze statues of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Ribsy.
  It is Beverly Cleary's unbound passion and dedication to children's 
literature that have earned her numerous literary awards, including a 
National Book Award, a Newberry Medal, and a National Medal of Art. In 
2000 the Library of Congress even named her a ``Living Legend.''
  Just as original Beverly Cleary fans enjoyed reading about the lives 
and adventures of her characters, each new generation of young Beverly 
Cleary readers finds a similar connection with those same characters. 
Ms. Cleary's books have sparked the imagination of so many children 
across America, helping instill literary skills that last a lifetime.
  When it comes to literacy, the importance of reading at an early age 
simply cannot be overstated. An early introduction to reading is one of 
the most significant factors influencing a child's success in school. 
It is linked to better speech and communication skills, improved 
logical thinking, and increased academic excellence. It is clear that 
young children who develop a love for reading have an upper hand both 
in the classroom and later in life.
  Thanks to Ms. Cleary, generations of kids across the world can 
experience Oregon from a literary perspective. One would be hard-
pressed to find another author who has made such a lasting impact on 
children's literature. So it is an enormous honor and a great personal 
pleasure for me to come to the Senate floor this afternoon to honor 
Beverly Cleary's contribution to literary history, to Oregon, and to 
children everywhere, and to wish her a very happy 100th birthday.
  With that, Mr. President, 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.


                          Gold King Mine Spill

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, last August several Western States and 
Indian tribes suffered an enormous environmental disaster. It was 
called the Gold King Mine spill. In this disaster, the U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency caused a spill of 3 million gallons of 
toxic waste water into a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado.
  This photograph shows the before and after. People all across the 
country remember this picture and the poisoning of this river by the 
EPA. This plume of toxic waste threatened people in Colorado, New 
Mexico, and Utah. It stretched to the land of the Navajo Nation and the 
Southern Ute Indian Tribe.
  When the Indian Affairs Committee held a hearing on the Gold King 
Mine spill last September, we heard testimony from Russell Begaye. He 
is the President of the Navajo Nation, which has lands roughly the size 
of the State of West Virginia, a very large piece of land. President 
Begaye told our committee that for the Navajo people, water is sacred, 
and the river is life for all of us.
  He said: Today, we are afraid to use the river--with an emphasis on 
the word ``afraid.'' The EPA caused that spill more than 8 months ago 
because it made crucial mistakes, critical mistakes. It failed to take 
basic precautions.
  Well, we still have not gotten answers to some very important 
questions. Now that the snow in the Rocky Mountains is beginning to 
melt, people in this very area, in the course of this river, are 
worried that they are being victimized once again by the failures of 
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They want to know if melting 
snow is going to stir up the lead and the mercury and the other poisons 
that have settled to the bottom after this poisonous spill.
  They want to know if this blue river is going to turn bright yellow 
again. Well, next week I am chairing a hearing in Phoenix, AZ, and it 
is a field hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee. We are going to be 
looking at the Environmental Protection Agency's unacceptable response 
to Indian tribes. This includes inadequate handling of the Gold King 
Mine disaster. It includes the Agency dragging its feet on cleaning up 
the cold-water uranium mines across the Navajo and the Hopi 
reservations.
  The members of these tribes deserve to hear directly from the EPA. 
They want answers about what is being done to fix this blunder. From 
what I have seen lately, I expect the Environmental Protection Agency 
will be doing its best to avoid giving any answer at all. When we, the 
Indian Affairs Committee, first invited the Agency to send a 
representative to this hearing to update us, they refused. It is 
astonishing; they refused. They said they would send written testimony 
instead.
  I don't think the EPA understands how this works. We are holding this 
field hearing to do oversight on this catastrophe that the EPA caused. 
This is not optional for them. This is not supposed to be just another 
chance for the EPA to show how uncooperative and unhelpful they can be. 
So tomorrow the Indian Affairs Committee plans to issue a formal 
subpoena for the EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, to appear at the 
field hearing.
  Ms. McCarthy testified last year. When she testified before our 
committee in Washington last September, she said that the Agency was 
taking--her words--``full responsibility'' for the spill. Today, the 
Agency will not even come and look these people in the eye. Does that 
sound as though it is taking ``full responsibility''?
  When this disaster first happened, the EPA did not notify the Navajo 
Nation until a full day after the spill. After 4 days, the EPA still 
had not reported to the Navajo leaders that there was arsenic in the 
water. This disaster happened more than 8 months ago. No one--no one at 
the Agency has been fired. No one has even been reprimanded for their 
failure.
  What has the EPA done? Well, here is a headline from the Wall Street 
Journal on Friday, April 8: ``Toxic-Spill Fears Haunt Southwest.'' In 
the southwestern part of the country, according to this article, it has 
been months since the Agency has been back to test the safety of the 
well water for the families near the river. Officials in New Mexico and 
in Utah say the EPA has failed to spearhead a comprehensive plan to 
manage the spring runoff or even to conduct long-term monitoring.
  The States and the tribes are having to monitor the water quality 
themselves. Why, you ask? Well, it is because the EPA was not planning 
to test enough sites or provide real-time data. That is what people 
need. What good is the data if it is not telling people that the water 
they are drinking right now is safe? Why tell people that the water 
they drank a week ago or a month ago was contaminated? They need to 
know about the water today.
  There are 200,000 people who drink from the river system that the EPA 
poisoned last summer. Why has the Environmental Protection Agency 
walked away from these families? Why is this Agency not taking full 
responsibility for making sure this mess has been cleaned up? I am not 
alone in asking that. This article about the ``Toxic-Spill Fears Haunt 
Southwest'' in the Wall Street Journal on Friday goes further.
  They actually quote the State environment secretary from New Mexico, 
who lives there, lives on the land, and knows the situation. This is 
the State environment secretary. He says: The

[[Page 3957]]

fundamental problem is, there is no engagement from the EPA. None.
  This is a specific, definite, concrete, environmental disaster. It 
was caused by specific people at the Environmental Protection Agency. 
This is about a government agency failing to do its job. They took 
their eye off the ball. They caused this toxic spill. They still have 
not focused on cleaning up the mess that they caused.
  Like so much in Washington, DC, the EPA has grown too big, too 
arrogant, too irresponsible, and too unaccountable. People in America 
deserve accountability. We all want a clean environment. That is not in 
dispute. We all know the original mission of the Environmental 
Protection Agency was a noble one. Somewhere along the line, this 
Agency lost its way. It got preoccupied with other things, and it lost 
sight of its real job, which is to protect the environment.
  Instead, we get this. When President Begaye of the Navajo Nation 
testified before the Indian Affairs Committee last fall, he was very 
clear. This is what he said: The Navajo Nation does not trust the U.S. 
EPA, and we expect it to be held fully accountable. Let me repeat. The 
Navajo Nation does not trust the U.S. EPA. We expect it to be held 
fully accountable.
  I think the Navajo Nation and other tribes in the West are right to 
not trust the EPA. They are right to expect it to be held fully 
accountable. That is exactly what we intend to do with this field 
hearing next week. Indian Country and all of America need to know if 
the EPA can do its job. From what they see here, they have serious, 
serious doubts. These people do not need a written statement. They need 
to hear straight from the people in charge and that means from Gina 
McCarthy, who is the head of the EPA.
  Next Friday, April 22, is Earth Day. According to press reports, 
Administrator McCarthy is planning to go to New York that day for a big 
media event around the Paris climate change treaty. That is what she is 
planning for next Friday, the day of this important hearing--a day when 
the EPA just wants to send written testimony.
  It is her preference to be in New York talking about what happened in 
Paris instead of going to Arizona to face the people her Agency has 
abandoned. That is what she thinks is more important. That is the way 
this administration prioritizes its activity--a photo op in New York, 
not meeting with the people whose lives her Agency has devastated. The 
director of the EPA still does not have her priorities straight. It 
should not have to come down to a subpoena. The Environmental 
Protection Agency should have done the right thing from the very 
beginning.
  It is up to the EPA to do the right thing now. On Earth Day, of all 
days, we need to hear from the Administrator of the Environmental 
Protection Agency.
  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. DONNELLY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                     Domestic Steel Industry Crisis

  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the severity 
of the crisis facing our domestic steel industry. Workers are losing 
their jobs, families are losing their homes, and communities are 
suffering.
  For several years our domestic industry has been under constant 
attack. Our steel industry is in the midst of a crisis more severe than 
the one experienced nearly two decades ago. Global demand for steel has 
not kept pace with global production. As a result, many of the global 
producers have come here to the United States to try to dump their 
steel. As a result of that, domestic producers continue to lose ground, 
surrendering a record-high 29 percent market share to foreign-made 
steel last year. The industry currently has about a 65-percent capacity 
utilization rate, and in Indiana we saw an 8-percent downturn in 
production last year.
  As a Senator from Indiana--a State that accounts for one-quarter of 
all domestic steel capacity--I visit with steelworkers and their 
families to listen to their concerns about the impact of illegally 
traded steel flooding our market. Hoosier families are worried. Steel 
plants are idling, and more than 1,000 Hoosier workers have been laid 
off as a direct result of the illegally dumped steel that flooded our 
market last year. These are workers who come up to me at church on 
Sundays or stop by my office. They look me in the eye and ask me to 
explain how other nations get to produce and sell steel under a 
different set of rules. These workers have never asked me or anyone 
else for a handout; they simply ask that all parties compete on a level 
playing field because these Hoosier steelworkers know how valued their 
steel products are here and abroad.
  Congress and the Obama administration must work together to not only 
prevent further job losses but to allow the steel industry to grow. 
When families face the uncertainty of a plant idling, they must prepare 
for the worst. All the while, small businesses that reside in 
communities relying on the steel industry's success suffer because 
families are no longer able to purchase goods and services, such as 
groceries and clothes and things for their home, because they are just 
trying to survive.
  The current situation only reinforces my long-held belief that strong 
trade policies strengthen communities and ensure good employment for 
our workers, and they maintain a level playing field to foster the kind 
of fair competition that leads to robust markets. However, as we know 
all too well, such policies only work when everyone plays by the same 
rules.
  I appreciate the work of my colleagues here in the Senate and across 
the Capitol in the House who have come together and worked in a 
bipartisan fashion to provide the administration with the significant 
tools they need to combat this historic influx of foreign-made steel.
  As my colleagues may recall, Congress recently passed the Leveling 
the Playing Field Act and also the ENFORCE Act to help our steel 
industry investigate and better fight unfair trade practices. While 
there is more to be done, the administration should use these important 
tools we have provided to vigorously defend our domestic industry from 
those who willingly do not play by the rules. Strict enforcement of the 
law is necessary to protect our domestic industry now and to deter bad 
actors from abusing the system in the future.
  Good, strong communities and good, strong cities like Portage and 
Gary and Crawfordsville and Rockport are relying on the Senate to do 
the right thing. We must double down on our efforts to combat the 
illegally traded steel coming into our market. We must do so together 
not only for the businesses and workers impacted by the onslaught of 
illegally traded steel but for the communities of children and families 
who have been linked for generations to the success of our Nation's 
steel industry. They are counting on us, and we cannot let them down.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Taxes and the National Debt

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, it is springtime in Missouri. Whether it is 
in our State that joins the Presiding Officer's State of Oklahoma or in 
Iowa, we are seeing trees begin to bloom. It was great to be home the 2 
weeks we were home and again last weekend and see the flowering trees 
sort of move from north to south and, I guess, south to north. It is 
one of my favorite times of the year, as it is for a lot of people. 
Particularly during the 2 weeks we were home, we would not see the 
blooms of the Dogwoods, and then a couple of days later we would see 
them farther north in the State than we had seen them before.

[[Page 3958]]

  People like the spring. They like the great weather, they like to get 
out and do things with their family--only to be reminded sometimes just 
how fickle the spring weather is. One thing a lot of people--including 
most of us--dread at this time of year, however, is that spring comes 
at about the same time that they have to file their taxes. That date 
comes this week, and if the weather is not predictable, the increasing 
reach of the Tax Code should be predictable and is predictable.
  Ronald Reagan said that Republicans believe every day is the Fourth 
of July, and our friends on the other side believe every day is April 
the 15th. We are having the income come in now and seeing what happens 
with it. It is the time of year we ought to look at what is happening 
with the hard-earned dollars American families work for.
  It is estimated that Americans will pay about $3.3 trillion in 
Federal taxes and about half that in State and local taxes. A total of 
almost $5 trillion--or 31 percent of all the national income in the 
country--goes to taxes. If, at various levels of government as a 
country, we are taking 31 percent of the money every family earns, we 
ought to be thinking about what happens with that and justify every 
penny of it. Another way of looking at it is that Missourians, and 
people across the country, will spend more on taxes this year than they 
spend on food, clothing, and housing combined.
  A lot of people might ask where the taxes are coming from. After all, 
in 2001 and 2003 Congress cut taxes. But that doesn't seem to be the 
case when we pay the tax bill. While we did cut taxes as a country in 
2001 and 2003, in 2009 we put a lot of taxes in place. One prime 
example of what happened in 2009 is the $1 trillion tax hike in the 
President's health care bill. Now, $1 trillion over 10 years is a lot 
of money. It is $100 billion a year that the government hadn't been 
collecting in taxes but now is.
  A few years ago the Ways and Means Committee asked the Congressional 
Budget Office, along with the Joint Committee on Taxation, to look at 
what the ObamaCare taxes really meant, and they revised that estimate 
up. They listed 21 tax increases, including 12 tax increases on the 
middle class, and those 21 tax increases amounted to a $1 trillion tax 
hike. A few of those taxes have been delayed for a little bit. We were 
able to slow down the silly tax on medical devices. Whom they thought 
that would help when people who voted for that bill and that tax, I 
don't know, but an extra tax on medical devices seems unreasonable to 
me. I don't know a single person who ever bought a medical device 
because they thought they were going to have a good time with it. They 
bought a medical device because they thought it was necessary for their 
health.
  Then, not only do we collect this money, not only do we collect 31 
percent of all the money people work for in taxes, we see the national 
debt continuing to increase. The national debt held by the public 
stands at about $13.5 trillion, but the national debt is really closer 
to $19 trillion because we owe a lot of money as a country and people 
to the places it has been borrowed from--the Social Security trust 
fund--and all $19 trillion has to be paid back.
  It is hard for most of us to even begin to think how much money that 
is, $19 trillion, but the gross domestic product--the total value of 
all the goods and services produced in the country--is less than that. 
GDP is estimated to be about $17.9 trillion.
  Another way to look at the national debt is that we have managed to 
accumulate a national debt that is more than equal to everything the 
country produces in a given year. Everything Americans work to make, 
everything we produce--the value of not just the products we make but 
the goods and services we make--is now exceeded by the national debt. 
There is no credible economic measure that would indicate that a 
country is stronger if the debt is bigger than the value of what it 
produced as a country.
  We have the debt, and then we have the deficit spending. Deficits 
occur when the government spends more money than it generates in 
revenue.
  Balancing the budget two decades ago wasn't all that easy to do. It 
required hard choices. But we as a country were able to reach a 
bipartisan consensus that surpluses are preferable to deficits and that 
a country is far better off as a result; that a growing economy is 
better than a stagnant economy; and that the economy is more likely to 
grow if the government isn't constantly sapping, for no defensible 
reason, the economic opportunity of people spending their own money to 
advance themselves and their families forward.
  One thing that every model shows is that it is easier to pay off the 
debt and it is easier to pay the bills of the country if you have an 
economy that is growing. But regulators who are out of control, and 
deficit spending hurts economic growth.
  If we look at the first year of the Obama administration, adjusted 
for inflation to today's dollars, that deficit ran about $1.6 trillion. 
Following that, during the first term it was $1.6 trillion, then $1.4 
trillion, then $1.3 trillion, and then $1.1 trillion. That sounds as if 
the deficit is going down, but it is $1.1 trillion over a budget that 
just 20 years ago was balanced. It is $1.1 trillion over a budget that 
a little more than a decade earlier had been a balanced budget.
  If we accept this year's number, the average deficit over the last 8 
years is $963 billion--right at $1 trillion--and we are borrowing that 
money and the $19 trillion that came before it at almost the lowest 
interest rate imaginable. What happens if the borrowing rate goes from 
where it is to, say, 5 percent? We already see that the interest on the 
debt is quickly becoming the third biggest government payment--Social 
Security, Medicare, paying the debt. Things like defending the country, 
a transportation system that works, health care research--all of those 
things are way below just the interest we would have on the debt, and 
that is at the lowest rate ever.
  Federal borrowing is really nothing more than a tax on the future. 
Federal borrowing is nothing more than saying: We want to have what we 
want to have right now, and we are willing for somebody else to pay the 
bill for what we want to have right now.
  As people sit down and file their taxes over the next 48 hours or so 
and make final calculations and look at what they made and look at what 
they are paying--as they have done over the last few weeks and will do 
over the next couple of days--it is an important time for them to talk 
to the people they elect to public office: What do you think you are 
gaining by not making the tough choices? What do you think you are 
gaining by not doing the things we have already agreed we need the 
government to do and doing those really well rather than coming up with 
yet another program that may or may not produce results?
  The health care plan is one of those. I had a hospital group in this 
morning. They had done a calculation of what part of the bill people 
were paying with their personal money as opposed to insurance that they 
had to try to protect themselves against health care costs before the 
Affordable Care Act and what they are paying now. What they found is 
that before the Affordable Care Act, they were paying 10 percent of the 
bill with personal money. After the Affordable Care Act, the average 
person with insurance was paying 20 percent of the bill. So the 
highest, fastest growing level of debt that hospital had was people 
with insurance who weren't able to pay the bill because their 
deductible was so high.
  So we managed to raise $1 trillion in taxes, insure almost no one in 
terms of total numbers--we still have about 30 million people who are 
uninsured--and in many cases, the people who are insured don't have the 
coverage they had before.
  People need to be asking what we are doing to mortgage the future and 
what are we getting out of that. Just as Missourians have a 
responsibility to ensure that their taxes are paid by April 15, we have 
a responsibility to ensure that their tax dollars are wisely used or 
not taken from them at all.
  I think the fiscal policy of the Obama administration over the last 8 
years

[[Page 3959]]

has been an irresponsible way to spend people's money. The cost-benefit 
analysis we asked for comes back with silly things, like we evaluate 
how much people worry about something or we evaluate how much people's 
feelings are hurt. What we ought to evaluate is what we get out of 
these excessive rules and regulations and regulators and inspectors 
that truly is a benefit as opposed to what do we get that is just one 
more additional burden that people are asked to pay for and, even worse 
than that, that then their children and grandchildren are asked to pay 
for by seeing this accumulated debt.
  We hear from our friends on the other side that it was necessary to 
engage in excessive spending to keep the economy afloat following the 
recession--the only way to do that is for the Government to play a 
bigger role in the economy. And what do we have to show for that? The 
economy is still struggling, the recovery has been unbelievably 
sluggish at best, and wages are stagnant for middle-class families. 
Why? One of the reasons is high taxes, combined with the onslaught of 
redtape, and regulators that are out of control. The policies coming 
out of this administration have really made any possible stimulated 
growth in the economy hard to find.
  The challenges of getting healthy economic growth and getting our 
fiscal house back in order will only become more daunting as the direct 
and indirect costs of things like the President's health care plan 
accumulate. I think we ought to all commit ourselves here, as people 
are coming to the end of this tax-paying season, to work together, to 
work on both sides of the Capitol and at both ends of Pennsylvania 
Avenue to find solutions for an overtaxed middle class, for out-of-
control spending, unsustained long-term debt and interest payments. We 
need a flatter, fairer, less complicated, and more competitive tax 
structure.
  If we are going to ask the American people to send in 31 cents out of 
every dollar they make at all levels--some people send in a lot more 
and some people send in a little less, but 31 cents out of every dollar 
of income in the country goes to government--the government has a real 
obligation to see that every one of those 31 cents is spent for a good 
purpose or not taken from people at all.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senate as in morning hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          Veterans Choice Act

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, just a month ago, I was on the Senate floor 
talking about the struggles of a number of Kansas veterans as they 
attempted to utilize the Veterans Choice Program that Congress passed 
nearly 2 years ago. That program is being implemented by the U.S. 
Department of Veterans Affairs. We looked for many opportunities to try 
to provide better service, more efficient service, more timely service 
to our veterans, and Congress ultimately came together and passed the 
Veterans Choice Act.
  As I indicated a month ago and numerous times on the Senate floor, 
that legislation, that law says if you are a veteran who can't receive 
the medical services you are entitled to, you have the opportunity to 
receive those services at a medical facility, a clinic, a physician, or 
a hospital at home. As an individual Senator who comes from a State as 
rural as most and more rural than many--and certainly as rural as the 
Presiding Officer's home State and the home State of the Senator from 
Missouri--we have a real interest in trying to make certain our 
veterans who live long distances from a VA hospital can access that 
medical care.
  I thought we took great satisfaction in the passage of that 
legislation. I certainly did. What we have discovered since then in its 
implementation has been one handicap, one hurdle, one bureaucratic 
difficulty, and one challenge after another. While maybe it is 
difficult for the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement this 
legislation, they are the ones who ought to suffer the challenges of 
doing so, not the men and women who served our country.
  During my conversation on the Senate floor a month ago, I talked 
about a number of veterans in Kansas and called them by name. One of 
those veterans was Michael Dabney, a Kansas veteran from Hill City, KS, 
in northwest Kansas, in the part of the State that I grew up in.
  A piece of good news is that Mr. Dabney is eligible for the Veterans 
Choice Program because he lives more than 40 miles from a VA facility. 
So Mr. Dabney qualifies under that Veterans Choice Program, and Mr. 
Dabney needed surgery and elected to use the Veterans Choice Program. 
There is a community-based outpatient clinic hosted by the VA in Hays, 
which is about an hour away from his hometown. He was receiving care 
and treatment there. The indication was he needed the surgery, and they 
suggested that he travel to Wichita--another couple hundred miles--for 
that surgery. But Mr. Dabney suffers from PTSD and indicated that he 
didn't feel comfortable and capable of traveling that extra 200 miles 
to receive the surgery.
  His primary care provider at the outpatient clinic in Hays indicated 
to him this: Well, you live more than 40 miles from a facility. You 
qualify for the Veterans Choice Act. You can have these services 
provided and this surgery provided at home.
  Mr. Dabney elected to do that. Rather than driving another 200 miles 
for surgery in a city far away, he had the surgery performed at home. 
That seems like the way this is supposed to work. But the end result 
was that, according to the VA, he didn't receive preauthorization. So 
despite his primary care provider telling him that he qualified for the 
Veterans Choice Act, after getting the service at home, he then started 
receiving the bills for that service.
  In frustration, he then contacted our office, and the folks in my 
office went to work. Here was an example that I thought we could be 
successful in solving. The record clearly indicates that his primary 
care provider, his VA primary care provider indicated he should utilize 
the Choice Act and have the services, the surgery provided at home. He 
did so. The VA then declined to pay for those services, and he began 
receiving the bills.
  So we went to bat for Mr. Dabney. Despite our efforts and despite his 
efforts, he has been told that those bills are due to be paid by him 
because he didn't get preauthorization. My point today is that the 
Department of Veterans Affairs ought to be the Federal agency that 
bends over backwards to help our veterans.
  I remember when the current Secretary testified before our Veterans' 
Affairs Committee in his confirmation hearing, and he indicated that he 
was going to run the Department in a way that was all focused on 
meeting the needs of veterans. Yet, just a few weeks ago, Mr. Dabney 
was told this by the VA. I don't know if they said they are sorry. They 
simply said: You didn't get preauthorization. You don't qualify. Those 
bills are your responsibility.
  I am here once again trying to highlight what happened. We went to 
the intermediary TriWest. They thought they could help us accomplish 
this and get the information that Mr. Dabney acted on and that this 
ought to be sufficient for the VA to pay the bill. And even with their 
help, the results from the Department of Veterans Affairs, through 
their Wichita hospital, said that Mr. Dabney obviously didn't 
understand the rules, and, therefore, they were not going to see that 
his bills were paid by the VA.
  This seems outrageous to me. The VA, through its employees, indicated 
he qualified. He relied upon that information, their assurance that he 
qualified, to have the surgery done at home. He is a veteran who needed 
surgery. He suffers from PTSD. He would be deserving of all the care, 
the treatment, and the consideration that could be given a man who 
served our country so well and suffered the consequences. Yet, despite 
the assurance that he should use the program, this decision was made: I 
am sorry, but you didn't dot the i's and cross the t's.
  I ask my colleagues to help me as we work our way through the 
implementation of the Veterans Choice Act. It is

[[Page 3960]]

discouraging to me--the number of veterans who tell me how disappointed 
they are with the Veterans Choice Act--when I thought it was such a 
great opportunity for their care and well-being. The end result is that 
many are discouraged, giving up on the Veterans Choice Act and not 
receiving the care and attention they need from the VA, deciding that 
the VA should not be their provider. The point is that we are failing 
them once again. We are failing them veteran by veteran, one at a time.
  The consequence is that the program is still not working. You cannot 
not meet the needs of a veteran and then have an expectation that we 
have done something useful and beneficial for that veteran.
  There is a discussion going on in the Veterans' Affairs Committee, 
and there are bills led by Senators Isakson and Blumenthal that address 
many of the issues plaguing the VA, ranging from their appeals system 
to accountability, to remedying the problems associated with the 
Veterans Choice Act. I urge my colleagues not to allow this opportunity 
to bypass, to go away. We must take these actions. In my view, this is 
an example of this problem that the VA should solve on its own. They 
should find a way to make this work. In their absence to do so, as 
Members of the Senate--certainly, I, as a member of the Committee on 
Veterans' Affairs--we have the obligation to continue to do battle for 
those who battled for our freedoms and liberties.
  I apologized to Mr. Dabney that he has been treated the way he has 
been by the Department of Veterans Affairs, by his government, and I 
will continue to fight on a case-by-case basis. But we do have a real 
opportunity as Republican and Democratic Senators to come together and 
agree upon a legislative solution to these and many other problems that 
plague us and plague our veterans.
  I simply am here to make the case, hopefully to the Department of 
Veterans Affairs, that they should find a way to care for this man who 
served his country and also to ask my colleagues to work together to 
make certain--in whatever ways legislatively we need act to meet the 
needs of those who served our country--that we do so.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to address this 
issue and the cause of this veteran and many others.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   filling the supreme court vacancy

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, before I turn to my prepared remarks, 
I wish to note that the minority leader came to the floor this morning 
to complain, again, that the Senate is following the Biden rules on the 
Supreme Court vacancy.
  As I have said before, there is not much that makes the minority 
leader more mad than when his side is forced to play by its own rules.
  So, I won't dwell on his daily missives. Most us around here have 
grown used to it and don't pay him much mind, especially given his 
record of leading a Senate where even some Members of his own party 
were never allowed to offer a single amendment. He voted 25 times to 
filibuster judicial nominees--including a Supreme Court Justice, and at 
the time argued there is nothing in the Constitution requiring the 
Senate to vote on nominees.
  And, of course, he will be remembered as the leader who did more 
damage to the Senate than any other leader in history when he invoked 
the so-called nuclear option in November of 2013.
  ``I think just from reading the cases you'll acknowledge that there's 
politics in legal rulings.'' That is what President Obama said last 
week when he visited the University of Chicago.
  The President met with law students and answered their questions. 
They asked him about judicial nominations, including his decision to 
make a nomination to fill Justice Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court. 
His responses were revealing. I agree with President Obama that too 
often politics seep into legal rulings. He is right as a factual 
matter. In fact, I said the same thing on the Senate floor a few days 
before the President did.
  Oddly, those on the left who were up in arms over my remarks were 
silent on the President's. I suppose that is because, unlike the 
President, I think it is a bad thing that there is politics in judicial 
decisionmaking these days. Politics in judicial rulings means that 
something other than law forms the basis of those decisions. It means 
the judge is reading his or her own views into the Constitution.
  Unlike the President, I believe the biggest threat to public 
confidence in the Court is the Justices' willingness to permit their 
own personal politics to influence their decisions. This isn't the 
first time the President has talked about how he believes Justices 
should decide cases. He has repeatedly said they should decide cases 
based on something other than the Constitution and the law. His views 
on this subject are clear.
  When Chief Justice Roberts was confirmed, then-Senator Obama said 
that in the really hard cases, ``the critical ingredient is supplied by 
what is in the judge's heart.'' In 2009, President Obama said he views 
``empathy'' as an essential ingredient for Justices to possess in order 
to reach just outcomes. And before he made his most recent Supreme 
Court nomination, the President said that where ``the law is not 
clear,'' his nominee's decisions ``will be shaped by his or her own 
perspective, ethics, and judgment.'' But what is in a judge's 
``heart,'' or their personal ``perspective [and] ethics'' have no place 
in judicial decisionmaking.
  The President's idea of what is appropriate for Justices to consider 
is totally at odds with our constitutional system. We are a government 
of laws and not a government of judges. I have said before that we 
should have a serious public discussion about what the Constitution 
means and how our judges should interpret it. President Obama and I 
have very different views on those questions. Politics belongs to us--
it is between the people and their elected representatives. It is 
important that judges don't get involved in politics. That is because, 
unlike Senators, lifetime-appointed Federal judges aren't accountable 
to the people in elections. It is also because when nine unelected 
Justices make decisions based on their own policy preferences, rather 
than constitutional text, they rob from the American people the ability 
to govern themselves. And when that happens, individual liberty pays 
the price.
  To preserve the representative nature of our government and our 
constitutional system, our judges need to return to their limited role, 
and decide cases based on the text of the Constitution and laws that 
the people's representatives have passed.
  President Obama last week described the justices' power as an 
``enormous'' one. That is true in a sense. But the Constitution limits 
the Justices' power to deciding controversies in specific cases that 
come before them. President Reagan talked about this on the day that 
Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia were sworn in. He recounted 
how the Founding Fathers debated the role of the judiciary during the 
summer of 1787. As President Reagan said, the Founders ultimately 
settled on ``a judiciary that would be independent and strong, but one 
whose power would . . . be confined within the boundaries of a written 
Constitution and laws.''
  For decades now, the Supreme Court has been issuing opinions 
purportedly based on the Constitution where the Constitution itself is 
silent. This kind of judicial decisionmaking usurps the right of 
Americans to govern themselves on some of the most important issues in 
their lives. That is what happens, for example, when the Court 
``discovers'' rights in the Constitution that aren't mentioned in its 
text and weren't observed when the Constitution was adopted. The same 
thing happens with ordinary statutes that Congress passes. If the 
Justices limited

[[Page 3961]]

themselves to saying what the Constitution or statute says about the 
case before them, their power wouldn't be so ``enormous.'' President 
Obama says it is not so simple. He says the cases that really matter 
are the ones where there is some ambiguity in the law. In those cases, 
President Obama thinks a justice needs to apply ``judgment grounded in 
how we actually live.''
  Again, I disagree. When judges ask what a law should mean, the 
meaning of a law will change, depending on the judge's ``life 
experiences'' or what judge happens to hear the case. The people lose 
control of what their laws say. It is not consistent with our system of 
self-government.
  James Madison--the ``Father of the Constitution''--explained the same 
thing in a letter to Richard Henry Lee. He said that ``the sense,'' or 
meaning, ``in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the 
nation'' defines the Constitution. He said that is the only way the 
Constitution is legitimate. That is because, in Madison's words, ``if 
the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the 
words composing it,'' the ``shape and attributes'' of government would 
change over time. And importantly, that change would occur without the 
people's consent. It wouldn't be consistent with the way we govern 
ourselves through our representatives.
  That is a very different view than the President suggested in Chicago 
last week when he said that ambiguous cases ask a judge to consider 
``how we actually live.'' In President Obama's view, the judge isn't 
asking what a law meant when it was passed, but what it should mean 
today. President Obama described this as his ``Progressive view of how 
the courts should operate.'' With respect to the President, it is my 
view that the courts shouldn't operate in a political way at all. Not a 
progressive one, not a moderate one, not a conservative one. Instead, 
in my view, the courts should operate in a constitutional way that 
ensures government by the people.
  Again, when Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia were sworn in, 
President Reagan touched on this very subject. He said that for the 
Founding Fathers, the question about the courts was not whether they 
would be liberal or conservative. The question, President Reagan said, 
was ``will we have government by the people?'' Judges have a role in 
ensuring that we have government by the people. They fulfill that role 
when they try to understand what a law meant--either a statute or the 
Constitution--when the people's representatives enacted it. If the 
Justices decided cases that way, there would be a lot less politics in 
legal rulings. Unlike the President, I think that would be healthy for 
our democracy. But more important, it was the understanding of those 
who wrote and adopted our Constitution.
  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. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Tester and I be allowed to engage in a colloquy for the next 
approximately 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I rise to encourage support for the 
Hoeven-Tester air ambulance relief amendment, which is legislation of 
importance to people living in both rural and urban communities who 
need urgent and timely medical care. The need for this amendment arises 
from the fact that Federal law preempts States from regulating air 
ambulance services pursuant to the Airline Deregulation Act, which was 
passed in 1979.
  While some air ambulance providers enter into agreements with 
insurers, a growing number have decided to operate as out-of-network 
providers and practice what is known as balance billing. That means 
consumers, not the insurance companies, are responsible for the 
majority of the medical bill.
  In recent years, State insurance departments have been fielding 
consumer complaints related to large balances left to them from charges 
not covered by insurance providers for air ambulance services. Patients 
in need of lifesaving air medical services have been left with balances 
of more than $25,000 when an air medical provider opts out of 
agreements with insurance providers.
  Let me share a couple of examples of what I am talking about with my 
colleagues. In one case, a young couple had a premature child who was 
in need of intensive care at another hospital. The couple was insured 
and assumed that the 1-hour helicopter flight to the other hospital was 
covered by their insurance. The air ambulance company presented them 
with a bill for almost $40,000, but because the company had not entered 
into an agreement with the couples' insurance company, they were 
reimbursed only about $15,000 of that bill, leaving them $24,000 that 
they needed to pay when they thought they had insurance coverage for 
the bill.
  In another case, a woman suffered a snowmobiling accident and was 
airlifted off a mountain. The charge was $40,000. Her insurance paid 
about $15,000, and so she was responsible for the $25,000 balance to 
the company. Now, in that case she negotiated with the company and got 
it down to a balance of $13,000, but that $13,000 she then had to pay.
  In a third case, a father and his daughter were airlifted from the 
hospital where they were to another hospital because they needed 
additional care. The young person's condition was deteriorating and she 
needed specialized care so they had to airlift her to another hospital. 
They had a single pilot who took them on the flight. After they 
returned home by car, they got a check from the insurance company for 
$6,800, so the insurance company paid $6,800. That left them with the 
balance of a bill that was almost $70,000. Again, they thought they 
were covered under their insurance. So my colleagues can see that this 
is a real concern and a real issue.
  Many consumers with health insurance coverage assume these medical 
bills will be taken care of and don't think to ask if the air 
transportation company is a participating provider because obviously 
they are in an emergency situation. Unfortunately, as a result, after 
the patient has stabilized and is in recovery, they learn they will be 
faced with an expensive medical bill they hadn't anticipated.
  In the last session of our State legislature in our State, the State 
legislature made an effort to address this problem in State law. What 
essentially the State law said was that the hospitals would have a list 
of providers that accept insurance as payment in full and insurance 
companies that do this balance billing, so then the hospital and the 
patient can be informed and make their decision as to the air ambulance 
provider. The problem is the State law was struck down in Federal court 
because the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 took precedence, meaning 
it is a Federal issue, which we understand. Obviously, airplanes cross 
State lines, so we understand there is a Federal aspect to it.
  Our amendment would allow hospitals to provide information so 
patients could determine which air ambulance providers accept the 
insurance payment as payment in full and which ones don't. Then 
hospitals could have that information available and patients could make 
their decisions accordingly.
  It is a very simple, straightforward amendment that would allow State 
legislatures to make sure that information is available for patients in 
their State.
  There are a number of organizations that are supporting this 
commonsense amendment, including the National Association of Insurance 
Commissioners, the American Health Insurance Plans, Blue Cross Blue 
Shield Association, American Heart Association, American Stroke 
Association, Consumers Union, and Families USA.
  That is the legislation in a nutshell, and I have taken a minute to 
explain it.
  Now I wish to turn to my colleague from the State of Montana and ask

[[Page 3962]]

him--as a cosponsor of this legislation I know he has run into this 
problem with his constituents. So I would ask him to comment both in 
terms of the situations he has run into in Montana and his thoughts on 
how we can best address it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from North 
Dakota for working on this important issue that in fact speaks across 
this country but especially in rural America.
  Senator Hoeven and I are on the floor working this afternoon to 
provide a voice to those who feel the well-being of ordinary Americans 
is being taken advantage of. These are folks who are honest and work 
hard and play by the rules, but they find themselves victims of an 
unchecked industry with too many bad actors. That is right. They are 
not all bad actors, but some are. The folks who survive the fight of a 
lifetime are waking up the next morning only to find themselves in a 
new fight--a fight to keep their home and their financial well-being.
  In rural America, we are seeing more and more troubling reports of 
families losing nearly everything to rising air ambulance bills. In my 
home State of Montana, over the past 10 years, we have seen more out-
of-State independent and for-profit air ambulance companies in 
operation. These companies are moving into my State, and they are not 
affiliated with local hospitals. They do not always have contracts with 
insurance companies, and they are taking financial advantage of 
families who are in crisis--families who may be forced to cash out 
their retirement accounts, drain their life savings, and even sell 
their homes to cover air ambulance bills that can climb up to $100,000. 
This has been well-documented in the State of Montana. Occurrences of 
people getting billed enormous sums of money after an air ambulance 
trip have been well-documented.
  So what is the upshot of all this? The upshot is we are a rural 
State. Oftentimes you can't get to a hospital in time by road, so you 
have to call an air ambulance. If you call the wrong one, you end up 
with a bill you can't pay. So people have to make literally life-and-
death choices at a time when they shouldn't have to. Oftentimes, 
because of this experience they are saying: You know what. We are 
between a rock and a hard place. We will take a chance. The wife or the 
spouse may be purple because they can't breathe, but they say: We will 
take a chance. They will pile in the car and drive an hour to the 
hospital and hopefully they will survive. A child may come in from an 
accident, having potentially lost a limb, who may be bleeding 
profusely, but they say: We will take a chance and not call the air 
ambulance.
  This system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. It is broken for the 
patients, it is broken for the providers, and right now in this country 
there is no tool to address it.
  We have a solution. Senator Hoeven and I have an amendment to tackle 
this issue and put it on the FAA bill and get it done. Our amendment 
would provide States the ability to decide whether they want to create 
rules regarding air ambulance rates and services. Right now, States are 
prohibited from regulating air ambulances, but families have made it 
clear that something must be done to prevent these companies from 
raking families over and collecting exorbitant bills. A one-size-fits-
all solution from Washington, DC, is not the answer, and that is why 
the good Senator from North Dakota and I believe each State should have 
the opportunity to address this growing problem in their own way.
  Our amendment will provide incentives for these air ambulance 
companies to be better neighbors, as we like to say in Montana. It will 
encourage them to work with local hospitals and insurance providers to 
ensure that the lifesaving services they provide will not cause that 
family to lose their home.
  This amendment is supported by State officials across the Nation and 
by folks on both sides of the aisle.
  With that, I ask Senator Hoeven to yield for a question.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Certainly.
  Mr. TESTER. Why is this legislation so important to Senator Hoeven 
and his constituents in North Dakota?
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I would respond to the good Senator from 
Montana that I think we have both described the importance in terms of 
the costs that people may face, particularly in a time when they are in 
an emergency or crisis situation. It is very difficult for them 
already. So, look, we need to do everything we can to make sure they 
can get quality medical care and that they are as informed as possible 
in making those decisions and trying to make those decisions easier for 
them, particularly at a time when they are faced with a life-
threatening situation or crisis situation.
  The good Senator from Montana really put his finger on it when he 
said that we are not asking for a Federal one-size-fits-all solution. 
Instead, we are saying: Let's empower the States to do what they can in 
terms of helping people when they are faced with this kind of emergency 
situation.
  So if one really looks at this amendment--and we have done a fair 
amount of work on it with health care providers, talking to the 
ambulance association and others, and we will continue to work on it. 
But essentially we are saying: Make sure people have that information 
readily available so that when they are in an emergency or crisis 
situation, they can make a quick and good decision that fits their 
needs, and let the providers compete for the business.
  This goes to empowering people in terms of choice and deciding what 
kind of care they want, and then they can make an informed decision 
about what they want. If they are in a situation where health insurance 
has to cover it, then they make that decision accordingly. If they want 
some other service in a particular circumstance and they are willing to 
pay out of pocket, then they can make that choice too.
  This really is about making sure that people have the information, 
particularly at a critical time when they really need it, so they get 
the health care they need and they also have some of those--what costs 
they are going to face. That is what it is all about. That is true in 
our States, which are more rural States, but it is true in the urban 
States as well.
  Mr. TESTER. It certainly is, and I can say that what we have heard in 
Montana is that there is a problem out there. We need some help.
  Last summer, I had a woman by the name of Christina from Missoula, 
MT, who called me. She and her husband both work full time. She pays 
$1,000 a month for her health insurance. She was being responsible, 
doing everything she was supposed to do, but an emergency struck, which 
could happen to anybody, and her daughter needed to be airlifted to 
Seattle, WA.
  The cost of the flight was the last thing on Christina's mind. She 
cared only about the health of her daughter. In the back of her mind, 
she knew she had health insurance, so she knew she would be OK. When 
Christina and her daughter returned from Seattle, they found a bill 
waiting for them for $85,000, a little bit less than twice the average 
that an American earns every year. Think about this--getting a bill 
from a service that you had no choice but to take and then finding out 
that it cost you twice as much as you make in 1 calendar year.
  Unfortunately, the story of Christina is not unique. Each year, more 
and more Montanans have a story exactly like Christina's. That is why 
it is critical that we get this problem addressed through this 
bipartisan amendment that will provide certainty and justice for 
families like hers. These folks really have nowhere else to turn.
  If we can get this amendment on the FAA bill--and I know we are 
working with the committee right now, tweaking it, trying to make it 
work so that people are more at ease with it--we can begin to address 
this issue that has haunted too many families.
  I would just tell you this. I had an accident when I was young, and 
it wasn't the kind of accident that was life threatening. My folks had 
only a 15-minute drive to get to the hospital. I

[[Page 3963]]

could tell you that if I had been a little bit more unlucky and we had 
put it into the 21st century and my folks would have had to get an air 
ambulance--which is absolutely necessary in rural America sometimes; it 
is necessary depending on what problem has happened--it would have put 
the family in a position where they literally could have lost the farm. 
This isn't right. This isn't what this country is about. All it takes 
is just a little bit of tweaking, a little bit of knowledge, a little 
bit of transparency, and that is what this amendment does. I think we 
can get this problem fixed, and it is simply the right thing to do.
  I want to thank Senator Hoeven for his leadership and his hard work 
on this issue.
  I yield back to Senator Hoeven.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Again, I would like to thank the Senator from Montana for 
joining in this bipartisan legislation and just ask that our colleagues 
work with us to get a good commonsense solution to solve this very 
urgent need.
  With that, Madam 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. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I would like to speak in support of 
several amendments that I am offering to the FAA reauthorization bill.
  You may recall that in 2011 some of my colleagues and I offered a 
bipartisan amendment to a section of the bill that called for the FAA 
to develop a process to integrate unmanned aerial systems, UAVs or 
unmanned aerial vehicles, into the NAS, the National Airspace System.
  That legislation included drafting a plan to develop air traffic 
requirements for all unmanned aerial systems at test sites; 
certification and flight standards at nonmilitary UAS test sites, as 
well as the National Airspace System; and making sure that the U.S. 
integration plan is incorporated in NextGen, the administration's 
project to modernize the American air traffic control system.
  Importantly, it also called for the agency to designate six test 
sites to help accelerate the NAS integration plan.
  These test sites were established in December of 2013, following a 
competitive process that encouraged some of the very best in the 
fledgling field of unmanned aerial systems to apply and compete for the 
test sites.
  I am proud to say that Grand Forks in my home State of North Dakota 
made the cut and is one of the premier test sites and hubs for UAS 
research and development in America. The work they have done there and 
at the other five sites across the Nation has been nothing less than 
remarkable, which is why I am here today to make the case for some 
additional amendments to help them maintain their momentum.
  The first is Hoeven amendment No. 3500, which extends authorization 
for the six test sites for another 5 years. The previous FAA bill from 
2012 authorized the test sites for 5 years, and the legislation before 
us extends that just an additional few months, through September 30, 
2017. Our amendment would extend this authorization by an additional 5 
years, through September 30, 2022.
  The Northern Plains UAS Test Site in North Dakota has some important 
achievements to point to: supporting NASA's UAS-related research; 
research and testing at up to 1,200 feet across the entire State of 
North Dakota, far above the limits for commercial small unmanned aerial 
systems; nighttime UAS operations; and approval to fly multiple types 
of UAS in the same airspace. Nevertheless, there is plenty of work left 
to do in support of integrating UAS into the national airspace, and 
that will require investment and support from industry partners. They 
will be much more likely to use the FAA test sites if they can be sure 
those test sites will be operational beyond the end of next year.
  My second amendment is Hoeven amendment No. 3538, the private 
aircraft exemption, which will help to expedite testing of private 
industry aircraft by not requiring them to lease their aircraft to the 
test site in order to fly.
  The six UAS test sites are intended to work with the UAS industry to 
perform research necessary to integrate the UAS, unmanned aircraft, 
into the national airspace. What are we trying to achieve here? We are 
trying to achieve concurrent use of the NAS, national airspace. Right 
now we obviously have manned aircraft flying all over the United 
States, but where we are going is we will have manned and unmanned 
aircraft flying at the same time, concurrently in the national 
airspace. We have to make sure that is done safely. We have to make 
sure that we address the privacy issues.
  There is a whole gamut of issues that have to be addressed to do this 
safely and well. That is what the test sites are developing so that we 
can move to that new paradigm. It is vitally important.
  We fly unmanned aircraft all over the world through our military, but 
we have to figure out how to do that safely and well in our airspace 
with civilian aircraft. That involves a lot of things--commercial 
aviation, general aviation, and unmanned aircraft for a whole myriad of 
uses. This is not an easy proposition, so we have to figure it out.
  If we don't do this, we will pay a huge price because right now the 
United States is the aviation technology leader in the world. The 
United States leads aviation technology globally, but if we don't 
figure out how to do this, somebody else will, and we can't afford to 
forfeit our leadership in aviation technology. We can't afford it from 
a military standpoint, and we can't afford it from a civilian 
standpoint if we are going to continue to lead in technology, job 
growth, the jobs of the future, and the strongest, most innovative, 
dynamic economy both now and in the future.
  We are working on the test sites to make this happen, but currently 
you have to lease your aircraft to the test site. You can't just come 
to the test site and get approval to fly. That is what we need to 
change.
  Currently, as I say, any private industry partner seeking to fly at a 
test site must first lease their unmanned aerial system--their plane or 
drone or whatever you want to call it, RPA, remotely piloted aircraft--
they have to lease that to the test site. As a public entity, it can 
then clear the aircraft to operate as a public aircraft while at that 
test site.
  The problem is that the UAS industry is understandably reluctant to 
release their UAS aircraft to the test site for research work and has 
particular concerns about losing proprietary information through the 
leasing process. Remember, this is the latest, greatest new technology. 
Companies are investing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in 
this new technology. They want to keep it proprietary. They don't want 
to disclose it to all of their competitors. At our test site right now, 
we have not only Northrup Grumman but General Atomics--manufacturers of 
Global Hawk, Predator, and Reaper--doing this kind of research and 
development. They need to protect those proprietary technology 
developments.
  Obviously this is an important issue for them as they are working to 
develop the aircraft of the future. My amendment would provide an 
exemption for the test sites to fly civil aircraft subject to whatever 
terms and conditions the FAA Administrator deems appropriate for public 
safety and subject to the terms of the certificate of authorization 
already granted to the test sites.
  Remember, the test sites have to get approval from the FAA to fly all 
of these different aircraft at the test site, so the FAA has already 
provided that prior authority. We don't need to have the additional 
work of in essence making these test aircraft public aircraft. These 
terms govern the airspace and conditions under which the test sites can 
operate with unmanned aerial systems.

[[Page 3964]]

  This amendment is common sense. Current procedures block the test 
sites from assisting industry in developing technology that integrates 
into the national airspace. This amendment would enable the test sites 
to perform as originally intended; that is, as a bridge between 
industry and the FAA to develop concurrent airspace use for unmanned 
aircraft, which is a key part of the future of aviation.
  Test sites will have the same responsibilities for safely managing 
the operation of UAS under their certificate of authorization as they 
do today. So this is about doing things in a more efficient way without 
any effect on public safety.
  In addition, the FAA already grants numerous exemptions on a case-by-
case basis to industry partners, known as section 333 exemptions. This 
amendment effectively serves as a test site 333 exemption, which should 
help decrease demand for the FAA to press the other exemption requests, 
again streamlining the process, making it work.
  Finally, I filed Hoeven 3543, which leverages test site and center of 
excellence participation in the unmanned traffic management pilot 
program. The underlying FAA legislation establishes an FAA-led pilot 
program to develop an unmanned traffic management system, which will be 
essential to the final goal of integrating the UAS into the national 
airspace. This is how we manage traffic--manned and unmanned aircraft--
in the same airspace. How do we manage that safely and well?
  The amendment would require the FAA Administrator to leverage to the 
maximum extent possible the capabilities of the FAA's UAS center of 
excellence and the six UAS test sites when developing and carrying out 
the pilot program. So we are saying to the FAA: Work with the test 
sites and the national center of excellence, which we have developed 
for unmanned aerial systems to move this technology forward.
  Right now, the FAA is behind the curve. The technology is racing 
forward, and we have to maximize our use of these resources to make 
sure that we are developing UAS the right way, in a way that the public 
feels is safe, that respects privacy rights, and that addresses all of 
the different potential concerns. Again, it is about doing things right 
and well with this new technology.
  Again, this is a commonsense amendment. The FAA should use the 
capabilities Congress has put at its disposal, along with its 
interagency and industry partners, to advance development of unmanned 
traffic management systems. My amendments give our UAS test sites the 
tools they need to stay up front, which will ultimately yield research 
benefits on behalf of our country.
  We have all seen and read in the media about how these remarkable new 
aircraft are playing a big military role in the security of our Nation. 
They achieve military objectives without putting our men and women in 
uniform in harm's way. We are also seeing how they play an important 
role in border protection and other security operations. Less well 
known is their use in precision agriculture, disaster mitigation, 
traffic safety, building inspections, energy infrastructure monitoring, 
and many uses that have yet to be imagined.
  The UAS industry is anxiously awaiting the approval of rules to begin 
operating small UAS at low altitudes. This is an important step, but it 
is just one step. It is limited, which is why we need the test sites 
for the research and development necessary to move forward. The UAS 
test sites and the center of excellence are in a position to stay ahead 
of the curve. Doing the research will enable the next phase in UAS 
integration from flying at night and beyond line of sight to flying 
higher and farther using larger aircraft.
  These amendments are important for the success of an exciting and 
rapidly growing segment of aviation in our country. The goal is to make 
UAS a fully working component of not only America's larger aviation 
system but also of our economy. As I said, we are the world's leader in 
aviation technology. We must continue to forge ahead to maintain that 
leadership.
  I will close by saying that almost all of us now have an iPhone or 
Android--some type of phone in our pocket. It is so much more, isn't 
it? It is a full-blown computer. Think back 10 years. We had no idea 
that we would all have these cell phones or that they would have all of 
these amazing capabilities. But look at how much we use it every day in 
our lives. Well, I make that analogy with unmanned aircraft. What is it 
going to look like 10 years from now? What is it going to be like? 
Well, we don't know yet. We don't know what all these applications and 
what all these uses are going to be. But what we do know is that the 
United States needs to be the leader in aviation technology 
development. That is what we are talking about with these test sites--
making sure that we can do it safely and well and that we can maintain 
that global leadership.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I would like to speak on an amendment 
I have submitted that will ensure the implementation of what is already 
required by statute: a biometric exit system for the United States. The 
law has required a biometric--that means a fingerprint, as opposed to 
biographic, which is name and birth date--system that allows us to know 
who is coming into this country on a visa and whether they left when 
they were supposed to leave. It is absolutely critical to the safety of 
the United States. It is something the 9/11 Commission recommended as a 
high priority. Ten years later, when they did their Review Commission 
report to see how their recommendations had been carried out, they 
noted that one of their top concerns was the failure of Congress to 
complete the system.
  Right now when you come into the United States, you put your hand on 
a screen and they clock you in biometrically, and then when you leave, 
there is no system that clocks you out.
  It is just like going to work every day. You take one of these 
iPhones. It has got this place on the bottom where you put your finger. 
I put my thumb on it. I don't have to put in my pass code; it simply 
reads my fingerprint. This is done all over America. These screens are 
not expensive. They don't require a lot of space. It is something that 
should be done. It has not been done.
  The first requirement for this was in 1996 through the Illegal 
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The requirements 
were largely ignored, and eventually modified until the terrorist 
attacks on September 11 caused us to focus again on the issue.
  Congress responded by once again demanding that government implement 
an exit system with the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which stated 
that an entry and exit data system should be fully implemented for 
airports, seaports, and land border ports of entry ``with all 
deliberate speed and as expeditiously as practical.'' Fifteen years 
ago, that occurred. Congress then reiterated its demand for a biometric 
entry-exit system in 2002 when it passed the Enhanced Border Security 
and Visa Entry Reform Act. This bill required the government to install 
biometric readers and scanners ``at all ports of entry of the United 
States.'' Subsequently and consistent with the recommendations of the 
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 
Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 
2004, which mandated that the entry-exit system be biometrically based. 
That was 12 years ago.
  Despite the relative successful implementation of a biometric entry 
system, the Department of Homeland Security has largely failed to 
implement this required biometric exit system. To date, Homeland 
Security has only implemented a handful of pilot programs. They have 
had one excuse after another, and failed to do so.
  There have been some promising developments in recent months, I would 
note.
  Of primary importance is the fact that Congress passed the 
Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016. This created a dedicated 
source of funds for the

[[Page 3965]]

implementation of a biometric exit system. It has been estimated that 
this fund will result in approximately $1 billion that will be 
available solely for the implementation of the biometric exit system 
required by law. Yet, even with this significant source of funding, the 
administration continues to dawdle. My amendment will end that delay 
and bring this matter to a close. It will complete the system that the 
9/11 Commission said was essential for our national safety and 
security.
  My amendment simply states that no funds from the FAA bill that we 
pass can be obligated or expended for the physical modification of 
existing air navigation facilities--that is, a port of entry--or of the 
construction of a new air navigation facility intended to be a port of 
entry, unless the Secretary of Homeland Security certifies that the 
owner or sponsor of the facility has entered into an agreement that 
guarantees the installation and implementation of such a facility not 
later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of the act. In other 
words, they have to complete the contract to make this system work, and 
then we give them 2 full years to accomplish it. That is more than 
enough time.
  The amendment allows Customs and Border Protection officers at each 
airport that serves as a port of entry to create a solution that works 
specifically for the needs of CPB and the airport. It gives them some 
flexibility to work these things out. It does, however, require--
finally and I hope fully--an agreement that guarantees that the system 
will be installed and implemented at the airport in 2 years.
  These airports drag their feet. Airlines drag their feet. They do not 
like to be bothered about this. It is not in their priorities, but it 
is not going to cause them great problems. It is not going to cause the 
airplanes great problems.
  Somebody needs to be representing the national interest around here, 
what is in the public interest. They don't get to undo a law passed by 
Congress 20 years ago that should have already been implemented years 
ago. It is that simple.
  This deal could be done in 6 months if we had an administration that 
was determined to get it done. The equipment is already available all 
over the country. Many police officers have these screens in their 
cars. They arrest someone for DUI, and they make them put their hand on 
the screen, and it runs a check throughout the United States. They find 
out that someone arrested in Alabama has a warrant for murder in New 
York City. That is the way the system is working today all over the 
country. We can't make this work at an international airport to ensure 
people who have a limited-time visa in the United States actually leave 
when they are supposed to? And when we find out someone may be a 
terrorist or connected with some illegal enterprise or terroristic 
plan, we want to know if they actually left the country or are still in 
the country. This is something law enforcement--the FBI and Homeland 
Security--needs to know about.
  I was told by one company that there are many competitors who would 
bid for this work. There are all kinds of systems out there. One 
manufacturer suggested we should host in the Capitol a products day and 
let all these companies bring in their systems so staffers and Members 
of Congress can go out and see what the possibilities are and erase 
forever this idea that this is somehow impractical, not feasible, and 
can't be done.
  If Apple and Samsung and others can implement technology on your cell 
phone, on your mobile phones to access them, you can be sure the U.S. 
Government could work with the airports to complete a biometric exit 
system, as the law has long required. Such a system will not have large 
space requirements. U.S. Customs and Border Protection can work with 
the larger airports with international terminals and install physical 
equipment at their departure gates. CBP can work with smaller airports 
to deploy handheld systems at gates handling international flights.
  Ultimately, all a passenger exiting the United States needs to do is 
place his or her hand on a simple screen or, with some devices, even 
just wave their hand in front of it. We had an expert tell us they have 
a system you don't even have to touch the screen. You can wave your 
hand in front of it, it reads the fingerprints, and the device will 
biometrically identify the passenger as the person exits.
  Somebody can take your name, go to the airport, and exit the country 
with some sort of ID and claim they exited as you were supposed to 
exit, without this biometric check, because you can use any name. If 
they clear this screening area, they move into the boarding area. They 
will be allowed into the boarding area. If there is a hit because the 
boarder is on some no-fly list because of some danger, the passenger 
can be denied boarding or removed from the plane before it takes off, 
and their baggage can be removed from the plane. Importantly, the 
United States would then have a unified, automatically produced list of 
those who have departed on time and those who have overstayed their 
visas.
  Colleagues, I would note we are having a huge surge in the number of 
people who come to this country on a visa and don't go home. It now 
amounts to over 40 percent of the people illegally in the country who 
came on a visa, promising to go home at a certain time, yet who are not 
going home.
  We had a Democratic debate a few weeks ago when former Secretary 
Clinton said: Well, if you are found in the United States unlawfully 
you should only be deported if you have been indicted or charged with a 
violent felony. How did this become the law? You are not allowed to 
stay in the country. You can't stay in the country if you overstay your 
visa. That is the law. You are deportable right there, whether you are 
a good person or not, and even if you never committed a traffic 
offense. Now we have leadership in this country so detached from law, 
so detached from the will of the American people, they are saying you 
can come in and stay for years after overstaying your visa and only be 
deported if you commit a violent felony.
  This has to be brought to a conclusion. The American people want a 
lawful system of immigration--are they wrong to ask for that?--one that 
serves the interests of the American people, one that is worthy of a 
nation that validates the rule of law, or do we just give in? Do we 
capitulate to lawlessness, and anybody who comes and can get into our 
country--even for a month, presumably--and who commits a $50,000 bank 
fraud is not going to be deported because it is not a violent crime, 
even though the law says otherwise?
  Let me just note that for a host of reasons the system should be 
based on the fingerprint system where we maintain our extensive 
database. There are eye systems that will read your eyes, we have 
systems that will read your face, but, colleagues, do not be led into 
that. We are not ready to do that. There is no data system that 
supports a face system. Let's stay with the fingerprints, as experts 
have told us.
  Let me also note that numerous countries around the world, including 
New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong, use a biometric system now. This 
is proven. There are approximately 17 countries.
  Ending this failure has bipartisan support. My subcommittee--the 
Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest--held a hearing 
on January 20 entitled ``Why is the biometric exit traffic system still 
not in place?'' During the hearing, we got promises from the 
administration but no commitment regarding when such a system would 
actually be deployed.
  Just a few weeks later, Secretary Johnson of Homeland Security made 
statements directing the Department of Homeland Security to begin 
implementation of the system at our airports by 2018--begin the 
implementation by 2018. So this is another mere promise--the kind of 
promises that have never resulted in the production of a system, and 
that uncertainty must end. The obvious missing piece is an actual 
completion date. This bill would create that. It is these kinds of 
lulling comments we have heard for all these years that have kept us 
from actually following through on the system.

[[Page 3966]]

  If Congress would like to know why the American people are not happy 
with their leaders in Washington, this is a good example of it, a very 
good example. Congress promises to fix a problem, we even vote for a 
bill to fix it, and in this case we voted for bills to fix it, they 
passed and became law and require the problem to be fixed, but it 
doesn't happen. As decades go by, we sit by and nothing ever happens. A 
special interest group speaks up here and a special interest group 
speaks up there and somehow it never happens.
  It is time to fulfill the promise and commitment to the American 
people. We promised the American people a system that would 
demonstrably improve our national security. As noted by former 
Commissioners on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the 
United States in a report issued in 2014, ``Without exit-tracking, our 
government does not know when a foreign visitor admitted to the United 
States on a temporary basis has overstayed his or her admission. Had 
the system been in place before 9/11, we would have had a better chance 
of detecting the plotters before they struck.''
  We have long known that visa overstays pose serious national security 
risks. A number of the hijackers on September 11 overstayed their 
visas. The number of visa overstays implicated in terrorism since then 
is certainly a significant number. A new poll came out earlier this 
year that indicates that three out of four Americans not only want the 
Obama administration to find these aliens who overstay their visas--not 
just the ones who have committed violent felonies--but also deport 
them. The same poll indicates 68 percent of Americans consider visa 
overstays as a ``serious national security risk,'' and 31 percent 
consider visa overstays as a ``very serious'' national security risk. 
And there is little doubt about why.
  The risks to our national security are too high for us to maintain 
the status quo. We are having more and more people traveling by air to 
the United States from around the world. We simply allow them to come 
on a very generous basis. They commit to leaving after a given period 
of time. Whether it is for a vacation or a job, they then plan to 
return to their home country, and we need a system to know if they are 
complying with that. We must fulfill the promise we made to the 
American people and do all we can to complete this system. My amendment 
would do so. It would finally bring this to a conclusion because it 
would say to the Air Force: We have money to help you do your runways, 
expand your airports, and do the kinds of things you would like to, but 
we want this agreement in place first.
  Mr. President, I understand that some on the Democratic side intend 
to object to calling up this amendment. It was my intention at this 
time to call up this amendment. I don't see any Democrat here, but I 
have been told that is what they want to do, and they passed that word 
along. So in an act of courtesy, I will not call up the amendment at 
this time, but we need to bring it up. Every Democratic member of my 
subcommittee who attended the hearing--Senators Schumer, Feinstein, and 
Franken--all said they favored fixing this. I think we have a 
bipartisan agreement if we can get a vote, but, once again, we may not 
be having a vote. That would be very distressing because I don't see 
how anybody could oppose the final completion of this much needed 
product.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from New Hampshire.


                         National Equal Pay Day

  Ms. AYOTTE. Mr. President, I rise because it is Equal Pay Day, and I 
would like to talk about the importance of finally ending gender-based 
discrimination in wages. It is unfortunate that in the year 2016, this 
is still an issue we need to address in this country, but it is.
  I had the privilege of serving as our State's first female attorney 
general. I think it is the right thing to do and the obvious thing to 
do, and under our laws this already exists--that equal pay for equal 
work should be the standard. All of us should be judged in the 
workplace by our experience, our qualifications, and our capability of 
doing our job and nothing else.
  Women face many challenges in balancing work and family life. I know 
that firsthand, being the working mom of two young kids. On top of 
those challenges, no woman, whether she is a mother or not, should ever 
face gender-based pay discrimination in the workplace. Today, more than 
half of New Hampshire's women serve as the primary or coearner in their 
household. That just underscores the serious need to address this 
problem.
  Men and women should receive equal pay for equal work. It is that 
simple. Your salary should be based on how you do your job. Because of 
that, I introduced the Gender Advancement in Pay Act, or GAP Act, along 
with Senators Capito, Portman, Burr, and Heller, and I thank my 
cosponsors for supporting this effort.
  What we did is we built on a highly successful bipartisan pay equity 
law that was signed into law in my home State of New Hampshire in 2014. 
The GAP Act makes it clear that employers must pay men and women equal 
wages for equal work, without reducing the ability of employers to 
provide merit pay and reward merit, which all of us want. Having been 
the first woman attorney general, I want to give women the opportunity 
to outperform their male counterparts as well because I know we can.
  Today, there is a patchwork of laws that govern equal pay and an 
employee's ability to discuss their pay without fear of retaliation, 
and differing court opinions have led to a situation where some 
employees receive protections not available to others simply based on 
where they live. As such, the GAP Act is a sensible approach to 
updating, clarifying, and strengthening these laws.
  For 20 years the Paycheck Fairness Act has been around in the 
Congress. It has never passed. One of the reasons, I think, was 
described very well in 2010 by the Boston Globe. It said that the 
Paycheck Fairness Act, as a whole, was too broad a solution to a 
complex, nuanced problem, but that a narrower bill that would stiffen 
some penalties and ban retaliation would be helpful. That is exactly 
what the GAP Act is--a bill that stiffens penalties, bans retaliation, 
and clarifies the law so that we can ensure we have equal pay for equal 
work.
  In short, my bill updates the Equal Pay Act's ``factor other than 
sex'' clause. Currently, employers can explain away pay differentials 
by pointing to a number of factors. One of those was ambiguously 
written to be a ``factor other than sex.'' Our bill closes this 
loophole and clarifies that any factor other than sex must be a 
business-related factor, such as education, training, or experience. It 
makes sense; doesn't it? Why would you allow a defense of a ``factor 
other than sex'' that has nothing to do with your job? To me, that 
seems to be inviting discrimination. That is why we should clarify the 
law to make clear that it has to be a factor related to your job--such 
as education, training, or experience. This would clarify the law for 
employees and protect the rights of employees, and, also, employers 
would clearly have this provision defined.
  The GAP Act also creates a penalty for willful violations. This is 
actually one step further than New Hampshire's bipartisan pay equity 
law. So it would put teeth into it, and I think that is important. 
Employers that knowingly act with the intent to discriminate should 
have to pay a penalty. What we do with the funds from this penalty is 
to take the funds and, rather than putting them back in the General 
Treasury, we are going to study the wage gap issue, make sure we have 
the best research on what is causing it and what is happening, and find 
more ways to expand opportunities for women in the workforce with 
better paying jobs.
  The GAP Act would also promote salary transparency. According to the 
Institute for Women's Policy Research, about half of workers were 
discouraged or outright prohibited from discussing their pay with 
coworkers. When employees are allowed to discuss their

[[Page 3967]]

pay, they are more likely to uncover incidents of discrimination. Yet, 
if I am not allowed to discuss my pay and I find a coworker who is the 
same situated as me yet making more money--a male counterpart--and I am 
not allowed to raise this because I can't discuss pay comparisons, then 
how am I going to raise a claim of discrimination? So we need to make 
it more transparent. We need to ensure that employees are allowed to 
discuss their pay. This will make it more likely to uncover incidents 
of gender-based pay discrimination.
  So our bill prohibits retaliation against employees who discuss their 
pay, and tells employers they can't institute secret pay policies and 
they can't ask an employee to bargain away their right to be able to 
talk about their pay if they choose to.
  Importantly, after getting feedback from stakeholders in our States, 
we made sure that provision is strong. The cosponsors of this bill 
reintroduced an updated version of this bill this week to ensure that 
there are stronger provisions for salary transparency and to make it 
clear that employers cannot sidestep provisions that ban retaliation 
against employees who discuss their pay. It prohibits pay secrecy 
policies that could encourage this kind of behavior.
  On Equal Pay Day, today, it is very important that we all work 
together to do anything we can to end the gender wage gap. One of the 
things we should do is to stop the political posturing. Let's stop 
using this incredibly important issue as a political football, because 
legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act has been around 20 years.
  I am glad to introduce the GAP Act, because I believe this is a 
commonsense piece of legislation that gets at the issue by clarifying 
our laws in a way that benefits employees. It makes sure it is clear 
that if you willfully violate our laws, you are going to have to pay a 
penalty. We are going to take that money, and we are going to put it 
back into research to further help us address the pay gap. We are also 
going to make clear for plaintiffs that, if you want to file an EEOC 
claim and you also want to file an equal pay claim, we will make sure 
you can do both, and your rights will be protected to do both by 
staying the statute of limitations while the EEOC claim is going 
forward. This will help plaintiffs not have to litigate in two forums. 
This will also allow the EEOC to do their job and, if they find 
discrimination, to be used in an equal pay act claim. This is another 
important step for plaintiffs and also to clarify that those who are 
victims of discrimination are able to bring their rights forward.
  On Equal Pay Day today, I hope we can stop making this a partisan 
issue and start actually passing legislation that will make a 
difference. In 2014 New Hampshire passed an important law. I was glad 
New Hampshire did that. I was glad that I could introduce what New 
Hampshire did here in the Senate on a bipartisan basis and build on 
that to introduce the GAP Act with some of my colleagues.
  I hope today, on Equal Pay Day, we will take up legislation like the 
GAP Act and address gender-based pay discrimination. We are in 2016. I 
have an 11-year-old daughter. I don't want to be discussing this 20 
years from now. I would like us to work on this in a serious, 
bipartisan manner, to address this, and to end gender-based pay 
discrimination once and for all, because equal pay for equal work just 
makes sense. It is the right thing to do, and it should be how our laws 
work.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of Flake 
amendment No. 3556.
  The amendment is simple. It simply strikes the newly added 
prohibition in the Visa Waiver Program on citizens of Visa Waiver 
Program countries who are also dual nationals of certain other 
countries, such as Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria.
  To be clear, this amendment keeps in place all other provisions added 
to the Visa Waiver Program to improve the security of the program, such 
as requiring greater information sharing. However, the dual national 
provision does not provide any meaningful security benefit and, 
instead, is a detriment to the country and the vast majority of dual 
nationals who provide a great benefit to the United States.
  The problem with the dual national prohibition is twofold. It is both 
imprecise in its application, and it is difficult, if not impossible, 
to administer. One reason the prohibition is imprecise is because it 
prevents travel under the program regardless of travel history. For 
example, a dual national of Iran who is prohibited from using the Visa 
Waiver Program need not have ever been to Iran to be prohibited. In 
fact, there is no clear definition of who qualifies as a dual national, 
and it demonstrates how this prohibition is impossible to administer.
  Many groups have pointed out that there is no international agreement 
on the rules of nationality, and that many people are dual nationals 
even if they do not wish to be. For example, there is no automatic way 
to relinquish one's Iranian nationality. It can only be accomplished if 
the individual is allowed to do so by the Iranian Council of Ministers 
and fulfills a number of requirements, including the completion of 
national military service. Does this sound likely or possible for an 
individual who has never resided in Iran?
  Now, the administration has recently stated that they will determine 
each potential visitor's nationality on a case-by-case basis. According 
to them, ``the U.S. government need not recognize another country's 
conferral of nationality if it determines that nationality to be 
`nominal.'''
  They also said ``DHS assesses whether an individual is a national of 
a country based on an individual's relationship to that country, such 
as if an individual maintains allegiance to that country.'' However, 
the administration would not specify what counts as ``maintains 
allegiance.''
  These examples show that the Visa Waiver Program is gaining nothing 
when it comes to actual security, and, instead, unfairly prohibits 
individuals' participation based on meaningless standards.
  Furthermore, of greatest concern is the potential for reciprocal 
treatment of U.S. citizens. Just today, the European Commission asked 
European Union governments and European lawmakers to suggest what 
actions the Commission might take due to the lack of visa waivers for 
some EU citizens. Now, while there are a number of concerns when it 
comes to reciprocity, this dual nationality provision has not gone 
unnoticed. Specifically, the Commission stated: ``In parallel to 
discussing full visa reciprocity, the Commission will continue to 
monitor the implementation of the changes in the Visa Waiver Program.''
  After expressing concerns about the negative consequences of these 
changes on ``bona fide EU travelers,'' the Commission invited the 
United States to consider the Equal Protection in Travel Act of 2016 in 
order to mitigate restrictions imposed on dual nationals. This 
amendment is that act.
  I agree that we should mitigate these restrictions on dual nationals 
and mitigate the chances of reciprocal treatment for U.S. citizens. The 
U.S. passport is the most powerful in the world, and we need to ensure 
it remains that way. We should not threaten that status for a provision 
that is both imprecise and impossible to administer.
  I hope we can have a vote on this amendment, and I hope my colleagues 
can support it.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page 3968]]


  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the 
Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill which is before 
the Senate and which we have been debating over the last week. Ensuring 
that our great Nation--States such as Colorado and Alaska that have 
important aviation industries--has a healthy and safe general aviation 
community and comprehensive aviation infrastructure is exactly the type 
of issue this Congress needs to be working on and the type that has 
been a top priority in previous Congresses.
  In my State, aviation has a very rich history and is an incredibly 
important driver of our economy but also an important element of 
connecting the entire State. Many aspects of our lives in Alaska rely 
on commercial and general aviation. Living in a State of such enormous 
scale with numerous remote communities gives Alaskans a very deep 
appreciation for air travel, which in many cases provides the only 
means for transportation for many residents.
  One of the things that is very much an honor being in the U.S. Senate 
is how different Senators come and describe life in their States so all 
Americans have a better understanding of how the entire country is 
knitted together, how we work together, but what unique challenges 
different States have.
  For more than 100 communities in Alaska--including regional centers 
such as Bethel, Nome, Barrow, and Kotzebue--aviation is the only means 
of getting in or out of those communities since there are no roads. 
Most States don't understand that. There are no roads, no ferry 
service, so aviation is critical. Alaska is unique in its dependence on 
aviation, and we have a very busy, what we call highway of the skies. 
There are more pilots per capita in my State than any other State in 
the country. So that means everything from mail, to groceries, to baby 
diapers has to be flown in by plane to many communities. If someone 
gets sick and needs to see a doctor, oftentimes that can only be done 
by air. There are over 400 general aviation airports across Alaska, 250 
of which are owned and operated by the State of Alaska, and that 
doesn't include hundreds of heliports that support mining, timber, the 
oil and gas industry, and others.
  General aviation and aviation infrastructure are critical components 
of our economy and our quality of life in our State, in Alaska. It is 
fundamental in terms of connecting people and communities and promoting 
and sustaining economic development. Indeed, estimates show that the 
general aviation community contributes over $1 billion a year in 
economic activity to the State of Alaska's economy and supports over 
47,000 jobs; that is 1 in 10 jobs in the entire State.
  This is a very important bill. It is an important bill for the State 
of Alaska, but it is also an important bill for the United States of 
America. The FAA reauthorization bill will expire in July, and it is 
important to avoid the uncertainty of more short-term extensions by 
passing the authorization bill we have had on the floor of the Senate 
over the last week.
  I thank Chairman Thune and Ranking Member Nelson for all the work 
they have been doing night and day, really for months on this important 
bipartisan bill. So far the process has been a model of how the Senate 
should work.
  Our friends in the media love to write the stories about nothing 
working in the U.S. Senate. I don't think so. There are a lot of 
important bills moving--the highway bill, the Education bill, human 
trafficking. Now we are looking at a bipartisan way to address a very 
important bill for the country; that is aviation, that is aviation 
infrastructure, and that is aviation security.
  Let me talk about some of the substance more broadly for the country 
and why this bill is so important.
  One aspect of the bill is the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2. Building off 
the success of the initial Pilot's Bill of Rights, this provision 
continues to make essential reforms for pilots--mostly general aviation 
pilots who are so important to my State--streamlining an overly 
burdensome medical certification process, increasing transparency and 
access to additional information for pilots in all the different 
aspects of their requirements as to being pilots in the general 
aviation community. There are provisions that also balance and make 
essential inroads toward rebalancing the relationship between the FAA 
and general aviation pilots.
  One thing this Senate bill does not do--there has been a discussion 
over in the House--is it does not transfer the air traffic control 
services that are so important to many of our States--particularly 
rural States--to a private corporation.
  This bill also, very importantly, strengthens safety for pilots and 
passengers across the country. You can't pick up the news and not see 
how important this issue is. From the terror attacks in Brussels, at 
the airport there, to the Russian flight out of Egypt that went down 
because of a suspected ISIS attack, to instances of criminal behavior 
even among U.S. airport employees, events around the world have 
underscored how important the need for stronger security measures for 
our Nation's air travel is.
  What is really important is this is the Senate taking proactive 
action. This is not a bill on aviation security where we are reacting 
to some horrible tragedy, God forbid, in terms of aviation security, 
whether an accident or a terrorist attack at one of our airports. What 
we have been doing is looking at the challenges in these areas and 
taking proactive measures so we don't have to react when there is a 
terrorist attack or an accident.
  So these are comprehensive airline security reforms that are some of 
the most important that have occurred and that we have debated in this 
body for over a decade. Let me list just a few of them.
  The bill includes several measures for the security of passengers by 
improving airport employee vetting to ensure that potentially dangerous 
individuals don't have access to secure areas in our airports, 
expanding the enrollment in the TSA PreCheck Program so passengers move 
through security lines into more secure areas more quickly--we saw how 
important that was in Brussels--and enhancing security for 
international flights bound for the United States.
  Overall, this legislation addresses a growing concern in terms of 
security, including the cyber security threats facing aviation and air 
navigation systems for our commercial airlines. The bipartisan FAA 
Reauthorization Act does more for passengers and more for security than 
any bill, at least in the last decade. It is an important bill, it is a 
good bill for America, and it is a good bill for Alaska. It will 
advance measures to keep us safer. That is why I am supporting this 
bill, and I encourage my colleagues to do so as well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.


                         National Equal Pay Day

  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, as we have heard all day, today is Equal 
Pay Day. What does that mean? That means that today is the first day 
women in the workforce--if we separated male and female workers--would 
actually get a paycheck in the year. That is pretty remarkable, and it 
is a disparity we have been working on for decades in this country but 
still have not achieved the parity that we believe is absolutely 
essential if we are going to be a family-friendly and forward-looking 
country with a growing and prosperous middle class.
  I think way too often the issue of pay equity--the issue of equal 
pay--is characterized as a woman's issue. It is characterized as 
something that only elite women care about, and it is characterized as 
something that is not something for the government to address. Well, I 
am here to dispel all of those myths. I think we can only fairly say 
that by shortchanging women, employers are also shortchanging working 
families. Families need a full salary so they can put food on their 
table and make sure children have the medical care they deserve.
  We have all heard the stark statistic that nationally women only earn 
79 percent of what White, non-Hispanic males are paid. In North Dakota, 
the numbers are even more dramatic. The

[[Page 3969]]

pay equity there is 71 percent. Women earn just 71 percent of what men 
make in my State. It is unacceptable. It is unacceptable at a time 
when--according to a recent study from the Pew Research Center--women 
are now the leading solo breadwinners in 40 percent of households. That 
compares to just 11 percent in 1960. It does not make sense that we are 
still struggling to make the same amount as men for equal work.
  Additionally, in North Dakota, 74 percent of children live in 
households where both parents work. Both parents need to work in order 
to support their families. When women don't make as much as men, it 
doesn't just hurt them, but it hurts their children and families across 
the country.
  What is Congress to do about this disparity? We need to pass a 
paycheck fairness bill. We need to make sure we have this critical 
piece of legislation, which responds to this concern, in our laws and 
in the statutes of the United States of America.
  What does paycheck fairness do? It would help close the pay gap by 
taking critical steps to empower women to negotiate for equal pay. I 
can't tell you the number of times I have heard women in my State say: 
Well, I just didn't know I wasn't getting paid what a man was getting 
paid. And employers saying: Well, she didn't ask and he did. I think we 
need to be able to give the tools to women so they know when there is 
disparate treatment. We need to close the loopholes the courts have 
created in the law, we need to create strong incentives for employers 
to obey the laws that are in place, and we need to strengthen Federal 
outreach and enforcement efforts.
  Looking at pay is only one part of the equation. We also need to pass 
other family-friendly policies, such as the FAMILY Act, which would 
establish a Federal paid leave policy.
  I can only imagine what the debate was in this body when somebody 
came up with the idea to introduce employment insurance. I am sure 
there were a lot of discussions about yet another program and yet 
another system that would actually add to the payroll tax and add to 
burdens put on families.
  Who today in this body would propose that we eliminate unemployment 
insurance? It has been a valuable transition opportunity so our workers 
can look for that next job without disrupting their family payment. As 
a person whose father was a seasonal construction worker, I know how 
critical that benefit was to my family when I was growing up. I know 
unemployment insurance frequently gave our family the ability to put 
food on the table in my household.
  Let's talk about what happens when someone has a baby. Let's talk 
about what happens when someone's mom gets sick. Let's talk about what 
happens when we have a catastrophic illness of our own. Many people in 
my State--in fact, the majority of people in my State--do not have 1 
day of paid leave. So their choice is to take care of their family's 
health conditions or to take care of their newborn child and just quit 
their job or go on unpaid leave and actually not receive a salary.
  How many people can go on unpaid leave and not receive salary? Not a 
lot. What it means is that frequently when people have to transition 
away from work, all of a sudden that person qualifies for food stamps, 
qualifies for Medicaid, and qualifies for other government assistance 
programs. The cost to the employer for those government programs is 
equal to the price of a cup of coffee a week. For $1.50 a week per 
employee, we can provide this benefit. How do we know we can provide 
this benefit? Because we have States that have done it. California, 
which restricted their payment, I believe, to 50 percent to families 
who used this insurance benefit, recently upped that amount to 70 
percent. This bill would put it at 66 percent.
  The FAMILY Act is also a critical piece of legislation that moves our 
employment economy into the 21st century. It actually recognizes that 
women are in the workplace, and they are in the workplace for real and 
permanently. It recognizes that when we have family-friendly policies, 
we have a better workforce, we have a more economical workforce, and we 
have an opportunity for employers to keep their businesses.
  Recently, in North Dakota, Senator Gillibrand and I traveled around 
the State talking about our paid leave policy in the FAMILY Act. We 
were in a small business with less than 10 employees. The owner said he 
would love to provide this benefit, but there was no way he could 
economically afford it. If anything happened to one of his employees, 
there would be no way he could give this benefit and also hire a 
temporary worker. If he had the opportunity to share that risk broadly 
with all small employers in the country, that shared risk would then 
make this benefit available to him, and he could keep his employees. He 
could keep those employees whom he trained, and he could make sure they 
were better employees when they came back because they have that 
benefit.
  We need to understand this isn't just about the girls. This isn't 
just about the women of the Senate standing up. It is about a shared 
experience we have all had. It is a shared experience of having to 
choose between going home and taking care of your mother or actually 
feeding your family. That is not much of a choice. When we look at why 
people are angry in America today and why they feel like they are not 
getting ahead, it is because they are falling further and further 
behind because we aren't adopting 21st century policies, such as the 
FAMILY Act, equal pay for equal work, and recognizing the value of what 
women do.
  I will close with a true story. When I was in college, between my 
freshman and sophomore year, I was a nanny. It was very rewarding. I 
loved the kids, but it was hard work and it was 24/7. After working as 
a nanny, I was a construction worker. Do you know why I worked 
construction? I was paid better and the work was not as difficult. I 
worked in a factory cleaning pipes, I worked on road construction, and 
I worked on rural water construction. Yes, that is hard work, and I was 
a laborer in all of those jobs. It is hard work, but none of it is as 
hard as taking care of children, sick people, or the elderly. Yet in 
America those jobs pay less.
  It is time we evaluate what is happening in the workplace and what is 
happening to America's families so we can adopt these family-friendly 
policies. In fact, we need to listen to our constituents so we can have 
empathy for the challenges of American families. When that empathy 
finds its way to public policy in the halls of Congress, people will 
once again feel reconnected to their government.
  I encourage everyone who hasn't taken a look at pay equity and hasn't 
yet taken a look at the FAMILY Act to understand and appreciate what 
this can do for their constituents, what this can do for the American 
workplace, and how we can help small businesses provide the services 
and benefits they need to provide so they can compete in this very 
competitive workforce environment.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                     Amendment No. 3464, as Amended

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to table the Thune amendment No. 
3464.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The motion was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 3679

                (Purpose: In the nature of a substitute)

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I call up substitute amendment No. 
3679.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell], for Mr. Thune, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 3679.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of 
Amendments.'')


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion for the 
substitute amendment to the desk.

[[Page 3970]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The bill 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 Senate amendment 
     No. 3679.
         Mitch McConnell, Daniel Coats, Roger F. Wicker, Roy 
           Blunt, Orrin G. Hatch, Thom Tillis, John Hoeven, Rob 
           Portman, James Lankford, John Thune, Mike Rounds, John 
           Cornyn, John Barrasso, Johnny Isakson, James M. Inhofe, 
           Jerry Moran, Kelly Ayotte.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call 
be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion for the bill to 
the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The bill 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 Calendar No. 55, 
     H.R. 636, an act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 
     to permanently extend increased expensing limitations, and 
     for other purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, Daniel Coats, Lamar Alexander, Bob 
           Corker, Roger F. Wicker, Orrin G. Hatch, Thom Tillis, 
           John Hoeven, Kelly Ayotte, John Thune, Mike Rounds, Roy 
           Blunt, John Cornyn, Pat Roberts, John Barrasso, Johnny 
           Isakson, James M. Inhofe.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call 
be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Amendment No. 3680 to Amendment No. 3679

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3680.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 3680 to amendment No. 3679.

  Mr. THUNE. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

             (Purpose: To strike and replace section 4105)

       Strike section 4105 and insert the following:

     SEC. 4105. ADS-B MANDATE ASSESSMENT.

       (a) Assessment.--Not later than 1 year after the date of 
     enactment of this Act, the Inspector General of the 
     Department of Transportation shall assess--
       (1) Administration and industry readiness to meet the ADS-B 
     mandate by 2020;
       (2) changes to ADS-B program since May 2010; and
       (3) additional options to comply with the mandate and 
     consequences, both for individual system users and for the 
     overall safety and efficiency of the national airspace 
     system, for noncompliance.
       (b) Report.--Not later than 60 days after the date the 
     assessment under subsection (a) is complete, the Inspector 
     General of the Department of Transportation shall submit to 
     the appropriate committees of Congress a. report on the 
     progress made toward meeting the ADS-B mandate by 2020, 
     including any recommendations of the Inspector General to 
     carry out such mandate.

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