[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5727-5750]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  2016

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 2028, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2028) making appropriations for energy and 
     water development and related agencies for the fiscal year 
     ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Alexander/Feinstein amendment No. 3801, in the nature of a 
     substitute.
       McConnell (for Cotton) amendment No. 3878 (to amendment No. 
     3801), of a perfecting nature.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, but I ask 
that the time be charged equally to both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Boozman). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in about 5 or 6 minutes, the Senate 
will proceed to the scheduled vote on the Cotton amendment on the 
Energy and Water appropriations bill. Actually, it will be cloture on 
the Cotton amendment. Before that vote, I ask unanimous consent that I 
first be allowed to speak for a few minutes, and following me, Senator 
Feinstein, and then we vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I will save most of my remarks for 
after the vote, but I wish to make two kinds of remarks. One is to give 
an update on the bill, where we are. The second remark is to restate my 
reasons why I will not vote for cloture on the Cotton amendment. First, 
in terms of where we are, we have the Cotton amendment at 10:30. The 
Senator from California and I have agreed--and I think our staffs and 
the Republican and Democratic leaders have discussed it--that there 
could be a vote for Senator Cardin and Senator Fischer at 60 votes, a 
voice vote on Senator Flake. That is it. Then we would have another 
cloture vote if we need it and a vote on final passage.
  In my view, and I believe in terms of Senator Feinstein's view, we 
ought to easily be able to finish the bill today. I think we should 
finish it today. I thank the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, for 
starting the appropriations process earlier this year than it ever has 
been started before. I thank the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, for 
working with us through some difficult issues we had on this first bill 
that we didn't expect and to make it possible for us to come to what 
looks like a prompt conclusion.
  This is an important bill. The Senators know that. We have had nearly 
80 Senators contribute parts of this bill. Some are very important to 
their States and this country. Whether it deepens the Mobile port or 
the west coast ports or rebuilds locks in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee 
or whether it properly funds the national laboratories across the 
country or moves ahead with our nuclear weapons program, this is one of 
the most important appropriations bills that we have.
  Today we will have spent 2 weeks on it, not counting the week we had 
for recess. We will have processed 21 amendments, if I go through the 
amendments I just described. If we succeed today in finishing the bill, 
it will be the first time since 2009 that the Energy and Water 
appropriations bill has gone across the floor in regular order.
  Senator Feinstein and I have worked pretty hard together, and as she 
likes to say, both of us have engaged in some give and some take in 
order to create a result that the Senate can be proud of and set a good 
example for the next 11 appropriations bills. We have a lot waiting to 
be done. The majority leader has already announced he would like to 
move ahead with the transportation and military construction bill. On 
both sides of the aisle, there is concern about moving ahead with Zika, 
which could be done during that bill. The Defense authorization bill 
needs to be dealt with before we get to the next recess. We have nine 
more appropriations bills to deal with, and there is a very important 
biomedical research bill called the 21st Century Cures Act. I hope we 
get to that bill sometime before July.


                           Amendment No. 3878

  Mr. President, I have one other thing to say. Senator Feinstein and I 
have worked hard to give all the Senators who had germane, relevant 
amendments a vote on their amendments, and we succeeded very well with 
that. We

[[Page 5728]]

processed 21 amendments, and that includes the amendment by Senator 
Cotton, which prohibits the United States from using tax dollars to buy 
heavy water from Iran in the year 2017. I defended his right to have a 
vote on that amendment, which we are about to have, but I will vote no 
on that amendment because I don't believe it belongs on the bill. No. 
1, I think it should be considered first by the Foreign Relations and 
the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees because it is filled 
with national security implications. No. 2, if it were adopted, I think 
there would be dangerous complications because it could increase the 
possibility that heavy water from Iran, which in the United States 
would be used for peaceful purposes, could be sold by Iran to another 
country, such as North Korea, and used to help make nuclear weapons. I 
don't want to have the Senate approve an amendment that would create 
that kind of possibility. No. 3, the President said he will veto it, 
which would result in not only having the Cotton amendment rejected, 
but the bill would fail as well.
  The discussion of where Iran's heavy water goes is an important 
discussion, and the Senator has a right to bring it up. Iran has it, 
and we don't want them to have it because they could use it to make 
nuclear weapons. We don't produce it, but we need it for medical and 
scientific research, so it makes sense for us to buy it. In the great 
scheme of things, it is not a great amount of money. But the idea of 
letting it go on the international market and perhaps find its way to 
countries building nuclear weapons is something I can't support, so I 
will vote no.
  I thank the Senator from California for working through all of these 
issues with us, and I am glad that following Senator Feinstein's 
remarks, we will vote on the Cotton amendment. I hope that with the 
cooperation of the majority leader and Democratic leader, we will be 
able to finish the bill today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of 
the Energy and Water Subcommittee for his leadership and willingness to 
settle issues to get this bill to the point where it really is ready to 
be voted on by this body. I think he has made the argument against the 
Cotton amendment eloquently and correctly. I am very grateful for the 
fact that he did what I think is a noble thing and changed his vote and 
will be voting against the Cotton amendment.
  Let me say something about this process. Both the chairman and I have 
been here for a long time, and we were here when appropriations bills 
were passed. The key to doing that is keeping poison pills off 
appropriations bills so they can be passed quickly. In addition to the 
arguments made by the chairman, the White House had very strong 
feelings and indicated they would veto this bill if it passed with this 
amendment. How do we start an appropriations process with a 
Presidential veto in the wings? I don't think we do. Hopefully, the 
appropriate thing will happen in this vote, and cloture will be 
defeated. I hope that it sends a signal--a strong signal--for the rest 
of the appropriations process. We want to show that we can run this 
place and get business done and poisons pills have no place on 
appropriations bills. That is my very deep belief, and that is where it 
once was.
  Once again, I thank the chair for his help, cooperation, and 
leadership. It is quite wonderful to be able to work with the Senator 
from Tennessee, Senator Alexander, and I too urge a ``no'' vote on 
cloture.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Senate amendment 
     No. 3878 to amendment No. 3801 to Calendar No. 96, H.R. 2028, 
     an act making appropriations for energy and water development 
     and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 
     2016, and for other purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, Thad Cochran, Lamar Alexander, Johnny 
           Isakson, Marco Rubio, David Vitter, Patrick J. Toomey, 
           Steve Daines, Richard C. Shelby, James Lankford, John 
           Thune, James M. Inhofe, Lisa Murkowski, Tom Cotton, Pat 
           Roberts, John Barrasso, John Hoeven.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on 
amendment No. 3878, offered by the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. 
McConnell, for the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Cotton, to amendment No. 
3801, as amended, to H.R. 2028, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Flake). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 57, nays 42, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 67 Leg.]

                                YEAS--57

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

                                NAYS--42

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Peters
     Reed
     Reid
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Sanders
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 57, the nays are 
42.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.


                           Amendment No. 3878

  Cloture not having been invoked on amendment No. 3878, under the 
previous order, there will be 1 hour of debate equally divided in the 
usual form.
  The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I regret that the Senators failed to 
invoke cloture on my amendment, but I am gratified that a large 
bipartisan majority of the Senate agrees that we should not use U.S. 
taxpayer dollars to subsidize Iran's nuclear program over and above the 
obligations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
  Now that cloture has not been invoked, my amendment is still pending, 
and I understand that Democrats denied cloture on the bill three times 
because my amendment is able to be called up after cloture on the bill.
  I want this bill to move forward, I want it to pass in an expeditious 
fashion, and therefore I intend later today to withdraw my amendment so 
it cannot be called up postcloture on the bill, leaving Democrats no 
reason not to agree to cloture on the bill and agree to final passage 
of the bill.
  Finally, I want to thank the Senator from Tennessee as well as the 
Senator from Kentucky, the majority leader, for working with me to make 
sure we have the Senate on record on this important issue. I regret 
that it took multiple days to get to a point we could have reached very 
early on, as I had agreed to a 60-vote threshold 2 weeks ago, but I do 
think it is important that the Senate has spoken on this most critical 
issue.
  I yield the floor.

[[Page 5729]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arkansas for 
withdrawing his amendment. I defended his right to have the amendment. 
I opposed the amendment, and I explained before the vote why I did 
that, so it is not necessary for me to say more about it.
  As Senator Feinstein and I said before the vote, we are ready to 
finish the bill. We have had terrific cooperation from Senators on both 
sides of the aisle. We will have included 21 amendments in the bill by 
the time we are finished. More than 80 Senators have made a 
contribution to the bill. It has importance to every part of our 
country. It is the first bill of a series of 12 that we need to deal 
with. It is within the budget levels. It is not a part of the Federal 
debt problem because the discretionary spending we are talking about is 
fairly flat.
  It is a well-designed bill, and we are ready to finish the bill. When 
it will be finished, of course, is up to the majority leader and the 
Democratic leader as they schedule.
  All that remains to be done, since Senator Feinstein and I have 
recommended that we have votes on the Cardin and Fischer amendments at 
60 and that we adopt a Flake-modified amendment by voice vote--then all 
that remains is a cloture vote, if necessary, and final passage. In our 
view, that could be done today, but there may be larger issues that 
have to do with the Senate schedule that would cause that to be put off 
until tomorrow, and we will wait for an announcement from the majority 
leader and the Democratic leader about what that schedule is.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. 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. ALEXANDER. For the information of Senators and staff, there will 
be a vote at noon. We expect a cloture vote at noon on the bill. There 
may be other things to discuss at that time. Several Senators have 
asked me about votes, and I indicated that there were a couple and that 
there might not be votes until after lunch, but the plan now is to have 
a vote at noon on cloture on the bill. Perhaps by then we will be able 
to lock in some other votes, which would occur after lunch.
  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. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Zika Virus

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the Zika virus and the 
urgent need for Congress to provide the $1.9 billion President Obama 
has requested to combat this health crisis.
  The Zika virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947. The virus is 
transmitted by the same mosquito species that transmits dengue, yellow 
fever, and chikungunya. Prior to 2007, the Zika virus had no known 
outbreaks and only 14 documented human cases. However, in the spring of 
2007, scientists documented 185 suspected cases of Zika on Yap Island, 
Micronesia, followed by more than 30,000 suspected cases in French 
Polynesia and other Pacific islands between 2013 and 2014, and in May 
2015 the first case of Zika was reported in Brazil.
  On February 1, 2016, the World Health Organization declared the 
ongoing Zika outbreak to be ``a public health emergency of 
international concern.'' According to the World Health Organization's 
International Health Regulations, a public health emergency of 
international concern is a situation where the disease outbreak 
``constitutes a public health risk to other States through the 
international spread of disease, and potentially requires a coordinated 
international response.'' The World Health Organization predicts that 3 
to 4 million people--3 to 4 million people--in the Americas will 
contract Zika within 1 year.
  There is a common refrain among scientists and experts studying Zika: 
There is much they still do not know about Zika, and what they do know 
is worrisome. Until recently, the Zika virus has been viewed as a 
relatively minor virus. The majority of individuals infected with the 
virus are asymptomatic, and those who do experience symptoms often 
complain of fever, rash, joint pain or conjunctivitis.
  However, newer research has shown the Zika virus can cause a number 
of previously undetected medical conditions, especially in regard to 
pregnant women. Last month the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention confirmed the link between Zika infection during pregnancy 
and severe fetal brain defects like microcephaly. The World Health 
Organization recently concluded that Zika can cause Guillain-Barre, a 
rare condition that attacks the body's nervous system, causing muscle 
weakness and even paralysis. Scientists have also recently confirmed 
the virus can be transmitted sexually--a first for this type of virus.
  As of April 2016, the World Health Organization documented Zika virus 
transmission in 62 countries and territories around the world, 
including 33 in the Americas. Brazil has been hardest hit by the virus, 
recording more than 91,000 cases of the virus and nearly 5,000 
suspected cases of Zika-related microcephaly. Across the U.S. 
territories, nearly 600 people have contracted Zika, including more 
than 400 in Puerto Rico. Here in the Continental United States, there 
have been over 420 related Zika cases, including 12 in my home State of 
Maryland.
  As we continue moving toward the summer months and the height of the 
mosquito season, the number of locally acquired and travel-associated 
Zika infections in the United States and its territories will 
undoubtedly climb. Just last month, CDC Director Tom Frieden indicated 
that clusters of locally acquired Zika were possible in the southern 
United States by the summer.
  Last month, the administration officially announced they would 
transfer $510 million from the remaining Ebola funds to jump-start the 
Zika response while waiting for congressional action. While $510 
million is a good start, it is just a fraction of what is needed to 
mount a full response to Zika. Congress does need to act because the 
$510 million Ebola fund isn't just found money. Those dollars were 
sustaining efforts to detect and prevent another Ebola outbreak in West 
Africa while also helping developing countries better respond to 
outbreaks on their own. It is unacceptable that we would force our 
public health professionals to choose between addressing Ebola or 
addressing Zika.
  There is no question the United States must take the threat of Zika 
seriously and mount an urgent, aggressive, and sustained response to 
the virus. As we speak, a Federal interagency task force, led by the 
Department of Health and Human Services, is working around the clock to 
mitigate the impact of Zika. Within the task force, the CDC is working 
closely with laboratories in affected countries, in the United States, 
and its territories to enhance laboratory and surveillance capacity and 
improve diagnostics.
  The CDC is also engaging in public health studies and is providing 
guidance to health professionals and educating the general public about 
prevention. The agency is also working with local authorities in the 
United States to improve mosquito control efforts.
  In Maryland, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious 
Diseases at the National Institutes of Health is supporting preclinical 
and clinical development of vaccines for the mosquito

[[Page 5730]]

virus and other mosquito-borne diseases. The Institute is also 
collaborating with stakeholders to conduct vital research that will 
allow us to better understand the origins and pathology of Zika and 
bring us closer to developing a vaccine.
  The Food and Drug Administration is working to improve and refine 
diagnostics for the Zika virus. Most notably, the FDA recently issued 
two Emergency Use Authorizations for two newly developed Zika 
diagnostic tests. To date, more than 25 States and the District of 
Columbia have verified their ability to test for Zika using these 
methods, which will enhance our ability to monitor this growing 
epidemic. The FDA is also working closely with the Biomedical Advanced 
Research and Development Authority to advance vaccine research and 
development.
  I am also pleased the U.S. Agency for International Development, 
USAID, is working with UNICEF to develop and implement communication 
campaigns and community mobilization for behavioral change related to 
personal protection against mosquitos, as well as community-based 
mosquito mitigation and elimination efforts--commonly referred to as 
vector control--in areas hardest hit by the virus. The agency is also 
partnering with the World Health Organization and its South American 
arm, the Pan American Health Organization, to implement and monitor 
vector control programs.
  In addition to providing personal protection commodities, USAID is 
also working closely with the international health partners to develop 
and adopt guidelines for addressing Zika in at-risk populations, 
particularly pregnant women.
  This is just a fraction of what a Zika response looks like. I would 
be here much longer if I were to go through every detail of what our 
agencies are doing to respond to the threat. Suffice it to say, this is 
an all-hands-on-deck emergency, and we cannot implement and sustain an 
adequate response without fully funding the President's request.
  More than 2 months have passed since the President sent his request 
to Congress. The Zika virus is not some nebulous foreign threat. It is 
already on our shores. Congress needs to act. I call on my fellow 
Senators to come to an agreement on a robust and comprehensive Zika 
supplemental that enables us to better prevent, treat, and respond to 
the virus both at home and abroad, while also replenishing the critical 
Ebola funds.
  When it comes to global health pandemics, which know no borders, the 
Congress of the United States can and must act to protect American 
citizens and people around the world.
  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 bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, within a few minutes, we will be voting 
for the fourth time on cloture on the bill. This time I expect it to 
pass. The Cotton amendment has been disposed of. Following that, if it 
is successful, Senator Feinstein and I have recommended to the majority 
leader and the Democratic leader that we move to a vote on the Cardin 
and Fischer amendments, at 60 votes, and a voice vote on the Flake 
amendment. Then, all that would be remaining would be a final cloture 
vote, which may or may not be necessary, and final passage. None of 
those votes have been agreed to yet, and we will let Senators know when 
they are. But in the opinion of the bill managers, we are ready to 
finish the bill, and we thank Senators for their cooperation to get us 
to this point.
  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. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Amendment No. 3878 Withdrawn

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, on behalf of the Senator from Arkansas, 
Mr. Cotton, I withdraw the Cotton amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is withdrawn.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  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. 3801 to Calendar No. 96, H.R. 2028, an act making 
     appropriations for energy and water development and related 
     agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and 
     for other purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, Bob Corker, Tom Cotton, Thom Tillis, 
           Mike Crapo, Joni Ernst, Jerry Moran, John Boozman, 
           Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Daniel Coats, Chuck 
           Grassley, Shelley Moore Capito, Thad Cochran, Lamar 
           Alexander, Richard Burr, Roy Blunt.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on 
amendment No. 3801, offered by the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. 
Alexander, as amended, to H.R. 2028, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 97, nays 2, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 68 Leg.]

                                YEAS--97

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Booker
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Reid
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Vitter
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--2

     Heller
     Lee
      

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Sanders
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 97, the nays are 2.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am glad to see an enthusiastic vote 
of support on the cloture motion on the fourth try. We gain a little 
bit every time.
  For the information of Senators, there will be two votes at 4:30 
p.m., on the Cardin and Fischer amendments at 60 votes each.


       Amendments Nos. 3871, 3888, and 3876 to Amendment No. 3801

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to call up 
the following amendments and that they be reported by number: Cardin 
amendment No. 3871, Fischer amendment No. 3888, and Flake amendment No. 
3876; further, that the time until 4:30 p.m. be equally divided between 
the managers

[[Page 5731]]

or their designees for debate on the amendments concurrently; and that 
following the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the 
Cardin and Fischer amendments in the order listed, with a 60-
affirmative-vote threshold for adoption for amendments Nos. 3871 and 
3888; I further ask that there be no second-degree amendments in order 
to any of these amendments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report the amendments by number.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Alexander], for others, 
     proposes amendments numbered 3871, 3888, and 3876 to 
     amendment No. 3801.

  The amendments are as follows:


                           amendment no. 3871

   (Purpose: To use Federal and State expertise to mitigate fish and 
            wildlife impacts at Corps of Engineers projects)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. PROTECTION OF FISH AND WILDLIFE.

       (a) In General.--None of the funds made available by this 
     Act shall be available to carry out project or project 
     operation studies unless the Secretary of the Army ensures 
     evaluation of and mitigation for impacts to fish and wildlife 
     resources consistent with recommendations developed by the 
     Director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the 
     Secretary of the Interior, and the States pursuant to section 
     2 of the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act (16 U.S.C. 662), 
     including recommendations to properly evaluate impacts and 
     avoid adverse impacts to fish and wildlife resources.
       (b) Requirements.--
       (1) In general.--In carrying out subsection (a), the 
     Secretary of the Army shall not select a recommended 
     alternative for a water resources project if the Director of 
     the United States Fish and Wildlife Service concludes that 
     the impacts of that alternative cannot be successfully 
     mitigated.
       (2) Mitigation.--The mitigation requirements under this 
     section shall be in addition to any other mitigation measures 
     required under section 906 of the Water Resources Development 
     Act of 1986 (33 U.S.C. 2283) and any other applicable Federal 
     or State law (including regulations).


                           amendment no. 3888

  (Purpose: To provide for the operation of reservoir projects by the 
                         Bureau of Reclamation)

       At the end of title II, add the following:
       Sec. 2__.  None of the funds made available by this Act 
     that would be provided to the Bureau of Reclamation for 
     reservoir projects, operations, administration of water 
     rights, or other action in the Republican River Basin may be 
     used in a manner that does not comply with each applicable--
       (1) current resolution of the Republican River Compact 
     Administration, dated November 24, 2015, for accounting and 
     reservoir operations for 2016 and 2017; and
       (2) State order necessary to carry out that resolution.


                           amendment no. 3876

  (Purpose: To require that certain funds are used for the review and 
               revision of certain operational documents)

       On page 5, line 22, strike the period at the end and insert 
     the following: ``: Provided further, That of the funds 
     provided herein, for any Corps of Engineers project located 
     in a State in which a Bureau of Reclamation project is also 
     located, any non-Federal project regulated for flood control 
     by the Secretary of the Army located in a State in which a 
     Bureau of Reclamation project is also located, or any Bureau 
     of Reclamation facilities regulated for flood control by the 
     Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Army shall fund 
     all or a portion of the costs to review or revise operational 
     documents, including water control plans, water control 
     manuals, water control diagrams, release schedules, rule 
     curves, operational agreements with non-Federal entities, and 
     any associated environmental documentation.''.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Zika Virus

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
the threat that the Zika virus poses--a threat to the health of 
Americans and to people around the world.
  Every day we learn more about this virus. The Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention has confirmed a link between Zika and 
microcephaly. That is a condition where babies are born with smaller 
heads and with brain defects. It is a devastating problem that we are 
all facing.
  Studies have linked Zika to something called Guillain-Barre 
syndrome--a condition I studied in medical school and have seen 
patients with. It can lead to paralysis, which is another very serious 
condition.
  Last week the Centers for Disease Control also confirmed the first 
Zika-related death in Puerto Rico.
  Because this virus is mostly spread by mosquitoes, the potential risk 
is only going to become more urgent as the weather turns warmer. So we 
must do what we can now--today--before this turns into a true epidemic 
rather than the threat it is today. America's drug companies and 
researchers need to continue working on treatments, tests, and 
vaccines. Our cities and towns need to start taking aggressive measures 
to control mosquitoes. Doctors can help to educate people who are at 
risk of contracting the disease--this virus--but we really do need all 
hands on deck.
  Washington has an important part to play, and Republicans in the 
Senate are ready to address this issue. Congress has already passed 
legislation that adds Zika to what is called the priority review 
voucher program. This program awards financial incentives to the 
sponsor of a new drug that is approved to prevent or treat a tropical 
disease. That is a good way Congress can help speed up the research 
process in dealing with Zika. Congress has also approved the transfer 
of nearly $600 million in existing, unobligated funds for an immediate 
Zika response, so the money has already been moved to help.
  We can also make a big difference by cutting through redtape, and 
there is significant redtape in this city that actually makes it harder 
to kill mosquitoes that carry this virus. We would think we would want 
to make it easier to kill mosquitoes, but there is redtape in 
Washington, DC--bureaucrats making it harder to kill the mosquitoes 
that carry the virus.
  Today it is hard to believe that there are requirements for permits 
that I think are absolutely unnecessary and that make it more difficult 
and more expensive to spray for mosquitoes in the United States. So if 
a farmer or a rancher, a city or a community wants to spray for 
mosquitoes, they have to use a pesticide that has been approved by the 
Environmental Protection Agency; that is No. 1. In a lot of cases, 
people who want to spray for mosquitoes also have to get a separate 
permit under the Clean Water Act. That is No. 2. There are two steps--
one, to get the permit to spray, and two, to get the EPA approval of 
what they are going to spray with. This doesn't add any benefit to the 
environment, and it certainly doesn't help protect anybody from the 
Zika virus. It is Washington getting in the way. It adds another hoop 
for people to jump through before they can get rid of the mosquitoes 
that carry the Zika virus.
  Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho has written legislation that would 
eliminate this second unnecessary requirement. It is not saying that 
anyone can go out and spray whatever they want. The pesticide would 
still have to be approved so that we know they are safe. But the 
legislation says that we don't need this second permitting process that 
Washington demands. It is a commonsense change. It is the kind of thing 
we could do to help local officials on the ground make the best 
decisions about how they can fight these mosquitoes and this virus in 
their communities, in the places they know the best, and do it quickly.
  The Crapo bill has 18 cosponsors, and I am proud to be one of them. 
It is a bipartisan bill with bipartisan support, and it has already 
passed the Environment and Public Works Committee. We should take up 
this bill and pass it and get these tools into people's hands as 
quickly as possible.
  I know that some of what America can do to help fight Zika--and 
people understand this--is going to require us to spend money, and I 
support that. That is why the Appropriations Committee is looking at 
the need for additional funding, additional spending to

[[Page 5732]]

address this threat. Regular appropriations bills are the best way for 
us to carefully look at where the priorities are for spending the 
taxpayers' dollars. That is how we should be paying for things around 
here, not just another continuing resolution or some emergency measure.
  When something new comes up, we can look at it, figure out how to 
balance the costs, and if we have to do an emergency bill to get some 
money out the door more quickly, we can take a look at that as well, 
but we can't do that without at least having a plan from the 
administration on where and how this money they are requesting is going 
to be spent.
  The Obama administration has not yet given us the level of 
information we need to make an informed decision. It appears that the 
administration is trying to take advantage of this Zika emergency to 
give itself an additional $2 billion to use however it wants--maybe to 
fight Zika but maybe to do other things. What the administration is 
saying is that they want the money to be used for ``assistance or 
research to prevent, treat, or otherwise respond to Zika virus . . . or 
other infectious diseases.'' The wording is much too vague. It would 
allow the administration to use these emergency funds on other 
priorities well beyond a Zika response.
  The President's request for emergency funding goes on to say that 
most of the money, they say, could be transferred to other parts of the 
government, like the Environmental Protection Agency and even the 
Department of Defense. It includes a lot of expenses that don't 
necessarily qualify as emergency spending outside the regular 
appropriations process.
  Both sides of the aisle know the Zika situation is serious, and both 
sides want to do what we can to help. But Congress also has an 
obligation to make sure that our taxpayer dollars are being spent 
responsibly, that there is accountability. We shouldn't be writing a 
big check for the Obama administration to cash without adequate 
explanation and adequate accountability. We deserve that. The American 
people deserve it. They will expect it, and they deserve it.
  I want to be clear. Zika is a very real public health threat, and it 
deserves serious discussion. It deserves urgent action. This fight 
against the Zika virus should not be turned into a political game. So I 
think it is a terrible sign that some Democrats in the Senate have 
begun to treat this devastating health issue like just another 
political talking point. That is what they have done here on the floor 
of the Senate. A couple of weeks ago, Democrats actually held a press 
conference calling on Congress to approve emergency funds for Zika. 
Then these same Democrats turned around and blocked passage of the 
Energy and Water appropriations bill for a number of days.
  The appropriations process is the best way for us to fund the Zika 
response, and the Senate Democrats are holding up this process for 
political purposes. We need to get moving beyond this appropriations 
bill to the next one that is going to address the issue of Zika. Then 
we hear that the minority leader might want to wait until next week to 
get on this bill. We need to get on this bill now.
  So the Democrats have made it clear that they don't even want to talk 
about offsetting any of the Zika funding. The Obama administration 
continues to stonewall our reasonable requests for adequate information 
about how it wants to spend these taxpayer dollars.
  Senate Republicans are going to keep asking for this information. We 
are going to keep pushing to use the appropriations process the way it 
is intended, and we are committed as Republicans to addressing the 
public health threat posed by the Zika virus. We will continue working 
across the aisle to respond to the threat and to do it in a way that is 
reasonable, responsible, and accountable.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                     Nomination of Merrick Garland

  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I come to the Senate floor to once 
again urge my Republican colleagues to listen to the vast majority of 
the people across the country, do their job and allow us to do ours: 
fulfill our constitutional responsibilities, hold hearings for Judge 
Merrick Garland, and give him a vote.
  We owe that to the people we represent. It is simply the right thing 
to do. Two months ago, the President did his job. He selected a 
nominee. For 2 months, Judge Garland has been ready and willing to meet 
with any Senator who will make the time. Yesterday Judge Garland did 
his job by submitting a questionnaire to the Senate Judiciary Committee 
outlining his background and his work history, which is standard for 
judicial nominees.
  What about the Senate? In complete disregard of what so many Members 
continue to hear in their home States across the country, Republican 
leaders are refusing to act. Senate Republicans will not say they are 
opposed to Judge Garland. They are refusing to even live up to their 
constitutional responsibility and consider him. This kind of pure 
obstruction and partisanship is so wrong. People across the country are 
not going to stand for it. We are now at an unbelievable 88 days into 
this Supreme Court vacancy. Especially after knowing what I do after 
meeting with Judge Garland and what many Republicans know after meeting 
with him as well, his distinguished career and work history show that 
he is, without a doubt, someone who deserves fair consideration by all 
of us in the Senate.
  Judge Garland led a massive investigation of the Oklahoma City 
bombing and supervised the prosecution of Timothy McVeigh. He called 
his work for the Justice Department, following the Oklahoma City 
bombing, the most important thing he has ever done in his life.
  His fairness and diligence earned him praise from Members of both 
parties, from victims' families, law enforcement officers, and even 
from the lead lawyer who was defending McVeigh. As a prosecutor, he 
ensured proper respect for the rights of criminal defendants.
  He was confirmed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in 1997 with a 
strong bipartisan vote of 76 to 23. Several of those who confirmed him 
in 1997 still serve in the Senate today. Clearly this is less about 
Judge Garland as a nominee and more about political obstruction and 
partisanship, especially after one Republican Senator admitted that if 
it looks as if Donald Trump will lose the November election, we should 
quickly confirm Judge Garland. This comes after weeks of saying the 
Senate should not do its job until we have a new President.
  Evaluating and confirming Supreme Court Justices is one of the most 
important roles we have in the Senate. I have heard from people all 
over my State of Washington who want the Senate to do its job.
  If Republicans continue to refuse to do their jobs, they aren't 
saying the people should decide; they are saying they believe the 
Republican Presidential nominee should. That is just wrong, especially 
after we heard from the presumptive Republican nominee last night on 
FOX News.
  Recently, he said that he thinks women should be punished for 
exercising their constitutionally protected reproductive rights.
  Last night he went a step further. He would only appoint ``pro-life'' 
Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Let me repeat that. The 
candidate Republicans would like to see in the White House nominating 
Supreme Court Justices has committed to taking our country back to the 
Dark Ages.
  That is appalling, and it is something I know millions of men and 
women

[[Page 5733]]

across the country are scared of. It is just one more reason that 
people will continue demanding that Senate Republicans do their jobs 
now.
  Washington State families should have a voice right now. Families 
across America should have a voice right now. The tea party gridlock 
and dysfunction that has dominated too much of our time and work in 
Congress should be pushed aside right now.
  I hope Republicans will reconsider. I hope they will meet with Judge 
Garland, hold a hearing, and give him a vote. We need nine Justices 
serving on the highest Court in the land.
  The American people deserve a fully functioning Supreme Court.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about a very 
important responsibility that the Senate has to deal with in an 
expeditious manner--a Supreme Court nomination.
  In a practice consistent with every single Supreme Court nominee 
before him, President Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy, Judge 
Merrick Garland, submitted his completed questionnaire yesterday to the 
Senate Judiciary Committee. Inside 6 boxes were 141 pages--with 2,066 
pages of appendices--in which Judge Garland provided incredibly 
thorough answers to the standard questions asked of every Supreme Court 
candidate.
  He detailed the highlights of his career, his published writings, the 
many honors and awards he received, the cases he litigated, the 
judicial opinions he gave, as well as his speeches and his interviews.
  Despite the fact that Senate Republicans have forced Judge Garland 
into an unprecedented limbo, he remains focused on the task before him. 
He has acted with the greatest decency, thoughtfulness, and 
bipartisanship while agreeing to meet with 46 Senators, including 14 
Republicans.
  Judge Garland respects the process. Why can't Senate Republicans?
  President Obama clearly respected the process when he picked Judge 
Garland, who--as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
District of Columbia, the second most important court in the country--
has more Federal judicial experience than any other Supreme Court 
nominee in history.
  Let me repeat that. Judge Garland, the nominee from our President, 
who was duly elected not once but twice, has more Federal judicial 
experience than any other Supreme Court nominee in history.
  Judge Garland has committed much of his life to public service, from 
his days leading the successful prosecutions of the Oklahoma City 
bombers and the Unabomber, to his nearly two decades as a Federal 
appellate judge. He is brilliant and he is evenhanded.
  The Congressional Research Service called him ``pragmatic'' and 
``meticulous,'' a nominee who prioritizes ``collaboration over 
ideological rigidity.''
  Let me repeat that. He is a nominee who prioritizes ``collaboration 
over ideological rigidity.''
  He has also received high praise from some Republican Senators, and 
that praise deserves repeating.
  Senator Lindsey Graham said: ``He's honest and capable, and his 
reputation is beyond reproach.''
  Senator Jim Inhofe, the chairman of the committee on which I serve as 
ranking member said: ``I think a lot of him.''
  Senator Rob Portman: ``He's an impressive guy.''
  Senator Jeff Flake said: ``Nobody has a bad thing to say about him.''
  Yet in the same breath, these are some of the very same Republicans 
who refuse to hold a hearing and schedule a vote on Judge Garland's 
nomination, even though article II, section 2, clause 2 of the 
Constitution says that it is the Senate's job to provide ``advice and 
consent'' on the President's Supreme Court nominees.
  This is what gets me--that my Republican friends say they care about 
the Constitution. They love the Constitution. They abide by the 
Constitution. They want a literal reading of the Constitution. Well, 
let's read it together--article II, section 2, clause 2: The President 
``shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, 
shall appoint . . . judges of the Supreme Court.''
  It doesn't say the President ``may nominate''; it says the President 
``shall nominate.'' It doesn't say the Senate ``may give advice and 
consent''; it says they ``shall.'' The President shall, by and with the 
advice and consent of the Senate. They also shall appoint Ambassadors, 
other public ministers and consuls, and judges of the Supreme Court.
  So here it is. This clause wasn't put in some bottle and miraculously 
washed up on the shore and read--this is what our Founding Fathers 
wanted. It is in the Constitution. It doesn't say ``may.'' It doesn't 
say to the Senate: ``And by the way, p.s., if you don't like the 
President, forget it.'' No, no, no. It is not in there. I looked. It 
doesn't say: ``Well, if you think that a President isn't a good 
President and that you are going to get a better one, you can put it 
off.'' No, it doesn't say that.
  The American people have three words for the Republicans who are 
disrespecting this process, disrespecting our Constitution, 
disrespecting our President, and threatening to create a man-made 
crisis at the Supreme Court. And it is a crisis. If they deadlock, it 
is a crisis. We will have one set of laws in one part of the country 
and one set of laws in the other part of the country, or we are not 
going to have a ruling on a very important issue. It doesn't matter 
what your ideology is, you are setting up deadlocks.
  It is bad enough that there is obstruction here. I know my friend, 
the Senator from Illinois, will talk about the obstruction when it 
comes to judges and Ambassadors and the like because we face it every 
day. That is bad enough. But the highest Court in the land, governed by 
this Constitution--it doesn't say: ``Look at the other side of the 
paper. You really don't have to act.'' No.
  Across party lines, the American people are saying three words to my 
Republican friends: Do your job. Do your job.
  Since 1916, when the Senate Judiciary Committee began holding public 
confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees, the Senate has never 
denied a Supreme Court nominee a hearing and a vote. Let me say that 
again. Since 1916, the Senate has never denied a Supreme Court nominee 
a hearing and a vote. The Democrats never did it, and the Republicans 
never did it--until now. And this is from the very people who say: 
``Oh, I carry the Constitution in my heart. I am a strict 
constructionist.''
  If you are such a strict constructionist, read this and follow the 
Constitution.
  I am not sure about this. I think I read that somebody is either 
thinking about filing a lawsuit or they have filed a lawsuit because of 
inaction. I tell you, if I wasn't here, I would truly think about that. 
You can't read this Constitution and come up with any conclusion other 
than that what they are doing is unconstitutional--the very same people 
who say: ``Follow the Constitution.''
  So in closing, which are the words my friend is waiting for, here is 
what I want to say. Our Republican friends have to rethink their 
obstructionist approach because they are going to do lasting damage to 
two of our country's most important institutions--the Senate and the 
Supreme Court. I know they love their country. I know they may not like 
this nominee, even though a lot of them seem to like him quite a bit. 
Maybe they are waiting for Donald Trump to put someone up. I hope that 
never happens. But I am going to tell you now that you are obstructing. 
You are obstructing the will of the people. You are obstructing a 
President who was elected twice. You are obstructing justice for the 
American people, and they all hate what you are doing, including the 
Republicans who have been polled.
  My Republican colleagues have to end these political games. It is 
time to

[[Page 5734]]

give Judge Garland the same consideration as every other nominee before 
him. It is time to bring some respect back to the Senate and to the 
Supreme Court nomination process. The American people are going to hold 
my Republican colleagues accountable for this because you cannot do 
this. This is not right.
  If you want to vote against a nominee, fine. I have done it. Of 
course, vote against the nominee. But as much as I have opposed 
nominees before--and I have--I have never suggested, nor has any other 
Democrat I know of ever suggested, that you don't go forward with the 
process.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor, noting that my friend from 
Illinois is going to address us.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the Presiding Officer tell us what 
the order of business is.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is postcloture on amendment No. 
3801.
  Mr. DURBIN. There are no time limits agreed to?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time is evenly divided until 4:30 p.m.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Chair.


                          Judicial Nominations

  Mr. President, the Executive Calendar is sitting here on the table 
for each Member of the Senate to take a look at. I have renamed it. It 
is no longer the Executive Calendar; it is the political obituaries.
  These are men and women who have been nominated to serve in positions 
of our government, who are excited about the opportunity to be public 
servants, many of whom have gone through extensive background checks, 
FBI checks, with staff having taken a look at their resumes, asked hard 
questions, demanded answers, and put these nominees through hearings. 
Many went through extensive periods of investigation and hearings and 
then were reported--20 of them, 20 judicial nominees--by the Senate 
Judiciary Committee to the floor of the Senate. Were they 
controversial? No. All 20 came to the floor by unanimous vote.
  Think about it. Here is a Senate divided--54 Republicans and 46 
Democrats--and 20 judicial nominees made it through what I just 
described to the Executive Calendar of the Senate, Wednesday, May 11, 
2016. And there they sit, day after weary day, month after weary month, 
thinking they might have a chance to serve this Nation but realizing 
the clock is running out. What do I mean by that? In this Congress we 
have approved 17 judges--2 circuit judges, those at the appellate 
level, and 15 at the district level. Twenty still sit on the calendar. 
And across the United States, we have 87 judicial vacancies, including 
29 that are in districts we think are in serious trouble if they aren't 
filled quickly.
  The Republican majority in the Senate puts these men and women 
through this process, reports them out of committee, and then lets them 
languish on the floor of the Senate. They will not call them for a 
vote. What are they waiting for? Well, it is a political decision. Here 
is what it comes down to. There is an unwritten rule--you will not find 
it in our rule book--called the Thurmond rule. It relates to Senator 
Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. He must have articulated this at some 
point in his career, but he said: When it comes to an election year--
like this one--we will stop approving nominations as of the beginning 
of the political conventions.
  Well, in this year, that is going to be about the middle of July. So 
if you do the countdown of when we are in session, we have probably 5, 
6 weeks left to consider nominations before they die under the 
unwritten Thurmond rule. So what the Republicans are doing is running 
out the clock on these 20 people. We shouldn't be surprised. If they 
would do this on a nomination to fill a vacancy on the highest Court of 
the land, it shouldn't surprise us they would do the same thing when it 
comes to these 20 nominees. What are they waiting for? Why don't they 
want to approve these noncontroversial judges? They are waiting in 
prayerful reflection for the election of Donald Trump as President.
  Mr. President, you know that many people in your party have mixed 
feelings about the candidacy of Mr. Donald Trump. But I would say, 
stepping aside from the merits of his candidacy, we shouldn't have 
mixed feelings when it comes to the Constitution, and the Constitution 
is explicit when it comes to vacancies on the Supreme Court. The 
Founding Fathers, in the Constitution--quoted a few minutes ago by my 
colleague from California--in article II, section 2, didn't mince words 
or equivocate. They said the President shall appoint nominees to fill 
vacancies on the Supreme Court, subject to the advice and consent of 
the Senate.
  We both have a role. The President is required by the Constitution to 
appoint someone to fill a vacancy. And 3 months ago, the untimely 
passing of Justice Antonin Scalia created that vacancy. Two months 
ago--56 days ago--President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to be the 
next Justice on the Supreme Court. The President met his constitutional 
responsibility. But the Republicans in the Senate announced, hours 
after Justice Scalia was found to have passed away, they would not even 
consider a nominee by this President to fill that vacancy--not a 
hearing, not a vote.
  You might say to yourself: Well, that is politics in Washington. 
Should we expect anything different? Should we expect a Republican 
Senate to approve a nominee from a Democrat? Come on, this is hard ball 
here; this isn't bean bag.
  Well, let me tell you a little story. In 1988, with a vacancy on the 
Supreme Court, Republican President Ronald Reagan, in his last year in 
office, nominated Anthony Kennedy to fill that vacancy and sent the 
nominee to this Chamber in the Senate when it was controlled by the 
Democratic side. What did the Democratic majority say to the Republican 
President, trying to fill a Supreme Court vacancy? We know our 
responsibility. And that Senate, under control of the Democrats, took 
up the name offered by the Republican President, approved him, and sent 
him to the Supreme Court in 1988.
  So to argue ``This is just typical politics. Don't make a lot of 
noise. We do this all the time''--let me make it clear: What the 
Republican Senate majority is doing today has never--underline that 
word ``never''--happened in the history of the United States of 
America.
  This is disrespect for a constitutional provision that is explicit. 
This is disrespect for a Court which now sits with 8 members on the 
Court--a Court which could find itself--and already has in several 
instances--tied 4 to 4. How important is that? Let me read a quote from 
back in 1987: ``Every day that passes with the Supreme Court below full 
strength impairs the people's business in that crucially important 
body.'' Who made that statement? Republican President Ronald Reagan. 
What he said then applies now.
  What the Republican majority is doing in the Senate--refusing Merrick 
Garland a hearing and a vote, holding up on the calendar 20 nominees 
who should be on the Federal bench--is obstructionism at its worst. It 
is what the people are sick of across this country. It is disrespectful 
to the Constitution, it is obstructionism, and it is pure politics.
  Why? Why are they so determined to keep this vacancy? Some of them, 
as I said, are dreaming of the possibility of a President Trump picking 
the next Justice on the Supreme Court. I will let your mind race away 
with the possibilities if ``The Donald'' is going to choose the next 
Justice on the Supreme Court, but others really bring it down to a much 
more basic level.
  There are special interest groups who want to make sure the next 
Justice on the Supreme Court is their friend. They do not want to run 
the risk that someone is going to be put on the Court who will not rule 
in their favor. So they are praying their political prayer: Hang on, 
hang on, Senate Republicans. Take the grief that two-thirds of the 
American people think you are wrong in what you are doing and be 
prepared to accept that grief if you want the support of these special 
interest groups.

[[Page 5735]]

  That is what this comes down to. It is the sad reality of politics in 
Washington today. And I will tell you, there is blame for both sides on 
many issues, but on this one there is crystal-clear clarity. The 
President has met his constitutional responsibility. The Senate 
Republican leaders, for the first time in the history of the United 
States of America, are denying a Supreme Court nominee a hearing and a 
vote. That is fundamentally wrong under the Constitution and 
fundamentally unfair to Merrick Garland.
  Merrick Garland was born in Illinois, so maybe I am partial to him a 
little bit, but he has quite a record. He has been touted as one of the 
best nominees in terms of qualifications. He is now the chief judge of 
the D.C. Circuit Court, right below the Supreme Court. That is a big 
job, but he is the man for it, according to people from both political 
parties.
  Solicitors General of the United States of America just sent a letter 
to the Senate. Nine of them signed, Democrats and Republicans. These 
are men and women who have argued before the Supreme Court representing 
the United States of America--attorneys who are familiar with that 
Court, the gravity of the decisions they face, the requirements to 
serve on the Court--and unanimously, Democrats and Republicans, they 
said to the Senate: Merrick Garland is the right man to serve on the 
Supreme Court.
  We come today with sadness, and even more with a sense of injustice 
that the Republicans would allow this political gambit to continue. To 
think that they are waiting for President Donald Trump to fill this 
vacancy is almost impossible to say or to believe, but it is a fact.
  I will close by saying I have checked the Constitution, and I check 
it regularly. There has been no change in the provision that says, in 
November of 2012, Barack Obama was reelected President of the United 
States to serve for 4 years--4 full years--and that would include this 
year. The Republican argument that he is out of business now and we 
will wait for the next President defies the verdict of the American 
people in that election. By 5 million votes they said: Barack Obama, 
you are the President of the United States for 4 years, with the powers 
attendant to that office. The denial by Republicans of that 
constitutional reality is a reflection on their feelings about a 
document which they have sworn individually to uphold and defend.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott). The Senator from South Dakota.


                              The Economy

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, 2 weeks ago we received the initial report 
on economic growth in the first quarter of 2016. The news was not good. 
As my colleague, the Senator from Alaska, Mr. Sullivan, has pointed out 
many times on the floor and in many forums, our economy grew at a 
dismal rate of one-half of 1 percent during the first 3 months of 
2016--one-half of 1 percent economic growth. In other words, the 
economy barely grew at all.
  While this report was particularly terrible, the truth is, weak 
economic growth has become the norm under the Obama administration. 
Since the recession ended in June of 2009, the economy has grown at an 
average rate of just 2.1 percent. In the typical post-1960 recovery, by 
contrast, economic growth averaged 3.7 percent. That is a huge 
difference. It is the difference between a stagnant economy and a 
flourishing economy--and, for millions of American families, it is the 
difference between surviving and thriving.
  Middle-class families are making 6.5 percent less than they were 
making in 2007, before the start of the great recession. A large part 
of the reason for that is the sluggish economic growth we have 
experienced in the Obama recovery. For too many families, this slow 
recovery has meant the end of cherished dreams--the dream of owning 
their own home, the dream of sending their kids to college, the dream 
of a secure retirement--and the kind of growth we need to escape from 
these economic doldrums is nowhere in sight.
  In fact, the Obama economy has led some economists to wonder if 2 
percent growth is the new normal. Right now, the Federal Reserve is 
projecting the economy will grow at a median rate of just 2.2 percent 
in 2016 and 2.1 percent in 2017. I would argue, based upon the 0.5 
percent economic growth the first quarter of this year, they may be 
dramatically overshooting the rate of economic growth if the current 
trend continues, and the St. Louis Fed expects that weak growth to 
continue for the next decade. That is very bad news for American 
families who are facing a less prosperous future with less economic 
opportunity and mobility.
  During the entire postwar period from 1947 to 2013, our Nation 
averaged 3.3 percent economic growth. At that pace, Americans' standard 
of living almost doubles every 30 years, incomes rise, financial 
security increases, and more people are able to afford homes, take 
vacations, and save for higher education. On the other hand, at the 
pace of growth we have seen since 2007, it will take far longer for the 
standard of living to double.
  Fortunately, we are not condemned to weak economic growth. If we look 
at the President's record, it is easy to see why our economy is still 
sputtering along: We had a failed $1 trillion stimulus program; $1.7 
trillion in new taxes; the President's health care law, which raised 
premiums for families and increased costs for small businesses; more 
than 2,700 new Federal regulations--and counting, we are not done yet--
get added to by the day; and a Federal debt that has nearly doubled on 
the President's watch and more.
  The President's policies don't have to be permanent. We can repeal 
ObamaCare and the incredible burdens it is placing on so many families 
and small businesses. We can replace it with something that makes more 
sense, creates competition, gives consumers more choices, and drives 
down prices.
  We can replace the President's tax hikes with comprehensive tax 
reform that focuses on lowering taxes for families and making America 
the best place in the world to do business, we can take serious action 
to address the spending that is fueling our national debt, and we can 
repeal some of the thousands of burdensome regulations the President 
has imposed during his tenure.
  It is easy to forget that every regulation the government imposes, no 
matter how small, has a cost--and those costs are paid by American 
families and American businesses. Take the national energy tax the 
President imposed on coal-fired powerplants. This rule will potentially 
drive up electricity bills for families by hundreds of dollars each 
year, and it will be especially harmful to low-income families and 
seniors who are living on fixed incomes.
  Take the President's decision to allow the EPA to regulate ponds and 
ditches on private land. This regulation will have significant economic 
impacts for farmers and property owners who will likely be hit with new 
Federal permits, compliance costs, and the threat of significant fines. 
Over the past 7-plus years, the Obama administration has imposed more 
than 2,700 regulations, including hundreds of major regulations. When I 
say ``major,'' those are regulations that cost American families and 
businesses more than $100 million each year. Out-of-touch Washington 
bureaucrats reaching into our States and imposing regulatory burdens 
from afar has become all too common in the Obama administration. 
Repealing some of the worst of these regulations would drastically 
reduce the burdens facing American families and businesses, and that 
would put more money in American families' pockets and free American 
businesses to do what they do best; that is, to innovate and create 
new, good-paying jobs.
  If we continue on the path we are on right now, we might be the first 
generation of Americans to leave the next generation of Americans worse 
off, but we don't have to be. We can reverse the course the President 
has set during his administration and put in place the kind of policies 
that will create conditions that are favorable to economic

[[Page 5736]]

growth, to grow our economy and lift the burdens on American families.
  Republicans in the Senate have already been working to undo the worst 
policies of the Obama administration. We are going to continue to fight 
until our Nation's economy is thriving and all families have the 
opportunity to achieve the American dream.
  If we can just achieve 1 percentage point additional growth in the 
economy each year, we are told by leading economists that would add 1.3 
million jobs to our economy, raise wages by $9,000 a year, and generate 
an additional $300 billion of Federal revenue that would make our 
fiscal picture look a lot smaller by comparison.
  We have to get spending under control. We have to reform entitlement 
programs that are unsustainable, that are going to bankrupt future 
generations of Americans, to get our fiscal house in order, but we also 
have to grow the economy at a faster rate. One-half of 1 percent is not 
adequate--nor is 1 percent, nor is 2 percent. We need to get back to a 
normal growth period in our economy. As I said, since the end of World 
War II, 3.3 percent has been the average, 3.7 percent has been the norm 
in a recovery coming out of a recession. If we get to that level of 
growth, we will see millions of new jobs in our economy, we will see 
American families getting their wages back to where they are growing 
with the economy, better paying jobs for American workers, and a fiscal 
picture that looks a lot more manageable than the one we face today.
  Economic growth is key to so many things that affect Americans' lives 
on a daily basis. We in the Senate ought to be focused like a laser on 
what we can do to put the right policies in place that would encourage 
and promote economic growth, rather than coming up with new ways to 
make it more difficult and more expensive in this economy to create 
jobs. Far too often, everything that happens in Washington, DC, today 
leads to more expenses, more mandates, more requirements, more 
regulations, and higher taxes, making it more difficult for our economy 
to get to that faster growth that is so important if we are going to 
make Americans' standard of living and quality of life better and hand 
off to the next generation a standard of living they deserve and that 
will improve on the one we enjoy today. That is what this is all about, 
and that is what we ought to be focused on.
  I am pleased the Senator from Alaska is here. I am told the Senator 
from Indiana will be joining him in just a minute to discuss the 
subject. The Senator from Alaska, Mr. Sullivan, has been a great 
advocate of growth in our economy and has been down on the floor 
talking about the implications of a half percent of growth and what 
that means; that if we don't change that trajectory and change it soon, 
we are going to continue down a path that makes it more and more 
difficult for American families to get ahead. That needs to change--
faster growth, higher growth, the right kind of policies--to make that 
possible.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I compliment my good friend from South 
Dakota, the chairman of the Commerce Committee, for coming down and 
leading the discussion on a very important topic that, to be honest, we 
are not talking about nearly enough in the Senate--and certainly the 
Obama administration is not talking about nearly enough--and that is 
the importance of our economy.
  I was on the floor a couple weeks ago and I made a prediction. I said 
there is going to be big economic news coming out, and my prediction 
was that nobody in the administration was going to talk about it and 
none of our friends in the media were going to talk about it. 
Unfortunately, my prediction came true.
  The big news, as Chairman Thune said, is that last quarter we grew at 
0.5 percent GDP growth. We essentially didn't grow. We didn't grow. The 
great American economy, the thing that has made us great as a country 
for 200-plus years, just stalled--and nobody talked. The Obama 
administration didn't talk about it. The media didn't talk about it.
  When we talk about gross domestic product, this is essentially the 
health of the economy. It is the measure of opportunity in America. 
Unfortunately, what we saw last quarter was additional proof that the 
Obama administration on this critical issue--economic growth for our 
citizens--is one of the worst in U.S. history. It is not just me saying 
that. People should take a look at these numbers. These numbers are 
actually from the administration and other administrations. This looks 
at recent economic growth for the last 50 years, starting with 
President Kennedy's administration, but as my colleague from South 
Dakota said, the average growth for the United States in our 200-plus-
year history has been about 3.7 percent GDP growth.
  We look at this chart--and this is very bipartisan, of course--almost 
4 percent GDP growth average for the country. This is what has made us 
great, strong. We look at this chart, and it shows the ups and downs. 
This red line is 3 percent GDP growth, which is considered pretty good. 
It is not great but pretty good. We certainly should be targeting that.
  Look at the Obama administration right here in the corner. It has 
never even hit 3 percent GDP growth--not once, not even in one 
quarter--ever.
  What we are seeing right here, in the almost 10 years of President 
Obama, relative to any other administration, Democratic or Republican--
Johnson, Nixon, even Carter, Reagan, Clinton, real strong growth 
there--clearly, the Obama administration has been, by any measure, a 
lost decade of economic growth. Unfortunately, you don't hear the 
administration talking about it at all. You can understand why. It is 
an abysmal record. But the truth is, if you look back in history and 
that news came out--whether it was a Democratic or Republican 
administration--the Secretary of the Treasury would have said: Don't 
worry America, we know you are hurting; we have a plan. The Secretary 
of Commerce would have said: We have ideas on growing the economy; we 
know that 0.5 percent GDP growth--essentially flat growth, no growth--
is not the historical tradition of America. Historically, Cabinet 
members in any administration would have told us: We know it is a 
problem, and here is how we are going to fix it.
  When this news came out 2 weeks ago, we heard nothing from this 
administration--nothing. When they do talk about the economy, there are 
typically three types of responses: One is, as my colleague from South 
Dakota mentioned, there is this talk in Washington about the ``new 
normal.'' In my view, it is one of the most dangerous phrases being 
bantered about in DC. The new normal says that we know America has been 
growing at this robust rate, almost 4 percent GDP growth for most of 
our history, but there are new factors, and we should not expect that 
anymore. We shouldn't even expect 3 percent. Let's just dumb down our 
expectations.
  They talk about the new normal. The new normal should be about 1.5, 2 
percent GDP growth, maybe. The people in Washington are telling the 
rest of the country: You guys should be satisfied with that. We 
shouldn't be. That is a surrender of the American dream. So that is one 
response--the new normal.
  The second thing the President has done for a while, but he can't do 
it anymore, unfortunately. He has looked around the world and said: 
Well, at least we are growing better than Europe or Japan or Brazil. 
Really, the only measure that actually matters is not another country; 
it is how do we stack up against America? He does not want to talk 
about that, so he talks about Europe. He can't talk about Europe 
anymore because we are growing at 0.5 percent GDP growth, and last 
quarter Europe grew at 2.2 percent. It is not great, but it is 
certainly better than ours. Obviously, they have to get rid of that 
talking point.
  The third thing they do is come out and try to tell us: Hey, you know 
what, you are actually doing better. I know you are feeling horrible 
and your wages haven't gone up, but you are doing better, trust me.

[[Page 5737]]

  In a New York Times article, the President recently lamented that, 
looking back, he didn't sell all the great stuff he was doing on the 
economy. He didn't sell it better. I don't think he needs to sell it. 
Most people feel it, and it is not great. He even said:

       Anybody who says we are not absolutely better off today 
     than we were just seven years ago, they're not leveling with 
     you. They're not telling the truth. By almost every economic 
     measure, we are significantly better off.

  I think it is astounding that the President of the United States is 
saying that kind of stuff to the American people because it is simply 
not true.
  Let me provide some facts. The story they tell is of a country that 
by almost every economic measure is actually worse off than we were 
when the Obama administration started. In the past 8 years, the labor 
force participation rate has slid to its lowest measure since the mid-
1970s. Essentially, that is people who have quit looking for a job 
because they can't find one.
  According to the most recent census data, the percentage of Americans 
below the poverty line in the last 8 years has grown. It is up almost 4 
percent. Real median household incomes in the last 8 years have 
declined from $54,900 to $53,600. Since the President took office, food 
stamp participation has actually soared. It is up by almost 40 percent. 
The percentage of Americans who own homes--a marker of the promise of 
the American dream--is down 5 percent. This is all in the 8 years, 7\1/
2\ years, since President Obama has been in office.
  The late Vice President Hubert Humphrey once said:

       Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be 
     believed, it must be credible. To be credible, it must be 
     true.

  No matter how much this administration uses soaring speeches or 
articles from media sources that have been favorably disposed toward 
them or clever tweets insisting that the economy is doing well, it 
simply is not. These are the facts, and Americans know it. Americans 
know it.
  We are spending more on housing and food. Wages are stagnant. As I 
have mentioned, many have given up looking for good jobs. Some are 
questioning the ability to put their kids through college.
  What is interesting is that Washington, DC, is doing fine. When you 
grow the government the way we have in the last 8 years, this part of 
the country actually never had a recession. It is not one of the 
richest places in America, right here in Washington, and that is why so 
many in the DC press corps weren't writing about this. The President 
says the economy is doing well, so it must be doing well.
  I think the good news is that even now the media is starting to pick 
up on this because the problem is so pervasive. In this election 
season, this is what we are hearing Americans talk about.
  Here is a heading from a recent Atlantic article: ``The lonely 
poverty of America's white working class.'' Here is another one from 
the same publication: ``The Resurrection of America's Slums.'' Here is 
one from another publication: ``Poverty in America: the Deepening 
Crisis.''
  Recently, there have been numerous articles about how poverty leads 
to addictions and to higher mortality rates. The New Yorker had an 
article entitled ``Life-Expectancy Inequality Grows in America.''
  The Washington Post is now starting to do some heartbreaking stories 
about poverty, death, and economic despair in our great country. 
Talking about the recent West Virginia primary election, the Washington 
Post stated: ``But many poorer, less-educated folks who have been left 
behind in the 21st century--the ones who have seen their wages 
stagnate, their opportunities for upward mobility disappear and their 
life expectancies shorten--are looking to disrupt a status quo that has 
not worked for them.''
  What does this mean for our great country, our citizens? One 
indication is, in poll after poll, Americans are telling us they are 
running out of hope. Sixty-five percent of Americans now believe the 
country is on the wrong track. That is not surprising. We never hit 3 
percent GDP growth in the last decade.
  The vast majority of Americans don't believe their kids are going to 
be better off than they are. They are telling us that the quality that 
has made America great, the quality that is in the DNA of the United 
States, and that is progress, is losing out to this idea of the new 
normal. It is a new normal where our children are not going to be 
better off than we are, where we can't grow the economy. The American 
dream is all about progress. We need to remember that. We can't settle 
for another lost decade of economic growth. We can't settle for 
stagnation.
  A number of my colleagues, particularly on the other side of the 
aisle, come to the Senate floor--and I have respect for everybody in 
this great body--and they talk about the moral imperatives they believe 
are important, moral imperative on this topic, moral imperative on 
another topic, but they rarely talk about the moral imperative of 
growth and opportunity. To me, that is the biggest moral imperative we 
have, with the exception of national defense in this body.
  It is a moral imperative to recognize that we have experienced a lost 
decade of economic growth. We have a moral imperative to talk about the 
pervasive poverty, what that does to our citizens, how it creates holes 
in the social fabric that holds us together, and how, when our own 
citizens fall through those holes, a piece of all of us goes with them 
because although we are individuals, we are all Americans together.
  We have a moral imperative to tell our fellow citizens that working 
together we don't have to accept this, the new normal. We have the 
moral imperative to lift up American workers with policies that 
actually help them.
  Like most Americans, I was shocked when Presidential candidate 
Hillary Clinton said that under her administration she would put coal 
miners out of work. Here is the quote: ``We are going to put a lot of 
coal miners and coal companies out of business.'' That is shocking. 
Think about that. I come from a State where there is a lot of mining. 
These are great jobs. These are important jobs. These are important for 
the national economy of America. To have a candidate say that she 
intends to put coal miners out of work is part of the problem.
  As Senator Thune mentioned, the other part of the problem is that 
Washington is no longer a partner in opportunity for coal miners, for 
workers, for growing the economy, but it has become an obstacle.
  We have to do a lot to get this economy moving. My colleague from 
South Dakota mentioned a number of ideas. We are going to be on the 
floor talking about them--the moral imperative to provide economic 
opportunity and hope for Americans.
  One thing for certain we have to do is get control of the Federal 
Government that wants to regulate every single aspect of our lives and 
economy. This is a chart that shows how Federal rules from this town go 
straight up. Every year there are more. As a matter of fact, the Obama 
administration is going to be the first in U.S. history to have 
proposed in a single year 80,000 pages of new Federal regs. If you 
think that is going to help the coal miners or other Americans or 
working-class families with hope and opportunity, that is not the right 
solution. What we need is less government and more economic freedom and 
the truth about what is going on with this great economy of ours in our 
great country. That is what we are going to continue to do.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Alaska, Senator 
Sullivan, for what he just presented to us here. He hit the nail right 
on the head. Along with our colleague from South Dakota, I want to add 
my voice to what has been said here.
  As chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, we pay a lot of 
attention to the state of the economy. We are presented with numbers 
and facts about where we are as a nation. The refrain that is becoming 
all too familiar; that is, we really are in a stagnant position, not 
going anywhere.

[[Page 5738]]

  Of all the statistics that come to us, two stand out here just 
recently. One is the fact that the April jobs report was significantly 
lower than it needs to be in order to provide meaningful jobs for 
Americans who are searching for jobs, and for Americans trying to move 
from part-time jobs to full-time permanent jobs, to put some certainty 
into their lives. With just 160,000 jobs created in April, basically 
that covers those who are retiring--maybe fewer than that--but 
certainly not the number of new jobs that give an indication of growth 
in the economy. That was a disappointing number, and obviously Wall 
Street paid attention to it. Hopefully it won't be repeated, but it is 
a worrying signal that we are not creating the kind of dynamic growth 
in the economy that will put our out-of-work individuals across this 
country back to work, that will provide opportunities for our young 
people who are graduating from college and high school this month and 
next month. That is nowhere near the number of jobs we need to even 
reach an average growth rate over the years, as my colleague from 
Alaska said.
  I think we have had eleven major recessions from World War II to the 
present. The recovery rate out of each of those recessions has been at 
4 percent. That rate of growth provided new hope for the people who 
lost their jobs and new hope for those coming out of educational 
institutions to secure a good job and begin the process of building a 
family, buying a home, and living the American dream. Yet this 
recovery--from a recession that began in late 2007 with the collapse of 
Lehman Brothers and the bank failures has been long. It was a deep 
recession. And it has taken a considerable amount of time to get moving 
in the right direction.
  Clearly, after the last 7\1/2\ years of the Obama administration, we 
have not begun to achieve the kind of recovery that has been the 
average of all the recoveries since the end of World War II. We've been 
about half of that, and because the recoveries have been half of that, 
we have not been able to provide opportunity for the American people.
  I think what we have seen here can best be defined as a result of the 
failed policies by this administration. We have policies that have 
raised taxes significantly on the American people even though their 
incomes have not increased. We have had policies of overspending here 
in Washington to the point where our national debt--based on years of 
deficit spending--has almost doubled from $10.7 trillion when this 
administration began to over $19 trillion after their 7\1/2\ years of 
governing and putting policies in place that have clearly failed.
  You can come to no other conclusion, despite what the White House 
puts out. The American people know better because their situation is in 
contrast to the White House saying that things are going well and that 
we are on the march forward. When the American people compare that with 
their situation, there is no comparison to be made whatsoever.
  Deficit spending, plunging into debt, and overregulation are 
burdening innovators and burdening businesses from having the ability 
to expand their business. Overtaxing and clearly overspending. Those 
three policies determine economic growth.
  I have had the great privilege of representing a State that has done 
just the opposite. Under Republican leadership, our State has 
controlled spending, controlled regulations, and put innovative 
processes in place that have allowed our State to thrive and grow. We 
came out of a deep deficit situation some years ago and have turned 
that around to the point where we now have a triple-A credit rating. We 
went from deficit spending, which caused borrowing, to a surplus well 
over $2 billion. We have become an attractive State to live and do 
business in.
  Let me state a couple of things that have been said about our State. 
Chief Executive Magazine recently named Indiana one of the top five 
States in the Nation for business. The magazine asked 513 chief 
executive officers to rank the States they were familiar with on tax 
and regulatory regime, workforce quality, and living environment. Let 
me state a couple of their quotes.

       Indiana . . . has its act together and is impressive.
       Indiana . . . has consistently ranked in the top 3 in 
     offering not just competitive incentives for business, but 
     also packages that improve the skill sets to hire a 
     qualified, work-ready workforce.

  Don Brown, chief executive officer of Indianapolis-based Interactive 
Intelligence, Inc., recently said that the State's low costs and low 
taxes allow job creators to invest more resources into their businesses 
and their employees. He went on to say:

       Limited regulations make it easy to grow here, freeing up 
     time, which is perhaps an entrepreneur's most coveted gift. . 
     . . We have great universities turning out lots of talented 
     graduates. . . . The public and private sectors work 
     effectively together in an effort to improve conditions for 
     everybody.

  How I wish that quote would reflect what is happening here in 
Washington. How I wish I could use that quote to say this is what is 
happening across the United States. I wish I could use that quote to be 
able to say that under the direction of this President and with the 
support of this Congress, we have reined in our overspending, tamped 
down our overregulation, put incentives in place to create jobs, and 
put policies in place that to create economic growth. Unfortunately, 
that is not the case, as has been made clear by my colleagues, and the 
case I am trying to make now.
  The contrast between a geographic entity called a State and the 
Federal Government and the policies which govern that State and govern 
our Federal Government in the three areas of taxation, regulation, and 
spending is dramatic. Why wouldn't we look at the States that have 
succeeded? Why wouldn't we look to the policies implemented by a State 
that has succeeded and demonstrated dynamic economic growth over the 
same timeframe as the Federal Government, who has done exactly the 
opposite relative to taxation, regulation, and spending, and draw the 
clear conclusion that the policies that have been implemented by this 
administration have failed?
  Let's stop pointing fingers at what the motives are. Let's just look 
at the results, and the results are very clear: We have a stagnant 
national economy, people not receiving opportunities to increase their 
income. If you go back to what the average earnings in America per 
family were at the start of this administration, it was $3,000 higher 
than it is today.
  Whatever releases come out of the White House or whatever the 
spokesman for the President says or the President himself says just 
simply doesn't match up to the facts. The facts are related to the 
policies that either have been put in place. It is clear that in the 
remaining months of this administration, those policies are not going 
to change. Simply there is denial of the fact that the country is not 
growing at a rate that provides opportunity and gives us hope for the 
future.
  But we do have a model, and my State is not the only model. We have 
models of States that have done exactly the opposite of that. Yes, they 
have regulations, but they are there for safety and health. They are 
beneficial and were not put in place to micromanage how businesses 
operate. States have been careful with the tax dollars and revenue that 
come in, and they balance their fiscal budget on an annual basis. They 
don't throw themselves ever deeper into debt. They recognized that is 
not the path to growth, and they spend the taxpayers' money wisely.
  Overtaxation, overregulation, and overspending clearly are not the 
path to economic growth. It is clear that the path is just the opposite 
of that.
  In the remaining months I have here, I will keep talking about this 
issue. I hope my colleagues will pay attention and make decisions on 
the basis of fact, not on the basis of ideology or what they have been 
told by the administration or the President. They need to look at the 
results, and the results are dramatic in terms of application of the 
basic principles that stimulate economic growth and provide hope for 
the American people.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.

[[Page 5739]]




                 Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act

  Mr. KING. Mr. President, when Senators rise on this floor, typically 
we are identifying problems, we are talking about how to solve them, 
and we are talking about how prior actions haven't quite worked. Today 
I have the pleasure of rising for the opposite reason. I am here to 
talk about something that has worked, something that we did, something 
that we worked on together on a bipartisan basis that has made an 
enormous difference for the students of our country.
  In the spring of 2013, there was an impending deadline. The interest 
rate on student loans, which in the past had been set by statute by 
Congress without regard to what the underlying economics were at the 
time or what the borrowing rate of the Federal Government was--it was 
an arbitrary number set by Congress, and it was due to double. In July 
of 2013, it was due to double to 6.8 percent.
  There was a proposal put forward by the leadership and by the Members 
on this side of the aisle which did not get sufficient votes. There was 
another proposal put forth by the Senators on the other side of the 
aisle which also didn't get enough votes. We were left with a situation 
with no proposal on the floor and an impending deadline that would have 
doubled rates for student loans for millions of students across the 
country. At that point, a small, bipartisan group of us got together 
and said: There has to be a better way to find a solution. We can't let 
this happen to our students.
  This is a particularly important time of the year to talk about this 
because this is when students are finding out where they are going to 
college next year, they are making their arrangements for financial 
aid, and they are thinking about what their commitment will be. Well, 
as of this afternoon, those students are going to be able to breathe a 
bit of a sigh of relief because we just learned that the interest rate 
on student loans taken out for next year based upon the cost of 
borrowing for the U.S. Government will be 3.76 percent. That is the 
lowest it has been in a decade, and it is considerably below--by almost 
half--what it would have been had we not come to that solution on that 
hot summer day in the middle of the summer of 2013.
  The group of people who worked on this and put it together were, as I 
said, a bipartisan group. The group consisted of Senator Richard Burr 
of North Carolina; Senator Manchin; Senator Tom Coburn, my friend from 
Oklahoma; Senator Alexander; Senator Tom Carper; Senator Dick Durbin; 
and Senator Tom Harkin. We had a lot of meetings, discussions, 
negotiations, and ultimately worked together to determine a fair and 
equitable way to set the rate for student loans from the Federal 
Government based upon the Federal Government's own cost of borrowing 
money and combined the best ideas from both plans. We got the strong 
support of the President, who encouraged the Democratic Members of our 
group to join in these negotiations, and we reached a consensus. The 
Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act passed this body with something 
like 80 votes, and that has made a real difference for our students.
  Here are some numbers: $50 billion, $5 billion, $275 million. Those 
are the answers. What are the questions?
  The first is, $50 billion is the amount of money students will save 
over the next 10 years based upon the difference of what the interest 
rate would have been and what it is going to be. This says 3.8 percent. 
We made this yesterday. It is actually lower; it is 3.76 percent. But 
this differential over 10 years equals $50 billion in the pockets of 
students across this country. That is a $5 billion-a-year difference in 
what they will have to pay in interest and what they would have paid 
had the law not been changed. That is an enormous amount of money for 
our students. In the State of Maine, the New America Foundation has 
estimated that this translates into over $275 million in interest 
savings to students just in the State of Maine.
  Well, those are big numbers: $275 million, $50 billion, $5 billion. 
So what does it mean in reality to an individual student? Here is what 
we are talking about. Under the old law, an individual typical 
undergraduate would have paid $17,000 in interest as opposed to 
$10,000. That is at least $6,000 that goes into the pockets of our 
students. That is going to make a real difference.
  I am delighted that we have had this success and that we have been 
able to report something that has actually been done right around here 
and then has truly benefited millions of students across this country, 
but we have plenty of work still to do. College is still too expensive. 
The burden of student debt generally is very heavy and weighs on not 
only the students but our economy. We need to reauthorize the Higher 
Education Act. We need to enact meaningful changes in the whole 
structure of how colleges can keep their prices affordable. We need to 
give students the tools they need to succeed. We also need to look at 
the structure of student loan programs to simplify, A, how you apply, 
and B, how you pay them back, how the structure is, and have simple, 
easily understood techniques to pay back according to your means, 
according to what you are earning at the time, an earnings-based 
repayment schedule so that students don't exit college with this 
enormous burden. One student told me: Senator, I feel like I have a 
mortgage but no house. That is essentially what is happening.
  So what I am talking about today is truly good news, but it is not 
the end of the story and we should not say: Well, we have taken care of 
that issue. Let's move forward.
  I do think every now and then it is important to acknowledge that 
occasionally the policies work out, and this is one that has worked out 
spectacularly for the students of America. Fifty billion dollars over 
the next 10 years will be saved by students who would otherwise be 
paying that money in interest, and that is money they can invest in 
their own futures and so can make a better life for themselves, their 
families, and our country.
  I appreciate the opportunity to acknowledge the work that was done by 
this entire body and by the House and by the President to resolve what 
would have been a true crisis for our students and to move it toward a 
much more manageable solution. I look forward to continuing to work on 
this issue and to keeping in touch with Chairman Alexander and Members 
of this body who are interested in continuing to work on this issue of 
the cost of college and how student loans are structured in order to 
make them work most effectively and fairly for the young people of this 
country.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 3888

  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss my amendment No. 
3888. I am proud to join my colleagues from Nebraska, Kansas, and 
Colorado to offer this bipartisan amendment. Our three States are 
signatories to the Republican River Compact, which allocates the water 
resources from the Republican River Basin as it travels across our 
States.
  Through this allocation process, our States work closely with the 
Republican River Compact Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation 
to help ensure the most efficient utilization of our waters as they 
head to families and businesses across the region. In Nebraska we value 
clean water. Our citizens go to great lengths to preserve and protect 
these resources.
  However, in recent years, the Bureau of Reclamation has violated 
administrative orders issued by Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado with no 
justification for their actions. This lack of accountability from the 
BOR is costing money. It is limiting citizens' access to precious water 
resources.
  Our bipartisan amendment that is before us would halt funding for the 
BOR when it violates State orders. Federal law already requires the BOR 
to comply with the States through interstate

[[Page 5740]]

compacts. Our amendment would hold this agency accountable for its 
actions. Our States have a right to manage their own water resources 
for the benefit of compact compliance.
  But through its action, the BOR has effectively altered those 
compacts. This agency was not created to operate unilaterally and exert 
veto power over the decisions States make to comply with compacts. Our 
amendment will ensure that Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas retain 
control of their waters. It will protect other States that have these 
interstate compacts from the consequential actions of an unaccountable 
Federal agency.
  Nebraska and its neighbors in Kansas and Colorado are good stewards 
of natural resources. We protect our water. We protect it at the State 
and the local levels. These States should be free to preserve their 
resources without unjustified intervention by the Federal Government. I 
urge all of my colleagues to consider this amendment, to consider the 
impact of a Federal agency overreaching and violating the rights of 
States to determine how to control, how to manage, how to work 
together, and how to work within compacts in order to meet the 
obligations they have.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moran). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                   Department of Education Rulemaking

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have come across an embarrassing 
situation. The U.S. Department of Education has apparently earned an F 
from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in its first 
attempt to write a regulation under the new law fixing No Child Left 
Behind that passed this body with 85 votes last year, passed the House 
overwhelmingly, and that President Obama signed into law in December 
calling it ``the Christmas miracle.''
  Most of us will remember this law. I know the Senator from 
Pennsylvania had a major role in some provisions in it. This was a law 
to fix a law that everybody wanted fixed. It was 8 years overdue.
  The law that needed to be fixed was called No Child Left Behind. Over 
the last several years, what had happened was that the U.S. Department 
of Education had become, in effect, a national school board. Everybody 
was upset with how much those who worked in the Department of Education 
were telling teachers, school boards, states, and students in 100,000 
public schools what to do. They were telling them what to do about how 
to evaluate teachers, what to do about what their academic standards 
should be--adopt common core--telling them what to do about how to use 
test scores, and saying how to fix a school that might be in trouble. 
There are seven defined ways to fix a troubled school. People grew so 
upset with it that we had a massive bipartisan uprising in the 
Congress.
  It is not easy to get 85 Senators on behalf of a big complex piece of 
legislation, but we did. The Wall Street Journal said that it was the 
largest transfer of power from Washington, DC, to the States in 25 
years. Almost everybody liked it except some people in the U.S. 
Department of Education, who set about almost immediately to try to 
rewrite the law as if they had actually been elected to something.
  We anticipated that. In this law we took the extraordinary step--we 
in Congress who under article I of the Constitution are elected to 
write laws--to write prohibitions into the law.
  For example, in the law there is a specific provision that said the 
U.S. Department of Education may not tell Tennessee or Pennsylvania or 
any other State what its academic standard must be specifically. It may 
not tell it that it must adopt common core. That is in the law. That is 
a specific prohibition.
  What I want to talk about today is a report by the Congressional 
Research Service that Congressman Kline, chairman of the House 
Education and the Workforce Committee, and I released today that says 
in the very first attempt by the Department to write a regulation 
implementing the new law, they flunked the test. Those are my words, 
not those of the Congressional Research Service, but their words are 
nearly as plain as mine.
  A new report by CRS says that their proposed ``supplement not 
supplant'' regulation goes beyond ``a plain language reading of the 
statute'' and is likely against the law.
  Congressman Kline said:

       The administration spent years dictating national education 
     policy and failed to deliver the quality education every 
     child deserves. Now, the department seems determined to 
     repeat its past mistakes. There is no question this 
     regulation would violate both the letter and intent of the 
     law, and it must be abandoned. Congress and the 
     administration promised to reduce the federal role and 
     restore local control, and we will use every available tool 
     to ensure that promise is kept.

  Mr. President, I know, Congressman Kline knows, and the Members of 
this body know that a law is not worth the paper it is printed on 
unless it is implemented properly. I am determined, as the chairman 
overseeing the Committee on Education, to make sure that this law is 
implemented properly.
  We will have this year six hearings on implementation of this law. 
There is a coalition of organizations that includes the Nation's 
Governors, the National Education Association, the American Federation 
of Teachers, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and others. 
These are people who don't always agree on education policy. They 
helped pass this law, and they are equally determined to make sure it 
is implemented correctly.
  They are not just working at a national level. The Governors in 
Tennessee and in other States are working with coalitions of those same 
organizations to make sure the law is implemented properly.
  On April 12, we had a hearing in the Education Committee, and I 
talked with the newly confirmed Education Secretary about this. I urged 
the President to appoint an Education Secretary because I wanted 
someone there who was accountable to the Senate, and he was confirmed. 
His responsibility is to discharge his duties faithfully according to 
the law, but based upon this first regulation, no one seems to be 
taking that seriously.
  Let me be specific about it. There is a provision in the law that 
goes back to about 1970 that says that if you are going to get money 
from the Federal Government--we call that title I money--that you have 
to provide at least comparable services with state and local funding in 
schools that get the money and schools that don't, except that teacher 
salaries may not be included in that computation. That is in the law. 
That has been there for decades now.
  Now we had a debate in our committee and on the floor about whether 
we should change that law. The Senator from Colorado, Mr. Bennet, feels 
very strongly about it. He said that we ought to change the law to say 
that teachers' salaries should be included in comparing spending in 
title I schools and non-title I schools. I had a different proposal. I 
said: Well, I agree with your point, Senator Bennet, but my proposal I 
would call Scholarship for Kids. Let's just take the Federal dollars in 
Tennessee, Pennsylvania, or Maryland and let the States decide to 
create $2,100 scholarships--the amount it could be--and follow each 
low-income child to the school that the child attends. Neither Senator 
Bennet's proposal nor my proposal could be adopted by the Senate. So we 
did not change the law.
  We then put specifically into the law a provision that said to the 
Department of Education that it may not write a regulation in such a 
way that requires parity or equal spending among school districts. That 
is in the law as well. Yet what happens? In the first regulation that 
the Department of Education sought to do in what we call a negotiated 
rulemaking process, they came up with a scheme, because as the 
departing Secretary said, his lawyers

[[Page 5741]]

are smarter than the people in the Senate or the people who work here. 
They came up with a scheme and requirements that would violate the law, 
and the method they chose to require is prohibited by another provision 
in the law. I don't call that being clever. I call that just ignoring 
the law, and I am not going to put up with it. I am not going to allow 
the Department of Education to sit here and watch us in both bodies of 
Congress--by big bipartisan majorities and supported by Governors, as 
well as teachers unions--decide that we don't want Washington dictating 
every little thing that happens in the schools, and as soon as the 
President himself signs the law, they start rewriting it over in his 
own Department.
  If this one provision, this rule that the Department came up with, 
were adopted, these are some of the consequences.
  It would, No. 1, require a complete costly overhaul of almost all of 
the State and local finance systems in the country. Maybe they need to 
be overhauled, but we did not decide that they needed to be, and no one 
is elected in the Department of Education to require that.
  No. 2, it would require the forcing of thousands and thousands of 
teachers to transfer from one school to another school. Perhaps they 
should transfer, but there are 100,000 public schools and there are 3.5 
million teachers, and we did not decide in our law that they had to 
transfer, and the Department can't decide that either.
  It would require States and local school districts to move back to 
the burdensome practice of detailing every individual cost on which 
they spend money to provide a basic educational program to all 
students, which is exactly what we were trying to free States and 
districts from under the law. We heard from superintendents and from 
school boards that this nit-picking, ``mother may I'' approach of the 
Department bureaucrats was wasting the time of superintendents, school 
boards, and teachers. So we wrote more flexibility into the law. The 
Department now wants to take it back.
  According to the Council of the Great City Schools, this new proposed 
rule would cost $3.9 billion just for the 69 urban school systems to 
eliminate the differences in spending between the schools.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
following my remarks a copy of a statement that Congressman Kline of 
Minnesota, the chairman of the House Education Committee, and I made 
concerning the report of the Congressional Research Service that says 
likely that the Department has ``exceeded its statutory authority and 
appears to go beyond what would be required under a plain language 
reading of the statute.''
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my 
remarks a statement I made in connection with the April 12 hearing with 
our Education Committee in the Senate, when Secretary King testified.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my 
remarks an editorial from the Wall Street Journal entitled ``Obama's 
Ed-Run'' that was published on April 18 of this year.
  The Wall Street Journal said, among other things, that ``the 
administration is now rewriting the parts of the law it doesn't like.'' 
A law passed with big bipartisan majorities.
  This is an intolerable situation. This is a complete flouting of the 
specific bipartisan intent of large majorities of the Senate and the 
House by a small group of people in a single department who know better 
than to do this. They know better than to do this. They are ignoring 
what we have written into law.
  They are not elected to anything. If they would like to be in the 
Congress or the Senate, they can resign their positions and the 
elections come up this year. They can run, and they can try to change 
the law. It took us 8 years to debate. We debated these provisions with 
very good people. The Senator from Colorado, who weighed in on this 
whole question of parity of spending between school districts, is a 
former distinguished superintendent of the Denver school district. He 
feels very passionate about it. I used to be the U.S. Secretary of 
Education myself. I have a different proposal about how to fix it, and 
I feel pretty passionate about it. But I feel even more passionate that 
if we are going to decide the answer to the question, we are going to 
decide it here, and it is not going to be decided down the street by 
regulations that are not authorized by law and in a method that is 
specifically prohibited by the provisions of a law that was signed by 
the President in December.
  So this is the first such regulation, but there will be more. I would 
hope that the Secretary of Education and the men and women who work for 
him would stop and take a deep breath and realize that we were serious 
when we passed this law, that we have the broad support of the entire 
education community across the board, and that I am not going to rest 
until I make sure that this law is implemented in the way it was 
written. That means that we are going to continue to hold the remainder 
of our six hearings this year. I am going to work with the coalition of 
Governors, teachers organizations, chief State school officers, and 
others to put a spotlight on the Department. I am going to urge the 
State departments of education to begin to write their own state 
education plans, which they then later submit to the Department in 
order to obtain their Federal dollars under the law. Then, if the 
regulations are not consistent with the law, I don't believe they 
should follow them. That means the State should ask for a hearing. And 
if the Department persists, then the State should go to court to sue 
the Department.
  If the Department persists, we have our own remedies in the Senate 
and the House of Representatives. We have something called the 
Congressional Review Act. It only takes 51 of us to overturn a final 
rule that we believe is not consistent with the law. We can do that. I 
will be at the head of the line in trying to do it. We have an 
appropriations process. The U.S. Department of Education has to come 
before us and be accountable to us for all of the money they receive.
  I expect from here on out for those who write the rules to follow the 
law. It is not just me saying this, it is not just Congressman Kline 
saying this, we have the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service 
that has examined this regulation. I hope my colleagues will look at 
this report. They have concluded that the regulation the Department 
proposed does not follow the plain language reading of the statute that 
was enacted and signed into law only last December, and is likely 
against the law.
  This is the first shot across the bow, as far as I am concerned. I am 
going to be watching every single one of these regulations. I hope this 
does not happen a second or third time or there will be a large number 
of us seeking to do anything we can do to make sure the law is 
implemented the way it should be.
  This was the most important law passed by the U.S. Congress last 
year. It affected 50 million children, 3.5 million teachers, and 
100,000 public schools. It restored to the people closest to the 
children the authority for dealing with those children. Everybody 
wanted that. Virtually everybody wanted that except a few people in the 
U.S. Department of Education who cannot keep their hands off America's 
100,000 public schools. They need to do that. They need to learn to do 
that. They are supposed to create an environment in which teachers, 
students, and school boards can succeed; they are not supposed to serve 
as a national school board.
  Congressman Kline, the chairman of the House committee, and I 
released this report today. I call it to the attention of my 
colleagues. I call it to the attention of the Governors, teachers, 
organizations, and all who care about our schools.
  I can guarantee you that we are going to keep our eye on the ball and 
make sure that future regulations are within the authority of the law 
we passed and that this law--the most important law passed last year by 
this

[[Page 5742]]

Congress and signed by the President--is implemented the way Congress 
wrote it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

 Alexander, Kline: Nonpartisan Government Analysis Confirms Education 
          Department's Proposed Regulation Is Against the Law

       Washington, May 11.--A new report by the non-partisan 
     Congressional Research Service (CRS) finds the Department of 
     Education's proposed ``supplement not supplant'' regulation 
     goes beyond ``a plain language reading of the statute'' and 
     is likely against the law.
       The CRS report was prepared in response to broad 
     congressional interest in the proposed regulation on the new 
     law that replaced No Child Left Behind and whether the 
     department has the legal authority to issue the regulation. 
     The report found that the department's ``interpretation 
     appears to go beyond what would be required under a plain 
     language reading of the statute,'' and that proposed 
     regulation ``appear[s] to directly conflict with this 
     statutory language, which seems to place clear limits on [the 
     Education Department's] authority.'' The CRS report also 
     states that a ``legal argument could be raised that [the 
     Education Department] exceeded its statutory authority if it 
     promulgates the proposed [supplement not supplant] rules in 
     their current form.''
       Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-
     Tenn.) said: ``This report from the non-partisan 
     Congressional Research Service confirms that what the 
     Education Department is proposing is against the law. So now 
     Congress has told the education secretary it's against the 
     law, a government agency has researched it and said it's 
     against the law, and members of the negotiated rulemaking 
     committee who rejected it said it was against the law. I will 
     use every power of Congress to see that this law is 
     implemented the way Congress wrote it.''
       House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John 
     Kline (R-Minn.) said: ``The administration spent years 
     dictating national education policy and failed to deliver the 
     quality education every child deserves. Now, the department 
     seems determined to repeat its past mistakes. There is no 
     question this regulation would violate both the letter and 
     intent of the law, and it must be abandoned. Congress and the 
     administration promised to reduce the federal role and 
     restore local control, and we will use every available tool 
     to ensure that promise is kept.''
       In writing the new law last year, Congress debated and 
     ultimately chose to leave unchanged a provision in the law 
     often referred to as ``comparability.'' This provision in the 
     law says school districts have to provide at least comparable 
     services with state and local funding to Title I schools and 
     non-Title I schools.
       A separate provision, known as ``supplement not supplant'' 
     or SNS, is intended to keep local school districts from using 
     federal Title I dollars as a replacement for state and local 
     dollars in low-income schools.
       The department's proposed supplement not supplant 
     regulation attempts to change comparability by forcing school 
     districts to include teacher salaries in how they measure 
     their state and local spending and require that state and 
     local spending in Title I schools be at least equal to the 
     average spent in non-Title I schools.
       The department proposed the regulation to a negotiated 
     rulemaking committee in March, but the committee could not 
     reach agreement on the proposal. Wisconsin Superintendent 
     Tony Evers, a member of the rulemaking committee, warned that 
     ``Congressional intent isn't necessarily being followed 
     here.''
       On the question of the department's legal authority for its 
     regulations, CRS says: ``The Supreme Court often recites the 
     `plain meaning rule,' that, if the language of the statute is 
     plain and unambiguous, it must be applied according to its 
     terms. Thus, if the language of the statute is clear, there 
     is no need to look outside the statute to its legislative 
     history or other extrinsic sources in order to ascertain the 
     statute's meaning or underlying congressional intent.''
       ``In the draft proposed rule . . . the Education Department 
     (ED) provided only a limited discussion of how this statutory 
     language gives ED the legal authority to require parity in 
     expenditures in Title I-A and non-Title-I-A schools. 
     According to ED, the reason that the proposal requires that 
     Title I-A schools receive at least as much in state and local 
     funding as non-Title I-A schools is `so that Title I funds 
     can provide truly supplemental support in Title I schools.' . 
     . . . On its face, however, the plain language of the SNS 
     provisions does not appear to require such a result. Notably, 
     the statutory language does not establish any type of 
     standard or requirement regarding how to demonstrate that a 
     Title I-A school receives all of the state and local funds it 
     would have received in the absence of Title I-A funds. . . . 
     ED's interpretation appears to go beyond what would be 
     required under a plain language reading of the statute.''
       On the question of whether the law specifically prohibits 
     the department from requiring equalized spending, the report 
     says: ``(The Every Student Succeeds Act) retained the Title I 
     prohibition that states: `Nothing in this title shall be 
     construed to mandate equalized spending per pupil for a 
     State, local educational agency, or school.' The proposed SNS 
     regulations, however, appear to directly conflict with this 
     statutory language, which seems to place clear limits on ED's 
     authority. This prohibition against equalized spending thus 
     raises significant doubts about ED's legal basis for 
     proposing regulations that would require Title I-A per pupil 
     expenditures to meet or exceed those of non-Title-I-A 
     schools. . . . Congress's decision to expressly prohibit ED 
     from requiring equalized expenditures among schools indicates 
     that Congress did not intend to impose such a requirement in 
     the SNS context, particularly in light of the absence of 
     explicit language to the contrary.''
       On the question of Congressional intent for the department 
     to address comparability, the report says: ``Meanwhile, the 
     legislative history behind Title I's comparability provisions 
     raises similar questions about ED's legal authority to 
     establish the proposed SNS regulations in their current form. 
     Over the eight-year period during which Congress considered a 
     comprehensive reauthorization of the ESEA, several bills and 
     amendments were introduced that would have modified the 
     comparability provision to require that actual school-level 
     expenditures be used in the determination of comparability, 
     but none of these proposals have been adopted. Most recently, 
     during consideration of S. 1177 in the Senate Health, 
     Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Michael 
     Bennet offered and withdrew an amendment to require that 
     comparability determinations be based on state and local per-
     pupil expenditures (including actual personnel and non-
     personnel expenditures). Ultimately, the ESSA, which 
     comprehensively reauthorized the ESEA, did not make any 
     changes to the comparability requirement, leaving in place 
     the statutory prohibition on the use of staff salary 
     differentials for years of employment when determining 
     expenditures per pupil from state and local funds or 
     instructional salaries per pupil from state and local funds. 
     In other words, the ESSA did not alter the existing statutory 
     language that prohibits the use of staff salary differentials 
     for years of employment when determining expenditures per 
     pupil from state and local funds or instructional salaries 
     per pupil from state and local funds in making comparability 
     determinations.
       ``Thus, the proposed SNS regulations appear to effectively 
     require (local educational agencies) to use actual teacher 
     salaries for SNS purposes despite the fact that the ESSA did 
     not address this matter. Because a reviewing court could view 
     this legislative history as relevant evidence of 
     congressional intent to maintain current statutory 
     requirements related to comparability determinations, a court 
     could potentially conclude that ED lacks the statutory 
     authority to attempt to impose a similar requirement via 
     other methods, including promulgation of the proposed SNS 
     regulations.''
       The report concludes: ``Based on the plain language of the 
     above provisions in conjunction with the legislative history 
     and the statutory scheme as a whole, it therefore seems 
     unlikely that Congress intended section 1118(b) to authorize 
     ED to establish regulations that would require Title I-A per-
     pupil expenditures to meet or exceed those of non-Title-I-A 
     schools. Given some of the concerns identified above, it 
     seems that a legal argument could be raised that ED exceeded 
     its statutory authority if it promulgates the proposed SNS 
     rules in their current form.''
                                  ____


   [From the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions]

  Chairman Alexander: Already ``Disturbing Evidence'' That Education 
                   Department Is Ignoring the New Law

       Washington, DC, April 12.--Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-
     Tenn.) today said there is already ``disturbing evidence'' 
     that the Education Department is ignoring the law that 
     Congress passed in December and told the Education Secretary 
     he would use ``every power of Congress to make sure the law 
     is implemented the way we wrote it.''
       Alexander said that in a negotiated rulemaking session, 
     ``your department proposed a rule that would do exactly what 
     the law says it shall not do . . . Not only is what you're 
     doing against the law, the way you're trying to do it is 
     against another provision in the law.''
       Alexander was chairing the second of six planned oversight 
     hearings on the law passed last year to fix No Child Left 
     Behind. Education Secretary John King was today's witness.
       ``As Secretary, you have sworn to discharge your duties 
     faithfully, and in your confirmation hearing, you said you 
     would `abide by the letter of the law.' The importance of the 
     hearing today is to make sure that you and your employees are 
     doing just that,'' Alexander said.
       In writing the law last year, Congress debated and 
     ultimately chose to leave unchanged a provision in the law 
     often referred to as ``comparability,'' first put in there in 
     1970, that says school districts have to provide at least 
     comparable services with state

[[Page 5743]]

     and local funding to Title I schools and non-Title I schools.
       The law specifically says that school districts shall not 
     include teacher pay when they measure spending for purposes 
     of comparability.
       At today's hearing, Alexander said: ``To accomplish your 
     goals on comparability, you are using the so-called 
     `supplement not supplant' provision that is supposed to keep 
     local school districts from using federal Title I dollars as 
     a replacement for state and local dollars in low-income 
     schools.
       ``The department is forcing school districts to include 
     teacher salaries in how they measure their state and local 
     spending and require that state and local spending in Title I 
     schools be at least equal to the average spent in non-Title I 
     schools.''


               The chairman's prepared remarks are below

       Mr. Secretary, I urged the president to nominate an 
     Education Secretary because I thought it was important to 
     have a confirmed Secretary when the department was 
     implementing the new law fixing No Child Left Behind.
       As Secretary, you have sworn to discharge your duties 
     faithfully, and in your confirmation hearing, you said you 
     would ``abide by the letter of the law.''
       The importance of the hearing today is to make sure that 
     you and your employees are doing just that.
       Last year this committee worked to pass a bill that fixed 
     No Child Left Behind. The legislation signed by the president 
     passed the House 359-64. It passed the Senate 85-12. The 
     president called it a Christmas miracle.
       The reason we were able to achieve such unusual unanimity 
     and consensus is that people had gotten tired of the 
     Department of Education telling them so much of what they 
     ought to be doing.
       It wasn't just Republicans or governors who were fed up, it 
     was school superintendents, teachers, principals, parents, 
     state legislatures, school boards, and chief state school 
     officers.
       There hasn't been a broader coalition that's helped to pass 
     a law in a long time.
       The Department of Education had become a national school 
     board, telling Washington state how to evaluate teachers, 
     telling Kansas what their standards must be, and telling 
     Tennessee how to fix failing schools.
       The legislation we passed got rid of all that. And then--it 
     went further--to the extraordinary length of putting in 
     statute explicit prohibitions on the department in 
     anticipation of another effort at regulatory overreach.
       It's a dramatic change in direction for federal education 
     policy--the Wall Street Journal read it and said it's the 
     ``largest devolution of federal control to the states in a 
     quarter-century.''
       But it isn't worth the paper it's printed on if not 
     implemented properly.
       Today, we're holding our second hearing of at least six to 
     oversee the implementation of this law and already we are 
     seeing disturbing evidence of an Education Department that is 
     ignoring the law that each of this committee's 22 members 
     worked so hard to craft.
       It wasn't easy to pass a law that most of us could agree 
     to. As I said last year, there were crocodiles at every turn.
       One of them was an issue people call ``comparability.'' 
     They're talking about a provision in the Elementary and 
     Secondary Education Act, first put in there in 1970, that 
     says school districts have to provide at least comparable 
     services with state and local funding to Title I schools and 
     non-Title I schools.
       The law specifically says that school districts shall not 
     include teacher pay when they measure spending for purposes 
     of comparability.
       This committee has debated several times whether or not 
     teacher pay should be excluded. Senator Bennet felt very 
     strongly about his proposal to address this, and I felt 
     strongly about mine.
       Ultimately the United States Congress made two decisions 
     about this issue, as reflected in the law we passed:
       First, we chose not to change the comparability language in 
     law, so the law still says teacher pay shall not be included:
       Second, we added a requirement that school districts report 
     publicly the amount they are spending on each student, 
     including teacher salaries, so that parents and teachers know 
     how much money is being spent and can make their own 
     decisions about what to do with it, rather than the federal 
     government mandating it be used in comparability 
     calculations.
       The law that the president signed in December didn't do one 
     thing to change the law that teacher salaries not be 
     included.
       But here's what your department did on April 1--you tried 
     to do what Congress wouldn't do in Comparability by 
     regulating another separate provision in the law.
       In a negotiated rulemaking session, your department 
     proposed a rule that would do exactly what the law says it 
     shall not do--that is, force districts to include teacher 
     salaries in how they measure their state and local spending 
     and require that state and local spending in Title I schools 
     be at least equal to the average spent in non-Title I 
     schools.
       If your proposed rule were adopted, it would:
       1. Require a complete, costly overhaul of almost all the 
     State and local finance systems in the country.
       2. Require forcing teachers to transfer to new schools.
       3. Require states and school districts to move back to the 
     burdensome practice of detailing every individual cost on 
     which they spend money to provide a basic educational program 
     to all students, which is exactly what we were trying to free 
     states and districts from under this law.
       4. According to the Council of Great City Schools, it would 
     cost $3.9 billion just for their 69 urban school systems to 
     eliminate the differences in spending between schools.
       But I'm not interested in debating today whether what 
     you've proposed is a good idea or a bad one--the plain fact 
     of the matter is that the law specifically says you cannot do 
     it.
       Not only is what you're doing against the law, the way 
     you're trying to do it is against another provision in the 
     law.
       To accomplish your goals on comparability, you are using 
     the so-called ``supplement not supplant'' provision that is 
     supposed to keep local school districts from using federal 
     Title I dollars as a replacement for state and local dollars 
     in low-income schools.
       According to a Politico story published on December 18, the 
     former Secretary of Education said: ``Candidly, our lawyers 
     are much smarter than many of the folks who were working on 
     this bill.''
       We in Congress were smart enough to anticipate your 
     lawyers' attempts to rewrite the law.
       So we included specific prohibitions in the ``supplement 
     not supplant'' provision that would prohibit you from doing 
     the very thing you have proposed.
       Section 1118(b)(4), says ``Nothing in this section shall be 
     construed to authorize or permit the Secretary to prescribe 
     the specific methodology a local educational agency uses to 
     allocate State and local funds to each school receiving 
     assistance under this part.''; and
       Section 1605, says ``Nothing in this title shall be 
     construed to mandate equalized spending per pupil for a 
     State, local educational agency, or school.''
       I'll use every power of Congress to make sure the law is 
     implemented the way we wrote it, including our ability to use 
     the appropriations process and to overturn such regulations 
     once they are final.
       In addition, if you try to force states to follow these 
     regulations that ignore the laws we wrote, I'll encourage 
     them to request a hearing with the department. And if they 
     lose, I'll tell them to take you to court.
       Second, I'm not the only one who can read the law. You're 
     going to come right up against the broad coalition of groups 
     who helped pass this law--the governors, school 
     superintendents, teachers, principals, parents, state 
     legislatures, and school boards.
       They've already sent you a letter saying that ``Regulations 
     and accompanying guidance should clarify how supplement, not 
     supplant is separate and distinct from maintenance of effort 
     and comparability, and steer clear of anything that would 
     change or modify any of those provisions beyond the statutory 
     changes already signed into law.''
       Wisconsin Superintendent Tony Evers, a member of the 
     rulemaking committee, said last week that ``Congressional 
     intent isn't necessarily being followed here.''
       Noelle Ellerson of the school superintendents association, 
     says that the prohibitions in the law, ``in tandem with 
     Congress' deliberate act of leaving comparability unchanged, 
     makes a seemingly tight case against expanding supplement not 
     supplant.''
       You've testified here and in the House of Representatives 
     that you will ``abide by the letter of the law.''
       It's not abiding by the letter of the law to require local 
     school districts to use teacher salaries and equalize 
     spending between Title I and non-Title I schools when the law 
     prohibits you from doing that.
       It's not abiding by the letter of the law to use the 
     supplement not supplant provision to achieve your goals for 
     Comparability when Congress debated this issue and chose to 
     not make any changes in the law.
       I'm making a point of this today because we're at the 
     beginning of the implementation of a law that affects 3.4 
     million teachers and 50 million students in 100,000 public 
     schools.
       I'm determined to see that the law is implemented the way 
     Congress wrote it.
       I think it's important at the beginning of this 
     implementation to make sure that you and those who work at 
     the department understand that.
                                  ____


               [From Wall Street Journal, Apr. 18, 2016]

  Obama's Ed-Run--The Administration Tries To Dictate State and Local 
                             School Funding

       President Obama has no inhibitions about rewriting laws he 
     doesn't like--even those he's signed. Witness the 
     Administration's revision of the Every Student Succeeds Act 
     to allow the feds to regulate state and local school 
     spending.
       The law--which passed Congress last year with large 
     bipartisan majorities--devolved

[[Page 5744]]

     power to the states and rolled back some federal mandates. In 
     doing so, Congress rebuffed the White House's previous 
     attempts to direct local education policy with No Child Left 
     Behind waivers.
       Mr. Obama nonetheless hailed the law as a civil-rights 
     success that ``reflects many of the priorities of this 
     administration.'' One notable achievement was giving local 
     school districts more discretion over Title I funds, which 
     target poor students. Federal policy dating to 1970 requires 
     that Title I funds must supplement, rather than supplant, 
     state and local spending.
       This requirement isn't controversial, but school districts 
     still complained that the cost of completing the federal 
     paperwork to comply diverted resources from instruction. 
     Congress eased the burden by letting school districts 
     establish their own methodology to show compliance. The law 
     also prohibited the Secretary of Education from prescribing 
     the ``specific methodology a local educational agency uses to 
     allocate State and local funds'' or mandating ``equalized 
     spending per pupil for a State, local educational agency, or 
     school.''
       The Administration is now rewriting the parts of the law it 
     doesn't like. The Education Department recently proposed 
     assessing the local school district's compliance with the law 
     by whether a Title I school ``receives at least as much in 
     State and local funding as the average non-Title I school.'' 
     In other words, the Administration is trying to do exactly 
     what the law prohibits it from doing.
       Progressives want to force local school districts to 
     equalize spending among schools. Regardless of the policy 
     merits, this is impractical since staff compensation 
     represents more than 80% of school spending. Younger teachers 
     with lower base salaries are more likely to work at low-
     income schools due to seniority rules in labor agreements and 
     state laws.
       This is why the law forbids the feds from considering 
     ``staff salary differentials for years of employment'' when 
     assessing comparability between Title I and non-Title I 
     schools. Mandating equalized spending in Title I schools as 
     non-Title I schools would force states to rewrite their 
     education funding formulas and districts to redo their labor 
     agreements.
       Experienced teachers earning higher salaries might have to 
     be forcibly transferred to low-income schools. Or teachers at 
     Title I schools would have to be paid more. Another 
     alternative--and the goal on the left--is to compel school 
     districts to employ more staff at low-income schools. Alas, 
     the quantity of employees is a poor proxy for the quality of 
     education.
       This Administration line-item veto violates both the letter 
     and spirit of a law that was intended to reduce federal 
     control over education rather than increase it.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.


                           Amendment No. 3871

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I wish to take this time to speak on an 
amendment I have authored, amendment No. 3871, which will be voted on 
shortly--at 4:30 p.m. this afternoon.
  I was listening to my friend Senator Alexander. I know he was not 
talking about my amendment--he was talking about a different subject--
but I always listen to Senator Alexander because he always makes such 
important points. I couldn't agree with him more that laws are not 
worth the paper they are printed on unless they are implemented 
properly. That was a comment he made. That is the reason I filed 
amendment No. 3871.
  I wish to point out that Congress passed the Fish and Wildlife 
Coordination Act in 1958. It was that act which requires all Federal 
agencies to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the 
Department of the Interior and the head of the applicable State fish 
and game departments on water projects.
  The concern we have today is that we have many water projects that 
are being initiated--it could be a dam project, a levy project being 
done by the Army Corps--and they are required to work with the 
recommendations of Fish and Wildlife as it relates to the impacts these 
projects have on fish and wildlife. In fact, they are not doing it. 
That is the reason I authored this amendment, to carry out 
congressional intent--not congressional intent--what we wrote into the 
law so that it is very clear that as part of the consultation, U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife and the States are to determine the potential impact 
to wildlife resources, describe the damages that will be caused by the 
project, and develop mitigating measures to prevent those damages and 
improve wildlife resources. That is the current rule.
  The problem is that the Federal agencies are not required to adopt 
the recommendations. I understand that, but they must give the 
recommendations full consideration, and they are not doing that today. 
At least they are not doing it as much as we think they should be. That 
is the purpose for this amendment, to make it clear that we meant what 
we said when we passed the law--similar to what my good friend said in 
regard to the education bill we passed last year.
  The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act review is a longstanding and 
critically important component of water resources planning. Utilization 
of expert recommendations in these reviews makes sense.
  Let me underscore what we are talking about. Water projects are very 
important. I know that. I serve on the Environment and Public Works 
Committee, which is the authorizing committee on many of these issues, 
to get these water projects moving. I understand the challenges. But 
one of the purposes is to make sure we preserve fish and wildlife.
  Every year, hunting and fishing contribute $200 billion to our total 
economic activity, to our Nation's economy. It is a huge part of the 
reason we require that type of consultation and working together--in 
order that when these projects move forward, the recommendations that 
are made by Fish and Wildlife and our local government entities are 
totally consistent with our local communities, that they are heeded and 
taken into consideration so that we not only get the needed water 
projects but we also preserve our fish and wildlife habitats so that we 
don't endanger the species as part of the project.
  I wish to emphasize that not only is this an environmental issue, 
this is about State involvement. Not only does the Army Corps need to 
ensure that projects meet Federal environmental requirements, it needs 
to respect each State's unique situation. If State fish and wildlife 
experts express concern about a project, my amendment reiterates what 
the law already is. The Army Corps must listen. That is what it says. 
It is as simple as that.
  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It has the strong 
support of many of our wildlife federations. The National Wildlife 
Federation supports it. Izaak Walton League of America, the Theodore 
Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited, and wildlife 
federations from many of our States support it.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the letter in support of my amendment.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                   April 25, 2016.
     Re: Support Cardin Amendment 3871 to the Energy and Water 
         Appropriations Bill.

       Dear Senator: As organizations representing a broad range 
     of conservation, sportsmen and women, recreation, and outdoor 
     interests, we urge you to support Amendment 3871 to the 
     Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. This common sense, 
     cost-effective amendment will protect fish and wildlife, make 
     federal water projects better, and give a real voice to the 
     nation's state and federal fish and wildlife experts.
       Every year, hunting and fishing contribute $200 billion in 
     total economic activity to our nation's economy. Ensuring 
     that water resources projects are designed, built and 
     operated to sustain and improve fish and wildlife populations 
     is critical to this economy and to our sporting traditions.
       Since 1958, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act has 
     fully integrated state and federal fish and wildlife expert 
     review into the Army Corps of Engineers water resources 
     planning process. As part of the water resources project 
     review process, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluates 
     the impacts of proposed water resources projects and makes 
     recommendations to reduce the harm to fish and wildlife 
     resources. State fish and wildlife experts are also 
     encouraged to provide input under this process.
       Despite the extensive work undertaken by the Fish and 
     Wildlife Service and the states in analyzing projects and 
     developing important recommendations, the Army Corps of 
     Engineers often does not follow the expert recommendations 
     that are developed. When this happens, federal water projects 
     can cause significant, and entirely avoidable, harm to the 
     nation's fish and wildlife. Failing to follow these expert 
     recommendations also leads to mitigation plans that do not 
     work.
       Amendment 3871 would ensure that the recommendations of the 
     nation's fish and

[[Page 5745]]

     wildlife experts are fully accounted for during the planning 
     of water resources projects. This is a common sense, cost-
     effective way to protect our nation's wildlife and make water 
     projects better for all of us. Our organizations urge you to 
     vote yes on amendment 3871.
           Respectfully,
       National Wildlife Federation, Izaak Walton League of 
     America, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout 
     Unlimited, Arkansas Wildlife Federation, Conservation 
     Federation of Missouri, Nebraska Wildlife Federation, North 
     Carolina Wildlife Federation, South Dakota Wildlife 
     Federation, Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

  Mr. CARDIN. I encourage my colleagues to read the language of this 
amendment. It carries out current law. That is simply what it does. 
Current law requires this consideration by Fish and Wildlife on these 
projects.
  This amendment makes it clear that we want the Federal agencies to 
comply with the law. That is why we wrote it that way. And this 
amendment would make sure the intent of Congress in implementing the 
statute is, in fact, carried out.
  Mr. President, with that, 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. RUBIO. 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. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 
to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Zika Virus

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I come to the floor again today to discuss 
the Zika virus, which has been in the news quite often in my home State 
of Florida and internationally.
  In a moment, I want to enter into the Record a number of articles 
that have appeared just in the last week in papers across the State of 
Florida.
  On May 7, the newspaper in Pensacola had this headline: ``Panhandle 
conditions create a Zika 'powder keg.''' The argument it makes is that 
part of the State--as are many of the areas in the South--is an area 
where you find prevalent a species of mosquito which is the primary one 
that is now transmitting the Zika virus. It goes on to say that as 
temperatures rise and rainfall increases--these are the two elements 
that mosquitoes need to spread. So there is going to be a massive 
spread--as there is every year--in the specific species of mosquitoes 
that transmit the Zika virus in the panhandle of Florida.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the Pensacola News Journal article.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

    [From http://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/2016/05/07/panhandle-
conditions-create-zika-powder-keg/83698034/, May 7, 2016]

             Panhandle Conditions Create Zika `Powder Keg'

                          (By Carlos Gieseken)

       Nine out of 10 mosquito bites in Northwest Florida can be 
     attributed to the culprit known to scientists as aedes 
     albopictus and colloquially as the Asian Tiger.
       It is black and white and measures about a quarter of an 
     inch in length. It is the sister to aedes aegypti, best known 
     as the Yellow Fever Mosquito because of its past success at 
     delivering that disease. It is behind the numerous outbreaks 
     that caused panic and killed thousands in Pensacola between 
     1765 and 1905.
       Today the two are once again in the spotlight for all the 
     wrong reasons--they carry Zika, a virus suspected of causing 
     birth defects in Brazil and other Latin American countries as 
     well as the Caribbean.
       Aedes aegypti was prevalent in the Florida Panhandle until 
     the mid 1980s, said John P. Smith, a medical entomologist 
     with Florida State University at Panama City who has studied 
     insects that affect public health for more than 30 years.
       At that time, the Asian Tiger began to assert itself when 
     it came to the United States from Southeast Asia via the used 
     tire trade.
       ``They are both bad guys, no doubt about it,'' Smith said. 
     ``Or should I say bad girls. Only the females bite.''
       Both mosquitoes also spread yellow fever, dengue and 
     chikungunya.
       The Asian Tiger is found in high concentrations on the Gulf 
     Coast, creating a potential powder keg. This is because Zika 
     spreads when mosquitoes bite multiple people after biting an 
     infected person.
       To date, the Panhandle mosquito population has not been 
     infected. According to the Florida Department of Health, 
     there has been one case of Zika in Santa Rosa County in a 
     person who was infected while traveling abroad. As of Friday, 
     there have been 105 travel-related cases of Zika in Florida.
       A great deal of media ink and broadcast time has been spent 
     on the disease, but how worried should the Panhandle be?
       ``I think it is a real concern,'' Smith said, ``and worth 
     doing something to prevent it.''


                           Year-round concern

       But mosquito control technicians in Escambia and Santa Rosa 
     counties wage a year-round war against the tiny, slender 
     pests.
       When temperatures regularly hit 60 or above in March or 
     April, the teams start spraying to knock out the adult 
     mosquitoes who have hatched and begun their warm weather 
     pursuit for food, i.e. blood.
       But during the winter months, even in the coldest frost of 
     January or February, mosquito larvae can lie dormant, 
     stunting their own development to wait for warmer 
     temperatures before emerging.
       Keith Hussey and Temika Wilkes are the mosquito control 
     directors at Santa Rosa and Escambia counties, respectively. 
     Their staffs are out inspecting those places where mosquito 
     larvae lie like baby vampires through the brisk weather 
     months.
       They inspect drainage ditches, holding ponds and woodland 
     pools. They also do neighborhoods sweeps in search of man-
     made mosquito nurseries like old tires or other containers, 
     foreclosed homes and abandoned swimming pools.
       Larvicide and gambrusia fish, which are the size of guppies 
     and thrive in stagnant water where they feed on mosquito 
     larvae, are effective weapons.
       ``You can get more mosquitoes killed in a small pond of 
     water than you can when they fly away all over the place,'' 
     said Matthew Mello, Escambia County mosquito control 
     supervisor.
       FSU's Smith monitors 12 sites in Santa Rosa County. The 
     mosquito control personnel in that county use his data to 
     help strategize where and when they treat for mosquitoes. He 
     and his staff also test the mosquitoes for diseases they are 
     known to carry.
       Escambia County's mosquito control budget for fiscal year 
     2015 to 2016 is just under $620,000. Santa Rosa County's 
     budget this year is $495,000, and has proposed a budget of 
     $594,518 for next year.
       Smith said that because of the size of the area that needs 
     to be covered, ``The programs in Northwest Florida are some 
     of the poorest funded throughout the state.''
       Bay County and other counties have specific taxing 
     districts that are used to raise millions of dollars to 
     combat mosquitoes. Their programs include aerial spraying 
     from helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, public education 
     programs and more staff who can cover more area.
       The amount of local funding is enough to handle day-to-day 
     and regular mosquito season needs, officials from Escambia 
     and Santa Rosa counties say. But is it enough should a Zika 
     infection break out locally, instead of from a far flung 
     place?
       ``The county's mosquito control program has adequate funds 
     to fulfill its mission and has successfully protected the 
     residents from disease spread by mosquitoes for many years,'' 
     said Ron Hixon, environmental manager for Santa Rosa County 
     in a statement. ``Every year the county reviews its funding 
     for mosquito control based on prior years mosquito data to 
     ensure adequate funds are available.''
       ``Please be assured that the Santa Rosa County 
     Environmental Department staff, specifically its Mosquito 
     Control division staff, are actively monitoring the Zika 
     situation and that the SRC Board of County Commissioners are 
     ready to deploy whatever resources are necessary to protect 
     the residents of Santa Rosa County,'' he said.
       The Florida Department of Health said in a statement that 
     it has an incident management team in its central office in 
     Tallahassee. It coordinates with the state departments of 
     agriculture and environmental protection as well as the 
     Division of Emergency Management, the governor's office, 
     VISIT Florida and others. Escambia County's Wilkes said 
     ``operations are currently funded at a level that supports 
     effective mosquito control. However, just like during a 
     hurricane or other natural disaster, if we were to have a 
     Zika outbreak and a subsequent state of emergency, we would 
     need additional funding for supplies and overtime costs.''

  Mr. RUBIO. The second article says: ``Zika findings could be 'game 
changers,' opening doors to research.'' It begins by saying:

       Two groups of scientists reported Wednesday that fetal mice 
     infected with Zika showed brain damage, a finding that 
     confirms the prevailing view that the virus can disrupt the 
     development of fetal brains in humans and provides a clearer 
     avenue to study the problem.
       The work should put to rest lingering doubts in some 
     quarters that the Zika outbreak sweeping through Latin 
     America and

[[Page 5746]]

     the Caribbean is responsible for a surge in babies born with 
     microcephaly and other brain anomalies.

  It goes on to quote an associate professor of pathology at the 
University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who says:

       Let me put it bluntly: These are game changers. . . . We 
     need to move forward now.

  There is an article dated May 10 in the Miami Herald: ``Two new Zika 
cases in Miami-Dade raise state total to 109.''

       Florida health officials confirmed two new Zika infections 
     in Miami-Dade on Tuesday, raising the statewide total to 109 
     people who have contracted the virus this year, more than any 
     state.
       In Miami-Dade, where most of Florida's Zika cases have been 
     reported, 44 people have been infected with the virus, said 
     the state health department, but the disease has not been 
     transmitted locally by mosquito bites. Broward County has 
     reported 15 cases of Zika.

  At about 5 o'clock today, I will meet with the Governor of our State, 
who is here asking for Federal aid to prepare for and combat the virus 
in the State of Florida.
  The Governor said:

       It's going to get warmer, we're going to have more 
     rainfall, we're probably going to see more mosquitoes in our 
     state. Our federal government has a variety of plans they're 
     talking about. . . . We've got to address the Zika issue. 
     Hopefully, we can get ahead of it.

  But it isn't just limited to Florida. This is an article from USA 
TODAY dated May 6, 2016: ``Gulf Coast could be ground zero for Zika.''

       The Gulf Coast may know hurricanes, but this year the 
     region of 60 million people could find itself unprepared and 
     at ground zero for a different type of storm: a mosquito-
     borne Zika epidemic.
       A look at the region's urban hubs, small towns and rural 
     outposts shows a patchwork of preparedness. Cities such as 
     Houston have robust plans in place, while smaller towns, such 
     as Corpus Christi, Texas, struggle with fewer resources.

  This is just part of painting an overall picture of this very serious 
problem.
  I would just say that the notion that we should only be worried about 
Florida or the States on the gulf coast alone would not be wise. 
Mosquitoes that infect people are found in 30 of the 50 States in this 
country. There are now Zika infections and Zika cases in multiple 
States across the country.
  We now know that Zika isn't just transmitted from mosquitoes but can 
also be sexually transmitted. In fact, the only case of transmission in 
Florida was one that was sexually transmitted in Central Florida.
  As we debate all these other important issues, this is a looming 
public health crisis. This is the situation we are now facing in this 
country. The time to act has come. The moment to act has come because 
right now in this body and in Washington, DC, we are facing a debate 
about this issue, about how much money we are going to spend on it.
  Look, the President has proposed $1.9 billion to deal with it. About 
$500 million of that is designed to pay back the Ebola funding that has 
been used in the short term to fill in the gap, but the rest of it is 
for real programs that go into dealing with this issue and particularly 
dealing with it on the island of Puerto Rico, which has been 
disproportionately impacted. When I hear people say there haven't been 
any cases of Zika transmitted in the United States, they are wrong. 
People of Puerto Rico are American citizens. They travel to the 
mainland extensively. It is our responsibility to also fight and care 
for them in this process.
  But the bottom line is that it is not a question of if, it is a 
question of when. There will be a mosquito transmission of Zika in the 
continental United States at some point over next few days, weeks, or 
months. We cannot get caught unprepared to deal with the consequences. 
The consequences, by the way, are not just to pregnant women, which in 
and of itself is reason to act--I don't mean to diminish it. The impact 
on pregnant women and their unborn children is extraordinary and 
devastating. The science on that is indisputable. We are seeing 
evidence of it all across the world and especially the Western 
Hemisphere being impacted by it. That alone is reason to act. But there 
is now a definitive link between Zika and Guillain-Barre syndrome, 
which is a debilitating, often fatal neurological condition that we 
know is associated with this.
  By the way, these children who are being born after being infected in 
the womb with Zika, we don't know what the long-term prognosis is. Just 
because they are not born with microcephaly does not mean they will not 
suffer from other neurological deficiencies or other neurological 
conditions in the years to come. We simply don't know. It is not just a 
first-trimester threat anymore. We now know Zika can be transmitted and 
can do serious damage in the second trimester as well.
  We know that soon the Olympic games will be played in Brazil, and 
that means hundreds of thousands of people will travel from and through 
the United States to the Olympics and back. We know we have constant 
visitors coming in and out of this country. How else would we get 109 
cases in Florida? These are people who have either traveled abroad or 
have been infected by a partner in the one case I have cited.
  This is an issue we should jump on with a real sense of urgency. It 
is a Federal responsibility to be involved in this. It is the job of 
the Federal Government to keep our people safe from external threats, 
and Zika today is an external threat spreading to this country--a 
country that is at the epicenter of global commerce and transit. It is 
just a matter of time before someone contracts Zika through a mosquito 
bite in the United States, and we have not prepared for it.
  Localities and States are doing the best they can with their limited 
resources, but they do not have the comprehensive resources the Federal 
Government can bring to bear. They do not have the resources for 
research the Federal Government can bring to bear. They do not have the 
ability to deal with it at the ports of entry the way the Federal 
Government can. These are important priorities I hope we will move on.
  In the last few hours, I have heard encouraging reports that there 
are a number of efforts going on behind the scenes in the Senate--at 
least one of them in a bipartisan way--to begin to address this issue. 
Over the next few hours, we will meet with the different stakeholders 
and others who are engaged in this issue to see if we can come up with 
a way forward.
  Here is what I hope we will not do. I hope we will not politicize 
this issue. Zika is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. It 
shouldn't be a campaign issue, although I promise it will become one if 
we have a Zika outbreak in the United States and we are back home doing 
our constituent work and not here voting. People are going to ask: Why 
did you do nothing on this issue? You knew it was coming. It was 
clearly broadcasted and predicted. All the indicators were there and 
nothing happened. Inaction on this is, quite frankly, inexcusable. I 
don't believe voters will excuse us for refusing to act on this.
  This should not be a political issue. It should not be a partisan 
issue. It shouldn't be used for one party to beat up on the other. 
There are so many other issues we can fight over but not on this--not 
where the real lives of real people are at stake. My hope is very 
soon--and I mean in the next couple of days--we can bring before this 
body a way forward on this issue that brings both parties together and 
that deals with this public health crisis in a responsible way.
  Let me say, look, we are running a debt in this country. So if there 
is a way to pay for it--and I believe there can be a way to pay for 
it--I am all for that. I have ideas about how we can come up with some 
of that money. We can find $1.4 billion, $1.5 billion, $1.9 billion to 
pay for this, and I think we should endeavor to do so, but even if we 
cannot, we should never allow the inability to agree on how to pay for 
it to stand in the way of addressing a public health crisis that 
threatens to become a public health catastrophe. I prefer that we pay 
for it. I am for that, but I am not going to let an objection to that 
stand in the way of addressing this issue.

[[Page 5747]]

  So through all the other issues we are debating today, from 
Presidential campaigns to water projects, I still do not believe we 
have given sufficient intensity, urgency or attention to this 
burgeoning issue that threatens the safety and security of our people. 
So it is my hope that over the next few hours and days we can come 
forward in a bipartisan way with a way forward, and I will continue to 
work to address and to achieve that.
  With that, 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. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


             Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise to address the issue of vacancies 
on the Federal bench in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
  In the 5\1/2\ years I have been in the Senate, I have sought to find 
common ground with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, with 
considerable success--and sometimes we continue to search for that 
success--whether it is legislation to prevent pedophiles from 
infiltrating our classrooms or working to fight this terrible scourge 
of opioid abuse and overdoses in Pennsylvania or trying to keep guns 
out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill.
  One of the accomplishments of which I am most proud is the work I 
have done with Senator Casey to fill vacancies as they have occurred on 
the Federal bench in Pennsylvania. Senator Casey and I have developed a 
fairly elaborate process. We are blessed to have very talented men and 
women who have volunteered their time, energy, and expertise to help us 
identify and vet candidates when a vacancy occurs, to recommend those 
candidates, and to begin a process by which we can get some of the best 
and brightest people in Pennsylvania who are able and willing to serve 
on the Federal bench to do exactly that.
  Using this process, Senator Casey and I have gotten together, we have 
agreed, and we have recommended to the President, the President has 
then nominated, and this Senate has confirmed 16 men and women to the 
Federal bench in Pennsylvania; 14 are district court judges, 2 circuit 
court judges. There are only two States in the Union that have 
confirmed more Federal judges in this period of time, and those are the 
very large States of California and New York, which have had 
considerably more vacancies. This makes a difference for the people of 
Pennsylvania.
  For instance, because Senator Casey and I have cooperated this way, 
we have been able to fill empty courthouses--Federal courthouses which 
have sat vacant where people do not have convenient access to justice. 
In the cities of Reading, Williamsport, and Easton, vacant courthouses 
are no longer vacant because through our work we now have Federal 
judges sitting, hearing, and trying cases, and providing justice in 
those communities.
  Despite what has been a very successful record so far, we have more 
work to be done. We have vacancies in Pennsylvania now. As a matter of 
fact, there are currently four district court--district court--
nominations for Pennsylvania that are pending in the Senate. Two are 
still being reviewed by the Judiciary Committee, and two have been 
approved by the committee. They have had their hearing, they have had 
their markup, they have voted, they have been successfully reported out 
of committee, and they are on the Executive Calendar.
  For some time, Senator Casey and I have been working to get all four 
of these nominees through the process and confirmed, and I strongly 
believe all four should be confirmed.
  Today, I want to focus in particular on two, and those are the two 
who have already been successfully reported out of committee. They are 
now listed on the Executive Calendar. These are vacancies that are 
especially concerning to me, because in one case the Federal courthouse 
in Erie, PA--the fourth biggest city in Pennsylvania--has a vacant 
courthouse. It is vacant. It has been vacant for almost 3 years. For 
almost 3 years, there has been no Federal judge able to hear cases, and 
so the people in Erie and the surrounding counties have very long 
travel distances. They have to go all the way down to Pittsburgh or 
take a very long drive to get to another Federal courthouse, and that 
is not right. It is not right for the people of Erie, and it is not 
right for the people of Northwestern Pennsylvania generally. We have 
another district judgeship in the Western District of Pennsylvania that 
likewise has been vacant for almost 3 years.
  Here is what I want to stress: The two nominees for these judgeships 
who I am talking about would fill judgeships that have been vacant far 
longer than any other pending on the Executive Calendar. There are 
other nominees pending on the Executive Calendar. I get that. There are 
people who want to confirm every one of them. I understand that, but no 
vacancies have been outstanding for as long as these two vacancies for 
which we have two qualified candidates who have been successfully 
reported out of committee, and they are very well-qualified nominees. 
In fact, I want to talk briefly about each of them.
  Judge Susan Baxter has a very impressive 34 years of legal 
experience, including over 20 years serving as a Federal magistrate 
judge and over a decade as a practicing lawyer in both the public and 
private sectors. She spent 3 years as a teacher. She completed her 
education at two of Pennsylvania's very impressive schools, getting her 
law degree from Temple and her undergraduate degree from Penn State. 
Judge Baxter has agreed to sit in the Erie courthouse, which would 
eliminate the problem of a vacant Federal courthouse in the city of 
Erie.
  Marilyn Horan is the other judge. Judge Horan likewise has extensive 
legal experience for 37 years, 20 of those years as a judge in the 
Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas in Butler County, PA; 17 years as a 
practicing lawyer, including 14 as a partner in a law firm. Judge Horan 
likewise attended two terrific Pennsylvania schools. She got her law 
degree from the Pittsburgh School of Law and her undergraduate degree 
from Penn State.
  There is no question in my mind, both of these women will make 
outstanding additions to the Federal bench in Pennsylvania. I believe 
the seats they will fill, if they are confirmed by the Senate, have 
been vacant too long. Three years is just far too long.
  Yesterday my colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, made a 
unanimous consent request for these 2 Pennsylvania judges but also 9 
others, for a total of 11. I was not on the Senate floor at the time. 
Had I been, I would have voiced my support for that request, and I 
would have agreed to that vote. Unfortunately, Leader McConnell 
disagreed and raised an objection. So we find ourselves stuck at zero: 
We have nobody pending for confirmation. We have our colleagues on the 
other side saying let's have 11 judges confirmed.
  I am suggesting a slightly different course. How about we try a step 
in the right direction? How about we vote on these 2 judges, 2 of the 
11? That is not the entire slate, but it is not zero. They are the two 
judges who would fill the vacancies that have been vacant the longest.
  These women represent real bipartisan cooperation. One was initially 
suggested to the President by Senator Casey. I suggested the other. One 
is a Democrat. The other is a Republican. The other seats have had 
vacancies for far shorter periods of time.
  So I think this would be progress if we could simply agree to have a 
vote on these two nominees, then see where we go from there. Let's get 
off this all-or-nothing, 0-or-11 situation, and let's confirm the two 
judges who would fill the vacancies that have lasted the longest.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to 
executive session to consider the following

[[Page 5748]]

nominations: Calendar Nos. 460 and 461 en bloc; that the Senate vote on 
the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; that if 
confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon 
the table en bloc; that the President be immediately notified of the 
Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session without 
any intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
  On the Executive Calendar, there is a queue of judges who have come 
out of the Judiciary Committee and are ready for floor action. By my 
count, along that queue, the two Pennsylvania judges my distinguished 
colleague refers to are Nos. 9 and 10; Senator Jack Reed's and my Rhode 
Island judge is No. 8. We would very much like to enter into an 
agreement where these judges start to be moved in regular order--as we 
often say we like around here--through the queue, as is the tradition 
in the Senate, so we can get them all cleared.
  The senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Casey, as the junior 
Senator mentioned, came here to move a larger block. I would not object 
to this request if it were amended to include all 10 of those judges on 
the Executive Calendar, down to and including the two Pennsylvania 
judges to whom my distinguished colleague refers. That would be 
Calendar Nos. 307, 357, 358, 359, 362, 363, 364, the all-important 459 
from Rhode Island, and 460 and 461.
  So if the Senator from Pennsylvania would amend his unanimous consent 
request to accommodate that, then I would not object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator so modify the request?
  The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, parliamentary question.
  I am not sure whether the majority leader's objection was to Senator 
Toomey's unanimous consent request or to my attempt to modify it. If it 
was to the former, we are moot, and this conversation has concluded. If 
not, then I will object if I cannot get the regular order for the 
judges ahead.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard on the modification.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, my understanding--what I intended to do 
was to object to the modification offered by the distinguished Senator 
from Rhode Island.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, with that clarification, I must 
regrettably object to the unanimous consent request propounded by the 
junior Senator from Pennsylvania. But I do hope very much that we can 
find a way to work toward getting these judges confirmed. These are 
judges who came out of the Judiciary Committee, which is a fairly 
contentious committee, unanimously. They are district judges. If we 
can't move them, then I suggest the Senate is really not working the 
way it ought to, and I very much hope we can get to a place where we 
can move them all.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I think it bears repeating again what I 
have said the last few days. If you look at the Barack Obama years--he 
will ultimately have 8 years in the White House--and the George W. Bush 
8 years in the White House, and you draw a line at this point in their 
Presidencies, Barack Obama has gotten 21 more lifetime appointments, 
Federal judges, than George W. Bush did during the same period. By any 
objective standard, President Obama has been treated more than fairly 
during the course of his Presidency--much more fairly than George W. 
Bush was treated during the same period of his Presidency.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to make it clear that I did not 
have an objection to the modification of the unanimous consent request 
that was made by the Senator from Rhode Island.
  I think Senator McConnell makes a valid point about judicial 
vacancies that have occurred under President Obama. But where we 
disagree is that I think right before us we have excellent candidates 
who have been vetted by both sides. They have been chosen by both 
sides. They have come through the process. They have had their 
hearings. They have been reported out by the committee. It does not 
serve the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to have to 
continue to wait.
  I am not finished in this effort. I am stymied today. I must say that 
I am disappointed that my friends on the other side can't agree to make 
some progress. It is not as though I am, for instance, asking that only 
Republican judges be confirmed or only judges who are chosen by 
Republicans. I am not asking that. We have a Democrat and a Republican, 
chosen by my Democratic colleague and myself, and I understand they are 
not in the sequence that is traditionally dealt with. But we are at an 
impasse here. They are the two judges who would fill the vacancies that 
have lasted the longest, through no fault of their own. I am trying to 
find a way to get somewhere between 0 and 11, neither of which is 
accepted. This is a very frustrating and disappointing moment, but I am 
not going to give up trying.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me add to what the distinguished 
Senator from Pennsylvania has said by noting first that the impasse to 
which he refers is created by his own leadership, which refused to 
bring up judges that have come out of the Judiciary Committee 
unanimously.
  There is a problem here. It is one that can be solved within the 
Republican caucus. We can't very much help with that, but we hope that 
a solution comes.
  The second point is that the question here should not be viewed only 
as to whether the President is being treated fairly but that there are 
vacancies on Federal courts, and it is our responsibility to provide 
advice and consent. We have a duty of fairness to the constituents who 
have empty seats in courtrooms, and we have a duty of fairness to the 
candidates--the nominees--who have put their lives on hold with the 
expectation that they would be treated fairly by the Senate. That is 
our job--to treat nominees fairly and to see to our constituents' 
needs. It is not just a question of numbers and who is President.
  I yield the floor.
  I appreciate the persistence of both colleagues from Pennsylvania, 
and I am sure we will continue to do this until we make some headway.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                 Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act

  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, today is an excellent day for students 
across the country who are taking out college student loans. For the 
upcoming school year, the Treasury auction just took place on 10-year 
notes. Some folks might ask: What is the connection with student loans 
and Treasury notes?
  Three years ago, Senator Alexander, myself, Senator Manchin, Senator 
King, and others said something very simple: We are going to get 
politicians out of the business of setting student loan rates, and we 
are going to let the marketplace do it. That was a wise decision, as 
was the law we passed--the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act. Since 
2013 it has saved students and their parents $36 billion in taking out 
student loans. We will save another $10 billion again this year. That 
means that 200,000 North Carolinians--students and their parents--are 
saving even more on student loans. Those 200,000 North Carolinians take 
out about $500 million in student loans to

[[Page 5749]]

attend universities and colleges. Because of this law, they have been 
saving. Because of today's Treasury auction, they are going to save 
even more. They are going to save about $1.1 billion across my State 
alone because of the reduction in the Treasury note from a little over 
4 percent on the 10-year to 3.76 today.
  Congressional Research Service tells us that about $4,500 less will 
be paid out for a 4-year degree. I hold this up because I think this is 
indicative of where we are this year--the lowest student loan rate 
since the year 2004. I know this is a debate not only within the body 
of the Senate and the House but also on the campaign trail for our 
Presidential candidates.
  Prior to 2013, interest rates had been written into law by 
politicians and were essentially set at 6.8 percent. Many of us looked 
at it and said: This is insane. For the protection of American 
taxpayers, it ought to be tied to some financial instrument. So we tied 
it to the 10-year bond. Since that point, taxpayers--specifically, 
students and their parents--have saved $36 billion because we decoupled 
it from the political process here.
  In fact, those interest rates have dropped significantly since last 
year--4.29 percent to 3.76 percent today. That means about $40 more per 
month in the average graduate's pocket. It means $4,500 more overall in 
saved costs.
  What would have happened if we hadn't come together to pass this law? 
Students would have shelled out another $46 billion in student loan 
interest payments. This is one thing that Congress can hold up, and we 
can highlight the fact that we did something responsible. For those who 
claim we haven't done anything about the high cost of student loans, 
let me suggest to you that we have done a lot. We have saved parents 
and students $46 billion. We probably could save them more than that 
if, in fact, we didn't divert some of the proceeds that the Government 
gets off of student loans to the Affordable Care Act by about $2 
billion a year.
  We ran into significant pushback from several Members of this body. 
In fact, 18 Members of this body, mostly from the other party, opposed 
this law. The junior Senator from Vermont called it a disaster for 
young people in our country looking to go to college. This law was also 
vocally opposed by the senior Senator from Massachusetts. But today, it 
demonstrates the shortsightedness that was displayed then. Today, 
because of what we did in a bipartisan fashion passed by this body, 
parents and students have saved $46 billion, and in North Carolina this 
next year, it is projected that they will save another $1.1 billion in 
interest payments on their student loans. This is a day that Congress 
can be proud of because we have done something good for the American 
people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Senator from 
North Carolina. He was the leader in 2013, along with Senator Manchin 
and Senator Coburn, who was here at the time--I was a little bit 
involved at the time--and Senator Angus King from Maine. We worked with 
the President and with the House. The Senator is exactly right. The 
decision that Senator Burr and others made, persuading this Congress 
and working with the President in 2013 to take the student loan 
interest rate out of politics and tie it to a certain rate, today 
reduces the rate by 0.5 percent for nearly 6.4 million students and 
saves millions and millions of dollars on student loans.
  There is a lot of talk about student loans and the cost of them. Some 
people don't look at all aspects of them. In Tennessee, the independent 
colleges and universities have pointed out to me that the new overtime 
rule proposed by the Department of Labor would add as much as $850 per 
student to the cost of tuition at all of the independent colleges in 
Tennessee, which is an outrageous thing to be doing.
  Here is an example of real leadership, real action, and real results 
by the Senator from North Carolina, the Senator from Maine, and the 
Senator from West Virginia, who by their action in 2013, working with 
the President, have reduced the cost of going to college for 6.4 
million American students. A lot of people can talk; some people can 
get a result.
  The Senator from North Carolina, the Senator from Maine, and the 
Senator from West Virginia got a result. I thank them for it. Let's 
give credit where the credit is due. President Obama was instrumental 
in that decision. He worked with Senator Harkin and with others in 
helping us come to an agreement.
  For those who think that things can't get done, things do get done 
here, and sometimes they help people who would like to have the help. 
Congratulations to Senator Burr for saving millions of dollars for 
students who are taking out student loans.
  Mr. President, in just a moment, we will have two votes on the Energy 
and Water appropriations act. The first is on the amendment by the 
Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin. The second vote is on the amendment 
by the Senator from Nebraska, Mrs. Fischer. Other than a voice vote on 
Senator Flake's amendment, those are the last votes on amendments that 
we have for the Energy and Water appropriations bill.
  As soon as the majority leader and the Democratic leader agree that 
we can schedule the vote on final passage--either later today or 
tomorrow--for the first time since 2009, we will have completed an 
Energy and Water bill in regular order across the floor of the Senate, 
which every single Member of this body has a chance to participate in, 
rather than just having the 30 members of the Appropriations Committee 
and then everybody else being presented with a great big omnibus bill 
at the end of the year, which they really don't have a chance to 
change.
  Everybody had a chance to weigh in on this. About 80 Senators did 
before it came to the floor. We will have considered about 21 more 
amendments. It has been a very good process. There were a couple of 
bumps, but this is the Senate. We deal with the bumps. I thank Senator 
Cardin for his contributions and Senator Fischer for hers. When we are 
through with that, we hope to finish the bill.


                       Vote on Amendment No. 3871

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is on 
agreeing to amendment No. 3871, offered by the Senator from Tennessee, 
Mr. Alexander, for the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 39, nays 60, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 69 Leg.]

                                YEAS--39

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

                                NAYS--60

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

[[Page 5750]]



                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Sanders
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.


                       Vote on Amendment No. 3888

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). Under the previous order, the 
question is on agreeing to amendment No. 3888, offered by the Senator 
from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, for the Senator from Nebraska, Mrs. 
Fischer.
  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 70 Leg.]

                                YEAS--52

     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--47

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Reid
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Sanders
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
  The majority leader.

                          ____________________