[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9491-9513]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  2016

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 2578, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2578) making appropriations for the 
     Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related 
     Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and 
     for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Shelby/Mikulski amendment No. 4685, in the nature of a 
     substitute.
       McConnell (for McCain) amendment No. 4787 (to amendment No. 
     4685), to amend section 2709 of title 18, United States Code, 
     to clarify that the Government may obtain a specified set of 
     electronic communication transactional records under that 
     section, and to make permanent the authority for individual 
     terrorists to be treated as agents of foreign powers under 
     the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
       McConnell motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on 
     Appropriations for a period of 14 days.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah, the President Pro 
Tempore.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted 
to complete my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Social Security Trustees' Reports

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, a few weeks ago I came to the floor to 
discuss the situation surrounding President Obama's nominees to serve 
as public trustees on the board of trustees for the various Social 
Security and Medicare trust funds. At that time, I noted that these 
nominations had become the center of a political firestorm. Sadly, that 
firestorm has continued in the weeks since I last spoke about this 
issue. While I have little desire to delve into what is a manufactured 
controversy, I do want to take some time to note how some events taking 
place this week should impact this particular debate.
  Tomorrow, the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees will 
release their annual reports, providing their assessment of the past, 
present, and projected future financial conditions of the trust funds. 
For decades, these reports have largely been devoid of politics, which 
is important because it allows policymakers and the general public to 
trust the numbers that are reported.
  Currently, there are four senior Obama administration officials who 
serve as trustees on these various Boards. There are also two positions 
for public trustee--one from each party according to the law--that are 
currently vacant. While it is not unheard of for the Boards to issue 
their reports without confirmed public trustees in

[[Page 9492]]

place, this administration has issued more trustees' reports with 
vacancies in the public trustee positions than any other 
administration.
  In a recent article in the Huffington Post, Senators Warren, Schumer, 
and Whitehouse put forth some serious allegations of political 
tampering with recent Social Security trustees' reports, stemming, 
according to their arguments, from the supposed undue influence of one 
particular public trustee. That trustee, Dr. Charles Blahous, has been 
renominated by President Obama.
  Specifically, these Senators alleged in their article that, due 
solely to the presence of this single public trustee on the Board, 
nefarious assumptions were somehow inserted into the trustees' report 
analysis, leading the report to overstate the financial challenges 
facing Social Security. My good friend, Senator Schumer of New York, 
echoed the very same allegations in a recent Finance Committee markup 
where we favorably reported President Obama's nominees for public 
trustee. And, I emphasize, these are President Obama's nominees.
  In the words of these prominent and outspoken Senators, the 2014 
Social Security trustees' report, ``curiously incorporated a number of 
assumptions playing up the potential of future insolvency of the 
program--a key talking point in the right-wing war on Social 
Security.'' Moreover, according to those Senators, the assumptions 
``were so troublesome that the independent Chief Actuary for Social 
Security took the unprecedented step of writing a public statement of 
actuarial opinion disagreeing with the report.'' They go on to say that 
``after similarly questionable elements appeared in the 2015 report, 
the Chief Actuary reported this extraordinary public rebuke.''
  These assumptions--and Dr. Blahous's very presence on the Board--are, 
according to my colleagues, part of an effort funded and directed by 
the infamous Koch brothers to dismantle Social Security and further an 
anti-government agenda. In fact, their article was ridiculously titled 
``The Koch Brothers Are Trying To Handpick Government Officials. We 
Have To Stop Them.''
  These are serious allegations that call into question the integrity 
of the annual trustees' reports. Yet my colleagues have stated these 
allegations repeatedly in various forms, from committee hearings, to 
Twitter feeds, to campaign fundraising materials, all without any 
apparent regard for these implications. Worst of all, the charges are 
also patently false, and they cannot be supported by fact, reason, or 
even common sense.
  Setting aside the almost paranoid and conspiratorial tone my 
colleagues have used when making these claims and even assuming, for 
the sake of argument, that supposedly questionable assumptions were 
baked into those trustees' reports, there is simply no remotely 
possible way that they were used solely because of Dr. Blahous's 
influence. Given the structure of these Boards, if a single public 
trustee were able to have such a pernicious influence on assumptions 
incorporated into reports that warranted some sort of alert from the 
Chief Actuary, then all of the other trustees--Treasury Secretary Lew, 
Labor Secretary Perez, Health and Human Services Secretary Burwell, 
Acting Commissioner of Social Security Colvin, the Democratic Public 
Trustee Robert Reischauer--and their staffs were either complicit in 
the perverse distortions or were too incompetent and powerless to 
detect them. Give me a break.
  In other words, although they conveniently overlook these facts, when 
my colleagues publicly indict the integrity of the Social Security 
trustees' reports, they are implicitly and necessarily calling into 
question the competence and efficiency of senior members of President 
Obama's Cabinet and, really, that of President Obama himself, who 
renominated Dr. Blahous to serve a second term.
  Of course, being honest about the makeup of the Board and the process 
by which these reports are compiled would make fundraising emails and 
campaign commercials, not to mention inflammatory entries on a 
Senator's Twitter feed, far less compelling. Recognizing this, my 
colleagues have opted to simply imply that Dr. Blahous--only one of the 
whole number of those on the Board--was solely responsible for 
allegedly questionable contents of the reports, apparently hoping no 
one will fact-check their assertions. I have to, as chairman of the 
Senate Finance Committee, fact-check these not so very honest 
assertions.
  Sadly, no one from the Obama administration has stepped forward to 
defend the President's nominee and refute these wild claims. More 
curious, however, is the fact that no one from the administration has 
publicly come forth to defend themselves from these Senators' charges 
of apparent incompetence and powerlessness in the face of Dr. Blahous's 
dastardly influence. I think we need a clearer picture of what went on 
in the compiling of those reports.
  In order to clear the air on this, I sent letters earlier today to 
the administration officials who sit on the Board to see if they agree 
with the claim that the reports they all willingly signed included some 
unwarranted assumptions designed to undermine Social Security and 
requesting that they provide me with a full briefing on the issue.
  Of course, the absurdity of my various colleagues' claims goes beyond 
their implicit condemnation of members of President Obama's Cabinet 
because these senior officials were not the only line of defense 
standing between the report and the alleged conspiracy to take down 
Social Security.
  If these reports included some pernicious assumptions, they not only 
slipped by the Secretaries of Treasury, Labor, and HHS, and the Acting 
Social Security Commissioner, they must also have had to slip the 
notice of 10 members of the 2015 Technical Panel on Assumptions and 
Methods, which was commissioned by the Social Security Advisory Board 
and contained many recognized and highly respected experts, including a 
Nobel Prize-winning economist.
  In other words, the pernicious and allegedly billionaire-inspired 
assumptions that a single public trustee was somehow able to covertly 
insert into multiple trustees' reports in order to overstate Social 
Security's financial challenges were so cleverly advanced that they 
eluded prominent Obama administration officials, their staffs, 10 
highly skilled, expert researchers, and the Social Security Advisory 
Board staff. That is ridiculous. And only the Chief Actuary was able to 
detect the skullduggery.
  That is still not the end of it, however. The nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office, CBO, has also produced forecasts of Social 
Security's finances, using some assumptions that differ from those used 
by the trustees for their reports but which identify even greater 
financial challenges to the Social Security trust funds than those 
concluded in the recent trustees' reports.
  According to Senators Warren, Schumer, and Whitehouse, Dr. Blahous, 
serving as an agent for the Kochs, was able to skew with nefarious 
assumptions as part of ``the right-wing war on Social Security'' to 
play up the potential future insolvency of the program. Even so, he 
apparently wasn't diabolical enough because he ended up duping the 
other trustees into assigning lesser financial challenges to Social 
Security than those seen by the CBO.
  Of course, perhaps my colleagues believe that this anti-government 
conspiracy has somehow infiltrated CBO, as well. If that is the case, 
perhaps they should come forward and reveal to the public just how deep 
the rabbit hole goes.
  Needless to say, none of this is sensible. It doesn't even pass the 
laugh test. And Dr. Blahous's influence on the trustees' reports isn't 
the only thing my colleagues have overstated in their writings, tweets, 
and campaign materials. They also dramatically overstate the 
``rebukes'' issued by the Chief Actuary for the 2014 and 2015 reports. 
It is actually shameful for my colleagues to do this.
  In truth, there actually were no rebukes or disagreements included in 
the

[[Page 9493]]

actuary reports. In fact, for both years in question, the Chief Actuary 
wrote that ``the assumptions used and the resulting actuarial estimates 
are, individually and in the aggregate, reasonable for the purpose of 
evaluating the financial and actuarial status of the trust funds, 
taking into consideration the past experience and future expectations 
for the population, the economy, and the program.''
  There were caveats which largely reflected the Chief Actuary's own 
opinions but nothing that would call into question the integrity of the 
reports as my colleagues claim. As I have said in the past, these 
tactics are, in my view, shameful, and they have little to do with 
protecting the promise of Social Security. Instead, they are 100 
percent political, designed to serve as a proxy for what political 
operatives hope will be an epic campaign battle over Social Security, 
something the other side constantly wages falsely. And, as is too often 
the case, the truth has taken a backseat to campaign talking points and 
fundraising efforts.
  Rather than engage on the substance of their preferred Social 
Security policies--and those of their presumptive Presidential 
nominee--my friends have opted to put forward false assertions and 
allegations that cannot be supported by the facts in order to attack a 
nominee's integrity and further a twisted story about supposed 
Republican efforts to ``privatize'' Social Security and ``turn it over 
to Wall Street.''
  It is not hard to see why some of my friends on the other side and 
their political allies in the activist community want to construct this 
type of conspiracy with regard to Social Security. After all, in recent 
years, the only meaningful advancement to prolong the life of any 
Social Security trust fund took place last year under a Republican-
controlled Congress. Last year, Republicans put together a bipartisan 
package to avert benefit cuts for disability beneficiaries. At best 
Democrats only reluctantly came on board. That package, which President 
Obama signed into law, contained no ``privatization.'' The only thing 
close to a ``benefit cut'' was a provision on retirement benefits 
claiming strategies based on provisions put forward in President 
Obama's budget.
  Yet, rather than help avert benefit cuts for disabled American 
workers and improve the disability insurance program, many of my 
friends on the other side spent most of their energy last year raising 
campaign money by scaring Social Security beneficiaries and giving 
speeches claiming that Republicans wanted to do nothing more than 
privatize Social Security and turn it over to Wall Street. We have been 
seeing those kind of tactics in every election for decades. It is 
shameful. Even with these constant attacks and distortions coming from 
my friends on the other side throughout 2015, Republicans constructed a 
package that enacted the most meaningful reforms to Social Security in 
three decades and averted massive benefit cuts. We did so by dragging 
most Democrats along kicking and screaming. It is not surprising that 
my colleagues are feeling the pressure to reassert their claims of 
ownership of all things Social Security in this election cycle, which 
they seem to do every election cycle--falsely, by the way. It is 
shameful.
  By the way, in the midst of that 2015 debate, a prominent Democratic 
Senator gave a speech at the headquarters of a leftwing advocacy 
group--one that happens to receive funding from a noted leftist 
billionaire--warning of ``attacks from the far right'' on Social 
Security and ``backdoor attempts to dismantle and privatize Social 
Security by discrediting disability insurance.'' Curiously, that same 
event was attended by the Chief Actuary of Social Security, who was 
also a speaker at the event, and it was live tweeted by the Social 
Security Administration. Yet no one from the Republican Party published 
any inflammatory articles accusing the Chief Actuary of using his title 
or position in association with a politically partisan event. No one 
accused him of ``burnishing his credentials'' by speaking at a highly 
partisan event. Certainly, no one made claims of a vast leftist 
conspiracy to plant progressive sympathizers in influential positions 
in order to advance a leftist view on Social Security or to capture the 
agency.
  By contrast, let's consider what that Huffington Post article and 
three of my Democratic colleagues said about Dr. Charles Blahous. The 
article claims that he ``burnishes his credentials'' as a public 
trustee by daring to write articles outside of his role as public 
trustee that identify and analyze financial challenges facing Social 
Security and Medicare. Gee, I would think that would be part of his 
responsibility. The article decries his affiliation with his own 
workplace, calling it ``a Koch front-group,'' which zealously approves 
an ``anti-government agenda.''
  Essentially, these Senators are saying that if you dare have ideas 
and thoughts with which they disagree, even if you offer them in 
reasoned writings and speeches, then you should be censored and deemed 
unfit to serve in any public capacity.
  My friends on the other side of the aisle have unfortunately injected 
needless politics into Social Security trustee reports and have 
threatened the integrity of those very reports with their allegations, 
as well as attacking an individual based on false claims. 
Unfortunately, it seems that in an election year, Democrats are intent 
on constructing a ``privatization'' straw man and using it to scare 
seniors into sending checks and votes to Democrats--something we have 
become pretty used to, really. That is despicable, to say the least. On 
the altar of election-year politics, they are apparently more than 
willing to sacrifice the historic transparency and integrity provided 
by the trustees' reports. Indeed, they have gone out of their way to 
claim that the reports are already politically compromised despite 
having no credible evidence that such is the case--none, zero.
  Thanks to a bipartisan desire to have the facts on Social Security's 
trust funds reported objectively and honestly, we have gone for decades 
with trustee reports that were largely free of political controversy. 
Unfortunately, some of my friends in the Senate, spurred on by their 
activist political operatives, seem no longer to have that political 
desire. It would truly be sad and not in the interest of current or 
future Social Security beneficiaries if trustees' reports now become 
mere political documents. While that is the road my colleagues 
apparently want to send us down--at least during this election year--I 
plan to do all I can to ensure that will not become the case.
  I am really concerned when I see people of this dimension in the 
greatest legislative body in the world using the Social Security ploy 
again in such a despicable way. It is hard for me to understand. I 
think it is hard for anybody who looks at it carefully to understand.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I have a question for the distinguished 
Senator from Utah.
  What are the Senator's proposals to stabilize the Social Security 
trust fund?
  Mr. HATCH. I am sorry; I did not hear the question.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, the Senator from Utah said that we 
Democrats have politicized the debate.
  Mr. HATCH. I didn't say all of you have.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. No, but my friend did say that we have injected 
politics into the Social Security debate and then went on to talk about 
how others have written articles. I don't dispute what my friend said. 
But because he chairs the Finance Committee, I wondered what his five 
ideas are for the stabilization of the trust fund. Maybe we can find 
common ground because it is a troubling matter.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am willing to look at the trustees' 
reports on this. There are six trustees, including Mr. Blahous, who is 
the only Republican. I am not even sure if he is a Republican, but I 
think he is. They all signed off on these reports, and they all 
indicated we have to be careful about Social Security or we are going 
to have a rough time keeping it stable.

[[Page 9494]]

  I don't think anybody in their right mind thinks that we can continue 
to keep doing what we are doing without finding some way of shoring 
this up.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Right. As the chair of the committee, my question is 
this: What are my friend's ideas so we can find common ground?
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, my ideas are to not put out false 
information or false language.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. OK, that is one we agree on.
  Mr. HATCH. I have to say that our ideas are to find every way 
possible to stabilize the Social Security system.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. What is an example of one?
  Mr. HATCH. Who knows. All I can say is that we have held hearings on 
it, and we have had everything from more taxes to pay for it, which 
isn't very exciting to most people around here, to more government 
programs to pay for, to any number of other social programs to pay for, 
and, frankly, none of those have been picked up by either side, to be 
honest with you.
  It is apparent that we are going to have to do something to shore up 
Social Security in the future, and the question is this: Are we going 
to just make it a sinkhole where all we do is put more and more money 
into it or are we going to live with the reality that we are spending 
ourselves blind in this country? I don't see any desire on the part of 
my colleagues on the other side to live with that reality right now.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I appreciate the response of the Senator 
from Utah, for whom I have a great deal of respect, but I want the 
record to show that the Democrats are not playing some kind of 
privatization card. The proposal to do that has come from the other 
party time and again.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, will the Senator yield on that?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I believe I have the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland has the floor.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, we are not playing a Social Security 
card. We don't believe you should play with Social Security, and that 
is why many of us opposed the chained CPI. Everybody knows what chained 
CPI is. That is Washington talk that would dramatically and irrevocably 
lower the cost of living that Social Security beneficiaries already 
get.
  If speaking up to protect and make sure senior citizens are getting 
their cost of living is playing the Social Security card, deal me in. 
Talking about Social Security solvency and trying to find common ground 
and identifying what are the basic proposals that we could at least 
discuss is not playing a card. I don't believe in playing the card, and 
I don't believe in playing the game.
  Let's not go around implying that Democrats are somehow or another 
making Social Security a political football. It is a political 
football, but what I worry about is, in the game of political football 
on Social Security, who gets kicked around but the seniors. That is who 
gets kicked around in the game of political football on Social 
Security.
  Yes, the stability of the trust fund is a very real issue, and I note 
that the ranking member on the Finance Committee is here, and I ask if 
the Senator wishes to speak.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I would like to respond.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, does Senator Wyden wish to speak at this 
time?
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I say to my colleague that I just walked in 
and I am prepared to speak on another subject, whenever it is 
convenient for my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I haven't yielded the floor yet. I asked 
because the distinguished Senator from Utah is the chair of the Finance 
Committee. The ranking member has arrived, and I didn't know if they 
planned a colloquy. That is why I turned and asked my colleague if he 
wished to make a comment, but I was not giving up the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is not permitted to 
yield, apparently, but is certainly permitted to speak.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Ohio, who is 
the Presiding Officer.
  We have been in session for over a half-hour, and I have spoken for 
only 5 minutes. I just want to reiterate that the solvency of Social 
Security and its trust fund is indeed of significant national interest. 
We have had a variety of commissions. We have had a lot of proposals. 
We have had a lot of meetings. We now need to have the will to act, but 
the will to act goes in pinpointing solutions and not pointing a finger 
at someone because of the political party they belong to.
  Mr. President, I am now going to yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I was just explaining that we just fixed 
the disability insurance fund last year. I wish to also point out that 
the last time I recall anybody talking about the privatization of 
Social Security was President Clinton. The last time I heard, he was a 
Democrat.
  All I am saying is this: I don't know anybody on our side who is 
advocating right now that we should privatize Social Security. I think 
everybody is advocating that we should shore it up and somehow or 
another strengthen it. I am one of those people. Yet we have a number 
of Senators here alleging that one of the six trustees--it is so out of 
line to say that--has all the evidence to sign off on a report that 
Social Security needs some help, and they are saying that this man, who 
happens to be the only Republican on the board of trustees, is trying 
to push a privatization schedule. That is all I am bringing up. I can 
say that I have heard Democrats talk about privatization as well. It is 
one of the subjects that I suppose has to come up in conjunction with 
this: Are we going to save Social Security? Will we do what is 
necessary here? Are we just going to keep talking about it like we do 
year after year? Are we going to allow one side to continue to distort 
what Social Security is all about? And are we going to do it to the 
detriment of every Republican in this body who feels completely 
otherwise? That is what I am talking about.
  I think most Democrats want to help secure Social Security, as I do, 
but to use that as a political ploy every time we turn around every 2 
years is just plain not right. That is what I am decrying here today. 
We ought to all look and see what we can do to strengthen Social 
Security, and we ought to look at every possible way of doing so and 
choose the best approaches we possibly can. But to have false 
allegations thrown out there just for political reasons to scare the 
people out there who are on Social Security, unjustly scare them, I 
think is despicable, and I think we ought to put a stop to it and quit 
making Social Security the paddle ball for Democrats in our political 
process.
  I am chairman of the Finance Committee. I have every desire to work 
with Democrats to resolve all of these issues, and I am open to 
whatever will help to resolve them. Our senior citizens deserve that 
type of treatment. I want to make sure we don't just make this a big 
political issue, as has been done here.
  Blahous is a very important person, a strong personality, a strong, 
highly educated person who has given great service in this area. I just 
don't think it is proper to make him a symbol in what really is a false 
set of accusations. I am not going to put up with it, and I don't think 
anybody else should either. And I don't think my colleagues on the 
other side, if they really understand the situation, will put up with 
it either.
  We have a body that works together in many good ways. I have total 
respect for the distinguished Senator from Maryland. She is somebody I 
do work with, whom I want to work with. She is thoughtful. She has done 
a great job on her committee--her committees, I should say--and she has 
a friend in me, and so do the three who have been doing this. They are 
friends, but they shouldn't be doing that. That is all I am saying.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The Senator from Oregon.

[[Page 9495]]




                           Amendment No. 4787

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I believe the next vote will take place on 
the amendment offered by the senior Senator from Arizona that would 
allow for the issuance of what are called national security letters, or 
NSLs, which are administrative subpoenas, and there will be an 
additional provision on what is called lone wolf. I am going to direct 
most of my comments for colleagues on the national security letters 
because the lone wolf provision was reauthorized for another 4 years as 
part of the USA FREEDOM Act.
  I want colleagues to understand that this tool, which certainly has 
been debated, while never used--it wouldn't have applied to the Orlando 
or San Bernardino cases--I want colleagues to understand that it is the 
law of the land today, and in the USA FREEDOM Act, it was extended for 
another 4 years.
  What I would like to do, though, is focus my remarks on the amendment 
from the senior Senator from Arizona as it relates to national security 
letters. In effect, what the senior Senator from Arizona is seeking to 
do is add back a provision that the administration of George W. Bush--
not exactly an administration people would accuse of being soft on 
terror--the senior Senator from Arizona is seeking to add back this 
provision that was rejected by the administration of George W. Bush.
  Here is how the amendment offered by the senior Senator from Arizona 
would work. Under his amendment, which we will vote on tomorrow, 
national security letters, which are called NSLs, could be issued by 
any FBI field office to demand records from a company without going to 
a judge or without any other oversight whatsoever. So let's repeat that 
because what colleagues have wanted to know is exactly what this would 
cover. The McCain amendment would allow for the government to demand 
email records, text message logs, Web browsing history, and certain 
types of other location information without any court oversight 
whatsoever.
  As I have indicated, this had been on the books for a number of 
years, and the administration of George W. Bush said it was 
unnecessary--in effect, that it was unnecessarily intrusive.
  In addition, since the Bush administration acted, I want to make 
mention of the fact that in the USA FREEDOM Act, the Congress adopted 
something I have been working on for a number of years--since really 
2013--to, in effect, give the government additional authority in the 
case of emergencies.
  In other words, I have always felt the Fourth Amendment and the 
warrant process was something that was very special in our country, but 
we live, of course, in a very dangerous time. We are all concerned 
about the security and the safety and the well-being of the people we 
represent. So I said, in section 102 of the FREEDOM Act, let's make 
sure the FBI has all the authorities necessary to protect the American 
people in the instance of an emergency. So the USA FREEDOM Act gave the 
FBI the authority to demand all the records they deemed necessary and 
then, in effect, after the fact--after the fact--come back and settle 
up with the court. So unless you are opposed to court oversight after 
the fact, unless you are opposed to court oversight altogether, there 
is no reason to support the amendment offered by the senior Senator 
from Arizona.
  A number of colleagues have also asked about the history of these 
national security letters. There is a long history of abuse and misuse, 
a long and very undistinguished record of abusive practices.
  The Justice Department inspector general has issued four separate 
reports over the past few years--four separate reports--documenting a 
number of serious problems. The inspector general found that data 
collected pursuant to the national security letters was stored 
indefinitely and used to gain access to private information in cases 
that weren't relevant to an FBI investigation, and the national 
security letters were used to collect tens of thousands of records at a 
time.
  Some have also made mention of the fact that a company that gets one 
of these national security letters could challenge it in court. That is 
technically right. Big companies that have the resources can challenge 
them. The small companies invariably say they can't afford to do that. 
So, again, no oversight. No oversight--particularly striking given the 
fact that, as I have noted, in the FREEDOM Act--something I felt very 
strongly about--we gave the government additional authority in the 
instance of emergencies.
  So we have now, by virtue of the amendment we will vote on tomorrow 
from my friend and colleague--we certainly have agreed on plenty of 
issues over the years. This is one where we see it differently. You 
have something the Bush administration rejected. The administration of 
George W. Bush--hardly one that we would say is sympathetic to the idea 
of weakening the government's stance against terror--they thought this 
was a mistake. They thought the amendment that there will be an effort 
to add back in was a mistake, and it was taken out. This would not have 
beefed up the fight against what happened in San Bernardino and 
Orlando.
  The FBI says it would help them with paperwork. I am not going to 
quibble with that. I have great respect for the FBI. But we are going 
to abandon court oversight in an area where the inspector general has 
documented abuses because it is convenient?
  Colleagues, I will close with this: It is a dangerous time. If you 
sit on the Intelligence Committee, as I have for a number of years, you 
know that is not in question. The American people want policies that 
promote their security and their liberty. That is what we are aiming 
for. What is being advanced in this amendment is an idea that really 
doesn't do either. It doesn't advance the security and well-being of 
the American people, and it certainly erodes their liberties.
  So I hope tomorrow, when we have the vote on this amendment, that 
colleagues will look at the history. It was rejected by the Bush 
administration. Now we have emergency authority, I say to my 
colleagues, for the government to get information when it needs it. 
After the fact, the government can come back and settle up.
  I think this amendment is a very substantial mistake. There has been 
a long history documented by the inspector general of abuses with these 
national security letters. I urge my colleagues tomorrow to oppose this 
amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the White House approved the FBI's request 
for this fix and sent forward a proposal, and then FBI Director James 
Comey, who I think is well respected--in fact, probably one of the most 
respected men in America--summed up the importance of this amendment, 
the Director of the FBI. No one who I know of has accused the Director 
of the FBI of trying to adopt some unconstitutional practices or gather 
power upon himself and his agency. Here is what he said: This amendment 
``would be enormously helpful.'' That is despite what the Senator from 
Oregon says. He said this is essentially ``a typo in the law that was 
passed a number of years ago that requires us to get records, ordinary 
transaction records that we can get in most contexts with a non-court 
order, because it doesn't involve content of any kind, to go to the 
FISA court to get a court order to get these records. Nobody intended 
that.'' That is what the Director of the FBI says. That is what the 
record shows, as is important. As the Director of the FBI says:

       Nobody intended that. Nobody I've heard thinks that's 
     necessary. It would save us a tremendous amount of work hours 
     if we could fix that, without any compromise to anyone's 
     civil liberties or civil rights.

  I agree with the Director of the FBI.
  This amendment--I am astounded, very frankly, that there is not a 
unanimous vote on this. It is simple. If the FBI is able to go into 
your financial written records, if they are able to go into your 
telephone records, then, pray tell, what is the difference between 
those and electronic records? It just so

[[Page 9496]]

happens electronic records are much larger.
  So don't take my word for it, I say to my colleagues, but I would 
listen to the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association--that 
renowned ``corrupt'' organization. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers 
Association--the Nation's largest nonpartisan professional association 
which represents Federal law enforcement officers from every Federal 
law enforcement agency, including the FBI--strongly supports this 
amendment.
  They go on to say--again, contrary to what the Senator from Oregon 
says, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association says that this 
amendment ``would correct an oversight in the law that has impeded the 
FBI's ability to obtain these records in national security cases on a 
timely basis.'' They go on to say that ``for over fifteen years--
including the eight years after 9/11--the FBI continued to use''--what 
they are talking about now is they want ``to gather electronic 
communications transactional records. Significantly, this authority was 
never used to acquire these records indiscriminantly.'' They go on to 
say that the amendment ``is necessary to protect America from terrorist 
threats and transnational criminal organizations.''
  This is what those men and women--thousands of them are members of 
this organization. The list is incredibly long. The Federal law 
enforcement agencies believe this amendment is necessary to protect 
them and America from terrorist threats and transnational criminal 
organizations. It is clear.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following letters of 
support be printed in the Record: the Federal Law Enforcement Officers 
Association letter, the National Fraternal Order of Police letter, and 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association letter.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                           Federal Law Enforcement


                                         Officers Association,

                                    Washington, DC, June 10, 2016.
     Hon. Charles E. Grassley,
     Chairman, Judiciary Committee,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Patrick J. Leahy,
     Ranking Member, Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senate, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Leahy: The 
     Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA)--the 
     nation's largest non-partisan professional association which 
     represents federal law enforcement officers from every 
     federal law enforcement agency, including the FBI--strongly 
     supports Senator Cornyn's effort to address issues related to 
     Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs) during 
     the Senate Judiciary Committee's consideration of S. 356, the 
     Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2015. 
     The amendment, referred to as the ``ECTR Fix,'' would update 
     electronic privacy laws and would help the FBI effectively 
     investigate and thwart terrorist plots.
       The ECTR amendment would correct an oversight in the law 
     that has impeded the FBI's ability to obtain these records in 
     national security cases on a timely basis. In 
     Counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations, 
     telephone toll records and electronic communications 
     transactional records are key components. It's important to 
     distinguish that these electronic communications are 
     metadata, not content. Section 2709 of Title 18 permits the 
     FBI to collect this data with a national security letter so 
     long as the information is ``relevant to an authorized 
     investigation to protect against international terrorism or 
     clandestine intelligence activities.'' The metadata from 
     these records are critical when the content of terrorist 
     communications are increasingly beyond the reach of lawful 
     process because of the widespread deployment of strong 
     encryption software.
       As originally enacted, Section 2709(a) established a duty 
     for wire and electronic service providers to comply with an 
     FBI request for ``subscriber information and toll billing 
     records information, or electronic communications 
     transactional records,'' and subsection (b) provided the 
     means by which the FBI could make such requests. Section 
     2709(b), however, did not specify the information that the 
     FBI could request. Instead, it referenced ``any such 
     information and records'' as described in subsection (a).
       Congress amended Section 2709(b) in 1993 to specify that 
     the ``subscriber information'' that a certification could 
     request consisted of ``name, address, length of service, and 
     toll billing records.'' No changes were made to the authority 
     to obtain electronic communications transactional records. 
     However, while Section 2709(a) still required production of 
     electronic communications transactional records, removal of 
     the phrase ``any such information and records'' left 
     subsection (b) without any specific reference to the 
     electronic communications transactional records referenced in 
     subsection (a). Nonetheless, Congress clearly intended 
     Section 2709 to continue to serve as a means of obtaining 
     electronic communications transactional records, as 
     subsection (a) continued to refer to a duty to produce such 
     records on request, and the title of the provision continued 
     to reference ``transactional records.''
       For over fifteen years--including the eight years after 9/
     11--the FBI continued to use Section 2709 to gather 
     electronic communications transactional records. 
     Significantly, this authority was never used to acquire these 
     records indiscriminately or in bulk. However, the recently-
     passed USA FREEDOM Act specifically prohibits doing so. In 
     2009, however, some electronic communications service 
     providers began refusing to comply with these requests, 
     citing the scrivener's error referenced above. The number of 
     providers refusing to do so has increased over the years. In 
     certain cases, the FBI has sought the records using other 
     authorities, but those authorities take significantly more 
     time and resources than using Section 2709.
       This section of the bill would amend Section 2709 to 
     reflect the original intent of Congress by clarifying the 
     types of ``telephone toll and transactional records'' that 
     the FBI used it to obtain for many years, while explicitly 
     prohibiting the collection of communications content.
       In December 2015, FBI Director James Comey summed up the 
     critical importance of the ETCR amendment when he testified 
     before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said, clarifying 
     this authority ``would be enormously helpful. There is 
     essentially a typo in the law that was passed a number of 
     years ago that requires us to get records, ordinary 
     transaction records that we can get in most contexts with a 
     non-court order, because it doesn't involve content of any 
     kind, to go to the FISA court to get a court order to get 
     these records. Nobody intended that. Nobody I've heard thinks 
     that that's necessary. It would save us a tremendous amount 
     of work hours if we could fix that, without any compromise to 
     anyone's civil liberties or civil rights.''
       The ECTR amendment is necessary to protect America from 
     terrorist threats and transnational criminal organizations. I 
     strongly urge you to consider adopting the ETCR Fix as part 
     of S. 356 the Electronic Communications Privacy Act 
     Amendments Act.
           Respectively,
                                                 Nathan R. Catura,
     FLEOA National President.
                                  ____

                                                National Fraternal


                                              Order of Police,

                                    Washington, DC, June 21, 2016.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Majority Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Harry M. Reid,
     Minority Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators McConnell and Reid, I am writing on behalf of 
     the members of the Fraternal Order of Police to advise you of 
     our support for S. Amdt. 4787 which will be offered to amend 
     H.R. 2578, the ``Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related 
     Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016.''
       The amendment will provide Federal law enforcement with the 
     tools they need to investigate and prevent terrorist attacks 
     by clarifying Section 2709 of Title 18 with respect to 
     Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs). Under 
     this statute, Federal law enforcement authorities have been 
     able to request and then collect metadata, not content, from 
     service providers as long as they have a national security 
     letter and the data request is ``relevant to an authorized 
     investigation to protect against international terrorism or 
     clandestine intelligence activities.'' However, despite 15 
     years of regular cooperation, recent requests made to some 
     service providers have been rejected and these companies have 
     cited ambiguity in the existing statute.
       The amendment would make clear Congressional intent that 
     such requests do not allow access to any content but that 
     name, email, Internet Protocol (IP) and physical addresses, 
     telephone me/instrument number, account number, login 
     history, length and type of service as well as the means by 
     which the service is paid for be made available to law 
     enforcement. This meta data can be crucial in 
     counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. The 
     FOP believes the amendment merely clarifies the existing 
     statute and does not give law enforcement any new authorities 
     or access to data previously unavailable to them. In fact, 
     the recent resistance to such requests was described to the 
     Committee on the Judiciary as ``essentially a typo'' and the 
     amendment better defines Congressional intent with respect to 
     ``telephone toll and transactional records.''
       I urge you and the Members of the United States Senate to 
     support S. Amdt. 4787 to ensure the timeliness and 
     effectiveness of our

[[Page 9497]]

     nation's counterterror and counterintelligence operations. 
     Our nation's security and defense should not be held hostage 
     or investigations jeopardized because of a ``typo.''
       Thank you as always for your consideration of the views of 
     the more than 330,000 members of the Fraternal Order of 
     Police. If I can provide any additional information on this 
     or any other issue, please do not hesitate to contact me or 
     Executive Director Jim Pasco in my Washington, D.C. office.
           Sincerely,
                                                 Chuck Canterbury,
     National President.
                                  ____

                                  Federal Bureau of Investigation,


                                           Agents Association,

                                     Alexandria, VA, June 8, 2016.
     Re: Electronic Communication Transactional Records.

     Hon. Charles E. Grassley,
     Chairman, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Patrick J. Leahy,
     Ranking Member, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. 
         Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Leahy: On behalf 
     of the FBI Agents Association (``FBIAA''), a voluntary 
     professional association currently representing over 13,000 
     active duty and retired FBI Special Agents, I write to 
     express our support for addressing issues related to 
     Electronic Communication Transactional Records (``ECTRs'') 
     during the Senate Judiciary Committee's consideration of S. 
     356, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act 
     of 2015. The relevant amendment, referred to as the ``ECTR 
     Fix,'' would be wholly consistent with the effort to update 
     electronic privacy laws, and would help the FBI more 
     effectively investigate and thwart terrorist plots.
       Notwithstanding the well-funded efforts by technology 
     companies and activists to misrepresent the ECTR Fix, the 
     truth is that clarifying the language of Sec. 2709 would 
     strike a familiar and effective balance between privacy and 
     security. ECTRs provide information abut the IP addresses, 
     routing, and sessions times for electronic communications, 
     and electronic service providers have complied with FBI 
     requests for ECTRs pursuant to Sec. 2709 for years. This 
     cooperation furthered the protection of the public, as ECTRs 
     are used to identify patterns of communications in the course 
     of national security and terrorism investigations. At the 
     same time, access to ECTRs does not represent a threat to the 
     privacy identify patterns of communications in the course of 
     national security and terrorism investigations. At the same 
     time, access to ECTRs does not represent a threat to the 
     privacy of Americans because the FBI can only request ECTRs 
     for a limited scope of investigations, and because ECTRs do 
     not include detailed information about the specific web pages 
     visited by internet users or the content of web pages or 
     electronic communications.
       Despite these facts, and as a part of their privacy-focused 
     marketing strategies, technology companies recently began 
     refusing to cooperate with the FBI on ECTR requests, and have 
     pointed to statutory ambiguity as a justification for their 
     actions. This choice has undermined national security and 
     counterterrorism investigations, and necessitates 
     Congressional action.
       Given the importance of protecting the public from 
     terrorist threats, we support an amendment to include the 
     ECTR Fix in S. 356, as well as the efforts to address the 
     issue through other legislative vehicles. We hope that 
     Congress will make these reasonable and common-sense changes 
     in a timely manner.
       If you have any questions, please contact me at 
     [email protected] or 703-247-2173, or FBIAA General Counsel 
     Dee Martin, [email protected], and Joshua Zive, 
     [email protected].
           Sincerely,
                                                 Reynaldo Tariche,
                                                        President.

  Mr. McCAIN. I will go on.
  The Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association says that it 
is a voluntary professional association currently representing over 
13,000 active-duty and retired FBI special agents. Here are 13,000 FBI 
agents, active and retired, who believe this amendment is essential for 
them to be able to do their job and protect America.
  By the way--hello--we just had an attack in Orlando where 49 
Americans were slaughtered, and we are arguing whether we should allow 
the FBI to find out not the information in electronic communications, 
but just find out about electronic communications. That is what this is 
about.
  I will quote from the 13,000 active-duty and retired FBI special 
agents:

       I write to express our support for addressing issues 
     related to Electronic Communication Transactional Records 
     (``ECTRs''). . . . The relevant amendment, referred to as the 
     ``ECTR Fix,'' would be wholly consistent with the effort to 
     update electronic privacy laws, and would help the FBI more 
     effectively investigate and thwart terrorist plots.

  After Orlando, do we want to help the FBI more effectively 
investigate and thwart terrorist plots or do we want to restrict their 
ability to do so? Is that what the Senator from Oregon wants? I don't 
think so.

       Notwithstanding the well-funded efforts by technology 
     companies and activists to misrepresent the ECTR Fix, the 
     truth is that clarifying the language [of subsection 2709] 
     would strike a familiar and effective balance between privacy 
     and security. ECTRs provide information about the IP 
     addresses, routing, and sessions times for electronic 
     communications, and electronic service providers have 
     complied with FBI requests . . . for years. . . . Given the 
     importance of protecting the public from terrorist threats, 
     we support an amendment to include the ECTR Fix . . . as well 
     as the efforts to address the issue through other legislative 
     vehicles. We hope that Congress will make these reasonable 
     and common-sense changes in a timely manner.

  It is signed by Reynaldo Tariche, the president of the Federal Bureau 
of Investigation Agents Association.
  So we have a choice here. We have a choice here. We have those who 
are so worried about privacy and those whose job and whose solemn duty 
is to protect this Nation--Federal law enforcement officers, the FBI, 
13,000 of the FBI agents, and then, of course, we have those who are 
under assault on a daily basis--our police.
  This is a letter from the Fraternal Order of Police ``writing on 
behalf of the members of the Fraternal Order of Police to advise you of 
our support'' for this amendment which will be offered. ``The amendment 
will provide Federal law enforcement with the tools they need to 
investigate and prevent terrorist attacks.'' It isn't any more 
complicated than that.
  My remarks probably will be a little longer.
  The Fraternal Order of Police has it right. This will provide an 
ability to prevent and counter further terrorist attacks.
  How many attacks do we need? I would ask my colleagues who are 
opposed to this simple amendment, how many attacks? Another San 
Bernardino? Another Orlando? Two or three more attacks before we give 
the Director of the FBI the tools he says he needs and wants to protect 
this Nation? That is what this is all about.
  The Fraternal Order of Police goes on to say that ``the amendment 
would make clear Congressional intent that such requests do not allow 
access to any content but that name, email, Internet Protocol (IP) and 
physical addresses, telephone/instrument number, account number, login 
history, length and type of service as well as the means by which the 
service is paid for be made available to law enforcement.''
  The Senator from Oregon, if I got his remarks right, says: Well, 
there has been corruption of it. There has been abuse. There has been 
misapplication.
  One of our jobs is oversight, if that is happening. But I also would 
say that is a damning indictment of these men and women who are putting 
their lives on the line every single day and are begging for this tool 
to defend this Nation.
  The Fraternal Order of Police says:

       I urge you and the Members of the United States Senate to 
     support [the amendment] to ensure the timeliness and 
     effectiveness of our nation's counterterror and 
     counterintelligence operations. Our nation's security and 
     defense should not be held hostage or investigations 
     jeopardized because of a ``typo.''
       Thank you as always for your consideration of the views of 
     the more than 330,000 members of the Fraternal Order of 
     Police.

  These are the views of more than 330,000 members of the Fraternal 
Order of Police. I think maybe we ought to listen to the will of 
330,000 men and women who are out there every day defending this 
Nation. Maybe we ought to listen to them. Maybe they are the ones whose 
lives are in danger. They are the ones who are the first targets of the 
terrorists. Maybe we ought to listen to their views rather than some 
misguided view that somehow this invades our privacy, to find out 
simply whether an address has been used and for how long--not content. 
If content is involved, that requires going to the FISA Court.
  Last week the Director of the CIA appeared before a rare open session 
of the Senate Intelligence Committee to deliver a stern warning to the 
American

[[Page 9498]]

people: ISIL has built a global apparatus with the intent to plot and 
incite attacks against the West. He explained that despite our 2-year 
air campaign in Iraq and Syria and despite our efforts to build and 
fight with local forces and despite the best work of our special 
operators, ISIL and other terrorist groups continue to evolve and plan 
to kill innocent Americans who reject their hateful ideology.
  That is the warning of the Director of the CIA. The CIA's warning 
obviously comes after the attack. It is remarkable. The CIA's notice 
about ISIL's continued strength followed years of warnings by the 
Director of the FBI and others in law enforcement who have explained to 
policymakers time and time again that the use of advanced technologies 
by our enemies is making it increasingly difficult for law enforcement 
to uncover and stop attacks. That is their view.
  We give these people the responsibility to defend this Nation, 
particularly against these attacks, and they are telling us they can't 
adequately defend against these attacks because of a provision we have 
that they can't even look at the fact that a site was used.
  By the way, if the Senator from Oregon and others believe this is an 
invasion of privacy, then why don't they propose an amendment that 
telephone and financial records should also be in that same category? 
Of course, that has the problem of being consistent.
  The law allows the FBI to request telephone billing information, 
financial transaction records, but terrorists don't radicalize by phone 
and they don't listen to ISIL propaganda through financial 
transactions. They radicalize through the Internet. I repeat: They 
radicalize through the Internet. So if they are radicalizing through 
the Internet, shouldn't we gain as much possible information as we can 
by monitoring their use of the Internet?
  Reports indicate that in 2013 the Orlando terrorist was removed from 
a terrorist watch list because there was insufficient information 
showing he was radicalized and therefore a threat. Perhaps--and I 
emphasize ``perhaps''--if the FBI had more effective authorities that 
would allow them to more easily determine Internet activity of those 
suspected of radicalization, he would have remained, perhaps, on the 
watch list. Currently, the FBI can only receive electronic 
transactional records information by going through the FISA Court 
process, which is a time-intensive court process that often takes over 
a month. With the thousands of potentially radicalized individuals 
already in the United States, we need to make it easier, not harder, 
for the FBI to receive the critical evidence they need so they can 
focus their investigations.
  Let me state again clearly for the benefit of my colleagues what this 
provision does not do. It does not allow the FBI to see the content of 
emails or conversations in Internet chat rooms. As I said before, this 
provision is narrowly drawn and carefully limited.
  The administration, Congress, and national security experts from both 
sides of the aisle have spoken repeatedly about taking on ISIL's 
Internet radicalism. This provision, according to the Director of the 
FBI, is a most important tool to give the FBI valuable data points to 
do just that.
  We face a threat from individuals who have been radicalized by the 
words, actions, and ideology of terrorist groups. These individuals may 
act alone, without clear direction from terrorist groups, but they 
fulfill the intent and desire of these groups.
  We must ensure that our law enforcement authorities keep pace with 
the tactics and methods of our adversaries. If our adversaries seek to 
attack us by inciting lone-wolf violence, we have to make sure law 
enforcement has the authorities they need to investigate and, we hope, 
stop those attacks.
  Our intelligence and law enforcement officers are the best in the 
world, but as terrorist networks grow and metastasize around the world, 
we ask them to bear an increasingly difficult--some even say 
impossible--burden. We ask them to uncover threats by individuals who 
are hidden among millions of law-abiding citizens. We ask them to 
determine which of us has been inspired by evil to do harm to our 
fellow citizens, and we ask that they do this difficult task with 
little or no impact on anyone's privacy. We have to recognize this 
threat for what it is.
  As our enemy evolves, so, too, we must evolve and strengthen our 
counterterrorism tools and authorities. Let's stop tying the hands of 
those who wish only to keep us safe and on many occasions are ready to 
make themselves unsafe in order to protect our fellow citizens.
  I guess my colleagues are presented with a choice. As the Senator 
from Oregon, with great skill and oratorical tools, will talk about 
rights of privacy, will talk about constitutional protections, all of 
those things--this is simple. This is a simple amendment. It has 
nothing to do with going into these sites and finding out information. 
That requires going to court.
  All it does is tell the FBI, whose Director has pled for this 
capability--does anyone assume the Director of the FBI wants to act in 
an unconstitutional fashion? Of course not. But you must accept the 
fact that it is his responsibility to protect the Nation and, 
therefore, when he asks for the tools to protect this Nation, then 
maybe we ought to pay attention and give them to him. I know of no one 
who is an objective observer who believes it would be unconstitutional 
to adopt this amendment.
  I don't know about abuses in the past that the Senator from Oregon 
says have taken place. I know abuses have taken place in the past on 
almost any aspect of American life. But I also know that when you have 
all of our police--330,000 of them, representing them--13,000 in the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal law enforcement agencies from 
all over America--the list is incredibly long--all asking for the 
ability to defend this Nation, by God, I think we should give it to 
them.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the senior Senator from Arizona--whom, as I 
mentioned, I have worked with often--has said, in effect, if you oppose 
his amendment, you are interested in privacy.
  The reality is, my interest is in privacy and security. I believe it 
is possible to have both, and I want to explain how that is the case.
  Something I worked on for a long time, the USA FREEDOM Act, we 
included section 102. Section 102 very explicitly said that if the 
government--if the FBI, in a situation like Orlando or San Bernardino, 
for example--if the government believed it needed information 
immediately--immediately--the government could get the information and 
then go back to the court after the fact. In effect, after the 
government had been able to get the information of its own volition, 
settle up immediately so as to protect the American people.
  This debate is about are we going to have policies that advance both 
our security and our liberty. I have felt very strongly--I see my 
seatmate, the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations 
Committee. We sit next to each other on the Intelligence Committee. We 
talk about these issues very often. As part of the USA FREEDOM Act, I 
pushed very hard to make sure the government had those emergency 
authorities.
  This is a dangerous time. Nobody disputes that. If you have been on 
the Intelligence Committee, as Senator Mikulski and I have been for so 
many years, that is not in question. This is a dangerous time.
  No. 1, the question is, Are we going to have both security and 
liberty? In my view, that is where the amendment from the senior 
Senator from Arizona comes up short.
  No. 2, the Senator from Arizona has said the problem he seeks to 
correct was just a typo, kind of a clerical error--not even close.
  The debate back in 1993--we have the record, the House, the Senate, 
the FBI. It was very carefully crafted in a way to ensure that there 
would not be abuse in the digital area. When you look at that 
specifically, that is very clear. This was not a typo. This was 
carefully crafted--House, Senate, FBI--in 1993.

[[Page 9499]]

  When my friend from Arizona says it was a typo--not even close. I 
hope colleagues will avail themselves of our offer to look at the 
record.
  Right now, nobody from the government, the FBI, has said, if it had 
the power the Senator from Arizona seeks to give the government--nobody 
in the intelligence field or in the government said it would have 
prevented Orlando.
  The fact is, the government has the authority, the emergency 
authority, and it was something I pushed very hard for. It was right at 
the core of my belief that we ought to be pushing for both security and 
liberty at a dangerous time and that the two are not mutually 
exclusive. So we added to the USA FREEDOM Act that emergency authority 
for the government.
  It is also true, the administration of George W. Bush specifically 
rejected the idea the Senator from Arizona is calling for. They 
specifically said this has created problems. There have been four 
separate inspector general analyses that support that.
  As we continue this discussion, I hope colleagues will see that we 
ought to keep the focus on both security and liberty. That is why the 
emergency authorities we got in the USA FREEDOM Act are so important. 
They are intact. They can be used for any situation--Orlando, San 
Bernardino, any other--that the government, the FBI, feels the security 
and safety of the American people are at stake.
  With respect to the lone-wolf provision, which I heard my colleague 
mention, we reauthorized that for 4 years in the USA FREEDOM Act. I 
supported that as well.
  I just hope colleagues will think through the implications of the 
amendment from the Senator from Arizona because under what he is 
talking about, a national security letter, what is called an NSL, can 
be issued by any FBI field office to demand records from a company 
without going to a judge. To support this, in effect, you basically are 
saying you don't support oversight, you don't support court oversight, 
because we have given the court and the government the ability to move 
quickly.
  I hope tomorrow we don't conclude that the FBI ought to be able to 
demand email records, text message logs, Web-browsing history, and 
certain types of information without court oversight.
  The Senator from Arizona said: Well, you are not going to get all the 
content of those emails.
  That is true, but the fact is, in a lot of instances, when you know 
who emailed whom, you know a whole lot about that person. If somebody 
emailed the psychiatrist four times in 48 hours, you know a whole lot 
about the person. You don't have to see all of the content of the 
emails.
  Colleagues, we will discuss this some more, but I hope Senators will 
see this is about ensuring there is both security and liberty. The 
government has not said or intimated that if they had the power the 
Senator from Arizona seeks to put back--that the Bush administration 
rejected--the government has not said or intimated this would have 
prevented the horrific tragedy in Orlando.
  I hope my colleagues will oppose the McCain amendment tomorrow.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, we have heard a spirited debate between 
two distinguished Senators, two distinguished Americans, who are very 
passionate about defending America, and I know there will be more 
debate on this.
  The Senator from Arizona and those who cosponsor his amendment want 
to add more authority to the FBI.
  I rise to say that in the next day, when there is an opportunity to 
offer another amendment, I will be offering another amendment to give 
the FBI more money to do the job with the authority it does have. 
Working on a bipartisan basis, the distinguished Senator from Alabama 
and I tried to produce a very good bill to fund the Justice Department, 
one of which is the FBI.
  We did do a good job, there is no doubt about it, but we operated 
within the budget caps. Within that, we did the best we could, but 
there is no doubt that the FBI could use more resources to be able to 
enhance its counterterrorism efforts and also increase its surveillance 
by tracking the terrorist threats.
  So when the opportunity arises, I will be offering an amendment that 
gives more money to the FBI, that also gives more money--working with 
the Senator from Wisconsin, Ms. Baldwin--to deal with hate crimes, one 
of the other significant issues here. Also, while we are talking about, 
again, the more authority issue, this amendment would include a section 
by Senator Leahy, the vice chair of the Judiciary Committee, that would 
have tough penalties for those who knowingly transfer or receive a 
firearm or know or have reasonable cause to believe it will be used to 
commit a crime of terrorism, violence, or drug trafficking. It will 
reduce the threat.
  We can debate all we want about more authority for the FBI. I think 
it is a good debate, the tension between security and civil liberties. 
The distinguished Presiding Officer is also a member--an active, 
diligent member--of the Intelligence Committee.
  These are not easy issues, but my amendment should be an easy issue. 
My amendment would add $175 million dedicated to the FBI's 
counterterrorism efforts that would raise funding for the FBI above 
what the House suggested. It would strengthen the FBI's 
counterterrorism workforce. The FBI would be able to restore--remember, 
not add--restore more than 350 positions, including 225 special agents 
for critical FBI investigations related to counterterrorism and 
counterintelligence. It would also give the FBI new tools to be able to 
go where these bad guys have access to new technology and new ways of 
avoiding detection.
  The number of terrorism threats disrupted by the FBI grew from 214 in 
fiscal year 2014 to 440 in fiscal year 2015. In one fiscal year, it 
actually doubled. As the threat goes, the FBI needs increased resources 
to hire and sustain the agents and intelligence analysts who interrupt 
these plots.
  Again, while we are talking more authority--and that debate will go 
on--I am saying, if you are going to give them more authority, and 
whether you are giving them more authority, the FBI is stretched thin.
  We did the best we could under the budget caps, but my amendment 
would be emergency funding. We don't look for offsets in order to take 
from one important Department of Justice function to give to the FBI or 
take from other Federal law enforcement to give to the FBI, or take 
from local law enforcement to give to the FBI. And it would be a 
tremendous boost.
  It would also boost the FBI's surveillance capabilities and add 
critical personnel, including special agents. Additional funds would be 
provided for 36 new positions, 18 fully dedicated to tracking terrorist 
threats, and it would certainly help to gather evidence on high, high 
priority targets.
  Again, while we are working at more authority, please, regardless of 
where you are on the lone-wolf debate, the Mikulski amendment offers 
the opportunity to add more funding.
  Mr. WYDEN. Will my colleague yield for a question?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Certainly, to the Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. I appreciate my colleague yielding, and I am a very, very 
strong supporter of her amendment because I think the idea of adding 
more resources is absolutely essential.
  As I look at these cases--and she and I have talked about this on the 
Select Committee on Intelligence--we know that the workforce is aging 
in the intelligence community. We are going to need more dollars for 
the personnel we are going to need and certainly a lot of resources in 
a variety of areas. Is that my colleague's intention, to make sure we 
get the resources to, in effect, get out in front of these upcoming 
threats?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. The Senator has identified my rationale and its actual 
underpinnings in a most accurate and precise way.
  You see, I am from the school of thought--along with, I know, the 
ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services, also a member of the 
Committee on Appropriations--that

[[Page 9500]]

the defense of the Nation and the protection of its people doesn't rely 
only on the Department of Defense. There are also other muscular ways 
of protecting it, some of which are, first of all, response and 
surveillance and so on in existing, constitutionally allowed 
authorities and giving more money to the FBI to operate under the law 
as we have currently defined it.
  But you know what, we need to do prevention. Prevention really comes 
from the kind of intervention that would occur with the State 
Department--again, a tool of diplomacy. And what they have is a whole 
effort underway to deal with the recruitment and radicalization of 
Islamic jihadist terrorists on the Internet. Well, we have to support 
that. When they were going for more money for defense, we made that 
argument. But I am not going to relitigate old arguments.
  We have before us Orlando. We have before us those who want to 
curtail the terrorist threat. I want to curtail that terrorist threat. 
And some of the ways I want to do it are, No. 1, add more money for the 
FBI; No. 2, join with our colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Tammy 
Baldwin, in adding more money to deal with hate crimes--hate crimes--
because often those are the aegis and the incubator and so on of future 
violence; and the other is to close the loophole to keep guns out of 
the hands of terrorists, violent criminals, and traffickers that our 
distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee mentioned.
  Mr. WYDEN. If my colleague will continue to yield, just briefly, what 
my colleague has stated--and I strongly agree with--is that she is 
trying to assure that the resources are there for the future.
  I am not going to drag my colleague into the earlier discussion, but 
what I am concerned about, and have been, is that the Senator from 
Arizona is relitigating the past. In effect, when the Bush 
administration took away the power because it was too intrusive, he 
wanted to go back to it.
  But apropos of my colleague, isn't that the heart of her case--that 
she is looking to the future--FBI resources, resources to deal with 
hate crimes, resources to deal with prevention? It seems to me she is 
trying to lay out a plan for the future.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. The Senator from Oregon is absolutely correct. This 
would be funding that would begin October 1. Given no cute tricks 
around shutdown and slam-down politics as we go into the fall--that we 
could actually move our appropriations--this would provide money 
starting October 1 with these additional resources to help the FBI be 
more effective than what it is, and also to help our Justice Department 
be even more effective than what it is in fighting hate crimes.
  I will be discussing my amendment in even more detail, but I know 
there are other colleagues on the floor, and I now yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2328

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I have come to the floor once again, as 
I have time and again, with a simple message. For Puerto Rico, time is 
of the essence. For the 3\1/2\ million United States citizens who live 
there, time is of the essence, but getting it right is also of the 
essence.
  There are only 8 business days left until Puerto Rico defaults on 
approximately $2 billion in debt. Congress needs to act immediately to 
prevent this fiscal crisis from becoming a full-blown humanitarian 
catastrophe. And while the House has attempted to address this issue by 
passing a legislative proposal called PROMESA--``promesa'' in Spanish 
means ``promise''--it lacks the promise that really would help 3\1/2\ 
million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico.
  There are Members on both sides of the aisle who believe the bill is 
fundamentally flawed. So instead of simply rubberstamping an inferior 
solution, the Senate needs to follow the Founding Fathers' intent and 
thoroughly debate this critical issue, which will have such a profound 
impact on so many Americans. I would note that calls for a thorough 
debate on the Senate floor are bipartisan in nature, and I thank my 
colleague Senator Wicker for joining me in a letter to the leadership 
asking for a full and open process to consider this bill.
  I would remind my colleagues that each one of us was elected to this 
very Chamber to debate and enact legislation to improve the lives of 
Americans. But I fear that, instead of a robust debate and thoughtful 
consideration of amendments to improve this bill, those who wish to see 
the House bill signed into law as drafted are going to delay and delay 
and delay until the last possible minute. Just as they did today, they 
are going to prevent us from debating this until next week, and then 
they will tell us it is too late to make any improvements to this bill. 
As a matter of fact, every article I have read suggests that is exactly 
the tactic which is being pursued.
  I come to the floor because it is not a new or novel tactic to quell 
dissent with the threat of a deadline, but just because it has been 
done before doesn't make it right. How can we as Senators shirk our 
responsibility when the people of Puerto Rico are at the edge of an 
abyss? They need our help, and they need it today. The bill will affect 
a generation of Puerto Ricans, and we owe it to them and their brothers 
and sisters who live in our States--half a million in my State of New 
Jersey, 5 million throughout the country--to get this right.
  Let me once again remind every one of my colleagues how deeply flawed 
this legislation is. First, the fate of 3\1/2\ million American 
citizens will be determined by 7 unelected, unaccountable members of a 
so-called oversight board that will act as a virtual oligarchy and 
impose their unchecked will on the 3\1/2\ million U.S. citizens on the 
island of Puerto Rico.
  As the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office states:

       The board would have broad sovereign powers--

  Sovereign words have meaning--

     to effectively overrule decisions by Puerto Rico's 
     legislature, governor and other public authorities. . . . 
     [It] can effectively nullify any new laws or policies--

  Any new law or policy--

     adopted by Puerto Rico that did not conform to requirements 
     specified in this bill.

  So the elected representatives of the 3\1/2\ million U.S. citizens on 
the island of Puerto Rico just don't get listened to. They can have 
their decisions overruled by a nonelected board, for which there is no 
guarantee there will be any representation by those who are elected to 
recommend to this board anyone to be placed on it.
  Even the bill's own author noted in the Interior Committee's report:

       The Oversight Board may impose mandatory cuts on Puerto 
     Rico's government and instrumentalities--

  Mandatory cuts--

     a power far beyond that exercised by the Control Board 
     established for the District of Columbia.

  If the board, in its sole discretion--and those words have enormous 
meaning. If my colleagues take the time to read the bill, as I have 
twice, fully, from the beginning to the end, 29 times the bill says 
that the board, in its sole discretion--not the Congress's discretion, 
not the bankruptcy court, not the Legislature of Puerto Rico, not the 
Governor of Puerto Rico--no, the board, in its own sole discretion--29 
times. If the board uses the superpower this bill allows it to have to 
close more schools, shutter more hospitals, cut senior citizens' 
pensions to the bone; if it decides to hold a fire sale and put Puerto 
Rico's natural wonders on the auction block to the highest bidder; if 
it puts balanced budgets ahead of the health, safety, and well-being of 
children and families--similar to how the control board travesty 
unfolded in Flint, MI--without their voices represented on the control 
board, there is nothing--nothing--the people of Puerto Rico will be 
able to do.
  Think about this. How many in this legislative body would allow such 
a board to take control over their State, no matter what their economic 
woes? The people on the island deserve a transparent oversight board 
where their voices and concerns are heard, not muted, and where the 
deals made with creditors are in the best interests of the people, not 
just hedge funds. The

[[Page 9501]]

fact that the Puerto Rican people will have absolutely no say over who 
is appointed or what action they decide to take is blatant--blatant--
neocolonialism.
  Second, I have said this before and I will say it again: Any solution 
needs a clear path to restructuring. That is the only reason to do this 
legislation anyhow--to give Puerto Rico a clear path to restructuring 
in the bankruptcy court under the edicts of the bankruptcy law. The 
unelected control board created in this bill will have the authority to 
decide whether Puerto Rico's debts are worthy of restructuring.
  Let's not fool ourselves into believing it is a sure thing that this 
bill guarantees the island the ability to restructure its debts in the 
first place. Instead, it would take a supermajority of this 7-member 
board--a 5-to-2 vote--in order for any of the island's debts to be 
restructured. What does that mean? It means that three people--a 
minority of the board--could derail the island's attempts to achieve 
sustainable debt payments. Without any authority to restructure its 
debt, all this legislation will do is take away the democratic rights 
of 3\1/2\ million Americans and leave the future to wishful thinking 
and a prayer the crisis will somehow be resolved.
  I am afraid we are opening the floodgates for Puerto Rico to become a 
laboratory for rightwing economic policies. Puerto Rico deserves much 
more than to be the unwilling host of untested experiments in 
austerity.
  I am not advocating to completely remove all oversight power. To the 
contrary, I support helping Puerto Rico make informed, prudent 
decisions and put it on the path to economic growth and solvency. But 
despite its name, the oversight Board envisioned by this bill doesn't 
simply oversee. It directs, and it commands. It doesn't assist; it 
controls. The Senate has an opportunity to change that situation. We 
have a chance to improve this bill and strike the right balance.
  Now, I would like to have the opportunity--and I welcome others as 
well--to offer a number of targeted, commonsense amendments to restore 
a proper balance and ensure the people of Puerto Rico have a say in 
their future. By the way, since they are going to have to live with the 
tough consequences that are coming, no matter what, it is always better 
when stakeholders are engaged in the process and have a say about their 
future. This tempers the powers of the control board and gives the 
people of Puerto Rico more of a say in who is on the board. I encourage 
my colleagues to do the same--to offer amendments they feel will 
improve the bill. I know, as all of us know, that success is never 
guaranteed, but at the very least, the people of Puerto Rico deserve a 
thorough and thoughtful debate on the Senate floor.
  I do not take lightly, nor should my colleagues, a decision to 
infringe upon the democratic rights of the people of Puerto Rico. The 
3.5 million American citizens living in Puerto Rico, and 5 million 
family members living in our States and in our districts--in New 
Jersey, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Connecticut, just to 
name a few--deserve more than the Senate's holding its nose to approve 
an inferior solution.
  So I hope the majority leader stands true to his word when he said we 
``need to open up the legislative process in a way that allows more 
amendments from both sides''--well, both sides are calling for 
amendments to this bill--and allows us to call this bill up for debate 
so we can do what we were elected to do--fix problems and make the 
lives of the American people better--and do what the Senate, as an 
institution, should do, particularly as viewed by the Founding Fathers; 
that is, to take the passions of the moment, to think about it, morally 
and logically, and at the end of the day hopefully to refine and make 
proposals much better.
  There is no reason that this has to wait until next week, on the 
verge of the Fourth of July recess. But I will say this. I want to give 
my colleagues notice now that I am not ready to rush to celebrate 
independence and create a situation of colonialism for 3.5 million of 
my fellow citizens. I hope we will get an early opportunity to debate 
this bill, offer amendments, and we will see how it falls then.
  Mr. President, in view of that desire, I ask unanimous consent to lay 
before the Senate the House message on S. 2328; that the motion to 
concur with an amendment be considered made and agreed to with no 
intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The majority whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would say 
to our friend from New Jersey that it is the plan, publicly announced 
by the majority leader, to bring this legislation that was passed by 
the House to the floor of the Senate next week. Obviously, we are 
working on the CJS appropriations bill, and our deliberation on that 
has been delayed by a number of the other amendments and other matters 
that have been voted on this week. But it has always been the intention 
of the majority leader to allow Senators to offer amendments, unlike, 
frankly, when Democrats controlled this Chamber. But I do think it is 
going to require some cooperation and maybe even some consent 
agreements to agree to amendments that can be resolved in time to meet 
the July 1 deadline. To me, one of the best arguments in favor of this 
legislation is that we want to avoid a taxpayer bailout. We want to 
avoid a taxpayer bailout. This legislation from the House does that. I 
understand the Senator may have some objections to it and some better 
ideas in his mind, but we are going to have that opportunity next week.
  If we want to see what the effect of leftwing fiscal policy is, what 
we see is the bankruptcy occurring in Puerto Rico now. I think they 
need to try something else, some fiscal responsibility and restraint. 
Frankly, I worry for the rest of the country that if we don't do 
something to get our own fiscal house in order here in the United 
States Senate, the rest of the country is going to find itself in dire 
straits at some point in the not too distant future.
  So I would say that we are going to have a chance to have that debate 
and those votes next week. This is not the time to do it because we 
have other important work that is pending before the Senate. Nor are 
the rest of us 99 Senators going to agree to a unanimous consent 
request to legislation we haven't even read or had time to consider.
  So under those circumstances, I would be compelled to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I am disappointed but not surprised. I 
do hope that the remarks of the Senator from Texas that there will be 
time and opportunity for amendments are real, because every published 
report I have seen suggests this will be brought up next Thursday on 
the verge of everybody trying to go on recess. My advocacy or my 
unanimous consent request wasn't to bring a bill to the floor that 
isn't already known. That bill has been out there for some time. It is 
to create the process to debate and begin to amend the bill--the bill 
passed by the House of Representatives that has been out there for some 
time now. So I wasn't offering a bill of my own vision. It was to 
create the process.
  Of course, I respect the importance of the present appropriations 
bill that we are discussing, but the urgency of the time limit as it 
relates to the default that can take place in July is not as pressing 
on that appropriations bill as it is for the people of Puerto Rico. So 
I think there can be a reasonable opportunity to move to PROMESA--a 
false promise, from my view--and a real opportunity to have a debate on 
it, and more than debate, amendments--amendments to make it better.
  So I hope that is going to happen. But I want to signal now that if 
we are jammed on Thursday and it is an up-or-down vote--take it or 
leave it--that I have every intention of doing whatever I can 
procedurally to make sure we have amendments on this.
  As it relates to the question of bankruptcy and bailout, we are not 
bailing anybody out here. That is why we want

[[Page 9502]]

Puerto Rico to have access to restructuring. Restructuring is a 
provision under the bankruptcy code that you take your debts--whether 
you are an individual, a company, or, in this case, a government--and 
you go before the bankruptcy court and you say: Here are all of our 
debts, and here is our income. We want to be able to restructure this 
in such a way that we can be solvent and at the same time be 
responsible to those debtors. And they will live with the dictates of 
the bankruptcy court. But this bill doesn't even guarantee that the 
bailout my colleague is concerned about doesn't happen, because it 
guarantees no absolute road to restructuring.
  As it relates to leftwing policies, I would just note--as someone who 
has been an advocate and a voice for the people of Puerto Rico for the 
24 years I have been in the Congress, since they have no elected 
representatives here who have a vote, at the end of the day--that there 
have been leaders of that government in Puerto Rico, many who have been 
Republican in nature and others who have been Democrat in nature. The 
policies that have taken place and that have accrued to this moment are 
a combination of some bad fiscal policies by leaders on both sides of 
the aisle but also by policies that treat the 3.5 million U.S. citizens 
in Puerto Rico inferior to any one of them if they took a flight to any 
State in the Nation, for which they would have full rights, 
obligations, and benefits.
  So we have been part of creating the process here, and we have been 
part when we took away section 936, which was an inducement to the 
private sector to help build jobs and economic opportunities. We just 
took it away. They had provisions to elements of the bankruptcy code. 
Somehow, in the middle of the night, that was taken away from them. So 
we have treated them like a colony, and now we are worried.
  As it relates to leftwing policies, let me just say that, if raising 
incomes of people, if saying to people there should be a minimum wage 
that can sustain your family and help you realize your hopes and dreams 
and aspirations, if you are working overtime and you ultimately should 
have some protections that you should be paid overtime--if those are 
leftwing fiscal policies, then I think most Americans believe that they 
should get a living minimum wage to be able to sustain their families, 
help their children be educated, take care of their health care, and 
think about their retirement.
  So I don't think this is about that at all. If we are going to lose a 
fight for the people of Puerto Rico, it is going to be because we are 
going to have a fight at least to have amendments and to consider what 
that future should be. But we are not going to take it that it is an 
up-or-down vote on a House-passed bill that has no voice of the Senate, 
no imprint of the Senate. That is not what I got elected to the Senate 
for.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.


                           Amendment No. 4787

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, tomorrow we will have a chance to begin to 
talk about the real cause of what happened that horrible night in 
Orlando at the Pulse nightclub--that is a homegrown terrorist attack 
inspired by the poisonous ideology of ISIS, the Islamic State. We will 
have a chance to revisit the total lack of any coherent plan coming out 
of the White House to deal with the threat of the Islamic State over in 
the Middle East and the consequences of failing to deal with that here 
at home.
  The poisonous fruit of that failure and previous ones is already 
self-evident: the massacre of American soldiers at Fort Hood, TX, in 
2009 that took the lives of 13 people and an unborn child; a deadly 
attack on 2 military facilities in Chattanooga, TN, in 2015 that took 
the lives of 5 U.S. servicemembers; an attempted attack in Garland, TX, 
about a year ago that--but for a vigilant police officer was thwarted--
could have been disastrous; and then, of course, the shooting in San 
Bernardino where 14 people were killed. Add to that poisonous fruit of 
the failure to have a coherent policy to deal with the Islamic State 
and its poison, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, where 3 persons were 
killed and many more wounded--not by a gun but by pressure cooker bombs 
made by the terrorists. Most recently, the worst terrorist attack in 
our country since 9/11 was in Orlando, where a jihadist pledged his 
allegiance to ISIS and then viciously gunned down 49 people in that 
Orlando nightclub.
  It is telling that the Attorney General sought to withhold from the 
American people the 9-1-1 calls of the Orlando shooter to excise out--
to rewrite history--and to diminish the terrorist influences that 
motivated him in the first place. It is further evidence that the Obama 
administration fails to see what is plainly right in front of its face 
when it comes to the threat, and it continues to refuse to deal with it 
in a way that would crush ISIS and discourage people from becoming 
radicalized because they feel like ISIS is winning. If ISIS were 
crushed and destroyed, which should be our goal, I don't believe we 
would have radicalized Americans here pledging allegiance to the leader 
of a crushed or destroyed Islamic State.
  So jihadi terrorism on American soil is not just some one-off, freak 
occurrence. It is now an undeniable pattern. How many ISIS-inspired 
attacks do we need in this country before we start talking about and 
taking the threat seriously and begin targeting the evil ideology ISIS 
is selling?
  Typically, in an investigation, law enforcement has to work hours on 
end to answer the question of who did it. But that is not the case with 
these examples of Islamic extremism. We know who the enemy is. But the 
Obama administration has failed to call it for what it is, and the 
President has failed to offer any strategy to root out and exterminate 
it. Promises to ``defeat and degrade'' appear just about as hollow as 
the President's threat of retaliatory action if redlines were crossed 
with the use of chemical weapons in Syria. When that happened, there 
were no consequences.
  So the result is that ISIS isn't contained, and it is surely not 
retreating. Don't take my word for it. The Director of the Central 
Intelligence Agency just last week suggested that ISIS would continue 
to ``intensify its global terror campaign.'' They are not giving up, 
and they are not going away. They are doubling down. Like the terrorist 
in Orlando, ISIS is actively using every tool at its disposal to 
recruit, train, and radicalize individuals here in America and in other 
parts of the world.
  This terrorist army figured out a long time ago that it could 
accomplish its objectives of inflicting death and destruction on 
innocent Americans without even having to send its operatives from the 
Middle East into the United States. All it had to do was to export, not 
its soldiers, but its ideology and poisonous ideas to the United States 
via the Internet with the propaganda that it uses to, again, poison 
susceptible minds, those who are sympathetic to the cause and willing 
to swear allegiance to it and carry out the horrific acts like we saw 
in Orlando.
  Over the weekend, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman 
noted that ISIS and its supporters are posting an estimated 200,000 
tweets a day--200,000 separate messages a day on Twitter. How long will 
it take before the administration recognizes that this propaganda poses 
a growing national security problem? Once they acknowledge it, how much 
longer will it take them before they do something about it?
  In fact, we heard from FBI Director Comey that there are open 
investigations on individuals suspected of being radicalized in all 50 
States. I don't see the administration doing anything at all to 
effectively counter this terrorist propaganda popping up all over the 
Internet, turning some susceptible Americans into cold-blooded jihadist 
killers. We can fight back by equipping our law enforcement personnel 
with the tools they need to keep us safe. The fact is, you can't 
connect the dots unless you can collect the dots, and that means robust 
intelligence consistent

[[Page 9503]]

with our Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment.
  Too often law enforcement officials have to operate with one hand 
over their eye or one hand behind their back, however you want to 
characterize it, because they can't access key information in a timely 
manner, and because of that they are not able to discern the pendency 
of an attack or the motivations of somebody who is planning an attack. 
If they could collect the information, maybe--just maybe--they could 
then go to the FISA Court and get a search warrant. Maybe--just maybe--
they could get a wiretap upon the showing of probable cause in court. 
Those, of course, are consistent with the Fourth Amendment protections 
against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the burden should be on 
law enforcement to produce probable cause evidence in order to justify 
collection of the content of those communications.
  We saw the consequences of our flying blind in Garland, TX, just last 
year. On the morning of the attempted terrorist attack, the two men who 
came from Phoenix dressed in body armor with semiautomatic weapons sent 
more than 100 messages overseas to suspected terrorists, and vice 
versa, but, unfortunately, FBI Director Comey--at least the last time 
he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee--said the FBI still 
doesn't have access to that information because of encryption. This 
means our law enforcement authorities could be missing critical 
information that could uncover future terrorist attacks or identify the 
network of terrorists here so we can stop them before they kill again.
  The Garland case isn't unique. The FBI is regularly slowed down by 
outdated policies that make their job of protecting the homeland much 
more difficult--more difficult than it needs to be. We saw that in San 
Bernardino too. We have to address this gaping hole in our legal 
authorities and do all we can to give the FBI and our other law 
enforcement officials the tools they need, and a good place to start 
would be tomorrow morning by allowing the FBI to use national security 
letters to obtain key information about what suspected terrorists are 
doing on the Internet and whom they are communicating with online in 
counterterrorism investigations. This is not for content, as the 
Presiding Officer knows. This is information about Internet and email 
addresses, much as national security letters are currently authorized 
to collect telephone numbers and financial information. In fact, the 
FBI Director said the omission of this authority years ago, he 
believes, was an oversight, but it now provides a gaping vulnerability 
and has blinded the FBI to information that could well allow them to 
have detected the intentions earlier of jihadists like the one in 
Orlando.
  I don't know for a fact, but I just wonder if the FBI, back when they 
were vetting the Orlando shooter on two separate occasions because 
things he said and did put him on the watch list, if they would have 
been notified immediately when he purchased his firearms. Well, as we 
now know, the FBI investigations were inconclusive and he was taken off 
the watch list. I wonder if the FBI had access to a national security 
letter that would allow them to gain information about the IP addresses 
he had been visiting from his Internet service provider, along with 
email addresses--again, not content because you can't do that without a 
warrant issued by the FISA Court and a showing of probable cause--and 
what he might have been viewing, such as YouTube videos of Anwar al-
Awlaki, who was responsible for radicalizing MAJ Nidal Hasan at Fort 
Hood and others, and the information was sufficient enough that the 
President of the United States authorized the use of a drone in order 
to kill him on the battlefield so he could not kill other innocent 
Americans--well, you get my point. We need to make sure the FBI has 
access to all the information they can legally get their hands on, and 
a good place to start is voting on the McCain-Burr amendment tomorrow 
so the FBI can obtain information about what they are doing on the 
Internet and who they are communicating with, and if it is justified, 
to be able to then go to court and demonstrate probable cause 
sufficient to actually then look at content in order to prevent 
terrorist attacks.
  I want to be clear about one thing. The FBI already has the power to 
review financial records like Western Union transfers and the FBI 
already has the power to review telephone records. They can access 
telephone numbers, not the content of the conversation, again, unless 
there is further authority issued by a court of law, but because of an 
inadvertent omission in the law, the FBI can't readily access the exact 
kind of information ISIS is using to recruit and radicalize violent 
extremists lurking in our midst.
  We have seen how difficult it is to identify these people before they 
kill. Why in the world wouldn't we want to make sure we provide all the 
information under our constitutional laws that could be available to 
law enforcement to identify these people before they kill?
  I introduced a similar proposal to the McCain-Burr amendment a few 
weeks ago in the Judiciary Committee that would address this and 
provide access to this counterterrorism information. I am glad our 
colleagues, the senior Senators from Arizona and North Carolina, have 
now offered this amendment to the underlying legislation.
  As the Presiding Officer knows, this provision, or one very similar 
to it, was contained in the Intelligence reauthorization bill that had 
the bipartisan support of everybody on the Intelligence Committee, save 
one.
  This is long overdue. It is bipartisan, and I think our failure to 
act to grant this authority, particularly in the wake of this terrible 
tragedy in Orlando, would be inexcusable. This is something the FBI 
Director, appointed by President Obama, has said he needs. He said this 
is their No. 1 legislative priority. President Obama's administration--
beyond just the FBI Director--supports it. What is stopping us from 
providing this authority?
  The truth is, these threats are at our doorstep. ISIS is using every 
tool it has to spread fear and chaos, and we owe it to those on the 
frontlines of our counterterrorism efforts to get them what they need 
in order to more effectively counter these terrorists' efforts. It is 
our duty to do something about it. Unlike some of the provisions we 
voted on last night that would do nothing to stop people like the 
Orlando shooter, this could actually stop them.
  I am all ears if there are other ideas when it comes to advancing 
commonsense proposals to fight terrorism at home and make our 
communities safer, but this is a good place to start. I hope going 
forward we can do a better job of providing the FBI and law enforcement 
officials the resources they need to keep us safe. This is within our 
grasp, and all we need to do is to take advantage of this opportunity 
and have a strong bipartisan vote to adopt the McCain-Burr amendment 
tomorrow morning.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, after voting down sensible gun measures 
earlier this week, Republicans want to change the subject. They want to 
resort to scare tactics to divert the attention of the American people. 
Now, they are offering an overbroad proposal that they argue is needed 
to keep this country safe.
  Let's be clear about what we need to stay safe. We need universal 
background checks for firearms purchases. We need to give the FBI the 
authority to deny guns to individuals suspected of terrorism. Senate 
Republicans rejected those sensible measures last night, but we still 
have the chance to give law enforcement real tools to fight terrorism 
and violent crime. We should strengthen our laws to make it easier to 
prosecute firearms traffickers and straw purchasers who put guns in the 
hands of terrorists and criminals. And we need to fund the FBI and the 
Justice Department so they have the resources they need to combat acts 
of terrorism and hate. Those are the elements of the amendment that 
Senators Mikulski, Baldwin, Nelson, and I have filed--and those are 
among the actions that Congress could take to protect this country.

[[Page 9504]]

  Instead Republicans are proposing to reduce independent oversight of 
FBI surveillance of Americans' Internet activities and make permanent a 
law that, as of last year, had never been used. And I should note that 
this is the same law that the Republican leadership in the Senate 
allowed to expire just last year.
  In case there is any confusion, I will state it clearly: The McCain 
amendment would not have prevented the Orlando attack.
  The amendment would eliminate the requirement for a court order when 
the FBI wants to obtain detailed information about Americans' Internet 
activities in national security investigations. This could cover Web 
sites Americans have visited; extensive information on who Americans 
communicate with through email, chat, and text messages; and where and 
when Americans log onto the Internet and into social media accounts. 
Over time, this information would provide highly revealing details 
about Americans' personal lives. The government should not be able to 
obtain this information whenever it wants by simply issuing a subpoena.
  Senator Cornyn and others have argued forcefully that we cannot 
prevent people on the terrorist watch list from obtaining firearms 
without due process and judicial review. They say we need an 
independent decisionmaker; yet at the same time, they are proposing to 
remove judicial approval when the FBI wants to find out what Web sites 
Americans are visiting. The FBI already has authority to obtain this 
information--if it obtains a court order under section 215 of the USA 
PATRIOT Act. In an emergency where there is not time to go to court, 
the USA FREEDOM Act allows the FBI to obtain this information before 
getting judicial approval, so this amendment is unnecessary.
  This amendment is opposed by major technology companies and privacy 
groups across the political spectrum, from FreedomWorks to Google to 
the ACLU. I ask unanimous consent that a letter from nearly 40 
organizations and companies opposing this proposal be printed in the 
Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The Judiciary Committee also should study this proposal before it 
proceeds. The Judiciary Committee has not held a hearing to examine 
whether this expansion of the NSL statute is necessary or how it would 
affect Americans' privacy and civil liberties.
  Rather than trying to distract us from their opposition to 
commonsense gun measures, Republicans should support actions that will 
actually help protect us, like those in the amendment filed by Senator 
Mikulski, Senator Baldwin, Senator Nelson, and myself. They should 
support emergency FBI funding. They should support funding for the 
civil rights division to help protect the LGBT community, the Muslim 
American community, and the African-American community from hate crimes 
and discrimination. And they should support my proposal to make it 
harder for terrorists and criminals to evade background checks by 
turning to firearms traffickers and straw purchasers. This is a 
provision that I have developed with Senator Collins and that has been 
strongly supported by law enforcement.
  As we saw in San Bernardino, terrorists can acquire assault rifles by 
simply using a friend to purchase the guns for them; yet prosecuting 
such individuals for firearms trafficking has proven to be an extremely 
difficult task. My proposal will fix these laws. It will provide law 
enforcement the tools it needs to deter and prosecute those who traffic 
in firearms, and it will help to close another glaring loophole in our 
gun laws that allows terrorists and criminals to easily acquire 
powerful firearms.
  I urge Senators to oppose the McCain amendment and to support these 
measures that will actually help keep our country safe.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
                                                     June 6, 2016.
       Dear Senator: The undersigned civil society organizations, 
     companies, and trade associations strongly oppose an 
     expansion of the National Security Letter (NSL) statute, such 
     as the one that was reportedly included in the Senate's 
     Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 and the 
     one filed by Senator Cornyn as an amendment to the ECPA 
     reform bill. We would oppose any version of these bills that 
     included such a proposal expanding the government's ability 
     to access private data without a court order.
       This expansion of the NSL statute has been characterized by 
     some government officials as merely fixing a ``typo'' in the 
     law. In reality, however, it would dramatically expand the 
     ability of the FBI to get sensitive information about users' 
     online activities without court oversight. The provision 
     would expand the categories of records, known as Electronic 
     Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), that the FBI can 
     obtain using administrative subpoenas called NSLs, which do 
     not require probable cause. Under these proposals, ECTRs 
     would include a host of online information, such as IP 
     addresses, routing and transmission information, session 
     data, and more.
       The new categories of information that could be collected 
     using an NSL--and thus without any oversight from a judge--
     would paint an incredibly intimate picture of an individual's 
     life. For example, ECTRs could include a person's browsing 
     history, email metadata, location information, and the exact 
     date and time a person signs in or out of a particular online 
     account. This information could reveal details about a 
     person's political affiliation, medical conditions, religion, 
     substance abuse history, sexual orientation, and, in spite of 
     the exclusion of cell tower information in the Cornyn 
     amendment, even his or her movements throughout the day.
       The civil liberties and human rights concerns associated 
     with such an expansion are compounded by the government's 
     history of abusing NSL authorities. In the past ten years, 
     the FBI has issued over 300,000 NSLs, a vast majority of 
     which included gag orders that prevented companies from 
     disclosing that they received a request for information. An 
     audit by the Office of the Inspector General (IG) at the 
     Department of Justice in 2007 found that the FBI illegally 
     used NSLs to collect information that was not permitted by 
     the NSL statutes. In addition, the IG found that data 
     collected pursuant to NSLs was stored indefinitely, used to 
     gain access to private information in cases that were not 
     relevant to an FBI investigation, and that NSLs were used to 
     conduct bulk collection of tens of thousands of records at a 
     time.
       Given the sensitive nature of the information that could be 
     swept up under the proposed expansion, and the documented 
     past abuses of the underlying NSL statute, we urge the Senate 
     to remove this provision from the Intelligence Authorization 
     bill and oppose efforts to include such language in the ECPA 
     reform bill, which has never included the proposed NSL 
     expansion.
           Sincerely,
       Access Now, Advocacy for Principled Action in Government, 
     American Association of Law Libraries, American Civil 
     Liberties Union, American Library Association, American-Arab 
     Anti-Discrimination Committee, Amnesty International USA, 
     Association of Research Libraries, Brennan Center for 
     Justice, Center for Democracy & Technology, Center for 
     Financial Privacy and Human Rights, CompTIA, Computer & 
     Communications Industry Association, Constitutional Alliance, 
     Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Engine.
       Facebook, Fight for the Future, Foursquare, Free Press 
     Action Fund, FreedomWorks, Google, Government Accountability 
     Project, Human Rights Watch, Institute for Policy Innovation, 
     Internet Infrastructure Coalition/I2Coalition, National 
     Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, New America's Open 
     Technology Institute, OpenTheGovernment.org, R Street, Reform 
     Government Surveillance, Restore the Fourth, Tech Freedom, 
     The Constitution Project, World Privacy Forum, Yahoo.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.


                        Mass Shooting in Orlando

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I take this time to continue the 
discussion as to the tragedy that occurred on June 12 in Orlando, FL. 
The shooting occurred at a popular LGBT club, Pulse. The club owner, 
Barbara Poma, lost her brother to the AIDS epidemic. The club was named 
to remember a pulse that faded from this world far too early. Pulse was 
not just a place to socialize, it was a refuge and a place of 
acceptance and solidarity where members of the Orlando LGBT community 
could be themselves without judgment.
  The fact that an attacker would target this venue, especially during 
Gay Pride Month, is a horrific tragedy and a senseless loss of human 
life. My deepest sympathies are with those killed and injured in this 
terrorist attack, along with their families and loved ones. My thanks 
go out to the first responders who saved lives in the midst of such 
danger.
  This attack, and others like it in recent years, tears at our hearts 
and

[[Page 9505]]

leaves us angry, frustrated, and confused. We, as a nation, must 
resolve to stop those who wish to do harm to Americans from committing 
and encouraging acts of terror.
  The Orlando shooter apparently subscribed to an extreme system of 
beliefs that led him to carry out this heinous attack. No religion 
condones or encourages such violence and killing. We must reject any 
ideology that leaves room for discrimination and dehumanization to a 
point where someone can commit these types of acts. No one should ever 
fear for their life simply for being themselves or expressing who they 
are as an individual. America's values of tolerance, compassion, 
freedom, and love for thy neighbor must win out over hate, intolerance, 
homophobia, and xenophobia.
  The time for talk is over. We, as a nation, as a community, and as an 
American family, must take actions to change minds, hearts, and, 
finally, change policies. The attack in Orlando was a terror attack and 
a hate crime. We can stop others and save lives by taking immediate 
action.
  I was disappointed we missed opportunities to do that yesterday with 
sensible gun safety amendments. I cosponsored the Murphy amendment, 
which would have created a system of universal background checks for 
individuals trying to buy a gun. The amendment would have ensured that 
all individuals who should be prohibited from buying a firearm are 
listed in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and 
would require a background check for every firearm sale. We know there 
are loopholes today. Why do we allow those loopholes to continue? It 
should not matter whether you buy a gun at a local gun store or at a 
gun show or on the Internet, you should have to pass a background check 
so we can make sure guns are kept out of the hands of people who should 
never have one. This amendment would have helped keep guns out of the 
hands of convicted felons, domestic abusers, and the seriously mentally 
ill, who have no business buying a gun.
  Studies have shown that nearly half of all current gun sales are made 
by private sellers who are exempt from conducting background checks.
  It makes no sense that felons, fugitives, and others who are legally 
prohibited from having a gun can easily use a loophole to buy a gun.
  Once again, the use of a universal background check will have no 
impact on the legitimate needs of people who are entitled to have a 
weapon, but universal background checks could and would help us keep 
our communities safe by helping us keep weapons out of the hands of 
criminals and those who have serious mental illness and domestic 
abusers. We need to stop their ability to easily be able to obtain a 
weapon.
  Universal background checks are strongly supported by the American 
people. Most background checks can be completed very quickly and do not 
inconvenience a purchaser at all.
  To my colleagues who have reservations about this legislation, let me 
cite the Heller decision. In June 2008 the Supreme Court decided the 
case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The Court held that the Second 
Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms rather than a 
collective right to possess a firearm. The Court also held that the 
Second Amendment right is not unlimited, and it is not a right to keep 
and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner and for any purpose.
  Justice Scalia wrote for the Court in that case:

       Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on the 
     longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by 
     felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying 
     of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and 
     government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and 
     qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms.

  That was Justice Scalia for the Court.
  Justice Scalia recognized Congress's right to make sure those who are 
not qualified to own a firearm do not get that firearm. We have an 
obligation to make sure that background checks are effective so as to 
keep out of the hands of criminals and those who have serious mental 
illness the opportunity to easily be able to obtain a firearm.
  The legislation pending before us in the Senate is fully consistent 
with the Heller decision. That amendment would have been fully 
consistent with the Heller decision and Justice Scalia's opinion.
  I know we can protect innocent Americans while still protecting the 
constitutional rights of legitimate hunters and existing gun owners. We 
should take that action on behalf of the American people.
  There was a second amendment I cosponsored that unfortunately was 
rejected yesterday--the Feinstein amendment--that would close the 
terror gap. If you are not safe enough to fly on an airplane, you 
shouldn't be able to buy a gun. The Feinstein amendment would give the 
Attorney General the authority to block the sale of guns to known or 
suspected terrorists if the Attorney General has reason to believe the 
weapons would be used in connection with terrorism. The amendment would 
have ensured that anyone who had been subject to a Federal terrorism 
investigation in the past 5 years would have been automatically flagged 
with the existing background check system for further review by the 
Department of Justice.
  Note that under this amendment, being included on a terrorist watch 
list is not by itself a sufficient justification to deny a person the 
right to buy a firearm. The Attorney General may deny that weapon 
transfer only if she determines that the purchaser represents a threat 
to public safety based on a reasonable suspicion that the purchaser is 
engaged or has engaged in conduct related to terrorism. So there is a 
standard there.
  A recent GAO report concluded that approximately 90 percent of 
individuals who were known or suspected terrorists were able to pass 
background gun checks. This amendment would have closed this loophole 
and would have reduced the risk of a terrorist being able to legally 
acquire a firearm.
  Under current law, individuals who are known or suspected terrorists 
and do not fall into one of the nine prohibited purchaser categories 
can legally purchase a weapon. While the FBI is notified when 
individuals on the terrorist watch list apply for a background check 
through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, it does 
not have the authority to block the sale.
  The Feinstein amendment contains remedial procedures so that 
individuals get the reason for denial, the right to correct the record, 
and the right to bring action to challenge the denial. In other words, 
there is due process in the Feinstein amendment.
  So I was disappointed that the two amendment chances we had yesterday 
were not approved by the Senate. I think both would have helped in 
making our communities safer.
  Congress has an obligation to act. As I have indicated before, we 
need to act. Inaction is not an option. The President of the United 
States has already acted to the extent he is permitted using his 
Executive authority. Many of our States have acted as well, including 
my own State of Maryland, but we need a national law that applies to 
all 50 States to stop criminals, terrorists, domestic abusers, and 
others who should not get their hands on a gun from simply driving to a 
nearby State with less restrictive gun laws and being able to legally 
acquire a weapon.
  I encourage my colleagues to continue to work on compromise 
legislation on the issue of universal background checks and terror 
watch lists. Congress should also act to ban assault-type weapons, 
which have no legitimate civilian use, and we should ban the sale of 
high-capacity magazines which only increase the level of carnage in a 
mass shooting.
  The time for action is now. We cannot wait.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.


                         Miners Protection Act

  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I rise today to express the urgent need 
to take up and pass a piece of legislation which has great meaning for 
me and my fellow West Virginians and which is

[[Page 9506]]

important to our Nation's coal-mining community, and that is the Miners 
Protection Act.
  Seventy years ago, in 1946, President Harry Truman secured an 
agreement committing the Federal Government to protect lifetime health 
and pension benefits for our Nation's miners. These men and women 
earned this care through their tireless and often very dangerous work 
to produce the coal that has powered our Nation and spurred economic 
growth for years.
  Over the course of seven decades, Congress has kept their promise. In 
1992, a bipartisan effort in Congress led by my predecessor, Senator 
Rockefeller, resulted in the passage of the Coal Act to address the 
health care needs of orphaned coal miners. Those are miners whose 
companies are no longer in existence.
  In 2006, I voted for legislation that built upon the Coal Act and 
continued the bipartisan congressional tradition, fulfilling our 
promise to coal miners and their families and retirees and protecting 
their promised health care benefits.
  In 2012, the bankruptcy of Patriot Coal placed the health care of 
more than 12,000 retirees and dependents at risk. A temporary solution, 
which has been going on for a couple of years, has preserved health 
care for these individuals, but that short-term solution is nearing an 
end.
  Additional coal industry bankruptcies--and I feel like we hear about 
one a week, and they are major--have threatened health care benefits 
for more families.
  If we don't act now, health care for more than 21,000 miners and 
families will be lost by the end of this year--just 6 months from now.
  West Virginians really know what mining has meant to our State and to 
our Nation, and our miners have depended on these benefits. Every day I 
am reminded of this.
  Char from Bob White, WV--and Bob White is the name of the little town 
he lives in--recently wrote to me:

       We are desperate. Our benefits are about to lapse unless we 
     get this legislation passed. It cannot be ignored again. Many 
     retired miners cannot afford to pay for their medications if 
     we lose our health care.

  Kenneth, who lives in Mullens, WV, said:

       It seems more and more that the attack on coal is no longer 
     an industry attack but one that is personal on individuals.

  He went on to ask this question: ``What about folks like me that 
worked hard their entire life?''
  Recognizing the significance of this problem, I joined with 
Congressman David McKinley to introduce legislation in 2013 that 
addressed both the retiree health care and the looming insolvency of 
the mine workers' multiemployer pension bill.
  Last year, Senator Manchin and I introduced the Miners Protection 
Act, a very similar bill. This bill demands immediate action. We need 
to follow through with our commitment to all the hard-working West 
Virginians and other coal miners across this country. In addition to 
addressing the health care needs of retirees through the same 
mechanisms supported by Congress in 1993 and 2006, the Miners 
Protection Act will ensure the solvency of the multiemployer pension 
plan that provides benefits to almost 90,000 retirees and surviving 
spouses. More than 27,000 of those--nearly one-third--live in my home 
State of West Virginia. The Miners Protection Act uses unobligated 
funds authorized by the 2006 AML reauthorization bill to support 
existing mine-working health and pension programs.
  Let's be clear. Mining retirees do not receive lavish benefits. The 
average pension payment is only $560 per month. But these funds are 
vital to our retirees who live on very small fixed incomes. They are a 
key part of a local economy in West Virginia and other States where 
these retirees live.
  If we fail to act, the pension plan will become insolvent, imposing 
projected liabilities of over $4 billion on the PBGC, known as the 
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. If we pass the Miners Protection 
Act, the pension plan will remain in good standing, benefiting 
taxpayers, beneficiaries, and coal communities.
  In May, the trustees of the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds 
announced that contributions to the pension fund have dropped by nearly 
two-thirds from last year's level. This just shows you how devastated 
our coal communities are.
  The continued regulatory assault on the coal industry has hastened 
this decline and threatened the retirement security of our miners. In 
2001, the EPA finalized the mercury and air toxins rule for coal 
plants. Since that time, our Nation has lost more than 40,000 coal 
jobs, and 1,000 of those workers are West Virginians. Our State's 
unemployment is among the highest in the country for this very reason. 
The impact of other EPA proposals, like the Clean Power Plan, which has 
been stayed by the Supreme Court, and the stream protection rule that 
is currently being finalized, would make the situation even worse in 
our coal communities.
  As I have said many times before, the negative regulatory impact on 
coal extends far beyond the tens of thousands of families who are most 
directly affected. A loss of coal severance tax revenue has triggered 
drastic budget problems for our State, which we just got a 1-year 
solution for, and a lot of our local governments are having to lay off 
county workers and school workers and schoolteachers.
  The severe impact on the health care pensions of our miners is 
another consequence of the administration's War on Coal.
  Given that Federal policies have played a major role in causing this 
problem, it is appropriate for the Federal Government to fulfill its 
commitment to retiring miners who will lose their promised benefits 
unless we act.
  The Miners Protection Act is critically important to so many people 
in my State and across this country. We need to keep the promise of 
lifetime health care for those retired coal miners whose companies have 
gone through bankruptcy, and we need to make sure our retirees receive 
the pension benefits they have worked so hard for.
  The Miners Protection Act is a truly bipartisan effort. It is 
supported by Democrats and Republicans and Independents in the Senate. 
There are 72 cosponsors on the House bill, including 39 Republicans and 
33 Democrats.
  West Virginians understand that this need not be a political 
football. As Thomas from Shady Spring, WV, put it, ``This issue is not 
partisan; this is an easy fix to funding promised pensions.''
  It is important this bill be enacted this year before the temporary 
solution expires and ends the health care benefits for so many retirees 
and before the continued downturn takes an even greater toll on the 
pension fund.
  I will continue to work with my colleagues in the West Virginia 
delegation, including Senator Manchin, Congressman McKinley, 
Congressman Mooney, and Congressman Jenkins, and all of the other 
cosponsors of this legislation, to see it become law before it is too 
late.
  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 bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MANCHIN. 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. MANCHIN. Mr. President, first of all, I thank my colleague, 
Senator Capito. We come from the same State, and we have known each 
other for a long time, and we basically represent the same people, who 
have given so much to this country. I want to thank her. This is truly 
bipartisan, and that is how it should be in this body. When you have 
something causing the people in your State and in the country to be 
hurting, you don't worry about the politics. Democrat or Republican, 
you reach across the aisle and do the right thing.
  I thank her so much. Everything she said is absolutely correct. This 
thing goes clear back to 1946 under President Harry Truman. At that 
point in time,

[[Page 9507]]

John L. Lewis basically was going on strike for the MWA. Every miner 
back in the 1940s belonged to the United Mine Workers. This Miners 
Protection Act basically fulfills the promise that a President of the 
United States made by Executive order. And what we have asked for now 
is to fix this.
  We have a pathway forward. Democrats and Republicans on both sides of 
the aisle, as Senator Capito has said, have stepped forward, and I am 
so appreciative of that. If we don't do something quickly--by the end 
of this year--they will lose their health care, and in another year or 
two they are going to lose their pensions.
  We are mostly talking about widows. Most of their husbands have 
passed away from black lung disease or other causes. These are widows 
who don't have much to begin with. These are stipends that assist with 
their medical and health care.
  This is something that should have been done a long time ago, but we 
are taking it right down to the end of the wire. That is what we are 
concerned about.
  We have asked everybody to look at the bill. We have found pay-fors.
  Here is a really good pay-for. The 1974 fund was solid until the 
collapse of 2008. The collapse didn't happen because the MWA did 
something wrong with the miners' pensions. It happened because of Wall 
Street. Guess what. We have a $5 billion fine on Goldman Sachs. We 
said: Let's take $3.5 billion of it. That is what caused the problem; 
that is a pay-for. We are also using abandoned mine land money excess--
not any of the mitigation we are responsible for.
  Senator Capito has laid this out to the point, and we have worked 
together. Both of our staffs have worked closely together on this. This 
is the way things should have been done.
  We hope that all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle will 
encourage the leadership to take a position on this and put it up for a 
vote. We think it will pass. We know that it will pass if it gets its 
day in court. This is the body that will make it happen. I think on the 
House side they will do the same thing.
  With that, I thank Senator Capito again for the hard work she has 
done. It is a pleasure working with her, and we will show that 
bipartisanship is alive and well in West Virginia and should be alive 
and well in the United States of America.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COATS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


         Ending U.S. Aid Used for Palestinian Acts of Terrorism

  Mr. COATS. Madam President, terrorist violence against civilians in 
Israel has been accelerating in recent years amounting to what is now 
called the silent intifada, the term meaning ``violent uprising.'' 
Perhaps it is called silent because we are not paying enough attention 
to the atrocities that are currently taking place in Israel.
  The first intifada lasted from December 1987 to 1993, the second, 
from 2000 to 2005. This third uprising, the so-called silent intifada, 
began in Jerusalem in 2014. Last year, the latest intifada was 
characterized with a new name, ``knife intifada.'' Earlier, we 
witnessed media accounts of Palestinian terrorists slaughtering 
Israelis and others, including American citizens, by blowing up 
restaurants or schoolbuses or using automatic weapons. Breaking news on 
CNN or FOX, or whatever we were watching, showed us the scenes of body 
parts, pools of blood in the streets, ambulances, with sirens 
screaming, rushing to the nearest hospital or aid station with 
mutilated and badly injured victims of these attacks. Lately, though, 
the weapons of choice seem to be increasingly the knife. Apparently, in 
some ways, the Palestinians think the direct face-to-face bloody 
slaughter of a teenager or a grandmother by a knife-wielding thug makes 
it even more personal and horrifying. Americans may know, through 
recent media reports, about this wave of violence injecting new poison 
into the region, but I think what most don't know is that American 
taxpayers are supporting this with their tax dollars. Let me repeat 
that.
  While we may be aware of some of what is going on in Israel through 
this knife intifada, through the continued horrors and the murders that 
are taking place, what Americans don't seem to know--in fact, what many 
of us have now learned--is that their tax dollars are supporting this 
effort. Since 1998, the Palestinian Authority has been encouraging such 
attacks by honoring and supporting Palestinian terrorists serving 
criminal sentences in Israeli prisons and rewarding the families of 
those who were martyred by their own violent acts.
  Since then, the system of payments has been formalized and expanded 
by President Abbas in Presidential directives. Palestinian terrorist 
prisoners are regarded by the Palestinian Authority as patriotic 
martyrs, fighters, heroes, and actually as employees of the Government 
of the Palestinian Authority. While in prison for their crimes, they 
and their families are paid premium salaries and given extra benefits 
as rewards for their service--their service being a criminal act, an 
assault, and even a murder. It is interesting that they use that word. 
Under release from custody, the terrorists then become civil service 
employees. Shockingly, monthly salaries for both incarcerated and 
released prisoners are on a sliding scale, depending on the severity of 
the crime and the length of the prison sentence. Thus, the more heinous 
the crime, carrying a longer sentence, enables the criminal or his 
family to receive a much higher premium salary. For example, a prisoner 
with a 5-year sentence or his family receives about $500 a month; 
whereas, a more serious criminal serving a 25-year sentence will 
receive $2,500 a month--six times the average income of the average 
Palestinian worker. Where else in the world does a prisoner receive 
such benefits that actually increase with the severity and violence of 
the crime?
  In May 2014, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a 
Presidential decree that moved this payment system from the PA, 
Palestinian Authority, to the PLO, the Palestine Liberation 
Organization. The openly acknowledged reason for this shift was to 
sidestep the increasingly critical scrutiny of this payment system by 
foreign governments--including the United States--which are 
contributing much of the money that is keeping the Palestinian 
Authority afloat.
  In 2014, I, along with Senators Graham and Kirk, cosponsored an 
amendment to the fiscal year 2015 appropriations bill providing for the 
reduction of budgetary support for the PA by an amount the Secretary of 
State determines is equivalent to the amount expended by the PA as 
payments for acts of terrorism by individuals who are imprisoned after 
being fairly tried and convicted for acts of terrorism and by 
individuals who died committing acts of terrorism during the previous 
calendar year. That is something Senator Kirk, Senator Graham, and I 
worked on to try to address this issue. Subsequent annual 
appropriations legislation continues now to include this provision. 
Once that prohibition was enacted and became law, PA President Abbas 
formally ended the program and transferred that support function to the 
PLO, by transferring to the PLO the exact amount that had been budgeted 
by the Palestinian Authority accounts for this prisoner support 
purpose; in other words, nothing but a shell game. Oh, we are getting a 
lot of criticism about providing support to these so-called martyrs, 
these criminals who have been convicted in Israeli courts. We are 
getting criticized for doing that--actually, people are telling us it 
is an incentive to do this. The sickness of this is that families 
benefit by having one member of their family actually go out and commit 
a crime, including a murder, getting sentenced to prison for a number 
of years, and then the family or the criminal is being rewarded for 
that very act.
  So when criticism came and the language we passed in the Congress 
which

[[Page 9508]]

enforced this came, Abbas simply pulled out a shell game and said: I 
will just shift the money and the authority over here, designating that 
the cutoff of aid by the United States and other countries now was 
going to a different authority. Now, the relationship between the two 
organizations, while complex, is also very intertwined. While the PLO 
claims it is an independent body, the PA receives its legitimacy and 
mandate from the PLO in agreements with Israel. In effect, the PA is 
subordinate to the PLO.
  I am speaking on the Senate floor because I have become increasingly 
concerned that this payment issue is not receiving the public attention 
and criticism it deserves. People think, well, we have solved the 
problem through the language which we passed a couple of years ago but 
are now discovering that a shell game was simply in play and that money 
is simply fungible and then shifted over to another function under the 
PA called the PLO that is then now distributing the money to the 
families.
  It appears some pro-Israel organizations may be hesitant to bring 
more pressure on the financially weak, dependent PA, believing it would 
deprive Abbas of what little remains of his authority and status as a 
negotiating partner, thus making a negotiated settlement with Israel 
less likely. It also appears that some Israeli officials have been 
reluctant to support the cutoff of aid to the PA, presumably to 
preserve the PA's stability as a West Bank security provider.
  Our administration--the U.S. administration--is similarly not eager 
to enforce this issue. The Department of State's Bureau of 
Counterterrorism said in a report last month that this payment system 
was ``an effort to reintegrate released prisoners into society and 
prevent recruitment by hostile political factions.'' There is nothing 
in the PA Presidential directives establishing this system that 
justifies such an absurdly positive view of its purposes. The U.S. 
Government should not see this payment program in such a positive light 
at all, nor does the Palestinian Authority deserve immunity because of 
its fragility. These payments provide rewards and motivations for 
brutal terrorists, plain and simple. To provide U.S. taxpayer money to 
Abbas and his government so they can treat terrorists as heroes or 
glorious martyrs is morally unacceptable. To tolerate such an outrage 
because of concern for Abbas's political future or preserving the PA's 
security role for Israel amounts to self-imposed extortion. If the PA's 
fragile financial condition requires U.S. assistance, then it is their 
policy--not ours--that must change.
  Let me be more specific as to why we need to take immediate action to 
stop the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to reward the PLO for its 
barbaric acts. Since 2014, there have been at least 45 terrorist 
attacks in Israel killing 585 people, including Americans. Just this 
past March, Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, 
was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in Jaffa. Taylor was a 
graduate of the U.S. military academy, and as a former U.S. military 
officer, he was buried with full honors. His attacker was killed by the 
Israeli police. This terrorist then received the honors of his own 
community and a burial ceremony that glorified him as a martyr, the 
highest religious achievement in Islam. The official Palestinian 
Authority spokesman said the celebration funeral was ``a national 
wedding befitting of martyrs''--a reference to the Islamic belief that 
a martyr marries 72 dark-eyed virgins in paradise.
  The family who presumably paid for this celebration received 
substantial rewards from the Palestinian Government and will now 
receive a permanent monthly stipend. Some of that money is paid into 
the U.S. Treasury by American taxpayers and is given as assistance to 
the Palestinian Authority, which is then shell moved over to the PLO 
and then provided as a reward for killing an American soldier.
  I, for one--and I am sure I am speaking for the American taxpayer--am 
not interested in paying for a martyr's funeral or his so-called 
wedding. I am also not interested in paying for what amounts to civil 
servant salaries for the two terrorists who shot four Israelis to death 
this past June in Tel Aviv or the two Palestinian boys who attacked 
customers in a supermarket in February or the 16-year-old terrorist who 
stabbed an Israeli mother of six to death in her own kitchen last 
January.
  I could go on and on about these atrocities and murders, and to think 
that American taxpayer dollars are paying the families and criminals of 
those who committed the crimes, with our tax dollars.
  As I said earlier, we need an immediate response to this outrage, and 
I am ready to lead the effort. First, I intend to work with my 
colleagues, particularly Senator Graham and Senator Kirk, who are on 
the relevant committees and had joined me years ago to try to put a 
stop to this. I want to work with them to end American financial 
support for incarcerated terrorists or the families of these so-called 
martyrs who have earned that status by the brutal slaying of Jewish 
citizens, including some Americans. We will identify the amount of 
money that flows from the PA to the PLO for this purpose and cut U.S. 
assistance by at least that amount. If that partial cutoff of U.S. aid 
is not sufficient to motivate the PA to end this immoral system of 
payments to terrorists, I propose a complete suspension of any 
financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority until their policy 
has changed.
  I am aware that suspending assistance to the Palestinians will have 
other consequences that we and Israel will have to address, but I 
believe the pressure that we and other like-minded governments could 
and should apply in this manner will bring President Abbas and other 
Palestinian officials to their senses. Whether or not this will occur, 
the moral imperative is clear: Payments that reward and encourage 
terrorism must stop. We have a moral obligation to do all that we can, 
as soon as we can, to stop financing the murder of innocent Israelis 
and Israel's friends and supporters.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          For-Profit Colleges

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I have taken the floor many times to call 
to the attention of the Senate abuses by for-profit colleges, an 
industry that enrolls 10 percent of all college students, receives 20 
percent of all Federal aid to education, and accounts for 40 percent of 
all student loan defaults. That is 10 percent of the students and 40 
percent of the student loan defaults. I have spoken about specific 
companies involved in this industry--for-profit colleges and 
universities--including Corinthian, the University of Phoenix, DeVry, 
ITT Tech, Westwood, and Ashford. It is a long list. I have spoken about 
Congress's responsibility and the responsibility of the Department of 
Education to reform higher education laws and be aggressive in 
overseeing these companies. Fortunately, things are starting to change 
at the Department of Education.
  Today, I wish to speak about the accreditors and one in particular--
the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or ACICS.
  Accreditors are, according to the Department of Education, 
responsible for ensuring that education provided by institutions meet 
acceptable levels of quality. In that role, they are, frankly, the 
gatekeepers of Federal dollars that flow to these colleges and 
universities. Without accreditation, the schools can't receive the 
money through the students for Pell grants and Federal loans. But, by 
law, the Department of Education decides which accrediting agencies are 
``reliable authorities as to the quality of education or training 
provided by the institutions of higher education and the higher 
education programs they accredit.''
  In order to be a gatekeeper of Federal educational student aid funds 
like loans and grants, these accrediting

[[Page 9509]]

agencies must be approved by the Department of Education. The 
Department performs periodic reviews of federally recognized 
accrediting agencies to ensure that they are still ``reliable 
authorities.''
  Here is where ACICS comes in. This outfit is currently undergoing one 
of those regular reviews by the Department and the Department's 
advisory board. It is a group called NACIQI, the National Advisory 
Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity and they will hold a 
hearing on ACICS this Thursday. Last week, in the first part of this 
review process, the Department of Education staff made its initial 
recommendation to NACIQI to revoke the recognition of ACICS, an 
accrediting agency responsible for about 25 percent of all for-profit 
colleges and universities.
  This is the right decision. I commend the Department. I hope that 
NACIQI and ultimately the Secretary of Education, Mr. King, will follow 
the recommendation.
  Last week, I joined Senators Blumenthal, Murray, Brown, and Warren in 
writing to NACIQI to express support for their recommendation. For too 
long, this accrediting agency has acted as a rubberstamp for some of 
the worst for-profit colleges in America. Let's take one example to 
start with: Corinthian. Some will remember this company. It lied to the 
Federal Government and to the students who went to school there about 
its job placement rates. Listen to this. They used a scheme where they 
paid employers to hire recent graduates of Corinthian in temporary jobs 
so that Corinthian could report to the Federal Government that their 
graduates got employment. They were caught. The fraud was systemic at 
Corinthian and ultimately resulted in its bankruptcy. They were 
defrauding the government and, even worse, they were defrauding these 
students and their parents.
  I wrote to the Department of Education asking them to look into these 
allegations of fraud about Corinthian in December of 2013. That same 
day I wrote to Dr. Albert Gray. He was the CEO of ACICS, which was the 
agency which accredited Corinthian. That was the agency that said to 
the Federal Government: This is a real college; you should let Federal 
funds flow to this college.
  So I wrote to Dr. Gray and I said: What are you doing as an 
accrediting agency to hold Corinthian accountable and to ensure that 
they do not continue their fraudulent practices?
  I received a response from Dr. Gray. His letter said the allegations 
were ``a source of great concern'' and that the council that he 
administered would review information submitted by Corinthian and 
``make a determination of what actions to take regarding additional 
inquiries, compliance hearings or more serious sanctions.''
  This so-called review of Corinthian by ACICS continued for more than 
a year, even as States like California, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin 
and Federal agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 
filed suit against Corinthian for their corrupt practices. Meanwhile, 
their accrediting agency was ``really looking into this''--really 
looking hard.
  As the evidence of Corinthian's fraud and abuse mounted, ACICS--this 
accrediting agency--continued its wishy-washy ``monitoring'' that never 
led to anything. In fact, up until the date that Corinthian Colleges 
declared bankruptcy in May of 2015, they were still fully accredited by 
this ACICS accrediting agency. That is disgraceful.
  But it wasn't disgraceful to ACICS. In response to an effort by 
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut in a 2015 Senate HELP Committee 
hearing to get Dr. Gray to admit that ACICS made a mistake by 
continuing to accredit Corinthian, Dr. Gray said:

       I will be the first to admit that accreditors like any 
     other organization make mistakes. Corinthian was not one of 
     those mistakes.

  Incredible--here is a group that has defrauded students, defrauded 
the Federal Government, is being sued by at least three States and 
other Federal agencies, had declared bankruptcy, and the accrediting 
agency was still standing firmly behind it. Is this an organization 
that we can truly trust as taxpayers to be a reliable authority as to 
the quality of education? This is the gatekeeper--this agency, this 
accrediting agency--the gatekeeper for millions and sometimes billions 
of dollars to flow out of the Treasury from taxpayers through students 
and their families to lots of CEOs at for-profit colleges that are 
doing quite well, thank you. History tells us we can't trust ACICS.
  Corinthian isn't the only embarrassment on the ACICS resume. 
According to the Center for American Progress, more than half of the 
$5.7 billion in Federal student aid awarded to ACICS-accredited schools 
in the past 3 years went to institutions facing State and Federal 
investigations or lawsuits. Twenty percent of the students at these 
for-profit schools accredited by this discredited agency defaulted on 
their Federal student loans. Does this sound like an organization that 
is a reliable authority when it comes to quality education schools 
provide?
  In my home State of Illinois, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who has 
been a real leader on this subject, settled a lawsuit last year against 
the notorious Westwood College. Westwood's practices were not all that 
different from Corinthian--lying to students about job prospects.
  I remember meeting a young girl in Chicago. She had been smitten by 
all of these criminal investigation shows on television. So she signed 
up at Westwood, and she signed up to take courses in criminal justice. 
It took her 5 years to finish, to get her so-called degree from 
Westwood College in Chicago. Do you know what she found afterwards? Not 
a single law enforcement agency would even recognize her diploma. She 
spent 5 years and, even worse, she went deeply in debt--almost $90,000 
in debt--for a worthless diploma from Westwood College. She moved back 
into her parents' home, living in the basement, and her dad came out of 
retirement to try to earn some money to help pay off the student loans 
at this worthless Westwood school.
  Guess who accredited Westwood College. ACICS, the same agency. In 
fact, in the course of their investigation, the attorney general's 
office found that ACICS was not annually verifying even a sample of job 
placements reported by Westwood and other institutions they accredited.
  There are so many other examples of negligence by this accrediting 
agency. That is why 13 State attorneys general, including Lisa Madigan 
of Illinois, have written to the Department of Education asking them to 
revoke ACICS' recognition.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter from the 
attorneys general be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

         The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Office of the Attorney 
           General,
                                                    April 8, 2016.
     Re Opposing the Application for Renewal of Recognition of the 
         Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools 
         (ACICS).

     Hon. John King,
     Department of Education, Washington, DC.
     Jennifer Hong,
     Executive Director/Designated Federal Official, National 
         Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and 
         Integrity, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC.
       Dear Secretary King and Ms. Hong: We write in response to 
     the notice of intent to accept written comments on the 
     application for renewal of accrediting agencies, 
     specifically, the Accrediting Council for Independent 
     Colleges and Schools (ACICS), as published in the Federal 
     Register on March 18, 2016. We have carefully reviewed the 
     Criteria for the Recognition of Accrediting Agencies, 
     including Sec. Sec. 602.16(a)(1)(i), 602.19(a) & (b), and 
     602.20(a), that are of particular importance to our 
     consumers. We believe that stronger oversight by accrediting 
     agencies is necessary to protect vulnerable students from 
     predatory schools, ensure accountability to taxpayers, and 
     level the playing field for career schools that are 
     delivering quality, affordable programs. Given ACICS' failure 
     to ensure program quality at the institutions it accredits, 
     we oppose renewal of recognition and urge the Department to 
     revoke its status as a recognized accreditor.
       Because the Department of Education does not directly 
     assess the quality of institutions of higher education, 
     students depend on accreditors to ensure that schools provide 
     an education that fleets at least minimum

[[Page 9510]]

     standards of quality. Accreditors, more than any other party 
     charged with the supervision of higher education, are 
     responsible for protecting students from profit-seeking 
     institutions offering training of no educational value. 
     Today, when millions of students are defaulting on the 
     student loans they incurred to attend subpar for-profit 
     schools, it is clear that certain accreditors are failing to 
     do the job.
       Even in the crowded field of accrediting failures, ACICS 
     deserves special opprobrium. According to a recent analysis 
     by ProPublica, only 35% of students enrolled at ACICS 
     accredited schools graduate from their programs, ``the lowest 
     rate for any accreditor.'' Of students who actually did 
     graduate, more than one in five defaulted on their student 
     loans within the first three years after graduation. A full 
     60% had not yet paid down a single dollar of the principal 
     balance on their loans.
       As consumer advocates in our respective states, our offices 
     have investigated many ACICS accredited schools based on 
     complaints from students, and found a fundamental lack of 
     substantive oversight for student outcomes by the accreditor. 
     Lapses that we have encountered include a failure to take 
     action when improper job placement statistics are reported, 
     inadequate job placement verification processes, and a lack 
     of transparency and cooperation with investigations into 
     student outcomes.
       ACICS' most spectacular failure was its decision to extend 
     accreditation to several dozen schools operated by Corinthian 
     Colleges. Corinthian's practice of offering extremely 
     expensive degrees of little value to low-income students has 
     been the target of more than twenty state and federal law 
     enforcement agencies. Yet ACICS continued to provide 
     accreditation to Corinthian's schools until the day 
     Corinthian declared bankruptcy. The U.S. taxpayer provided 
     approximately $3.5 billion to Corinthian, made possible by 
     ACICS's accreditation.
       ACICS has failed repeatedly to take action in response to 
     public enforcement actions by state and federal law 
     enforcement. In the Illinois Attorney General's investigation 
     and subsequent litigation with Westwood College, the office 
     found that ACICS was not annually verifying even a sample of 
     job placements reported by the institutions it accredits. 
     When asked by the attorney general's office, ACICS would not 
     commit to formally outline their verification process in an 
     affidavit. This type of obfuscation hinders regulatory 
     cooperation between the ``triad'' that oversees higher 
     education in the United States, the federal government, the 
     states, and accreditors.
       There are other examples of ACICS' failure to identify 
     compliance problems and enforce its accreditation standards. 
     In 2015, Education Management Company (EDMC), with campuses 
     accredited by ACICS including The Art Institute and Brown 
     Mackie College, settled with thirty-nine State Attorneys 
     General and agreed to forgive $102.8 million in outstanding 
     loan debt. ITT Tech has been sued by the Consumer Financial 
     Protection Bureau, and Attorneys General of Massachusetts and 
     New Mexico and is under investigation by 19 other states. 
     Daymar College employed dozens of unqualified faculty as 
     determined by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education 
     and the Kentucky Attorney General, yet ACICS took no action 
     to rebuke the school or require remedies for students. Daymar 
     subsequently settled with the Attorney General and agreed to 
     provide $11 million in debt relief and pay $1.2 million in 
     student redress. National College of Kentucky, Inc. was fined 
     $147,000 by a Kentucky Court for failing to fully respond to 
     a subpoena from the Kentucky Attorney General. National 
     College of Kentucky later admitted in litigation with the 
     Kentucky Attorney General that it advertised false job 
     placement rates yet ACICS has taken no action against the 
     school.
       Career Education Corporation, whose Sanford Brown schools 
     are ACICS-accredited, settled with the New York Attorney 
     General's Office in 2013 for $10.25 million based on findings 
     that CEC fabricated job placement rates. ACICS failed to 
     identify the placement rate inaccuracies and, when CEC's 
     misconduct came to light, failed to terminate or suspend 
     accreditation to any Sanford Brown Schools. In fact, ACICS 
     did not even request that CEC recalculate inaccurate 
     placement rates for several of the affected cohorts.
       It should be noted that ACICS has representatives of these 
     problem schools on its board and committees, raising serious 
     questions about potential conflicts of interests and 
     therefore ACICS's ability to impartially evaluate those and 
     other schools. For example, ITT, Corinthian Colleges, and 
     National College all had representatives on the ACICS Board 
     of Directors/Commissioners during the pendency of these 
     enforcement actions or the events leading thereto.
       ACICS's accreditation failures are both systemic and 
     extreme. Its decisions to accredit low-quality for-profit 
     schools have ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of 
     vulnerable students whom it was charged to protect. It has 
     enabled a great fraud upon our students and taxpayers. ACICS 
     has proven that it is not willing or capable of playing the 
     essential gate-keeping role required of accreditors. It 
     accordingly should no longer be allowed to do so.
       The state attorneys general appreciate this opportunity to 
     comment and we urge the Department to exercise its 
     appropriate discretion in refusing to renew recognition.
           Sincerely,
         Maura Healey, Massachusetts Attorney General; Brian E. 
           Frosh, Maryland Attorney General; Thomas J. Miller, 
           Attorney General of Iowa; Lisa Madigan, Illinois 
           Attorney General; Andy Beshear, Kentucky Attorney 
           General; Karl A. Racine, District of Columbia Attorney 
           General; Janet Mills, Maine Attorney General; Stephen 
           H. Levins, Executive Director, Hawaii Office of 
           Consumer Protection; Lori Swanson, Minnesota Attorney 
           General; Ellen F. Rosenblum, Oregon Attorney General; 
           Eric T. Schneiderman, New York Attorney General; Hector 
           Balderas, New Mexico Attorney General; Bob Ferguson, 
           Washington Attorney General.

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, ACICS has shown time and again that it is 
not a reliable authority when it comes to the quality of an education. 
It is not a responsible steward of taxpayers' dollars.
  Follow the money in this case. Think of schools like Corinthian that 
took billions of dollars out of the Federal Treasury through loans that 
are assigned to students and paid into Corinthian so they can maintain 
their operations and pay handsome salaries to their CEO. Now they go 
bankrupt, and at that point the students of Corinthian have a choice. 
They can keep their worthless semester hours from Corinthian and keep 
their debt or they can walk away from both. Well, many of them choose 
to walk away. When they walk away, they have wasted years of their 
lives, but even more important, taxpayers have just taken a beating.
  These are corrupt capitalist ventures that rely, for 85 to 95 percent 
of their revenue, directly on the Federal Government. These are not 
free market entities. These are not private corporations. It is crony 
capitalism at its worst.
  So, today, I want to commend the Department of Education for making 
its recommendations to NACIQI to withdraw ACICS' federal approval. I 
hope this is the beginning of the end for this awful organization that 
has been complicit in defrauding students and the fleecing of taxpayers 
by major for-profit education companies for way too long.
  I encourage the Department to continue to remain steadfast in its 
current position and to ensure that the students and institutions that 
ACICS currently accredits are well informed that this process is under 
way.
  Finally, I will say that ridding our higher education system of ACICS 
is a good first step, but more needs to be done to reform it. In the 
coming weeks, I will be introducing an accreditation reform bill with 
several of my colleagues, and I hope this issue will be front and 
center during the Senate's consideration of a Higher Education Act 
reauthorization in the next Congress.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for the 141st time to urge 
my colleagues to wake up, in this case more specifically to the 
political influence, particularly the dark money, that perpetuates the 
climate blockade in Congress.
  In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the United States to write 
his famous ``Democracy in America.'' De Tocqueville described our 
American style of government as ``quite exceptional.'' He wrote about 
it with affection and with fascination. He may have been the first 
American exceptionalist.
  As the son and grandson of Foreign Service officers, I can personally 
attest to the importance of America as a paragon of government across 
the globe, as an aspirational model of self-governance, and as a 
country that others count on that comes to help, not to loot or 
conquer.
  The roots of our American exceptionalism are found in the three 
simple words that introduce our Constitution: ``We the People.'' The 
notion that the government belongs to the people seems unremarkable 
now, but in its day, it was literally revolutionary.

[[Page 9511]]

  Today, this proposition is under threat from few very well-heeled 
special interests and their shadowy front groups, all powered up by the 
Supreme Court's disastrous 5-to-4 Citizens United decision. In that 
decision, the Court's conservative bloc overturned long-standing laws 
of Congress, rejected the common sense of the American people, and gave 
wildly outsized influence over our elections to a little stable of Big 
Money interests, creating what one newspaper in Kentucky has aptly 
called a ``tsunami of slime.''
  The evidence is in. The evidence is found in our elections, where the 
tsunami of outside cash has wiped out previous campaign spending 
records and created whole new campaign spending categories that never 
existed before, like dark money. And the evidence is found in this 
Chamber, where before Citizens United we had a thriving bipartisan 
debate on climate change. Now we have exactly the silence the polluters 
want from the Republican side. It wasn't very long after de Tocqueville 
published his famous book on American democracy that the physicist John 
Tyndall wrote about excess heat trapped by the buildup of certain gases 
in the atmosphere. He wrote:

       [T]o account for different amounts of heat being preserved 
     to the earth at different times, a slight change in [the 
     atmosphere's] variable constituents would suffice for this. 
     Such changes in fact may have produced all the mutations of 
     climate which the researches of geologists reveal.

  Those ``variable constituents'' to which Tyndall referred included 
carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor; he was writing about what we 
now call the greenhouse effect. We have understood this greenhouse 
effect for a century and a half. Abraham Lincoln was President when 
this was published. It is nothing new or controversial in real science, 
as I think every single one of our major State universities would 
attest, and it is starting to have a pretty pronounced effect.
  NOAA just reported that the Earth passed what they call ``another 
unfortunate milestone.'' Carbon dioxide concentrations passed 400 ppm 
at the South Pole last month. That was a first in 4 million years. NOAA 
also announced that the globally averaged temperature over land and 
ocean surfaces for May 2016 was the highest for any May in the NOAA 
global temperature record. This marks the 13th consecutive such month, 
breaking its monthly global temperature record--the longest streak in 
NOAA's 137 years of keeping records.
  We understand what is going on. So why is Congress stuck, asleep at 
the wheel? Why? Because since the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens 
United, the big fossil fuel polluters and their network of front 
groups--a well-documented crowd now in academic literature and in 
journalism--have poured money and threats into our politics. Just one 
group, the Koch brothers-backed front group Americans for Prosperity, 
openly proclaimed that if Republicans support a carbon tax or climate 
regulations, they would ``be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican 
nomination process.'' It would mean their ``political peril.''
  The threat is plain. It is funded by the very deep pockets and the 
highly motivated schemes of the fossil fuel industry, enabled by 
Citizens United, and much of it is largely hidden from public 
disclosure. Candidates get it; it is the public that doesn't see what 
is going on behind the scenes.
  Every election since Citizens United has broken spending records, and 
this year is on track to do it again. Super PACs, anonymous so-called 
social welfare 501(c)(4) groups, and other outside groups have so far 
spent nearly $400 million in this election, and we are still nearly 5 
months from election day. Politico has reported that donations to super 
PACs are expected to exceed $1 billion this election cycle. Gee, for $1 
billion, what could they possibly want?
  We know where this money will go. It will fund an onslaught of the 
ugly, noxious, negative campaign ads that Americans hate. They hate the 
negative messages smearing the ad's targets. But they also hate another 
message. They hate the message that this smear was paid for by some 
shadowy group that they know perfectly well has no role in their State 
or in their life and that they usually have never heard of but has 
suddenly commandeered their TV screen to deliver the smear attack. That 
secondary payload, which has delivered negative ad after negative ad, 
is piling up, and its message to the American viewer is clear: This has 
gotten weird. This has gotten out of hand, and you don't count.
  Not surprisingly, Americans are becoming more and more disillusioned 
with our politics. According to a Bloomberg poll, 72 percent of 
Americans report being fed up with politics and politicians, and 59 
percent feel the ``political system is broken.'' According to a recent 
Rasmussen poll, three-quarters of voters believe the wealthiest 
individuals and companies have too much influence over elections, and 8 
in 10 agree that wealthy special interest groups have too much power 
and influence. They are not wrong. That Citizens United decision has 
even helped make Americans feel by a ratio of 9 to 1 that an ordinary 
American will not get a fair shot against a corporation in the U.S. 
Supreme Court.
  It is a dirty circle. The strength of America lies in its people. 
Stoking distrust and contempt for our political system breeds cynicism, 
and that cynicism gives special interests more influence in their age-
old battle to loot the public. That failure also jeopardizes the 
exceptionalism that has made America an example for good throughout the 
world--fat chance that we are an example for good on climate change 
when the fossil fuel industry has done what it has with its campaign 
spending.
  It is a mess, and to clean it up a group of us have assembled a ``we 
the people'' suite of legislation. The ``we the people'' legislation is 
a collection of straightforward reforms designed to loosen the grip of 
big money on our elections, reduce the influence that wealthy special 
interests have over our government--often behind the scenes--and return 
America's democracy to its true owners, the American people.
  How do we do this? Well, first, we bring transparency back to our 
elections with an updated DISCLOSE Act, a bill I have introduced in the 
last three Congresses. DISCLOSE would require every organization 
spending money in elections, including super PACs and tax-exempt 
501(c)(4) groups, to promptly disclose donors who give $10,000 or more 
during an election cycle and to get the spending information online 
within 24 hours. It would prevent super PACs from acting as de facto 
extensions of a candidate's campaign, and it would reform the Federal 
Election Commission to break the partisan deadlock that cripples 
enforcement of existing campaign finance laws.
  Second, we undo the Court's dreadful Citizens United decision. 
Citizens United was wrong in treating corporations as if they were 
people. It was wrong that corporate money will not corrupt. It was 
wrong not seeing that whatever special interests are allowed to do 
politically, they can threaten and promise to do, and those threats and 
promises are corrupting. Finally, it overlooked that a small class of 
special interests can actually make a bundle buying influence.
  The fossil fuel industry, for instance, even when it spends $750 
million in one election, is still making a bundle protecting the 
massive subsidies that support fossil fuel in this country. According 
to the IMF, that number is about $700 billion every year in effective 
subsidies.
  So ``we the people'' includes Senator Udall's constitutional 
amendment to give Congress the power to once again pass commonsense 
measures regulating presently unlimited corporate cash in our 
elections. Finally, ``we the people'' includes proposals championed by 
Senators Bennet and Baldwin to stop the spinning, revolving door that 
so often makes officials beholden to corporate special interests.
  It was not long after Alexis de Tocqueville described our unique 
American democracy and it was about the same time John Tyndall 
described the basic science of the greenhouse effect that President 
Lincoln reminded a

[[Page 9512]]

war-weary nation of the point of all that bloodshed--that ``government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from 
the earth.''
  Allowing special interests to secretly buy elections and influence 
government officials gives away an American patrimony that was dearly 
bought. Make no mistake, without Citizens United, and without the 
maligned and dishonorable use of its weaponry by the fossil fuel 
industry, we would have had by now a bipartisan solution to climate 
change. A faction on the Court that unleashed that new political 
weaponry, an industry that took shameful and remorseless advantage of 
it, and a party that has willingly subordinated itself to that 
influence to keep the money flowing all share the blame for where we 
are today.
  We need to clean this up. The polluters don't just pollute our 
planet; they are polluting our very democracy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.


                            Economic Growth

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, for months now I have been coming to the 
floor to talk about an issue that I know the American people want us to 
talk about, and that is the economy and the importance of growing our 
economy. I am highlighting what unfortunately has been a very anemic 
record of economic growth over the last 10 years, highlighting what is 
called the gross domestic product for the United States. I have been 
doing that because certainly the Obama administration doesn't want to 
do that. When we look at these numbers, we know that these are some of 
the weakest economic numbers, certainly in the last 7 years--some of 
the weakest economic numbers in U.S. history. The media doesn't want to 
talk about it, so I believe it is important that we come and have a 
debate on the economy because the American people want us to talk about 
this.
  I want to remind my colleagues that the gross domestic product--what 
we have here on this chart--is really a marker of the health of our 
economy. It is a marker of progress, a marker of the American dream. 
Right now we have a sick economy by any measure.
  Last quarter the U.S. economy grew at 0.8 percent GDP growth--barely 
grew.
  To put that in perspective, what has made our country great year 
after year, decade after decade, has been an economic growth rate of 
about 3.7 percent, almost 4 percent.
  If you look at this chart, it has many different administrations. 
This red line is the 3-percent GDP marker, which is considered OK, not 
great. Usually, most administrations are above that.
  Year after year, decade after decade--Democratic administration, 
Republican administration--what has made the country great is economic 
growth. If you look at the Obama years right here, it never even hit 3 
percent GDP growth. That is why they don't want to talk about it. When 
the President does talk about it, he doesn't remind Americans that this 
is the slowest, weakest recovery in over 70 years, but when he does 
talk about it, he still points fingers at those who came before him.
  After nearly 7\1/2\ years, two terms, this economy is his. He owns 
it, and he should take responsibility for it.
  As Michael Boskin, the well-respected Stanford economics professor, 
put it: ``Mr. Obama will likely go down as having the worst economic-
growth record of any president since the trough of the Great Depression 
in 1933.''
  Whether the President owns up to it, there is no doubt--just look at 
the charts. These are their numbers, by the way. These are the Obama 
administration numbers. There is no doubt we have experienced a lost 
decade of growth that is harming not only the economic security of our 
country and the national security of our country but--most 
importantly--American families who are experiencing this. The great 
engine of our economic growth, driven by the American worker, the most 
productive worker in world history, is now idle because we cannot grow 
our economy.
  We had more evidence of this last month with the abysmal May jobs 
report. Again, nobody talked about it. The media didn't talk about it. 
Certainly, the White House didn't talk about it, but we should be 
talking about it, what happened in May. The report showed, in May, 
employers throughout the entire United States added 38,000 jobs. That 
is in an $18 trillion economy that employs 126 million Americans--
38,000 jobs is nothing and everybody knows it.
  As a matter of fact, today, Fed Chairman Janet Yellen talked about 
what a dismal report that was in May. In fact, that is the lowest 
monthly gain since 2010 in terms of jobs, and 2016 has seen the worst 
employment start since 2009, since the beginning of the Obama 
administration.
  All of this is very bad news for the country, the economy, American 
families, and American workers. Every economist, including the Fed 
Chairman today, every pundit, even politicians who understand this 
issue, know this is a big problem. Yet the President and Members of his 
administration refuse to level with the American people about what is 
going on. You didn't hear anyone talking about the jobs report. In 
fact, right now they are calling our economy the strongest in the 
world. They are touting the fact that despite this economic jobs 
report, the unemployment rate actually ticked down. It went down from 
5.1 percent to 4.7 percent. They are kind of bragging about that. That 
is normally good news. The unemployment rate going from 5.1 to 4.7 
percent, they are talking that up.
  What is going on? What is the real story behind these numbers? 
Because the people who know these numbers know what is going on. I 
thought I would try to explain a little bit about why this 
administration is not leveling with the American people at all. First, 
having the strongest economy in the world right now is nothing to brag 
about. The President used to brag about how we were growing more than 
Europe. That was last quarter. We are not growing more than Europe now. 
The EU grew at about a 2-percent GDP growth last quarter. As I said, we 
grew at about 0.8 percent, so even that comparison is not working.
  An economist recently stated that bragging about having a strong 
economy right now globally is ``like having the best-looking horse in 
the glue factory.'' There is not a lot to brag about there.
  Really, the only comparison that matters when the administration 
tries a spin, ``Hey, we are doing better than Japan or better than 
Brazil''--the only comparison that matters is this one: How are we 
doing relative to American history? That is all that really matters, 
not the spin of how we are doing relative to another country. This is 
what matters. Again, by any measure, we have been performing very 
poorly for the last 10 years.
  Second, let's unpack the unemployment numbers. The 4.7-percent 
unemployment rate sounds pretty good, but what the President knows and 
what his administration knows but will not tell the American people, is 
that rate from the jobs report last year had numbers behind it that 
were very worrisome. If we only created 38,000 jobs, then how does the 
unemployment rate go down from 5.1 percent to 4.7 percent?
  This is how. The standard measure of unemployment in this country, 
the unemployment rate, includes only people who are actively looking 
for work. That is a term called the labor force participation rate. So 
if the labor force participation rate goes down, then the unemployment 
rate will also go down, even if we have a weak economy.
  So what happened in May? Why did the unemployment rate tick down to 
4.7 percent? That is normally good news. Well, we know it is not 
because of robust job growth because there were only 38,000 jobs 
created. Nobody thinks that is robust.
  What happened in May--and the White House isn't talking about it--the 
unemployment rate went down because almost 700,000 American workers 
quit working, quit looking for a job. Think about that. In 1 month, 
664,000 Americans--in 1 month, almost 700,000 Americans who had been 
looking for work

[[Page 9513]]

got discouraged. They said there is nothing out there. This economy is 
so weak so I am quitting even looking for a job. That is why the 
unemployment rate went down--not a strong economy, not strong growth--
discouraged American workers saying: I am done. I am not even going to 
look anymore. Of course, that is nothing to celebrate, 700,000 
Americans completely discouraged who said: I have had enough, I am not 
even going to try. Think about the families. Think about the workers 
who made that decision.
  Unfortunately, this is one of the dismal, economic legacies of the 
Obama years. Year after year, as exhibited by this chart, millions of 
Americans have simply left the workforce. They just quit. This is a 
chart of the labor force participation rate at the beginning of the 
Obama administration and now.
  Year after year, you can see more Americans say: I have had it. I 
give up. The economy is too weak. I am quitting, quitting even looking. 
Again, they are not counted in the unemployment rate.
  The labor force participation rate is a rather ungainly term, but 
what it really measures is the hope of the American worker and his or 
her family. So we should call it the American worker hope index. Here 
is the hope index for the American worker.
  As you can see by the chart, it has been crashing under this 
President with his economic policies year after year. Hope has been 
declining for American workers ever since the President got into 
office. In fact, it has not been this low since the economic malaise 
years of President Jimmy Carter.
  If you see the right hand here, 62 percent--the Carter malaise 
years--Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and then the Obama administration years, 
back almost on par with the Carter years. That is not a strong legacy.
  The last time we had an American worker hope index this low was in 
1978, the height of the Carter stagflation, when so many Americans were 
discouraged from even trying to work. That is the legacy we have right 
now.
  The most recent job numbers that came out in May was the day the 
President gave a speech to a bunch of high school students. To the 
children, the high school kids, the President painted a rosy picture of 
the economy. He told them the economy was strong and that he had cut 
the unemployment rate in half. We know that is not a fully accurate 
statement. If we had the same labor force participation rate today that 
we had at the beginning of the Obama administration, our unemployment 
rate would actually be 9.7 percent, almost unchanged from the beginning 
of 2009 when it was 10.1 percent.
  So the bottom line, the main reason--indeed, almost the sole reason 
the official unemployment rate has been, ``cut in half,'' as the 
President said, is because millions and millions of Americans have left 
the workforce because the hope of the American worker has crashed, and 
it has now reached the same low levels it did during the Carter years.
  The President did also tell these high school students that to create 
a better, stronger economy, we have to be honest about what our real 
economic challenges are.
  Here, I agree with him. Let's start with an honest assessment made 
recently by former President Clinton. This is what he said about the 
Obama economy: ``Millions and millions and millions and millions of 
people look at the pretty picture of America [Obama] painted and they 
cannot find themselves in it to save their lives.''
  That was former Democratic President Bill Clinton talking about the 
loss of hope over the last 8 years. President Clinton recently said:

       But the problem is, 80 percent of the American people are 
     still living on what they were living on the day before the 
     [2008 financial] crash. And about half the American people, 
     after you adjust for inflation, are living on what they were 
     living on the last day I--

  Meaning President Clinton--

     was president 15 years ago. So that's what's the matter.

  That is President Clinton. He is talking honestly about this economy. 
That is what honesty looks like. Family incomes have declined during 
the Obama years, wages have been stagnant, and the economic hope of the 
American worker has crashed to levels not seen since Jimmy Carter.
  I close with a few words for the American people as we get to the 
final months of the Obama administration.
  The President is going to make the claim--and some of his supporters 
and maybe even Secretary Clinton are going to make the claim--that the 
unemployment rate during the Obama years went from 10.1 percent to 4.7 
percent. They are going to talk about this. They are going to make 
people believe that somehow this is a great accomplishment.
  While technically true, what the President is not going to do, what 
Secretary Clinton is not going to do, is unpack the numbers to actually 
tell the whole truth because that unemployment rate decline is due 
primarily to the fact that so many American workers have simply quit 
looking for work. That is the full truth.
  So when you hear this great number--10.1 percent unemployment all the 
way down to 4.7 percent--the real number is 9.7 percent. The real 
number is in this index. The real number is that the American workers' 
hope over the last 8 years has crashed.
  So when the President and the White House continue to tell us that 
everything is fine, that jobs are plentiful, that the unemployment rate 
has been slashed in half, that our economy is strong relative to other 
countries, it is very important to look at what they are really saying. 
We shouldn't believe that. And the vast majority of Americans don't 
believe it because they are hurting. They are hurting because this 
economy is hurting. Millions of Americans want to work but can't find a 
job. Millions of Americans have quit looking for a job. And, as the 
President says, we need to recognize that fact and to be honest about 
it. Only then can we do what is one of the most important jobs this 
Senate can do, which is grow our economy again and create real job 
opportunities for the millions of American workers who want to work but 
have been so discouraged they have left the workforce.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


            UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENT--EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time 
to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the 
Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider 
individually either of the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 357 and 
358; that there be 30 minutes for debate only on each nomination, 
equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back 
of time on the respective nominations, the Senate proceed to vote 
without intervening action or debate on the nomination.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.

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