[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15633-15650]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will resume consideration of the 
following nomination, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read the nomination of Callista L. Gingrich, of 
Virginia, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the 
United States of America to the Holy See.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, not too long ago--I believe this was 
2011--a President came to a joint session of Congress and before the 
American people, he said what needed to be said about our Tax Code. He 
was pretty blunt. He said that our Tax Code is ``rigged.'' He said: 
``It makes no sense, and it has to change.'' Of course, you can 
imagine, that was met with bipartisan applause in the House Chamber and 
across the country.
  The same President called on Democrats and Republicans to ``simplify 
the system, get rid of the loopholes, and . . . lower the corporate tax 
rate''--one that, I might add, ranks among the highest in the 
industrialized world.
  That President, like the rest of us, knows that our business tax rate 
is a self-inflicted economic wound because businesses figure out, How 
can I move money offshore and my headquarters offshore, and if I earn 
money overseas, how can I avoid bringing that back to the United States 
for better wages and more jobs and to build the business? That is all 
because of our self-destructive Tax Code.
  But the President's name--and I gave it away by saying the year the 
speech was given. The President's name might surprise you, given the 
nature of the current debate in Washington. It was Barack Obama who 
said that, and the straight talk came from his 2011 State of the Union 
address.
  Let's fast forward a few years. We have a new President from a 
different party beating the same drum. President Trump has called our 
Tax Code a relic and a colossal barrier standing in the way of 
America's economic comeback. He is right, of course, but so was 
President Obama.
  Tax reform doesn't have to be partisan. In fact, it shouldn't be 
because the ramifications are much more important than just the 
politics and the scorekeeping of the day. The job creators in my State 
of Texas are the ones who really understand what is at stake because 
they are living it. They are the ones who are getting slammed by our 
current system.
  Take Lisa Fullerton, for example, who owns a small retail business in 
San Antonio, my hometown. Ms. Fullerton is an accountant with 33 years 
of experience, who used to handle her own business's tax compliance in-
house. Eventually, though, the code became too complex, and enforcement 
became too punitive, and she couldn't take that risk anymore. She said 
that her outsourcing of tax and employment functions now costs her 
small business roughly $280,000 more per year than it did in 2000.
  Lisa is far from the only one who is frustrated. Kurt Summers is the 
President of Austin Generator Service, a small residential power 
company in the Texas capital. For him, a lower tax rate would mean the 
difference between his company turning a profit or a loss. It would 
literally make the difference between being able to keep the

[[Page 15634]]

doors open or have to lock them up permanently. He explained that any 
extra profits realized through tax savings might enable his company to 
grow more aggressively. To him, the need for change is very simple. It 
means more hiring and more jobs.
  So Texans, like Alaskans and like all Americans, get the picture. But 
the picture is pretty messed up, and it doesn't make any sense.
  Greg Brown, President of W.W. Cannon, an industrialized storage 
company in Dallas, says that compliance has gotten to be a truly 
herculean tax. It has gotten so difficult that he has had to outsource 
that to a CPA--again, because it is so complex and people don't want to 
risk the burden of not doing it right because of the punitive nature of 
the penalties.
  Darryl Lyons, CEO of PAX Financial Group, has done the same thing. He 
is harmed each year by the passthrough taxes on his small business 
income, which impair his ability to save for business emergencies, as 
well as to pay off his company debt.
  Lastly, in terms of my stories here, Andy Ellard, the owner and 
general manager of a machine company in Dallas, regularly purchases 
expensive computer numerical controlled equipment to stay competitive 
in his industry. I have no idea what that is--computer numerical 
controlled equipment. He said that the tax ramifications of every 
purchase have to be considered. Almost every day, he asks: Can we 
expense it? Do we have to depreciate it? And if we do, over how long?
  Mr. Ellard isn't shy with his words. He calls the complicated 
deduction scheme for business expenses ``chaos.''
  Clearly, something needs to change. As I said at the outset, that has 
been acknowledged on a bipartisan basis by the current President and 
the past President. I even brought out some quotes yesterday or the day 
before from the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, making exactly the 
same argument. The ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, the 
Senator from Oregon, said that lowering the corporate tax rate will 
make America more competitive globally and will bring money back home 
for jobs and investment in our country. So it is important for us to be 
consistent and, unfortunately, they haven't been.
  Things are starting to change. Last week, the so-called Big 6--led by 
Speaker Ryan; Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin; Kevin Brady, chairman 
of the House Ways and Means Committee; and the Finance Committee 
chairman, Orrin Hatch--released a unified framework that contains core 
principles for reform. Among them are a simplified rate structure, the 
elimination of the alternative minimum tax, and many itemized 
deductions and incentives for companies to keep jobs on American soil. 
Perhaps most importantly, the framework recommends what is widely 
agreed upon as overdue, which is lowering our uncompetitive corporate 
rate, which puts American employers and workers at a disadvantage.
  Today, it is sad but true that we are divided on many issues in 
America. But as President Trump and President Obama have suggested, tax 
reform does not have to be one of them.
  I listened to our friend the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, this 
morning, calling for bipartisan tax reform. They are going to have a 
chance to do that because, after we pass a budget resolution, I 
anticipate that in the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Hatch will 
call up a base bill known as the chairman's mark, which will be open 
for amendment in the Senate Finance Committee. That is what people have 
been asking for, a chance to participate in the writing of the 
legislation in the committee and then to have it come to the floor for 
open debate and amendment. It is what we call regular order around 
here. But what I am hearing from our Democratic colleagues is, yes, 
they want bipartisan legislation, but they don't want to participate in 
the process of writing. It strikes me as pretty hypocritical. This 
shouldn't be partisan, as President Obama and President Trump have 
demonstrated and as Democrats and Republicans alike have said time and 
again.
  We in Washington have no magic wand that will make our Tax Code 
suddenly disappear, but that doesn't excuse us from working to make 
taxes and tax compliance a little less painful.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.


                        Las Vegas Mass Shooting

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, last weekend a man camped out on the 32nd 
floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. He stockpiled 23 weapons 
and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He set up bipods and scopes. He 
brought a hammer to knock out the window. Then, on Sunday, he opened 
fire. He kept firing for 15 minutes, stopping only to reload and switch 
weapons. Over 15 minutes, he murdered 58 Americans and injured more 
than 500.
  The day after the shooting, I was in Washington. I had seven or eight 
meetings, and not a single person in those meetings brought up the 
worst shooting in modern American history--not one.
  I am not sure if it was two mass shootings ago or three when we 
started to accept this as a normal condition of American life, when we 
lost our belief that it was within our power to protect our fellow 
Americans at a country music concert or at a nightclub or at a movie 
theater or at a school.
  I know there are strong beliefs about guns in America--principled 
beliefs--but there are also steps that the overwhelming majority of 
Americans want us to take. There are 90 percent of Americans who think 
we need background checks for every gun sale, including 74 percent of 
NRA members. There are 89 percent of Americans who think we should 
prevent the mentally ill from purchasing guns. There are 82 percent of 
Republicans who want us to bar gun purchases for people on the no-fly 
or terrorist watch list. Yet Congress has done nothing to respond to 
the American people. We did nothing after Aurora, after Newtown, after 
Orlando--nothing.
  Unlike Washington, in Colorado, after the two mass shootings in 
Aurora and at Columbine, our legislators rose to the occasion and made 
tough choices after we suffered two of the worst mass shootings in our 
Nation's history. After the massacre at Columbine, we closed the gun 
show loophole. After the tragedy in Aurora, we strengthened our 
background checks in a Western State. Last year, those background 
checks blocked 8,704 people from buying guns. That may sound like a 
lot, but 380,000 people applied for guns in Colorado last year. That 
means just 2 percent of those folks who applied were blocked and that 
98 percent were able to buy guns without a problem.
  Who were the 2 percent whom Colorado is blocking but whom this 
Congress fails to block? Among them were murderers and rapists and 
kidnappers and domestic abusers.
  No one could come to this floor and tell me Colorado is worse off 
because we have kept guns out of the hands of those people. The average 
wait time for those background checks is 12 minutes. That strikes me as 
a fair tradeoff to keep guns out of the hands of murderers and 
kidnappers and rapists. Yet here in Washington, despite now an annual 
tragedy--tragedy after tragedy--Congress has done nothing. We haven't 
even done the simple things like close the gun show loophole or stop 
people on the terrorist watch list from buying weapons.
  This is not about taking guns away from people who have them. It is 
about keeping guns out of the hands of people who nearly everybody 
agrees should not have them. It is about stopping more people like the 
Las Vegas killer from modifying his rifles to become almost fully 
automatic and far more deadly. I cosponsored a bill this week to ban 
those modifications, and I am encouraged that some of my Republican 
colleagues seem to be open to that idea.
  I know we cannot stop every madman or every random act of violence in 
this country--we cannot--just as we cannot stop every murder from 
happening, but that does not mean we should not make them less likely 
or that we cannot take steps to limit their harm, steps that are backed 
by the overwhelming majority of Americans and

[[Page 15635]]

that are fully consistent with the Constitution.
  I remember, after the shooting at the Pulse Nightclub, I was supposed 
to take my daughter to camp that day. She was going to be away from us 
for a month. I can remember I did everything I could to keep her from 
hearing the news that day, as the numbers of fatalities increased 
during the course of the day, because I didn't want her to leave us--
she was about 12 at the time--with a sense of fear, the fear I felt and 
the country felt. I am so sorry my children and America's children have 
to grow up in a country where mass shootings are common, where we are 
beginning to see them just as part of our lives.
  I heard somebody the other day on television say that is the price of 
freedom. What a shame that somebody would say that in the United States 
of America. What a surrender that represents to our children and to the 
victims of these crimes. I didn't grow up in that America, but 
conditions have changed. We have let it happen. The result is, we now 
have an entire generation of Americans--of our countrymen, our sons, 
and our daughters--who are growing up with a reasonable fear that they 
could be victims of a mass shooting or that their moms or their dads 
might not come home one day.
  I think our kids have enough to worry about. They have every right to 
see a movie with their parents, to go dancing with their friends, or to 
see a concert on their one night off without having the fear of being 
shot down by people who have no business carrying such powerful 
weapons. They have a right to expect that this Congress will finally do 
something about gun violence in our country--violence which is far 
greater than anywhere else in the industrialized world.
  In the wake of these horrific acts, as always, Americans spring into 
action. First responders secure the area and care for the wounded. 
Neighbors hold vigils to honor the victims and support grieving 
families. Journalists shed light on what happened and why. Citizens 
speak out to demand action from their elected officials. They are doing 
their jobs, and it is time for Congress to do ours.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). The Senator from West Virginia.


                               Tax Reform

  Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, last week, I rose to talk about the 
importance of tax reform. I believe this is a policy issue we cannot 
talk about enough and that we cannot emphasize enough. So, today, I 
rise to talk about how important the reform is to our small businesses, 
and in the coming weeks, I will be up here to talk about other 
important aspects of tax reform.
  We are all from different States and other parts of the country, but 
we all know small businesses are a major economic driver in our 
country, as 95 percent of businesses in the United States are small 
businesses, and that number is even higher in my State of West 
Virginia. Small businesses employ more than half of West Virginia's 
workforce. Yet our small businesses face a marginal tax rate as high as 
39.6 percent. At the same time, their effective tax rate can vary 
widely. In fact, a CNBC survey showed that 22 percent of small 
businesses cannot really say what their effective tax rate really is.
  Think about that.
  If you are a small business that is a partnership or an LLC, then 
your profits are going to pass through to you and be taxed at the 
individual rate. There are currently seven individual tax brackets. 
Then you have credits and deductions. There is also a self-employment 
tax, and the list goes on. On top of that, small businesses can have 
Social Security and Medicare taxes, a Federal unemployment tax, and 
employment taxes. That is not even taking into account taxes like a 
State-level income tax or property tax and more. That is why businesses 
and individuals spend billions of dollars a year to comply with the Tax 
Code. That is more than 18 hours for every man and woman and child in 
the United States of America. If I could give a visual here, that is 
basically 3 million people working full time on taxes for small 
businesses at a cost of $195 billion.
  The point is, it is complicated. Our Tax Code is too complicated, and 
that is part of what tax reform is about--simplifying the Tax Code. If 
Congress can simplify the Tax Code just to cut compliance costs in 
half, think of how many significant resources that would free up that 
would be better used to grow the economy, create jobs, raise wages, and 
expand businesses.
  The National Federation of Independent Business, which represents 
325,000 small businesses across this country, called this tax reform 
framework a good start, and it has urged us to take swift action. 
According to a survey by Paychex, 41 percent of small business owners 
want tax reform to be the very top priority.
  Whom will these reforms really help? We are going to have a long 
discussion on this. This is just part of whom they will help. They will 
help the small businesses that employ so many people in my home State 
of West Virginia. They will help people like Eric Hott, of EH 
Chocolates & More, from Hampshire County. Eric has a great story. Eric 
grew up on a farm in Kirby, WV. His mother was from Hornberg, Germany. 
While growing up, his grandmother was always cooking something. After 
graduating from high school, Eric moved to Germany to begin a culinary 
apprenticeship. By 2006, he had a chef apprenticeship at a five-star 
hotel in Germany. He went on to serve at events like the G8 Summit and 
for guests that included the German Chancellor and his First Lady. 
After running a patisserie in Germany, he moved to Switzerland, where 
he refined and perfected the art of chocolate-making. That sounds good 
to me. Then what did he do? He wanted to come home. He returned home to 
West Virginia. He went back to Kirby, WV, and started his own small 
businesses--first EH Chocolates & More and, later, Farm Fresh Produce. 
Both are growing and delicious businesses.
  Small businesses employ middle-class Americans who power this and 
other small businesses across the country. We need more folks like 
Eric--lots more--who are willing to take the risk, who have a good 
idea, and who want to stay and work in their own homes in rural America 
and certainly in our State of West Virginia, which has had a major 
economic downturn. We need more Eric Hotts. We need to simplify the Tax 
Code for small businesses and let them focus on what they do best, 
which is refining their products, providing their services, and 
providing jobs for people in their various areas.
  As much as any other policy that Congress can advance, tax reform 
will promote growth and provide job opportunities across this great 
country. Across the entire country, only two in five distressed 
communities have seen any job growth during the past 5 years. Fully 50 
percent of U.S. job growth has occurred in just 2 percent of our 
country's counties.
  We need to change that. We need to help small businesses that are 
major economic drivers in every part of our country. It is no wonder 
that small businesses have found it difficult to open, let alone 
succeed in many parts of our country. Because of our outdated Tax Code, 
real wages for most workers have barely increased for decades. By 
modernizing our Tax Code, we can create more opportunity and higher 
wages for Americans. We can achieve a simpler system with lower rates 
that is good for business and workers and, from the description I just 
put forward, would be a good time saver and resource saver.
  The best thing about this in terms of small business is that it would 
lead to more jobs. Let's create an environment that leads to more 
investment in our States and continues to grow and build jobs. These 
are the changes hardworking West Virginians and Americans are hungering 
for. In order to make West Virginia the best place to live and work, 
now is the time for tax reform.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues to make this a reality. 
Doing it will benefit so many--everyone in this country.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.

[[Page 15636]]

  (The remarks of Mr. Flake pertaining to the introduction of S. 1937 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. FLAKE. 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. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   REMEMBERING ELDER ROBERT D. HALES

  Mr. LEE. Madam President, I rise today to honor the life of Elder 
Robert D. Hales, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
  Elder Hales passed away peacefully on Sunday, October 1, at the age 
of 85. He leaves behind his faithful wife Mary and their two sons, 
Stephen and David.
  Robert Hales was born and raised in a faithful household in Long 
Island, NY. He was an all-American boy who played baseball through 
college at the University of Utah but eventually traded in his baseball 
uniform for a flight suit, serving in the U.S. Air Force as a jet 
fighter pilot. Elder Hales's service as a military aviator would inform 
the rest of his life and certainly his entire ministry. He took with 
him the unit motto displayed on the side of his aircraft: ``Return With 
Honor.''
  After his discharge from the military, Elder Hales entered the world 
of international business. In jobs around the world, he established a 
reputation as an enthusiastic leader who relished a challenge and dealt 
fairly with others. Because of these qualities, Elder Hales rose to 
become president of Paper Mate, a division of Gillette. Later, he 
assumed senior executive positions at Max Factor Company, the Hughes 
Television Network, and Chesebrough-Pond's Manufacturing Company. But 
Elder Hales never let work dominate his life, as so many executives do. 
Despite the enormous demands on his time, he stayed faithful to the 
more important commitments he made to his family and to his Lord.
  So it was that Robert Hales, a business executive of international 
renowned, made an unusual decision in the prime of his life: He left 
the corporate world to give his all to the church. When Jesus said 
``Come, follow me,'' Robert Hales left his nets straightaway and became 
a fisher of men.
  Elder Hales was called to become the presiding bishop of the church 
in 1985, overseeing the church's vast charitable network. As bishop, he 
used the skills of a business executive not for profit but to help the 
least of those among us.
  In 1994, Elder Hales was sustained to the Quorum of the Twelve 
Apostles, a church position he held for 23 years until his passing just 
days ago. From this position as a watchman on the tower, he boldly 
proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he also spoke out on such 
pressing societal issues as religious freedom. He saw that the erosion 
of religious belief in the United States was quickly devolving into 
social and political intolerance for religious people and institutions. 
But this prediction did not lead Elder Hales to despair, no; instead, 
he redoubled his efforts to edify the next generation--the young men 
and women who were in the preparatory period of life, as he termed it.
  His addresses and sermons were full of moral exhortation and 
practical advice on living well. Don't walk, run to holiness, he urged 
his brothers and sisters in faith. Elder Hales knew that holiness is an 
activity, a pursuit to which we must consecrate our whole lives running 
the race and enduring to the end.
  Through his example and through his words, Elder Hales taught that 
virtue is not just a good intention but a good deed reinforced and 
compounded by past deeds.
  Elder Hales urged young men and women to embrace the joys of 
adulthood through marriage, child-rearing, and responsible citizenship. 
He knew that the way to true happiness lies in those sacrificial 
activities, not the selfish lifestyles that tempt so many today.
  During one memorable address to the General Conference of the church, 
Elder Hales recounted the advice he received as a boy when he had been 
tempted to make a poor decision: ``Robert,'' his father had said to 
him, ``straighten up and fly right!'' From the testimony of his life, 
it is clear that Elder Hales honored his father's advice in the Air 
Force, in the workforce, in the household, and in the church. Elder 
Robert D. Hales flew right. Now he has returned with honor to be 
embraced by his Heavenly Father.
  Thank you, Madam President.
  I yield the floor and 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. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          Russia Investigation

  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I want to be able to give a quick 
update to this body on a conversation that started yesterday and has 
been ongoing for months about Russia and their interference in our 
elections and how they are trying to engage with us in a way that much 
of Europe has seen for decades but that we just haven't seen in the 
United States.
  Yesterday, Senator Burr and Senator Warner stood up and gave an 
update of where we are in the status of the investigation of the Senate 
Select Committee on Intelligence. They walked through some of the 
statistics. We have done over 100 interviews. We have 4,000 pages of 
transcript from those interviews. We have 100,000 documents that we 
have gone through so far, and there is more to go. We have completed 
some areas where we have interviewed everyone who we could possibly 
interview in that area. In other areas, as we do one interview, they 
quote a couple of other people, and we chase down those individuals, 
and it continues. So parts of the investigation are not done at this 
point, but some of it is.
  Several aspects are clear from the investigation, though, again, it 
is not complete, and we will have a final document at the end. Some of 
the areas that are clear are that Russia was trying to use active 
measures to engage us in our last election. That part is very, very 
clear.
  The question comes for many people: Why would they do that? Quite 
frankly, this is the way Russia has worked for a very long time--this 
asymmetric warfare they do where they try to constantly interfere in 
other people's thoughts and conflicts. They have done it across Europe 
for a long time. They are now doing it here.
  Some of this is a product of Russia's having a very weak economy and 
trying to find some way to bolster themselves up. In the last 2 years, 
the Russian ruble has dropped 40 percent in value. As they struggle 
with low oil prices and struggle in the way they function with their 
government with the oligarchs and have a select group of people who can 
succeed and other folks who continue to struggle around the country and 
as they struggle under that system where they have fake elections and 
such, they try to reach out to other countries and try to interfere in 
our elections to make us look like them.
  We have a free press that they try to engage in. We have free speech 
that they don't have in Russia. We have freedom of religion, which they 
don't have in Russia. We have the ability to be able to have disputes 
on political issues. They clearly don't have that in Russia. If you 
disagree with leadership in Russia, you will end up in prison. If you 
disagree with leadership in the United States, you will end up on TV. 
It is very different to be in an open society like ours. But they reach 
into what we consider a strength and try to make it our weakness.
  We are going to try to get the facts out on this over the next 
several months as we work through this process. We are going to expose 
what Russia is really trying to do. Do they use

[[Page 15637]]

some overt propaganda networks like Sputnik Radio and RT? Is their 
Russian propaganda on multiple cable and satellite channels throughout 
the United States? Their version of the facts are designed to create 
discord in our Nation. That is what they do.
  They also have ways that are not quite as overt. They reach in on 
social media platforms. They have their trolls in Russia who have 
thousands of fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter and other social 
media apps. They use those thousands of apps to search around any news 
in America and find a place where there is conflict in America and then 
try to amp up the volume.
  To be clear, the Russians are not creating conflict in America. We 
have plenty of it. We disagree on issues. Again, it is our free 
society. When we disagree on something, we disagree on it publically 
and sometimes loud. That is who we are as Americans. We try to work 
things out, sometimes at a high volume. But just like two kids who are 
fighting on the playground in the fifth grade--remember those two kids 
that started a fight and their friends were watching them? Then, 
eventually, someone on the other side of the playground started yelling 
``fight,'' and the crowd started forming. The Russians aren't starting 
the fight. They aren't even in the fight. They are the kids on the far 
side of the playground, trying to get more people to run to the fight. 
They are not starting the Twitter wars and the battles, but they look 
at where America is divided, issues like race. Their troll farms will 
try to find areas where we disagree, such as areas of race, and reach 
in and try to amplify the volume on that by repeating accusations and 
by trying to be even more hostile online. They are trying to stoke 
disunity in our Nation.
  It is important that we know that every time you see something with a 
high number of hashtag counts that goes up, it is not always Americans 
who are pushing that up. Occasionally, it is an outside body trying to 
raise the volume and make a conflict look even bigger than it already 
is in America because they are into sowing discord. That is what they 
love to do. That is what the rest of the nations have seen them do. We 
should be very clear that the Russians are trying to continue to sow 
chaos into us.
  They have reached into our election systems. In the previous couple 
of weeks, the FBI notified 21 different States that during the last 
election season, the Russians tried to interfere in their election 
process as a State. Now, that doesn't mean they did interfere. That 
means they reached in and tested systems. That means they tried to go 
into voter databases to see if they could access a voter database to 
see who was registered to vote. They tried to get into a secretary of 
State's office in a local State to see if they could figure out how 
they do their elections. That means they reached into systems in States 
to see what voting machines they used and if they tried to connect them 
in. They were trying to find out how they do elections, learn as much 
as they could about their process, and see how far they could get.
  Through all of our work, we have yet to find a single vote that was 
changed. The Russians didn't get into voting machines. They didn't 
alter the election in any way, but they were constantly probing through 
multiple States to see what they could get access to.
  Now, it is my belief that they are preparing for something else. They 
are trying to see what they could get access to in the last election to 
see if they could get back into it and do even more in the next 
election. We should be aware of that. We should be aware not only of 
their propaganda, but we should be aware that they are going after our 
elections to see if they can find a way, at the end of the election, to 
make us doubt the outcomes.
  What can we do about that? I will give you several ideas. One of 
them, I would say, is that we need to protect the primacy of States 
running the elections. There is absolutely no need for the Federal 
Government to go to States and take over their election process. It is 
a constitutional protection that those States have to be able to run 
their elections, but every State is also responsible to do it. Of the 
21 States that I noted here that the Russians tried to engage in, they 
couldn't get to a single voting machine. The States are already doing a 
good job, but they need help.
  There is no reason the State of Oklahoma should have to work alone to 
be able to protect itself from the Russians trying to invade it in the 
cyber attack. They are going to need some allies to come along with 
them, but the States should still be able to run the system. There 
should be more sharing between the State and the Federal Government. 
There should be an opportunity for the Federal Government to be able to 
say to a State, earlier than 10 months after the election: Hey, you are 
being hacked. For the FBI to notify States a couple of weeks ago that 
they were hacked in the 2016 elections is a little late. When it is 
occurring, we need to have that engagement between State IT folks and 
Federal IT folks. We need to be able to have that conversation as it is 
ongoing so the State can take protective measures as it is occurring. 
We need to have that cooperation between States and the Federal 
Government. We need to be able to help States come up with ways they 
can audit their system after the election is over.
  When every election occurs, you should be able to audit it and make 
sure the machines that were running the election actually were not 
hacked. You can verify that. In Oklahoma, we have optical scanners. You 
fill out a paper ballot. You run it through an optical scanner at the 
end of the election time, and they can count everything from the 
optical scanner. If there is any question, they can go back to the 
paper and actually do a hand count. We can literally audit our 
elections and their process. It is a safe system that we have set up in 
our State. Every State does it differently, but I would encourage every 
State to set up a system where they can audit their system.
  We know this year that the Russians were trying to engage in our 
election. It could be someone else who could do it. Any number of 
groups could try to interfere in our process. It is basic common sense 
to say we should have a system of elections we can actually audit. 
Perhaps Russia, in the days ahead, hopes that our Nation will be more 
like theirs. We will not be.
  We are the longest constitutional Republic in the world. We still 
need the world. We still put out our values about free speech, free 
press, freedom of religion, and opportunities for individuals to 
actually engage and to have conflict with their own government and to 
be able to disagree publically on things. We still can disagree with 
each other. We need to be aware that they want to turn us into them. I 
would hope for the sake of the Russian people, in the days ahead, that 
they could be more like us.
  Ronald Reagan told a story about a friend of his who had a 
conversation with a Cuban refugee fleeing from communism and oppression 
in Cuba in 1964. He said that his friend, this Cuban refugee, said:

       If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. 
     This is the last stand on Earth.

  We are still a role model for the rest of the world. As much conflict 
as we have with each other, we are still a role model. I have no issue 
disagreeing at times with people on this floor. We can have our 
disagreements, but I don't want the Russians to interfere in our 
disagreements. They can keep their business over there. In the days 
ahead, we will continue to expose the things they are doing. So they 
can back off and go bug someone else because we are akin to what they 
are doing.
  With that, 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. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Ohio.


                             Equifax Breach

  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I say to the Presiding Officer--and the 
Senator who is about to become the Presiding Officer--I appreciated the 
work

[[Page 15638]]

of you two together, in tandem, today for two nominees in front of the 
Agriculture Committee. I thank you.
  (Mr. SASSE assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. President, I rise to talk for a moment about a hearing yesterday, 
which the Presiding Officer sat through, too, with the outgoing CEO of 
Equifax. We know what happened with Equifax, yet we really don't know 
entirely what happened. We know there was a breach of Equifax's 
information, and 145 million Americans--more than half of the adult 
population in our country--had their data breached. Criminals will now 
have access to the data of far too many Americans.
  I am hopeful because I and Senator Crapo, the chairman of the 
committee, and others on the committee were pretty unhappy--not to 
speak for others, certainly, but we were pretty unhappy with Equifax's 
performance yesterday because we didn't get a lot of answers to a 
number of our questions.
  When you think about what we do with medical language, with our 
personal medical information, we have laws to say that our personal 
medical information belongs to us. We, of course, can share it with a 
hospital or a doctor or whomever we want, but our doctor can't share it 
with other doctors without our permission. Our hospital can't share it 
with other hospitals without our permission. But our personal financial 
data doesn't fall into those categories.
  We know how this happens. Equifax is a company that many have rarely 
thought about. A lot of people have never thought much about it, and 
many have never really explored who they are. Equifax is a company in 
Atlanta. There are three data agencies like this. They get your data 
without your permission. They get it from a utility company or from a 
bank or from somebody else. They have two jobs: to collect your data 
and then to protect your data, your personal financial data.
  This company--this CEO has been paid $69 million over the last 3 
years. The CEO we met with, who has retired, has been compensated very 
generously. Who knows if he will end up getting bonuses and golden 
parachutes and all? The American public has come to unfortunately 
expect that these CEOs will abuse the public trust.
  Look at what happened at Wells Fargo, creating all kinds of accounts 
for people who didn't even want those accounts, who didn't even know 
they were having those accounts opened. And look at Equifax.
  In far too many cases, these companies don't protect our information 
the way they have promised they would. It makes all of us, the 145 
million, subject to some kind of criminal activity in all kinds of 
ways--to violate our privacy and to take advantage of us financially 
and all the identity theft and all the things that come with that.
  If you were a student at Bowling Green State University who graduated 
and you miss a student loan payment after you have graduated, you get 
your credit dinged by Equifax. If you are a homeowner in Mansfield, OH, 
or in Ravenna, OH, and you miss a monthly payment or a couple of 
monthly payments, you get your credit dinged. You are held accountable 
by Equifax, but Equifax hasn't really been held accountable much by 
anyone.
  The cynicism people in this country have toward our financial system, 
toward Wall Street--then we see Wells Fargo do what they have done; 
then we see Equifax do what they have done. It is time for Congress to 
push away these special interest groups that have far too much 
influence in this body.
  The White House has not been helpful. The White House looks like a 
retreat for Goldman Sachs executives, with all the people around the 
President who do the bidding of Wall Street and protect far too many of 
these Wall Street firms and Wells Fargo and the Equifaxes of the world.
  I am hopeful that we will sit down in a bipartisan way and begin to 
figure out what to do here. Maybe we do consider the protections we 
have for people's medical records--we ought to have the same protection 
for their financial records. It simply makes sense, and I am hopeful we 
can come to a solution.
  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. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Puerto Rico Recovery Effort

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise today, as I have on so many 
occasions, to give voice to the 3.5 million Americans who call Puerto 
Rico home. Their lives have been turned upside down by Hurricane Maria, 
and now more than ever, they desperately need to be heard. I invite my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in amplifying the 
voices of millions of Puerto Ricans calling out for help and the 
millions here on the mainland who have yet to hear from their families.
  Here on the floor with me today are aerial photos of the destruction 
caused by Hurricane Maria, the astounding damage I saw firsthand when I 
toured Puerto Rico by helicopter on Friday, pictures largely taken by 
me.
  Take this collapsed bridge in the municipality of Utuado, situated in 
the central mountains of Puerto Rico. Every day, the 30,000 Americans 
who live in Utuado depend on these bridges to cross the beautiful 
rivers that run through it, but today those 30,000 Americans are 
secluded, waiting in the dark, and wondering when help will arrive.
  Images like these have stayed with me from the moment I left Puerto 
Rico, and I share them today because the people of Puerto Rico need our 
collective voices and support to stop this humanitarian crisis from 
devolving into a full-blown American tragedy.
  This is another example of some of the devastation of a large number 
of homes in a community.
  If we hope to overcome the monumental challenges before us, we need a 
full grasp of the reality on the ground. I thought that is why 
President Trump went to Puerto Rico this week--to get a dose of 
reality. Instead, the President continued to feed on his own warped 
version of reality. The President told the people of Puerto Rico that 
they should be ``very proud'' that the death count was only ``16 versus 
literally thousands of people'' who died in ``a real catastrophe like 
Katrina''--a real catastrophe like Katrina. And certainly that was a 
catastrophe, but this is no less real for the people of Puerto Rico. 
Yet, moments later, the AP reported that fatalities in Puerto Rico have 
tragically risen to 44. And while I pray it is not the case, I fear 
that it may be even worse, because we have secluded communities that 
still have not gotten access, so we don't know what is happening there.
  In short, the situation is perilous, and we don't have a moment to 
waste.
  Like many, I had hoped that during his visit to Puerto Rico, the 
President would take the high road and set a new tone after his 
administration's woefully delayed and inadequate response to Hurricane 
Maria. Instead, the President took victim-blaming to a whole new level. 
He told emergency responders and local elected officials: ``I hate to 
tell you, Puerto Rico, but you have thrown our budget a little out of 
whack.''
  Well, Mr. President, perhaps we have to dial back the budget-
bursting, trillion-dollar tax cuts you want to give to billionaire 
families like yours, because it is going to take more than paper towels 
to help the people of Puerto Rico.
  In this country, we don't turn our backs on Americans in need. We 
don't complain about how much it costs to restore power to hospitals or 
rebuild roads in ruin that connect people to their government and 
essential services or get clean drinking water and food and medicine to 
the hungry and the frail. We are the United States of America, and we 
are there for each other, whether it is Texas after Harvey or Florida 
after Irma or New Jersey after Sandy or Puerto Rico after Maria.
  If you heard the President speak earlier this week, you would heard 
that everything is going great and that he

[[Page 15639]]

in particular is doing the greatest job any President has ever done in 
the history of the world. The administration will tell us that the 
majority of hospitals are open but leave out the fact that many are 
running on emergency generators at significantly reduced capacity. They 
will leave out how the shortages of ambulances and fuel and functional 
roads have made getting to the hospitals nearly impossible. Even if you 
do find a way there, the hospitals might not have the medicine, 
supplies, or doctors you need.
  The administration will boast that it has set up 11 distribution 
points for food, water, and other necessities, but what good is a 
distribution center that takes hours to reach and is out of supplies 
before you get there?
  They will brag about how half of the people have access to running 
water but neglect to say that in some rural areas in the north, barely 
over 13 percent of people have access to running water.
  They will boast about all of the buildings being inspected--something 
that even the Governor of Puerto Rico questioned--but look at this 
image I took 5 days before the President landed. This is just 25 
minutes outside of San Juan. Hurricane Maria destroyed many of the 
wooden homes that populate the island and weakened many of its immense 
structures, as the picture showed that we had up before. Here is an 
example of it. So you see that all of these homes are destroyed. Some 
of them are not made in the same way. Here is a cement structure that 
is also totally destroyed. I saw the same sights across Puerto Rico in 
communities near the capital, in the mountains, and along the coast.
  What does all this tell us? It tells us an unfortunate truth: that 
the administration's response to this crisis has been woefully 
inadequate from the start.
  For 2 weeks, Puerto Ricans cried out for help--help accessing clean 
water, help powering hospitals, help feeding families. Yet the 
President accused them--the victims of this historic natural disaster--
of being ingrates clamoring for handouts. He dismissed the urgency of 
their situation, and he effectively called the mayor of San Juan 
another nasty woman who should pipe down.
  Well, this is the mayor of San Juan, wading hip deep in water. Does 
this look like a woman who isn't taking responsibility? No. To me, it 
looks like a leader doing everything she can to save lives.
  I knew from the start that we weren't getting the full picture, and 
because the administration went out of its way not to provide support 
for a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit the island, I 
decided to go myself. After all, it will be the responsibility of 
Congress to fund disaster relief and long-term recovery on these 
islands, and we need the facts in order to produce the right 
legislation. So last Friday, I boarded an Americans Airlines flight to 
Puerto Rico.
  Now, let me be clear. I have visited the island of Puerto Rico I 
don't know how many times over the past 25 years, both in my official 
capacity as a Member of Congress and personally to vacation. It is no 
exaggeration to say that the island I saw on Friday is not the island I 
have known and loved. The lush, green, tropical landscape that comes to 
mind when we think of Puerto Rico was mostly devoid of life.
  I met with the Governor of Puerto Rico. I spoke to local law 
enforcement officials, first responders, and Federal FEMA officials. 
With the help of the Governor's office and the Puerto Rico Joint Forces 
of Rapid Action--or FURA, as they are known on the island--I saw the 
damage by helicopter. I saw debris and mudslides and fallen trees on 
the inland streets, destroyed homes sprinkled with the occasional yet 
all-too-familiar blue of FEMA tarps. A dead green hue covered the 
landscape that was such a foreign sight to me that I caught myself 
thinking I was somewhere else.
  This was an all-too-familiar scene--the scene of a strong cement 
structure of a building, on the surface impervious to the strong winds 
of a hurricane, yet now on the verge of sinking into the Earth. The 
hurricane eroded so much land that in some inner parts of the island, 
landslides have become the new norm. The people who live here may never 
be able to return. Entire generations of close-knit communities may 
never be the same.
  Despite these dire conditions, during my visit to Puerto Rico, I felt 
the spirit of community and commitments shared by so many Americans 
across the island. After Hurricane Maria, they woke to devastation, no 
communication, and the isolating affects of roads being cut off by 
fallen trees, electrical posts, and debris. As they wait and wonder 
when their government will come to their aid, they are doing everything 
they can to survive. They have taken matters into their own hands. They 
are clearing roads, sheltering relatives who lost their homes, and 
working together to care for the most vulnerable. So through it all, I 
saw the hard-working spirit alive in Puerto Rico that I see whenever I 
speak with Puerto Rican families there and across New Jersey, where so 
many of my constituents are mobilizing to send help as they anxiously 
wait to hear from their families.
  Like so many Americans, I too worried about my family on the island. 
My brother faces health challenges, and I worried about his care. 
Fortunately, we had a brief moment to meet, and I was able to give him 
some supplies--help one person. But as tough as this situation was, he 
is one of the lucky ones. He lives in a suburb of San Juan which is 
relatively better off than the more remote, rural areas.
  Let's look at a chart of our recovery status. Fifteen days after the 
storm ravaged the island, where does it stand? Well, 93 percent of our 
fellow Americans are still without power. I can tell my colleagues 
firsthand that the heat and the humidity from all of the water that 
came from Maria is stifling. It is oppressive. It is hard to breathe.
  Sixty percent of Puerto Rico has no cell phone service, meaning 
people have no way of connecting to their families on the island and 
outside of the island or calling for help if they needed it. If they 
did, we could have pinpoint accuracy of search and rescue missions.
  Day by day, fewer and fewer Puerto Ricans have access to clean, 
running water. From October 2 to October 3, the population with running 
water dropped from 29 percent to 13 percent.
  The truth is, this situation would be unacceptable in any major city 
on the U.S. mainland, but, as the people of Puerto Rico know all too 
well, they don't get the same treatment as their fellow citizens on the 
mainland. The ugly truth is that for generations, Congress has treated 
the people of Puerto Rico not as our fellow Americans, not as people 
who have fought and bled for their country, like the famous 
Borinqueneers, an all-Puerto Rican infantry division, who received, 
recently, the highest decoration Congress gives collectively--the 
Congressional Gold Medal. They haven't treated them as first-class 
citizens but as second-class citizens.
  Hurricane Maria didn't create this disparity, but it exposed the 
longstanding inequities that have hindered the island's success for 
generations. The people of Puerto Rico don't receive equal Medicaid 
funding, Medicare coverage, or access to tax credits. They aren't just 
numbers on a ledger; they are long-term care for a grandparent, 
treatment for a critically ill child, and a fair shot to make a living 
wage and raise a family.
  This didn't happen overnight. These wrongs add up over time. As 
Governor Rossello said so eloquently:

       I invite you to reflect on why Puerto Rico is in the 
     current state of disadvantage and inequality. It's not 
     something that happened just a few months or few weeks before 
     this storm. It is a condition that has happened for more than 
     a century in Puerto Rico.

  I invite you to reflect on the reality that even after the storm hit 
Puerto Rico, even when it was evident it was a disaster in the United 
States, only half of our U.S. citizens knew Puerto Ricans are U.S. 
citizens. So when Hurricanes Irma and Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, 
these disparities, these inequalities, were laid bare.

[[Page 15640]]

  None of this should have taken the Trump administration by surprise. 
We knew the storm was coming. We knew for days that a category 5 
hurricane was on a collision course with Puerto Rico, just as 
communities across the island were picking up the pieces after Irma. We 
have known for years about the island's aging infrastructure, like the 
downed power line pictured here.
  In short, all of us knew Hurricane Maria was a recipe for disaster 
that would leave 3.5 million Americans imperiled, disconnected, and in 
the dark. It should not have taken the administration 12 days to issue 
a disaster declaration--something I called for--for 100 percent of the 
island because, as I saw on Friday, there is no community in Puerto 
Rico untouched by this tragedy. Focused leadership would have had a 
three-star general on the ground the moment the clouds parted, not 8 
days after the storms struck.
  We needed medical evacuation vehicles and vessels, aid and relief 
delivery systems on standby, the USNS Comfort ready for immediate 
deployment--something I called for. Instead, the administration told us 
helping Puerto Rico is hard because it is an island in a big ocean--but 
it happens to be an island of 3.5 million U.S. citizens.
  We have no more time to waste. That is why it is so urgent that we 
take action now. If we could send 20,000 troops to Haiti, surely, we 
can get more boots on the ground saving American lives in Puerto Rico. 
We need more helicopters airdropping food and water to secluded 
communities. We need generators delivered and the repair of 
communication towers expedited.
  It is up to the President to mobilize every resource possible--to 
save lives, to get the lights turned on, to rebuild bridges, to reach 
secluded communities, to reconnect families. We can't afford to waste 
any more time, not when lives are on the line, not when elderly 
residents in nursing homes grow frailer by the moment, not when hungry 
American children have nothing to eat, not when communities are without 
clean drinking water for days on end. We need to keep the pressure on 
the administration.
  That is why I wrote the President, urging that he activate the 
Defense Production Act of 1950 so the military could more quickly 
deliver vast private sector resources to those in need. That is why my 
colleagues and I wrote to the White House and urged FEMA to waive 
disaster relief cost sharing because, as the Governor told me: I have 
no revenue coming in. I have no revenue coming in, and the likelihood 
of revenue coming in, certainly in the short term, is not there. How do 
you acquire the 70 or 75 percent Federal assistance if you don't have 
the 25 percent to put up? That is why we have written the USDA asking 
that they use all available resources to get food to the people of 
Puerto Rico.
  This is an all-hands-on-deck situation for the Federal Government, 
but Congress also has a responsibility to act. That is why I sent a 
letter to Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan urging that they bring 
forward an emergency supplemental aid package and fund community 
development block grants for disaster recovery. It is up to us in 
Congress to immediately authorize, not just the emergency funding 
needed to save lives in Puerto Rico but also the assistance needed for 
a full-powered recovery.
  We must give Puerto Ricans the tools to rebuild. That means making 
sure Puerto Rico's financial control board gives the Governor the 
flexibility to spearhead this recovery. Board members of that control 
board should be on the island, assessing the damage, speaking to the 
survivors, allowing Governor Rossello to create a new budget that 
reflects Puerto Rico's post-Maria reality. The damage, by some 
estimates, could be as high as $90 billion, so adjusting expectations 
and enabling flexibility is absolutely critical going forward.
  I have said it before and I will say it again. The people of Puerto 
Rico must come before Wall Street creditors. As it turns out, this is 
one area where the President and I can find common ground. Just last 
night, he called for Puerto Rico's debt to be wiped out. I hope all of 
us--the administration, my colleagues in Congress, and the fiscal 
control board--can work together to jump-start Puerto Rico's recovery. 
That must include enabling flexibility, addressing the island's 
crippling debt, and ensuring that pensions are protected and paid. 
Imagine not getting your pension--no longer working, having no income, 
and then your pension is not protected. How do you make it? All of us 
in the Senate have a responsibility to stand with Puerto Rico. How we 
respond to this crisis will have profound consequences, not just for 
the Americans who live in Puerto Rico today but for generations to 
come.
  We need to pass a disaster package that matches the astounding damage 
suffered by the island. The photos I have brought to the floor today 
give a glimpse--not anywhere near the whole picture--of the devastation 
on the ground. It is not enough to reconnect a faulty, ailing power 
grid. It is time to be proactive and rebuild Puerto Rico so it is 
prepared for the next storm and for the 21st century. It is time to fix 
the underlying disparities which have hindered Puerto Rico's success. 
Otherwise, we will simply be rebuilding a broken foundation.
  Let me close by saying, I remind my colleagues that Puerto Ricans are 
not just citizens of the United States--which, in and of itself, should 
speak to the compelling arguments we should be engaged in helping 
Puerto Rico as our fellow Americans. They have fought to defend our 
Nation from World War I to the War on Terror. Take a walk down to the 
Vietnam Memorial, and you will see Puerto Rican names engraved in that 
stone far in excess of the number of people proportionately to the 
American population. Throughout our history, Puerto Ricans have given 
their lives so they may remain part of the ``land of the free.'' To 
this day, more than 10,000 Puerto Ricans serve in every branch of the 
U.S. Armed Forces.
  Let's also remember that beyond the 3.5 million citizens living on 
the island, there are 5 million Puerto Ricans living in our States, in 
our congressional districts, and in our communities. In the aftermath 
of this unprecedented disaster, these Americans deserve the same 
rights, the same respect, and the same response from their Federal 
Government. That is what I told leaders from New Jersey's Puerto Rican 
community earlier this week--assemblymen and women, mayors, community 
leaders, and concerned citizens.
  We all remember how hard it was to secure the funding we needed to 
rebuild New Jersey in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. We had to 
fight tooth and nail every step of the way, and, guess what, we had two 
U.S. Senators from New Jersey and 13 Members of Congress, joined by our 
colleagues from New York--two U.S. Senators from New York and a whole 
host of congressional Members as well as from Connecticut, which was 
also affected. It was an incredible time here to try to get relief.
  Americans in Puerto Rico have no vote in the Senate, they have no 
votes in Congress, and the fight to rebuild Puerto Rico will be that 
much harder, but, as I have in the past, I intend to be their voice and 
their vote in the U.S. Senate.
  Now is not the time to pretend like recovery will be a piece of cake. 
No one--not the Governor, not the President, not any one of us--should 
sugarcoat the human catastrophe playing out in Puerto Rico. It is time 
for honesty about the conditions on the ground, the challenges we face, 
and the actions we must take.
  Yes, Puerto Rico is an island in the middle of a very big ocean, but 
we are the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. We have the 
most advanced military capabilities ever known and the most skilled 
Armed Forces in the world. We have to be there for 3.5 million 
Americans who are in need. We are the United States of America. We do 
the impossible. Give our men and women in uniform any mission, and they 
rise to the occasion.
  If we conducted the Berlin Airlift, set up tactical operations in the 
mountains of Afghanistan, built green zones in Baghdad in the height of 
the Iraq war, then surely we can save the lives of Americans in danger, 
and surely we can save those lives and help rebuild

[[Page 15641]]

Puerto Rico. We must not rest until every American is safe and the work 
of rebuilding is done.
  I yield the floor.
  (At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered 
to be printed in the Record.)
 Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Mr. President, I had expected to be able to 
vote today on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of 
Callista L. Gingrich to be Ambassador to the Holy See. Instead, I am in 
Las Vegas meeting with victims of and first responders to the deadliest 
mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
  I support the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Callista 
L. Gingrich to be Ambassador to the Holy See. The U.S. relationship 
with the Holy See is an important one and is best supported with a 
confirmed ambassador leading it. Ms. Gingrich's faith and engagement 
with the Catholic community will support U.S. ties to the 
Vatican.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ISAKSON. 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. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be 
yielded back on both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Cloture Motion

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

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination 
     of Callista L. Gingrich, of Virginia, to be Ambassador 
     Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of 
     America to the Holy See.
         Mitch McConnell, Bob Corker, Johnny Isakson, Patrick J. 
           Toomey, Richard Burr, Orrin G. Hatch, Roger F. Wicker, 
           Tom Cotton, James Lankford, Pat Roberts, Ron Johnson, 
           Richard C. Shelby, Cory Gardner, John Thune, James E. 
           Risch, Deb Fischer, David Perdue.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
nomination of Callista L. Gingrich, of Virginia, to be Ambassador 
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to 
the Holy See, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. 
Heller), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez 
Masto) and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Nelson) are necessarily 
absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). Are there any other Senators in the 
Chamber desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 75, nays 20, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 216 Ex.]

                                YEAS--75

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Reed
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Strange
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--20

     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hassan
     Hirono
     Markey
     Merkley
     Peters
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warren
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Cochran
     Cortez Masto
     Heller
     McCain
     Nelson
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). On this vote, the yeas are 75, 
the nays are 20.
  The motion is agreed to.
  The Senator from North Dakota.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about what is 
really a ``once in a generation'' opportunity, and that is the 
opportunity we have right now to reform our outmoded and complex Tax 
Code and also, most importantly, to provide tax relief for our Nation's 
families, farmers, and small businesses.
  Our Tax Code has not been updated since 1986. When you think about 
all that has changed over the last 30 years, you know that modern 
advances in technology have drastically revolutionized the way business 
is conducted. Today, the creation of the internet, substantially 
increased automation, and instant communications have created dramatic 
changes and in many ways have brought us closer in terms of 
communication and have interconnected our global economy in ways we 
never could have foreseen back in the 1980s, when we last reformed our 
Tax Code.
  So it is past time--not time but past time--to modernize our outdated 
Tax Code to the 21st century. We must do so in order to ensure that 
American businesses can compete on the global stage, while providing 
tax relief to hard-working middle-class families who have been 
struggling to get and stay ahead over the last decade.
  The recently released tax blueprint proposes sweeping tax reforms 
that will benefit working families and small businesses throughout the 
country while promoting job creation, economic growth, and global 
competitiveness. This country was built on hard work by individuals and 
families who strive each and every day to make ends meet to provide for 
their loved ones and to plan for retirement. The current Tax Code is 
complex and has many loopholes that do nothing to help our hard-working 
families keep more of their own hard-earned money. Our tax framework 
will help individuals and families in my home State and across this 
country to get ahead by generating new jobs through sustained economic 
growth while lowering the overall tax burden and putting more money 
back in the taxpayers' pockets.
  We do this in a number of ways: by doubling the standard deduction, 
by eliminating taxes on the first $12,000 earned by an individual and 
$24,000 earned by a married couple, effectively establishing a zero-
percent tax rate as the bottom bracket--the bottom tax rate. That means 
that nearly 81 percent of North Dakotans who claim the standard 
deduction could see a significant increase in their take-home pay. That 
is true of other States across the country as well. Further, we are 
consolidating and lowering the tax rates across the board while 
simplifying the Tax Code to make it fairer for everybody.
  At nearly 70,000 pages long, it is no wonder that Americans currently 
spend 6 billion hours a year complying with the Tax Code. In fact, 94 
percent of taxpayers choose either to pay someone else or to use 
software to prepare their taxes because of the complexity of our Tax 
Code. Our goal for tax reform is to allow the vast majority of 
Americans to file their tax returns on a single page--a simple 
calculation, something they can do themselves. We want to reduce the 
cost and stress that many Americans feel during tax season.
  Further, our tax framework aims to create greater opportunities for 
small business owners, farmers, and others to help grow our economy and 
be more competitive than ever before. While we focus on a business 
friendly State in North Dakota--we have a very business

[[Page 15642]]

friendly climate--the Federal tax continues to place an undue burden on 
the nearly 71,000 small businesses that operate in our State, which is 
more than 95 percent of all of the employers in the State. Again, this 
is something that applies across the Nation. The driver of our economy, 
the backbone of our economy is small business. They are the job 
generators. They are the job creators. We have to do more to help them 
do what they do, which is to create jobs and to grow our economy.
  The same applies to our family farmers. My State alone has more than 
30,000 family farms and ranches. Their marginal tax rate can reach as 
high as almost 45 percent, nearly twice the average rate of the rest of 
the industrialized world. That creates real challenges. This tax 
framework follows the example we have set in our State by restoring 
economic opportunity, by lowering the tax burden, and by enacting a 
pro-growth tax code.
  Economists in general agree that high corporate taxes reduce wages to 
workers, raise costs to consumers, and reduce returns on retirement 
savings. That affects all of us. Maintaining high tax rates does 
nothing to improve the fairness of our system. It only punishes 
everyday citizens and reduces economic opportunities for all Americans.
  For far too long, our Tax Code has incentivized American companies to 
send jobs and investment overseas, instead of keeping them here at 
home--keeping that investment, keeping those jobs here at home. 
Consequently, large multinational corporations now hold approximately 
$2.6 trillion overseas. That is money that could be repatriated back to 
the United States for investment in American jobs here at home. Our 
framework would end the loopholes and the incentives that keep foreign 
profits offshore by moving to a territorial tax system and encouraging 
repatriation of these offshore funds, bringing that investment back to 
America. This is about getting the American economy going again and 
creating jobs and opportunity here at home rather than overseas.
  It is vital that we advance a comprehensive tax reform that 
simplifies the IRS code and simplifies rates. Putting more money in the 
pockets of working individuals and families and empowering private 
investment will drive domestic job creation and increase wages through 
higher demand for labor and lower business costs. All the while we can 
ensure stable government revenues through a broader tax base, a growing 
economy, and a more efficient tax system. That means that we will 
continue to be able to fund our priorities as we work to get our debt 
and deficit under control.
  Ensuring U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace and providing 
tax relief to middle-class families will benefit both current and 
future generations. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
work together to get tax reform done for the people of my State of 
North Dakota, for their respective States, and for Americans across 
this entire country.
  With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.


                               Healthcare

  Mr. PETERS. Madam President, in many ways, the Children's Health 
Insurance Program has been an outstanding example of what a bipartisan, 
democratic process can accomplish. Twenty years ago, President Bill 
Clinton worked with a Republican majority in both the Senate and the 
House of Representatives to successfully pass the Children's Health 
Insurance Program into law. That legislation passed with 85 votes in 
the Senate--an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote--to recognize the simple 
fact that all children born in this great country of ours should have 
healthcare coverage.
  The Children's Health Insurance Program, along with our Nation's 
community health centers, has more often than not seen great bipartisan 
support. As Members of Congress, we have always come together and 
understood the importance of these programs, and we have done 
everything we can to ensure that quality, cost-effective care is 
available to millions of Americans. Unfortunately, as I stand here 
today, funding for both the Children's Health Insurance Program and 
community health centers has expired.
  The Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, provides healthcare 
coverage to over 100,000 children in my home State of Michigan and more 
than 9 million children nationally. In addition, community health 
centers serve as the primary medical home to over 600,000 Michiganders 
and more than 20 million individuals across our country. For people 
living in rural and underserved areas, their community health center is 
their doctor's office and often their only choice when it comes to care 
close to home.
  We have already passed the deadline to extend the Children's Health 
Insurance Program and the Community Health Center Fund. We have passed 
the time to act. We should not wait any longer to provide certainty to 
the millions of children and their families who depend on CHIP and to 
the Americans who will lose access to care if their community health 
center is closed.
  We are already seeing the impact of our inaction in the CHIP program. 
Several States have begun to warn that they may be forced to end 
enrollment of new children, cut back services, or end their programs 
altogether if we do not act soon. Independent experts estimate that at 
least 10 States could completely run out of funding for their 
Children's Health Insurance Program before the end of the year, while 
funding for the remaining States' programs would not be very far 
behind.
  This is not a responsible way to govern. I have heard from physicians 
in my State, especially in rural communities, who fear that this lack 
of action will mean great harm to the patients they serve. I have heard 
from pediatricians who know firsthand what the end of CHIP would mean 
for Michigan's children. As our country grapples with what we can do to 
expand mental health treatment and address the expanding opioid 
epidemic, letting these programs lapse would be a huge step in the 
wrong direction. This unnecessary uncertainty has already forced some 
community health centers to contemplate staff hiring freezes and 
layoffs. It is certainly harming their day-to-day operations. It has 
made it difficult for them to recruit new doctors, and it has made it 
harder for their offices to obtain loans to grow their practices and to 
serve more patients.
  Luckily, this is a problem we know how to solve. I am proud to have 
cosponsored bipartisan legislation with Senators Hatch and Wyden that 
would ensure funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program. I 
also support similarly bipartisan legislation by Senators Blunt and 
Stabenow to extend funding for our Nation's community health centers.
  I welcome the fact that the Senate Finance Committee held a markup 
yesterday and was able to advance the bipartisan bill to fund the 
Children's Health Insurance Program. Now the rest of us in Congress 
need to do our job. Let's bring both of these bills up for a vote 
because, quite frankly, we cannot afford to wait any longer. Our 
Nation's children and millions of Americans who use community health 
centers as their primary medical home cannot afford to wait any longer. 
Historically, these programs have not been controversial to 
reauthorize, and they should not be now.
  I am urging my colleagues to prioritize the children of our rural and 
underserved communities who will be hurt if we do not act soon. Let's 
do what is right for our country's children and families and pass this 
vital legislation as soon as possible.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (The remarks of Ms. Heitkamp and Ms. Murkowski pertaining to the 
introduction of S. 1942 are printed in today's

[[Page 15643]]

Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')


  Tribute to Reverend Dr. Alonzo B. Patterson, Jr., and Mrs. Shirley 
                               Patterson

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wish to recognize an extraordinary 
individual in my State, along with his wife. I would like to take a few 
minutes today to recognize Reverend Dr. Alonzo B. Patterson, Jr., and 
Mrs. Shirley Patterson.
  During the first week of November, Anchorage is going to host 4 days 
of events to commemorate the service of two of our most beloved 
community leaders, the Reverend Dr. Alonzo B. Patterson and his wife, 
Shirley Patterson. Next month, Reverend Patterson leaves the pulpit of 
Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. This is a pulpit he has held for some 
47 years. Mrs. Patterson, his wife of six decades, is to be recognized 
for her service as well.
  Anchorage is one of America's great communities, and it is not 
uncommon to celebrate the retirement of a figure of Patterson's 
stature, but 4 separate days of events--that is huge, and it is a 
testament to the respect our community has for the Patterson family.
  Think about this: Alaska has been a State for just 58 years. Reverend 
Patterson has had his pulpit for 47 years. And Shiloh is not Reverend 
Patterson's first pulpit in Alaska; it is his second. He came to 
Anchorage after founding the Corinthian Baptist Church in Fairbanks. 
Reverend Patterson grew up with Alaska, and Alaska grew up with 
Reverend Patterson.
  Corinthian and Shiloh could appropriately be characterized as 
African-American churches. But for the African-American community in 
Alaska, they are far more than churches; they are centers of Black 
history in Alaska.
  Zakiya McCummings interviewed Reverend Patterson earlier this year 
for an article published in the Anchorage Press, and in that interview, 
Reverend Patterson explained:

       The church was, and always has been, the sanctuary in the 
     Black community. It is the meeting place, the community 
     center, the focus for support and help, the place you come to 
     be important, the psychologist for your particular problem, 
     the time to shout out your frustrations and the only place to 
     be significant. You could be a Deacon or something in the 
     church where in the rest of the community, you were just 
     another Black person. The church was for us a panacea for 
     many of the social ills that existed then and still have 
     relevance.

  Given the central role Reverend Patterson has played in Alaska's 
African-American community for most of our State's existence, it is no 
surprise that he is regarded as a historian of Black culture in Alaska. 
Ms. McCummings observed that it is a responsibility that he doesn't 
take lightly. Reverend Patterson told her:

       I feel like I have to be the keeper of our historical 
     plight and to speak to each generation in my time. It is a 
     powerful responsibility because if I go to sleep on my watch, 
     then the next watch will have nothing to build on. . . . 
     We're responsible that the gate remains open for the next 
     generation.

  Under Reverend Patterson's watch, there was much progress. In the 
1960s and 1970s, Reverend Patterson recalled, ``much of Alaska was 
small family businesses, including the banks. If you were not part of 
that family or their friends, you had a hard time getting a job.
  Many of the jobs for African Americans were either construction or 
government jobs.''
  Reverend Patterson proudly recalls the first Black principal of a 
State elementary school, an African-American banker who was elected to 
the school board and subsequently to the Alaska Legislature, an 
African-American activist in the Fairview section of Anchorage who is 
regarded as the grandfather of the city's public transportation system. 
Today's African-American community is built on the foundation of these 
pioneers who endured.
  Make no mistake about this, Alonzo Patterson was no mere spectator to 
all of this progress. He was an agent of change, rooted in his 
observation, and he stated: ``In ministry there are no limits except 
the ones we set for ourselves.'' Under his leadership, Shiloh grew 
spiritually, physically, and fiscally, and would include a church 
school, a television ministry, and a jail outreach ministry.
  On Shiloh's 29th anniversary, the mortgage note for the original 
structure was burned under the theme, ``Burning to Build,'' and 
groundbreaking for a new educational wing commenced. There was more 
building to come. The Martin Luther King Jr. Family Life Center was 
dedicated on May 23, 1993. In 2001, Reverend Patterson spun off a new 
nonprofit organization, Shiloh Community Development, Inc., to serve 
youth, minorities, and the disadvantaged. Today Shiloh Community 
Development is well known for its youth mentoring program called Young 
Lions of Alaska.
  He is a founder of Bridge Builders of Alaska, which celebrates the 
diversity of our communities and a powerful voice in Alaska's annual 
celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Day. In 2015, Reverend Patterson 
was the keynote speaker at the King Day ceremonies on JBER. At that 
ceremony, he warned his audience that Dr. King's dream is at risk of 
dying. He said:

       This dream is at risk if nothing is done, and nothing is 
     holding us back but ourselves. Stop waiting for miracles; 
     believe in yourself to make society better. Each of us can do 
     our part, by loving and respecting others.

  This is just one example of his powerful voice. Reverend Patterson's 
sermons were always inspiring, many legendary, and it explains why he 
is regarded as a pastor's pastor, growing not only his congregants but 
the generations of ministers who will follow in his footsteps. As one 
who has joined in the congregation there at Shiloh on numerous 
occasions, I can attest that there was never a Sunday that I did not 
leave feeling inspired by the words of Dr. Patterson.
  They aren't calling the appreciation festivities for Reverend 
Patterson a retirement ceremony. They are calling it a transition, 
probably because nobody believes Rev. Alonzo Patterson has any 
intentions of pursuing a future of leisure. Leadership and inspiration 
runs in Alonzo Patterson's DNA.
  We wish him and Shirley well in their next calling, and we take 
comfort in the fact that their contributions to our community are far 
from over. November marks a transition, not a retirement--and certainly 
not a eulogy--for this extraordinary Alaska family.
  On behalf of my Senate colleagues, I thank Dr. Patterson and his 
lovely wife Shirley for their good works, and thank them in advance for 
their continued leadership.


                    Alaska Airlines ``Combi'' Planes

  Mr. President, I know I have occupied a little bit of time on the 
floor this afternoon with a wide range of topics--from the tragedies 
that face many of our indigenous women to recognizing a prominent 
leader of the Alaska community. Now I wish to share a little bit of 
Alaska's history as we see a transition in aviation and transportation.
  It is really the end of an era in my home State. On October 18, just 
a few days from now, Alaska Airlines will fly the final run of the 
uniquely Alaskan combi plane before retiring them and updating the 
fleet.
  OK. She is going to make a floor speech about an airplane. Yes, I am 
going to make a floor speech about an airplane because this combi plane 
is a special Boeing 737-400, designed to carry up to 14,000 pounds of 
cargo and 72 passengers. It is called a combi because it is a dual-use 
plane, a combination of passengers and cargo. Alaska Airlines is the 
only major airline in the country to have these combi planes, and they 
were specifically designed for the special challenges of a very large 
State. Over their lifespan, they have delivered every imaginable thing 
via airplane in Alaska.
  You have all heard me talk about the size of our State. The sheer 
size of this State presents logistical hurdles unlike anyplace else. I 
keep saying we are one-fifth the size of the country, and 80 percent of 
our communities are not connected by road. When we think about how we 
move around in our State, a postage stamp placed in the middle of an 
average sheet of paper represents the area a person can reach in Alaska 
by coastline, river, road, or railroad. The rest is only reachable by 
plane. You just have to fly everywhere. This being the case, it only 
makes

[[Page 15644]]

sense to try to efficiently deliver people and goods to hub communities 
in Alaska. Alaska Airlines is looking to serve. This is not a promotion 
for them; it is a recognition that they needed to figure out how to 
move people and freight, and they reconfigured the aircraft to do this.
  What makes these planes so special is, they can carry up to four 
large cargo containers. We call them igloos. These igloos load into the 
front portion of the aircraft, right behind the pilots. There is a 
simple divider between the cargo and the passengers. So they load the 
cargo up front, and the passengers come up the back on a set of steps, 
just like we used to do in the prejetway times. You load from the back, 
but your first 17 rows of a traditional aircraft would be occupied by 
cargo. If you have more cargo--if you are flying fish out from Cordova 
south or if you are flying your Iditarod dogs that have been dropped in 
Nome and need to get back to Anchorage and you need a lot of space for 
the animals, you have flexibility to move back and forth.
  These have flown all over the State, up to Nome, on the Bering Sea 
coast, along the Arctic Ocean, to the oilfields in Prudhoe, and, most 
famously, in the ``milk run'' area. The milk run got its name because 
Alaska Airlines literally delivered the milk to the communities along 
the way, as well as other food stuff--all manner of goods and 
passenger. It is something that if you are from the southeast, we all 
know about the milk run. We all complain about the fact that it takes 
about 5 hours to get from Anchorage down to Juneau, if you have to go 
through Yakutat and Cordova and stop at each one. That is just the way 
it is. You bounce down from Cordova, Yakutat, Juneau, Ketchikan. 
Finally, you hit Seattle. You run into your sports teams, families are 
coming and going. These are the workhorses that are not only moving the 
passengers, they are moving the groceries, they are moving the mail, 
they are moving the medicine. They are moving it all.
  When I say it moves everything, we have built up a little bit of 
history about how things move around. We have moved cows. We have moved 
cars. The picture I like best is moving the herd of Santa's reindeer. I 
think Santa was actually posed in this, but the reindeer were not. They 
needed to be able to move the reindeer so they hauled them in the 
front, situated them, and closed it off, and you have the passengers in 
the back. Whether you are moving reindeer, whether you are transporting 
an injured eagle to the Raptor Center in Sitka or letting the sled dogs 
hitch a ride back to Anchorage after they have made the thousand-mile 
trip to Nome, this is what we do.
  The invention of the combi plane really highlights the unique needs 
and the parameters of daily life in the State. We are a long way from 
the lower 48. You can barely drive to any of the communities. If you 
are going to move goods, if you are going to move passengers, you are 
on an airplane. Whether it is Essential Air Services, bypass mail, air 
freight, these are the backbones of commerce in Alaska. This is our 
interstate. It is the interstate in the air.
  Whether we are shipping our wild caught, sustainably managed salmon 
that people around the world love to eat, we ship that out. We ship in 
the toothpaste, the loaves of bread, and the basics that we need. 
Thanks to the combi, we have been able to do this with regular, 
reliable scheduled service in areas where the weather would usually 
chase off more. These are smaller aircraft. They can handle it all. The 
size of the combi allows them to land and take off in much more 
turbulent conditions than smaller propeller planes.
  So it is a kind of bittersweet time for some of us who have grown up 
around these aircraft. As we think about the ``only in Alaska'' type of 
things, it is encouraging to know that this development of retiring the 
combi planes--the proposal is to replace them with separate, full-sized 
passenger and cargo planes. As a result of the increased demand for 
goods and passengers, we need more space on planes to deliver both. If 
updating the fleet means that we need and get more business in Alaska, 
I suppose that is a good thing for all.
  There are many of us who are going to be bidding a fond farewell come 
October 18, which is the last scheduled flight for the combi. It is 
also Alaska Day in our State. I thank Alaska Airlines and those who fly 
these great planes and do so safely. They provide a level of service 
and have for so long. I thank them for what they have done over the 
course of so many years.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, here is what is happening with so-called 
``tax reform.'' Tonight, the Budget Committee is voting on a budget 
resolution that does two things.
  First, it sets the spending limits for everything in the government--
environment, energy, defense, healthcare, education, transportation, 
and so on.
  Second, it includes something called reconciliation instructions that 
basically direct all of the committees to report back with legislation 
that either increases or decreases the Federal deficit by a certain 
amount. This time around, here is what they are doing--asking the 
Senate Finance Committee to draft legislation to increase the deficit 
by $1.5 trillion. Again, this is going to pass on a party-line vote, 
with Republicans prevailing, to increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion. 
This is what will start the tax reform process.
  That is not all. Republicans still haven't given up on decimating our 
healthcare system. They are still trying to cut Medicaid and, this 
time, Medicare, and they are going to use this tax bill. They are going 
to cut $473 billion from Medicare at a time when our population is 
getting older and many seniors are already struggling. They are also 
going to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid. This is the program that pays 
for one out of every two births in this country. It helps millions of 
families who have loved ones in nursing home care.
  Last week, they tried to pass a healthcare bill that cut taxes. Now 
they are trying to pass a tax bill that will cut healthcare. Their 
proposal will, actually, increase the deficit by $4 trillion. That is 
12 zeros.
  Here is what we could do with $4 trillion. We could completely 
rebuild half of the airports in the United States. We could put 20 
million people through 4 years of college. We could pay off the debt 
for every student loan.
  Instead, the United States is going to be in the red by $4 trillion, 
but after they cut $1 trillion from Medicaid and one-half trillion 
dollars from Medicare, the party that has railed against the Federal 
debt and deficit will still add $2.5 trillion to the deficit.
  This is all so that they can give tax cuts to the richest people in 
the United States. I promise you, I understand that both parties are 
sometimes guilty of exaggerating and that sometimes both parties are 
guilty of relying on talking points and relying on caricatures of the 
other side, but you couldn't caricature this bill if you tried. This 
bill is already a caricature of what people say Republicans are all 
about, which is to shred the social safety net and provide tax cuts to 
the wealthiest Americans.
  They are going to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent, 
and they are going to cut tax rates across the board, but the people 
who will actually benefit will be the people at the top. The Tax Policy 
Center, which is a nonpartisan, highly respected group, has crunched 
the numbers, and they found that within 10 years, 80 percent of the 
benefits of this $4 trillion tax bill will go to 1 percent of 
Americans.
  Remember what is happening. We are borrowing a huge chunk of this, 
and whatever is not borrowed comes out of Medicare and Medicaid. So the 
programs that pay for women to give birth in a hospital or for elderly 
people to

[[Page 15645]]

get healthcare will be decimated, and the wealthiest Americans will pay 
less in taxes. This is bad policy, not just for the people who work 
hard but for the whole economy.
  I want to give you a specific example. Again, both parties rely on 
talking points, and both parties accuse each other of having the wrong 
set of ideas, but we have an example of what happens when you do this. 
This bill is actually modeled after what they did in the State of 
Kansas. The State government eliminated one of its business taxes, 
telling people that it would help the State's economy. Instead, the 
economy slowed down, which left them with even lower tax revenues. They 
had to cut government programs, like education, and now people do not 
want to send their kids to Kansas public schools anymore because they 
do not have the resources to educate their children.
  This is not a path that America should follow. Everyone needs to pay 
their fair share, and that includes big corporations and the people who 
are benefiting from the system and making millions of dollars every 
year, but in this proposal, they are the ones getting all of the tax 
breaks.
  Companies already have huge tax breaks. Some corporations end up 
paying zero in Federal income tax every April 15 even though they are 
making healthy profits. They have teams of lawyers and accountants who 
help them dodge paying even a penny to the Federal Government. That is 
why corporate income taxes make up less than 10 percent of all of the 
revenue to the Federal Treasury. Meanwhile, at least 30 percent of the 
middle class will actually pay more if the Republicans succeed with 
their tax reform package.
  Think about this.
  Thirty percent of the middle class is going to see tax increases in 
their tax bills. Why? It is because they have to find some money to 
subsidize the tax cuts for the richest people. Some of the money will 
be found by borrowing; some of the money will be found by making cuts 
to Medicare and Medicaid; and some of the money will be found by 
increasing taxes on the middle class. One out of every two households 
with children will see its taxes go up under this plan. Increasing 
taxes for these people while decreasing them for big corporations is 
not a plan for economic growth. We have heard over and over that 
Republicans do not want to add to the deficit--I don't either--but this 
is, literally, what they are voting to do tonight.
  Again, this is not a talking point. This is not a sort of rhetorical 
flourish. The bill, itself, provides for $1.5 trillion worth of deficit 
spending. Yet it is not deficit spending on the military; it is not 
deficit spending on disaster response; and it is not deficit spending 
on Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security or any of the social safety 
net programs that they claim is the problem with the Federal budget. It 
is deficit spending for the purpose of a tax cut, 80 percent of which 
is going to 1 percent of the country. This is not conservative--
certainly not fiscally conservative--and it will not help us to grow 
the economy.
  It is no surprise that this policy is bad, because, again, the 
process has been so bad. With healthcare, they ignored regular order. 
They obliterated the committee process. They ignored Democrats. They 
ignored the way the U.S. Senate is supposed to work, and they failed. 
One Republican Senator says that he will not vote for anything that 
adds one penny to the deficit. Another Republican Senator said that he 
will not do anything that does not cut taxes for everybody. It already 
does not meet that test. Members of Congress on both sides of the 
aisle--Republicans too--have promised not to cut Medicaid or Medicare. 
It violates all of those promises.
  If you did not like the ACA repeal because it cut Medicaid, guess 
what. This cuts Medicaid more. If you made a promise to your voters not 
to cut Medicare, you should be aware that this bill provides for one-
half trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare. If you are railing against 
debt and deficits, this is the biggest budget buster that I have ever 
seen in my short, 5-year career in the U.S. Senate.
  During the campaign, the President of the United States promised not 
to cut Medicare, and the senior Senator from Arizona has called for 
regular order. This violates every procedural and policy principle that 
has been articulated on this Senate floor since I have been here. I do 
not see a way forward on this legislation when it has been conceived in 
a purely partisan way. It will only take us deeper into dysfunction. 
For the sake of the Senate, let's stop going down this path. Let's 
restore regular order and work together on a bipartisan tax reform 
process.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Tribute to Pastor Alonzo Patterson

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, nearly every week I have been coming 
down to the Senate floor to recognize someone in my State who has made 
a difference for Alaska and really has made a difference for all 
Americans. It is my favorite part of the week to actually come down and 
talk about Alaska to my colleagues in the Senate, to the folks in the 
Gallery, to the press, and to the American people watching. It is what 
I refer to as our time to talk about the Alaskan of the Week.
  Many watching and on the floor and those who have visited our great 
State know that Alaskans think it is the most beautiful place in the 
world. There are natural wonders everywhere. We had a beautiful summer. 
We have resilient, warm-hearted, fiercely independent but accepting 
people. We have challenges in Alaska just like the rest of the country, 
but at the heart of our State are kind, generous people full of 
different cultures and backgrounds that we celebrate.
  Most people don't know this about Anchorage, AK: My hometown is 
probably the most culturally and ethnically diverse city in the 
country. We have places of worship all over the city and the State that 
reflect that great diversity of Alaska and America.
  One of the stalwarts of our faith community for the past 47 years has 
been Pastor Alonzo Patterson of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, 
and he is our Alaskan of the week. Every Sunday he fills his church 
with spirit, joy, and gospel music punctuated by ``amens'' that float 
through the church, down the street, and work their way into our 
community and into our hearts. That is what he has been doing for 47 
years. For decades, those sermons have inspired countless Alaskans to 
help feed the hungry, provide homes for those without, and strive to 
create a more just country, State, and society, and a more just 
community.
  Let me tell you a little bit about Pastor Patterson. He was born in 
Wilson, LA, and raised in New Orleans. Like a lot of Alaskans, 
thousands of Alaskans, he joined the military and made his way up to 
Fairbanks, AK, in the 1960s, where he founded the Corinthian Baptist 
Church, and he ministered to the congregation there. Then, in 1970, he 
was called to Shiloh, one of the few African-American churches in 
Anchorage. He designed and rebuilt Shiloh at its current location, and 
under his leadership, Shiloh's membership, its facilities, and its 
energy took off.
  He has conducted thousands of marriages and baptisms. He has given 
thousands of eulogies, celebrated graduations and anniversaries, 
counseled countless couples, people who are grieving, people who are 
rejoicing, people who are suffering, and he has helped turn that into 
action--not just for the African-American community but for all people 
and all races in our community and in our State.
  Pastor Patterson told a reporter:

       The church was and always has been a sanctuary in the Black 
     community. It is the meeting place, the community center, the 
     focus for support and help, the place you come to be 
     important, the psychologist for your particular problem, the 
     time to shout out your frustrations and the only place to be 
     significant.


[[Page 15646]]


  He continued:

       You could be a Deacon or something in the church where in 
     the rest of the community you were just another Black person. 
     The church was for us a panacea for many of the social ills 
     that existed then and still have relevance.

  That is what he talked about. That is his heart and soul, how he saw 
his church and congregation. Thanks to Pastor Patterson and Shiloh, the 
city is a more inclusive place for all. He has helped heal those social 
ills for thousands of our fellow Alaskans.
  One of his friends, Celeste Hodge Growden, a member of the church, 
said:

       He and the church have led the way for a lot of things that 
     have been accomplished here [in Anchorage]. Pastor Patterson 
     always says, ``leaders lead.'' That is the way he has lived 
     his life. He is not in the background.

  During election time, Pastor Patterson organizes a huge ``get out the 
vote'' campaign. He was instrumental in getting a Martin Luther King 
memorial in Anchorage--a 10-year-long endeavor.
  She also talked about the groups he chaired, founded, and led beyond 
his congregation, including Bridge Builders of Anchorage, the March of 
Dimes Foundation, the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation of Alaska, and 
the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Anchorage.
  You know, with leaders like this, the list goes on and on. In 
addition to Corinthian Baptist Church in Fairbanks and Shiloh in 
Anchorage, Pastor Patterson also planted Eagle River Missionary Baptist 
Church and Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church of Palmer.
  I have been uplifted to the core when my wife Julie and I have gone 
to Shiloh and listened to Pastor Patterson preach and listened to the 
beautiful--and I mean beautiful--Shiloh choir sing. It is a spiritual 
and energizing experience like no other. I love attending services at 
Shiloh.
  On November 5, 2017, Pastor Patterson's 80th birthday, he will be 
giving his last sermon as pastor of Shiloh, and I certainly plan on 
being there. He is stepping down for Pastor Undra Parker, who will be 
the new and dynamic leader of Shiloh--another great Alaskan, another 
veteran--and I know he is going to do a great job. But of course it is 
a bittersweet time for Shiloh's parishioners because of the foundation 
Pastor Patterson built.
  The church, the singing, and the amens will continue on Earth and the 
church in Anchorage, AK, as it is in Heaven. God bless Pastor 
Patterson, his wife of 61 years, First Lady Shirley Patterson, and the 
congregation of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church for all they have done 
and continue to do for our community.
  Congratulations to Pastor Patterson for being our Alaskan of the 
Week.
  Mr. President, I would like to say a few words about my Members on 
the other side of the aisle who are doing something that is just not 
helping the United States of America right now; that is, obstructing 
progress with regard to the new administration.
  I understand that right now my party is in the majority, and to be 
honest, I have been someone who thinks we should spend a lot more time 
here in the Senate, working in the Senate and getting things done. We 
have a lot of work to do. But I see that people back home can get 
frustrated with some of the lack of progress, and some of that we can 
address by spending more time in this body.
  Some of the questions that are coming out are about why things aren't 
getting done. It is a good question. Answers can be complicated, but 
what it mostly boils down to is that a lot of issues in this body--a 
lot--rely on consensus. The rules were carefully constructed so that 
the minority has a say in the legislative process. For the most part, I 
believe that is a good thing. As a former President once pointed out, 
we are not a red or blue America; we are the United States of America.
  With that said, the people did elect us to come here and start 
getting things done. Implicit in their votes for a new President and a 
new administration was to be able to put people in the Federal 
Government to work, to focus on growing the economy, and to focus on 
rebuilding the military after a 25-percent cut over the last 8 years, 
to focus on better jobs and higher wages.
  Throughout history, whether it has been Republicans or Democrats, the 
minority party has understood this. When a new administration gets 
elected, they start to put nominees in place, and the Senate takes 
action. We hold hearings and we have votes to put Senate-confirmed 
officials in the Federal Government to work. If you don't like the 
person, you can ask them tough questions in hearings and you can vote 
against them on the floor of the Senate or in committees. But what we 
are seeing right now is pure obstruction. On every single nominee, the 
maximum amount of time is required before there is even a vote. This is 
something new. This is something different. In fact, the current 
minority leader said the following words in 2013:

       Who in America doesn't think a President, Democrat or 
     Republican, deserves his or her picks for who should run the 
     Federal Government agencies? Nobody.

  That was the minority leader in 2013. They were wise words then, but 
apparently he and his Members have forgotten those words.
  I have some facts here on the board. At this point in time, 10 months 
into President Obama's Presidency in 2009, the Senate had allowed more 
than 318 nominees to be cast by a simple vote. The Senate only asked 
for a procedure known as cloture five times. Essentially, President 
Obama got elected, and the Senate Democrats and Republicans worked to 
get his team put in place. Yes, the Republicans did that. Certainly, I 
wasn't here then. They voted against some of these nominees, and that 
is fine. But what they did was they let them come to the floor for a 
vote.
  In contrast to what I mentioned about President Obama's first year in 
office, only 100 of President Trump's nominees have been confirmed 
through voice vote. That is less than one-third of the courtesy given 
to President Obama 8 years ago. Cloture votes for Trump's nominees have 
been required for 100 nominees. Remember, I just said there were five 
for Obama's nominees 8 years ago. There have been 100 for Trump's 
nominees, and only 63 have been allowed by simple voice vote. What does 
that mean? It means that each vote requires a 2-day waiting period and 
then another 30 hours of debate. That is what it means.
  The press won't write about it. My friends in the press sitting up 
here in the Gallery won't write about this. The contrast between the 
Trump treatment by the Senate and the Obama treatment by the Senate is 
incredible, and we don't hear a word out of the press on this. And this 
isn't partisan; this is just hurting the American people. There was an 
election, and now we need to fill the government with people who can 
run agencies. With all due respect to my friends on the other side of 
the aisle, they are not doing it. They are not allowing it.
  We had a vote on an Eighth Circuit judge last week. It had to go 
through cloture. We essentially spent the whole week on this--2 days 
and 30 hours. The judge passed the Senate by a 95-to-1 vote. It was a 
95-to-1 vote. He wasn't controversial at all so what was the point? The 
point was simply to delay.
  Again, here is the difference. Nominations sent to the Senate are 
about the same. President Obama had more 8 years ago but not too many 
more. There were 520 versus 443 for President Trump confirmed. At this 
time during the Obama administration, there were 342. Trump has 163. So 
that is 66 percent for the Obama nominees 8 years ago and 37 percent 
for the Trump nominees.
  The press will not write about it, but this is a disservice to 
Americans, whether you are a Democrat or Republican. I will just 
mention a few. We have had nominees, such as the Assistant Secretary 
for Health in Health and Human Services. It came out of committee 
several weeks ago. It is sitting on the floor. The Assistant Secretary 
of Health, it is not a controversial position for the company, but it 
is an important position. I bet that person is going to finally get 
passage from the Senate at some point by a big supermajority, but we 
are delaying it. We are delaying it.
  I really would love it if the minority leader would come down, look 
at the

[[Page 15647]]

American people, and just say: Here is why we are delaying. Here is why 
we are delaying. Explain it. They love to do this kind of stuff, 
procedural ``dark arts,'' thinking people aren't watching. People 
understand this.
  The head of a leading Democratic think tank told the press they 
intend to hold up and tie up floor time on every single Trump 
administration nominee. Now, if that happens, if they take the time for 
every nominee--there are over 1,000 who need Senate confirmation--and 
they take the entire amount of time they are allowed with cloture and 
other votes, if they don't extend the courtesy that was extended to 
President Obama when he was trying to put his team in place, the Trump 
administration will never have a team in place. It will literally be 4 
years.
  I hope today the press starts writing about this because the 
difference here in 8 years is quite remarkable and yet nobody is 
talking about it; that being that the minority leader and my colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle stop obstructing what every other 
administration has had in terms of a courtesy, which is, if you win the 
election, whether you liked it or not, you work with the other side in 
the U.S. Senate to get your people in place--Department of Defense 
officials, Department of Transportation officials, Department of Health 
officials, Environmental Protection Agency officials. We have to get 
the country moving again, and the obstruction, which is unprecedented, 
by the minority leader and unfortunately many of my colleagues on the 
other side is only harming the American people. It is only harming the 
progress that the vast majority of Americans want, whether you are a 
Democrat or a Republican. I am hopeful they are finally going to change 
and start moving forward nominations and letting us vote on them so we 
have an opportunity to actually get this country moving again.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.


                        Las Vegas Mass Shooting

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I would like to begin by talking about 
the recent tragedy in Las Vegas, the largest mass shooting in U.S. 
history, with at least 59 dead and more than 500 injured, including one 
Minnesotan who was injured and another who lost his life. So I join my 
colleagues in mourning for the victims and their families. They are and 
should be our focus at this time, as well as making sure those who were 
hurt get the best medical care this country can give.
  As we look ahead, these events underscore the urgency to continue 
fighting for funding to better treat mental illness but also for 
sensible gun safety legislation, and I joined with some of my 
colleagues the day after the tragedy in Las Vegas to call for those 
changes. No one policy will prevent every tragedy, but we need to come 
together on commonsense legislation to save lives.
  One place we discussed this week where we could come together--
because we have in the past--is on background checks. My colleagues 
Senator Manchin and Senator Toomey, who are two A-rated NRA Senators, 
have already demonstrated that we can find bipartisan agreement on 
something as straightforward as background checks. I was very pleased 
they came together on this legislation, but the fact remains, the 
Senate's failure to pass that bipartisan compromise was disheartening--
one of my more disheartening days in the Senate because I began my day 
that day with the families of the Sandy Hook tragedy, with the parents 
who had lost their little kids, with the parents who had come to this 
building to advocate for a bill, the background check bill, that they 
knew wouldn't have saved their child's life, but they knew it would 
have saved others. What we have seen with expanded background checks is 
they reduce suicides and they reduce domestic homicides by a fairly 
large number.
  Our constituents agree that we should be able to find some agreement 
here, as the numbers have consistently shown that Americans across the 
political spectrum, including gun owners, support proposals to require 
background checks by wide margins. I have a State, like the Presiding 
Officer's, where there are a lot of hunters. It is a proud tradition in 
Minnesota so I look at all these proposals and I say to myself: Does 
this hurt my Uncle Dick and his deer stand? For many of the ones I have 
looked at, the answer is clearly no, including the background check 
bill.
  When I talk to law enforcement in my State, they stress the need to 
have effective background checks to stop felons, people with severe 
mental illnesses, and others prohibited under current law from 
accessing guns. These efforts do not have to infringe in any way on 
Americans' lawful right to own guns.
  Another sensible measure is Senator Feinstein's legislation to close 
a loophole that allows bump stop devices to convert semiautomatic 
firearms into weapons that work like fully automatic guns. Law 
enforcement officers have now recovered 12 of these devices from the 
Las Vegas shooter's room. I am a cosponsor of that bill, and I am 
encouraged that some of my Republican colleagues have agreed to look at 
this.
  I hope we can find a path forward in the weeks ahead, not only with 
regard to this particular focus, the bump stock device legislation, but 
also on some of the other bills like the background check bill.


                               Healthcare

  Mr. President, I am here for another purpose today; that is, that we 
must get to work on other important business in the Senate. We need to 
reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program and come together 
on bipartisan fixes to the Affordable Care Act. No parent should ever 
have to worry whether their child will have healthcare, but funding for 
the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, expired over this 
weekend. CHIP is one of the great bipartisan success stories. Both 
parties have come together to support a program that provides 
healthcare to millions of children.
  In Minnesota, these funds support coverage for 125,000 children. I 
heard from the children's hospitals and clinics of Minnesota just last 
week about many of the families who count on this program. While States 
like mine are finding ways to make Federal funding last a bit longer, 
since ours has already expired, every single day Congress doesn't act 
puts coverage of millions of children at risk.
  There is already bipartisan work underway to keep this program going. 
Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden have introduced a bipartisan bill to 
extend CHIP for 5 years. In 2015, the last time we renewed this 
program, it passed the Senate with 92 votes--92 out of 100 votes. We 
should demonstrate that same bipartisan spirit again. The children in 
America are counting on us. We must act before it is too late or States 
like mine may be forced to make difficult choices about insurance 
coverage for some of our more vulnerable constituents.
  CHIP is one part of our healthcare system that is working. We should 
be doing everything in our power to protect it. So let's come together 
and pass this long-term reauthorization of CHIP.
  Mr. President, CHIP is not the only area where we should be able to 
come together on healthcare. The American people want us to work 
together on bipartisan fixes to the Affordable Care Act. As I said the 
day it passed, it was a beginning and not an end. Any major piece of 
legislation like that needs improvements and changes. Let's work 
together on the bipartisan bills and ideas that have been put forward. 
Just like my friend Senator McCain said, we could do better working 
together--Republicans and Democrats.
  Senator Alexander and Senator Murray have been holding hearings and 
discussions on commonsense solutions to bring down insurance costs over 
the past month. We had Governors here, and there were actually more 
Republican Governors in the room than Democratic Governors, as they 
embraced these suggested changes which include reinsurance. I note 
Senator

[[Page 15648]]

Collins and Senator Nelson, a Republican and a Democrat, have a bill 
together that would do something on that front.
  I look at what has been done in Alaska--I see my colleague, Senator 
Murkowski here--and what has been done in Minnesota when it comes to 
reinsurance, and we have seen some of the rates go down, not to where 
we need them to go, but there has been a decrease in the amount of 
rates. We would like to see that on a national basis, and that is why I 
am such a strong supporter of Senator Alexander and Senator Murray's 
work.
  Mr. President, finally, we need to be doing something on the 
skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs. People such as Kim from 
Plymouth, MN, is struggling to afford her insulin because it has gone 
up three times. She keeps the injector with a few drops of insulin from 
day-to-day so she can get by. That is why I think we should have 
Medicare Part D negotiations. I have a bill that now has 33 cosponsors 
that lifts the ban that makes it illegal for 41 million seniors to 
negotiate the prices of drugs. Seniors can be a pretty stubborn and 
very vocal group. Why don't we let them unleash their power and allow 
Medicaid to negotiate prices?
  Senator Grassley and I have a bill to stop pay for delay, where major 
pharmaceutical companies are paying off generics to keep their products 
off the market. I have a bill with Senator Grassley, Senator Leahy, and 
Senator Lee--the four of us lead the bill--the CREATES Act, which makes 
it easier to get more generic competition in the market. We also--
McCain and I, and Senator Lee and I--have bills that allow for safe 
drugs to come in from other countries to again create more competition 
to bring the price down. When the prices of four of the top best 
selling drugs in America have gone up over 100 percent, I don't think 
we can just sit here and do nothing anymore.
  I bring up these efforts because, for the most part, they are 
bipartisan--the work of Senator Alexander and Senator Murray, the bills 
that have been introduced to do something on prescription drugs. Let's 
get moving on that and let's reauthorize CHIP. The last time it passed 
the Senate with 92 votes.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.


             Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following nominations: 
Executive Calendar Nos. 323, 324, 325; that the Senate vote on the 
nominations en bloc, with no intervening action or debate; that if 
confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon 
the table en bloc; that the President be immediately notified of the 
Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any 
statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. INHOFE. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it is my hope that we will be able to 
come to agreement with regard to the nominees whom I have just asked 
for consideration. These are individuals who have been moved out of the 
Energy and Natural Resources Committee to be named to the Federal 
Energy Regulatory Commission. This is a Commission that has been 
without a functioning quorum for months on end. They have just recently 
been able to achieve that quorum, but they are not yet to a full 
complement.
  We worked hard to reach an agreement with colleagues so these names 
could advance so the FERC could get to work in an expeditious manner. 
There is much to be considered. The work that has piled up, that has 
cost our economy, that has cost our country over these many months, as 
we have seen these delays when you don't have a functioning FERC, has 
been considerable. We want to try to reach agreement, but I am 
disappointed that we are not going to be able to advance them this 
afternoon.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.


                            Wildfire Funding

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, 4 weeks ago, I stood here on the floor of 
the Senate and called for increased funding to fight the wildfires. 
This is just one of the dramatic pictures of Oregon ablaze. It is 
thousands and thousands of acres.
  I had the experience of driving roughly 350 miles in my State and 
never escaping the smoke from the fires that were in every single 
corner and in every quadrant of the State of Oregon. We have seen the 
challenge of Mother Nature at work this year with Hurricanes Harvey, 
Irma, and Maria hitting in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. But let's 
not forget the incredible damage being done in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, 
and Washington by these extraordinary fires.
  Over the last decade, we have seen an average of 50,000 fires in 
America each year. They destroy and burn up more than 5 million acres, 
but this year the count is well over 8 million acres and counting. In 
Oregon, we normally have fires that burn, on average, about 500,000 
acres, but this year we are well over 600,000 acres and counting.
  As a result of these raging fires, we have many communities that have 
been so powerfully impacted and so many forests destructively impacted. 
We should stop and ask: What can we do better in terms of our forests 
and our communities? That is why I am taking to the floor right now.
  The first thing we need to do is to end fire borrowing. This is where 
the U.S. Forest Service, in order to pay for fighting these fires, 
proceeds to borrow from every other account. This has become all too 
common. What are those other accounts? They are the hazardous fuels 
funds, forest management funds, forest restoration funds, forest 
conservation funds, road maintenance funds, and funds that are designed 
to prepare for future timber sales.
  All of that does a lot of damage to the preparation. So the fires are 
more resilient and aren't susceptible to this type of firefighting. We 
have seen, on average in the last decade, a cost of fighting fires 
across the country of about $1.6 billion. But this year, we are over $3 
billion--almost double. So even though the Appropriations Committee had 
wisely put in a buffer of several hundred million dollars to prevent 
fire borrowing, those funds were long ago wiped out.
  So there we were 4 weeks ago. I was working to say that now that we 
are over the allotted funds for the year, let's immediately get more 
funds that can be used to backfill this shortage in September. I thank 
all of my colleagues for the fact that those funds were included in the 
continuing resolution. We successfully provided a bridge so that 
firefighting could continue and so that the fire borrowing was quickly 
repaid.
  But that is not a permanent solution--to try to legislate or to 
backfill on a rapid basis. Indeed, when we have these kinds of fire 
seasons, it is like other natural disasters. It is like tornadoes and 
hurricanes and floods. So we need to have a FEMA-style backup for those 
worst ever fire seasons. That is what my colleagues Senator Wyden and 
Senator Crapo--bipartisan teamwork--have been putting forth. It is 
called the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2017. It says that when we 
reach a certain level of funding for fighting fires, the balance will 
go to a FEMA-style fund. That is exactly the way it should be done.
  It has been estimated in the past that if just the top 1 percent or 2 
percent of the worst fires were funded in FEMA-style fund, we would 
never have had fire borrowing in the past. But the most relevant kind 
of crisp and clean way to do that would be to adopt this bill Senator 
Wyden and Senator Crapo have put so much work into and which I am 
certainly pleased to cosponsor. That would be very useful, and we 
should do that now.
  We should respond while the memory is fresh and, actually, while 
fires are still burning in State after State--certainly burning in my 
home State of Oregon. Then we should recognize, too,

[[Page 15649]]

that this terrible fire year has done so much damage to so many 
communities. We have communities where the roads have been cut off. We 
have communities where the tourists disappeared because of the smoke, 
or other economic enterprises had to shut down for an extended period.
  So as we assist those communities hit by Harvey and hit by Irma and 
hit by Maria, let's also help those communities that were hit by this 
year's extraordinary fires. That would mean strengthening the Small 
Business Disaster Loan Program. That would mean taking the additional 
funding for the USDA Emergency Community Water Assistance Program, and, 
certainly, it would mean making additional community development block 
grants available to the communities impacted by these fires. Let's not 
forget those communities as we provide assistance in funding to the 
communities affected by the hurricanes.
  Then we also need to address the fact that many assets in our forests 
were scorched by these fires. There are trails that have to be 
repaired, roads that have to be repaired, watershed repairs to avoid 
landslides, facilities that were scorched and burned, and wildlife and 
fish management restoration, including critical sage grouse areas.
  I was up visiting the incredible waterfall, the Multnomah Falls. They 
were explaining that several of the trails have bridges--there are so 
many bridges on the trails in Oregon--and that the fire had burned some 
of the understructure. So from above it looked like the bridges were 
safe, but they weren't safe. They can't reopen those trails until they 
get support to do all these repairs. The Forest Service has estimated 
that it will take $150 million to restore the damage done to the Forest 
Service's infrastructure.
  So we should make that happen as part of this bill. Then, we should 
turn to forest fire resilience. We have 2 million acres in need of fire 
prevention efforts in Oregon. Actually, we have far more of that in 
need of fire prevention, but we have nearly 2 million that have already 
passed through environmental approval for work to reduce the hazardous 
fuels that are on the floor of the forest, and we need to thin these 
forests.
  You can imagine that when you have clearcuts and those clearcuts are 
replanted, the trees grow back very close together. In a short amount 
of time, those forests are very good for fires and very good for 
disease, but they are neither good for ecosystems nor for timber 
stands. So they have to be thinned, and that thinning can be done, in 
Oregon alone, on nearly 2 million acres already approved through the 
environmental process. The challenge is to get more funds into that 
effort.
  That, too, should be part of this because, whether you talk to an 
environmentalist or talk to somebody who wants sawlogs for the mills, 
they both know that if you thin these forests, you make them more 
resistant to fire. With better timber stands, you have better 
ecosystems, and you supply a steady supply of sawlogs to the mill.
  Let's not reopen the timber wars of the past. Let's work together 
with a win-win.
  I want to show this chart because it indicates the dramatic change of 
what has happened to the Forest Service budget. We can go back to 1995 
and compare it to the year 2015. I want to focus particularly on the 
orange. The orange is the amount of money that was spent fighting 
forest fires, and 20 years ago, it was 16 percent of the Forest Service 
budget. But in 2015--2 years ago--it broke 50 percent. It was 52 
percent of their budget. This year, it has certainly gone up much 
higher than that. So as the amount of funds spent on fighting fires has 
increased, it has dramatically reduced the amount of funds that support 
our maintenance and improvement of the forest. That is what is getting 
squeezed out.
  Let me put it differently. The more you spend fighting fires out of a 
single pot of money, the less money you have to prevent the fires. 
Everywhere I go they say: Can't we do more on the front end so these 
forests are more resilient? If you think about how fire works, it 
really gets going if the trees are close together because one tree 
lights the next tree on fire. If you thin them, you slow that down. The 
fire goes from the ground, where there is brush, to the canopy, where 
there are branches, very easily if the branches are close to the 
ground. So you trim off those branches, separate the trees, thin them 
out, shave off the branches, cut off the branches, and suddenly you 
have a forest that is much more resilient.
  There are those folks who have said: Let's just get rid of the 
environmental rules. Let's just clearcut everything. Let's do 10,000 
acres at a time. That is, by the way, 15 square miles. Let's set those 
15 square miles next to each other. Let's just shave the Earth and wipe 
out the forests. That way, there will not be forest fires. Those are 
the timber wars of the past.
  What we have seen is that we can bridge the divide between a good 
ecosystem and a good timber stand by thinning the forest, by making 
them more like a natural forest, which is much more fire resilient. In 
the process of thinning, which has to be done periodically over time, 
we are also providing a steady foundation for sawlogs for our mills.
  There is a mill in John Day, OR. I met with the folks there who were 
very worried. The workers there were very worried about that mill 
getting shut down. I was determined to do everything I could to save 
that mill. What ended up happening is that we found we couldn't save 
that mill with a timber sale because a timber sale can't commit to a 
load of logs over a 10-year period. The owner of the mill couldn't 
commit to the cost of new machinery if he didn't know he would get logs 
for an extended period of time. So we discovered that we could, though, 
through a forest health contract--through a stewardship contract--
enable a steady supply of thinned logs to make it to that mill and make 
sure that mill stayed open. Not only did it keep it open, but it added 
workers to that mill. That is the type of win-win solution that we 
need.
  There is another way of looking at the cost of fighting fires. Here 
we see, in 1995, 16 percent of the budget going to fight fires; in 
2017, 56 percent. Let's look into the future. An original estimate was 
that we would reach 67 percent by 2025; now the new estimate, based on 
the changing dynamics in the forest, is that we will get to over two-
thirds of the budget fighting fires by the year 2021--four fire seasons 
from today. That is how big the issue is. That is why we need funds 
from the front end to be able to thin these forests. This is simply 
common sense.
  If you are the private owner of a private forest, you wouldn't dare 
let this forest retain this high propensity for fires and disease. You 
would thin the forest. You would make it a better timber stand; you 
would make it a better ecosystem. And that is what we need to do.
  We have also seen that another way of looking at the changes is how 
the staffing levels have changed over the last two decades. If we look 
at just two decades ago, we can see that in 1998 there were about 
18,000 individuals dedicated to managing the forest lands and just 
5,700 dedicated to going out and fighting blazes. Now we have come into 
the future, and we see now that the number of people fighting fires is 
larger than the number working on all of the other forest programs. We 
have to commit to doing far more on the prevention end. If we let this 
summer's crisis go without securing funding to thin those forests that 
have already gone through the environmental process, we are making a 
huge mistake, and it is going to cost us more because there are going 
to be even more fires in the future. So not only do we spend more out 
of the National Treasury to fight them, but we will have less healthy 
timber stands to fuel our economy.
  Let's end the fire burn. Let's provide the funding to restore the 
fire service assets that were burned, the scourged assets. Let's 
provide assistance through community development block grants and small 
business loans to assist the communities that were scourged by these 
fires. Let's pass Senator Wyden and Senator Crapo's bill, which 
proceeds to create a FEMA-like

[[Page 15650]]

structure to back up the worst fire seasons, and certainly, certainly, 
absolutely, let's invest in prevention on the front end by thinning 
these forests and getting the flammable buildup of forest branches off 
the floor of the forests. Those are positive things we can do.
  At this moment in Houston, in Miami, in Puerto Rico, people are 
thinking, what can we do to better prepare for the next storm surge? 
What can we do to be better prepared for the next hurricane? Well, we 
know for sure that we are going to have fires across the Northwest in 
Montana, in Idaho, in Oregon, in Washington every summer, and they are 
simply getting worse. We must ask ourselves the same question: How do 
we change this rhythm? How do we operate this differently and better? 
That is our responsibility in this Chamber, and that is the set of 
things we can do to have a far better outcome in the future.
  I urge all of my colleagues to support these five efforts as we 
support funding for Texas and Florida and Puerto Rico.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blunt). The majority leader is recognized.


            Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following 
leader remarks on Tuesday, October 17, the Senate proceed to the 
consideration of Calendar No. 191, the nomination of David Trachtenberg 
to be Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. I further ask that 
there be 10 minutes of debate on the nomination equally divided in the 
usual form; that following the use or yielding back of time, the Senate 
vote on confirmation with no intervening action or debate; that if 
confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon 
the table, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's 
action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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