[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2111-2154]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 prayer

  Pursuant to rule IV, paragraph 2, the hour of 12 noon having arrived, 
the Senate having been in continuous session since Monday, the Senate 
will suspend for a prayer by the Senate Chaplain.
  The Chaplain, Dr. Barry C. Black, offered the following prayer:
  Let us pray.
  Eternal Lord God, teach us this day, through all our employments, to 
see You working for the good of those who love You.
  Strengthen the hearts of our lawmakers against temptations and make 
them more than conquerors in Your love. Lord, deliver them from all 
dejection of spirit and free their hearts to give You zealous, active, 
and cheerful service. May they vigorously perform whatever You command, 
thankfully enduring whatever You have chosen for them to suffer. Guard 
their desires so that they will not deviate from the path of integrity.
  Lord, strengthen them with Your almighty arms to do Your will on 
Earth, even as it is done in Heaven.
  We pray in Your mighty Name. Amen.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The Senator from Nevada.


                          Repealing ObamaCare

  Mr. HELLER. Madam President, I want to take a few moments to discuss 
an issue, one that is on everybody's mind; that is, the status of 
ObamaCare. Congress has taken the first step to repeal ObamaCare. I was 
in the House of Representatives when ObamaCare was passed into law. I 
opposed the law five times while I was in the House before it was 
passed with zero bipartisan, zero Republican support and was signed 
into law by the President.
  I opposed ObamaCare because I feared that this law would increase 
costs, make it harder for patients to see a doctor, increase taxes on 
the middle class, increase taxes on seniors, and hurt the economy.
  Over the last 7 years, all of these fears have become a reality. A 
new Congress and a new administration have heard the people's response 
loud and clear, and that response is that we must repeal ObamaCare. 
Repealing ObamaCare means repealing all of the taxes that go with it--
not part of them, not some of them, but all of them.
  ObamaCare increased taxes on hard-working Americans by $1.1 trillion. 
Higher taxes lead to more money being taken out of the pockets of hard-
working families. Health care costs have increased to a degree where I 
have heard from Nevadans across the State, of all ages and backgrounds, 
all with similar concerns.
  What I wish to do is take a moment to read an email that I received 
just last week from a 13-year-old boy who lives in Las Vegas. He said:

       I wanted to write an email to express my concerns about 
     Obamacare and hopefully persuade you in making a change.
       My family used to have health insurance until ObamaCare 
     kicked in and forced my family to drop our insurance since it 
     tripled the cost and wasn't affordable. We are getting 
     penalized now for not having insurance.

  Think about that. ObamaCare kicked their family off their insurance 
by tripling the costs, making it unaffordable, and then ObamaCare 
penalized that family for not having insurance.
  Going back to the young boy, he said:

       Since then we have had medical bills piling up. This is an 
     issue with a lot of people and I don't know a lot about 
     policies but I do know that something needs to change for the 
     good of the people.
       I've heard President Donald Trump will be addressing this 
     issue. I just hope you will represent Nevada in favor of 
     getting rid of ObamaCare.

  I can assure my constituents back home in Nevada, and especially this 
young man who is advocating for his family, that I am committed to 
repealing ObamaCare. This young man's parents had employer-sponsored 
health care coverage that took care of their family when they needed 
medical care. And as a result of ObamaCare, the costs were too high to 
afford the health insurance they had.
  One of the biggest drivers of cost increases on the middle class is 
the 40-percent excise tax on employee health benefits, better known as 
the Cadillac tax. In Nevada, 1.3 million workers who have employer-
sponsored health insurance plans will be hit by this Cadillac tax. 
These are public employees in Carson City. These are service industry 
workers on the Strip in Las Vegas. These are small business owners and 
retirees across the State.
  We are talking about reduced benefits, increased premiums, and higher 
deductibles. When I first started working on this issue, I knew the 
devastating impact this tax would have on Nevadans, but also in order 
to get anything done, we needed a bipartisan effort to reduce this tax 
and to eliminate it.
  I recruited a good friend by the name of Senator Martin Heinrich from 
New Mexico, and together we were able to gain huge support on both 
sides of the aisle. During the highly partisan reconciliation debate in 
2015, where Congress successfully delivered an ObamaCare repeal bill to 
President Obama's desk, Senator Heinrich and I pushed our colleagues to 
include our legislation to fully repeal the Cadillac tax as an 
amendment.
  Our amendment passed with overwhelming bipartisan support by a vote 
of 90 to 10. With this nearly unanimous vote, we were are able to delay 
the Cadillac tax until 2020.
  This Congress, Senator Heinrich and I have reintroduced Senate bill 
58, the Middle Class Health Benefits Repeal Tax Act, which fully 
repeals this bad tax. I hope that my Senate colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle will join Senator Heinrich on this bipartisan piece 
of legislation and on this issue to support our bill and get rid of 
this Cadillac tax once and for all.
  I know that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will have a 
lot of differing opinions on the Affordable Care Act, but one thing we 
can agree on is that the Cadillac tax should be fully repealed.
  Now that we have passed an ObamaCare repeal resolution, we will move 
to the next phase of the repeal process. The budget we just passed 
included reconciliation instructions for the Senate Finance Committee 
and the HELP Committee to repeal ObamaCare.
  We made a promise to repeal ObamaCare, and now it is time to keep 
that promise. This includes my legislation to fully repeal the Cadillac 
tax. The goal of health reform should be to lower costs for those who 
already have health benefits and to expand access to those who do not 
currently have coverage. ObamaCare did not achieve either of those two 
goals.
  I am committed to ensuring that all Americans have access to high-
quality, affordable health care. We must start by repealing the 
Cadillac tax.
  I thank Senator Heinrich for his continued leadership on this issue. 
I want to thank him, and I want to say that Senator Heinrich continues 
to put his constituents above politics. I know that he shares my 
commitment to repeal this bad tax.
  I also want to thank Congressman Kelly and Congressman Courtney for 
their leadership on the House side. I know that we are all eager to 
work together to get this bill to the finish line.
  Madam President, I yield to the senior Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last night we all witnessed a rather 
extraordinary event. Certainly for the first time in my time in the 
Senate, we saw rule XIX of the Standing Senate Rules invoked. That rule 
says: ``No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form 
of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or 
motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.''
  I certainly agree with the ruling of the Chair and the decision of 
the Senate as a body that that line was crossed last night. A Senator 
can't evade that rule by somehow claiming: These

[[Page 2112]]

weren't my words; I was reading what somebody else said.
  Specifically, in the case of our former colleague, now deceased, 
Senator Ted Kennedy claimed that the nominee for Attorney General was 
somehow a disgrace to the Justice Department and ought to resign. That 
certainly crossed that line.
  Our colleagues want to point to a letter written by Coretta Scott 
King. That was part but not the whole of the speech given by the 
Senator from Massachusetts. I hope that maybe we have all been 
chastened a little bit, and maybe we have all learned a little bit of a 
lesson here.
  I yearn for the day when the Senate and, frankly, the country as a 
whole would pull back from the abyss of recrimination, personal 
attacks, and we would get back to doing what this institution was 
designed to do--which is to be a great body for deliberation and 
debate--and we would treat each other with the civility with which we 
would all want to be treated.
  We are at a pretty challenging time in our Nation's history, when 
many people who were surprised and disappointed at the last election 
are unwilling to accept the results of that election and the verdict of 
the American people. I can only hope that, after the passage of some 
time, they will return to their senses, and they will agree that no one 
is well served by this race to the bottom in terms of decorum and in 
terms of rhetoric, in terms of how we treat one another. The American 
people are better served when we treat each other with civility and 
respect and when we don't make personal attacks against Senators 
because of the positions that they take.
  This debate over the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions has taken on 
some rather unusual twists and turns. I want to comment briefly on some 
of the remarks made by our colleague from Minnesota about voting rights 
because I think this is exemplary of the way that Senator Sessions' 
record on voting rights has been misrepresented.
  We all know that in 2006--those of us who were here in the Senate, 
including Senator Sessions, including the Democratic whip and myself--
we all voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. That included 
section 2 and section 5, which was later struck down. Section 2 is the 
provision of the Voting Rights Act that applies to the entire Nation, 
and it authorizes a lawsuit to vindicate voting rights that are 
jeopardized by some illegal practice. Section 5, which was the subject 
of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Shelby County case 
that was decided in 2013--that was directed not at section 2, which 
applies to the entire Nation, but to section 5, which applied only to a 
handful of jurisdictions around the country. It was based on voting 
practices that existed in the middle 1960s.
  I would be the first to admit that the record of vindicating the 
rights of minority voters in 1965 was nothing to be proud of. We have 
come a long way in this country, and it has been because of the Voting 
Rights Act. It has been because of our collective commitment to the 
right of every citizen to vote that I believe those statistics which 
existed in the mid-sixties are no longer valid today.
  In fact, if you look at many of the jurisdictions covered in the 
1960s, including places like Alabama, where Senator Sessions is from, 
they have records of minority voting that are superior to jurisdictions 
that are not covered by section 5. How our colleagues across the aisle 
can somehow condemn Senator Sessions for the Supreme Court's decision 
in the Shelby County case, when he voted for the reauthorization of the 
entire Voting Rights Act, section 2 and section 5, strikes me as 
extremely misleading and unfortunate, but it does seem to characterize 
the nature of the debate about this nominee.
  During his confirmation hearing, I said: Well, those who don't know 
Senator Sessions are interested to learn his record and his resume, but 
those of us who worked with him--we don't need to read his resume. We 
don't need to hear a recitation of his record. We know the man. We know 
what is in his heart. And he is a thoroughly decent and honorable 
Member of the Senate, and he will do an outstanding job, I believe, 
restoring the reputation of the Department of Justice, as one dedicated 
to the rule of law above all else.
  There is always a risk--and this happens in Democratic 
administrations, as well as Republican administrations--when the 
Attorney General feels like they are an arm of the White House. That is 
not the job of the Attorney General. The President has a lawyer, White 
House Counsel. The Attorney General is supposed to have some measure of 
independence even though he or she is appointed by the President and 
serves at the President's pleasure.
  That is why we ask questions of people, like Deputy Attorney General 
Sally Yates: Can you tell the President no? Well, she said she could. 
And then ultimately, unfortunately, in the case of the Executive order 
that was issued by President Trump later on, said--even though this 
order was vetted by the Office of Legal Counsel and determined that 
this was a legal Executive order both in content and in form, she said: 
I still disagree with the President's Executive order, and I am going 
to order the Justice Department lawyers not to defend it.
  Well, that is the kind of politics that we need none of in the 
Department of Justice. We have plenty of politicians in this country. 
We have plenty of politicians in the Congress and in the White House. 
We don't need another politician as Attorney General. In fact, we need 
a nonpolitician, an apolitician, somebody who believes that their 
allegiance to the rule of law, irrespective of who is involved, whether 
it is the President of the United States or the least among us--that is 
what the rule of law is all about. And that is one reason why I feel so 
strongly that Senator Sessions will be an outstanding Attorney General, 
because I believe he will restore the Department of Justice to an 
institution that believes in and enforces the rule of law above 
politics, and that is a fundamentally important thing to do.
  We know Senator Sessions, as I said earlier, brings a lifetime of 
relevant experience to this job: former Federal prosecutor, former U.S. 
attorney for the Department of Justice. He said those were some of the 
best years of his life.
  I once had a colleague who now serves on the Fifth Circuit. When he 
became a U.S. district judge in San Antonio, he was recalling his days 
as U.S. attorney. He said--I still remember this after all these many 
years--he said he never had a prouder moment in his life than when he 
appeared in court and he said: ``I am here and I am ready on behalf of 
the United States of America.''
  Senator Sessions is here, and he is ready to serve the American 
people as Attorney General. And we know from his service at the 
Department of Justice, as attorney general of Alabama, and now for the 
past 20 years in the Senate, that he is devoted to the rule of law and 
keeping our country safe. So it has really been sad to see interest 
groups vilifying him over and over again or people mischaracterizing 
him, as they have on his voting rights record, things that he is not 
responsible for after voting to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 
2006. He didn't decide the Shelby County case.
  This is a man we have worked with for--some for 20 years, people who 
have been here that long with him, and we know Jeff Sessions to be a 
man who has dedicated his life to public service. Our colleagues across 
the aisle have offered him an occasional compliment, like the 
Democratic leader, who once called him straightforward and fair. The 
assistant Democratic leader called him a man of his word. But now the 
decision to drag out Cabinet nominations as long as possible and to 
waste valuable time that could be used on other bipartisan 
legislation--we know our Democratic colleagues have chosen to slow-walk 
the process, and I think it is a shame, particularly in the case of 
somebody whom we all know so well and who is dedicated to the 
Department of Justice and the restoration of the rule of law.
  Several of us have talked from time to time about how the holding up 
of these nominees is unprecedented. At this point in President Obama's 
term,

[[Page 2113]]

21 Cabinet members were confirmed. Senator Sessions, when we vote on 
his nomination tonight, will be No. 8--21 to 8. You have to go back to 
George Washington to find a slower confirmation timeline for a new 
administration. There is no good excuse for it, particularly in light 
of the fact that now, under the Reid precedent, our colleagues across 
the aisle know that all of these nominees, particularly in the case of 
Senator Sessions, will be confirmed. So holding up the nomination just 
for delay alone makes no sense at all.
  Well, some have said holding up Senator Sessions' nomination is 
somehow similar to the confirmation process for Loretta Lynch, but that 
really rings hollow on examination. Let me remind them what happened 
when Loretta Lynch was nominated as Attorney General. At the time, our 
Democratic friends were filibustering a bipartisan bill that later 
passed 99 to 0. They were filibustering a bipartisan anti-trafficking 
bill for no good reason. That is my view; they may think they had a 
good reason. I think actually what it had to do with was the Hyde 
amendment and the longstanding limitation on the use of taxpayer funds 
for abortion that had gone back to roughly 1976. They wanted to 
eliminate that restriction in this anti-trafficking bill, so they 
refused to consider that legislation, which many of them had 
cosponsored, to help thousands of victims of sexual exploitation, 
slavery, and human trafficking find a path to healing and restoration. 
So the majority leader, in an action that I completely endorsed, simply 
said that as soon as they dropped the filibuster, we would move on with 
the Loretta Lynch nomination. They did finally, and we processed her 
nomination. So in no way were those two situations similar.
  Today, our colleagues across the aisle want to keep a new President 
from surrounding himself with the men and women he has selected to help 
run the country. I think if there is one thing that should give people 
more confidence in the new administration, it is the quality of the men 
and women he has chosen for his Cabinet, and I would add Vice President 
Pence, somebody we know here, having served 12 years in the House of 
Representatives.
  So the delay is really for no good reason at all and will have no 
achievable results. They are not going to be able to block the 
nomination but, rather, just try to score political points. And 
preventing an exemplary nominee from filling an important national 
security position I believe makes our country less safe.
  I will give our colleagues across the aisle some credit for allowing 
the confirmation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Gen. John 
Kelly at the Department of Homeland Security and finally, after a long 
weekend, Mike Pompeo as Director of the CIA. Those are essential 
components of the President's national security Cabinet, but it also 
includes the Attorney General of the United States, someone whose 
nomination has been delayed until we vote on him tonight. After 9/11, 
the Attorney General became more than just a law enforcement officer; 
he became a counterterrorism official as well, integrally tied, with 
supervision of the FBI, to our efforts to protect the American people 
from terrorists who would kill us or our allies.
  So there is really no good excuse for delaying the confirmation of 
Senator Sessions, and I am confident that tonight we will finally do 
what we should have done at least 3 weeks ago--confirm Senator Sessions 
as the next Attorney General of the United States. And I believe it is 
past time that we do so.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I would like to respond to the statement 
made by the Republican whip, my friend from Texas, Senator Cornyn. This 
is day 20 of the Trump administration. Day 20. Not quite 3 weeks since 
President Trump was sworn in as President of the United States. This 
evening at about 7 p.m., we will vote on his nominee for Attorney 
General. So in the first 20 days of his administration, he will have 
his Attorney General.
  What the Senator from Texas failed to relate was the experience we 
went through not that long ago when President Obama wanted to fill the 
vacancy of the Attorney General's office with Loretta Lynch, a woman 
who had served as prosecutor, U.S. attorney, lifelong professional in 
the Department of Justice, who went through the regular hearing process 
in the Judiciary Committee, was reported from the committee, and she 
was sent more than 20 additional questions by Senator Jeff Sessions of 
Alabama--more questions which of course, she dutifully answered, as she 
was required to do. Then she was reported to the calendar, where she 
sat for 2 months. A 2-month vacancy in the Attorney General's office. 
Why? Was there something substantively wrong or controversial about 
Loretta Lynch? If there happened to be, I never heard it.
  Where then was that argument about national security and leaving the 
Attorney General nomination in limbo when it was President Obama 
seeking to fill that spot? Well, we didn't hear it at all. In fact, the 
Senator from Texas said: Oh, it was related to another bill and whether 
that bill was going to be called; it was actually Senator Reid who was 
holding it up.
  From where I was sitting--and I came to the floor at one point and 
said: What are we waiting for? This lady is eminently qualified. She 
has been reported by the committee. She has answered all the questions. 
She languishes on the calendar.
  She wasn't alone in this experience, incidentally. The Executive 
Calendar, as the Obama Presidency ended, was filled with nominees who 
were held for no obvious reason by the Republicans. They had been 
reported from the committees. They were ready to fill judicial 
vacancies across the United States and other posts. And the official 
position of the Republican Senators happened to be: We are not going to 
ever let people vote on them because we are hoping and praying we will 
get a Republican President who can fill those same vacancies with 
people of our political persuasion. That was the reality.
  That was the same reality that left Merrick Garland, President 
Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, languishing 
for almost 1 year. The Republicans and the leaders in the Senate would 
not give him a hearing or a vote. And Senator McConnell came to the 
floor and said: I won't even meet with him.
  So when I hear these protests now from the Republican side of how we 
are not moving quickly enough on these nominations, we are. And I think 
we are moving in the appropriate way. We are asking hard questions.
  And I don't subscribe to the position of the Senator from Texas, who 
preceded me here, when it comes to the Voting Rights Act. I listened as 
Senator Sessions of Alabama said that he believed the Shelby County v. 
Holder decision was a victory for the South when it ended preclearance 
of legislation that could have a direct impact on the voting rights of 
individuals. And I do recall what happened when the Federal court took 
a specific look at North Carolina's legislation statutes as it related 
to voting and said the North Carolina legislature had ``with surgical 
precision'' found ways to exclude African Americans from voting--not 20 
years ago but just a few months ago, before this last election.
  This is a critical issue, and it is interesting to me that last night 
the dustup on the floor involving the Senator from Massachusetts, 
Senator Warren, was about the same issue, the Voting Rights Act.
  In a letter sent by Coretta Scott King to Strom Thurmond--then 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee--when Senator Sessions, 
before he was Senator, was being considered for Federal judgeship--this 
is what Coretta Scott King said in the letter. I am not going to read 
the personal and controversial sections that have been pointed out 
before, but it is critical to what her message happened to be. She said 
to Strom Thurmond in a letter about Senator Sessions moving to the 
Federal bench:


[[Page 2114]]

       Free exercise of voting rights is so fundamental to 
     American democracy that we cannot tolerate any form of 
     infringement of those rights. Of all the groups who have been 
     disenfranchised in our Nation's history, none has struggled 
     longer or suffered more in the attempt to win the vote than 
     black citizens. No group has had access to the ballot box 
     denied so persistently and intently.

  It was a critical issue over 30 years ago when Mr. Sessions was then 
being considered for a Federal judgeship. It is a critical issue to 
this day because of two things: a decision by the Supreme Court, which 
basically took away one of the major powers of the Voting Rights Act, 
and, secondly, a coordinated effort by Republicans across the United 
States to suppress the vote of minorities and particularly African 
Americans.
  I point directly to that North Carolina decision for what I just 
said. What they have tried to do is to systematically reduce the 
likelihood that poor people and minorities will vote. As chairman of 
the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 
Rights, and Human Rights, I held public hearings in Ohio and Florida. 
Those hearings were held in those States because they had proposed new 
restrictions on voters.
  So, both in Cleveland and in Florida, I brought the election 
officials--Democrats and Republicans--before my subcommittee, put them 
under oath and asked: What was the incidence of widespread voter fraud 
in the elections in your State which led you to make it more difficult 
and challenging for the people of your State to vote?
  The answer was: There were none. There were no examples of widespread 
fraud. There were only a handful of prosecutions for voter fraud. That 
told the story. This didn't have anything to do with voter fraud. This 
had to do with discouraging turnout in areas that were more friendly to 
Democratic candidates, period. So when we make a big issue of the 
position of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions on the Voting Rights Act, it 
is with good cause.
  It is historically an issue which has haunted the United States since 
the Civil War, when excuses after excuses were made for African 
Americans seeking the right to vote, and people were denied the right 
to vote with poll taxes and literacy tests and ridiculous standards to 
this very day, when the Republican Party strategy is to diminish the 
African-American vote by voter suppression.
  Is it important that we know the position of Senator Jeff Sessions on 
the Voting Rights Act? To me, it is one of the most important questions 
to be asked. The fact that it evoked controversy on the Senate floor 
with Senator Warren last night is an indication of how seriously we 
take it. Yes, we have added a few more hours to the debate. I disagree 
with the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Texas who say: You know 
how it is going to end; why are you wasting our time?
  I don't think it is a waste of time to have a fulsome debate in the 
Senate on something as fundamental as protecting the right of every 
American citizen to vote.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, will the Senator from Illinois yield for a 
question?
  Mr. DURBIN. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. TESTER. I say to Senator Durbin, there has been a lot of talk 
about the fact that the number of Cabinet appointees were much higher 
in the Obama administration than they are now. Could you take us back 8 
years ago? I mean, we just confirmed a lady to be Secretary of 
Education who has never spent 1 minute in a public school classroom, on 
a school board, teaching, student, otherwise. There are claims out 
there about some of these nominees being involved in insider trading. 
There are claims out there that some of these nominees did not pay 
their taxes.
  Could you take us back 8 years ago and tell us how those folks were 
treated, if there was anything wrong with them when they came to this 
floor?
  Mr. DURBIN. Through the Chair, I will respond to the Senator from 
Montana. Here is the difference. Eight years ago, when Barrack Obama 
was elected President and was to be sworn in on January 20, he brought 
together his team to serve in his Cabinet and said to them: The first 
thing you need to do is to follow the law. You need to file all the 
papers required of you by the ethics standards of the United States 
Government.
  So, I am told that on January 8, almost 2 weeks before he was sworn 
in, their paperwork was on file. So they had complied with the law and 
they were awaiting their opportunity for a hearing. Contrast that with 
the current situation. There are still proposed Cabinet members by 
President Trump who have not filed their required ethics disclosures.
  Why is it important? Because we believe that though we can't reach in 
and require the President to file his income tax returns, which he has 
steadfastly refused to do, we know what the standards are when it comes 
to many of those departments.
  The standards are very demanding. There has to be a disclosure and 
there has to be a process of divestment. If I am about to become the 
head of an agency and my personal wealth includes holdings that have a 
direct impact on that agency, I am required by law to divest myself of 
those holdings. The more complicated my portfolio and net worth might 
be, the more challenging this is.
  Penny Pritzker, a very wealthy individual from Chicago, was chosen by 
President Obama to be the Secretary of Commerce. It took her 6 months, 
I say to the Senator from Montana, to fully comply with the law so she 
could go through the hearing--6 months. Now we hear complaints from the 
Republicans: Well, why aren't the Trump nominees going through more 
quickly? Why aren't our billionaires put on the fast-track?
  I am sorry, but Trump billionaires are subject to the same rules as 
all billionaires. They have to file the necessary documents. I might 
add, you can go back a little further in history and find 
disqualifications for Cabinet positions. Oh, you hired someone in your 
household to work for you and you did not pay their Social Security, 
their FICA? Sorry, you are disqualified from being in a Cabinet.
  Now we have Trump nominees where that is happening--not with 
frequency, but it is happening--and it doesn't seem to be even close to 
a disqualification. So it clearly is a double standard. I would say to 
the Senator from Montana, the fact that the Obama nominees moved 
through as quickly as they did showed they took the law seriously, they 
made the disclosures they were required to make, and in virtually every 
case had unique qualifications for the job.
  To put Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education next to Arne Duncan, who 
headed up the Chicago Public School System as Secretary of Education, 
is to show that contrast.
  Mr. TESTER. I want to thank the Senator from Illinois for his history 
lesson on the confirmation process over the last 8 years, at least in 
the Senate.
  I want to speak today on behalf of the thousands of Montanans who 
have asked me to oppose the nomination of Mr. Sessions as the Attorney 
General of the United States. As this country's top law enforcement 
official, the Attorney General must stand up and fight for all 
Americans. The Attorney General must provide a voice for the folks who 
often are not able to speak for themselves.
  The Attorney General must enforce the law as it is written, not how 
the President wishes it was written. I believe Mr. Sessions has proven 
time and time again that he does not fulfill these qualifications, and 
therefore I will oppose his nomination for Attorney General.
  Mr. Sessions opposed the reauthorization of the Violence Against 
Women Act. This landmark legislation protects women from domestic 
violence and sexual assault and brings perpetrators to justice. In my 
State of Montana, this law helped provide over $10 million every year 
to support women and children. Those are critical resources that make a 
real difference in the lives of women, children, and their families, 
and they keep our communities safe.

[[Page 2115]]

  The Violence Against Women Act supports shelters like the Friendship 
Center in Helena, which is literally saving lives and protecting women 
and children from violence every day--in fact, they help over 1,000 
Montanans each and every year--or programs like Rocky Boy Office of 
Victims Services, which is in the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation.
  Thanks to the Violence Against Women Act, this has helped reduce the 
number of sexual assaults on that reservation. If he is confirmed, I 
would invite Mr. Sessions to Red Lodge, Missoula or Browning, and the 
many other places in our State to see how the Violence Against Women 
Act is saving lives and making communities safer. I invite him to sit 
down with the survivors at any of the YWCAs in Montana and explain to 
them why he opposes the Violence Against Women Act.
  As Attorney General, Mr. Sessions will be responsible for 
administering critical resources through the Violence Against Women 
Act, resources that will save lives, but as a Senator, Mr. Sessions has 
turned his back on the survivors of domestic violence. I am not 
confident he will be there for them as Attorney General.
  I will not support a nominee for Attorney General who opposed 
legislation that helps us better investigate and prosecute violent 
crimes against women, but that is not all. I am not convinced that Mr. 
Sessions will stand up for the privacy laws of law-abiding Americans. 
Less than 2 years ago, right on this Senate floor, Mr. Sessions fought 
to preserve the most intrusive aspects of the PATRIOT Act.
  That was not the first time he supported unchecked government 
surveillance. Mr. Sessions has voted in support of the most intrusive 
aspects of the PATRIOT Act seven times--seven times.
  He is a staunch advocate for the NSA's bulk data collection, which 
violates the privacy of millions of Americans. If Mr. Sessions is 
confirmed as Attorney General, will he push back and fight our 
government that undercuts our freedoms? Will he fight on behalf of 
government officials who listen into our phone calls, or scroll through 
our emails or preserve our Snapchats?
  Will he intervene if the government once again spies on citizens 
without a warrant? I think the answer to that, quite frankly, is no. 
When government agencies like the NSA collect bulk data, they do so at 
the expense of our freedoms. If Mr. Sessions is not willing to protect 
our Fourth Amendment rights, can we expect him to fight for other 
constitutional rights?
  Will he fight for the First, the Second, the Fifth? Again, the answer 
is no. We need an Attorney General who will fight and protect our 
individual freedoms, not one who is willing to sacrifice it.
  I am not alone. Thousands of Montanans have contacted my office 
opposing Mr. Sessions. Here are some of the things Montanans have 
written to me. Anne from Missoula wrote me:

       Please vote against the nomination of Jeff Sessions for 
     Attorney General. He has a history of supporting the 
     weakening of our civil liberties. Voting rights should be 
     strengthened, not weakened. His support of the Patriot Act 
     and opposition of the Violence Against Women Act are just a 
     few of the many egregious positions that he has taken.

  Susan from Bigfork:

       Please vote no on Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. She 
     is an inappropriate choice due to women's issues and civil 
     liberty issues. He has shown poor choices in protecting 
     voting rights and women's choices.

  Jerilyn from Belgrade:

       Jeff Sessions is completely the wrong person to be Attorney 
     General. His record on civil rights and women's issues belong 
     in a different century.

  Amy from Whitefish:

       Vote no to the nomination of Jeff Sessions, who has shown 
     himself time and again to be no friend to equality or civil 
     liberties. Please know that we in Montana expect you to 
     uphold our desire for all members of this great Nation 
     regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation 
     or sexual orientation, to be treated with respect and 
     dignity.

  Charles from Livingston:

       He voted no on the Violence Against Women Act.

  That ``he'' being Mr. Sessions. Mr. Sessions voted no on adding 
sexual orientation to the definition of hate crimes. He voted yes on 
loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping.
  Now, I agree with Anne and Susan and Amy and Jerilyn and Charles and 
thousands of other Montanans. Because of that, I will not support Mr. 
Sessions, and I will urge my colleagues to oppose his nomination.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Madam President, I rise to urge my colleagues to join me 
in opposing the confirmation of our colleague Jeff Sessions to be 
Attorney General of the United States.
  I have great respect for Senator Sessions' long history of public 
service, and I am pleased to have had the opportunity to work with him 
where we have found common ground. However, Senator Sessions and I have 
frequently and sometimes vehemently disagreed on important issues, 
including matters like civil rights and voting rights, hate crimes 
laws, immigration, and criminal justice reform.
  I want to acknowledge that Senator Sessions' nomination is supported 
by many, including many in the law enforcement community in my home 
State of Wisconsin. It is vital that the Attorney General have a good 
working relationship with the law enforcement community, and I have no 
doubt that Senator Sessions will be a strong voice for law enforcement, 
if he is confirmed.
  But the role and the responsibility of our Attorney General is bigger 
than any one group. Our Attorney General must work on behalf of all 
Americans. The Department of Justice has a broad jurisdiction. So I 
have also heard from over 16,000 Wisconsinites who are opposed to his 
confirmation, many of whom expressed profound concerns about what it 
would mean for racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, including 
DREAMers, and others, were he to become our Attorney General. Hundreds 
of national civil and human rights organizations have expressed their 
opposition on similar grounds.
  After reviewing his record, getting a chance to meet with him in my 
office, and considering everything that I have heard from my 
constituents, I simply do not believe that Senator Sessions is the 
right choice to be Attorney General of the United States. I have that 
belief for a number of reasons.
  First, I am concerned that Senator Sessions will not be the 
independent champion for the rule of law that we need with Donald Trump 
in the White House. In any administration, the Attorney General's first 
duty is to the Constitution and to the people of the United States. 
This President has already issued a number of orders--legally 
questionable orders--including one affecting our visa and refugee 
programs that a number of Federal courts have already temporarily 
blocked. We need an Attorney General who will ensure that the 
President's actions do not run roughshod over protections guaranteed by 
our Nation's laws and Constitution. I am not convinced that Senator 
Sessions will be that kind of Attorney General.
  Second, I do not believe that Senator Sessions will be the champion 
of the civil rights of all Americans that an Attorney General must be. 
The Department of Justice plays a central role in enforcing our 
Nation's civil rights laws, from investigating hate crimes to 
safeguarding the right to vote, to fighting discrimination against 
women, racial and religious minorities, and people with disabilities. 
At a time when there has been a disturbing increase in hate-motivated 
crimes, discrimination, and harassment, including, particularly, 
against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and people of 
the Muslim faith, it is even more important that the Department of 
Justice be strong and proactive.
  I have heard from constituents in Wisconsin who have faced bigotry 
and hate-motivated speech in the wake of the election of Donald Trump. 
Among them is a family from Fitchburg, WI, with 11 adopted children, 
including children from Ghana and China.
  This family received an anonymous letter proclaiming ``Trump won'' 
and calling them race traitors and telling them to go home. This and 
other reports from Wisconsinites and, frankly,

[[Page 2116]]

from people throughout the United States breaks our hearts.
  Senator Sessions fought against efforts to strengthen and make more 
inclusive Federal hate crimes laws and criticized voting rights laws as 
``intrusive.'' He has shown hostility to the rights of LGBT individuals 
and attacked the reproductive health care rights of women.
  Now more than ever we need a Justice Department that places a 
priority on enforcing our civil rights and voting rights laws, 
proactively combatting hate violence and fighting for the equality of 
all Americans. I am simply not convinced that Senator Sessions will be 
the champion vulnerable Americans need as Attorney General with an 
unflagging commitment to make our country a fairer and more equal 
place.
  Third, I believe Senator Sessions will not take a fair or humane 
approach as Attorney General with regard to immigration. I was deeply 
troubled by candidate Trump's ugly and divisive rhetoric on 
immigration, and I am appalled by the actions that he has taken thus 
far as President.
  Senator Sessions was one of his campaign's key advisers on 
immigration and has been a vocal opponent of bipartisan, comprehensive 
reforms that would address our broken immigration system.
  The Department of Justice is responsible for adjudicating immigration 
cases and ensuring fairness and due process in the treatment of 
undocumented individuals and refugees.
  The Department also plays a key role in our national security 
apparatus, helping to fight terrorism, and keeping the homeland safe.
  The President's recent orders on immigration have furthered 
divisions, created chaos and confusion, proven to be legally and 
constitutionally questionable, and are inconsistent with core American 
values. In the opinion of many national security experts, they will 
make our Nation less safe, not more.
  I simply do not believe that Senator Sessions, with his history of 
hostility to immigration and support for this President's approach, is 
the right person to lead the Department of Justice, as it discharges 
its critical duties on immigration and national security.
  America has made great progress over the last 8 years with an 
administration that has taken seriously a shared responsibility to pass 
on to the next generation a country that is more equal, not less.
  All Americans deserve a strong commitment from America's top law 
enforcement official to act on violence born out of hatred based on 
race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any 
other characteristic.
  At a time when voting rights and the constitutional right of women to 
make their own health care decisions are under attack across our 
country, we need an Attorney General who will stay true to these 
constitutional freedoms and not be driven by politics.
  For me, the vote on Senator Sessions' confirmation is a moral choice. 
I am guided by my strong belief that all Americans deserve equal 
opportunity and freedom to pursue their hopes and dreams. I cannot 
support this nomination for Senator Sessions to be Attorney General, 
and I urge my colleagues to oppose him.
  Now I would like to take a moment to discuss what happened last night 
here on the Senate floor. Last night, the Republican leadership of this 
Chamber stopped one of my colleagues from reading the words of Coretta 
Scott King.
  Coretta Scott King wrote a letter and a statement to the Senate 
Judiciary Committee back in 1986, expressing her opposition to Jeff 
Sessions' nomination to serve as a Federal judge.
  Coretta Scott King believed, as I do, that the right to vote is a 
fundamental right afforded to every American. It is a right that people 
have lost their lives seeking and defending.
  Mrs. King wrote in her testimony regarding Jeff Sessions' record:

       Blacks still fall far short of having equal participation 
     in the electoral process. Particularly in the South, efforts 
     continue to be made to deny Blacks access to the polls, even 
     where Blacks constitute the majority of the voters. It has 
     been a long up-hill struggle to keep alive the vital 
     legislation that protects the most fundamental right to vote. 
     A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the 
     enforcement of those laws, and thus, to the exercise of those 
     rights by Black people should not be elevated to the Federal 
     bench.

  Mrs. King's words matter. They matter to me, and they matter to 
millions of Americans. Mrs. King's words should matter in this debate, 
and they deserve to be heard. I believe it is simply wrong to silence 
legitimate questions about a nominee for U.S. Attorney General, and I 
hope that her words can be heard as this debate continues.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                  Career and Technical Education Month

  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
Career and Technical Education Month. The month of February has been 
set aside as Career and Technical Education Month. It is an opportunity 
for us to talk about something that is working very well in some of our 
States and is giving our young people amazing opportunities, and it 
should be expanded.
  Over the last 6 years, my home State of Ohio has come a long way. We 
have turned a record deficit into a billion-dollar rainy day fund. We 
have created lots of new jobs, but we also have a problem in Ohio and 
around the country, and that is a skills gap.
  If you go on the www.ohiomeansjobs.com Web site right now, I think 
you will see about 122,000 jobs being offered. In other words, these 
are companies saying: We are looking for people.
  At the same time, in Ohio today, we have about 280,000 people who are 
out of work. So how could that be, you ask? Well, if you look at the 
jobs and you look at what the descriptions are, many are jobs that 
require skills, and some of these skills are not available right now in 
the workforce. So you could get a lot of people put back to work just 
by developing these skills in Ohio.
  At the same time, this is happening around the country, and this 
skills gap--this mismatch between the skills that are in demand in a 
local economy and the skills of a worker--is something that can be 
dealt with with more aggressive career and technical education.
  Businesses want to invest more. They want to make better products, 
but they can't do so if they can't find the right people.
  By the way, when those skilled workers aren't available, often those 
jobs go somewhere else. So in the case of Ohio, some may go to other 
States--let's say Indiana--but some go to other countries--say India.
  So if you don't have the skilled workforce, you are not going to be 
able to keep the jobs that we want here in America because workers are 
such a critical part of making a business successful.
  The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the 
typical unemployed worker today has been unemployed for about 6 months. 
So we have this long-term unemployment again. The skills gap would help 
deal with that. There are 5.8 million Americans who are now stuck in 
part-time work who would want full-time work. So we have some 
challenges in our economy, and this skills training would really help.
  According to a survey from Deloitte, 98 of the 100 biggest privately 
held employers in my hometown of Cincinnati, OH--98 out of 100--say 
they are struggling to find qualified workers. There is a shortage of 
machinists--machine operators. We are a manufacturing State. There is 
also a shortage of other jobs, IT skills, health care skills. Companies 
want to hire, but they have a hard time finding workers with the right 
skills.
  By the way, it is not just in Cincinnati or in Ohio; it is across the

[[Page 2117]]

country. There was a study done by the National Association of 
Manufacturers that found that three out of every four manufacturers say 
the skills gap is hurting their ability to expand and create more jobs. 
So as soon as this new Congress and new administration get to work, I 
think there is an opportunity for us to address this.
  One thing we have heard about from the administration and also from 
both sides of the aisle here is the need for more infrastructure. We 
have all heard about the funding for our crumbling roads and bridges, 
our water systems, our waste water systems. I think that is all true, 
but it is going to be tough to do it because we don't have the skilled 
workers to rebuild the infrastructure. I think there is an area of 
common ground that if we have skilled workers, we will be much more 
likely to rebuild that infrastructure.
  We had a conference on this issue a couple of weeks ago in Congress, 
and we brought people in from Ohio from the building trades. The point 
they made was: We would love to see this infrastructure expansion 
everybody is talking about. But who is going to do the work? We need 
more skills training, and we need to make sure that is there.
  Yesterday afternoon we confirmed the Secretary of Education, Betsy 
DeVos. One reason I voted for Betsy DeVos is that she talked about 
skills training. Her quote was that CTE, career technical education, is 
an ``important priority,'' and she agrees that we must do more to give 
our young people the job skills they need.
  Some people, when they hear about CTE, wonder what it is. For some in 
my generation, it is what was called vocational education, but I will 
tell you that it is not your father's Oldsmobile. It is really 
impressive to go to these CTE schools and see what they are doing and 
see the changes in the attitudes of the kids and their parents once 
they get into these programs.
  One of the challenges we have is getting kids to enroll in some of 
these CTE programs. Sometimes the parents say to their kids: That is 
not something you should do. You should get on track to go to college 
because that is the track we were on, and that is the track we were 
told was better. I will tell you that is a big mistake. Changing that 
attitude is really important to helping expand CTE because young people 
going into these CTE programs have an incredible opportunity. By the 
way, many of them do go on to college, 2- or 4-year institutions. Many 
of them also get a job out of high school, and, again, that job is very 
important to our employers keeping jobs and economic activity here in 
this country, but it is also a huge opportunity for them.
  I was at a CTE center a couple of years ago. We were sitting around 
the table talking to some of the employers who were there supporting 
the programs, some of the administrators, and, of course most 
importantly, some of the students who were from three local high 
schools who were all involved in this CTE program. Of the three young 
people who were there, two of them were going off to manufacturing jobs 
where they were going to be making 50 grand a year plus benefits, and 
the third was going into an IT position where, again, she was going to 
have a great opportunity.
  My question to the students was: Have you gone back to your high 
school and talked to your friends about this? They all indicated they 
were planning to do that because they had a great experience. They had 
great opportunities. By the way, one of them was interested in being an 
engineer. He was going to CTE and then going to get a job. He had a job 
lined up with a company he had interned for, but that same company was 
willing to send him to school to get a degree in engineering over the 
subsequent years.
  All three of them had college credits already because in Ohio 
students are allowed to get college credits from CTE courses, which 
makes it more likely that they will graduate but also more likely that 
they will be able to get to college and have college be more affordable 
by getting credits in advance. It is a terrific idea.
  There is a story that I heard about recently of a young woman in 
Ohio. Her name is Mackenzie Slicker from Massilon, OH. She will tell 
you that she was not doing very well in school. She was not hitting her 
marks, and she was not very excited about school. Then one day she saw 
there was an opportunity to get into a CTE course in sports medicine. 
She applied for it. The teacher looked at her scores in other classes 
and non-CTE classes, and said: I will take a chance on you, but I am 
concerned about you because your grades are so low. But she applied. 
She said she was embarrassed by those scores. The teacher let her in 
with the understanding that she would do a better job in her other 
classes. The CTE course gave her a totally new-found motivation to work 
hard and get good grades.
  I hear this again and again back home. These kids from CTE are 
excited. They not only stay in school--they are not dropouts--but they 
do better.
  In her senior year in high school she had a 4.0 after getting into 
the CTE program for sports medicine. She is studying at Miami 
University where she is on track for living out her dream of becoming 
an orthopedic surgeon. That is an example of how CTE really works.
  Senator Tim Kaine and I had this in mind when we started the Senate 
CTE Caucus. It is a caucus that started with just a couple of Members, 
and now it has a strong following. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin 
is among the leaders of that caucus, and she is on the floor today. 
This caucus not only has these conferences that bring people together 
to talk about issues, but we also put together legislation.
  Senator Kaine and I introduced legislation called Jumpstart Our 
Businesses by Supporting Students Act, or the JOBS Act. We tried hard 
to get that acronym, JOBS. We introduced it a couple weeks ago. It 
would let low-income people get Pell grants for job training programs. 
Under current law, financial aid for programs can be used for courses 
lasting 15 weeks or more, but a lot of the licensing programs and the 
job training programs are less than 15 weeks. In Ohio a lot of them are 
9 weeks. So we think this legislation will be helpful, giving young 
people options that they don't have now to be able to have this funding 
to be able to give them opportunities for a better start in their 
careers, getting them the licensing they need, the certificates they 
need, and putting them on the path to joining the middle class and the 
ability to get a job, but also to be able to buy that car, to be able 
to buy that home over time by having this opportunity to get skills 
training.
  Our legislation has been endorsed by education groups like the 
Association of Career and Technical Education, the National Skills 
Coalition, the National Council for Workforce Education, and many other 
groups. We appreciate their help, and we are going to get that 
legislation done.
  I hope colleagues from both sides of the aisle can join us to get 
that legislation enacted. It makes so much sense.
  Senator Kaine and I are also planning to reintroduce another bill 
called Educating Tomorrow's Workforce Act, which improves the quality 
of our CTE programs by setting minimum standards for CTE programs that 
would ensure students are able to transfer their credits, be able to 
have their work graded today based on today's industry standards, and 
use equipment that is up to date. So basically it is legislation--and 
again I thank Senator Baldwin for her support--to help increase the 
quality of CTE education. In some of our States this is working 
incredibly well. Ohio is one of those cutting-edge States. We have to 
ensure that the standards are maintained and expanded everywhere and we 
continue to support reauthorization to strongly support our CTE 
programs.
  Just like the JOBS Act, this bill has been endorsed by a number of 
education experts and groups, and we appreciate their help, including 
the National Career Academy Coalition, the National Career Development 
Association, National Association of Secondary School Principals, and 
many more.

[[Page 2118]]

  In Ohio we have some great schools, whether it is Cleveland, OH--the 
Max Hayes High School does an awesome job. I was there for its opening, 
now about a year and a half ago, and they are doing a terrific job of 
working with the building trades, working with private industry, 
working with the high schools in the area, and developing skills that 
are badly needed in Northeast Ohio. Ohio also has some great health 
care CTE programs. I mentioned the young woman who found her motivation 
getting involved in CTE for sports medicine.
  Recently I went to Butler Tech to their health care campus, which is 
north of Cincinnati, and what they are doing there is amazing. You walk 
in and all the kids have on their white medical coats, and whether they 
are dental hygienists who are being trained or technologists or 
students who plan to go to medical school someday or those who are 
interested in getting a degree in nursing, there are some incredible 
sites. They have brought in outside partners, all from the area, who 
are involved with working with them. It is good for our kids but also 
really good for our community.
  Mr. President, if we pass this legislation that I am talking about 
today, if we continue to focus on career and technical education as we 
are supposed to do this month--CTE month, February--we are going to 
help many millions of our young people to be able to have better 
opportunities and, most importantly, we are going to be able to help 
our economy. We are going to help create more jobs and more 
opportunities in this country, to be able to close that skills gap, to 
put people back to work. It makes too much sense for us not to come 
together as Republicans and Democrats alike, and with the new 
administration, to promote career and technical education.
  With that I yield my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I rise today to support the nomination 
of Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General of the United States. He 
is a veteran and an outstanding public servant who has worked 
tirelessly for decades in service of his constituents in Alabama, in 
this body, as a U.S. attorney, as Attorney General of Alabama. He is a 
good colleague and a friend to many of us on both sides of the aisle. 
He is gracious with his time, his wisdom, his intelligence.
  In all nomination processes there is some twisting of facts that goes 
on and, unfortunately, even some character attacks, but the twisting of 
his record and the attacks on Senator Sessions, in my view, have been 
particularly egregious. That is why I was very saddened by what 
happened on the floor of the U.S. Senate last night.
  One of our colleagues violated rule XIX. Here is what rule XIX says: 
``No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of 
words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or 
motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.''
  That is the rule. It has been in place for decades, and I don't think 
you need to be a Harvard law professor to realize that rule was 
violated last night.
  Mr. President, like you, I have been in the Senate for a couple of 
years. I certainly have tried very hard to work with my colleagues, all 
my colleagues across the aisle, Democrats, Republicans. I have respect 
for all of them. I have no problem whatsoever with Senators coming 
down, and in the last week or so, Senators coming down to the floor of 
the Senate to debate their views on nominees for Cabinet positions, up-
or-down votes on the merits and the qualifications of these nominees. 
That is what we should be doing. That is our job. We have seen a lot of 
that over the last several weeks.
  Like the Presiding Officer, in the last couple of years, I supported 
some of President Obama's Cabinet officials, was opposed to others, as 
is our job, on their merits and qualifications. We can do this in a 
respectful manner, especially here on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We 
can certainly do this in a way that does not violate rule XIX by 
imputing conduct and motives unbecoming of a U.S. Senator. More 
importantly, we can do this in a way that is respectful of each other. 
For the sake of the Senate and for the country, I hope we can get back 
to that tradition that is so important to this body.
  Let me try to set the record straight on Senator Sessions, the 
Senator Jeff Sessions I know. I have gotten to know him over the last 2 
years. He certainly has a long, distinguished history of public 
service. Nobody in this body is denying that. Everybody in this body 
knows Senator Sessions well, knows that he is a man of integrity, a man 
of principle. He will support the laws of the land, and he will be a 
fierce advocate for the rule of law and defending the Constitution.
  I wish to spend a few minutes on the broader issue of what is 
happening on the Senate floor right now. We are not getting a lot of 
press on it, but it is the unprecedented obstruction that is happening 
with regard to President Trump's Cabinet. Because of this obstruction--
unfortunately, by my colleagues--more than 2 weeks into President 
Trump's term, he has fewer Cabinet Secretaries confirmed at this point 
than any other incoming President since George Washington. That is some 
pretty serious obstruction. Nineteen days into his term as President of 
the United States, President Obama had 21 Cabinet Members confirmed. 
Right now, President Trump has seven. President Obama had three times 
the numbers we now have today.
  I believe most Americans--certainly the Americans I represent, 
fairminded Alaskans who are desperate to get our country and our 
economy working again--don't like this kind of obstruction. They see a 
new President who should be allowed to move forward with his Cabinet in 
place so the Federal Government can get to work on behalf of the 
American people. I think Americans are also seeing the reputation of 
good people who want to serve their country tarnished for political 
purposes.
  I hope the Members on the other side of the aisle understand that the 
American people are wise. They see through all this theater. We need to 
get to work. We need to let the Trump administration get to work.
  This body has a responsibility to treat the confirmation process with 
the same courtesy, seriousness, and focus the Senate gave to President 
Obama when he came into office, and that has not happened right now. It 
is not happening right now, and we need to move forward on that.


                  Visit By The Prime Minister of Japan

  Mr. President, we are on the eve right now of a very important visit 
of a very important ally. Prime Minister Abe of Japan will be visiting 
the United States here in the next day. He is going to be visiting with 
some Members of the Senate, visiting with President Trump and his team.
  I wish to make a few points on how important this visit is, not only 
for the United States-Japan relationship, but the importance of our 
allies. We are an ally-rich nation. When you look around the world, you 
look at the broad number of allies the United States has, and then you 
look at our adversaries or potential adversaries who are ally-poor. 
This is one of the most important strategic advantages the United 
States has right now in the world, to keep Americans safe and our 
allies safe. We are an ally-rich nation and our adversaries and our 
potential adversaries are ally-poor.
  For over 7 years, since the end of World War II, both the executive 
branch and this body and the House of Representatives have worked hard 
on this to build a system of allies all around the world to keep our 
country safe and our allies safe.
  In his inaugural address, I was pleased to see that President Trump 
talked about reinforcing old alliances and forming new ones. That is 
exactly what we need to do as the United States of America. In terms of 
our allies and the importance of different regions, there is no more 
important ally than Japan. There are no more important foreign policy 
and national security challenges that exist in the world than what is 
happening in the Asia-Pacific with the rise of China and the security 
and economic challenges but also opportunities in that part of the 
world.
  I urge all of my colleagues to warmly welcome the Prime Minister of 
Japan

[[Page 2119]]

and his team and to help focus on making sure that as we move forward 
with a new administration, we are working together with them, we are 
encouraging them. As the Senate, we are very focused on this issue of 
deepening our existing allies and alliances and broadening the 
opportunities to create more.
  The Senate plays a very important role in this regard. In terms of 
being able to keep American citizens safe, there is nothing more 
important than making sure we focus on our allies and, in particular, 
give a warm welcome to the Prime Minister of Japan this week.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I wish to start by responding to my 
new colleague.
  I respect my colleague. We have worked together on many issues, the 
Senator from Alaska and I. I think he would agree it is very important 
that the American people, the public, have a thorough review of 
candidates for a position in public office who are going to have 
incredible influence over all aspects of their lives. That is why it is 
so important we undertake this process. It is a fact that many of the 
nominees put forward by President Trump had massive conflict-of-
interest issues that need to be resolved. Many of them remain 
unresolved. Many of them are still not proceeding through committees 
because either their ethics report information has not been provided 
yet or they haven't passed other clearances.
  So it is absolutely fitting that we in the Senate do our job to make 
sure the people who are placed in these positions of high office are 
thoroughly vetted.
  I also wish to take a moment to respond to the statements regarding 
my good colleague, the Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren.
  Last night she was reading from a letter presented by Coretta Scott 
King at the time of the 1986 hearings on the judicial appointment of 
Senator Sessions. At the time he was a nominee to fill the vacancy.
  As a new Member of the Senate, it is difficult to understand how 
reading that letter--I have a copy of that letter right here--could be 
a violation of the Senate rules, but I assume we will all have time to 
investigate that question. I will say that the result has been a lot 
more people around the country have had an opportunity to read that 
important letter from Coretta Scott King.
  Obviously, we are gathered here as we consider the nomination for 
Attorney General. President Thomas Jefferson wrote: ``The most sacred 
of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to 
all its citizens.'' This is the job of the Department of Justice, and I 
think it is worth reviewing the mandate and purpose of the Department 
of Justice to determine whether Senator Sessions is the right person 
for this special and unique position in the U.S. Government.
  The Judiciary Act of 1789, the same act in which the first Congress 
created the Federal judiciary, Congress also created the Office of the 
Attorney General. In years thereafter, Congress empowered the Justice 
Department to handle all criminal and civil suits in which the United 
States has an interest. The Department is the largest law office in the 
world and the chief enforcer of our Nation's laws. The Attorney General 
has to be the people's lawyer. Upon taking the office, the Attorney 
General swears an oath to ``protect and defend the Constitution of the 
United States.'' More than almost any other officer of the U.S. 
Government, it is the job of the Attorney General to protect and carry 
out the Constitution's plan of defending the rights and privileges of 
those who most need that protection. There is a Latin motto on the seal 
of the Department of Justice. It refers to the Attorney General as the 
one ``who prosecutes on behalf of justice.'' In the paneling above the 
door of the anteroom outside of the Attorney General's office are 
inscribed the words: ``United States wins its point whenever justice is 
done its citizens in the courts.''
  As former Attorney General Loretta Lynch said after taking the oath 
of office, the employees of the Department of Justice are ``the ones 
who make real the promise of justice and redress for all Americans.'' 
She said they ``continue the core work of our mission--the protection 
of the American people.''
  She said: ``The challenge in that--for you, for me, for all of us 
that love this Department and love the law--is to use the law to that 
end. To not just represent the law and enforce it, but use it to make 
real the promise of America, the promise of fairness and equality, of 
`liberty and justice for all.'''
  I think we all recognize--and I see we have been joined by many of 
our colleagues from the other side of the Capitol from the House of 
Representatives. It is great to see them here as part of this historic 
debate. I see the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. 
Conyers, as well as many other colleagues because they know this is an 
important moment.
  Just as Loretta Lynch described the importance of the Office of 
Attorney General, we all have to take heed because I think all of us 
recognize that the story of America, the story of our country has been 
the story of working to live up to that original promise. It has been a 
long journey, and there have been a lot of broken promises along the 
way, and it is an unfinished journey. We know there has been a lot of 
blood and tears shed in order to try to make good on the ideas of equal 
justice and equal opportunity, of equal rights. We have come a long 
way--there is no denying that--but we also know we have a long way to 
go to meet that full promise.
  The role of the Justice Department is to be a fighter for living up 
to that purpose, for living up to that promise, to be the champion of 
the people, to be the defender of those who are too often undefended, 
to be a fighter for those who do not have an advocate, to be the voice 
for people who do not have high-priced and high-powered lobbyists. They 
need to be the advocate for everybody, the Attorney General--someone to 
whom those who are feeling like they are getting an unfair shake can 
turn. It has to be a refuge for those who have been victimized by the 
powerful, someone who can speak for all of the American people.
  To fulfill this responsibility, the Attorney General overseas over 
114,000 employees, 60 agencies, from the Antitrust Division, the Office 
of Privacy and Civil Liberties, to the U.S. attorneys, and the Office 
on Violence Against Women Act.
  The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, created in 1957, 
works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, 
particularly the most vulnerable in our society. The division is 
charged with enforcing Federal statutes, prohibiting discrimination on 
the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, 
and national origin.
  The Justice Department's Disability Rights Section works to achieve 
equal opportunity for people with disabilities by implementing the 
Americans with Disabilities Act. Forty-nine million Americans with 
disabilities rely on the Attorney General to protect their rights. The 
Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review 
adjudicates immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly 
interpreting and administrating the Nation's immigration laws. That is 
their charge. Under the supervision of the Attorney General, the office 
conducts immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and 
administrative hearings that determine the fate of millions of people--
and we have seen just how important that is in the last few weeks.
  The Justice Department's voting section enforces Federal laws that 
protect Americans' right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act, the 
Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the National Voter 
Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act. 
That is their charge.
  The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel provides legal 
advice to the President and the executive branch. They are supposed to 
give their best legal advice and call the balls and strikes without 
political shadowing.

[[Page 2120]]

The office reviews for legality all Executive orders and proclamations 
proposed to be issued by the President of the United States.
  The Justice Department has played a vital role in advancing the 
promise of America. You just have to look historically to how it was 
not just a passive actor but made sure they did their job to be a 
fighter for people who were disenfranchised.
  In 1957, in Little Rock, AR, the Justice Department helped to force 
the Governor of Arkansas to allow African-American children to attend 
an all-White Central High School. That was a Justice Department action 
under President Eisenhower.
  In the years since the Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmstead v. 
L.C., the Justice Department has fought to implement the goal of 
integration under the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide people 
with disabilities the opportunity to live their lives to their full 
God-given potential.
  In 2013, in Atlanta, GA, a Justice Department investigation and 
prosecution in response to the beating of a 20-year-old gay Atlanta man 
resulted in the first conviction in Georgia under the sexual 
orientation provision of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate 
Crimes Prevention Act.
  Again, the Justice Department is not a passive actor, enforcing the 
laws of the United States in order to advance equal justice in the 
United States of America.
  This is a really important legacy to uphold, and the question is, Is 
Senator Sessions the right person to uphold that legacy?
  Senator Sessions has represented the State of Alabama in the Senate 
for 20 years. He has served as the ranking Republican member of the 
Budget Committee, among other responsibilities here in the Senate. 
There may be many other positions in the executive branch for which 
that experience would provide an appropriate fit, but the role of the 
Attorney General is different. As I have said, this is a sacred duty 
and somebody in this position has to have a record not just of an 
understanding of the law but a willingness to make sure that we 
implement the law for all the American people.
  I regret that as I examine the history of Senator Sessions' 
statements and actions, I do not believe that he is well suited for the 
position of Attorney General. Nothing in his history or record 
indicates that he will be a fighter for those who are less powerful and 
those who have been left out. Nothing indicates that he will be a 
fighter for people of color, people with disabilities, or people in the 
LGBT community. Nothing in his record suggests that he will be that 
warrior for justice that we need in our Attorney General.
  To the contrary, time and again, Senator Sessions has taken positions 
that vary with those important traditions in our jurisprudence and in 
our law and, indeed, are contrary, in many instances, to the very 
mission of the Justice Department.
  Many years ago, back in 1986, I was on the floor of this Senate in a 
very different capacity. At that time, I was the legislative assistant 
for national security and defense policy to a Maryland Republican 
Senator by the name of Mac Mathias--a very independent Maryland 
Republican Senator, a liberal Republican and a real statesman. Senator 
Mathias was on the Judiciary Committee at the time. Strom Thurmond, the 
Senator from South Carolina, was the chairman. In fact, Mac Mathias 
probably should have been the chairman, but because of his independent 
streak, the Republican caucus at that time worked really hard to make 
sure that Senator Thurmond moved from being chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee to exercise his seniority on the Senate Judiciary 
Committee to become chairman so that Mac Mathias could not assume that 
position.
  Senator Mathias was somebody who always looked at the facts and 
called the balls and strikes as he saw them--a good role model for me, 
a good role model for everyone. I wasn't ever thinking--it was the last 
thing on my mind--of running for office at that time, but as I look 
back, he was a good role model for a U.S. Senator.
  As I said, he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time. He 
was on the Senate Judiciary Committee during the time of the hearings 
when now Senator Sessions, then U.S. Attorney Sessions, was up for his 
nomination for a Federal judgeship. Senator Mathias listened very 
carefully to the testimony. Senator Mathias, I am sure, would have read 
the letter from Coretta Scott King. He always did his homework. He 
always read everything and listened to everybody. After hearing all of 
the testimony, Senator Mathias--and, again, the Republicans were the 
majority in the Senate then, as they are today--and Senator Specter 
from Pennsylvania, another Republican Member, cast their votes in 
opposition to the nomination of then Attorney Sessions for a Federal 
judgeship.
  As I review the materials since that time--since the time that 
Senator Mathias cast that vote exercising his independence as a 
Republican Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee--I find that we 
have received very little assurances that there has been a change in 
the desire of Senator Sessions to be that advocate--that advocate--for 
justice, because all of these many years later, we are now hearing from 
those who have taken the time to update his record.
  I have with me now a letter that many of us received--and I have 
received many letters, as have my colleagues--from the Leadership 
Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The letter reads:

       In our democracy, the Attorney General is charged with 
     enforcing our Nation's laws without prejudice and with an eye 
     towards justice. And just as important, the Attorney General 
     has to be seen by the public--every member of the public from 
     every community--as a fair arbiter of justice.

  They conclude:

       Unfortunately, there is little in Senator Sessions' record 
     that demonstrates that he would meet such a standard.

  They say that his 30-year record of racial insensitivity, bias 
against immigrants, and hostility to the protection of civil rights are 
among the reasons that they oppose his nomination.
  The NAACP reached another and a similar conclusion, strongly urging 
the Senate to vote no on Jeff Sessions' nomination for Attorney 
General.
  The letter reads, in part:

       The Justice Department is a crucial enforcer of civil 
     rights laws and adviser to the President and Congress on what 
     can and should be done if those laws are threatened. Given 
     the disregard for issues which protect the rights and, in 
     some cases, the lives of our constituents, there is no way 
     the NAACP can be expected to sit by and support Senator 
     Sessions' nomination to support the U.S. Department of 
     Justice.

  Another letter from the National Task Force to End Sexual and 
Domestic Violence reads, in part:

       The leadership organizations and individuals advocating on 
     behalf of victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, 
     dating violence, and stalking write to express our opposition 
     to Senator Jeff Sessions' nomination for Attorney General of 
     the United States of America. We have arrived at this 
     position based upon a review of his record as a State and 
     Federal prosecutor, during which he applied the law unevenly, 
     and as a U.S. Senator, during which he supported laws that 
     would afford only some members of our society equal 
     protection under the law.

  There is another opinion letter from the Religious Action Center of 
Reform Judaism, which has spent a lot of their time and energy over 
decades focused on civil rights issues. I quote from their letter of 
January 12, 2017:

       The pursuit of civil rights has been the core of the reform 
     Jewish movement social justice work for over 50 years. Guided 
     by the fundamental principle that all people are created 
     equal in the divine image and words of Leviticus, 19:18, love 
     your neighbor as yourself, we have worked to pass landmark 
     legislation that advances fundamental rights of all people, 
     regardless of race, class, sex, gender identity, sexual 
     orientation, or national origin. As the chief law enforcement 
     officer in the country, the Attorney General has substantial 
     power over the administration of these policies.

  They go on to write:

       Senator Sessions' longstanding record of insufficient 
     commitment to voting rights, to LGBTQ equality, women's 
     rights, immigration reform, and religious freedom causes us 
     to believe that he would stand in the way of the Justice 
     Department's mandate to ensure equal protection under the 
     law.


[[Page 2121]]


  There are many other letters like this one from people who took a 
thorough review of the record of the President's nominee to be Attorney 
General.
  I would like to discuss something that has received a little bit less 
attention regarding Senator Sessions' record, and that is what I 
believe and what those who pay close attention to these issues believe 
has been a poor record in support for individuals with disabilities. 
This is especially important given the debate we had just the other day 
on the nomination of Mrs. DeVos to be the Secretary of Education, 
because she indicated in her testimony before the HELP Committee that 
she thought that it was a State obligation, not a Federal obligation, 
to enforce the IDEA law--the Individuals with Disabilities Education 
Act. So we should take a little time to look at the record of Senator 
Sessions with respect to the rights of people with disabilities.
  One such occasion was a big moment on the floor of this Senate. It is 
when the Senate considered the ratification of the Convention on the 
Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a treaty that had been negotiated 
under President George W. Bush and later signed by President Obama. 
Although I was serving in the House of Representatives at the time, I 
got lots of urgent calls and letters from constituents and friends in 
the disability community about the importance of the United States 
ratifying that convention. But in his remarks on the floor of the 
Senate, Senator Sessions not only opposed it, but he called the 
convention on the rights of persons with disabilities ``dangerous.''
  There have been few moments on this floor where Senators were more 
eloquent about that convention than former Senator and former 
presidential nominee Bob Dole, who appeared on the floor at the time, 
and who is no longer a Senator. He did in committee testify in favor of 
ratification of the convention that was before the Senate. He recalled 
during his testimony his maiden speech, the very first speech here in 
the U.S. Senate of Senator Dole. His first speech occurred on April 14, 
1969. It was the anniversary of the day he was wounded in World War II. 
He delivered his maiden speech on persons with disabilities, about the 
importance of protecting and ensuring the rights of people with 
disabilities. He, as we know, was disabled in action fighting for our 
country.
  In his testimony to the committee in 2012 on the convention, he said:

       It was an exceptional group I joined during World War II, 
     which no one joins by personal choice. It is a group that 
     neither respects nor discriminates by age, sex, wealth, 
     education, skin color, religious beliefs, political party, 
     power, or prestige. That group, Americans with disabilities, 
     has grown in size ever since. So, therefore, has the 
     importance of maintaining access for people with disabilities 
     to mainstream American life, whether it's access to a job, an 
     education, or registering to vote.

  Those were words of Senator Dole urging the Senate to ratify that 
convention. He went on to point out U.S. leadership on advancing the 
rights of persons with disabilities, particularly with the Americans 
with Disabilities Act. He pointed out that current U.S. laws in place 
in 2012 were already enough to make sure the United States satisfies 
its obligations to the international Convention on the Rights of 
Persons with Disabilities. Joining the treaty, Senator Dole said, would 
``reaffirm the common goals of equality, access, and inclusion for 
Americans with disabilities--both when those affected are in the United 
States and outside of our country's borders.''
  Senator Dole believed so powerfully in the importance of this treaty 
that, as I indicated earlier, he came to the floor of this Senate many, 
many years after he served here and hoped that his presence on the 
floor of the Senate would convince his Republican colleagues--and all 
his colleagues--to support that convention. Unfortunately, when the 
vote came down, it failed in getting the higher level of votes 
necessary for ratification by only 5 votes. One of those votes was that 
of Senator Sessions who, as I indicated, said that this convention on 
disabilities was ``dangerous.'' He rejected an international treaty 
that had been signed and supported by both Republican and Democratic 
Presidents, negotiated by President Bush and signed by President Obama. 
It imposed no additional obligations on the United States. It just said 
that we stand with others in the international community to support the 
billions of people around the globe who have a disability.
  On that issue, Senator Sessions stood against nearly every veterans 
organization in our country. He stood against a broad coalition of 
disability rights groups, including the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy 
Program. He advanced a theory that somehow U.S. sovereignty would be 
called into question. Yet, as then-Senator Dick Lugar, the Republican 
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pointed out, the 
United States had already satisfied its obligations and to make that 
clear, the declaration in the resolution of advice and consent stated 
simply at the time: ``The Senate declares that, in the view of the 
reservations to be included in the instrument of ratification, current 
United States law fulfills or exceeds the obligations of the Convention 
for the United States of America.''
  Despite the presence of Senator Dole on the floor and the support of 
the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Lugar, 
Senator Sessions opposed that.
  If that were the only incident where Senator Sessions failed to 
uphold the rights of people with disabilities--maybe, maybe, maybe--I 
am not sure it would be understandable. But it is not the only 
incident. Senator Sessions also made deeply concerning comments about 
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which we have 
heard so much about in the last couple of days during the debate on the 
nomination of Mrs. DeVos. Senator Sessions referred to the IDEA, or 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, as perhaps ``the single 
most irritating problem for teachers throughout America today'' and ``a 
big factor in accelerating the decline of civility and discipline in 
classrooms all over America.'' The most irritating problem was our 
national commitment to try to make sure that every child--every child, 
regardless of disability--had a chance to achieve his or her full God-
given potential. That was apparently irritating.
  Senator Sessions claimed that ``special treatment for certain 
children'' created a distraction in the classroom. Special treatment. 
That is not what IDEA is about. The idea of IDEA legislation was to 
make sure all kids could get an appropriate and decent education. It 
wasn't there to give kids with disabilities some kind of advantage, 
just a chance, along with the other kids.
  As to the so-called issue of special treatment, ``special treatment'' 
is a concerning trend in many of Senator Sessions' statements--not just 
with respect to individuals with disabilities, but in many other cases. 
In far too many circumstances, he appears to conflate steps to protect 
the rights of a minority or disadvantaged group that has historically 
faced persecution or discrimination as somehow an effort to give that 
group an elevated status over everybody else instead of just an equal 
chance with everybody else. The idea that the IDEA legislation to help 
kids with disabilities get an education in school was somehow a big 
advantage to them over other kids without disabilities is a striking 
and revealing statement, and it is one that carries through and on to 
other circumstances.
  I am concerned that Senator Sessions fails to recognize that there 
are communities in this Nation that truly have been subjected to 
discrimination and that are disproportionately affected by certain 
policies and need sustained civil rights protections--not to give them 
an elevated status, but simply to give them an even playing field with 
everybody else.
  It is the job of the Attorney General of the United States to make 
sure all of our citizens are treated equally under the law. The notion 
that somehow protecting the rights of groups that have been 
historically discriminated against is a bad thing and gives them an 
advantage doesn't conform to the reality of our country. I think we all 
know that.

[[Page 2122]]

  This same issue came up with respect to Senator Sessions' position on 
the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill. He called it a ``special 
protection'' for LGBT individuals rather than an acknowledgement that 
these individuals had been historically discriminated against and put 
at risk of greater violence. He criticized Supreme Court Justice Sonia 
Sotamayor for her decision that disenfranchising felons violated the 
Voting Rights Act, saying that her analysis that the policy had a 
disproportionate impact on African Americans was somehow ``a bridge too 
far.''
  I am sure that if Mrs. Coretta Scott King were here today, she would 
say that we need to continue to travel along our journey toward meeting 
our promise of equal rights, equal justice, and equal opportunity, and 
ensuring justice for groups that have been discriminated against 
historically--whether on racial grounds or on grounds of gender or of 
on sexual orientation. That is not somehow to give them an advantage 
but to recognize that they have faced historic discrimination, and to 
provide them with a chance.
  Just yesterday in Maryland, following the efforts of my good friend 
and our State attorney general Brian Frosh, a Maryland court overhauled 
the cash bail system in our State. I think all of us who have seen the 
way the criminal justice system operates know that far too often cash 
bail ends up criminalizing poverty. According to the Pretrial Justice 
Institute, ``47 percent of felony defendants with financial bonds can't 
pay and stay in jail until their case is heard.'' In other words, they 
simply can't afford to make bail, and so they stay in jail, sometimes 
for years. Not only is it costly to hold people for an extended period 
of time prior to trial, but we know it has sometimes incentivized 
people--people who were innocent of the crimes they were charged with--
to strike plea deals simply because they can't afford to pay the bail 
and they can't afford to spend months or years away from their homes or 
families.
  Like many people in organizations, I have looked at Senator Sessions 
record with respect to the issue of criminal justice reform, and it is 
lacking in the need to find a bipartisan solution to what is recognized 
across party lines as an important effort that we need to make--
criminal justice reform--because we know we have too many people who 
are currently locked up for nonviolent offenses, including many 
substance abuse offenses.
  It makes no sense within our system to have the kind of mass 
incarceration we have seen in our country, where we have 5 percent of 
the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prison population. 
There is a bipartisan recognition that justice demands we change that. 
Unfortunately, I have not seen that recognition in the record of 
Senator Sessions.
  In remarks on the Senate floor in 2002, Senator Sessions also 
criticized a Supreme Court ruling about the execution of people with 
intellectual disabilities. The Court found that people who had 
incredibly diminished intellectual capacity should not be executed--
that it violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual 
punishment because these are individuals who could not form a capacity, 
an intent--and that we should not execute people who did not form that 
criminal intent, the mens rea. That was an advance in our Federal 
jurisprudence, yet that was severely criticized by Senator Sessions. So 
that statement, along with his position on IDEA and his opposition to 
the convention on peoples with disabilities raises many, many troubling 
questions regarding his willingness to protect individuals who need 
protection.
  We also recognize that the Attorney General has to be somebody who is 
independent, who is willing to stand up to a President if a President 
is calling upon the Justice Department to take an unlawful action or an 
action inappropriate or inconsistent with the interests of justice.
  In 1904, in a letter to the Attorney General, President Theodore 
Roosevelt said:

       Of all the officers of the Government, those of the 
     Department of Justice should be kept most free from any 
     suspicion of improper action on partisan or factional 
     grounds, so there shall be gradually a growth, even though a 
     slow growth, in the knowledge that . . . the representatives 
     of the Federal Department of Justice insist on meting out 
     even-handed justice to all.

  Senator Sessions himself made the point when he questioned then-
nominee Sally Yates about her responsibilities in the Justice 
Department of President Obama. Senator Sessions told Ms. Yates:

       You have to watch out because people will be asking you to 
     do things and you need to say no. You think the attorney 
     general has the responsibility to say ``no'' to the President 
     if he asks for something that's improper? A lot of people 
     have defended the Lynch nomination, for example, by saying, 
     ``Well, he appoints somebody who's is going to execute his 
     views. What's wrong with that?'' But if the views the 
     President wants to execute are unlawful, should the attorney 
     general or the deputy attorney general say no?

  That was the question posed by Senator Sessions.
  Ms. Yates answered:

       Senator, I believe the attorney general or the deputy 
     attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and the 
     Constitution and to give their independent legal advice to 
     the President.

  That is exactly what she did. That is exactly what Deputy Attorney 
General Yates did just a few days ago when President Trump asked her to 
take an action which in her opinion was inconsistent with the laws of 
the United States. She did what Senator Sessions asked her to do at 
that hearing, and she was fired.
  Let's look at the record of Senator Sessions' willingness to stand up 
in an independent way to some of the outrageous statements that have 
been made by President Trump.
  After the terrorist attack in San Bernadino, CA, Mr. Trump called for 
a ``total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States 
until our country's representatives can figure out what . . . is going 
on.''
  He went on to reiterate his plans for a Muslim ban in a March 2016 
CNN interview and a later speech. What did Senator Sessions do at that 
important moment? At that time, Senator Sessions was an early supporter 
of not only Mr. Trump but his call for a Muslim ban. Just days after 
Candidate Trump first made his Muslim ban proposal, Senator Sessions 
told Steve Bannon on Breitbart's radio program:

       We're in an age that's very dangerous and we're seeing more 
     and more persons enter. And a lot of them have done terrorist 
     acts and a lot of them believe it's commanded by their 
     religion. So I think it's appropriate to begin to discuss 
     this [Muslim ban].

  We all want the greatest security for our country. We all want to 
make sure bad people don't get here. But I think we also understand as 
Americans that a religious test violates the principles of our Nation.
  Senator Leahy pointed out at Senator Sessions' confirmation hearing 
that Senator Sessions opposed a resolution saying the United States 
should not use religious tests for immigration into the country, that 
they were antithetical to our founding principles. Nevertheless, when 
it was time to be counted and stand up, Senator Sessions did not do 
that.
  More recently, we heard President Trump criticize the Washington 
State judge--and I see our leader, my friend Senator Murray, on the 
floor. He criticized the decision of a Federal district judge, and he 
did it, as we know, in a dismissive way, tweeting that he was a ``so-
called judge.'' That is another moment when--whether you support 
President Trump and his campaign or you support his actions as 
President, it is a moment when, if you are going to being the chief law 
enforcement leader in the country, you say: Mr. President, really, that 
is not an appropriate thing to say.
  Senator Sessions had another opportunity to challenge then-Candidate 
Trump on an earlier occasion when Candidate Trump criticized the judge 
who made a ruling against him in the Trump University case and 
criticized him on the grounds of his heritage. That was an opportunity 
when others in this country, even people who were supporting Candidate 
Trump, said: You

[[Page 2123]]

know what, that is out of line. That is out of bounds.
  We did not hear from Senator Sessions. Maybe Senator Sessions was 
being looked at for another executive agency where that question was 
less important, where maybe it wouldn't carry so much weight. But for 
the Attorney General of the United States, we need somebody there who 
is going to be independent, somebody who is going to be willing to 
challenge the President of the United States when he suggests unlawful 
actions or makes statements that are inconsistent with the system of 
justice.
  Finally, on the issue of voter fraud, I think all of us have heard 
from President Trump about his claim that he really won the popular 
vote. We shouldn't even be here talking about it, but he keeps talking 
about it. He claims that he really won the popular vote, that it was 
these 3 million people who cast fraudulent ballots--zero evidence, no 
evidence, and yet when Senator Franken asked Senator Sessions about 
these claims of voter fraud, these unsubstantiated claims of massive 
voter fraud, Senator Sessions didn't take the opportunity to say: You 
know what, I support President Trump, but he is out of line; he is 
wrong to make these outrageous claims. He didn't say that. In fact, 
President Trump at one point was talking about having the Justice 
Department or the FBI look into this very question.
  I am not satisfied at all that Senator Sessions would meet his own 
test--the test he presented to Sally Yates when she was up for her 
nomination for Deputy Attorney General about whether she would stand up 
to what she considered an unlawful order by the President of the United 
States. She did. She was fired. There is no evidence that Senator 
Sessions would stand up under those circumstances, and we need an 
Attorney General who will stand up for the law and for equal justice 
and for every American.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota
  Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I rise today regarding the upcoming 
confirmation on Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to be Attorney General 
of the United States. For the past 3 years, I have had the great 
pleasure of working with Senator Sessions in this body. We served 
together on both the Senate Armed Services and Environment and Public 
Works Committees. Within those committees, as well as on other issues 
that have come before the Senate during that same time period, I have 
found that Senator Sessions is extremely forthright, hard-working, and 
Senator Sessions is honest. He has served Alabamans and all Americans 
well during his 20 years in the U.S. Senate.
  In addition to serving on the Armed Services and EPW Committees, he 
also serves on the Senate Judiciary and Budget Committees, all of which 
address vital aspects of our Federal system.
  Senator Sessions also had a distinguished career before he was 
elected the U.S. Senator from Alabama. After graduating from the 
University of Alabama with a law degree, Senator Sessions practiced law 
in Russellville and Mobile, AL. In 1975, he took the oath to defend the 
Constitution of the United States as an assistant U.S. attorney--the 
first step in a long and honorable career as a prosecutor. In 1981, 
Senator Sessions was nominated by President Reagan and confirmed by the 
U.S. Senate as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. 
He served honorably in that role for 12 years. Senator Sessions was 
then elected Alabama attorney general and served in that role until his 
election to the U.S. Senate.
  It is clear to me that Senator Sessions is exceptionally and perhaps 
uniquely qualified to serve as the Attorney General for the United 
States. He served as a line prosecutor and, as U.S. attorney and 
Alabama attorney general, as the chief Federal and State law 
enforcement authority. He has personally handled or managed a wide 
variety of cases--criminal and civil, trial and appellate. Senator 
Sessions also has extensive experience in the Federal system and, as a 
former State attorney general, a deep respect for State and local law 
enforcement and the role of States in our Federal system.
  There is an attribute even more important than experience, in my 
opinion, and that is integrity. Over the course of his career, Senator 
Sessions has demonstrated a deep respect for the Constitution and the 
rule of law, and ultimately, I believe that is what is most important 
in an Attorney General of the United States.
  In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote this about the role of a U.S. 
attorney, and I think it applies similarly to the Attorney General:

       A federal prosecutor ``is the representative not of an 
     ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose 
     obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its 
     obligation to govern at all and whose interest, therefore, in 
     a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but 
     that justice be done.''

  The Supreme Court continued:

       [A]s such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the 
     servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt 
     shall not escape or innocence suffer.

  I support Senator Sessions as Attorney General of the United States 
not only because his experience makes him qualified to serve but more 
importantly because his character makes him qualified to serve. Senator 
Sessions will, in the words of the Supreme Court, be a certain 
``servant of the law'' and will make certain that justice is done for 
all Americans.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I stand here today to give a voice to the 
thousands of people who have contacted me in recent weeks urging me to 
vote no on this nomination. First, I need to express my frustration and 
outrage about what happened here on the floor last night.
  In the middle of a debate about the next Attorney General--someone 
whose job it will be to defend the rights of all Americans; whose job 
it is to defend people from discrimination, inequity, and unfairness; 
whose job it is to defend women, to defend people of color, to defend 
all those who are too often told to sit down, stand down, be quiet--we 
saw the Republican leader selectively use the rules to silence our 
colleague, a woman Senator, who was reading the words of an African-
American woman and a historic civil rights leader, reading the words of 
someone who embodies the fight for justice, for freedom, for equality, 
and for civil rights in America; someone who all of us should be 
looking to for lessons in these times, not someone whose words should 
be silenced because she said something people may not enjoy hearing.
  At a moment when we are engaged in a debate about how best to defend 
our fellow citizens from discrimination and fight back against forces 
that seek to demean others in order to gain power, I was stunned. I 
respect the decorum that the Senate strives to maintain, but there are 
times when you cannot stay silent. This is one of those times. We will 
not be silent.
  So I want to say that I stand with my friend, the Senator from 
Massachusetts. I stand with the words of the late Coretta Scott King, 
and I stand with the many people who have contacted me about this 
nominee that we are debating here today. I can tell you that the day 
President Trump announced he had picked Senator Jeff Sessions to lead 
the Department of Justice, the phones in my office lit up. People from 
across my home State of Washington contacted my office to express their 
shock, their outrage, and their fear.
  The calls came from people who help LGBTQ youth experiencing 
homelessness; groups who have tirelessly advocated for necessary 
criminal justice reform; families caught in a broken immigration 
system; civil rights advocates and community leaders who have fought 
for decades to create a more just society; advocates and nonprofits 
trying to help women escape domestic violence. The list goes on.
  That was in November. And in the weeks and months since the President 
made his choice for Attorney General known, those concerns have not 
died down. In fact, they have only gotten louder and more urgent as the 
public

[[Page 2124]]

gets a better look at Senator Sessions' long record, what he stands 
for, and where he wants to take this country. I share their concerns.
  It is why I will oppose Senator Sessions' nomination to be Attorney 
General. I urge my colleagues to join me to reject this nomination, and 
send a message to the new President about the rule of law in this 
country. Send a message to the new President, who came into office 
showing blatant disregard for our traditions of transparency, 
traditions that tell us the President has a duty to put the needs of 
the American people before the needs of his bank account. Send a 
message to someone who, just weeks into his term, has displayed 
shocking disdain for the U.S. Constitution and the separation of 
powers, the same President who fired an Acting Attorney General because 
she refused to ignore the law, to approve his hateful and 
unconstitutional Executive order barring refugees; the same President 
who ridiculed a well-respected Federal judge in Seattle, a George W. 
Bush appointee, because the judge didn't rule the way he wanted.
  The U.S. Attorney General is often the last line of defense for our 
Constitution within an administration. And they need to be the first to 
stand up to our President when our President is wrong.
  Senator Jeff Sessions is not that kind of nominee. The people of this 
country expect and deserve an Attorney General who will protect their 
civil and constitutional rights and liberties. They deserve someone 
committed to the principles of inclusiveness and justice--someone who 
will fiercely defend the rights of all Americans to be treated equally 
under the law. The American people need an Attorney General who 
continues to make the fight against racism, discrimination, and hate 
crimes a core part of that Department's mission. We know Senator 
Sessions is not the person for that job.
  More than 30 years ago, he couldn't even pass muster in a Republican-
majority Senate. During his confirmation hearing, Senators cited his 
racially charged comments and his shameful record on civil rights as a 
U.S. attorney as reasons they could not support him. And as my late 
colleague Ted Kennedy said at the time: ``It is inconceivable to me 
that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let 
alone a U.S. Federal judge.''
  I ask my colleagues who are inclined to support his nomination today, 
What has changed? I have served alongside Senator Sessions for years, 
and I know his record all too well. And like my constituents who 
started sounding the alarm back in November, I am deeply concerned by 
his agenda that would take our country backward.
  Senator Sessions has dismissed one of our bedrock civil rights laws, 
the Voting Rights Act, as ``intrusive,'' while pushing restrictive 
voter ID laws and fueling conspiracy theories about voter fraud. I 
watched as he refused to work with a bipartisan majority of the Senate 
on immigration reform and instead pushed extreme policies that would 
punish the most vulnerable members of our communities. And that, by the 
way, included DREAMers across the country who have never known another 
home besides America. His personal passion on that issue and his years 
of advocacy against commonsense immigration policies cause me great 
concern about whether he would use the Department of Justice to pursue 
his extreme anti-immigration agenda.
  On criminal justice reform, he beat back efforts from within his own 
party to address the exploding race of incarceration across this 
country. The injustice of these laws falls disproportionately on 
communities of color.
  Time and again, he has defended laws that favor throwing nonviolent 
offenders in jail rather than working to rehabilitate them, even though 
it has been consistently proven that prison is not a means of 
rehabilitation. This nominee's views on criminal justice reform are so 
out of the mainstream, his position is even at odds with the Koch 
brothers.
  At the very time our Nation engages in a critically important debate 
about ensuring equal treatment under the law, as we continue the 
struggle to make sure equality shines through our education system, our 
justice system, our economy, and our country, Senator Sessions remains 
dismissive of the very tools our Justice Department must use to move us 
forward.
  When I joined so many of my colleagues in the Senate to reauthorize 
and improve the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act to protect women 
across the country, Senator Sessions worked against us to tear it 
apart. As someone who has sat face-to-face with survivors of domestic 
violence and fought to increase protections for those dealing with 
sexual assault, I can see why people would question whether Senator 
Sessions has any intention of enforcing the laws that protect them 
because I wonder that myself.
  This nominee's track record of trying to undermine women's 
constitutionally protected reproductive rights is horrifying and 
should, by the way, scare every woman in this country.
  I have heard from so many members of the LGBTQ community who are 
terrified that Senator Sessions would be tasked with protecting their 
rights. His votes against repealing don't ask, don't tell and expanding 
hate crimes definitions to include LGBTQ Americans confirm those fears.
  This alone has to give my colleagues pause when so many Americans--
our friends, our family members, our coworkers--fear that their 
government will look the other way as they endure violence, 
discrimination, and marginalization just because of who they love or 
how they live. We must fight back with everything we have.
  When this President attacks the independence of our judges--judges 
who have declared the obvious, that the Muslim ban Executive order is 
unconstitutional--we cannot put the person who Steve Bannon calls ``the 
fiercest, most dedicated and most loyal promoter'' of the President's 
agenda at the head of the Department of Justice. This is not who we 
are.
  Senator Sessions is not the Attorney General this country needs. I 
urge members of the Senate to stand up for the Constitution, to stand 
with your fellow Americans. The stakes are far too high to make Senator 
Sessions our next Attorney General.
  I urge you to join with me in voting against this nomination. Now 
more than ever, we need an Attorney General who will be independent and 
willing to stand up to President Trump's illegal and unconstitutional 
actions whenever they happen.
  The last thing this country needs right now is a rubber stamp to 
validate this administration's illegal actions.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. It is always disturbing to sit in this Chamber and listen 
to some of the speeches. I am wondering if even a saint could get 
approved without a filibuster in this body.


                        Nomination of Tom Price

  Mr. President, I am pleased today to come to the floor in support of 
another friend, someone I am honored to have worked with for many 
years, and that would be Dr. Tom Price. When I first heard that 
President Trump nominated Dr. Price to serve as Secretary of Health and 
Human Services, I was reassured to know that one of the most capable, 
well-prepared individuals President Trump could have chosen would fill 
such an important post.
  Health care is highly complex, highly specialized, and it has a 
significant impact on our Nation. Our Federal Government's involvement 
in health care has changed dramatically over the last few decades, and 
that change has accelerated in the last few years. Health care makes up 
one-sixth of our economy, and the Department of Health and Human 
Services has a tremendous impact on all parts of all sectors of health 
care. Who better than a doctor should head an organization that covers 
the wide variety of major health care programs?
  Let me mention just a few that a doctor should be in charge of. One 
would be Medicare, another is Medicaid. And then there is our vast 
biomedical research functions at the National Institutes of Health, 
usually referred to as NIH. Then there is our domestic and 
international public health

[[Page 2125]]

work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC; the 
review of innovative and lifesaving drugs and devices at the Food and 
Drug Administration, or FDA; or how about our preparedness in the 
development of medical countermeasures at the Biomedical Advanced 
Research and Development Authority, or BARDA; and many other programs 
impacting the Nation's health that also provide an alphabet of 
initials.
  Who better to understand the most important side of health care, the 
patient, than one who is, at the end of the day, the person that takes 
care of the patient? The patient is the biggest factor in all health 
policies. These policies are too often put together here in Washington. 
Hundreds of bureaucrats sit in offices, deciding what patients ought to 
have done to them. Sitting here in offices without being doctors, 
without having treated patients, I will be glad to have someone in 
charge there who, instead, considers what the patient wants done.
  In the Senate HELP Committee hearing with Dr. Price, he spoke about 
his view on the importance of the patient in health care. He reiterated 
that again before the Finance Committee when he said: ``[It is] 
imperative that we have a system that's accessible for every single 
American, that's affordable for every single American, that 
incentivizes and provides the highest quality health care that the 
world knows and provides choices to patients so they are the ones 
selecting who is treating them, when, where, and the like.''
  Tom Price is an ideal candidate for this role. Not only does he know 
the health care system as a physician, he knows it as a policymaker who 
has been a thought leader in health care here in Congress. His resume 
is well rounded. He has practiced and taught medicine, he was a 
business owner, and he served as a legislator.
  Let me repeat. He has not only practiced medicine, he has taught 
medicine, and he has been a business owner of a large business that 
dealt with health care and he served as a legislator.
  His confirmation will also mark the first time since the George H.W. 
Bush administration that a physician has led this agency. Our health 
care system is in a significant time of transformation. Well before 
ObamaCare, there was a need to make changes that would give people more 
options in health insurance and to find a way to contain costs.
  We have even more work to do now as patients find themselves with 
fewer choices and higher costs. The new Secretary's role will be a 
difficult one. In the last year, our health insurance markets have 
teetered into unstable ground, especially in the individual market. 
Even with absolutely no change in the law, more and more people will 
lose access to health insurance coverage.
  It has been suggested that the Republicans should just let the 
current system keep going for another year or so until the Democrats 
would be begging us to make changes, but we are not going to do that. 
We are not going to have those people go through that kind of 
suffering, even though there is a risk to it. We are not going to sit 
and wait for the system to crash. We will be working in Congress to 
repeal ObamaCare and reform our health care system by putting the 
patient first.
  It will be critical to have a partner in the administration to make 
changes and implement the law in a way that reflects the intent of 
Congress and provides for full, open, and transparent input from the 
public. I understand that some of my Democratic colleagues have decided 
that being a Republican is a disqualifying characteristic for any 
Cabinet Secretary. It is all too easy to resort to vilification of our 
political opponents, but I will just point out the words of David Lloyd 
George, who is not a conservative, who said: ``A politician is a person 
with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him, he is a 
statesman.''
  Tom Price's nomination is something that I believe would have been 
relatively noncontroversial, even a few years ago. I know that when I 
voted in favor of the confirmation of Sylvia Burwell as the Secretary 
of Health and Human Services for President Obama's Cabinet, I looked at 
her qualifications, not her politics.
  If we look at Dr. Price with the same lens, I am hopeful we will see 
a bipartisan vote for this confirmation. The nomination of Tom Price is 
a great opportunity for our country to benefit from his knowledge, to 
benefit from his dedication, to benefit from his lifetime of service, 
and to benefit from his commitment to working with us all to improve 
health care in the United States.
  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. HEINRICH. 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. HEINRICH. Mr. President, in 1986, Coretta Scott King, the widow 
of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, wrote a letter urging 
Congress to block the nomination of Jeff Sessions for Federal judge. 
The Senate Judiciary Committee would ultimately reject that nomination.
  Here we are three decades later. Senator Sessions, who cannot erase 
his troubling record on civil rights, is again undergoing a 
confirmation hearing as President Trump's nominee for Attorney General. 
I would like to read an excerpt from Mrs. King's letter, and I ask 
unanimous consent that the letter in its entirety be printed in the 
Record following my remarks.
  Mrs. King wrote:

       I write to express my sincere opposition to the 
     confirmation of Jefferson B. Sessions as a federal district 
     court judge for the Southern District of Alabama. My 
     professional and personal roots in Alabama are deep and 
     lasting. Anyone who has used the power of his office as 
     United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free 
     exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to 
     our courts. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his 
     office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly 
     black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not 
     be rewarded with a federal judgeship.
       I do sincerely urge you to oppose the confirmation of Mr. 
     Sessions.

  When Senator Elizabeth Warren tried to read this exact same letter 
last night here on the Senate floor, Republicans voted to silence her, 
citing that she was in violation of Senate rules aimed at preventing 
Senators from impugning the motives of their colleagues.
  The move by some of my colleagues to silence the words of Senator 
Warren and Mrs. King last night is troubling not only because this is a 
threat to our democratic values, but also, frankly, because it is 
hypocritical. During a scathing speech last year in this same Chamber, 
the Senator from Texas went so far as personally attacking the 
Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell and accusing him of lying. 
In May of last year, the Senator from Arkansas, also here on the Senate 
floor, delivered a speech directly criticizing former Senate Minority 
Leader Harry Reid, using the terms ``vulgar,'' ``incoherent,'' and 
``cancerous'' to describe him.
  He said on the Senate floor:

       I am forced to listen to the bitter, vulgar incoherent 
     ramblings of the minority leader. Normally, like every other 
     American, I ignore them.

  I bring this up because neither of these Senators were silenced. 
Neither were told to sit down and take their seat. Silencing Senator 
Warren for reading Mrs. King's letter under the guise of following 
Senate rules is hypocritical and rightfully leads some to question 
whether the majority leader may have a different standard of expected 
conduct for female Senators compared to their male counterparts.
  I have already announced that I will vote against the nomination of 
Senator Sessions. After this episode last night, I believe now more 
than ever this position will require an unwavering commitment to 
protect American's constitutional rights, and to stand up against 
discrimination and hate.
  Like the thousands of New Mexicans I have heard from, I lack that 
confidence in Senator Sessions. I urge the

[[Page 2126]]

American people to read and share Coretta Scott King's letter and 
continue to make your own voices heard because we will not be silenced. 
We will persist.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

         The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social 
           Change, Inc.,
                                 Atlanta, Georgia, March 19, 1986.
     Re Nomination of Jefferson B. Sessions U.S. Judge, Southern 
         District of Alabama Hearing, March 13, 1986

     Hon. Strom Thurmond,
     Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Thurmond: I write to express my sincere 
     opposition to the confirmation of Jefferson B. Sessions as a 
     federal district court judge for the Southern District of 
     Alabama. My professional and personal roots in Alabama are 
     deep and lasting. Anyone who has used the power of his office 
     as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free 
     exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to 
     our courts. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his 
     office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly 
     black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not 
     be rewarded with a federal judgeship.
       I regret that a long-standing commitment prevents me from 
     appearing in person to testify against this nominee. However, 
     I have attached a copy of my statement opposing Mr. Sessions' 
     confirmation and I request that my statement as well as this 
     letter be made a part of the hearing record.
       I do sincerely urge you to oppose the confirmation of Mr. 
     Sessions.
           Sincerely,
     Coretta Scott King.
                                  ____


    Statement of Coretta Scott King on the Nomination of Jefferson 
   Beauregard Sessions for the United States District Court Southern 
                          District of Alabama


          Senate Judiciary Committee, Thursday, March 13, 1986

       Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: Thank you for 
     allowing me this opportunity to express my strong opposition 
     to the nomination of Jefferson Sessions for a federal 
     district judgeship for the Southern District of Alabama. My 
     longstanding commitment which I shared with my husband, 
     Martin, to protect and enhance the rights of Black Americans, 
     rights which include equal access to the democratic process, 
     compels me to testify today.
       Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert 
     Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and 
     unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used 
     the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of 
     the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to 
     serve as a federal judge. This simply cannot be allowed to 
     happen. Mr. Sessions' conduct as U.S. Attorney, from his 
     politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions to his 
     indifference toward criminal violations of civil rights laws, 
     indicates that he lacks the temperament, fairness and 
     judgment to be a federal judge.
       The Voting Rights Act was, and still is, vitally important 
     to the future of democracy in the United States. I was 
     privileged to join Martin and many others during the Selma to 
     Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965. Martin was 
     particularly impressed by the determination to get the 
     franchise of blacks in Selma and neighboring Perry County. As 
     he wrote, ``Certainly no community in the history of the 
     Negro struggle has responded with the enthusiasm of Selma and 
     her neighboring town of Marion. Where Birmingham depended 
     largely upon students and unemployed adults [to participate 
     in non-violent protest of the denial of the franchise], Selma 
     has involved fully 10 per cent of the Negro population in 
     active demonstrations, and at least half the Negro population 
     of Marion was arrested on one day.'' Martin was referring of 
     course to a group that included the defendants recently 
     prosecuted for assisting elderly and illiterate blacks to 
     exercise that franchise. In fact, Martin anticipated from the 
     depth of their commitment twenty years ago, that a united 
     political organization would remain in Perry County long 
     after the other marchers had left. This organization, the 
     Perry County Civic League, started by Mr. Turner, Mr. Hogue, 
     and others, as Martin predicted, continued ``to direct the 
     drive for votes and other rights.'' In the years since the 
     Voting Rights Act was passed, Black Americans in Marion, 
     Selma and elsewhere have made important strides in their 
     struggle to participate actively in the electoral process. 
     The number of Blacks registered to vote in key Southern 
     states has doubled since 1965. This would not have been 
     possible without the Voting Rights Act.
       However, Blacks still fall far short of having equal 
     participation in the electoral process. Particularly in the 
     South, efforts continue to be made to deny Blacks access to 
     the polls, even where Blacks constitute the majority of the 
     voters. It has been a long up-hill struggle to keep alive the 
     vital legislation that protects the most fundamental right to 
     vote. A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the 
     enforcement of those laws, and thus, to the exercise of those 
     rights by Black people should not be elevated to the federal 
     bench.
       The irony of Mr. Sessions' nomination is that, if 
     confirmed, he will be given life tenure for doing with a 
     federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished 
     twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods. Twenty years 
     ago, when we marched from Selma to Montgomery, the fear of 
     voting was real, as the broken bones and bloody heads in 
     Selma and Marion bore witness. As my husband wrote at the 
     time, ``it was not just a sick imagination that conjured up 
     the vision of a public official, sworn to uphold the law, who 
     forced an inhuman march upon hundreds of Negro children; who 
     ordered the Rev. James Bevel to be chained to his sickbed; 
     who clubbed a Negro woman registrant, and who callously 
     inflicted repeated brutalities and indignities upon 
     nonviolent Negroes peacefully petitioning for their 
     constitutional right to vote.''
       Free exercise of voting rights is so fundamental to 
     American democracy that we can not tolerate any form of 
     infringement of those rights. Of all the groups who have been 
     disenfranchised in our nation's history, none has struggled 
     longer or suffered more in the attempt to win the vote than 
     Black citizens. No group has had access to the ballot box 
     denied so persistently and intently. Over the past century, a 
     broad array of schemes have been used in attempts to block 
     the Black vote. The range of techniques developed with the 
     purpose of repressing black voting rights run the gamut from 
     the straightforward application of brutality against black 
     citizens who tried to vote to such legalized frauds as 
     ``grandfather clause'' exclusions and rigged literacy tests.
       The actions taken by Mr. Sessions in regard to the 1984 
     voting fraud prosecutions represent just one more technique 
     used to intimidate Black voters and thus deny them this most 
     precious franchise. The investigations into the absentee 
     voting process were conducted only in the Black Belt counties 
     where blacks had finally achieved political power in the 
     local government. Whites had been using the absentee process 
     to their advantage for years, without incident. Then, when 
     Blacks; realizing its strength, began to use it with success, 
     criminal investigations were begun.
       In these investigations, Mr. Sessions, as U.S. Attorney, 
     exhibited an eagerness to bring to trial and convict three 
     leaders of the Perry County Civic League including Albert 
     Turner despite evidence clearly demonstrating their innocence 
     of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, in initiating the case, Mr. 
     Sessions ignored allegations of similar behavior by whites, 
     choosing instead to chill the exercise of the franchise by 
     blacks by his misguided investigation. In fact, Mr. Sessions 
     sought to punish older black civil rights activists, advisors 
     and colleagues of my husband, who had been key figures in the 
     civil rights movement in the 1960's. These were persons who, 
     realizing the potential of the absentee vote among Blacks, 
     had learned to use the process within the bounds of legality 
     and had taught others to do the same. The only sin they 
     committed was being too successful in gaining votes.
       The scope and character of the investigations conducted by 
     Mr. Sessions also warrant grave concern. Witnesses were 
     selectively chosen in accordance with the favorability of 
     their testimony to the government's case. Also, the 
     prosecution illegally withheld from the defense critical 
     statements made by witnesses. Witnesses who did testify were 
     pressured and intimidated into submitting the ``correct'' 
     testimony. Many elderly blacks were visited multiple times by 
     the FBI who then hauled them over 180 miles by bus to a grand 
     jury in Mobile when they could more easily have testified at 
     a grand jury twenty miles away in Selma. These voters, and 
     others, have announced they are now never going to vote 
     again.
       I urge you to consider carefully Mr. Sessions' conduct in 
     these matters. Such a review, I believe, raises serious 
     questions about his commitment to the protection of the 
     voting rights of all American citizens and consequently his 
     fair and unbiased judgment regarding this fundamental right. 
     When the circumstances and facts surrounding the indictments 
     of Al Turner, his wife, Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue are 
     analyzed, it becomes clear that the motivation was political, 
     and the result frightening--the wide-scale chill of the 
     exercise of the ballot for blacks, who suffered so much to 
     receive that right in the first place. Therefore, it is my 
     strongly-held view that the appointment of Jefferson Sessions 
     to the federal bench would irreparably damage the work of my 
     husband, Al Turner, and countless others who risked their 
     lives and freedom over the past twenty years to ensure equal 
     participation in our democratic system.
       The exercise of the franchise is an essential means by 
     which our citizens ensure that those who are governing will 
     be responsible. My husband called it the number one civil 
     right. The denial of access to the ballot box ultimately 
     results in the denial of other fundamental rights. For, it is 
     only when the poor and disadvantaged are empowered that they 
     are able to participate actively in the solutions to their 
     own problems.

[[Page 2127]]

       We still have a long way to go before we can say that 
     minorities no longer need be concerned about discrimination 
     at the polls. Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian 
     Americans are grossly underrepresented at every level of 
     government in America. If we are going to make our timeless 
     dream of justice through democracy a reality, we must take 
     every possible step to ensure that the spirit and intent of 
     the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fifteenth Amendment of 
     the Constitution is honored.
       The federal courts hold a unique position in our 
     constitutional system, ensuring that minorities and other 
     citizens without political power have a forum in which to 
     vindicate their rights. Because of this unique role, it is 
     essential that the people selected to be federal judges 
     respect the basic tenets of our legal system: respect for 
     individual rights and a commitment to equal justice for all. 
     The integrity of the Courts, and thus the rights they 
     protect, can only be maintained if citizens feel confident 
     that those selected as federal judges will be able to judge 
     with fairness others holding differing views.
       I do not believe Jefferson Sessions possesses the requisite 
     judgment, competence, and sensitivity to the rights 
     guaranteed by the federal civil rights laws to qualify for 
     appointment to the federal district court. Based on his 
     record, I believe his confirmation would have a devastating 
     effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also 
     on the progress we have made everywhere toward fulfilling my 
     husband's dream that he envisioned over twenty years ago. I 
     therefore urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to deny his 
     confirmation.
       I thank you for allowing me to share my views.

  Mr. HEINRICH. 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. MARKEY. 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. MARKEY. Mr. President, I have heard from literally thousands of 
my constituents who have contacted my office in unprecedented numbers 
with fears about a Justice Department headed by Senator Jeff Sessions 
as Attorney General of the United States.
  My constituents and Americans all across the country are concerned 
about the independence and integrity of the Justice Department under 
President Donald Trump.
  We are only 3 weeks into the Trump administration, and what we have 
seen so far has been alarming. We have 3 years and 49 weeks left to go 
in President Trump's term of office, and we have already seen in 3 
weeks President Trump issue an illegal and immoral ban on Muslim 
refugees. We then saw President Trump fire Acting Attorney General 
Sally Yates from her job overseeing the Department of Justice--an 
action reminiscent of Watergate's infamous ``Saturday Night 
Massacre''--because she refused to defend in court his unconstitutional 
and un-American Executive order.
  Sally Yates's job and the job of the entire Justice Department is to 
uphold the rule of law. The Attorney General of the United States is 
the lawyer for the people of the United States--not Donald Trump's 
personal lawyer. It is called the rule of law, not the rule of Trump, 
but it is the rule of law that is at stake when the nomination of 
Senator Sessions is in question to run the Department of Justice.
  I have told my constituents that Senator Sessions must be judged 
based on the totality of his record: as a U.S. attorney, as Alabama's 
attorney general, and as U.S. Senator.
  A review of that record, including 2 days of hearings before the 
Senate Judiciary Committee, demonstrates anything but the commitment to 
the equal and impartial administration of justice and an independence 
from the President that we must demand from the Nation's top law 
enforcement officer.
  Senator Sessions' record spanning decades in public office reflects 
hostility to important constitutional rights, hostility to laws 
intended to protect people of color, hostility to laws intended to 
protect women, hostility to laws intended to protect the LGBTQ 
community, and hostility to laws intended to protect immigrants against 
discrimination and violence.
  Senator Sessions has fought against civil rights efforts. He has 
fought against protecting voting rights, and as a U.S. attorney, 
Sessions tried to prosecute three civil rights workers who were helping 
elderly and disabled African-American voters to cast absentee ballots.
  During his 1986 judicial nomination hearing, he called the Voting 
Rights Act ``an intrusive piece of legislation.'' And in his testimony 
to the Judiciary Committee, Senator Sessions would not commit to 
continue the Justice Department's efforts to challenge restrictive 
State voter ID laws. Senator Sessions has fought against comprehensive 
immigration reform, against criminal justice reform, and against 
commonsense gun control measures.
  As for a woman's right to choose, Senator Sessions has said: ``I 
firmly believe that Roe v. Wade and its descendants represent one of 
the worst, colossally erroneous Supreme Court decisions of all time.'' 
At his confirmation hearing, Senator Feinstein pressed him on his 
statement, asking him whether it was still his view. ``It is,'' Senator 
Sessions replied.
  It is simply unimaginable that we would have an Attorney General of 
the United States holding such a view of Roe v. Wade and the rights of 
women to control their own reproductive health. Roe v. Wade is the law 
of the land, and it should remain that way forever.
  Mr. President, I would also like to address the actions last night by 
the Senate majority leader to silence the remarks of my colleague from 
Massachusetts, Senator Elizabeth Warren.
  Coretta Scott King was attending the New England Conservatory of 
Music in Boston when she met a divinity doctoral student at Boston 
University in 1952, in Boston. One year later, Coretta Scott married 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as they took their degrees from Boston to 
begin a cause found in the South that became a national and 
international movement.
  The two shared their life, a cause that would change the world. The 
voices and legacy of Coretta Scott King and Dr. Martin Luther King, 
Jr., are as much a part of Massachusetts history as the American 
Revolution, John Adams, and President John Kennedy.
  What Senator Warren was doing last night was standing up for equal 
justice the way Massachusetts has always stood up for equal justice, 
the way Senator Ted Kennedy stood up for equal justice. We have a deep 
and proud history in Massachusetts of fighting for what is right. The 
abolitionist movement was born in Massachusetts.
  In past generations, when young women wanted the right to vote, a 
group of committed activists in Massachusetts formed the Suffragette 
movement, and they changed the U.S. Constitution so women can vote.
  When young people in Massachusetts were upset with the voting rights 
laws for minorities in America's southern States, they became the 
Freedom Riders, and they changed the laws of the United States.
  I make these remarks from the desk once held by Massachusetts Senator 
Edward Brooke. Senator Brooke was the first African American elected to 
the Senate. He was a Republican. He was also a civil rights activist, 
and he also received his law degree at Boston University, in 
Massachusetts.
  From the Founding Fathers to the movement for universal health care, 
to the first same-sex wedding in the United States, and to the Senate 
floor last night, Massachusetts has always been at the heart of 
America's quest for equal justice.
  Leader McConnell used an arcane Senate rule to silence Senator 
Warren, but the people of Massachusetts and all people of good 
conscience will never be silenced when confronted with our moral 
responsibility to speak out.
  Senator Warren deserves an apology for being silenced when she 
attempted to share this very relevant, very powerful part of our 
national history last night. The American people deserve to hear the 
important words of Coretta Scott King. So here they are:

       Dear Senator Thurmond:
       I write to express my sincere opposition to the 
     confirmation of Jefferson B. Sessions as a federal district 
     court judge for the Southern District of Alabama. My 
     professional and personal roots in Alabama are deep and 
     lasting. Anyone who has used the power of his office as 
     United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free 
     exercise of the ballot

[[Page 2128]]

     by citizens should not be elevated to our courts. Mr. 
     Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a 
     shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black 
     voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be 
     rewarded with a federal judgeship.
       I regret that a long-standing commitment prevents me from 
     appearing in person to testify against this nominee. However, 
     I have attached a copy of my statement opposing Mr. Sessions' 
     confirmation and I request that my statement as well as this 
     letter be made a part of the hearing record.
       I do sincerely urge you to oppose the confirmation of Mr. 
     Sessions.
       Sincerely, Coretta Scott King

  Coretta Scott King was right in the 1960s. Coretta Scott King was 
right in 1986. Coretta Scott King is right today.
  Based on the totality of Senator Sessions' record, I have no 
confidence that he shares a commitment to justice for all Americans. I 
do not believe he will fight to defend the most vulnerable in our 
society. I do not believe he will stand up to President Trump when the 
time comes, as it surely will come.
  The great Robert F. Kennedy, a U.S. Attorney General himself, once 
said ``that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists 
on.''
  We must insist that our top law enforcement officer upholds the law 
for all Americans. I do not have assurance that Senator Sessions will 
meet that challenge.
  I will be voting no on Senator Sessions' nomination this evening, and 
I urge all of my colleagues to do likewise.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, yesterday I spoke at length about my fear 
that Senator Sessions' would not have the ability to act as an 
independent Attorney General. The Attorney General is not the 
President's lawyer. He or she is the chief law enforcement officer of 
the United States. And he or she must faithfully serve all Americans. 
Even if Senator Sessions could demonstrate independence from President 
Trump, my review of his extensive record leaves me unconvinced that he 
is capable of serving and protecting all Americans.
  In 1986, Senator Ted Kennedy called Jeff Sessions a ``throwback'' 
because of his conduct on civil rights issues. I regret to say that, 
since the Judiciary Committee's bipartisan rejection of Senator 
Sessions' nomination to be a district court judge in 1986, Senator 
Sessions has not allayed our concerns. In his 20 years in the Senate, 
he has not shown a commitment to protecting the most vulnerable in our 
communities. Time and again, when the rights of women, LGBT 
individuals, and disenfranchised communities have been debated here in 
the Senate, Senator Sessions has not sought to protect their civil and 
human rights. Too often, he has been the one standing in the way.
  That is why National Nurses United has written to me to express their 
opposition to Senator Sessions. They wrote: ``We provide the best care 
we possibly can, without regard to race, gender, national origin, 
religion, socio economic circumstances, or other identifying 
characteristic. That is what caring professionals do. Unfortunately, 
that is not what Jeff Sessions has done in his role as a public 
servant.'' I ask unanimous consent that their full letter be printed in 
the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. That is why my friend John 
Lewis testified before the Judiciary Committee in opposition to Senator 
Sessions. Congressman Lewis stated that, ``When faced with a challenge, 
Senator Sessions has frequently chosen to stand on the wrong side of 
history.'' Senate Republicans should be listening to these concerns and 
those of protesters in our streets and airports standing up for our 
Constitution. We should not subject those concerns to a gag rule.
  Yet Senator Sessions and his supporters have painted a different 
picture of his record. They have argued that he has a strong record on 
civil rights. So I asked Senator Sessions in written questions to 
identify areas in which racial inequalities persist. He could have 
talked about sentencing or about areas where the Civil Rights Division 
has found patterns and practices of police departments violating 
people's rights or about the kind of voter suppression efforts that an 
appeals court found ``target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical 
precision.'' Senator Sessions did not identify a single example of 
racial inequality in modern America. That is astonishing. No one can 
uphold the rights of all Americans if he is unwilling to pay attention 
when those rights are being violated.
  Some have suggested that Senator Sessions' record on civil rights has 
been criticized unfairly and he is held to a different standard because 
he is a conservative from the South. I disagree. When the Judiciary 
Committee rejected Senator Sessions' district court nomination in 1986, 
one of the votes against him came from Senator Heflin, who was a 
conservative from Alabama. Moreover, I and most other Democrats just 
voted to confirm as U.N. Ambassador another conservative Southerner: 
Nikki Haley. In 2015, then-Governor Haley made the decision to remove 
the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. She 
said, ``[I]t should never have been there'' and that she ``couldn't 
look my children in the face and justify it staying there.'' When 
Senator Sessions was asked about this and other efforts to remove the 
Confederate flag from public buildings, he argued that such efforts 
``seek to delegitimize the fabulous accomplishments of our country.'' 
It can come as no surprise that the civil rights community is concerned 
by his nomination.
  But I will speak to my own experiences with Senator Sessions' views 
on civil rights laws. In 2009, Senator Sessions opposed expanding hate 
crime protections to women and LGBT individuals, groups that have 
historically been targeted based merely on who they are. He stated, ``I 
am not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face 
that kind of discrimination. I just don't see it.'' Thankfully, a 
bipartisan majority of Senators saw it, and the Matthew Shepard and 
James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is now law. These 
protections are needed now more than ever. According to recent FBI 
statistics, LGBT individuals are more likely to be targeted for hate 
crimes than any other minority group in the country.
  Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, wrote a letter last month opposing 
Senator Sessions' nomination. She was concerned not just by Senator 
Sessions' opposition to the law that bears her son's name, but by how 
Senator Sessions viewed such hate crimes. She wrote:

       ``Senator Sessions strongly opposed the hate crimes bill--
     characterizing hate crimes as mere `thought crimes.' 
     Unfortunately, Senator Sessions believes that hate crimes 
     are, what he describes as, mere `thought crimes.'
       ``My son was not killed by `thoughts' or because his 
     murderers said hateful things. My son was brutally beaten 
     with the butt of a .357 magnum pistol, tied him to a fence, 
     and left him to die in freezing temperatures because he was 
     gay. Senator Sessions' repeated efforts to diminish the life-
     changing acts of violence covered by the Hate Crimes 
     Prevention Act horrified me then, as a parent who knows the 
     true cost of hate, and it terrifies me today to see that this 
     same person is now being nominated as the country's highest 
     authority to represent justice and equal protection under the 
     law for all Americans.''

  But that was not all. Senator Sessions also said that ``the hate 
crimes amendment . . . has been said to cheapen the civil rights 
movement.'' I asked him about this comment and whether he still felt 
that way at his hearing, but he did not respond to the question. I 
asked him a second time, in a written follow-up, what he meant by that 
comment. He replied that ``Those were not my words,'' but again did not 
explain what he had meant by that remark. So I asked him a third time. 
The third time, he finally conceded. He wrote to me that ``it is not 
correct to say it cheapens our commitment to civil rights.'' If it is 
not correct to say that, then why did Senator Sessions quote it in the 
first place--and why did it take him three tries to acknowledge the 
error?
  Senator Sessions also opposed the 2013 Leahy-Crapo Violence Against 
Women Reauthorization Act, which overwhelmingly passed the Senate with 
support from a majority of Republican Senators. During his hearing, and 
again in written questions, Senator Sessions refused to commit to 
defend this important law's constitutionality.

[[Page 2129]]

He said only that he ``will carefully study'' it to discern whether it 
is ``reasonably defensible.'' His refusal to voice support for VAWA is 
all the more troubling in light of reports that the Heritage 
Foundation's budget blueprint, which is reportedly being relied on by 
the new administration, calls for eliminating all VAWA grants. I asked 
Senator Sessions to commit to stand up for victims and preserve these 
critical programs. Again, he refused.
  Amita Swadhin, who appeared before the Judiciary Committee and 
bravely shared her story of being raped as a child, explained why this 
issue is so important: ``We need an Attorney General who will continue 
the progress we have made since the initial passage of VAWA, someone 
committed to improving and enforcing our laws to ensure the most 
vulnerable victims of crime can come forward to seek accountability and 
to access healing.'' This law and these grants are a matter of life and 
death to many people across the country. We need an Attorney General 
who understands that. The National Task Force to End Sexual and 
Domestic Violence, which has never before taken a position on an 
Attorney General nomination, wrote to the Judiciary Committee because 
they do not believe Senator Sessions understands that. The letter 
states:

       ``Senator Sessions' senate record of strenuous objection to 
     protections for historically marginalized populations, 
     coupled with his record of selective prosecutions, 
     demonstrate his unwillingness to protect marginalized 
     victims' access to justice and disqualify him from holding 
     the position of Attorney General of the United States, a 
     position charged with the responsibility of securing justice 
     for all.''

  I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record at 
the conclusion of my remarks.
  Senator Sessions and his supporters have tried to minimize his 
opposition to the Leahy-Crapo VAWA bill by pointing out that he did 
vote in committee for the Republican substitute amendment. Let me 
explain what that amendment would have done. It would have cut 
authorization levels by 40 percent, hampering efforts to prevent 
violence and provide services to victims in need. It would have removed 
all provisions intended to ensure that victims can receive services, 
regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. It would have 
removed important provisions to let tribal justice systems reach the 
many criminal and civil cases that fell through the cracks. That 
amendment would have gutted core elements of the VAWA reauthorization 
that go to the heart of what VAWA does. A vote for that amendment 
hardly demonstrates a commitment to victims.
  Another issue that concerns me is criminal justice reform. For years, 
I have worked with a bipartisan group of Senators to reduce mandatory 
minimum sentences for drug offenses. These sentences have created 
perverse disparities within our justice system. Racial minorities still 
receive nearly 80 percent of them. Our bipartisan effort has had the 
strong support of the Justice Department and many others in law 
enforcement, but not Senator Sessions. In recent years, no one in the 
Senate has fought harder against even modest sentencing reform than he 
has.
  I am also concerned about Senator Sessions' commitment to ongoing 
civil rights litigation. I asked whether he would maintain the Justice 
Department's position in certain important cases. He would not commit 
to maintaining the Department's position, even in voting rights cases 
where courts have already found that certain voter ID laws are 
discriminatory.
  Senator Sessions would not commit to even maintaining cases that are 
already at the Supreme Court. Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral 
argument in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District. The Justice 
Department filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioner, arguing 
that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires states to 
provide more than de minimis educational benefits and in fact ``give 
eligible children with disabilities an opportunity to make significant 
educational progress.'' Even though it would be extraordinary for the 
Justice Department to take a new position after oral argument has 
already been heard, Senator Sessions would not commit to maintaining 
the Department's position in this case.
  I pointed to a lawsuit the Justice Department filed last year in 
Georgia alleging that Georgia's treatment of students with disabilities 
violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. In this lawsuit, the 
Justice Department noted that some of the facilities used by students 
with disabilities ``are located in poor-quality buildings that formerly 
served as schools for black students during de jure segregation.'' I 
asked Senator Sessions whether he would continue to pursue this case, 
and bring others like it where States are in violation of the ADA. He 
refused to commit to continuing this case. The ADA also contains a 
waiver of State sovereign immunity, which is a critical tool for 
enforcing that landmark law. Twice during the Bush administration, the 
Justice Department argued, and the Supreme Court agreed, that the 
waiver was a valid exercise of Congressional power under section V of 
the 14th Amendment, but Senator Sessions would not commit to defending 
the constitutionality of that provision.
  Senator Sessions' record on disability rights is also of concern 
because of the way he spoke about students with disabilities. He once 
argued that mainstreaming causes a ``decline in civility and discipline 
in classrooms all over America.'' As with my hate crimes amendment and 
VAWA, the problem is not just that Senator Sessions has opposed 
protections for the most vulnerable, it is also the language that he 
uses when opposing them, which denigrate those the laws seek to 
protect. That is why a group of 18 disability rights organizations have 
written to Senate leadership expressing their strong opposition to 
Senator Sessions' nomination.
  Senator Sessions has also demonstrated a shockingly brazen attitude 
when I asked him about the offensive rhetoric used by some of his 
political associates. I asked him whether he would condemn certain 
remarks by David Horowitz, Frank Gaffney, and others. Senator Sessions 
received awards from these individuals. He regularly attended their 
conferences. He has given media statements in support of their 
organizations and the views they put forth. Yet, when Senator Sessions 
was directly asked to respond to some of their statements, he 
effectively shrugged his shoulders. These included comments: referring 
to Muslims as ``Islamic Nazis'' who ``want to kill Jews, that's their 
agenda''; alleging that President Obama ``is an anti-American radical 
and I'm actually sure he's a Muslim, he certainly isn't a Christian. . 
. . He's a pretend Christian in the same way he's a pretend American''; 
alleging that two Muslims members of Congress have ``longstanding 
Muslim Brotherhood ties''; arguing that a Muslim member of Congress 
should not be allowed to serve on the House Intelligence Committee 
because of his ``extensive personal and political associations with . . 
. jihadist infrastructure in America''; claiming that married women by 
definition cannot be raped by their husbands; calling for ``railroad 
cars full of illegals going south''; and calling President Obama a 
traitor.
  Senator Sessions responded that he does not hold those views. That is 
fair enough. But he did not explain why he chose to associate with such 
individuals. When someone accuses President Obama of treason, it is not 
at all enough to say, ``I do not hold that view.'' That is why, last 
month, Muslim advocates and 36 other civil rights organizations, 
including the Leadership Conference on Civic and Human Rights and the 
NAACP, wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing 
strong concern that ``Senator Sessions has closely aligned with anti-
Muslim hate groups, accepted their awards and accolades, and publicly 
praised their leadership. Senator Sessions' appointment will only 
embolden these groups and activists and serve to further fan the flames 
of anti-Muslim bigotry already burning in this country.'' If Senator 
Sessions cannot condemn David Horowitz and Frank Gaffney, who the 
Southern Poverty Law Center has repeatedly called ``extremists'' who 
run hate groups, for

[[Page 2130]]

calling President Obama a traitor, it is fair to ask whether he will 
have the courage to stand up to the President of the United States, as 
Sally Yates did.
  The Attorney General is charged with enforcing the laws that protect 
all Americans. No one can fulfill that obligation who is not clear-eyed 
about the threats facing the most vulnerable in our communities. We 
need an Attorney General who will aggressively confront those who 
appeal to hate and fear. I do not believe that person is Senator 
Sessions. The Senate and the Judiciary Committee have heard from a 
multitude of civil rights, civil liberties, and domestic violence 
organizations, as well as nurses and numerous faith leaders, who oppose 
this nomination. This Senator stands with them.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                       National Nurses United,

                                 Washington, DC, February 7, 2017.
     Hon. Patrick J. Leahy,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Leahy: We write on behalf of the more than 
     150,000 registered nurse members of National Nurses United to 
     urge you to vote against the confirmation of Senator Jeff 
     Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Attorney 
     General. Much has been said by many others against 
     confirmation of this nominee, so we will be brief.
       Our members work as bedside healthcare professionals in 
     almost every state in the nation. We work in every hospital 
     setting, from small rural facilities to large urban public 
     health systems, in prominent research hospitals affiliated 
     with prestigious public and private universities, as well as 
     Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics. We care for Americans 
     on every point of the demographic spectrum, at their most 
     vulnerable. We provide the best care we possibly can, without 
     regard to race, gender, national origin, religion, socio 
     economic circumstances, or other identifying characteristic. 
     That is what caring professionals do. Unfortunately, that is 
     not what Jeff Sessions has done in his role as a public 
     servant. And to vote in favor of confirming him as the chief 
     law enforcement officer of the United States would abdicate 
     your responsibility to provide the oversight necessary to 
     ensure that basic legal rights are enforced evenhandedly and 
     for the protection of all people.
       As Senate colleagues, you no doubt know Senator Sessions' 
     record as a lawmaker, as well as his record as the U.S. 
     Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and as the 
     Alabama Attorney General. It was, of course, his record in 
     the U.S. Attorney's office and his many publicly verified 
     racially insensitive comments that resulted in a majority of 
     the Senate Judiciary Committee voting against confirmation 
     for his nomination to be a U.S. District Court judge in 1986. 
     This `no' vote happened while the Judiciary Committee was 
     majority Republican. Even Senator Howell Heflin, a fellow 
     Alabamian, voted against him, citing ``reasonable doubts'' 
     over whether he could be ``fair and impartial.''
       Senator Sessions has oft asserted that his comments over 
     the years were taken out of context, or intended as humor. 
     But his record tells the truth. Early in his career he 
     charged civil right leaders (``the Marion Three'') with 
     voting fraud related to their efforts to assist African 
     American voters. The fact that the defendants in that case 
     were acquitted didn't deter Mr. Sessions. Later, as Attorney 
     General of Alabama, he initiated another voter fraud 
     investigation involving absentee ballots cast by black voters 
     that, again, resulted in findings of no wrong doing. During 
     that same timeframe, he was criticized for declining to 
     investigate church burnings, and he ``joked'' that he thought 
     Ku Klux Klan members were ``OK, until [he] learned that they 
     smoked marijuana.''
       Against that background, Senator Sessions aggressively 
     interrogated Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Court's first 
     nominee of Latino heritage. Further betraying a deep belief 
     in natural division between racial groups, he grilled Justice 
     Sotomayor about whether she could be fair to white Americans, 
     despite her 17-year record as a jurist and having received 
     the American Bar Association's highest rating. And he 
     expressed grave concerns that she would engage in judicial 
     ``empathy'' on the high court, favoring persons of certain 
     races or ethnicities over others. He then voted against her 
     confirmation.
       Senator Sessions' prejudices are not only against people of 
     color. As an organization representing a predominately female 
     profession we are compelled to express our outrage that 
     Senator Sessions defended Donald Trump's statements about 
     grabbing women by the genitals, by saying that such conduct 
     would not constitute sexual assault. The fact that he took a 
     different position during his Committee hearing is of no 
     comfort. It only shows that he will say whatever he believes 
     will help land him in the seat of power to determine whether, 
     and against whom, to enforce our laws. His comments last fall 
     dismissing President-elect Trump's despicable treatment of 
     women is consistent with his vote in 2013 against the 
     Violence Against Women Act. As nurses, we see close up the 
     devastating effects of domestic violence against our 
     patients, and we are disturbed by Senator Sessions' alleged 
     concern that the protection of that statute should not extend 
     to victims of violence on tribal lands.
       Moreover, confirming Senator Sessions to the job of the top 
     prosecutor would exacerbate our national crisis over race 
     issues in policing and our criminal justice system. He 
     personally blocked the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, 
     a bipartisan effort spearheaded by Sens. Charles Grassley (R-
     Iowa), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and John Cornyn (R-Texas), and 
     Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The fact that law 
     enforcement leadership throughout the nation supported the 
     reform effort made no difference to Senator Sessions. And 
     unfortunately, his actions as U.S. Attorney for the Southern 
     District of Alabama only further illustrate his indifference 
     to this crisis. For example, drug convictions made up 40 
     percent of his cases when he served in that position--twice 
     the rate of other federal prosecutors in Alabama.
       Despite the current trend of focusing resources on violent 
     crime, and away from out-dated drug war policies, Senator 
     Sessions continues to oppose any attempts to legalize 
     marijuana and any reduction in drug sentences. As Attorney 
     General, he could direct federal prosecutors throughout the 
     country to pursue the harshest penalties possible for even 
     low-level drug offenses, a step that would further exacerbate 
     our national record of incarcerating non-violent offenders--
     the vast majority of whom could be successfully treated, at 
     far lower cost to society, with appropriate healthcare 
     treatment.
       Nor should Senator Sessions be trusted to ensure equal 
     access to voting rights. He has publicly called the Voting 
     Rights Act ``in-trusive,'' and has insisted that its 
     proactive protections of racial minorities were no longer 
     necessary. This is especially disturbing as Senator Sessions 
     voiced public support for voter-ID laws, while his home state 
     recently tried to close over thirty DMV offices, many in 
     majority-black areas, shortly after instituting strict voter-
     ID requirements. We are reminded of the words of Coretta 
     Scott King in her letter opposing Jeff Sessions' nomination 
     to the federal district court in 1986: ``The irony of Mr. 
     Sessions' nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given 
     a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the 
     local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and 
     cattle prods.''
       We will not attempt to address all the positions Senator 
     Sessions has taken that are out of step with the reality of 
     the difficult times we are in, but as nurses we must include 
     our grave concern that as Attorney General he would not be 
     vigilant in enforcing environmental protections. In a July 
     2012 Senate hearing on climate science, Senator Sessions 
     dismissed the concerns about global warming expressed by 98% 
     of climate scientists, and asserted that this is ``[a] danger 
     that is not as great as it seems.'' These positions are 
     frightening. Climate change is a public health issue that 
     cannot be overstated. As nurses we have been seeing for some 
     time increases in the frequency and severity of respiratory 
     diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema, as well 
     as an increase in cancers and aggravation of cardiovascular 
     illness. The effects of air pollution are particularly acute 
     in pediatric patients. They have higher respiratory rates 
     than adults, and consequently higher exposure. Our elderly 
     patients are also especially vulnerable. Respiratory symptoms 
     as common as coughing can cause arrhythmias, heart attacks, 
     and other serious health impacts in geriatric patients. As 
     global warming progresses, we are seeing sharp increases in 
     heat stroke and dehydration, both of which are sometimes 
     fatal.
       In our disaster relief work through our Registered Nurse 
     Response Network, we have been called upon to assist the 
     victims of Hurricane Katrina and Super Storm Sandy--events 
     that many scientists believe would not have been of the 
     magnitude they were if not for rising temperature.
       Current and future generations cannot afford to have a fox 
     minding the hen house on the important issues of civil and 
     criminal protections under the control of the Attorney 
     General. We urge you to set aside your personal loyalty to 
     Senator Sessions and evaluate honestly his record and fitness 
     for this critically important job. We urge you to vote 
     against his confirmation.
           Sincerely,
                                               Deborah Burger, RN,
                             Co-President, National Nurses United.
                                                    Jean Ross, RN,
     Co-President, National Nurses United.
                                  ____

         National Task Force to End 
           Sexual & Domestic Violence
       Dear Member of the Judiciary Committee: We, the steering 
     committee of the National Task Force to End Sexual and 
     Domestic Violence (NTF), a coalition of national, tribal, 
     state, and local leadership organizations and individuals 
     advocating on behalf of victims of sexual assault, domestic

[[Page 2131]]

     violence, dating violence and stalking, write to express our 
     opposition to Senator Jeff Sessions' nomination for Attorney 
     General of the United States of America. We have arrived at 
     this position based upon a review of his record as a state 
     and federal prosecutor, during which he applied the law 
     unevenly, and as a U.S. Senator, during which he supported 
     laws that would afford only some members of our society equal 
     protection of the law. The role of Attorney General requires 
     a demonstrated commitment to providing equal protection under 
     the law--particularly to people who face discrimination 
     because of their race, religion, gender, gender identity, 
     sexual orientation, disability or other identities. We 
     respectfully submit that Senator Sessions' record speaks for 
     itself and that his history of differential application of 
     the law carries with it the potential to harm victims and 
     survivors of gender-based violence, particularly survivors 
     from historically marginalized communities. Thirty years ago, 
     this Committee rejected Senator Sessions' nomination to the 
     federal bench due to well-justified concerns regarding his 
     problematic record on civil rights and troubling history of 
     making racially insensitive statements. These aforementioned 
     concerns, combined with his equally troubling comments on the 
     nature of sexual assault and other concerns raised below, 
     make Senator Sessions an unqualified choice to serve as U.S. 
     Attorney General.
       The position of Attorney General of the United States of 
     America, created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, bears the 
     responsibility of representing the United States in all legal 
     matters in which the country has an interest. Chief among 
     those interests is the affording of equal protection under 
     our criminal, civil and civil rights laws to all members of 
     our society. Under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 503, the President's 
     appointment of an Attorney General must be with the ``advice 
     and consent of the Senate.'' The process ensures that the 
     person holding the post of Attorney General is one fit for 
     such duty, a person with the intellectual, moral and 
     steadfast ethical capacity to uphold the laws and interests 
     of the United States and to apply the laws equally to all 
     members of society.


     Failure to Speak Up for Victims of Violence and Discrimination

       A threshold qualification for the position of Attorney 
     General is a deep understanding of the laws s/he is sworn to 
     uphold. Of critical relevance are Senator Sessions' recent 
     comments on the nature of sexual assault in response to the 
     release of a 2005 video in which President-Elect Donald Trump 
     describes grabbing women's genitalia without their consent. 
     When asked whether he would characterize the behavior 
     described by President-elect Trump as sexual assault, Senator 
     Sessions responded, ``I don't characterize that as sexual 
     assault. I think that's a stretch. I don't know what he 
     meant--.'' Federal statutes enacted prior to Senator 
     Sessions' tenure as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District 
     of Alabama criminalize ``abusive sexual conduct.'' The 
     applicable definition for conduct prohibited by 18 U.S.C. 
     Sec. 2244 is clearly stated: ``the intentional touching, 
     either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, 
     anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person 
     with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or 
     arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.'' Thus, 
     the Senator is either unaware that abusive sexual contact is 
     illegal under federal law, or he feigned ignorance of the 
     laws he was sworn to uphold as an officer of the court for 
     the sake of political expedience.
       The Department of Justice has the exclusive authority to 
     enforce the United States' criminal statutes, including 18 
     U.S.C. Sec. 2244. The Department of Justice also has 
     exclusive jurisdiction over the prosecution of domestic and 
     sexual violence in the District of Columbia, most sexual 
     assaults perpetrated in Indian Country, and concurrent 
     jurisdiction over domestic violence offenses committed in 
     Indian Country. Any candidate for Attorney General of the 
     United States, particularly a former U.S. Attorney, should 
     possess a thorough understanding of the legal definition of 
     sexual assault under federal law and under the laws of the 
     jurisdictions in which the Office of the U.S. Attorney has 
     prosecutorial responsibility. The National Task Force has 
     worked collectively for decades to ensure that legal 
     definitions in the U.S. Code and under state and local laws 
     make it absolutely clear that sexual assault is a crime. The 
     job of the Attorney General is to enforce the law without 
     fear or favor. Thus, we expect the Attorney General to 
     enforce federal laws addressing sexual assault without 
     introducing nonexistent ambiguity, because of the 
     perpetrator's identity. Senator Sessions' cavalier statement 
     about sexual assault leaves us fearful that he will not 
     vigorously prosecute sexual assault crimes, a practice 
     unbefitting of the nation's chief law enforcement officer.
       Additionally, Senator Sessions' poor history with respect 
     to fighting for fairness and equity has us justifiably 
     concerned that he will not step in to vindicate the rights of 
     survivors of campus sexual assault and other victims of 
     discrimination. The Justice Department has jurisdiction to 
     enforce a myriad of civil rights statutes, including Title VI 
     of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education 
     Amendments of 1972. These statutes bar discrimination in 
     education based on race, color and national origin and sex 
     (respectively) by educational institutions that receive 
     federal funding. On college and university campuses alone, we 
     know that 20 percent of women are victimized by sexual 
     assault. Absent an Attorney General's commitment to ensuring 
     that educational institutions root out bias and violence and 
     hold perpetrators accountable, victims of discrimination, 
     harassment or violence based on sex, race and/or national 
     origin will be unable to pursue their education in an 
     atmosphere of educational equity. Teachers surveyed since the 
     election have described thousands of incidents of ``bigotry 
     and harassment,'' stemming from incidents involving ``racist, 
     xenophobic or misogynistic comments,'' and/or ``derogatory 
     language directed at students of color, Muslims, immigrants, 
     and people based on gender or sexual orientation.'' It is 
     imperative that the person nominated to the position of 
     Attorney General possess a demonstrated record of work and 
     support for these impacted communities, including people of 
     color, immigrants, Muslims and religious minorities, members 
     of the LGBT community, and people with disabilities.
       Regrettably, Senator Sessions' career is replete with 
     actions taken and statements made in opposition to equitable 
     educational access. While Attorney General of Alabama, 
     Senator Sessions fought equitable educational access for 
     poor, minority and disabled students in Alabama even after 
     being ordered by a federal court to remedy the yawning 
     financial disparities between Alabama's richest (and whitest) 
     and poorest school districts. Additionally, his 
     mischaracterization of the Individuals with Disabilities in 
     Education Act as creating ``special treatment for certain 
     children,'' and being responsible for ``accelerating the 
     decline of civility and discipline in classrooms across 
     America,'' is appalling. In light of these remarks, we are 
     concerned not only about the Senator's willingness to use the 
     civil rights statutes to protect survivors of both campus 
     sexual assault and other forms of harassment and violence in 
     the education context, but also his commitment to ensuring 
     equal access and safety under certain programs in the 
     Violence Against Women Act for victims of sexual and domestic 
     violence who have disabilities.


                        Fair Application of Law

       We have additional concerns regarding the Attorney 
     General's role with respect to the fair, even and unbiased 
     application of the law. Victims and survivors come from all 
     racial or ethnic backgrounds, faith practices, sexual 
     orientations, and gender identities: 33.5% of multiracial 
     women have been raped, as have 27% of American Indian and 
     Alaska Native women, 15% of Hispanic, 22% of Black, and 19% 
     of White women. Additionally, 53.8% of multiracial women and 
     39.3% of multiracial men experience intimate partner physical 
     violence, intimate partner sexual violence and/or intimate 
     partner stalking in their lifetimes, as do 46.0% of American 
     Indian and Alaska Native women, 45.3% of American Indian and 
     Alaska Native men, 19.6% of Asian and Pacific Islander women 
     (data for Asian and Pacific Islander men is not available), 
     43.7% of Black women, 38.6% of Black men, 37.1% of Hispanic 
     women, 26.6% of Hispanic men, 34.6% of White women and 28.2% 
     of White men. We know firsthand that many survivors from 
     vulnerable populations hesitate to contact law enforcement or 
     do not trust the court system to address their victimization 
     because they fear, based on prior experience, that any 
     justice system response may not help them. We expect anyone 
     who serves as Attorney General to create a Justice Department 
     accessible to all; the 5th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. 
     Constitution demand no less.
       Senator Sessions' well-documented prosecutorial record, as 
     U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and as 
     Attorney General for the State of Alabama, demonstrate his 
     propensity to inequitably apply the law to the disadvantage 
     of historically marginalized populations. Senator Sessions' 
     history leads us to question whether he will vigorously seek 
     to ensure that all victims and survivors of gender-based 
     violence, particularly vulnerable populations and those at 
     the margins of society, have access to vitally needed 
     services and legal protections.


Senator Sessions' Opposition to Protections for the Immigrant and LGBT 
                              Communities

       We are concerned that the positions that Senator Sessions 
     has taken on immigration and LGBT individuals pose grave 
     threats to vulnerable victims of gender-based violence. His 
     consistent support of immigration policies that increase the 
     barriers to safety for undocumented victims of sexual and 
     domestic violence victims pushes immigrant victims further 
     into the shadows and harms families and communities by 
     allowing perpetrators (batterers and rapists) to abuse, 
     traffic and assault with impunity. During the consideration 
     of two major comprehensive immigration reform bills, as well 
     on various other occasions, Senator Sessions has sponsored 
     amendments and stand-alone legislation to limit the 
     availability of critical safety net assistance for immigrants 
     and increase barriers to protections from abuse

[[Page 2132]]

     and exploitation by penalizing local jurisdictions that fail 
     to engage in immigration enforcement activities. He has made 
     no subsequent statement that indicates that he would rethink 
     these punitive policy positions were he to be confirmed.
       His failure to support, and sometimes active opposition to, 
     progress and protections for the LGBT community leave us 
     gravely concerned that if confirmed, he would not stand up 
     for the rights of the LGBT community generally, and 
     particularly with respect to LGBT victims of violence. He 
     opposed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes 
     Prevention Act, which is of particular concern as we witness 
     a spike in harassment of minorities and bias crimes over the 
     last several months. Additionally, he supported a 
     constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He also 
     opposed the repeal of ``Don't Ask Don't Tell.'' Senator 
     Sessions' record sends the message to marginalized survivors 
     that their experiences will not be understood, nor will their 
     rights be protected, if he is confirmed as the Attorney 
     General.


              Opposition to the Violence Against Women Act

       We are also concerned that the nominee voted against the 
     Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization of 2013. 
     Seventy-eight out of one hundred senators supported the 
     bipartisan bill; Senator Sessions was in the distinct 
     minority. The 2013 Act addresses the gaps in law that were 
     uncovered through outreach to and surveys of programs and 
     service providers and domestic and sexual violence victims 
     themselves.
       Our analysis revealed that many survivors were not able to 
     access services and justice to the extent they needed. Of 
     particular note, we found that LGBT survivors often lacked 
     access to justice and support based on their gender identity 
     or their sexual orientation. We also learned of the 
     deplorable lack of access to justice faced by survivors of 
     domestic violence and sexual assault on tribal lands. VAWA 
     2013 included provisions that removed one of many barriers 
     that prevent access to justice for American Indian and Alaska 
     Native domestic violence survivors. The 2013 statute's 
     provisions expand and ensure that immigrant survivors can 
     access VAWA protections, allowing survivors to come out of 
     the shadows, help hold batterers and abusers accountable, and 
     enable law enforcement to protect community safety. VAWA 
     2013's goal of ensuring equal protection of the law was 
     rejected by Senator Sessions, who cast the bill's 
     advancements toward inclusion and equal protection as 
     political maneuvering and, in that light, voted against the 
     bill. The Attorney General is tasked with ensuring that 
     VAWA's protection and programs are available and accessible 
     to all. Senator Sessions' opposition to the VAWA protections 
     and his prosecutorial record leave us gravely concerned that 
     he would not vigorously or consistently apply these 
     protections.


                               Conclusion

       The 14th Amendment provides the inalienable right that 
     every person receive equal protection under the law. Senator 
     Sessions' senate record of strenuous objection to protections 
     for historically marginalized populations, coupled with his 
     record of selective prosecutions, demonstrate his 
     unwillingness to protect marginalized victims' access to 
     justice and disqualify him from holding the position of 
     Attorney General of the United States, a position charged 
     with the responsibility of securing justice for all. 
     Selective application of the law and outward hostility 
     towards victims of sexual and domestic violence in 
     historically marginalized populations has a chilling effect 
     on their willingness and ability to seek services and 
     protection. It drives sexual violence, domestic violence, 
     dating violence and stalking underground, something we have 
     made great strides to avoid. The Attorney General of the 
     United States must be an individual committed to protecting 
     the inalienable right of equal protection under the law to 
     all within United States' jurisdiction. Moreover, his 
     minimizing comments about the nature of sexual assault call 
     into question his dedication to enforcing the law and 
     providing justice to victims of this serious crime.
       In short, we oppose Senator Sessions' confirmation as 
     Attorney General of the United States and we ask you, as a 
     member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to ask him direct 
     questions regarding the concerns raised in this letter, and 
     to advise the President, pursuant to the prescription of 28 
     U.S.C. Sec. 503, that Senator Sessions' is unqualified to 
     hold this post.
           Yours truly,
      The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, after a great deal of careful thought and 
consideration, I have decided to oppose Senator Sessions' nomination to 
be the next Attorney General of the United States.
  I have long served with Senator Sessions. While he and I have 
frequently disagreed on certain legal and civil rights issues, I have 
never doubted the sincerity or heartfelt nature of his positions. I am 
deeply concerned, however, that he cannot be the effective check on the 
Executive Branch that our nation currently needs.
  In just the short time since President Donald Trump took office, our 
Nation has faced upheaval and challenges to the way our government 
typically runs. The President's unprecedented refusal to divest himself 
of his business holdings while in office has created legal and 
constitutional conflicts that are unique in our Nation's history. His 
use of social media to antagonize American businesses has already 
caused needless volatility in our economy, which is the cornerstone of 
global financial stability. Most recently, he has unilaterally enacted 
a ban on travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority 
countries--creating chaos in airports, separating families, and 
tarnishing our Nation's image around the world. It is of great concern 
to me that Senator Sessions has already stated his unwillingness, if 
confirmed, to recuse himself from investigations into potentially 
unlawful activities of the Trump campaign and Trump administration.
  Moreover, Senator Sessions and I disagree on how the law should treat 
immigrants, refugees, the LGBTQ community, women, and racial 
minorities, among others. These disagreements go to the heart of the 
Justice Department's law enforcement and civil rights functions. For 
instance, in 2013, Senator Sessions voted against a bipartisan effort 
to reform our Nation's immigration laws. This effort garnered 
overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle and would have done 
much to address the immigration problems facing us today. He also voted 
against the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, 
which provides much-needed support to and protections for some of the 
most vulnerable people in our communities--and is overseen by the 
Justice Department that he hopes to administer. Additionally, his 
statements and votes in opposition to reaffirming the prohibition on 
torture run counter to our values and basic precepts of international 
law. And he has voted against every recent effort in this Chamber to 
establish the most basic, commonsense laws that would keep our 
communities safe from the threat of gun violence. He also has called 
into question the Voting Rights Act and praised the Supreme Court's 
harmful decision striking down a key section of this law.
  These are just some of the clear disagreements I have with the 
positions Senator Sessions has taken over the years, which cause me to 
doubt his ability to effectively lead the Justice Department. Our next 
Attorney General should be a champion for all Americans' civil rights 
and civil liberties. The occupant of that office should give Americans 
confidence in our judiciary, our elections, and the impartial due 
process that is the hallmark of the rule of law. Therefore, I cannot 
support Senator Sessions' nomination to be Attorney General of the 
United States.
  Mr. MARKEY. 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. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the 
nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next Attorney General of 
the United States.
  I enthusiastically support this nomination, because I know Senator 
Sessions to be an independent-minded man of great integrity. He is 
someone who understands and respects the rule of law. He values it 
deeply, in fact. He is someone who understands the difference between 
making law and enforcing the law. He understands the difference between 
setting policy and enforcing laws that contain policy, and he is 
someone who understands that, as a lawyer, the very best way to serve 
your client often involves offering honest, independent advice--honest 
independent advice of the sort that might

[[Page 2133]]

not always occur to the client on the client's part.
  I have listened to the remarks of some of my colleagues, and I have 
to state that I have served with Senator Sessions for the last 6 years, 
ever since I first became a Member of this body, and I don't recognize 
the caricature that has been painted of him over the last 24 hours. So 
I want to address head-on several of my colleagues' expressed concerns 
about his nomination.
  Some of my colleagues have expressed and relied upon what really 
amount to policy concerns--policy disagreements between themselves and 
Senator Sessions--as a reason to oppose his nomination.
  As I explained it in our Judiciary Committee markup last week, I have 
disagreed with Senator Sessions not just 1 or 2 times but on many, many 
occasions and not just on a few isolated issues that are only 
tangentially related to something important to me but on circumstances 
and issues that are very important to me and that are at the center of 
my legislative agenda. We have disagreed, for example, about sentencing 
reform. We have disagreed about immigration reform, and several 
important national security issues implicating constitutional law, and 
constitutional policy. All of these issues are very important to both 
of us--to me and to Senator Sessions. They can be emotional issues, and 
they happen to be issues on which Senator Sessions and I disagree, not 
just a little bit, but we happen to disagree taking almost 
diametrically opposed positions in many of these areas.
  Notwithstanding these disagreements--disagreements that I have seen 
in every one of the 6 years I have served in this body so far--I have 
never seen Senator Sessions raise his voice in anger against a 
colleague. To be sure, Senator Sessions makes his arguments vigorously, 
passionately, and forcefully, and yet he does so in a way that ensures 
that he will always treat his colleagues, even though he disagrees with 
them, with dignity and respect. You may not persuade him that your 
position is right and his is wrong, but he always gives you the 
opportunity to make your case. I think Members of this body know that. 
Those Members of this body who have actually taken the time to get to 
know Senator Sessions and actually have the opportunity to work with 
him, even the opportunity to disagree with him know that. Senator 
Sessions interacts with his colleagues in a way that demonstrates a 
degree of respect for differences of opinion that are seldom seen here. 
In fact, I can't think of a colleague who better exemplifies the 
principles of collegiality to which we aspire in this body than does 
Senator Sessions.
  Perhaps even more importantly, Senator Sessions obviously understands 
the difference between lawmaking on the one hand and law enforcement on 
the other hand. This is plain from testimony he provided before the 
Judiciary Committee.
  As just one example, he told us:

       ``To go from the Legislative branch to the Executive branch 
     is a transfer not only of position, but of the way you 
     approach issues. I would be in an executive function and 
     enforcement function of the law this great legislative body 
     might pass.''

  His commitment to the rule of law and even application of the law is 
also plain from his public record, from his record serving in other 
positions. His record, for example, as U.S. Attorney for the Southern 
District of Alabama, and his record as attorney general for the State 
of Alabama.
  To put the matter quite plainly, a great number of Senators have 
served in the Cabinet over the years. The standard has never been that 
a Senator is somehow unfit for the executive branch--for a Cabinet 
position in the executive branch--if he or she has disagreed with you 
on important issues. If that were the standard, no Senator would ever 
be confirmed because we debate important public policy issues every 
single day, and it is never the case that we will find any among us, 
even colleagues, with whom we agree most of the time who are going to 
agree with us 100 percent of the time. So I urge my colleagues to put 
aside any policy differences they might have with Senator Sessions when 
considering his nomination and when deciding how they are going to vote 
in response to his nomination, because those simply are not relevant to 
his job and, at a minimum, ought not to be disqualifying factors 
relevant to his job.
  As to independence, some of my colleagues doubt that Senator Sessions 
will be an independent voice at the Department of Justice. 
Respectfully, I can say with full confidence that anyone who actually 
knows Senator Sessions knows that he is fiercely independent-minded. He 
never shies away from expressing his closely held, sincerely developed 
views on any issue, even when political pressure might suggest a 
different course of action be in order. It is clear that Sessions will 
apply his independent-mindedness to his job after he is confirmed as 
Attorney General of the United States.
  During his testimony before the Judiciary Committee, he repeatedly 
outlined the importance of having an independent Attorney General, and 
he explained how he would fulfill this obligation, how he would become 
precisely such an Attorney General, one who would exercise a degree of 
independence and not simply be a rubber stamp.
  For example, he told us that every Attorney General ``understands, I 
think, that if a President wants to accomplish a goal that he or she 
believes in deeply, you should help them do it in a lawful way but make 
clear and object if it is an unlawful action.'' He described that 
role--being able to tell the President ``no,'' that is--as ``the 
ultimate loyalty to him.''
  He testified: ``I hope that President Trump has confidence in me so 
that if I give him advice that something can be done or cannot be done, 
that he would respect that.''
  Sessions also explained that if the Attorney General were asked ``to 
do something plainly unlawful, he cannot participate in that. He or she 
would have to resign ultimately before agreeing to execute a policy 
that the Attorney General believed would be unlawful or 
unconstitutional.'' Senator Sessions made this point repeatedly. He 
made it with great emphasis and in such a way that it is unmistakably 
clear to me that this is the Attorney General he would aspire to be and 
that he would in fact become after being confirmed.
  Now, some may argue that you cannot necessarily trust his testimony 
because no Attorney General nominee would declare an intention to be a 
rubberstamp to the nominated President. Others may argue that Senator 
Sessions was too involved in the Trump campaign to be impartial. This 
is one of those points that you either believe or don't believe. You 
can't reason your way to an answer. You have to know the person.
  So I urge my colleagues to reflect on their experiences with Senator 
Sessions. If I know one thing about him, he is not a ``yes'' man. If I 
know one thing about him, it is that of all the people with whom I have 
served in the Senate, he is one of the very last who I would ever 
expect in any context to sell out his sincerely held views on the basis 
of political expediency. Instead, Senator Sessions takes his 
professional responsibility very seriously.
  When he was a lawyer, he took seriously his obligations to his client 
and the law. As a Senator, he has taken seriously his obligations to 
the people of the State of Alabama. I know he will do the same thing at 
the U.S. Department of Justice.
  He told us that ``the Attorney General ultimately owes his loyalty to 
the integrity of the American people and to the fidelity of the 
Constitution, and the legislative laws of the country.'' This 
demonstrates that Senator Sessions understands, as any good lawyer 
does, that every lawyer has a client, and you understand how best to 
represent that client and that client's interest. You have to 
understand the nature of the attorney-client relationship. You have to 
know who the client is, you have to know how to interact with that 
client, and you have to be willing to push back on that client, even 
when--especially when--it is difficult, because that is the job of the 
lawyer. The obligations incumbent

[[Page 2134]]

upon the lawyer provides that the lawyer sometimes has to push back on 
the client.
  At the end of the day, it seems to me that some of my colleagues 
perhaps just want an Attorney General who will be openly, 
affirmatively, presumptively, perennially hostile to the President's 
agenda. Now, that has never been the standard, and it is not a workable 
way of arranging the executive branch of the U.S. Government. The 
President should be allowed to assemble his or her team so long as the 
President picks people who are qualified, people who are willing and 
able to fulfill their constitutional responsibility, and people who do 
not have anything disqualifying in their backgrounds that would suggest 
that they cannot be trusted with this type of very substantial 
responsibility. Senator Sessions plainly satisfies these criteria.
  So I support Senator Sessions' nomination. I do so wholeheartedly. I 
do so, I would add, with a somewhat heavy heart, knowing that as we 
take this step and confirm Senator Sessions as the next Attorney 
General of the United States, we will be losing a colleague--not just 
any colleague but a colleague that has been a dear friend to me, who 
has been a kind mentor and a good example to me at every stage of my 
service in the Senate. He has done this not only when we have agreed, 
but he has done this especially when we have disagreed. That is what I 
love so much about Senator Sessions--that he has taught me much about 
how to get along with and respect people who sometimes reach different 
conclusions than I reach on my own.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.


                              APPOINTMENTS

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair, in accordance with Public Law 93-
618, as amended by Public Law 100-418, on behalf of the President pro 
tempore and upon the recommendation of the chairman of the Committee on 
Finance, appoints the following members of the Finance Committee as 
congressional advisers on trade policy and negotiations to 
International conferences, meetings and negotiation sessions relating 
to trade agreements: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch), the Senator 
from Iowa (Mr. Grassley), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), the 
Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. 
Stabenow).
  The Chair announces, on behalf of the majority leader, pursuant to 
the provisions of Public Law 114-196, the appointment of the following 
individuals to serve as members of the United States Semiquincentennial 
Commission:
  Members of the Senate: the Honorable Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and the 
Honorable Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.
  Private Citizens: Cathy Gillespie of Virginia, Daniel DiLella of 
Pennsylvania, Lucas Morel of Virginia, and Tom Walker of Alabama.
  Mr. LEE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. HARRIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. HARRIS. Mr. President, my parents met when they were graduate 
students at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s when 
they were active in the civil rights movement. In fact, my sister and I 
joke that we grew up surrounded by a bunch of adults who spent their 
full time marching and shouting for this thing called justice.
  I was part of only the second class to integrate Berkeley, CA, public 
schools almost two decades after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that 
separate was inherently unequal in the great case of Brown v. Board of 
Education--a case, I might add, that was supported by an amicus brief 
from the then U.S. Attorney General.
  In fact, it was the lawyers in Brown v. Board of Education--Thurgood 
Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Constance Baker Motley--who 
inspired me at a young age to become a lawyer.
  Simply put, it is likely that had the U.S. Supreme Court not decided 
the way it did in Brown v. Board of Education, I would not be standing 
here as a Member of the U.S. Senate.
  So then, as a direct beneficiary of landmark rulings by the U.S. 
judicial system and the American judicial system, I am acutely aware of 
the lasting and profound impact our courts can have on the everyday 
lives of Americans. It is with a deep sense of respect and admiration 
for the role of our justice system that I rise to oppose the nomination 
of Senator Sessions to be the next Attorney General of the United 
States.
  The mission of the Department of Justice is clear: ``To enforce the 
law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; 
to ensure public safety against threats, foreign and domestic; to 
provide Federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek 
just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure 
fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.''
  It is those words--``justice for all''--that best articulate the 
spirit behind our judicial system.
  I am a career prosecutor. In fact, I started my work as a young 
deputy district attorney in the Alameda County District Attorney's 
Office. That office was once led by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice 
Earl Warren. Every time I filed a case, it would never read with the 
name of the victim versus the name of the defendant. It always read 
``the people'' versus the defendant because in our democracy, in our 
great judicial system, we have rightly said a harm against any one of 
us is a harm against all of us, especially because we know that harm is 
most often directed at some of the most vulnerable and voiceless among 
us. So we rightly have declared that as a civil society, we will not 
require them to fight alone. We will stand with them. Justice for all.
  This point is what raises my question of whether this nominee can 
fulfill the role and responsibility of this job. Let's be clear. This 
is not a debate about a President's nominee. It is not simply a debate 
about a President's nominee. This is a debate about the fundamental 
ideals of our country--ideals that date back to the founding of our 
country and those great words we spoke in 1776: ``We hold these Truths 
to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are 
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among 
these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.''
  All men are created equal, with unalienable rights. And it is 
significant that, 87 years later, President Abraham Lincoln in his 
Gettysburg Address declared that our Nation was ``conceived in liberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.'' 
Lincoln affirmed that he was not extending a new right to those 
enslaved but rather enforcing those rights they already had. In other 
words, President Lincoln was fulfilling the promise first made in the 
Declaration of Independence, a promise that made clear the basis for 
legal equality derives not through a right that is given but from 
natural rights--rights that have been endowed upon us by our Creator; 
rights that cannot and should not be taken away or given up.
  So let us recognize that civil rights are not given through the 
enactment of a law or the publication of a court decision. Rather, our 
inherent civil rights are fulfilled when we guarantee them through the 
implementation and enforcement of the law.
  Well-meaning people indeed can argue over the best means to ensure 
our fundamental rights, but it is crucial that we do not allow 
ourselves to be drawn into a suggestion that enforcing civil rights is 
favoring one group over another. Protecting civil rights is not about 
taking care of someone else. It is in our common interests. It is in 
each of our self-interests.
  Liberty for each of us depends on liberty for all of us. It is just 
like the Department of Justice's mission, which articulates in those 
three words, ``justice for all.''
  This is the Department's charge. It is its mission, and the next 
Attorney General of the United States must use his powers as a 
prosecutor to uphold it.

[[Page 2135]]

  This brings me to the troubling and, frankly, unacceptable record of 
the nominee for this office. It is the U.S. Department of Justice that 
is charged with enforcing the rights of those trying to cast a ballot, 
but Senator Sessions cheered the Supreme Court's decision to gut the 
Voting Rights Act, used his power as a U.S. attorney to prosecute three 
African-American Civil Rights activists in Alabama, and then called the 
NAACP ``un-American.''
  It is the U.S. Department of Justice that addresses systemic 
inequalities that we know, unfortunately, still exist in our criminal 
justice system and have led to mass incarceration--but Senator Sessions 
led the opposition to bipartisan sentencing reform.
  It is the U.S. Department of Justice that investigates and prosecutes 
crimes motivated by hate based on race, religion, gender, nationality, 
disability, or sexual orientation of its victim--but in the 1990s, when 
lawmakers worked to pass hate crime legislation after the brutal 
killing of Matthew Shepard, Senator Sessions was a vocal opponent.
  It is the U.S. Department of Justice that uses the power of the 
prosecutor to protect women who have been victims of crime--but Senator 
Sessions voted no when both Democrats and Republicans came together to 
reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, which gives support and 
assistance to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, 
including members of our LGBT community.
  It is the U.S. Department of Justice that defends that most 
fundamental right of freedom to worship--but it was Senator Sessions 
who was one of the most outspoken defenders of then-candidate and now-
President Donald Trump's unconstitutional Muslim travel ban which, by 
the way, was roundly denounced by many of his fellow Republicans.
  It is the U.S. Department of Justice that enforces Federal laws 
prohibiting employment practices that discriminate on the grounds of 
race, sex, religion, and national origin. But Senator Sessions has 
opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act, Lilly Ledbetter Act, and the 
Employee Non-Discrimination Act.
  It is the U.S. Department of Justice that implements the Americans 
with Disabilities Act. But when both Democrats and Republicans worked 
to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which 
provides resources to children with special needs, Senator Sessions 
said that providing educational services for these children ``may be 
the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America 
today.''
  Whether you are the father of a special needs child in a classroom, a 
woman trying to earn fair pay, an African-American man in a voting 
booth, or a victim at a police station trying to report a crime, 
Senator Sessions has not been your advocate.
  As a former U.S. Attorney General, the great Bobby Kennedy once said:

       We must recognize the full human equality of all our people 
     before God, before the law, and in the councils of 
     government. We must do this, not because it is economically 
     advantageous, although it is; not because the laws of God and 
     man command it, although they do; not because people in other 
     lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and 
     fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.

  The right thing to do. That is what makes us special as a country. 
That is what makes us right. That is what makes us great--our values 
and our ideas. It is the belief that no matter who you are, whether 
young or old, rich or poor, gay or straight; whether you are a child 
from Oakland or a child from Birmingham; whether you came here by plane 
to escape the hardships of war and torture or by foot to build a better 
life; whether you have been the victim of gun violence or opioid 
addiction; whether you are paid less than others doing the same work or 
stopped at a red light because of the color of your skin, you deserve 
an Attorney General who recognizes the full human quality of all 
people.
  It is what led Attorney General Herbert Brownell, when there was 
rampant voter discrimination and intimidation here in the United 
States, to create in the United States Department of Justice the Civil 
Rights Division, whose mission is to ``uphold the civil and 
constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most 
vulnerable members of our society.''
  It is what led Attorney General William Rogers to forcefully demand 
the integration of an elementary school at the Redstone missile center 
in Alabama when the children of Black servicemembers were being denied 
entry.
  It is that commitment that led Bobby Kennedy to send 500 U.S. 
marshals to Oxford, MS, to escort a young Black man, James Meredith, to 
enroll at Ole Miss. It is what led U.S. Attorney General Elliott 
Richardson to resign rather than do the bidding of a corrupt President 
during Watergate.
  It is what led my friend, Attorney General Eric Holder, to sue the 
State of Arizona over SB 1070, a law that led to the unjust racial 
profiling of immigrants and to say that the U.S. Government would no 
longer defend a law that prevented LGBT Americans from expressing their 
love for one another.
  It is what led Attorney General Sally Yates, on a Monday evening this 
month, to stand up and refuse to defend a Muslim ban.
  More than most Cabinet positions, the U.S. Attorney General enforces 
the principles that are the founding of our country, but I have seen no 
evidence in his record or testimony that Senator Sessions will approach 
this office in furtherance of these noble ideals. The gains our country 
has made are not permanent, and it is incumbent on the Attorney General 
of the United States to fight for the civil rights of all people.
  No one said it better than Coretta Scott King:

       Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in 
     every generation.

  If Senator Sessions won't, then it is incumbent upon the rest of us 
to persist.
  I urge my colleagues to vote no.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON. 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. NELSON. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the nomination 
of Senator Sessions to be the next Attorney General. I believe one of 
the most important jobs of a U.S. Attorney General is to protect the 
people's right to vote.
  In the tumultuous days of the early 1960s, on a hot afternoon, I 
watched on a grainy black and white TV as Dr. King delivered his 
memorable ``I Have a Dream'' speech on the steps of the Lincoln 
Memorial.
  His soaring, spiritually laced speech challenged us to commit our 
lives to ensuring that the promises of American democracy were 
available, not just for the privileged few but for ``all of God's 
children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and 
Catholics.''
  ``Now is the time,'' Dr. King urged, ``to make real the promises of 
democracy.'' He stressed that a central promise made to the citizens in 
a democracy is the right to vote and to have that vote counted. He 
said: ``We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot 
vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to 
vote.''
  Half a century has passed, and our country has changed with the 
times, but one thing has not changed. The right to vote for ``all God's 
children'' in America is still under assault. Unbelievably, we are not 
so very far from the problems of 1963. Despite the passage of time and 
landmark civil and voting rights legislation, five decades later there 
is still considerable voter suppression in this country.
  In fact, several States have recently enacted restrictive laws 
cutting back voting hours on nights and on weekends, eliminating same-
day registration, and basically making it harder for people to vote. 
Standing in between a citizen and the voting booth is a direct 
contradiction to the vision of equality put forth by our Founding 
Fathers. In 1776, they declared that all

[[Page 2136]]

men were created equal, but many in our country had to wait another 94 
years before the 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted citizens 
the right to vote--though not all citizens. Ratified in 1870, the 
amendment states: ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote 
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on 
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The 
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate 
legislation.''
  It still took another 50 years before women in America were allowed 
to vote. After her arrest for casting a ballot in the Presidential 
election of 1872, Susan B. Anthony delivered a number of speeches in 
Upstate New York on women's suffrage. In those speeches, she noted that 
the right of all citizens to vote in elections is key to a functioning 
democracy.
  Specifically, one line from her speech stands out. ``And it is a 
downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings 
of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing 
them by providing the democratic-republican government--the ballot.''
  After the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the ballot, it 
took another 45 years before our Nation belatedly enacted the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965 intended to guarantee every U.S. citizen the right 
to vote. Does this principle really hold true in practice?
  The continued voter suppression of which I speak may not be as 
blatant as it once was with Jim Crow laws and poll taxes and literacy 
tests and the like, but it is still very much with us.
  In recent years, it is obvious that hurdles have once again been 
placed between the voting booth and the young and minority voters. A 
devastating blow was dealt by the U.S. Supreme Court when it gutted the 
Voting Rights Act in 2013. Our Nation's highest Court struck down a 
central provision of the law that was used to guarantee fair elections 
in this country since the mid-1960s, and that includes the guarantee of 
elections in my State of Florida since that time.
  Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect our right to 
vote. It required States with a history of voter suppression to get 
Federal approval before changing their voting laws. And for nearly five 
decades, the States had to prove to the Department of Justice why a 
change was necessary and demonstrate how that change would not harm 
voters.
  In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court declared that part of the law was 
outdated. It essentially rendered a key part of the law void until a 
bitterly partisan and gridlocked Congress can come up with a new 
formula for determining which States and localities need advance 
approval to amend their right-to-vote laws. The majority justified its 
ruling in the Court by pointing out that we no longer had the blatant 
voter suppression tactics once used to disenfranchise targeted voters 
across the country. I vigorously disagree because removing much needed 
voter protections also prevents the Federal Government from trying to 
block discriminatory State laws before they go into effect. In essence, 
States and local jurisdictions are now legally free to do as they 
please.
  In fact, just moments after the decision, the Texas attorney general 
said his State would begin ``immediately'' honoring local legislation 
that a fellow court had imposed ``strict and unforgiving burdens'' on 
many Texans attempting to cast a ballot.
  As has been noted, the right to vote was not always given to all 
American adults, but our laws adjusted as we became a more mature and 
tolerant democracy. But the reverse is what has been happening in 
America today and especially in Florida.
  Since the 2010 election, in addition to cutting back on early voting, 
North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida have approved voting 
restrictions that according to some experts are targeted directly at 
reducing turnout among young, low-income, and minority voters who 
traditionally support Democrats.
  One study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University 
School of Law reviewed the crop of similar disenfranchisement laws that 
were enacted after the 2010 decision. All told, the center found that 
as many as 5 million Americans could be adversely affected by these 
voting laws, and there is a clear political impact as a result of these 
disenfranchisement laws.
  Two University of Massachusetts professors conducted a study that 
found that there was a clear pattern associated with the voter 
restrictions in the various States. According to Keith Bentele and Erin 
E. O'Brien, States were more likely to pass limits on voting that 
elected those Republican Governors, those States that increased their 
share of Republican lawmakers, and those States that became more 
electorally competitive under Republicans.
  In 2011, the Florida legislature and State officials reduced a number 
of early voting days. They reduced them from 2 weeks down to 8 days, 
including very conveniently canceling the Sunday right before the 
Tuesday election, a day that had historically seen heavy African-
American and Hispanic voting.
  State officials countered that registered voters would still have the 
same number of hours and that they could still vote early, only in 8 
days instead of 2 weeks. Well, it didn't work out that way. Florida 
also made voting harder for people who had been recently moved to 
another county and had an address change, such as college students, 
after it subjected voter registration groups to penalties and fines for 
mistakes--voter registration, mind you, penalties, and fines if you 
didn't turn it in within a certain number of hours.
  They were so burdensome that the League of Women Voters challenged 
the provision in Federal court and they won but not before Jill 
Cicciarelli, a Florida teacher, had helped her students preregister to 
vote and ended up facing legal troubles as the result of her well-
intentioned public service. A schoolteacher, teaching a government 
class, getting her kids preregistered, so when they became 18, they 
could vote, and she got in trouble with the State of Florida. The New 
Smyrna Beach High School civics teacher unwittingly ran afoul of the 
State's new convoluted election law. Cicciarelli, it turned out, hadn't 
registered with the State before beginning the drive and didn't submit 
forms to the elections office within that short number of hours. 
``You're talking about a high-energy teacher who cares about her kids, 
cares about her community and cares about her country,'' is how the New 
Smyrna High School principal, Jim Tager, described the situation.
  Thankfully, the Voting Rights Act allowed the Federal Government to 
go before a panel of Washington, DC, judges who found that Florida's 
2011 reduction of early voting--which I have just chronicled--here is 
what the court said, ``would make it materially more difficult for some 
minority voters to cast a ballot.'' As a result, Florida had to restore 
96 hours of early voting.
  Even with these added protections, the next election in 2012 was a 
fiasco. Lines outside the polling places were prohibitively long, with 
some people waiting up to 8 hours to cast their vote. I am not kidding 
the Senate. There were lines in Dade County, Miami Dade County, 7 and 8 
hours. By the way, some of those lines, there wasn't a nearby bathroom. 
Faced with calls for extending poll hours, the Governor of Florida 
failed to do what its two Republican gubernatorial predecessors had 
done: extend voting hours in some of the most swamped polling places to 
give folks enough time to exercise their right to vote.
  In fact, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis found that 
in 2012, Florida had the Nation's longest waiting lines to vote at an 
average statewide of 45 minutes. More than 200,000 voters in Florida 
gave up in frustration because the lines were so long. They didn't vote 
that year. According to another analysis by Ohio State University, in 
the Orlando Sentinel, they are the ones who came up with that 200,000 
figure, and they aren't done yet.
  As if the 2011 restrictions weren't enough, an elections official in 
Miami-Dade County, in 2012, said that restrooms would be closed to 
voters at

[[Page 2137]]

polling sites in private buildings over a handicap access dispute, even 
though there were bathrooms in those private buildings where the 
polling place was. The State's top election official in 2012 also told 
one of our 67 local election supervisors not to allow voters to submit 
absentee ballots at remote dropoff sites. She, by the way, is a 
Republican supervisor of elections. She told the State Department 
Division of Elections to kiss off; that she was running the elections 
and she was going to make sure there were enough places around that 
county where, if they had an absentee ballot, it was going to be 
convenient for them to go and drop off that absentee ballot than having 
to take it miles and miles to one place, that the Division of Elections 
at the State level was telling them to go to that Supervisor of 
Elections. She knew what she had to do to make it easy for voters to 
vote, and she stuck to her guns.
  At the same time, that same Division of Elections in the Department 
of State, denied a request from the city of Gainesville in a municipal 
election. They denied the request to use the University of Florida 
campus building for early voting. A move that was viewed by some--more 
than some--as an assault on student voting by making it more difficult 
for students to find a place to vote.
  By then, I had asked the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, for an 
investigation into the changes in Florida's voting law. In response, 
the Attorney General wrote to warn the Governor of Florida that the 
Justice Department would be ``carefully monitoring'' Florida's 
elections. ``During your tenure, your State has repeatedly added 
barriers to voting and restricted access to the polls,'' the Attorney 
General wrote. ``Whenever warranted by the facts and the law, we will 
not hesitate to use all tools and legal authorities at our disposal to 
fight against racial discrimination, to stand against 
disenfranchisement, and to safeguard the right of every eligible 
American to cast a ballot.''
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the letter from the U.S. Attorney General to the Governor of Florida, 
dated July 21, 2014.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
                                                     Office of the


                                             Attorney General,

                                    Washington, DC, July 21, 2014.
     Hon. Rick Scott,
     Governor of Florida, The Capitol, Tallahassee, FL.
       Dear Governor Scott: In recent years. I have heard from 
     public officials and citizens of Florida expressing their 
     deep concern that certain changes to Florida election law and 
     procedures have restricted voter participation and limited 
     access to the franchise. Because the right to vote is one of 
     our nation's most sacred rights, I strongly urge you to 
     reevaluate laws and procedures that make it harder for 
     citizens to register and to vote so that all eligible 
     Floridians can easily and without burden exercise their right 
     to vote.
       Generations of Americans took extraordinary risks and 
     willingly confronted hatred and violence--including in your 
     home state--to ensure that all American citizens would have 
     the chance to participate in the work of their government. 
     The right to vote is not only the cornerstone or our system 
     of government--it is the lifeblood of our democracy. Whatever 
     the precise contours of federal law, we each have a civic and 
     moral duty to protect, and to expand access to, this right.
       For this reason, I am deeply disturbed that during your 
     tenure your state has repeatedly added barriers to voting and 
     restricted access to the polls. For example, changes in 2011 
     significantly narrowed the early voting window that had 
     previously enabled thousands of Floridians to cast ballots. 
     As the three judge court in Florida v. United Stares, 885 F. 
     Supp. 2d 299 (D.D.C. 2012), observed, the law threatened ``a 
     dramatic reduction in the form of voting that is 
     disproportionately used by African-Americans'' that would 
     have made it ``materially more difficult for some minority 
     voters to cast a ballot than under the benchmark law,'' in 
     part because the decreased opportunity for early voting would 
     produce increased lines at the polls during the remaining 
     hours. Id. at 333. Accordingly, the court refused to approve 
     reduced early voting hours with respect to the five counties 
     in Florida covered by the Voting Rights Act's preclearance 
     provision.
       Indeed, Florida's decision to reduce early voting 
     opportunities in the 2011 legislation was widely recognized 
     as a disaster. A report released by the Orlando Sentinel in 
     January 2013 found that at least 201,000 Florida voters did 
     not cast ballots on Election Day 2012 because they were 
     discouraged by long lines at polling places. I am pleased 
     that last year you signed legislation that restored early 
     voting days. However, I have grave concerns that there 
     remains a troubling pattern in your state of measures that 
     make it more difficult, not easier, for Floridians to vote. 
     For example, as part of the same 2011 law, the state imposed 
     rules on organizations that helped register individuals to 
     vote that were, in the words of a federal court, ``harsh,'' 
     ``impractical,'' ``burdensome,'' and ``unworkable.'' League 
     of Women Voters of Fla. v. Browning, 863 F. Supp. 2d 1155 
     (N.D. Fl. 2012).
       Most recently, the federal courts have concluded that in 
     2012, Florida violated the National Voter Registration Act of 
     1993 (NVRA) by conducting a systematic program to purge 
     voters from its voter registration rolls within the 90-day 
     quiet period before an election for federal office. In doing 
     so, Florida used inaccurate and unreliable voter verification 
     procedures that harmed and confused voters. Arcia v. Fla. 
     Sec'y, of State, 746 F.3d 1273 (11th Cir. 2014).
       Florida is one of just eleven states that continue to 
     restrict voting rights even after a person has served his or 
     her sentence and is no longer on probation or parole; and in 
     2011, you made it more difficult for individuals who have 
     served their sentences to regain the right to vote by 
     eliminating automatic restoration of rights for non-violent 
     felons and requiring a five year waiting period before felons 
     convicted of non-violent crimes can apply to have their 
     rights restored. Approximately ten percent of the entire 
     population is disenfranchised as a result of Florida law. The 
     justifications for denying citizens' voting rights for life, 
     especially after they have completed their sentence and made 
     amends, are unpersuasive. On the contrary: there is evidence 
     to suggest that offenders whose voting rights are restored 
     are significantly less likely to return to the criminal 
     justice system. For example. a study recently conducted by a 
     parole commission in Florida found that, while the overall 
     three-year recidivism rate stood at roughly 33 percent, the 
     rate among those who were re-enfranchised after they'd served 
     their time was just a third of that.
       And there are a number of other troubling examples 
     involving recent changes:
       In 2013, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued a 
     directive to county officials who supervise elections stating 
     that they should never solicit the return of absentee ballots 
     at any place other than supervisors' offices. Many have 
     expressed concern that this directive will significantly 
     reduce the number of places to return an absentee ballot and 
     will have a negative impact on citizens whose jobs, access to 
     transportation, or addresses make it difficult to return 
     ballots to supervisors' office which, especially in large 
     counties, may be miles away.
       This year, Gainesville, in an attempt to avoid the long 
     lines that characterized the 2012 election, sought approval 
     to use the University of Florida's student union as an early 
     voting site. Secretary of State Detzner denied the request. 
     As a result, it is more difficult for University of Florida 
     students--who have to travel to alternative early voting 
     locations miles off campus--to participate in early voting.
       In April, it was reported that the Miami-Dade County 
     Elections Department had a policy, according to an email from 
     an Assistant County Attorney, ``not to permit access to 
     restrooms at polling sites on election days.'' As you know, 
     in 2012, Miami-Dade County had some of the longest lines and 
     waiting times to vote in the United States. Some voters 
     reported waiting as much as six hours. Many of the people 
     stuck in lines need to use bathroom facilities in order to 
     remain in line and be allowed to vote.
       Whether or not these changes would ultimately be found to 
     violate specific federal laws, they represent a troubling 
     series of efforts to limit citizens' ability to exercise the 
     franchise. And I write to you today to make clear that the 
     Department of Justice is carefully monitoring jurisdictions 
     around the country--including throughout Florida--for voting 
     changes that may hamper the voting rights we are charged with 
     protecting. Whenever warranted by the facts and the law, we 
     will not hesitate to use all tools and legal authorities at 
     our disposal to fight against racial discrimination, to stand 
     against disenfranchisement, and to safeguard the right of 
     every eligible American to cast a ballot.
           Sincerely,
                                              Eric H. Holder, Jr.,
                                                 Attorney General.

  Mr. NELSON. The Attorney General cited problematic actions of the 
Governor's chief elections official, including purging from the voter 
rolls suspected noncitizens--a move that eventually was blocked after 
outright opposition from county election supervisors.
  So in light of this evidence and following a widespread public 
outcry, what do we do now? As we say, it may not be as obvious as poll 
tactics and all the other blockades to voting, as we

[[Page 2138]]

have seen in the past, particularly by all of the marches and so forth 
during the 1970s civil rights era. It might not be as obvious, but 
there are all these subtle attempts. So what do we do?
  I submit that though the problem is complex, the answer is relatively 
simple. As Americans who cherish the right to vote, we must turn to 
those schemers and say: There is a promise of democracy that we will 
not allow you to break. We have an obligation to keep this promise of 
democracy for our children.
  Congress may be dysfunctional, but we must continue to push lawmakers 
for a fix to the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down 
on a 5-to-4 vote, a key provision. We ought to be making it easier to 
vote, not harder. I believe no one should have to wait more than one-
half hour to vote.
  So I joined with others a few years ago to introduce a bill in 
Congress aimed at making that standard 30-minute wait time based on the 
January 2014 recommendation of a bipartisan Presidential Commission on 
Election Administration. Keep in mind what President Johnson said a 
half century ago: ``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever 
devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible 
walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.''
  Also remember what Dr. King said:

       So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the 
     right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my 
     mind--it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic 
     citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact--I can 
     only submit to the edict of others.

  Don't we owe it to all our children the right to possess themselves 
if this is to be a truly free and fair democracy? I believe that two of 
the most fundamental rights in our democracy are the right to vote and 
the right to know whom you are voting for and the right to have the 
confidence that vote is going to be counted as you intended.
  If that were not enough, just as concerning as the ongoing efforts to 
suppress certain votes in this country is the amount of undisclosed and 
unlimited money that is sloshing around in our campaigns.
  The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United has opened the 
floodgates and allowed the wealthiest Americans to spend unlimited 
amounts of money to influence our elections. Allowing such unlimited, 
undisclosed money into our political system is corrupting our 
democracy.
  I have strongly supported several pieces of legislation, such as the 
Disclose Act, to require groups who spend more than $10,000 on 
campaign-related matters to identify themselves. Tell the people who is 
giving the money by filing a disclosure report with the Federal 
Elections Commission. But that is not what the Supreme Court decision 
required.
  The American people have a right to know whom they are voting for--
not just the name on the ballot but who is behind that name on the 
ballot. The Supreme Court itself said that ``transparency enables the 
electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to 
different speakers and messages.''
  I believe we as a Congress have a moral obligation--a moral 
obligation--to correct what has happened to our system and to ensure 
that our voters have the information they need to make an informed 
decision on election day.
  So this Senator has spoken on two subject areas--the right to vote 
and the amount of undetectable, unannounced, undisclosed, and unlimited 
money in our elections. For these and many other reasons I have stated 
and have not stated and the reasons mentioned in these remarks, I will 
vote no on the confirmation for Attorney General.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we are coming to the conclusion of weeks 
now of debate on the nominee to be the Attorney General of the United 
States, and we still have other debates to have on other people before 
this process ends. In fact, somebody observed this week that you have 
to go back to the very founding of the government, to the first 
administration of George Washington, to find a time when it has taken 
longer to put a Cabinet in place, and George Washington only had to 
find four people in a government that was just trying to establish 
itself. But we are taking a maximum amount of time on a Cabinet and a 
Presidential nomination that usually happen quickly.
  There has traditionally been an understanding in our country that 
when the President is elected--the importance of the President being 
able to put his stamp on the government as quickly as possible. And 
eventually we will be able to say his or her stamp on the government. 
But up until now, Presidents have had that opportunity. I read 
somewhere that from President Garfield right after the Civil War 
through Franklin Roosevelt, that Cabinets--those were put in place in 
the first days of every one of those administrations, often even the 
very first day.
  What we have seen in this debate is also the questioning of people's 
motives, not just their decisions. I don't quote Vice President Biden 
often, but one of the quotes I have heard him give often and one I have 
agreed with in all my time here is that it is appropriate to question 
somebody else's decisions in public debate, particularly when you are 
debating your colleagues, who have also been elected to these jobs as 
well, but it is frankly not appropriate to question their motives. When 
we start doing that, that is always a mistake.
  When I was the whip in the House, I used to tell freshman Members of 
the House: You are going to enjoy this opportunity and be better at it 
while you are here if you can vigorously fight for what you are for but 
if you will also believe that in virtually 100 percent of the cases, 
the person on the other side of that debate is as well motivated and as 
genuine as you are. You can be wrong and not be evil. You can be wrong 
and not be badly motivated.
  You know, elections do have consequences. Every person we are talking 
with on this floor in this debate was elected to the Senate.
  I think Senator Sessions will be confirmed Attorney General, so 
sometime later this week, one of our number will have been appointed to 
this job. But these are people who come to this process as the 
Constitution determines, and they serve here as representatives of both 
the State they represent and the Constitution and what it stands for.
  In the case of Senator Sessions, we have a colleague who has been 
here for 20 years. Anybody who has been here less than that served 
every day of their time in the Senate with Senator Sessions. People who 
have been here longer than that have served all 20 years with Senator 
Sessions. I don't know how you can do that and not see the quality he 
brings to that job every day.
  He and I have not always voted the same. In fact, there is probably 
no Member here with whom I have always voted the same. But he comes 
with a background of integrity.
  He started as an Eagle Scout. I think he was a Distinguished Eagle 
Scout. I am not even sure I know the difference between an Eagle Scout 
and a Distinguished Eagle Scout; I thought all Eagle Scouts were 
distinguished. But starting even then, Jeff Sessions has always stood 
out a little above the crowd.
  He has four decades of public service. In 1975, he became an 
assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District in Alabama. Half a 
dozen years after that, he became the U.S. attorney in that district. 
He held that job for 12 years until he became the attorney general of 
Alabama. People trusted him to take that those responsibilities. In 
1997, as I said, he came to the Senate.
  He has been a senior member of the Judiciary Committee for some time 
now. He has worked across party lines, and he has done that in fights 
for justice and fights on behalf of the victims of crime and, frankly, 
on more than one occasion, fights to be sure that those accused of 
crimes also had their day in court, and after they had their day in 
court, it was Senator Sessions who was instrumental in leading the 
fight for the Fair Sentencing Act.

[[Page 2139]]

  Senator Sessions was very involved in the Paul Coverdell act for 
forensic sciences to be sure that the evidence that was in court would 
be unassailable to every extent possible. He has been vigorous in 
wanting to be sure those accused of crimes had justice, as well as 
those who were the victims of crime.
  When I came to the Senate, Senator Coons and I--a Democrat from 
Delaware and a good friend of mine. I am thinking about him in this 
week that his father passed away. When we came to the Senate 6 years 
ago, we formed the Law Enforcement Caucus. Senator Sessions was a great 
supporter of that effort.
  When we were able to reauthorize in the last Congress the Victims of 
Child Abuse Act--this is a law that provides Federal assistance to 
locations in virtually every State--22 in the State of Missouri--where 
kids who have been the victims of crime or a witness to crime have a 
place to go and get the information out of their lives that needs to 
get away from them so they can get on to the next thing that happens, a 
law that protects our most vulnerable children and is designed to hold 
the perpetrators of crimes on those children or crimes those children 
witness--allows that to be dealt with in the right way. Senator 
Sessions was a great advocate for that.
  He has been endorsed by the major law enforcement associations of the 
country, as well as many of his colleagues. The law enforcement 
associations that say Jeff Sessions would be a good Attorney General 
are the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, 
the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Major Cities 
Chiefs Association, the Major Counties Sheriffs' Association, and the 
list goes on.
  Then you get to the victims of crime groups who have endorsed Senator 
Sessions.
  Five former U.S. Attorney Generals and one former FBI Director are on 
that list. They are saying that Jeff Sessions would be a good person--
in the case of five of them--to hold the jobs they held, and they know 
more about that job than any of us do: Michael Mukasey, Alberto 
Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Bill Barr, Ed Meese III. All, along with FBI 
Director Louis Freeh, have endorsed Jeff Sessions for this job.
  There has been some discussions of his relationship with African 
Americans. We have African-American endorsements from his State but 
also from the former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice; our 
colleague Tim Scott, who will be here later this afternoon, and I 
intend to be here for his remarks; and Larry Thompson, the former 
Deputy Attorney General. These are people who know Jeff Sessions and 
know what he has to offer to that job.
  It is a job of great responsibility. Seldom will we as Senators have 
an opportunity to confirm someone to that job or any other job that we 
know as well as Senator Sessions. We know his family. We know his 
recent addition of twin grandchildren to his family just a little over 
a year ago. We know how much he cares about them. We know the moments 
that he has reached out to each of us as we have had challenges or 
things we needed help with.
  I think he will do a great job as Attorney General. I believe that 
will happen later today. I think the country and the Attorney General's 
office will be in good hands late today when Jeff Sessions undoubtedly, 
I am confident, becomes the Attorney General.
  I look forward to that vote later today and then getting on to the 
next nominee, Dr. Price, whom I served with in the House. Any 
discussion that there have not been ideas that were alternatives to the 
Affordable Care Act--people just have not been paying attention to Dr. 
Tom Price all the time he has been in the Congress or as budget 
director and haven't paid attention to him as a practicing physician. 
He is another great nominee at a time when we really need to set a new 
course.
  We are going to see that happen in both the Attorney General's office 
and at HHS, and I look forward to what we do as those move forward.
  I also look forward to what may not be the official maiden speech but 
what I think will be the first speech on the floor for our new 
colleague, John Kennedy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I rise to support the nomination of Jeff 
Sessions to be the next Attorney General of the United States of 
America, and I would like to explain why.
  It seems to me that most Americans don't care about the politics on 
Capitol Hill. They don't particularly care about the politics in the 
Senate, and they don't especially care about the politics in 
Washington, DC. Most Americans are too busy earning a living. These are 
the Americans who get up every day, they go to work, they work hard, 
they obey the law, they try to do the right thing by their kids, and 
they try to save a little money for retirement.
  Most Americans I think are fairminded, and most Americans are 
commonsensical. They understand that when they elect a President, the 
President can't do the job alone. He gets help, and he starts with 
appointing members of his Cabinet. Of course, the Senate has to provide 
advice and consent and confirm those appointees.
  Most Americans understand that a President--whoever the President--is 
not going to pick his enemies to do that. He is not going to pick 
somebody he doesn't trust. He is not going to pick someone to advise 
him if he is not qualified. He is going to pick someone he is on 
friendly terms with. He is going to pick somebody who is competent. He 
is going to pick somebody who is experienced. That is what President 
Trump has done. That is what President Obama did. That is what 
Secretary Hillary Clinton would have done, had she been elected 
President.
  Now, President Trump has nominated Senator Jeff Sessions. I recognize 
that not all Americans and not all Members of the Senate agree with his 
political positions. Some folks don't agree with his political party. 
Some folks don't like him because they don't like the person who 
appointed him. I get that. Some folks may not even like the part of the 
country he is from. That is OK. This is America. In America, you can 
believe anything you want to believe, and as long as you don't hurt 
anybody, you can say it.
  But it seems to me that no reasonable person, if they look at Senator 
Jeff Sessions' record, can argue that he is not qualified, if by 
qualified you mean that he has any potential to be a great Attorney 
General.
  This is a man who has served as a State attorney general. This is a 
man who was a U.S. attorney not for 1 year or 5 years or 6 years. For 
12 years he served as a U.S. attorney. This is a gentleman who has been 
a U.S. Senator for 20 years, three terms, and three times the good 
people of Alabama have sent Jeff Sessions to this body.
  Most people here know him. They have had lunch with him. They have 
met his family. They have worked with him on bills. They have worked 
against him on bills. They know him, and they know he is qualified.
  There has been a lot of discussion about whether Senator Sessions 
will respect the rule of law. He will. He understands the difference 
between making policy, as Congress does, and executing policy. I have 
no doubt whatsoever that Senator Sessions, as the next Attorney 
General, will be more than willing to enforce laws that he might not 
necessarily agree with.
  There has been some discussion about Senator Sessions and the Bill of 
Rights. Senator Sessions understands the importance of personal 
liberty. I listened very attentively in the Judiciary Committee. He was 
asked a lot of questions about our Constitution. It is clear to me that 
Senator Sessions understands that the Bill of Rights is not for the 
high school quarterback. The Bill of Rights is not for the prom queen. 
The Bill of Rights is there to protect the unprotected, the man or 
woman in America who might want to do things a little differently. He 
understands that very, very clearly.
  At some point, we all have to stop regretting yesterday, and we have 
to start creating tomorrow, and that is the point we are at.

[[Page 2140]]

  I unconditionally support Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next 
Attorney General of the United States of America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, before I get into my speech regarding 
Senator Sessions, I wanted to talk a little bit about what occurred 
last night.
  First, there is no doubt in my mind that the letter written by 
Coretta Scott King should be read by each and every Member of this 
Chamber. Regardless of whether you disagree with her conclusions, her 
standing in the history of our Nation means her voice should be heard. 
What I took issue with last night and the true violation of rule XIX in 
my eyes were the remarks shared last night originally stated by Senator 
Kennedy--not Coretta Scott King--Senator Kennedy.
  Whether you like it or not, this body has rules, and we all should 
govern ourselves according to the rules.
  There is no doubt that last night emotions were very high, and I am 
not necessarily happy with where that has left us today. The Senate 
needs to function. We need to have a comity in this body if we are to 
work for the American people. This should not be about Republicans and 
Democrats. It is not about us; it is about the American people.
  If we remember that point as we move forward, our Nation will be able 
to heal where we hurt. We will be able to disagree without being 
disagreeable. This should be the norm, not a unique experience in 
public discourse.
  Before I decided to give this speech, I had the privilege last night 
around midnight of having to sit in the Chair and presiding. My good 
friend Cory Booker was making an eloquent presentation about where we 
are on issues of race in this Nation. He was talking about the South, 
and he was talking about the pain, the suffering, and the misery.
  Today, as I want to share my thoughts on Jeff Sessions and how I have 
come to my conclusion, I thought it was important for me to not try to 
persuade people but to simply inform, because this issue is not simply 
the issue about our next Attorney General. This is really an issue 
about all of us--not all of us as Senators but all of us as members of 
the American family. This is an issue that digs deep into the core of 
our souls, deep into the core of our Nation, deep into who we can be, 
who we should be, and how we will get there.
  So my objective here, as I speak, will not be to somehow persuade the 
other side that your decision is wrong. I don't think that is my 
responsibility nor my intention. My goal isn't even to persuade those 
who believe that Jeff Sessions will not be a good U.S. Attorney General 
that they are wrong. I simply want to share information. I want to 
share facts. I want to share, as Paul Harvey used to say, ``the rest of 
the story,'' because if you read the news reports, you walk away with a 
clear picture based on facts but not necessarily a clear picture based 
on truth. There has been a distortion in many arenas, in many echo 
chambers about who he is and why I support him.
  My good friend Cory Booker last night spoke about a true American 
hero, John Lewis. John Lewis is an American hero. I know that this may 
or may not be popular with everyone in the Chamber or everyone in 
America on the conservative side or the liberal side, but the reality 
of it is this. He was beaten within an inch of his life so that I would 
have the privilege--not to stand in the Chamber but--to vote, to simply 
vote.
  We should all thank God for the sacrifices of men and women so that 
people like myself, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris would be allowed one 
day not to simply vote but to serve in the most unique, powerful, and 
one of the most important legislative bodies in the world today. It is 
the sacrifices of men and women of color who fought against injustices. 
We stand as a nation on the shoulders of these giants. I know that I 
don't have to remind my mother or my family, but just as a reminder to 
those who are listening to the conversation, when I leave the Senate 
one day, I am still going to be Black, an African American--Black every 
day, Black every way, and there is no doubt.
  This is an important part of the conversation because, as I read 
through some of the comments of my friends on the left, you will wonder 
if I ever had an experience as a Black person in America. I want to get 
to that in just a few minutes.
  God, in His infinite wisdom, made me Black, born in Charleston, SC, 
for a purpose. I am blessed to be who I am, and I am equally blessed to 
be a Charlestonian. Our country, the South, and, specifically, my State 
have suffered through difficult and challenging times around the issue 
of race. My grandfather, who passed away at 94 years old last January, 
knew a very different South. I remember listening to him talking about 
his experiences of having to step off of the sidewalk when White folks 
were coming. He learned early in life: Never look a White person in the 
eyes. He was in his forties in the 1960s. His whole life view, his 
paradigm, was painted with a broad brush. Separation, segregation, 
humiliation, and challenges.
  It was in my home city of Charleston where the Civil War began. It 
was in my home city of Charleston where nearly 40 percent of all the 
slaves that came to America would come through in Charleston, SC. It 
was a Charlestonian who came up with the concept written into our 
Constitution of three-fifths of a man--a Charlestonian.
  But it was also Charlestonians who, in 2010 had a choice between 
Strom Thurmond's son and a young--I use that word liberally--African-
American guy named Tim Scott.
  The evolution that has occurred in the South could be seen very 
clearly on this day in Charleston. The very first shots of the Civil 
War were in Charleston. They gave me the privilege of representing them 
in Congress, over the son of Strom Thurmond, over the son and the 
namesake of one of the most popular Governors in South Carolina, 
Carroll Campbell, Jr. I thank God that the South Carolina that I have 
come to know, the South that I have had the experience to enjoy is a 
different South. It is a different Charleston than my grandfather knew 
in his 94 years. But my life has not been one of privilege, of promise.
  As I said just a few nights ago, I was born into a single parent 
household, living in poverty, nearly flunking out of high school. I 
have been called everything that you can think of from a racial 
perspective--good, not too often bad, very consistently. So I 
understand that there is room for progress. There is a need for us to 
crystallize what we are fighting about, who we are fighting for, and 
how we are going to get there.
  This is an important day and an important issue, and the U.S. 
Attorney General is perhaps one of the most important decisions I will 
make about the Cabinet of President Trump. I will tell you that, for 
me, this has been a challenging journey, one that I have not taken 
lightly because, as I said earlier, I am going to be Black when I leave 
this body, and so when I think about some of the comments and some of 
the challenges for Jeff Sessions around the 1986 process, the trial of 
the KKK and the trial of the Turner family, an African-American 
couple--they were defendants he brought to court--I have heard it, and 
I wanted to know more about what it is we are talking about, not by 
reading it in the paper but by calling folks in Alabama, understanding 
with new eyes who Jeff Sessions is--not the guy I serve with but the 
guy who will have the most powerful position in law enforcement. I 
wanted to know firsthand who he was before he was nominated and how he 
would respond in a room filled with African-American leaders.
  I and my best friend in Congress, Trey Gowdy, for a very long time 
throughout South Carolina have held meetings of African-American 
pastors and leaders coming together with law enforcement to try to 
bridge the gap that is obviously broken, bridge the gap that obviously 
exists between law enforcement and African-American leaders. So I 
brought Jeff Sessions down to see from a distance how he

[[Page 2141]]

interacts with these African-American pastors, hear the tough questions 
on Walter Scott and other issues so I can have an appreciation and 
affinity of how the Justice Department under his leadership would act.
  I take this responsibility seriously, and I wonder if my friends in 
the Chamber have had a chance to see what others think--not the 
political echo chamber, not the organization, but run-of-the-mill 
people.
  So I had that experience, and I will tell you that without any 
question, the conclusion that I have drawn is a pretty clear 
conclusion. I am glad that I dug into the issue. I am glad I took the 
time to know Jeff Sessions the best I can from what I have read from 
1986, what I saw in my own home city of Charleston, with a provocative 
history on race.
  We are at a defining moment in our country, not because of the 
Attorney General, not because of the debate we are going through in 
this body, but because our country is being pulled apart from extremes 
on both ends. This is not healthy for our country. Too often, too many 
particularly on the right are found guilty until proven innocent on 
issues of race, issues of fairness. I say that because, as I think 
about some of the comments that have come into my office over the last 
several weeks, I am used to being attacked. If you sign up to be a 
Black conservative, the chances are very high you will be attacked. It 
comes with the territory, and I have had it for 20 years, two decades. 
But my friends and my staff are not used to the level of animus that 
comes in from the liberal left who suggest that I somehow am not 
helpful to the cause of liberal America and therefore I am not helpful 
to Black America because they see those as one and the same.
  I brought some of the pages of chats that I have from folks, the 
comments I get from Twitter about my support of Jeff Sessions:
  Tracy V. Johnson sent in ``Sen. Uncle Tim Scott.''
  ``Everyone from SC who happens to be a left winger knows that Tim 
Scott is an Uncle Tom. [``S''] is documented.'' ``S'' is not for Scott; 
it is for fertilizer.
  SGaut says: ``A White man in a black body: Tim Scott backs Jeff 
Sessions for attorney general.''
  Until 3 weeks ago the only African-American chief of staff in the 
U.S. Senate out of 100 was the chief of staff for a Republican. The 
second African-American chief of staff in the U.S. Senate is the chief 
of staff of a Republican. Yet they say of my chief of staff that she is 
``high yella,'' an implication that she is just not Black enough.
  I go on to read from folks who wanted to share their opinions about 
my endorsing Jeff Sessions:
  ``You are a disgrace to the Black race!''
  Anthony R Burnam @BurnamR says: ``You an Uncle Tom Scott aren't you? 
Sessions. How does a black man turn on his own.''
  Anthony B. from @PoliticalAnt says: ``Sen. Tim Scott is not an Uncle 
Tom. He doesn't have a shred of honor. He's a House Negro, like the one 
in Jango.''
  He also writes--I guess Anthony Burnam has been active on my Twitter 
feed--that I am ``a complete horror . . . a black man [who is] a 
racist.''
  ``Against black people''
  ``Big Uncle Tom [piece of fertilizer]. You are a disgrace to your 
race.''
  I left out all the ones that use the ``N'' word. I just felt that 
would not be appropriate.
  You see, what I am surprised by, just a smidgeon, is that the liberal 
left that speaks and desires for all of us to be tolerant does not want 
to be tolerant of anyone who disagrees with where they are coming from. 
So the definition of ``tolerance'' isn't that all Americans experience 
a high level of tolerance; it is all Americans who agree with them 
experience this so-called tolerance.
  I am not saying this because it bothers me because, frankly, I have 
experienced two decades of this. You don't necessarily get used to it, 
but you don't find yourself as offended by it all. I just wish that my 
friends who call themselves liberals would want tolerance for all 
Americans, including conservative Americans. I just wish that my 
liberal friends who are self-described liberal would want to be 
innocent until proven guilty and not guilty until proven innocent.
  So back to my findings on Jeff Sessions. I brought Jeff Sessions to 
Charleston. And you can read about it in the Post and Courier, the 
local newspaper. The pastor said that Jeff Sessions was warm and 
friendly, engaging and competent.
  Now, I will say that the response from the NAACP and the NAN, the 
National Action Network, about the meeting that I had with the African-
American pastors--that it was outrageous that I would invite African-
American pastors to meet with this guy and they didn't have an 
invitation. So I invited two of their leaders. I didn't tell anyone who 
was coming because I wanted folks to come into the room and make their 
own decisions and come to their own conclusions. They decided not to 
come. Maybe it was because a conservative invited them. I don't know 
why. But I wanted everyone to have a chance, and they did. It was 
interesting.
  Here are some other interesting facts that I have not seen often in 
the press, which I think is a very important point.
  All of us who engage in conversations around this Nation about race 
and justice, to only have part of the story is just an unfortunate 
reality that we should get used to that I haven't gotten used to. But 
the reality is, 50 years ago, in 1966, Senator Sessions campaigned 
against George Wallace's wife for Governor. As a Senator, Jeff Sessions 
voted in favor of a 30-year extension of the Civil Rights Act. He was 
one of only 17 Republicans to support the first Black Attorney General, 
Eric Holder. He spearheaded the effort to award the Congressional Gold 
Medal to Rosa Parks, an Alabama native and civil rights icon.
  As Cory Booker, my good friend from New Jersey, said last night as I 
presided, he and Jeff Sessions worked wonderfully well together in 
awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the foot soldiers of the civil 
rights movement in Selma, AL.
  Here is another part of the story that just hasn't seemed to break 
through the threshold of our national media on Jeff Sessions' support 
within the Black community. As I started making phone calls to leaders 
in Alabama who were Black and Democrats, I was very surprised at what I 
started hearing about Jeff Sessions. I will start with an Alabama 
native, Condoleezza Rice, who is not a Democrat but who is an Alabama 
native. She said: Sessions has worked hard to heal the wounds in 
Alabama brought on by the ``prejudice and injustice against the 
descendants of slaves.''
  Willie Huntley, an African-American assistant U.S. attorney under 
Jeff Sessions, now an attorney in Mobile, AL, has known Jeff Sessions 
for more than 30 years and said in an interview that he has never 
encountered racial insensitivity from Sessions in the three decades 
they have known each other.
  Alabama Senate Democratic leader Quinton Ross said of Jeff Sessions: 
``We have talked about things from civil rights to race relations, and 
I think anyone--once you gain a position like that, actually 
partnership has to go aside because you represent the United States and 
all the people. . . . I feel confident [Jeff Sessions] will be an 
attorney general that will look at it from all perspectives to just do 
what's right for the citizens of the United States.''
  That is from an African-American Democratic leader in the Alabama 
State Senate, Quinton Ross.
  From former Obama administration Surgeon General Regina Benjamin: ``I 
think he'll be fine. I consider him a friend. . . . At least he will 
listen as attorney general. My hope is that he'll do what is best for 
the American people.''
  Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson says this. Larry is 71 
years old, so we are not talking about folks who grew up in my New 
South that I talked about earlier. Still we are working through it, 
but, boy, we have changed. This is a 71-year-old who says of Jeff 
Sessions: ``He doesn't have a

[[Page 2142]]

racist bone in his body.'' He said: ``I have been an African American 
man for 71 years. I think I know a racist when I see one. Jeff is far 
from being a racist. He's a good person, a decent person.''
  Gerald Reynolds, former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil 
Rights: ``During my discussions with Senator Sessions and his staff, it 
was clear that the senator has a strong interest in ensuring our 
nation's antidiscrimination laws are vigorously enforced. Senator 
Sessions is a man of great character and integrity, with a commitment 
to fairness and equal justice under the law.''
  Just a few more.
  Fred Gray. Fred Gray is an iconic figure in civil rights, for those 
of us who may not be familiar with him. Fred Gray is an African-
American civil rights attorney. He represented the Reverend Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr. He represented Rosa Parks. He represented the Tuskegee 
men who were exploited in the syphilis experiment by the government. 
This is what he said in this letter from 2016:

       What would be more noteworthy for the State of Alabama than 
     having an Alabamian follow in the footsteps of the late Mr. 
     Justice Hugo Black? Previously I have expressed appreciation 
     for your acts herein stated. I look forward to working with 
     you in any future capacity in which the Lord permits you to 
     serve.

  That is a quote from a letter that he wrote to Jeff Sessions.
  We are talking about a hero of the civil rights era. We are talking 
about the lawyer for Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and the 
Tuskegee men. We are not talking about someone who doesn't understand 
and appreciate the weight and the importance of civil rights in this 
Nation.
  William Smith was hired as the first African-American Republican 
chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Jeff Sessions. He 
said:

       Jeff Sessions is a man who cared for me, who looked out for 
     me, and who had my best interests in mind. So, anybody who 
     says anything different simply doesn't know Jeff Sessions.

  One last statement. This is an important one from my perspective.
  I mentioned earlier that there was a case against a couple, the 
Turner couple, where Jeff Sessions was the prosecutor, and the Turners 
were being prosecuted for some voter rights issues. Interestingly 
enough, what you don't hear in the news, by the way, is that the case 
was brought by other African Americans in Alabama against an African-
American couple, the Turners. This is from Albert Turner, Jr., the son 
of the two defendants in that case. He says:

       While I respect the deeply held positions of other civil 
     rights advocates who oppose Senator Sessions, I believe it is 
     important for me to speak out with regard to Senator Sessions 
     personally. First, let me be clear. Senator Sessions and I 
     respectfully disagree on some issues. That won't change when 
     he is the Attorney General of the United States. And I expect 
     that there will be times, as it is with all politicians, when 
     we will legitimately disagree and I will be required by my 
     conscience to speak out. I look forward to those constructive 
     debates, if necessary. However, despite our political 
     differences, the Senator and I share certain Alabama and 
     American values, including love of our State, its people, and 
     our country.
       I have known Senator Sessions for many years, beginning 
     with the voter fraud case in Perry County in which my parents 
     were defendants. My differences in policy and ideology with 
     him do not translate to personal malice. He is not a racist. 
     As I have said before, at no time then or now has Jeff 
     Sessions said anything derogatory about my family. He was a 
     prosecutor at the Federal level with a job to do. He was 
     presented with evidence by a local district attorney that he 
     relied on, and his office presented the case. That is what 
     prosecutors do. I believe him when he says that he was simply 
     doing his job.

  Jeff Sessions has also worked on civil rights cases, including the 
KKK murderer Henry Hays in 1981.
  Jeff Sessions worked with the Department of Justice attorneys, the 
FBI, county investigators, and the county district attorney to solve 
the murder of a 19-year-old African American, Michael Donald. Sessions 
and the U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted ``Tiger'' Knowles as an 
accomplice, obtaining a guilty plea and a life sentence in Federal 
court. After hard investigative work, Sessions shifted the case of the 
KKK murderer Henry Hays to the State court where he received the death 
penalty, which was not available at that time at the Federal level.
  USA v. Bennie Jack Hays is another successful case against the KKK 
that Jeff Sessions participated in.
  In Conecuh County in 1983, Jeff Sessions joined in bringing the first 
lawsuit in the history of the Department of Justice to stop the 
suppression of African-American voting rights. In United States v. 
Conecuh County, the DOJ Civil Rights Division, along with Jeff 
Sessions, sued white Conecuh County election officials, including the 
chair of the local Republican Party.
  Finally, Dallas County. In 1978, the Department of Justice used 
Dallas County, AL, to replace its at-large election system and go to a 
single-member district so that African Americans would have a better 
chance to be elected. Jeff Sessions supported it, the ACLU supported 
it, as did the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. They were successful.
  Finally, on the criminal justice issue that I support, according to 
Senator Dick Durbin, who said during the confirmation hearing that Jeff 
Sessions saved thousands upon thousands of years of Black men's lives 
because of his push to reduce the disparity between crack and powder 
cocaine from 100 to 1, to where it is today. Jeff Sessions even fought 
against the Bush administration to bring that disparity down.
  In conclusion, as I reflect on the brave men and women who have 
shaped this country, who have fought for my freedom, for me to 
participate fully in this Republic--the greatest experiment of self-
governing the world has ever known--we have an obligation to judge a 
man not by the color of his skin nor by the State of his birth, but by 
the story his life tells and by the content of his character.
  Jeff Sessions has earned my support, and I will hold him accountable 
if and when we disagree moving forward.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I see the majority leader of the Senate. I 
will suspend until he has finished.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I just wanted to congratulate the 
Senator from South Carolina for a very, very meaningful and effective 
presentation on behalf of our colleague, Senator Jeff Sessions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I too wish to congratulate my colleague 
from South Carolina on his remarks. We don't share the same view on 
this, but he is an important voice in the Senate, and I am glad that he 
is a colleague on the Education Committee in the Senate.
  As a matter of fact, the other day I said that I wish the President 
had the sense to appoint him Education Secretary. The kids whom I used 
to work for in the Denver Public Schools would have been very, very 
well served by him.
  The President, of course, is entitled to choose his team, and that is 
partly what elections are about. The Attorney General, more than any 
other Cabinet official, must be the people's lawyer, an advocate for 
the rule of law above all else.
  My office has received nearly 23,000 calls and emails opposing this 
nomination. Many of them I cannot read today on the floor for fear of 
violating the Senate rules. But it is clear from these comments that 
young Coloradans who came to the United States and know no other 
country but this country, who arrived here illegally, but, through no 
fault of their own, fear they will be deported back to a country they 
don't know--it is clear to me from the comments that I have received in 
these letters that Coloradans in the LGBTQ community fear that an 
Attorney General Sessions would turn a blind eye toward discrimination. 
It is clear from these comments that Senator Sessions has not earned 
the confidence of many Coloradans who may soon rely on him to protect 
their rights and to identify

[[Page 2143]]

abuses of constitutional power. And Coloradans, many of whom I know, 
fought for equality and justice during the civil rights movement, and 
fear that it will turn back much of the progress we have made.
  We have a disagreement about Senator Sessions' role before he came to 
the Senate, but the fundamental reason I object to his nomination as 
Attorney General is that he led the fight in 2013 against our 
bipartisan effort to reform the broken immigration system in the United 
States. And I sat here on this Senate floor night after night after 
night listening to the Senator use fear and inaccuracies to derail our 
best chance in years to fix this broken immigration system.
  Now, in time, I have come to understand that people come to this 
floor and they don't always--they are not always accurate in what they 
say. Sometimes they don't mean to be accurate; sometimes they are just 
mistaken. That was the first time I had ever heard that kind of 
relentlessness, saying things that just weren't right. I am being 
careful with my language because of last night's ruling.
  He claimed that our bill--and, by the way, that bill, unlike almost 
anything that has happened in this place in the 8 years that I have 
been here--started out as a bipartisan effort, four Democrats and four 
Republicans working together for 7 or 8 months in a room trying to 
solve each other's issues.
  There is a lot about the Senate today that the American people should 
not and cannot be proud of, and I will come to that in a minute. But as 
to the work of the Gang of 8, I would have been happy for people to 
have seen what happened behind closed doors in those 7 months. It is 
how the Senate ought to operate. It went to the Judiciary Committee 
where Democrats and Republicans together amended the legislation. They 
made it better. And then it came to the floor of the Senate and we had 
more amendments, and it passed with 68 votes.
  It still hasn't passed the House. It has never even gotten a vote on 
the floor of the House of Representatives.
  Senator Sessions claimed during that debate that our bill would have 
``dramatically increased incidence of criminal alien violence, 
officially legalizing dangerous offenders, while handcuffing 
immigration officers from doing their jobs.''
  He claimed it would have legalized ``thousands of dangerous criminals 
while making it more difficult for our officers to identify public 
safety and national security threats.''
  Senator Sessions claimed our bill would lead to a ``huge increase in 
immigration,'' invite a flood of immigrants into our Nation who would 
steal jobs from ``struggling American workers.''
  These claims are demonstrably untrue. If our bill had become law, we 
would have secured our borders, we would have bolstered internal 
security, we would have better protected American workers, and we would 
have strengthened our economy.
  Contrary to his characterization of what was in that bill, the 2013 
bill provided far greater security than President Trump's plan.
  The first two words in the title of that bill were ``border 
security.'' That has been completely ignored by the critics. It has 
been completely ignored by people who want to make an issue out of this 
in national campaigns. But the reality is it provided billions of 
dollars toward new technologies to monitor the border. It called for 
the building of a 700-mile fence. By the way, none of the rest of it 
would come to pass until we took care of the border.
  Nearly 20,000 new Border Patrol agents--four times more than ordered 
by President Trump and double the current number--and not paid for by 
raising taxes on the American people at our border with Mexico, not 
paid for in a way that would destroy our trading relationship with 
Mexico, but paid for by fees that people were paying as they were 
becoming lawful in the United States of America. It had protections in 
the bill for American workers to ensure that employers hired American 
labor first. I know he objected to this, and I understand we had a 
difference of opinion, but the bill included a tough but fair path to 
citizenship, requiring people to go through background checks as part 
of a long path to citizenship.
  During the Presidential campaign, Senator Sessions advised President-
Elect, now-President Trump on immigration policy. In fact, my 
understanding is the President's immigration Executive orders--
including one being challenged in court--mirror Senator Sessions' 
positions. These positions are antithetical to our history, to our 
values, to whom we are as a country.
  Last Friday was the highlight of my year. I got on a plane and I left 
Washington--that was pretty good in and of itself--to go home to 
Colorado. On Friday, I went to Dunn Elementary School in Fort Collins, 
CO, where Kara Roth's fifth grade class welcomed 26 new Americans from 
13 countries to the United States. It is an International Baccalaureate 
program in this elementary school. This is an annual event.
  We were there in the gym, and the fifth graders were there singing; a 
young girl had won an essay contest on ``What it Meant to be in 
America.'' There was a color guard. Kids came in wearing their Boy 
Scout uniforms to post the colors, the American flag, and the flag of 
Colorado. The fourth graders were there watching what they would be 
doing next year as fifth graders.
  There was no need for a politician to tell anybody in that room that 
America is an exceptional country. No politician needed to say that to 
the fifth graders in Mrs. Roth's class who were studying the 
Constitution and studying immigration. We certainly didn't need to tell 
that to the immigrants from all over the world. I think I mentioned, 
they were from 13 different countries.
  One of the great parts of the ceremony was when they asked people to 
stand up to the country from which they came, and fifth graders also 
stood up if they were from that country. There were kids from China; 
there were kids from Mexico standing up in this fifth grade class; 
incredibly, three kids from Libya whose parents are at the university 
in some capacity in Fort Collins.
  As always in these naturalization ceremonies, people had tears in 
their eyes because as one of them once said to me at another time in 
Colorado, his dream had come true the minute he became a citizen of the 
United States because he knew his children would be citizens of the 
United States of America. Everybody in the room knew that.
  What is important for us is these fifth graders' perspective on 
American government, on democracy, and on the history of this Republic 
I think probably may not be quite exactly right because they, thank 
goodness, have been untarnished by special interests, untarnished by 
campaign money and partisan fighting, and power struggles that have 
nothing to do with the American people or their priorities.
  Their view of what the essence of self-government is all about is 
really what it is all about. It is really what we are supposed to be 
doing here: a commitment to a republic and democracy, a commitment to 
the rule of law, a commitment to the separation of powers. The stuff 
they are reading in their little Constitution just like this one is 
what this place is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be what we 
are doing here. It is the reason why I am objecting to this nomination.


         Trump Administration and the Judiciary and Free Press

  More than that, I feel compelled to talk a little bit about President 
Trump's attacks on the judiciary and free press over the last several 
weeks since he has been sworn into office, since he has taken the oath 
of office to be President of the United States. He has repeatedly 
undermined the credibility of Federal judges doing their constitutional 
duty to uphold the rule of law simply because he disagrees with them.
  The Vice President said the other day: There is a tradition in 
America of one branch of government criticizing another branch of 
government. There is no tradition, that I am aware, of a President 
meddling in an ongoing case in an article III court.

[[Page 2144]]

  Just today, he called our courts ``political.'' That is about the 
most damaging thing you could say about our independent judiciary. He 
said that last night's Federal appellate hearing was ``disgraceful.'' A 
decision hasn't even been rendered in the case, and he is saying it is 
``disgraceful.''
  Earlier this week, he accused what he called ``dishonest'' American 
journalists of, his word, ``ignoring'' terrorist attacks in the name of 
some unnamed hidden agenda.
  I wish to say, I sat through the last speech at some length, and I 
want to make sure I get it on the record; so through the Chair, I beg 
the indulgence of my colleagues for a few more minutes.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the editorial be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  [From the Denver Post, Feb. 6, 2017]

         With Latest Bashing, Lying Trump Gets Sinister Indeed

                  (By The Denver Post Editorial Board)

       Donald Trump's weekend bashing of a federal judge, and 
     Monday's attack of news organizations for supposedly sharing 
     a hidden agenda with terrorists, goes way too far, and would 
     seem out-there crazy if it weren't also rather frightening.
       Where to begin? Let's hope that President Trump wasn't 
     aware of an imminent terror plot in his rush to slam down his 
     refugee and travel ban. For if he was, his approach to the 
     threat has backfired so horrendously it could be some time 
     before his administration is able to reinstate it, or, 
     hopefully, a more thought-out version. Now that Judge James 
     Robart rendered the travel and refugee order unenforceable, 
     it is likely that the matter won't be resolved until it makes 
     it to a divided U.S. Supreme Court, where its chances could 
     meet the futility of deadlock.
       We hope Trump sees the error in his strategy. Even for the 
     president of the United States, working to achieve on-the-
     ground results within our massive federal government takes 
     skill, and some buy-in from those charged with making it so.
       Trump's order had none of that. Officials in all the 
     relevant agencies knew too little about it until it went into 
     effect. No wonder lawsuits resulted, and that one of them 
     persuaded a judge to block the order.
       Sadly, Trump doesn't appear to have gotten the message. 
     Just as he did on the campaign trail, when he insulted a 
     judge by claiming his Mexican heritage disqualified him to 
     rule in a case involving Trump University, Trump attacked 
     Judge Robart. ``Just cannot believe a judge would put our 
     country in such peril,'' the president posted on Twitter on 
     Sunday. ``If something happens blame him and court system. 
     People pouring in. Bad!''
       Had the president stuck to defending his executive power, 
     he would have been on solid ground. But surely it is 
     outrageous to argue that, in making a ruling based on his 
     review of the law, Robart deserves to be held accountable for 
     any lawless action perpetrated from terrorists long sworn to 
     harm Americans.
       Then, on Monday, Trump told members of the military that 
     news organizations have been intentionally covering up terror 
     attacks, saying that ``in many cases the very, very dishonest 
     press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and 
     you understand that.''
       To back his assertion, Trump pointed to the exhaustively 
     reported terror attacks in Paris and Nice.
       American journalists have been killed reporting on 
     terrorists. They've been beheaded. It would be impossible to 
     calculate how many words have been written in the overall 
     war-on-terror beat. To suggest that some kind of shared bias 
     exists throughout American newsrooms so strong that it 
     compels journalists to hide truth and thereby endanger the 
     public is as dangerous as it is demonstrably untrue.
       So, once again, Lying Trump takes the stage. When he can't 
     make the grade, he blames others. Doing so is a common enough 
     human reaction to personal weakness, but to falsely suggest--
     based on the known evidence--that members of the judiciary 
     and the press are somehow on the side of enemies of the state 
     points to either a cracked mind, or something more sinister.
       Americans shouldn't buy what our president is selling. The 
     truth is Trump botched what could have been a reasonable 
     attempt to make the country safer. His mistakes gave our 
     enemies a huge morale and recruiting boost. And his bashing 
     of others is as unseemly as it is dishonest.

  Mr. BENNET. The Denver Post editorialized yesterday, stating the 
obvious horrible truth here:

       American journalists have been killed reporting on 
     terrorists. They've been beheaded. . . . To suggest that some 
     kind of shared bias exists throughout American newsrooms so 
     strong that it compels journalists to hide truth and thereby 
     endanger the public is as dangerous as it is demonstrably 
     untrue.

  That is right. It is dangerous. It is dangerous for the leader of the 
free world to be saying that journalists are crooks; that the facts 
they are publishing in newspapers and online are untrue when they are 
true. It is dangerous when we are engaged in an experiment of self-
government that goes back about 240 years to the founding of this 
country to refute things that are absolutely true as false and to claim 
that the reason they are being raised is because people lack integrity; 
that journalism is all about false news.
  The White House put out a list of, I think it was in the seventies, 
of terrorist attacks they claim had never been reported, and newspaper 
after newspaper after newspaper had to run lists of the events that the 
White House described as unreported and then have links to the stories 
in their own newspapers and other newspapers that had reported on 
terrorists. As the Denver Post noted, and it is worth remembering this, 
there are journalists who have lost their lives trying to cover this 
story to have us better understand what is happening in the Middle 
East, what the threat of terror looks like, and have been beheaded on 
television because they took that risk.
  With respect to the judges, for years it has been so painful around 
here to get anybody confirmed. I see these folks who are lawyers who 
have to put their law practice on hold for something that should be the 
greatest reflection of achievement of their life, being appointed to a 
Federal district court in this country, and who wait and wait and wait 
because of the unconscionable delay and disputes and partisan bickering 
that happens here instead of getting people on the court to do the job 
that they need to do.
  Now we are going to be in the business of accusing judges and the 
judiciary of being crooked, of not following the law, of just playing 
politics. I think it is really important for us--not just Democrats but 
also Republicans--and I know my colleague is here from Florida. I wish 
to say in this body how much I appreciated his comments last night. He 
may not appreciate that I am saying that, but I appreciate his comments 
because a lot of what he said I completely agree with.
  I know it has become fashionable to tear down rather than work to 
improve the democratic institutions which generations of Americans have 
built. This place didn't get here by accident. It is not a fluke. The 
Founding Fathers would be shocked--shocked--to know this Republic still 
exists. They would be proud. I think they would be proud of the 
progress we have made, but they would be shocked, at the time they were 
compromising with one another--slave owners and abolitionists, 
compromising to create this Republic that had never existed in an 
expanse as big as the Thirteen Colonies geographically or with as many 
people in the Thirteen Colonies geographically--for them to see this 
about 240 years later from coast to coast, 330 million people, the 
strongest military on the planet, the strongest economy on the planet, 
a place where people want to come--just as my mother and her parents 
came--to build opportunity for the next generation. That is incredibly 
special in the history of humankind. As I think my colleague from 
Florida was saying last night, we need to treat it with a little more 
care.
  I am not just talking about the Senate. I am talking about our 
responsibility to provide oversight for this administration. I am 
talking about the importance for us to set an example for the children 
I saw last Friday at the naturalization ceremony, just as they are 
setting an example for us.
  None of us is going to be here forever. We have a lot of work to do. 
There are a lot of people here and around the world who are counting on 
us to pull ourselves together and start making this place work.
  I will finish by saying that I think in this world of social media, 
it is also critically important for us to remember the importance of 
edited content and the work that journalists do. There is not a class 
of school kids whom I don't impose at least that thought on,

[[Page 2145]]

as they think about the research they are doing for their papers and 
the work we need to do as Senators.
  I thank my colleagues for their indulgence. Thank you for allowing me 
to speak on this floor. It is a great privilege to be here, but it is a 
privilege we need to exercise in a way that actually reflects the 
values of this country and the expectations that the American people 
have for us to address their priorities.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.


                                 Russia

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, first, I do appreciate the words of my 
colleague from Colorado, and I thank him for them, and that topic 
deserves more discussion on the floor of the Senate.
  One of the things that always gives me extraordinary pride to be an 
American and to be a Member of the Senate is the realization--as I sat 
here today and listened to my colleague from South Carolina, Senator 
Scott--that neither my ancestors nor his were participants in terms of 
structuring this Republic. Yet this Republic is so grand that it has 
plenty of room for people like me and him and so many others 
participating--including here, as one of only 100 Americans who are 
entrusted with the responsibility of representing our States and also 
upholding our Constitution in this body.
  The Senator from Colorado is also right in talking about the role of 
the Senate not just in terms of passing laws but in conducting 
oversight irrespective of who occupies the White House. It is a 
difficult thing to do these days because everything in American 
politics is covered through the lens of politics and of elections. 
Almost immediately, whatever I say here on the floor today will be 
analyzed through the lens and construct of elections past and elections 
future. What is he trying to achieve or what are any of us trying to 
achieve politically? There is a place for that. I think we are not 
foolish enough to believe there is no politics in politics.
  There is also something that is incredibly important, and that is the 
Constitution that every single one of us is sworn to uphold. It is a 
pledge I again took recently on these very steps a few feet away from 
where I stand here now a few weeks ago.
  Part of that is, in fact, to oversee the foreign policy conduct of 
the United States. As many of us are aware, there has been recent 
discussion in some circles, including in my party, about a desire to 
achieve a better relationship with Vladimir Putin and with Russia. By 
the way, I share that goal. I think it would be good for the world if 
the United States and Russia had a better relationship and, in 
particular, with the Russian people, with whom we have no quarrel. I 
also think we have a responsibility to understand what the obstacles 
are to better relations.
  It is in that context that I come to the floor of the Senate today 
because I had a lot of people ask me over the last week, over the last 
few months: Why is it that you have such views about our relationships 
with Russia on the way forward?
  I want to take a moment to discuss that in the broader context, with 
everything else that is happening here now. Even as we work through 
these nominations, the world continues to turn, and events around the 
world continue to have an impact on us here.
  Let me begin by saying this. I don't think this is a fact that can be 
disputed. Vladimir Putin today has amassed more power in Moscow and 
Russia than any leader in Russia in about 60 years, if not longer. He 
used to maintain that power through a pretty straightforward deal that 
he had with both elites and the broader society.
  Here is the deal he used to have with them. The deal was this: I will 
help you--especially the elites--make a lot of money and become very 
wealthy, and I will help society at-large by helping to grow our 
economy. In return, however, I need complete power and complete control 
of the government.
  That was basically the arrangement he had up until just a few years 
ago when a combination of falling oil prices and economic decline 
forced them into a different direction. The new model that Vladimir 
Putin is now pursuing in Russia is one in which he is basically trying 
to gin up and rally public support, and he is largely doing it through 
a foreign policy which is aggressive and which is designed to create an 
impression among the Russian people that Russia has now been restored 
to great power status--a status equal or on par with that of the United 
States.
  The first thing we have to understand is that much of what Vladimir 
Putin does is not in pursuit of an ideology, like the Soviet Union did. 
It is about domestic politics in Russia and about needing the Russian 
people to believe that he and his strength are essential to what Russia 
has. So much of it is about that.
  What are the prongs of the strategy? The first is that he has sought 
to make their military modern and strong, and you see evidence of that 
in the fact that while Russia is going through crippling budget cuts as 
a result of a downturn in the global economy, oil prices falling, and 
sanctions against the Putin government, they are increasing defense 
spending. They are modernizing. They are adding capabilities. They are, 
for the first time, although in a limited way, beginning to conduct 
naval exercises and projection of power in places they hadn't been in 
for 25 years or longer.
  The second is a crackdown in internal dissent. For that, I think the 
evidence is overwhelming. I know we have all heard recently about the 
case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is a Russian political opposition 
leader. He is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin. He works at something 
called the Open Russia Foundation, an organization of activists who 
call for open elections, a free press, and civil rights reforms in 
Russia.
  This is an interesting thing to talk about because there has been a 
lot of discussion on this floor a moment ago about the press and a lot 
of discussion about elections, of course, over the last year and 
longer. There has been a lot of discussion about civil rights. Think 
about this. This is what the Open Russia Foundation works for and on 
behalf of in Russia.
  In America, when you believe that civil rights are being violated at 
this moment in our history or you think the election system isn't 
working the way it should or you are defending the press, as my 
colleagues have done here today in the right of a free press, you have 
a bad blog post written about you, someone may run against you for 
office, cable commentators will say nasty things about you from the 
other side, maybe somebody will stand up on the floor and criticize you 
for this or that.
  Let me tell you what happens when you do that in Russia. They poison 
you. Kara-Murza is believed to have been poisoned in February 2017; 
after he experienced organ failure, and he is currently in the 
hospital--just this month. This comes 2 years after another suspected 
poisoning that nearly killed him in May 2015.
  I want to take a moment to urge the administration to do everything 
in their power to ensure that he is receiving the medical care he needs 
and to help determine who was behind the latest apparent attempt 
against him.
  If this was an isolated case, you would say: Well, maybe something 
else happened. There is an incredible number of critics of Vladimir 
Putin that wind up poisoned, dead, shot in the head in their hotel 
room, found in the street, and other things.
  In other instances, just today we have this article from the Wall 
Street Journal about someone who was thinking about running against 
Vladimir Putin. Alexei Navalny was thinking about running for 
President.
  So what happens in America when somebody thinks you are going to run 
for President? They do an opposition research file. They plant negative 
stories about you. They start badmouthing you on cable news. That is 
unpleasant, no doubt. He was found guilty by a kangaroo court of 
corruption, which, of course, according to Russian law, finds him and 
blocks him from running in next year's Presidential election.
  Again, if this were an isolated case, you would say: Maybe this guy 
did

[[Page 2146]]

something wrong. The problem is, just about anyone who is either 
thinking about running for office or challenging Putin winds up 
poisoned, dead, in jail, or charged and convicted of a crime.
  The second thing he has done is just completely crack down on all 
internal dissent. There is no free press in Russia. I would venture to 
guess that if I controlled 80 to 90 percent of the press reported about 
me, I would probably have approval ratings in the eighties and nineties 
as well. That is a pretty good deal for the leader but not for the 
people.
  The third thing that is part of this effort is that they are 
basically doing everything they can--Vladimir Putin--to undermine the 
international order that is built on democracy and respect for human 
rights. I think the example of that is in various places.
  Look at what has happened in Syria. Vladimir Putin gets involved in 
Syria, not because he cares about humanitarian crises--because, in 
fact, Russian forces have conducted airstrikes in civilian areas. We 
have seen the images. It is undeniable that it happened. It is by every 
definition of the word a war crime to target civilians with military 
weaponry.
  That is what has happened in Syria. But for Vladimir Putin, it has 
been successful because his engagement basically changes the conflict. 
He now has positioned himself in the eyes of the Russian people and 
many people around the world as a power broker in the Middle East--in 
fact, as an alternative to the United States in that region.
  This is part of his strategy. It wasn't about Syria as much as it was 
about his goal of being able to go to the Russian people and say that 
we matter again on the global stage. In Ukraine, there was talk about 
moving toward the European Union in terms of economic relations. There 
was talk about joining NATO. Then he invaded Crimea, and he kept it. He 
has funded separatists forces in eastern Ukraine. There is no more talk 
of NATO, and there is no more talk of unifying the economy with Europe, 
and they kept Crimea. The last few days we are starting to read open 
press reports of mobilization and unusual activity among eastern 
Ukrainian separatists backed, supported, trained, and equipped by the 
Russians, and we fear that new fighting could be imminent at any moment 
once again.
  Then we have all heard the discussions about the elections in the 
United States and the efforts of other governments to not just hack 
computers. It is not about hacking alone. It is about the strategic 
placing of information, gathered through cyber intrusion, for the 
purposes of undermining political candidates and, therefore, 
influencing the election.
  There was something deeper here. It was part of a broader effort to 
discredit our Republic and our democracy, to be able to go back to the 
Russian people and to the broader world and say that the American 
political system is corrupt. The American political system is not a 
true democracy. The American political system is as bad as all these 
other systems in the world that they criticize. They do not come to 
this with clean hands.
  I often wonder sometimes if we contribute to that argument in the way 
we behave toward one another in our political discourse in this 
country. That is something to think about in the long term. I hope 
people understand that as we engage in these political debates in this 
country, these things are being viewed around the world. For people who 
may not have a clear perspective, or if this information is being used 
negatively--by no means am I saying that we should not have vibrant 
debate in this country; we should, but I also want people to 
understand--that oftentimes gives off the perception that, in fact, our 
Republic is on the verge of collapse.
  We are in challenging times. We have some strong disagreements, and 
oftentimes they become heated. I know for a fact that there isn't a 
single Member of this body prepared to walk away from the Constitution 
or the liberties that it protects and are enshrined therein.
  By the way, I don't believe Vladimir Putin is done in this effort. I 
think you are now going to see him continue to interfere in Yemen. He 
can use that as leverage against the gulf kingdoms, against the Saudis.
  I think you are going to see him continue to engage in Egypt. He will 
go to the Egyptians and say: The Americans are always hassling you 
about human rights. Why don't you just buy your weapons from us? Why 
don't you give us a military base? We are never going to give you grief 
about human rights. We are a much easier and low-maintenance partner.
  I wouldn't even be surprised to see him start dabbling in Afghanistan 
with the Taliban, in some capacity anyway, and couch it in terms of 
fighting ISIS.
  We will see. My point is, it is not done. I bring all that up in the 
context of this suggestion among some, and I think it is important to 
talk about it because I don't think we should dismiss viewpoints. There 
are some, including in the administration, who believe that maybe we 
can do a deal with Vladimir Putin where he helps us fight against ISIS 
and in return we lift sanctions. The argument that I hear from people 
is this: Why wouldn't we want better relations with Vladimir Putin and 
enlist them in the fight against ISIS?
  I come here today in the context of everything I have laid out to 
tell you why I think that is unrealistic and deeply problematic.
  Here is No. 1. Why do we have to do a deal with Vladimir Putin to 
fight ISIS? He already claims that he is. In fact, that is the way he 
describes their operations in Syria--as an anti-terror operation. There 
is no more dangerous terrorist group in the world today than ISIS. 
There is certainly no more dangerous terrorist group in the world today 
than ISIS. There is certainly no more dangerous and capable a terrorist 
group in Syria today than ISIS.
  Isn't that what he is already doing? Why would we then have to cut a 
deal to encourage him to do what he claims to already be doing? There 
are only two reasons. Either No. 1, we think he should do more, which 
in and of itself tells you that he is not doing it; or No. 2, because 
he is not doing it now.
  Here is the second problem: this argument that as part of this whole 
effort with Russia, one of the things we would be able to achieve is to 
break them from the Iranians, to create some sort of split between the 
Russians and the Iranians.
  I saw an article the other day talking about that as part of this 
endeavor. My argument to you is that we don't really need to do that. 
That is going to happen on its own. Say what you want, as soon as ISIS 
is destroyed in Syria and Iraq or in both, the Iranians are going to 
immediately not just push to drive the Americans out of the region but 
drive the Russians out as well.
  The Iranians are not interested in replacing American influence in 
the region with Russian influence. They want to be the hegemonic power 
in the region. As to this argument that we somehow can peel them apart, 
my friends, that is going to happen all on its own. If we abandon there 
tomorrow, the Iranians would immediately turn to driving the Russians 
out as well because they want to be the hegemonic power. They have long 
desired to be the hegemonic power in the region. That is going to put 
them in conflict with the Russians sooner rather than later at some 
point here, at least to some level.
  The third thing I think we have to understand is that there is 
absolutely no pressure, no political rationale why Vladimir Putin needs 
a better relationship with the United States at this time, at least not 
politically. He is not going to lose an election, because if you run 
against him, you go to jail. He controls the press. He controls the 
political discourse in the country. So one of the reasons we should 
always be advocates for democracy is because democratic leaders act 
much more responsibly because they have to answer to their people, but 
in essence that is not what you have in Russia. There is really no 
reason or rationale why he would be pressured to have a better 
relationship with us.
  Do the Russian people want a better relationship with America? I have 
no doubt about that, but I want you to understand that everything they 
learn about our relationship with them is

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largely derived through the Russian press. If you never had the 
pleasure of watching, for example, the RT Network on television, and 
you are interested in comedy and satire, I encourage you to tune into 
that station from time to time so you can see an alternative 
representation of events that would startle you, and perhaps make you 
laugh. This is unfortunately the sort of media information that filters 
to the Russian people that Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin completely 
control.
  Here is the fourth and perhaps most important reason I think this 
endeavor is unrealistic and perhaps even counterproductive. The price 
you would have to pay is simply too high in return for the alleged 
benefit that would come about.
  No. 1, the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin has basically 
violated every agreement they have made now and in the past. They are 
violating the cease-fire. They violated all sorts of arrangements with 
regard to arms reductions, and they will continue to do that in any 
deal anyone cuts with him.
  The second is one of the first things he is going to ask for is the 
lifting of all sanctions for both Ukraine and interference in our 
elections, in return for no changes to the status in Ukraine and no 
promise of not undertaking efforts like what happened here in the 
future.
  The third thing they are going to demand is recognition of a Russian 
sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, especially in places that are 
now countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. In essence, a 
United States acceptance officially or otherwise that there are 
countries in the world who are not allowed to enter into economic or 
military engagements with the United States unless Russia allows it.
  You think about that. They are basically going to ask us to play some 
game of geopolitical chess, where we basically turn over the 
sovereignty and future of other Nations and say to them there are these 
countries in the world, and we are not going to try to do anything with 
them, economic, political, cultural, socially or militarily, unless you 
give us permission to do so. This would be a requirement. It is one of 
the things he insists upon.
  He would also require the United States to support pulling back NATO 
troops and equipment and personnel and operations from Nations in 
Europe, which would be devastating to the NATO alliance, which one of 
his other goals is to render NATO feckless and irrelevant.
  I just don't think that is a price worth paying in exchange for 
alleged cooperation against ISIS--that he claims to already be 
conducting--and in exchange for basically sending a message to the 
world that America is your ally, unless there is a better deal with us 
for someone else. That would be devastating. What do I think we should 
do, and what I hope the Senate will do, if there is an effort now or 
any time in the future, by anyone, to change or conduct a deal of this 
magnitude?
  I think the first thing we need to do is be committed to the 
principle. These sanctions that are in place should remain in place 
until the conditions in those sanctions are met, until the sovereignty 
of Ukraine is respected, and until these efforts to undermine democracy 
and spread misinformation are fully accounted for.
  The second is, I think it is important for us to reaffirm our 
commitment to NATO, and that includes the building up of defenses and 
exercises, that we continue to do that firmly, not just with our NATO 
allies but with any nation who seeks cooperation with us.
  The third is careful but strategic engagement in the Middle East to 
the Iraqis, to make very clear that the United States will continue to 
be their partner after ISIS falls; that we want Iraq to be prosperous 
and free and that we believe it is better for the world and we are 
prepared to help them achieve that.
  To the Egyptians, we will continue to press them on human rights, and 
we should. We should also be willing at the same time--and, by the way, 
with the argument that respecting human rights is actually good for 
Egypt, that in the long term these conditions that exist will lead to 
constant threats to their government, but we can do that while at the 
same time continuing to partner with them on military sales. I think 
they would welcome a conversation about trade and potentially a 
bilateral trade agreement with them about opening up avenues for 
business investment and so forth.
  The fourth is to point out that if they are not going after ISIS, 
then what exactly are they doing now? It is important for us to point 
that out to the world. Again, I made this point numerous times. I want 
to make it once again; this idea that we are going to get them to 
cooperate much more against ISIS basically implies they are not doing 
it now, but they claim that is why they are in Syria to begin with.
  Finally, I think it is important for us to try to communicate 
directly with the Russian people to the extent possible. It is hard to 
do because the Russian Government, under Putin, also controls the 
Internet with filters and the like. It is important for us to say our 
quarrel is not with the Russian people; that for many years up until 
this unfortunate turn of events over the last decade, the links with 
the United States and the Russian people grew strong and those links 
remain.
  In my home State of Florida, there is a significant number of 
Russians who live in Florida part time and so forth. I hope that will 
continue. Our quarrel is not with the Russian people, and we desire for 
Russia to be powerful and influential in the world. We want Russia to 
be prosperous. This country does not view this as a zero-sum gain. In 
order for America to be influential, Russia must be less influential.
  Our quarrel is not with Russia but a leader who does view it as a 
zero-sum gain, a leader who believes the only way Russia can be more 
important is for America to be less important, a leader who has chosen 
to try to undermine an international order based on democracy and free 
enterprise and human rights that has kept the world out of a third 
world war, and I think it is important for us to do that.
  I think that is important and why we need at least to be prepared in 
this body, if necessary, to move forward with legislation that doesn't 
just codify existing sanctions but that prevents the lifting of those 
sanctions, unless the conditions in those sanctions are met. This is 
our job. It is true that Presidents and administrations have an 
obligation, a duty, and a right to set the foreign policies of the 
United States. There is no doubt about it. I think that is true, no 
matter who is the President.
  But it would be a mistake, and in my opinion, a dereliction of duty 
for the Senate and the Congress to not recognize that we, too, have a 
duty to shape the foreign policy of the United States and the power to 
declare war in the budgets that we pass, in the laws and conditions 
that we put in place, and in our ability to override vetoes, when 
necessary, even in the process of nominating individuals to serve in 
the U.S. Government and the executive branch.
  We not only have the power, we have the obligation; the obligation to 
shape and mold and direct the foreign policy of this Nation, and if we 
don't, then we are not living up to the oath we took when we entered 
this body, and that it is not a political thing. This is not about 
embarrassing anyone. This is not about partisan issues. It should never 
be. In fact, one of the traditions that has existed in this Nation for 
a long time is that foreign policy, when it came to issues that 
impacted the security issues of the United States, there was an effort 
to make sure it was as bipartisan or nonpartisan as possible because 
when America gets in trouble on national security, there is no way to 
isolate on a bipartisan basis.
  It is my hope, as we debate all these other issues, that we continue 
to keep these issues in mind because it is critical to the future of 
our Nation, critical to our standing in the world, and ultimately vital 
and critical to the kind of world and Nation we will leave to our 
children and grandchildren in the years and decades to come.
  I, for one, in the midst of all of this debate about a bunch of 
issues that divide us, will continue to work to ensure that this is one 
that unites us and

[[Page 2148]]

allows us to live up to our constitutional obligation, to participate 
fully in shaping and directing the foreign policy of this great Nation.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the nomination of Senator 
Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General. I thought very carefully about 
this matter and about what it means to oppose a colleague. We had an 
unusual night last night, where one of our Members was ordered to stop 
speaking as she explained her opposition. Comments that would have been 
allowed regarding any other Cabinet nominee were ruled unacceptable 
because this nominee also sits in this body. I voted to overturn that 
ruling and restore my colleague's speaking privileges because I was of 
the opinion that the constitutional duty to advise and consent on 
nominations should allow for debate.
  But whatever my opinions about the ruling, I do have to acknowledge 
that standing on the floor to speak in opposition to a colleague is not 
an everyday occurrence. We do disagree every day, all of us, even 
within our own caucuses on matters of policy, but there is something 
more personal about taking the floor to take a position regarding a 
sitting Senator who has been nominated for a Senate-confirmable 
position.
  I know Senator Sessions well. We served together on the Armed 
Services Committee. We attend a weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast 
together. We have taken codel trips together. I consider Senator 
Sessions a friend, and I respect that he has been repeatedly sent to 
this body by the voters of his State, but while we can and should be 
friends, strive to be friends, in this Chamber, we are not ultimately 
here about friendship. We are here to do people's business. And 
significant differences in our opinions and convictions are not to be 
papered over, even when we find ourselves in different positions than 
our friends.
  Some Members of this body ran for President, and I did not support 
them, even though they were my friends. And some people in this Chamber 
did not support me to be Vice President, even though we are friends. 
There is nothing unusual about that. We all understand it. We must 
treat each other with respect and civility. We are still called to, in 
the words of Lincoln, ``be firm in the right as God gives us to see 
what is right.''
  So based upon how I see the right and on my convictions, I cannot 
support my colleague for the position because I do not have confidence 
in his ability to be a champion for civil rights, to wisely advise the 
administration on matters involving immigration, and to be resolute as 
the Nation's chief law enforcement official that torture is contrary to 
American values.
  This one matters to me a lot. This appointment is very critical. The 
Attorney General is one of the four Cabinet appointees who are not 
allowed to be engaged in political activity: Secretary of Treasury, 
Attorney General, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense. They are 
beyond politics and supposed to be above politics. They must have an 
independent gravitas and even be willing to challenge the President. 
The mission of the Department of Justice cannot be more important. For 
17 years, before I got into State politics, I was a civil rights 
lawyer. I read a book, ``Simple Justice,'' when I was in law school, 
about the lawyers who battled to end segregated education in this 
country. Even though I really didn't know any lawyers and certainly 
didn't know any civil rights lawyers--and was living in kind of an 
Irish Catholic neighborhood in the suburbs of Kansas City--I decided I 
wanted to devote my life to this.
  So I moved to Virginia in 1984 and started practicing civil rights 
law, and I did it for 17 years. I will always remember--and I bet you 
will too--my first client, the first case that I had that was really 
mine. A young woman who walked into my office and told me she had been 
turned away from an apartment, and she thought it was because of the 
color of her skin. I was able to prove that was the case, and so we 
were able to win, but what I remember about Lorraine was how it made 
her feel. She was my age. She had just finished school. She was looking 
for an apartment, her first apartment away from home, just like I had 
done. While my experience getting a job, finding an apartment, getting 
out on my own had been a positive, her experience had been a negative. 
And she was going to have that feeling and carry it with her every time 
she looked for a house for the rest of her life: Am I going to be 
treated differently because of the color of my skin? What had been a 
happy occasion for me, as a young man venturing out into the world, had 
been a sad one and a difficult one for her. That started 17 years of 
fighting in State and Federal courthouses for people who had been 
turned away from housing or fired or slander or otherwise treated 
poorly, either because of their race or their disability or because of 
their advocacy about important public policy issues.
  The civil rights laws of this country protect the liberty of 
minorities of all kinds who otherwise could be tyrannized by the 
majority view in their community. The promise of equal justice under 
the law is sacrosanct and fundamental. And in this battle, the Attorney 
General is the guardian of liberty, or in a wise Biblical phrase, the 
``Watcher on the Wall.''
  Judges sit in their courts and they wait for cases to come to them, 
but an Attorney General is charged with going out and finding 
wrongdoing and making sure it stopped. None of the advances that our 
country has made in the civil rights field has happened without a 
supportive Department of Justice and Attorney General. And those of us 
out in the field, lawyers who were taking cases, but especially the 
clients who simply seek equal justice under law, they have to view the 
Attorney General as their champion.
  In 1963, a married couple in Northeast DC sat down at their kitchen 
table not far from here, and they wrote a letter to a lawyer in town. I 
want to read the letter to you.

       Dear sir: I am writing to you concerning a problem we have. 
     5 years ago my husband and I were married here in the 
     District. We then returned to Virginia to live. My husband is 
     white, I am part negro and part Indian. At the time, we did 
     not know that there was a law in Virginia against mixed 
     marriages. Therefore we were jailed and tried in a little 
     town of Bowling Green. We were to leave the State to make our 
     home. The problem is we are not allowed to visit our 
     families. The judge said if we enter the State within the 
     next 30 years that we will have to spend 1 year in jail. We 
     know we cannot live there, but we would like to go back once 
     in a while to visit our families and friends. We have three 
     children and cannot afford an attorney. We wrote the Attorney 
     General, he suggested that we get in touch with you for 
     advice. Please help us if you can. Hope to hear from you real 
     soon. Yours truly--Mr. And Mrs. Richard Loving.

  That attorney, Bernie Cohen, became a friend of mine. And his partner 
Phil Hirshcop and Bernie took the case of this married couple all the 
way to the Supreme Court, and 50 years ago the Supreme Court struck 
down interracial marriage in this country. But the case started with a 
couple who, having no where else to turn, thought, if we write the 
Attorney General, surely he will be a champion for us and he will help 
us redress this horrible wrong. That is who the Attorney General needs 
to be. The powerful never have a hard time finding somebody to 
represent them in court, but the poor or oppressed or those who don't 
have anybody else to stand up for them, they need a justice system that 
will treat them fairly, and they need an Attorney General who will 
embody that value.
  Three areas: civil rights, immigration, and torture.
  In the area of civil rights, Senator Sessions' record here as a 
Senator has been troubling to me. In the past, when he was considered 
for a judicial position, he declared that the voting rights laws were 
``intrusive.''
  He welcomed the ``good news'' when the Supreme Court in the last few 
years struck down, in the Shelby County case, parts of the Voting 
Rights Act. He has not engaged in efforts that many of us have tried to 
engage in to improve and fix the law.
  This is an important issue to know about an Attorney General whose 
Department is supposed to be the chief

[[Page 2149]]

enforcer of the Nation's voting rights laws. Voting rights are under 
attack all over this country. The Attorney General must be a champion 
of those laws.
  Senator Sessions has opposed protections for LGBT citizens in this 
body. He voted against the elimination of don't ask, don't tell. He 
voted against the passage of the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill. He 
has publicly stated numerous times his opposition to marriage equality. 
As far as I know, he has never stated otherwise that he has changed 
those opinions.
  The Senator spoke on the Senate floor about the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act in 2000. He said that this beneficial law 
was ``a big factor in accelerating the decline in civility and 
discipline in classrooms all over this country.'' This is very 
troubling to me as someone who believes that act is one of the Nation's 
preeminent civil rights laws.
  There are other examples, but I won't belabor the point.
  The Loving family wrote to Attorney Generally Robert Kennedy to help 
them battle injustice because they believed he would protect their 
important civil rights values at stake. I am not confident that people 
hard-pressed in this country, who feel marginalized, will see the 
office as a potential ally and champion under Senator Sessions. This is 
particularly the case when we have a President who has been 
successfully sued in the past for civil rights violations and who makes 
prejudicial comments about people based on their gender, their 
religion, their immigrant status, or their disability.
  Second, immigration. Our immigration policies are critical. We need 
to fix our laws. In my time in the Senate, Senator Sessions has been 
the most vocal Senator in opposition to what I believe are reasonable 
and necessary reforms. His floor comments and his obvious personal 
passion around this issue are clear, but I think his policies are 
simply wrong.
  Immigration does not hurt our economy; it helps it. Jefferson 
recognized this in the Declaration of Independence. In his Bill of 
Particulars against King George, he said: We do not want to live under 
your tyranny. You won't let us have a good immigration system.
  Jefferson recognized it, and all through the years, the inflow of 
talent, the blood of innovation and talent and new ideas from 
immigrants, has been part of what has made our country great. That is 
why there is such a consensus in favor of immigration reform from the 
labor unions and the chambers of commerce. The CBO says that it will 
increases our net worth and GDP.
  Immigration does not hurt our workers, as Senator Sessions often 
claims it does. A reform would help our workers by eliminating the 
ability of people to live and work in the shadows and be paid 
substandard wages that undercut the wages of others.
  Senator Sessions' views on immigration even extend to a critical 
program like the Special Immigrant Visa Program, which grants special 
protection to foreign citizens, especially those from Afghanistan and 
Iraq, who have helped our troops on the battlefield. They signed up to 
help Americans who are in the service. They put their lives at risk for 
doing so. Because of that, we have a special program to accord them a 
welcome that they are deserved in this country.
  Senators McCain, Shaheen, and I and many others have worked on this 
program, and Senator Sessions has been a determined opponent of the SIV 
Program, and I just can't understand why. If we will not help the 
people who help us, then who will choose to help us in the future? Some 
of these SIV immigrants were turned away at airports after the poorly 
conceived and poorly implemented immigration order of President Trump.
  As we contemplate some of this President's outlandish and 
discriminatory claims about immigrants and as we deal with the 
aftermath of this poor order, we have to separate the extreme and the 
untrue from our legitimate security concerns. A good lawyer often needs 
to be a check against the bad instincts of his client. In this area, I 
am not confident Senator Sessions can do that.
  Finally, torture. Like the vast majority of this body, I believe 
torture is contrary to American values. That is why I was proud to work 
with Senators McCain, Reed, Feinstein, and others in 2015 to pass a law 
clearly stating that torture would not be allowed by any agency of our 
government--not just the military but any agency of our government. 
This law passed the Senate overwhelmingly and in a strongly bipartisan 
fashion. But Senator Sessions was one of a small number of Senators who 
opposed the law, who opposed a ban on torture.
  When we met, I asked Senator Sessions why he had opposed the law, why 
he had opposed this bipartisanship bill. This is a fundamental question 
for any of us but certainly for an individual who wants to occupy the 
Nation's chief law enforcement position. His response was not at all 
convincing. I don't think the Nation should have an Attorney General 
with an ambiguous record about torture.
  While most Federal agencies have a general counsel, it is ultimately 
the Attorney General who sits at the very top of the pyramid of 
attorneys advising the President in providing this legal advice. This 
President has--very unwisely, in my view--stated that he thinks torture 
is both justifiable and effective. I believe we need an Attorney 
General who will check that instinct and not support it or justify it.
  I will say this in conclusion: There is an independence that is 
necessary in this position. It is established in law in this position 
and three other Cabinet positions. Any Attorney General must be able to 
stand firm for the rule of law, even against the powerful Executive who 
nominated him or her. In this administration, I believe that 
independence is even more necessary.
  I oppose Senator Sessions, who is a friend, who is someone I respect 
for this position, because I believe his record raises doubts about 
whether he can be a champion for those who need this office most, and 
it also raises doubts about whether he can curb unlawful overage by 
this Executive.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis).
  The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in strong support of 
the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next Attorney General 
of the United States. I do that as someone who has known him personally 
quite well for 6 years now. I want to do this briefly because we are 
pressed for time, but I want to make a few points.
  First, I think we all recognize the terrific credentials that Senator 
Sessions brings to this job--his career, his lifetime serving his 
country, from his time in the U.S. Army Reserve, to his 12 years as a 
U.S. attorney, to the 2 years he spent as the attorney general of 
Alabama, all before being elected to the U.S. Senate. But much more 
importantly, I am so impressed by this good man, this good and decent 
man's commitment to protecting all members of our society and his sense 
of fairness. Let me give a couple of examples.
  It was Senator Sessions who worked with a Democratic colleague, 
Senator Coons, on legislation to help women and children who were 
victims of abuse. It was Senator Sessions who joined me in our 
successful effort to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of 
additional funds each year to victims of child abuse and sexual assault 
and domestic violence.
  Senator Sessions' sense of fairness is also illustrated in his 
approach to law enforcement. It is probably widely known that he has 
the endorsement of every major law enforcement group in America, but 
Senator Sessions has also spent a lot of time and effort making sure 
people on the other side of law enforcement are treated fairly and 
humanely.
  It was Senator Sessions who led the successful effort to eliminate 
the disparity in sentences for crack users versus cocaine users, 
working with Senator Durbin, a Democrat. They succeeded because Senator 
Sessions understood that the disparity--the much harsher penalty on the 
use of crack cocaine versus white powdered cocaine--

[[Page 2150]]

was completely unfair and overwhelmingly adversely affected African 
Americans. That was not acceptable to Jeff Sessions.
  It was Senator Sessions who in 2003 joined with Democratic Senator 
Ted Kennedy in introducing and helping to successfully enact the Prison 
Rape Elimination Act because of his concern about the appalling abuse 
experienced by some people in our prisons. That was not acceptable to 
Jeff Sessions.
  Let me just say that--I am going to be very candid. The most 
objectionable and offensive slander I have heard against Senator 
Sessions is the notion that somehow he has some kind of racist 
leanings. That is an outrageous and dishonest charge. I have known this 
man very well. There is not a racist bone in his body. This is a man 
who has been endorsed by many, many African-American leaders. This is a 
man who personally took on the KKK every chance he had when he was 
serving as the U.S. attorney. In fact, arguably, he was the reason that 
the law enforcement--in fact, he personally did probably more than 
anyone else to bankrupt the KKK by design so that he could destroy that 
organization in Alabama, which is exactly what he succeeded in doing.
  Jeff Sessions is a man who has tremendous respect for the law, a 
reverence for the law, respect for the rule of law. There is absolutely 
no question in my mind, from my own personal experience with him for 
these years, that he will enforce the law vigorously and fairly.
  Several of my Democratic colleagues have come down here and they have 
rattled off policy areas in which they disagree with Senator Sessions. 
You know what, there are areas where I disagree with Senator Sessions. 
I guarantee you, there are lots of areas where I had disagreements with 
the members of President Obama's Cabinet. But it never occurred to me 
to expect that I would have complete agreement on every policy issue 
with every candidate for a Cabinet position.
  What I know about Jeff Sessions is that he is an extremely well-
qualified attorney, with outstanding credentials, has spent his adult 
life serving his country and his State, that he has gone to the mat to 
work for people who are some of the least fortunate and people who have 
been through appalling circumstances. He has been their champion. I 
just know he is going to stand up for the principles of the rule of law 
and equal justice before the law.
  The last point I want to make is, when Republican Senators gather 
periodically for our lunches and our private discussions, every 
Republican Senator knows that when we are discussing something, if Jeff 
Sessions believes that we are talking about doing something that is a 
violation of a principle that he holds, he is going to be the first guy 
who is going to stand up, and he is going to say: My colleagues, this 
would be a mistake. This is not the right thing to do.
  He is the one who is the first to stand up to any other member of the 
conference; it doesn't matter who it is. If he thinks what they are 
suggesting is not the right thing to do, not the principled thing to 
do, not consistent with our role as Senators, not consistent with our 
principles, Jeff Sessions is always willing to stand up for what is 
right.
  He will stand up for what is right as the Attorney General of the 
United States. I am proud to support him, and I urge all of my 
colleagues to do likewise.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I think many millions of Americans 
perceive, as I do, that these are not normal times.
  We have had a new President of the United States who called a judge a 
``so-called judge'' because he dared to disagree with President Trump's 
decision on the ban of Muslims coming into this country.
  We have a President who attacks the media in this country as fake 
news; everything they are saying is a lie. We have a President who goes 
before the troops--men and women in the American military--and starts 
talking about politics. It is very clear to me that we have a new 
President who really does not understand the Constitution of the United 
States of America, who does not understand the separation of powers in 
the Constitution, and in that context, we need an Attorney General who 
will have the courage to tell the President of the United States when 
he is acting in a dangerous, authoritarian, or unconstitutional way.
  I have known Jeff Sessions for a number of years, and personally, I 
like Jeff Sessions. But I do not believe at this moment in history, 
when we need people around this President to explain the Constitution 
to him, that Jeff Sessions will be the Attorney General to do that.
  I am deeply concerned about voter suppression in this country. I am 
deeply concerned that, as a result of the Supreme Court's gutting of 
the Voting Rights Act, we have, in State after State after State, 
Governors and legislatures that are working overtime to make it harder 
for poor people, people of color, older people, young people to 
participate in the political process.
  Today in the United States, we have, compared to the rest of the 
world, a low voter turnout. Only about 60 percent of eligible voters in 
America cast a ballot. Our job--whether you are conservative, 
Republican, Progressive, Independent, Democrat--whatever you are, if 
you believe in democracy, what you should believe in is bringing more 
people into the political process, increasing our voter turnout, not 
working as hard as you can to suppress the vote.
  I want an Attorney General of the United States of America to tell 
those Governors, to tell those attorneys general all over this country 
that as Attorney General of the United States, he will fight them tooth 
and nail in every way legally possible to stop the suppression of the 
vote in State after State throughout this country.
  We have the dubious distinction in this country of having more people 
in jail than any other nation on Earth. We have about 2.2 million 
Americans. We are spending about $80 billion a year locking them up, 
and the people who are disproportionately in jail are African American, 
Latino, Native American.
  I want an Attorney General who understands that the current criminal 
justice system is failing, that we have to figure out ways to keep 
people from getting into jail by investing in education, in jobs, and 
that incarceration and more jails are not the answers to the crisis we 
face within criminal justice. I honestly do not believe that Jeff 
Sessions is that person.
  In recent years, we have made significant progress in allowing 
people--regardless of their sexual orientation--to get married and to 
have the full rights of American citizenship. I do not believe that 
Jeff Sessions will be the Attorney General who will be supportive of 
LGBT rights.
  We have some 11 million undocumented people in this country. I 
believe that most Americans see the solution as comprehensive 
immigration reform and a path toward citizenship.
  Today we have some 700,000 people who are DACA recipients, who have 
come out of the shadows and trusted the Federal Government to protect 
them. We need an Attorney General who is sensitive to the needs of DACA 
recipients, who will pursue humane immigration policies, and advocate 
for the need of comprehensive immigration reform. I do not believe that 
Jeff Sessions will be that Attorney General.
  So, Mr. President, for all of those reasons and more, I will be 
voting against Jeff Sessions to become the next Attorney General of the 
United States.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I also rise this evening to talk about the 
nomination of our colleague from Alabama, Senator Jeff Sessions, to 
serve as our next Attorney General.
  Like many of our colleagues, I have heard from an incredible number 
of people in my State regarding this nomination--some in favor, fewer 
than

[[Page 2151]]

100--many against. Almost 1,300 Delawareans have called, emailed, or 
written to my office, expressing their opposition to Senator Sessions' 
nomination.
  I would like to share, if I could, just a few excerpts from some of 
the emails that I have received concerning this nomination.
  We will start with Priscilla from the town of Newport in the northern 
part of our State. She wrote to me about the experience of her family 
growing up in a segregated society. Here is what she had to say. She 
said:

       I lived through my parents not having the right to vote, 
     not being able to go through the front door of a restaurant 
     or doctor's office, using the colored fountains and 
     bathrooms. Never again.

  Another person, Rhonda from Dewey Beach wrote to me about Senator 
Sessions' voting record on voting rights. Here is what she had to say. 
She said:

       Mr. Sessions has called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a 
     ``piece of intrusive legislation.'' Under him, the Justice 
     Department would most likely focus less on prosecutions of 
     minority voter suppression and more on rooting out mythical 
     voter fraud.

  Here is one from Wilmington, DE--my hometown now--from a woman named 
Dawn. She wrote to me about her concerns as a parent of a child with 
autism. She wrote these words:

       I am writing to express my deep concern with Jeff Sessions' 
     nomination for Attorney General. I am a parent of an autistic 
     son and am terrified that people with these types of views 
     will be in power to enforce (or not) the laws that protect 
     the rights of my son and so many others.

  Mr. President, the common theme throughout these letters, these 
calls, these emails is their fear that Senator Sessions will not be an 
Attorney General for all Americans.
  I know that many of my colleagues--our colleagues--will soon be 
voting their hopes by voting to confirm Senator Sessions to be our next 
Attorney General, but too many of my constituents, including African 
Americans, immigrants, women, Muslims, and other vulnerable 
populations, have called and emailed my office in numbers that I don't 
think I have ever seen before to express their fears and to ask me to 
do something about it as their senior Senator.
  I have heard their voices loud and clear, and I feel compelled to add 
my voice to so many others in opposing this nomination.
  Let me just say this as clearly as I can. I do so with no joy, no 
joy.
  Last night, as I was thinking about what I wanted to share on the 
floor this evening, my mind drifted back to another time and place.
  The Presiding Officer may not know this. I grew up in Danville, VA, 
my sister and I, the last capital of the Confederacy. I got there I 
think when I was just about 9 years old and left when I was about to 
finish high school.
  The home that we lived in right outside of Danville, VA--if you 
walked out the front door, about 100 yards down the road on the other 
side was a church, Woodlawn Baptist Church. That was our church, and my 
mom dragged my sister and me there every Sunday morning, every Sunday 
night, every Wednesday night, and most Thursday nights.
  When my sister and I were in high school, we stood on the doorstep of 
that church Monday through Friday when school was in session, and we 
would catch a school bus. About 200 yards down the road, on Westover 
Drive, there was another school bus stop, where African-American kids 
got on their school bus, 200 yards away. We would drive in our school 
bus 10 miles to our school, Roswell High School, and the kids at the 
other school bus stop would get in their bus, and they would drive past 
our school another 10 miles to get to their school.
  On weekends, my dad worked a lot. He was in the Navy Reserve as a 
chief petty officer. He was gone a lot on the weekends. My mom worked 
in downtown Danville in the five-and-dime store. My sister and I would 
catch a bus, and we would ride downtown to go have lunch with my mom on 
many Saturdays when we were 9, 10, 11, 12 years old.
  I couldn't help but notice when we got on the bus that if you were 
White, you got to sit up front, and if you were Black, you sat in back. 
We would go to a blue plate diner with my mom at lunchtime. There was 
one section where, if you were White, you got to eat there, and another 
section where, if you were Black, colored, you would eat there. To go 
to the restrooms, it was colored only, White only.
  After lunch, my sister and I would go to Rialto Theatre in Danville, 
and my mom would give us each a quarter. And for 25 cents, we could see 
that afternoon three movies until she was finished with work, and we 
would go home together. At that Rialto Theatre, if you were White, you 
sat down in front on the first floor; if you were Black, you sat up in 
the balcony.
  I will never forget that when I was a little boy in Danville, one 
day, I went to the dentist's office for some dental care. I remember 
this older African-American woman coming into the dentist's office, and 
she was in pain with I think an abscessed tooth.
  She said: I know I don't have an appointment, but could someone just 
help me out of my misery?
  They said: I am sorry, ma'am. You don't have an appointment. We can't 
do anything for you. And she left crying.
  My parents--it turns out I am a Democrat; they were Republican, as 
far as I know. They got to vote, and they got to vote regularly. But I 
will bet you dollars to doughnuts that the kids at that bus stop who 
caught that bus to go to that all-Black, all-African-American school, 
my guess is that a bunch of them didn't get to vote because of 
something we had in Virginia called a poll tax.
  Among the lessons that my sister and I learned at Woodlawn Baptist 
Church was the Golden Rule: Treat other people the way we want to be 
treated.
  Among the things that we learned at that church is Matthew 25: We 
should care for the least of these. When I was hungry, did you feed me? 
When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was thirsty, did you give 
me a drink? When I was sleeping in prison, did you visit me? When I was 
a stranger in your land, did you welcome me? And we were taught: yes, 
yes, yes, yes.
  Micah 6. In my church this past Sunday, the question was raised: What 
is expected of us by the Lord? And we received three answers. And the 
three answers: Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with thy God.
  I have taken those lessons from my childhood, and those are lessons 
from my own church today. And I want to tell you that as a kid growing 
up in Danville, VA, I can understand how other kids in my community 
were racist or bigoted. I can understand how it happened in Alabama or 
North Carolina, where our Presiding Officer is from.
  But somewhere along the line, somebody got ahold of me and said: You 
know all that stuff you are talking about in church and the Bible? If 
you really believe it, here is how you should act and talk and speak. 
And finally it sunk in.
  I just want to say that Jeff Sessions has been my colleague. I have 
been here for 16 years. He has been my friend and colleague for 16 
years. We read the same Bible. There have been times where we read it 
together over the years. When we met in my office just a few weeks ago, 
we talked about how our faith guides us in our lives. I reminded him of 
how Matthew 25 talks about moral obligations, ``the least of these,'' 
which I have talked about.
  As I carefully considered my friend's nomination to serve our country 
in such a critical role, I found that while we agree on many issues, 
including that our faith is an important guide not only in our personal 
lives but in our capacity as public servants, I found that our views on 
too many important issues diverged.
  Like many Americans, I am troubled by the direction Donald Trump is 
seeking to take our country in these first few weeks of his 
administration. I believe that an independent Attorney General can 
provide a check on this President's legal recklessness, and it may be 
more necessary now than at any point in recent history. Donald Trump 
has already revealed an agenda that reflects his divisive campaign, one

[[Page 2152]]

that I believe will make our economy less robust, less fair, our 
environment less clean, our country less inclusive, our freedoms less 
free, and our allies less inclined to take America at its word.
  Many of us worry that Jeff Sessions will not be the independent check 
on this administration that we need, and many of us worry that Jeff 
will not hold our Justice Department to the principles that everyone, 
no matter their age, income, sex, or color, deserves equal protection 
under the law. My colleagues and I have these concerns with a number of 
Cabinet nominees. I voted for more of them than I voted against.
  Having said that, we need individuals to serve in these key posts who 
are willing to speak truth to power. Ironically, that is what got 
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates in trouble. She did it a few days 
ago when she was fired for refusing to defend the Muslim ban because 
she thought it might not be lawful.
  Throughout the campaign, Senator Sessions supported a religious-based 
test for immigrants, and I fear that Senator Sessions is unlikely to 
stand up to Donald Trump and tell him that he is wrong on this front. 
To be honest with you, I just believe we need somebody who will do 
that, and unfortunately I fear there is a good chance that Senator 
Sessions believes Donald Trump just might be right. I am also afraid 
that Senator Sessions won't be the independent check our country is 
likely to need, especially in this administration.
  Ultimately, however, the votes are where they are, and it appears 
that our friend, our colleague, Senator Sessions, will be our country's 
next chief law enforcement officer and chief attorney. Over these past 
days and weeks, I thought about whether our friend is the best person 
for the job, as I have said. I know others have too. I also thought 
about the millions of Americans who fear that he may have views about 
different races and minorities that could seep into the Justice 
Department, resulting in an unequal applications of our country's laws.
  My thoughts have led me to the example of Lyndon Johnson, a man from 
the South who served, as you may recall, in the U.S. House of 
Representatives in Texas for a number of years and later suddenly 
became President under tragic circumstances, as we all recall, in 
November of 1963. LBJ didn't just oppose civil rights while in the 
House of Representatives and in the Senate, he often bragged about it. 
But he went through a public transformation that would lead him to pass 
the first civil rights bill since reconstruction as Senate majority 
leader in 1957 and then signed into law some of our Nation's landmark 
civil rights laws--the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act 
of 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Act, the Fair Housing Act, and 
countless others.
  LBJ's transformation didn't happen overnight, though. The truth is 
that his views on civil rights and racial justice might have been there 
all along.
  Here is what Robert Caro wrote about LBJ in the most recent 
installment on his life:

       Although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what 
     is seldom said, but what is equally true, is that power 
     always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade 
     others to give him power, concealment is necessary: to hide 
     traits that might make others reluctant to give him power, to 
     hide also what he wants to do with that power. If men 
     recognized the traits or realized the aims, they might refuse 
     to give him what he wants. But as a man obtains more power, 
     camouflage is less necessary. The curtain begins to rise. The 
     revealing begins.

  So it was, in Caro's view--and I think he is probably right--so it 
was with Lyndon Johnson.
  Mr. President, that reminds me of another quote tonight. This is one 
from our former First Lady Michelle Obama, who said these words: 
``Being President doesn't change who you are, it reveals who you are.''
  It reveals who you are.
  We are not confirming Jeff Sessions to be our next President, but we 
are confirming him to be our next Attorney General, and we must ask, as 
the curtain rises, what will it reveal? What will it reveal about Jeff 
Sessions?
  Unfortunately, each time Jeff's career has led to more power, whether 
it was district attorney in Alabama, attorney general for his State, or 
as U.S. Senator, it has revealed a Jeff Sessions who is much the same 
as he has always been. It has revealed Jeff Sessions to be less 
inclined to undergo the transformation that so many others before him 
have undergone to put themselves and our Nation on the right side of 
history.
  I will close with this thought: If Senator Sessions is confirmed, it 
is my sincere hope that our friend and our colleague will recognize the 
awesome responsibility and the opportunity he has to serve not only the 
people of Alabama, not only the people of the South or the Southeastern 
part of our country, but Americans across our country of all races, all 
colors, all creeds. In this body, it is often important that we vote 
with our hopes rather than our fears, and unfortunately, tonight I am 
not yet prepared to vote my hopes. But the words of a reporter writing 
about President Johnson a few years ago give me some hope as we look 
forward, and maybe they will give hope to the rest of us. Here is what 
that reporter wrote about Lyndon Johnson:

       Perhaps the simple explanation, which Johnson likely 
     understood better than most, was that there is no magic 
     formula through which people can emancipate themselves from 
     prejudice, no finish line that when crossed, awards a 
     person's soul with a shining medal of purity in matters of 
     race. All we can offer is a commitment to justice in word and 
     deed that must be honored but from which we will all 
     occasionally fall short.

  And I would just add, and we do.
  I hope these words I have just quoted resonate with our friend and 
colleague, Senator Jeff Sessions. If they do, both he and our country 
will be better for it.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion about 
Senator Sessions' nomination on this floor in the last 24 hours. Before 
we vote, I want to offer a couple of observations about the unfairness 
in some of the statements.
  First, I was hoping to limit my remarks to all of the reasons why I 
believe Senator Sessions will make an outstanding Attorney General, but 
instead I feel very compelled to say a few words about some of the 
attacks that have been leveled against Senator Sessions here on the 
floor, where he has served the people of Alabama faithfully for 20 
years.
  A number of Senators have come to the floor to talk about Senator 
Sessions' hearing in 1986 when he was nominated to be a Federal judge. 
Now, it happens that I was in the Senate in 1986, at that time by 6 
years. I was on the Judiciary Committee in 1986, by that time for 6 
years, and I want you to know I saw what happened. I don't have time to 
go into all the details here, but I will tell you this: Jeff Sessions' 
hearing in 1986 was an absolute ambush. In fact, it was a planned 
ambush. He was unfairly attacked then and he is being unfairly attacked 
now. I will give just two examples.
  First, in the last 24 hours, we have heard Senator Sessions attacked 
for a voting rights case that he pursued as U.S. attorney in Alabama. 
We have heard a lot about that case. Of course, those who have raised 
the Perry County trial don't tell you Senator Sessions was actually 
asked to pursue that case by two African-American candidates who 
believed that ballots cast by African-American voters had been altered. 
The bottom line is that he was vindicating the voting rights of 
African-American voters whose voting rights had been compromised.
  Second, we have heard Senator Sessions criticized for testimony in 
his 1986 Judiciary Committee hearing about the Voting Rights Act. It 
has been said on this floor and it has been said repeatedly that Jeff 
Sessions called the Voting Rights Act ``intrusive,'' but those speaking 
in the last 24 hours don't know what he actually said. He did use the 
word ``intrusive,'' but then he said the Department of Justice had to 
do it ``because it would not have happened any other way.''
  He said further: ``Federal intervention was essential in the South.'' 
He

[[Page 2153]]

said it was an intrusive piece of legislation ``because it was a 
necessary piece of legislation, I support it.'' That is right. He said 
the Voting Rights Act ``was a necessary piece of legislation, I support 
it.'' That is what he said. But if you have been listening the last 24 
hours--you wouldn't know any of that by listening to those who have 
come to the floor and talked all about that case in 1986.
  Like I said, I was here way back then. I saw what happened to that 
man who is going to be our next Attorney General, who would go on to 
join the Senate for these 20-some years and become our colleague and 
our friend. So you can understand why it is very frustrating to me to 
listen to all of those attacks, and it is particularly frustrating to 
hear it from Members who were not even here in 1986.
  With that, let me just say this in closing: Senator Sessions has 
served with us for 20 years. Every Member of this body knows him to be 
a man of integrity. Almost all of us have been on the other side of a 
policy debate with Senator Sessions at one time or another. I know I 
have. What we know from those debates is that whether Senator Sessions 
agrees with you or not on any policy question, he handles the debate 
fairly, he handles the debate respectfully, and he handles the debate 
honorably.
  Senator Sessions answered our questions in the Judiciary Committee 
for 10 long hours. He gave us his word on the critical issues that 
should decide our vote on this nomination. Most of that was centered 
around the fact that he is a man devoted to the law, and he is devoted 
as the chief law enforcement officer of our country to enforce the law, 
even if he didn't vote for it and even if he disagreed with it.
  We know from the questioning that Senator Sessions will be 
independent when he said when he has to say no to the President of the 
United States, he will say no to the President of the United States. We 
know Senator Sessions then, as I have said, will enforce the law 
faithfully, without regard to person, for all Americans.
  Motivated by those principles, Senator Sessions will make a very fine 
Attorney General, and most people in this body know that--even those 
who are going to vote against him.
  I am pleased to cast my vote in favor of his nomination, and of 
course I urge my colleagues to do the same thing.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the nomination of my 
colleague and friend Jeff Sessions to be the Attorney General of the 
United States.
  Why? We have had this debate. It has gone on a long time, and we have 
heard from a lot of proponents and opponents of Jeff Sessions. Who 
would know Jeff Sessions better maybe than I would? I have worked with 
Jeff Sessions since he came to the Senate 20 years ago. Between us we 
have been here 50 years, 30 years for me, 20 years for him. Our staffs 
worked day and night on issues that have affected our State and 
affected the Nation.
  I first really got to know Jeff Sessions when he was the Attorney 
General of Alabama. He had been the U.S. attorney. He was pretty well 
known, but I didn't know him. We didn't really know each other until he 
became the Attorney General.
  I urged him to run for the U.S. Senate. I thought he could win, but I 
thought not just that he could win but that he could bring something to 
this body. I thought he would be a good colleague, he would be a good 
Senator for the State of Alabama and for the United States of America, 
and he has been.
  When you deal with people day after day--remember, we all know each 
other as colleagues here. There are just 100 of us. It sounds like a 
lot of people, but it is not. When we interact on committees, when we 
deal with each other, when our families are thrown together, we talk, 
we debate, we maybe even fight a little bit at times over issues. We 
get to really know somebody.
  I know Jeff Sessions pretty well. I believe he is competent as a 
lawyer, he was a good lawyer, he was a good prosecutor, and he served 
our State as Attorney General. He has been active on the Judiciary 
Committee where he has chaired a subcommittee. He has been active on 
the Budget Committee. He has been active on the Armed Services 
Committee. He has been active right here in the Senate--our Senate--on 
the Environment and Public Works Committee, and he is well respected.
  What kind of Attorney General do we want? We want somebody who is 
competent, somebody with integrity--integrity above everything. That is 
what counts in this job. This is a very, very important job. These are 
big shoes. Jeff Sessions can fill those shoes, and I am happy and proud 
to be here and to vote for him tonight. I wish my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle would join us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask to proceed on leader time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would like to say a word about the 
nominee we are about to confirm. We have long known our colleague from 
Alabama as Senator Sessions--and soon Attorney General Sessions--but it 
wasn't always this way. There was a time when the distinguished Senator 
from Alabama was known simply as ``Buddy.'' Buddy--the product of a 
small town called Hybart, the son of a country store owner, the 
inheritor of modest beginnings.
  Senator Sessions' parents grew up in the Depression. They taught 
their son the value of a dollar and the importance of hard work. If our 
colleague wasn't at school or football practice, you were likely to 
find him at his dad's store lending a hand to customers. As anyone from 
a small town can attest, that little store served as far more than just 
a place to buy goods. It was also a local gathering place, a place 
where people were liable to share their hopes and concerns, and their 
dreams too.
  This is where Jeff Sessions developed his core values. It is where he 
developed an appreciation for the everyday struggles of working people. 
It is where he learned the importance of listening first, of standing 
up for what matters, of putting others' needs before one's own. It made 
him a better person. It made him a pretty good politician too.
  Senator Sessions is the kind of guy who, with just one conversation, 
can make you feel as if you have known him your entire life. He is 
usually the first to arrive at constituent events and the last to 
leave. He has also made it a priority to travel annually to every 
county in Alabama--all 67 of them.
  His staff will tell you it is these trips home when Senator Sessions 
is really in his element. Driving across Alabama, from sunup to 
sundown, milkshake in hand, or maybe a Blizzard from Dairy Queen, Heath 
bar flavor, thank you very much, that is Senator Sessions.
  Now, it is not hard to see why Alabamians keep sending him back to 
Washington. Last time out he scooped up a modest 97 percent of the 
vote.
  Part of Senator Sessions' secret to success is simple enough; he is 
just a likable guy.
  Our colleague is one of the most humble and most considerate people 
you will ever meet. He is a true Southern gentleman. He is pretty funny 
too. His staff would certainly agree. They still remember the time he 
accidentally ran his suit coat through the paper shredder. They saved 
the evidence too. Let's hope that one makes it into his archives.
  Sessions' alums call this man a mentor. They remain ever grateful for 
his focus on their own development. I know they are going to miss 
grabbing a burger and fries with him at Johnny Rockets.
  They are really going to miss his wife Mary as well. We will around 
here too.
  Now, in Sessions' world, Mary Sessions is something of a legend. She 
has been our colleague's strongest supporter, no matter the task before 
him. She has been a source of encouragement and a friend to all of Team 
Sessions. I doubt they will ever forget

[[Page 2154]]

Mary's friendship or her famous cream cheese pound cake.
  One thing they will not soon forget either is Senator Sessions' 
intense focus on the office's letter-writing operation. Sometimes that 
meant working weekends with the boss to get the constituent 
correspondence just right.
  There is no doubt Senator Sessions is very, very particular about his 
writing, whether it is constituent letters or legal memoranda, and 
there is a good reason for that. Words, as this lawyer is known to say, 
have meaning. It is a philosophy that has animated Senator Sessions' 
longtime love affair with the law.
  He believes in equal application of the law to each of us, regardless 
of how we look or where we come from. It is a genuine passion for him. 
It is an area of deep importance and principle.
  Senator Sessions will stand up for what he believes is right, even 
when it isn't always the easiest thing to do.
  Now, this is a guy who fought for Republican principles long before--
long before--Alabama became a red State. He stood up to the George 
Wallace dynasty as a young man. He stared down the forces of hate as 
U.S. attorney and State attorney general. He has continued to fight for 
the equal application of the law as well, not to mention a growing 
economy, a streamlined government, and a strong defense.
  Of course, as anyone who knows him will tell you, Senator Sessions is 
a lawyer's lawyer. He is willing to hear the other side of an argument. 
He is willing to make the other side of the argument as well. He is 
also willing to be persuaded.
  He has worked across the aisle with Democrats like the late Senator 
Ted Kennedy and the assistant Democratic leader on issues like prison 
reform and sentencing reform. Democrats have praised him as someone who 
is ``straightforward and fair'' and ``wonderful to work with.''
  The politics of the moment may have changed, but the truth of 
statements like these endures. Deep down, each of us knows these things 
remain just as true about Senator Sessions today as they did when our 
Democratic colleagues praised him.
  Fair in action, bound to the Constitution, a defender of civil 
rights, this is the man we have come to know in the Senate. It is the 
same man we can expect to see as Attorney General.
  Senator Sessions may be leaving the Senate, but there is plenty this 
Eagle Scout will be taking with him. That includes the motto he has 
lived by--``Be Prepared''--which is so engrained in our friend that it 
is even engraved into the back of the granite nameplate on his desk. It 
is a simple phrase with a simple message, and it seems particularly 
fitting for our friend today.
  He has a big job ahead of him. I think he is up to the task. He is 
tough, but he is fair. He is persistent, but he is respectful. He is a 
likeable guy, a principled colleague, and an honest partner. And while 
we are really going to miss him, we also couldn't be prouder of him.
  So let us thank Senator Sessions for his many years of service.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Sessions 
nomination?
  Mr. CORNYN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS (when his name was called). Present.
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 59 Ex.]

                                YEAS--52

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

                                NAYS--47

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                        ANSWERED ``PRESENT''--1

       
     Sessions
       
  The nomination was confirmed.
  (Applause, Senators rising.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote on the 
nomination.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the motion to reconsider.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to table the motion to reconsider.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
table.
  The motion was agreed to.

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