[Pages S2654-S2667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT,
2016

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will resume consideration of H.R. 2028, which the clerk will
report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

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

Pending:

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

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Unanimous Consent Requests--Executive Calendar

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to talk today about judges,
specifically district court judges across our country. We have a number
of judges in Pennsylvania who have not moved forward, and I want to
speak to that today.
I think it is a case of or a story about obstruction. It is as simple
as that, and there is no excuse for this kind of obstruction. These
nominees came from Senators of both parties, and that applies to
Pennsylvania, as well, and have had all their credentials vetted and
approved by the Judiciary Committee.
Pennsylvania currently has four nominees to the district court, and
one seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is vacant as well. All
of these excellent nominees deserve immediate consideration and
confirmation.
The Pennsylvania judges were agreed to by my colleague from
Pennsylvania, Senator Toomey. We worked together to arrive at a
consensus. Just by way of example, the two we are talking about today,
in particular, Judge Susan Baxter and Judge Marilyn Horan, are
Pennsylvania judges who have sterling qualifications and credentials,
were selected on a bipartisan basis, as I mentioned, in our State, were
unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and they have
been languishing now for months, even after Judiciary Committee
consideration.
We have two other Pennsylvania district court nominees, Judge John
Colville and Judge Milton Younge, who are still inexplicably stuck in
the Judiciary Committee, despite being equally qualified and nominated
the same day as Judge Baxter and Judge Horan.
So the old expression applies here: Justice delayed is justice
denied. That is what we are seeing when we have this kind of
obstruction preventing the confirmation of judges who have come through
the Judiciary Committee.
The American people have fundamental basic rights. I believe one of
those rights is to expect that their courts are working with a full
complement of judges. President Obama has seen just 17 judges confirmed
in the last 2 years of his Presidency so far--I know we are still in
the midst of those 2 years but 17 judges to date in the last 18 months,
roughly--compared to 68 when Democrats controlled the Senate the last
years of President Bush's administration.
We have seen the same obstruction at all levels of the court system.
For example, we know the chief judge of the District of Columbia Court
of Appeals, Judge Merrick Garland, has in fact been completely
obstructed--not even getting a hearing, not even getting a vote of any
kind. That might be the most glaring and egregious example of
obstruction. So when it comes to Judge Garland and his consideration to
be a member of the Supreme Court, I hope our Republican colleagues
would simply do their job. That is what the Constitution tells us we
must do. The Constitution says advise and consent, not advise and
consent when you feel like it or when it is politically expedient.
One last point about the judiciary, in terms of how essential it is
to our democracy, is that we pride ourselves as a nation having a
judiciary which is independent--separate from the legislative branch,
separate from the executive branch--an independent and in fact coequal
branch of government, not an institution that is the instrument of one
party, especially the party in power.
So when it comes to Judge Garland, we simply ask Republican Senators
to do their job: allow a hearing, conduct a hearing, ask a lot of
questions, and then have a vote on Judge Garland to be a Justice.
On district court nominees, it is as simple as agreeing to what has
already been agreed to; that all these candidates are of the highest
caliber and they are through the Judiciary Committee. All we need now
is for folks in the Senate to come together and make a collective
decision to move these district court judges forward.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Will the Senator withhold his
suggestion of an absence of a quorum?
Mr. CASEY. Yes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania,
Senator Casey, for bringing to the attention of this body the fact that
we have not met our constitutional responsibility in the advice and
consent of appointments made by the President to the courts.
I think we all understand the challenge on the Supreme Court of the
United States, where the failure to hold a hearing on Judge Garland,
basically saying the President's term is no longer 4 years but 3 years
in an election year, makes no sense at all. We have all been talking
about that, but as Senator Casey pointed out, this is now becoming a
matter for our district courts.
Let me share with my colleagues. This past week, I went by the U.S.
District Court in Greenbelt, MD, and had a chance to talk with some of
the judges who were there. They were telling me there is a serious
urgency to fill the vacancies on the Maryland District Court. We have
two vacancies on the Maryland District Court. One was appointed by the
President in March of last year, Paula Xinis, to fill the vacancy. We
have a judicial emergency in Maryland. The President did his job in
making the nomination in March of 2015. For reasons I don't quite
understand, it took 6 months before the Judiciary Committee reported
out that nomination, but they did. They reported it out in September
2015, 6 months later. This is not a controversial appointment. It
passed by voice vote out of the Judiciary Committee.
Paula Xinis is well qualified. She has clerked for judges. She has a
distinguished record in public service, public interest law as well as
in private law. I could go through her full record. I have done it
before, but Paula Xinis has now been waiting over a year for
consideration.
So I am sort of puzzled. Is the Republican leadership now telling us
that the term of a President is no longer 4 years but 2 years for the
appointment of district court judges? This is a noncontroversial
appointment that should have been confirmed well before now and is
still on the calendar. As my friend from Pennsylvania pointed out, when
we look at the number of actions this Congress has taken on President
Obama's appointments--17 confirmations by the Senate--compared to a
comparable number in 2008, when the Democrats controlled the Senate and
it was in the last 2 years of President Bush's term, 68 nominations
were filled in that year.
Currently, we have 20 nominations on the Executive Calendar waiting
for action that have been approved by noncontroversial votes of the
Judiciary Committee. The number of vacancies has increased in these 2
years from 43 to 79.
I know the distinguished leader is on the floor. I am hopeful we will
find a

[[Page S2655]]

way forward so we can act on some of these nominations.
Mr. President, I yield the floor to my colleague from Pennsylvania.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations:
Calendar No. 307, Calendar No. 357, Calendar No. 358, Calendar No. 359,
Calendar No. 362, Calendar No. 363, Calendar No. 364, Calendar No. 459,
Calendar No. 460, Calendar No. 461, Calendar No. 508; further, that the
Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the
nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be
considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or
debate; that no further motions be made in order to the nominations;
that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the
President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the
Senate then resume legislative session.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as I had noted before we left for
recess, the way to look at these judicial appointments is to talk about
apples and apples, not apples and oranges.
At this point in President Bush's 8 years, he had 303 judicial
nominations confirmed. President Obama so far has had 324. According to
my math, that is 21 more judges confirmed during the 8 years of
President Obama to this point than during the 8 years of President Bush
to this point.
That said, we are looking to see if we can set up another vote on a
judicial nominee, but until that process is complete, I object.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, as I pointed out to my colleagues, the
number of vacancies has increased during this term from 43 to 79. We
have judicial emergencies in our State and many States around the
Nation. So I am going to try a smaller number and see whether we can
get agreement on that.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session
to consider the following nominations: Calendar No. 307, Xinis;
Calendar No. 357, Martinotti; Calendar No. 358, Rossiter; Calendar No.
359, Stanton; that the Senate proceed to vote without intervening
action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that the
motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with
no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to
the nominations; that any related statements be printed in the Record;
that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and
the Senate then resume legislative session.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
The majority leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
As I indicated a moment ago, the way to measure a President's success
in getting judges confirmed is to compare two Presidencies--President
Bush, who was in office for 8 years, and President Obama, who will be
in office for 8 years--to this point. At this point, President Obama
has received 21 more judicial confirmations than President Bush did to
this point. So he has been treated very fairly.
Therefore, I object.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination:
Calendar No. 307, Paula Xinis, nominee for the District of Maryland;
that the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on
the nomination; the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid
upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further
motions be in order to the nomination; that any related statements be
printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of
the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, there are today 81 vacancies in our Federal
courts, 29 of which are judicial emergencies.
I note, with respect, that the majority leader has compared the
number of district court nominees confirmed under the previous
President and the current President; but, in my view, what matters most
is that there are 29 judicial emergencies in district courts across
this country and that there are 20 district court nominees who were
voted out of the Judiciary Committee on unanimous voice votes that
continue to await action on this floor--the one that I just sought a
unanimous consent for, Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland, and 19
others. At this point, 1\1/2\ years into this Congress, only 17 judges
have been confirmed to district courts in this United States, and last
year the Senate matched a record for confirming the fewest in more than
half a century--11 for the entire year.
What I am most concerned about is its impact on the operations of the
courts of the United States. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I
am frustrated and concerned. We have 24 nominees waiting for a hearing
in the committee as well; 7 of these nominees are to courts of appeals,
including AUSA Rebecca Ross Haywood, who has been nominated to serve on
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the appellate court
covering my home State of Delaware.
Then, of course, there are ongoing concerns about the vacancy on the
Supreme Court. It has been 55 days since President Obama nominated
Chief Judge Merrick Garland--a consensus candidate who was previously
confirmed to his seat on the DC Circuit by a bipartisan majority of the
previous Congress--to our Nation's highest Court.
Last week, a bipartisan group of former Solicitors General--Paul
Clement, Todd Olson, and Ken Starr, former SGs who have served in both
Republican and Democratic administrations--endorsed Judge Garland as
``superbly qualified,'' having ``demonstrated the temperament,
intellect, and experience to serve'' on the Supreme Court. I am gravely
concerned that we have sunk to a level in terms of the delays in
confirmation of qualified judicial nominees to the courts at all levels
in our country, that we are having a significant ongoing and negative
impact on the functioning of our courts and access to justice in this
country. Sadly, obstruction in this body has allowed too many of our
courts to grind to a halt on the important business of our Federal
judicial system. I believe it is time we do our jobs. There are vetted,
qualified Americans ready, willing, and able to serve in our Nation's
justice system. We should embrace their willingness to serve and let
them get to work.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, was there a unanimous consent request?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. No further consents are pending.
The Senator from Utah.

Remembering Robert F. Bennett

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to a man who was truly
a giant in my home State of Utah and in this institution, the U.S.
Senate.
He was a friend to everyone he met and someone whose life of service
to the people of Utah we celebrate. At the same time, we mourn his
passing: Senator Robert F. Bennett.
Senator Bennett loved the political arena. Though his heart was
always with his family in Utah, he spent many years working on Capitol
Hill in both the Senate and the House, and later as a congressional
liaison for the Department of Transportation. He also spent many years
in business, where his management abilities and his keen mind helped
build a successful corporation and earn him awards such as Inc.
Magazine's ``Entrepreneur of the Year.''
But Senator Bennett's true passion was for sound public policy, for
the development of good policy. He cared little about who wrote policy,
and he cared even less for who would get the credit for good policy. So
long as wise politics were enacted into law, he was

[[Page S2656]]

happy. That was his objective, and it was a noble one at that.

This was apparent to me after a memorable conversation I had with him
in 2010, just a few days before our State's Republican nominating
convention, at which we were both candidates. I was in the lobby of a
local radio and television station, waiting to go on the air and
watching the national news on a large television screen. I don't
remember the exact issue that was being discussed, but I remember the
general topic, and I will never forget what happened as I watched this
broadcast.
Senator Bennett walked into the lobby and, seeing me, simply strolled
over to stand next to me. To be honest, I was anticipating the type of
understandably awkward interaction that might occur between candidates
near the end of a heated political contest. Instead, with his
charismatic and characteristic charm and affability, he quickly put me
at ease by nodding toward the screen and saying rather diplomatically,
``You know, there's a pretty good chance that you will be the person
who has to deal with this issue.''
Having gracefully diffused the situation and diffused any tension
that might have otherwise been between us at that moment, he proceeded
to share some words of wisdom and personal insights, imparting to me
some of the lessons he had learned from his own experience on that
matter. It was clear to me that he had not only thought long and hard
about it but that he was ultimately less concerned with who addressed
the issue, less concerned with who would get credit for fixing the
problem, and more concerned with ensuring that the problem was dealt
with thoughtfully, wisely, and in a manner most likely to result in a
good outcome for the American people. In Senator Bennett's view, there
was no such thing as a political opponent; there were only potential
political allies.
Although Senator Bennett was a serious statesman, he was also one who
did not take himself too seriously. This is one of the many reasons
people everywhere were drawn to him. Many Utahns will remember his
flair for self-deprecating humor emblazoned on his campaign billboards
in 2004. Summarizing Senator Bennett's most distinctive qualities, one
billboard read: ``Bold. Brilliant. Beanpole.'' In a slight variation on
the same theme, another one of his billboards read: ``Big Heart. Big
Ideas. Big Ears.'' And perhaps everyone's favorite declared: ``Better
looking than Abraham Lincoln,'' adding parenthetically, ``just
barely.'' In the political arena, where inflated egos loom large, Bob
Bennett was a breath of fresh air.
Senator Bennett's command of public policy was legendary. He could
speak extemporaneously and at length on everything from the Federal
budget, to Utah's changing demographics, to business trends, and he
could do so without any notes.
He was a master storyteller, one who had the uncanny ability to
entertain and challenge his audience at the same time--the result of a
lifetime of learning and profound thinking. He always maintained an
open mind, never unwilling to rethink policy issues in light of new
information. These qualities are but a few of the reasons he was a
trusted colleague, and he was trusted by colleagues on both sides of
the aisle of this Chamber.
Although much has been written about his public and his political
accomplishments, there was a side to him that does not receive the
attention it probably deserves. A day in the life of a U.S. Senator is
often stressful and invariably unpredictable. Under such circumstances,
the likelihood of error is high, and as one of his staffers once told
me, ``There were plenty of times that scheduling mistakes were made,
and anger at us''--the staff--``certainly would have been justified.''
But these same staffers also said that in 18 years in the U.S. Senate,
they never saw Bob Bennett get angry or even so much as raise his voice
at any of his staff members. He was always kind, patient, and
understanding with them, and they were committed and loyal to him in
return. I am convinced that one of the reasons so many Members of the
Senate trusted Bob Bennett so completely was that they saw how his own
staff treated him and how he returned that trust.
I have been the beneficiary of the staff that he built. Some of my
very best staffers were those whom I hired from Senator Bennett's
office, who not only helped me get my office up and running but helped
keep it running efficiently and effectively as the trained
professionals they were, having been mentored by one of the greats of
this institution.
Senator Bennett was a man of the utmost integrity and was the same
calm, deliberate, and thoughtful person whether speaking in public or
speaking to close confidants. At 6 feet 6 inches, he towered over most
people, but that didn't prevent him from meeting people where they
were, treating everyone with dignity and respect, and exhibiting true
understanding and true compassion for all with whom he interacted.
Whether he was talking with ranchers in Iron County or consulting a
grieving parent visiting him in his Salt Lake office or debating the
Chairman of the Federal Reserve during a Banking Committee hearing, Bob
Bennett treated everyone the same--with kindness, respect, and concern.
He often quoted President Reagan's famous aphorism that ``there is no
limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who
gets the credit.'' But Senator Bennett didn't just recite those words;
he lived them. They were part of who he was and what he did.
On more than one occasion, he worked for months on end to craft a
legislative solution to a difficult issue, only to discover at the last
moment that the price of its passage would be to give all the credit to
someone else. Because his objective was--first and foremost--to make
sure the right thing was done, this was a price Senator Bennett was
always willing to pay. This was an obstacle from which he never shied
away. This was something that never deterred him from doing the right
thing.
Since the election of 2010, I have been asked countless times about
my relationship with Senator Bennett. My answer invariably reminds me
of the great privilege it is to serve the State of Utah in his seat.
Our conversations were always meaningful and focused on innovative
approaches to dealing with difficult and important policy issues. A
consummate statesman and a classic gentleman, he always made clear to
me that good policy is always good politics in the end.
Senator Bennett's achievements were numerous, and he will be
remembered for his tremendous impact on the State of Utah. However, I
am certain that if he were to make a list of his greatest
accomplishments, it would likely say nothing about his business
successes or his political endeavors. Rather, it would focus entirely
on his family--on his dear wife Joyce, the 6 children they raised
together, and on their 20 grandchildren.
Senator Bennett truly was, in every way, a giant. He was a man of
integrity, a man whose word was truly his bond, and a man who left both
the State of Utah and his country better than he found them. He was a
man who had a firm and unwavering commitment to his faith in God and
was true to that faith until the very end.
It is my hope and prayer that Senator Bennett's wife Joyce, his
children, and his grandchildren are comforted at this difficult time,
knowing that our State and our country are forever grateful for their
husband, father, and grandfather's exemplary life of service.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The majority whip.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague from Utah for
his generous remarks about our friend, Senator Bob Bennett. I had the
opportunity to serve with Senator Bennett for a number of years. Those
of us who are of a certain age, who were raised in the Star Wars
period--sometimes I think about Bob Bennett as the Jedi Master, the
Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the wise men of the Senate whom it has been my
pleasure to come to know and learn from. Certainly, we will miss him.
We send our very best wishes and condolences to Joyce and their entire
family, along with 20 grandchildren. It is a huge, wonderful family of
which I know he was very, very proud.

Working Together in the Senate and Criminal Justice and Mental Health
Reform

Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about the Senate's work
and what

[[Page S2657]]

we have been able to do and what we still have to do. In the past we
knew there had been an experiment, principally under the leadership of
the former majority leader, now the minority leader, Senator Reid, of
basically not allowing the Senate to function and not allowing
Senators, including Members of the majority party, to offer amendments,
lest people be forced to vote on things they later would be held
accountable for by the voters. What a concept that is.
In fact, we have seen a different approach at work under the
leadership of Senator McConnell, the Senate majority leader in the
114th Congress, over the last, roughly, year and a half. It is one
where everyone gets to participate, and when people have a better idea,
they are allowed to offer that by way of an amendment and constructive
proposal to improve legislation and to try to do what they can to build
consensus, to get legislation passed in the Senate and the House, and
get it on the President's desk. We are going to have differences. Of
course we are. But it is important that we try and that we not just
come here to make speeches and vote no on everything, but we actually
try to find some way of getting to yes, particularly where it doesn't
violate our principles and where we are able to make incremental
progress on the work we have been sent to do.
Fortunately, we have seen the Senate get back to work. We just
recently passed important legislation, such as the Energy Policy
Modernization Act--a bill that will update our country's energy
policies. This follows on the heels of a vote late last year where we
lifted the antiquated ban on crude oil exports. It is something to give
our domestic producers access to global prices for their products,
something that encourages domestic production and helps us become less
dependent on foreign imports and helps us help our friends and allies
around the world who are sometimes dependent for their source of energy
on some pretty unsavory characters who can cut it off, using energy as
a weapon. But, particularly, it is important in terms of getting
Americans back to work.
While the unemployment rate continues to tick down to roughly about 5
percent, the untold story is the percentage of people actually
participating in the workforce is at a 30-year low, and people have,
unfortunately, given up looking for work in too many instances, making
that 5-percent unemployment statistic a little bit misleading. We
learned again last week, I think it was, that our economy grew at 0.5
percent.
I remember when we used to talk around here about the economy growing
at 4 percent or 3 percent, at least. In other words, as population
increases, the only way more jobs get created is for our economy to
continue to grow. There are not a lot of problems that America has that
couldn't be made better by a growing economy. Unfortunately, we have
seen the negative consequences of some of the policies, particularly of
the executive branch when it comes to regulation, which have made that
very difficult. We have been making some progress in the Energy Policy
Modernization Act as part of that. It has passed consumer-friendly
legislation that will help people get access to energy help and provide
the incentives for them to conserve.
We have also done things such as pass a reauthorization of the
Federal Aviation Act, the FAA. That may not seem like a big deal
unless, of course, you fly in an airplane and care about safety. The
legislation we passed--I think the Senate has done that--has helped
regulate the growing number of remotely run aircraft or drones to make
sure those don't conflict with passenger planes, so those will be
safer. That is just another example.

We have also passed important legislation to deal with this
prescription drug abuse crisis. Many call it the opioid abuse crisis,
which happens too often. When people can't get access to the addictive
prescription painkilling drugs they have been prescribed, they turn to
the cheaper forms of addictive drugs such as heroin. We were able to
pass the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act back in March, and I
know the House of Representatives--I believe this week--is taking up
this same legislation. My hope is that we can continue to work together
to bring relief to those struggling with addictions and to help save
those who would otherwise suffer from a fatal overdose of drugs. We
still have a lot of work ahead of us.
We started the appropriations process last month, which I know has
been an enormous frustration to a lot of people. I remember all too
clearly, as the Presiding Officer does, the alternative, which was
doing it in a 12-step process. The regular appropriations process was
to do an omnibus appropriations bill at the end of the year, which is a
lousy way of doing business. We would have one bill that would spend
roughly $1 trillion. That process lacked the transparency and
accountability that necessarily goes into a step-by-step process, where
we move 12 separate appropriation bills across the floor. We all said
we wanted to do this. This basic work is done by the legislature so we
can pay the bills according to the limits we have agreed upon in terms
of spending, but we keep running into roadblocks.
Last night we had a vote to try to get back on the Water and Energy
appropriations bill. The obstacle appears to be that our friends on the
other side of the aisle don't want to vote on the germane amendment
that was offered by the Senator from Arkansas. As a result of their
objections to proceeding in the normal way to consider germane
amendments like that one, the fact is, the majority leader had to file
for cloture on that bill in order to guarantee that there will be a
vote on that amendment. Hopefully, once that is resolved, we will get
back on final passage of that appropriations bill and then move on to
the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill.
After that, I believe the plan is to move on to the VA-Military
Construction appropriations bill. In other words, it is not fancy work,
but it is our work, and it is something we should be doing in a
transparent and methodical sort of way.
These bills actually represent the fundamentals of legislating--the
sort of blocking and tackling. They include resources to fund our
military, which is something we all say we are for. We need to keep our
commitments to our veterans, which is a sacred obligation, and we need
to help provide the necessary infrastructure across our country. We
need to keep the folks who serve our country in diplomatic posts abroad
and those who protect our borders here at home safe. I hope we can
grind our way through this so we can take up and pass all 12
appropriations bills. The people who have elected us deserve that and
not some end-of-the-year mad dash to the finish line, where everybody
comes away pretty much dissatisfied by the process.
Beyond the appropriations process, I also want to point out some
important work being done at the committee level in the Senate. I serve
on the Judiciary Committee under the leadership of Chairman Chuck
Grassley from Iowa. At the end of April, I was proud to join a number
of my colleagues, on a bipartisan basis, to announce major proposals to
reform our criminal justice system. Back when I went to law school,
more years ago than I would like to recount, we were told the criminal
law was supposed to be used to punish people who violated the law, to
deter others who might be tempted to commit crimes in the future, and
to rehabilitate people who made a mistake and ended up in prison. My
experience and observation has been we have largely forgotten the
rehabilitation process.
Beginning in 2007, in Texas and other States, we began to provide
incentives for low-risk offenders who were in prison who, if given the
opportunity, would begin the process of turning their lives around.
They might be dealing with a drug or alcohol addiction or an education
deficit, such as the fellow I heard about when I was in a prison in
East Texas recently. The shop teacher at that prison said: I have guys
in my shop class in this prison who can't even read a ruler. How in the
world are they supposed to get a job on the outside? How in the world
are they supposed to turn their lives around once they get out of
prison? We simply seem to forget that people who are in prison will
usually get out of prison, and the only question is: How well equipped
will they be to work in civil society and to hopefully turn their lives
around and become productive members of society.

[[Page S2658]]

I am not naive enough to say or to think that everyone will take
advantage of those opportunities, but we know that many will take
advantage of those opportunities. That is not just conjecture, that is
based on the experience of States like Texas, Georgia, and North
Carolina.
As former attorney general and long-time Federal district judge in
New York, Michael Mukasey, said: The gold standard in terms of criminal
justice reform is the crime rate. I know there has been some discussion
about the incarceration rate, and some people want to talk about other
things, but he said the real question has to do with the crime rate. If
the crime rate is going down, you are doing something right. If the
crime rate is going up, you are doing something wrong. The good news is
the crime rates in places like Texas have gone down as a result of some
of these programs which help to prepare those who are willing to take
and accept this help so they can turn their lives around. It has also
helped us deal with the ballooning prison system cost. Indeed, in Texas
alone we have been able to shut down three prisons as a result of
reducing the population, slowing down and in many cases eliminating
this turnstile, where people go to prison, get out, commit other
crimes, and end up right back in prison again. This is an example of
criminal justice reform which I know the President is for.
There is another component of sentencing reform which I think very
sensibly deals with some of the mandatory prison sentences that were
passed many years ago with the best intentions but some of which have
really overshot the mark. The most important element, when it comes to
a criminal sentence, is the certainty of the sentence, not the length
of the sentence. Again, Judge Mukasey, former Attorney General of the
United States said: Many times people who commit crimes have impulse-
control problems, and they are not thinking about what is going to
happen to them 25 years from now or 50 years from now. They are
thinking about what will happen to them next week, today, or later
tomorrow. So I believe the certainty of punishment is a more important
consideration than the length of the punishment.
It may make some people feel good to say we are going to put somebody
away for the rest of their lives, and in some instances that is the
appropriate punishment, but when it involves a nonviolent offense and
they are stacking mandatory sentences in a way that is disproportionate
to the offense that was committed, I think it is appropriate to
consider changing the mandatory minimum sentencing.
We also created a safety valve. Nobody who is currently in prison
gets the benefit of the changes in the mandatory minimum sentences
without appearing in front of the same Federal district judge who
sentenced that person to prison in the first place. That Federal
district judge will be able to not only consider the circumstances of
the crime but the postconviction and postincarceration conduct as well
as the comments and input of any victims of the crime. This way they
can determine--based on all of the circumstances--whether you ought to
be given the benefit of that reduced mandatory minimum sentence. It is
not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It gives that person a right to be
considered by a Federal district judge as long as it does not involve a
serious crime as defined by Federal law. We categorically excluded that
to make sure this is focused primarily on nonviolent offenders, those
who are least likely to put the community at risk.
There is one other area that I think we have an opportunity to work
on and perhaps succeed with because there seems to be no real objection
to the idea; that is, how to deal with people who have mental illness
in our society. Back in the old days, people with mental illness used
to be put in institutions. They were basically locked up and the key
was thrown away. Well, we know that didn't work very well. It was
basically warehousing people with mental illness. Someone had the idea
to deinstitutionalize those with mental illness. That way they would
get to live in the community and would then receive the sort of
followup help, assistance, and care they needed in order to maximize
their potential, whatever it might be. It was good in theory, but after
the deinstitutionalization took place, people ended up living in the
streets--the homeless whom all of us see. They are obviously mentally
ill, but they live on the streets or end up in our criminal justice
system because they are not getting the treatment that might help them
to become more adaptive and productive.
I told this story before, and I will repeat it briefly now. I have a
friend who is the sheriff of Bexar County, in San Antonio, TX. While at
a meeting recently here in Washington, DC, he said: How would you like
to meet the largest mental health provider in America. I said: Sure.
She said: Let me introduce you to the sheriff of Los Angeles County. In
other words, the person who runs the LA County jail. In addition to the
homeless who are living on our streets or crowding our emergency rooms
with a variety of illnesses--real and imagined--a large number of
people end up in our jails.
Thanks to great innovative programs like that in Bexar County, San
Antonio, TX, and as a result of what Sheriff Pamerleau and others have
done, we began to address the problem at its root and are making sure
that people who need help are not just warehoused in jail but are
actually diverted to a treatment facility. I have introduced
legislation which I think might help the situation, and that is called
the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act. The fact is, Adam Lanza's
mother--Adam Lanza was the shooter at Sandy Hook who stole his mother's
gun, killed his own mother, and then went on to murder those poor,
innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary School--basically had two
choices: One is she could seek an involuntary, temporary commitment to
a mental institution, after which he gets out, he is angry at her,
their relationship deteriorates even more, and she has nowhere else to
turn or we could have a mechanism where she could go to a civil court
and ask a judge to enter a court order requiring her son to undergo
outpatient treatment, to make sure he saw a psychologist or mental
health professional and was actually compliant with the doctor's orders
in terms of taking his medication.
One of the biggest problems in the mental health area is that people
will simply start to feel better and then quit taking their medicine.
As a result, they end up becoming sicker and sicker and sicker. In Adam
Lanza's case--because his mother really didn't have any mechanism to
make him comply with his doctor's order to take his medication--he
basically became more and more mentally ill until this tragedy
occurred. I am not saying this would have necessarily prevented that
tragedy, but I think it would provide another tool that loved ones can
use, and I believe need, when a member of their family suffers from
symptoms of mental illness and simply refuses to deal with it and
comply with their doctor's orders.
This month is actually National Mental Health Awareness Month, and it
is an appropriate time for us to talk not only about the solution--or
at least something that will improve the status quo, when it comes to
mental illness in our country--but it is also a time to educate people
about mental health issues and to highlight ongoing efforts and to
support those who are struggling.
I dare to say that there is not a single family in America that is
not affected by this problem or, perhaps, if it is not an immediate
family member, then it is somebody they know or somebody with whom they
live in the community. So we have a lot of work to do.
Criminal justice reform and mental health reform are two issues that
are absolutely the opposite of partisan; they are nonpartisan issues.
There are issues where people have different points of view, and that
is fine. Let's see where we can build consensus and what things we may
have to leave for future legislation. The basic point is that, even
though the media is obsessed with what is happening in the Presidential
race and the primaries on both sides, we have been able to continue to
do the people's work here. There is a lot to be done, and, frankly,
there is a lot more that we can do. But we have an opportunity to build
on nearly a year and a half of a strong bipartisan record of
accomplishment, one

[[Page S2659]]

that has benefitted both those in the majority and the minority.
Frankly, the focus shouldn't be on us--on who is up and who is down--
but on what we are able to do together to pass legislation that helps
the American people.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The Administration's Policies in the Middle East

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, we all know that the Obama
administration's 8 years in office is beginning to wind down. As it
does, as is natural for a President ending his time in office, the
President and the members of his team are starting to focus on their
legacy and on how they want to be remembered.
Now with regard to this administration's policies in the Middle East,
unfortunately for them, the legacy and narrative that is beginning to
take hold is one of not leveling with the American people--not one of
honesty. That should concern all of us--all of us in this body, whether
Democrats or Republicans.
When the President of the United States is in open disagreement with
the Secretary of Defense and with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff on one of the most critical issues our Nation faces--whether to
send our sons and daughters into combat--it should be cause for
significant concern for all of us in this body and across the country.
President Obama has repeatedly told the American people that U.S.
troops in the Middle East are not in combat. In 2010, he announced that
we were ``ending our combat mission in Iraq,'' and in 2014, he used the
same words to talk about Afghanistan. More recently, he said that our
mission in Syria ``will not involve American combat troops fighting on
foreign soil.''
Yet, just less than 2 weeks ago, in a Senate Armed Services Committee
hearing, when Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford, were asked if our troops in the
Middle East, Syria, and Iraq are engaged in combat, these two senior
U.S. officials unequivocally said: Yes, they are. To the members of our
military serving overseas, particularly in the Middle East, Secretary
Carter and General Dunford were stating the obvious. Indeed, there have
been recent news reports in the Washington Post and in the Military
Times that describe up to 200 Marines at a place called Fire Base Bell
in northern Iraq, firing artillery missions on a daily basis in support
of Iraqi troops in order to kill ISIS terrorists. Our soldiers serving
in the Middle East as part of the Joint Special Operations Command
conduct regular counterterrorism missions to kill and capture
terrorists in the Middle East. Of course, we see on a daily basis our
brave pilots from all the different services, who have dropped
approximately 40,000 bombs in Iraq and Syria in close air support
missions, focused on destroying and killing ISIS members and their
infrastructure and their logistics bases.
Since 2014, almost 1,200 bombs and close air support missions have
been conducted in Afghanistan. Just yesterday, we were informed of a
successful strike--again, a coalition strike with fighter aircraft--
that killed three ISIS leaders.
These missions have entailed risk. Some of the members of our
military have been killed and others have been wounded, but there is no
doubt that all of what I have just described is the very definition of
combat. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff have both stated this.
Indeed, in a lead editorial in the Military Times on Friday entitled
``It's a combat mission, Mr. President,'' the editorial concluded by
saying:

When U.S. and allied troops are on Islamic State turf with
the mission of wiping it from existence, they are on a combat
mission. Calling it anything else is wrong.

To Secretary Carter's credit, at a hearing last week, he agreed and
stated unequivocally that ``these [members of our military] are in
combat . . . and I think we need to say that clearly.''
This is the Secretary of Defense. Well, apparently the White House
didn't get the memo. Last week, when asked about a very brave Navy SEAL
who unfortunately was killed in a fierce firefight involving U.S.
Special Operations forces, Kurdish commandos, and Islamic State
fighters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that ``the
relatively small number of U.S. servicemembers that are involved in
these operations are not in combat but are in a dangerous place.''
That is the White House--``relatively small'' and ``not in combat.''
Why does President Obama and his White House continue to peddle the
fiction that U.S. forces are not engaged in combat? That is a really
important question that we need to be asking. Why? The whole world
knows that we are. Why are they peddling this fiction to the American
people?
Perhaps the Commander in Chief is truly unaware that our military
forces are in combat, and there are hundreds of them that are. If that
is the case, that would be very troubling indeed. What is more likely
is that the President has told the American people repeatedly that he
will end wars and won't send combat troops to the Middle East, and so
the word contortions coming from the White House are part of the
twisted attempt to salvage and protect the President's legacy. But by
spinning the truth for political purposes, the President is coming
perilously close to leaving a legacy of dishonesty when it comes to our
military involvement in the Middle East.
Much more worrisome, this dishonesty comes with a cost. First and
foremost, it diminishes the service and sacrifice of our troops and
their families. Again, in the Military Times editorial on this very
topic, on Friday it stated:

Calling it a training mission [in the Middle East] is cold
comfort to the parents, spouses and children of the deployed
troops. . . . The more the White House insists these troops
are not part of a combat mission, the more distrust it breeds
in the ranks [of our military] and among the public. It's
viewed as the sort of condescending semantics Washington
plays to deny the obvious. That can only serve to erode
support for the [important] mission.

Americans serving in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan know that they are
in combat. The Commander in Chief needs to acknowledge this fact and
the bravery it entails and not disguise the true nature of their duty.
Second, the costs that come with this dishonesty is that it further
undermines the administration's very tenuous foreign policy credibility
regarding its stated goal of degrading and destroying ISIS. While this
is the correct goal, a series of missteps in the Middle East, including
the President's failure to enforce his own redline when it was crossed
by Bashar al-Assad in Syria has brought us to the point where our
adversaries and our allies question U.S. credibility and resolve.
Islamic State terrorists know that they are in combat against American
forces. They see it every day. But when the President says otherwise,
it signals a lack of conviction, making it harder for us to defeat
these terrorists.
Third, this dishonesty about the role of our troops allows
Presidential candidates to duck a tough issue. For example,
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said--
unchallenged by anyone, including in the media--that she would continue
the President's policies of not sending combat troops to Syria and
Iraq. But the President is sending combat troops to Syria and Iraq.
Finally, and more broadly, by playing fast and loose with the facts
about our policies in the Middle East, the Obama administration is
making it harder to gain congressional support for its policy. I
strongly believe that when the executive branch and the legislative
branch on national security and foreign policy issues are in agreement
and working together, that is when we are strongest as a country. I
have been critical of this administration's policies in certain areas
and supportive in others. If Congress feels like the administration is
being played and the American public is not getting the courtesy of the
truth, support in this body for these important policies will crumble.
We saw an extreme example of this over the weekend in a remarkable
New York Times Magazine piece about the

[[Page S2660]]

President's Deputy National Security Advisor, who is credited with
selling the Iran nuclear deal to Congress and the American people. We
see line after line in a very lengthy article about not leveling with
the American people on that deal, which we debated here on the Senate
floor.
Let me give you a couple of quotes from that article. One is just how
they sold the deal. Now I am quoting the article.

The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the
Iran deal presented--that the Obama administration began
seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to
take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came
about in 2013 because of elections that brought moderates to
power in that country--was largely manufactured [by the White
House] for the purpose of selling the deal.

So here we have White House officials saying they manufactured a
story to sell the nuclear deal to the Congress and the American people.
Another quote talked about a speech the President gave on the deal--a
very important speech--and it says:

While the President's statement and speech was technically
accurate--

This is about the timing of the negotiations--

it was also actively misleading.

So again a top White House official is pretty much admitting that he
was fabricating a narrative to get the American people and the Congress
of the United States to ``sell'' and ``buy off'' on the Iran deal.
You know, reading this article, one gets the sense that to some of
the people in the White House, this is all a game. Facts don't matter,
but cleverness does. The quotes in the article from young White House
officials are almost gleeful when they recount how they sold the
nuclear deal to ``clueless reporters''--any of the press listening, I
hope you like that adjective--and Members of Congress and how the White
House created an ``echo chamber'' and were the puppet masters,
literally putting words in the mouths of Members of Congress and
reporters to sell this deal.
My colleagues should read this article. Again, it is like a game.
But, of course, this is not a game. All of this--American troops in
combat, whether the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism should
obtain a nuclear weapon--this is not a game. This is a deadly serious
reality.
I was reminded of this serious reality this past week when I spent
much of my recess with the assessment and selection team of the Marine
Corps' Special Operations Command. It wasn't clever 30-somethings with
fine arts degrees out in the field, working on little sleep, but 20-
somethings of all backgrounds, from every corner of America, going
through some of the most rigorous military training possible. Some of
these young marines will make the cut for Special Operations Command
and others won't, but all are striving for the honor of defending their
Nation during challenging times. No doubt in due time many will be
heading to the Middle East and other parts of the world, doing their
duty to keep us safe.
The Obama administration owes these brave young Americans the truth,
not spin. The Obama administration owes Congress the truth, not spin.
The Obama administration certainly owes the American people the truth,
not spin. The sooner the President and his White House start leveling
with the American people about our roles and our policies in the Middle
East, the better it will be for all of us.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, before I give my intended remarks and
while the Senator from Alaska is still on the floor, let me just share
with him--although I probably would not have used some of the
pejorative terms, let me agree with him that this distinction that has
been made between combat troops and noncombat troops in the Middle East
is ridiculous.
We need a more fulsome discussion on the floor of the Senate as to
the scope of our deployment there. We just heard evidence last week
that we have U.S. troops on the ground in Yemen in addition to Iraq and
Syria. Frankly, the appropriate forum to have that discussion is a
debate on an authorization of the use of military force to fight our
enemies in the region.
So, while I might not share the way in which the sentiments were
expressed, I think that this conversation about brave men and women--
American soldiers--putting their lives on the line as we speak in the
Middle East is as important as it gets. The fact that we are not having
a broader discussion about this is deeply problematic. So I thank the
Senator for raising the issue. I hope it is something on which we can
come together as we provide legal cover and perhaps restrictions on the
use of force in the region. So I thank the Senator for bringing up this
important subject.

Gun Violence

Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the 21,000 people a
year, 2,600 a month, 86 a day--these are rough numbers--who are killed
by guns all across the country. A lot of the kids who grow up in
neighborhoods like the North End of Hartford or the East End of
Bridgeport--it feels like a war zone because they fear for their life
every day as they are walking to school. The levels of PTSD--when
virtually every one of these kids knows someone very close to them who
has been shot, it rivals the diagnoses that come back from war zones
abroad.
Today, in my campaign to try to bring the voices of victims to the
floor of the Senate, I want to talk about one aspect of this epidemic
that is all across the country; that is, the epidemic of young children
being killed accidentally by guns. The numbers are really hard to
believe, that in this country, in any one given year, there are
somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 children and teens who die from guns
in the United States. That does not even count all of the kids who
suffer nonfatal gun injuries; in 2010, the official number was about
18,000. There is a lot of reporting that suggests that the numbers we
know are dramatically lower than what the actual numbers are, that
there are a lot of injuries that happen in the home because of guns
that are not reported as part of the official statistics.
Here are just a handful of headlines from recent papers, including
this New York Times headline: ``One Week in April, Four Toddlers Shot
and Killed Themselves.''
On average, last year, in 2015, people were getting shot by toddlers
on a weekly basis. I think it is time that we start talking about this
epidemic of young kids--as young as 1 or 2 years old--getting their
hands on weapons and either killing themselves or killing their parents
or their brothers or their sisters and that we start talking about the
fact that this is not happening anywhere else in the world.
Here are the rates of gun deaths per 100,000--this is children and
teens. We are going to take high-income countries. I mean, it is not
close. Canada, our neighbor, is the next highest with 0.75 per 100,000,
but 3.24 children and teens die from gun homicides, gun deaths--
accidental, intentional--every year. Other countries barely register.
There is nothing unique about the nature of American children that
explains this away. The only thing that can explain this is the large
number of unsafe weapons that are available to children. So I want to
talk for a little bit today about what is happening out there.
Here is the broader number. On average, every day 46 people are shot
or killed by accident with a gun. In 2015 there were at least 278
unintentional shootings at the hands of young children and teenagers.
So these are young kids and teenagers unintentionally firing a weapon.
We know there are at least 278. The New York Times found that
unintentional shootings occurred roughly twice as often as the records
indicate because of idiosyncrasies in terms of how such deaths from
accidental shootings are classified.
We know there are about 1.7 million children and youth under the age
of 18 who are living in homes with loaded and unlocked firearms. Some
1.7 million kids are in homes with loaded and unlocked firearms. A
Harvard survey showed that children who live in gun-owing households,
by a rate of 70 percent--these are kids under the age of 10--70 percent
of kids under the age of 10 who live in households that have a gun knew
where their parents stored the guns, even when they were hidden, and 36
percent of those kids under 10 years old reported that they themselves
had handled the weapons. One

[[Page S2661]]

out of three kids under 10 had found the weapon and had handled the
gun. One analysis found that 70 percent of unintentional child deaths
from firearms could have been prevented if that firearm had simply been
stored, locked, or unloaded.
So this is a part of the story of gun violence in this country that
does not often get talked about, but given this one horrific week we
had in April, maybe we can have a conversation about what we can do to
try to reduce the number of accidental shootings that happen at the
hands of little kids. My goal in these speeches is to tell you who
these victims are, so, as hard as it is, let me tell you a little bit
about some of the children who passed away in this week during April.
Holston Cole was a 3-year-old from Dallas, GA, who shot himself with
his father's loaded gun on April 26. The gun, according to his father,
was located in a backpack. Holston removed it from the backpack and
then accidentally fired the weapon. Autopsy results confirmed that the
shot was both accidental and self-inflicted. After the gun fired,
Holston's father called 911. I wouldn't recommend that you listen to
the recording. You will hear the father wailing: ``No, no! Stay with
me, Holston. Can you hear me? Daddy loves you. Holston. Holston,
please. Please.''
This was a kid who was full of energy from morning until night, as
his relatives described. His pastor, who officiated Holston's funeral,
remembered Holston as a boy who loved superheroes and sometimes
wrestled cardboard boxes. He loved to play in small, inflatable bouncy
castles whenever he could.
Sha'Quille Kornegay was 2 years old when, on April 21, in Kansas
City, MO, she died after accidentally shooting herself in the head with
her father's gun. She had been taking a nap with her father when she
found the gun under a pillow on the bed, where her father generally
kept it. Her father woke up from the nap to Sha'Quille by his bed
bleeding and crying, the gun at her feet. Sha'Quille's mother was
devastated by her daughter's loss and noted that the daughter's first
word was ``daddy.'' She was buried in a pink coffin, her favorite doll
by her side and a tiara strategically placed to hide the self-inflicted
gunshot wound to her forehead.
Finally, and I promise I will stop, Kiyan Shelton, 2 years old, same
week, Indianapolis, IN, shot and killed himself with a handgun that he
found in his mother's purse. She had briefly stepped away when the
toddler climbed on to the kitchen counter and reached for his mother's
purse, where her cell phone was ringing, and he found the weapon. He
fired the weapon, and he was wounded in his shoulder. In critical
condition, he was quickly taken to a nearby hospital, but he died
shortly thereafter.
A neighbor who lived across the street remembered that Kiyan had just
learned how to ride a bicycle. He was out on his little bike with
training wheels. Everybody knew his mother used to keep watch of the
stray dogs in the neighborhood, trying to keep her son safe. He was 2
years old. He died because he was reaching for a ringing cell phone in
his mom's bag and shot himself.

There is a way to solve this. I know we are not supposed to have
props on the floor, but this is a cell phone. It opens and closes based
on my fingerprint. There is technology ready and available to make sure
that a weapon can only be fired by the owner of that weapon. Yet there
is a pretty open conspiracy in the gun industry today to prevent that
technology from becoming available to consumers. Smith & Wesson tried.
They tried to develop a smart weapon, but they were boycotted. They
were boycotted by the rest of the gun industry. When retailers have
tried to sell smart guns in their stores, they have faced boycotts
regularly and in some cases even threats of physical violence.
It doesn't make sense to most people. Why on Earth would the gun
industry not want--or the gun lobby not want safe guns to be an option,
to be available? From what I understand, it is rooted in a law that was
passed a decade ago by New Jersey that says if smart-gun technology is
developed, it will be mandatory. First, that is one State's law, so
there is no national conspiracy to mandate that every single gun be a
smart gun. But let's play this out. Let's say that technology was
developed so that you could ensure that no gun could be fired if it
wasn't fired by you or another authorized user of the gun. I think it
would be logical for us to have a conversation as to whether that
should be mandatory. Maybe we won't develop technology that is fail-
safe enough. Maybe it will always make sense to have that as an option.
But when we figured out how to make cars safer, we required that
technology to be built in as a part of the car.
I don't think we are to the point where we could discuss making that
technology mandatory on guns, but I wouldn't suggest that it should be
something we should rule out. To the extent that a retailer or a
gunmaker wants to invest in understanding how to make a gun more fail-
safe, how to build in this kind of technology--whether it be your
fingerprint or other biometrics, other guns connected to a wristband
that you may wear--they should be able to sell those. They should be
able to make them without facing reprisals from the rest of the gun
lobby and the gun industry.
Shouldn't we try to do something to prevent these deaths, one every
week last year? That is just people who were shot by toddlers, in
addition to the dozens more children who accidentally injured or killed
themselves with a weapon.
I struggle to try to figure out the ways in which we can come
together on this issue. I certainly understand there are difficult
compromises on issues like the prohibition of certain weapons. But
smart-gun technology is something on which we should be able to come
together.
The President has taken steps on his own. He has started a process by
which Federal agencies would help to stimulate research in smart-gun
technology, maybe with the goal of a pilot program being developed at a
law enforcement agency to try to buy some of these weapons. The
President has taken steps on his own, but we could do something
together, and we should because it is only a problem here. It is not a
problem anywhere else. To me, that has to tell us that we are doing it
wrong and that there is something more we can do so that this reality--
that U.S. children and teens are 17 times more likely to die from a gun
than children in the 25 other high-income countries combined--isn't a
reality for much longer. If there is anything we could do to stop there
from being another Kiyan, another Sha'Quille, and another Holston, we
should do it.
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. WHITEHOUSE. 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. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
allowed to speak as in morning business for up to 20 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Climate Change

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today I rise for the 136th time in my
series of speeches on the continuing threat of global climate change.
Real science--the peer-reviewed kind--continues to prove the
established connection between carbon pollution and the startling
changes we see in our climate and oceans, changes that are so profound
that we will leave to our children and grandchildren a world very
different from the one we knew growing up. Nonetheless, powerful fossil
fuel interests still willfully spread disinformation about climate
science. There are obvious similarities between the fossil fuel
industry's denial of its products' climate effects and the tobacco
industry's denial of its products' health effects. These similarities
are sufficient that a proper inquiry should be made about pursuing a
civil lawsuit like the one the Justice Department brought and won
against Big Tobacco.

I have made that suggestion and, wow, did that set off an outburst.
The rightwing climate denial outfits and the fossil fuel industry
mouthpieces went into high gear. I think there were about 100
spontaneous reactions to my

[[Page S2662]]

Washington Post op-ed and to a related question that I asked Attorney
General Lynch. This outburst was interesting. There was usually only a
degree or two of separation between the outlets and mouthpieces engaged
in this outburst and the fossil fuel industry. Most of the arguments
were the same, with the same telling falsehoods, omissions, and
oversights. Among these misstatements, various outlets said that the
aim of any such investigation would be to ``silence climate
dissidents'' and squelch ``independent thought''; indeed, that such an
inquiry would be ``an affront to the scientific method.'' Any
investigation of fraud would be an attack on science.
Well, maybe if most of your science is fraud, you see things that
way, but the charge is just not true in any ordinary sense of the words
involved. And the language was nearly hysterical. I was the Grand
Inquisitor Torquemada and mighty ExxonMobil was lonely Galileo; the
State attorneys general were involved in a ``Soviet-style
investigation'' and ``gangster government.'' Oh, it was big talk
indeed.
It does raise this question: If the Wall Street Journal editorial
page and the other fossil fuel industry mouthpieces were such resolute
guardians of the scientific method, where were they when actual peer-
reviewed climate scientists were investigated and harassed and bullied
for doing their jobs? We took a look, and here is what you see from the
mouthpieces: possible civil investigation of the fossil fuel industry,
massive indignation, actual investigations of legitimate climate
scientists, silent equanimity.
Here is some of the history. This February, the chairman of the House
Science Committee issued a government subpoena to NOAA Administrator
Kathy Sullivan, seeking to investigate NOAA scientists' deliberative
materials. And this was not the first time. The chairman issued a
previous government subpoena against NOAA scientists after the journal
Science published a NOAA report debunking the fossil-fuel-funded
climate deniers' contention that global warming had paused. So the
junior Senator from Rhode Island mentions a possible inquiry into
fossil fuel industry fraud, and industry mouthpieces go ape. The
committee chairman actually issues subpoenas against scientists and not
a peep.
In 2005, the former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee thought to investigate the personal emails of a climate
scientist after he published a study showing the rapid increase in
global temperatures. This investigative effort was so rank that even
fellow Republicans objected. Sherwood Boehlert, then a Republican
Congressman from New York, expressed his ``strenuous objections'' to
the chairman's ``misguided and illegitimate investigation.'' Even with
that public warning of a misguided and illegitimate investigation
against scientists, there was not a peep from the mouthpieces.
In 2010, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia launched an
investigation against a University of Virginia faculty member--a
climate scientist, of course. The Attorney General served the
University of Virginia with a series of civil investigative demands to
produce documents related to the work of the offending UVA faculty
member. Well, to its credit, UVA refused, and won a multiyear legal
battle with the Attorney General that went all the way to the Virginia
Supreme Court.
Again, attorneys general consider investigating the fossil fuel
industry, and all the mouthpieces go ape. An actual attorney general
harasses an actual climate scientist to the point where the university
has to send its lawyers to defend him, and from the mouthpieces, there
was not a peep through all those years of litigation.
In 2011, as the Cuccinelli investigation was underway, an oil
industry front group called the American Tradition Institute, which is
now known as the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, doubled down and
sought identical materials from UVA through a Freedom of Information
Act request. Again, UVA objected, and in 2014 the Supreme Court of
Virginia unanimously threw that out, too, based on--and I quote the
Supreme Court of Virginia--``the concept of academic freedom and the
interest in protecting research.''
So you suggest an investigation of the industry, and the denial
apparatus goes ape. But here an industry front group actually went out
to investigate climate scientists in a way that caused the Supreme
Court of Virginia to call in the concept of academic freedom against
them. And they are still at it. Despite the UVA loss in court, the
Energy & Environment Legal Institute has since filed FOIA requests
against scientists at NASA, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, the University of
Alabama in Huntsville, the University of Delaware, and the University
of Arizona. That is some double standard.
In 2009, a hacker stole more than 1,000 emails and 3,000 other
documents from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in
Britain who were working on a United Nations report on climate change.
Naturally, the climate denial apparatus went to work to select passages
from the emails to assert that the climate scientists manipulated data.
This turned out after multiple--yes--investigations to be false. Six
official investigations ensued, clearing everyone of any wrongdoing: a
three-part Penn State University investigation, two separate reviews
commissioned by the University of East Anglia, a United Kingdom
Parliamentary report, an investigation by the NOAA inspector general's
office, and an investigation by the National Science Foundation's
inspector general's office.
Throughout all of these investigations of the climate scientists, was
there a peep of concern out of these mouthpieces about investigative
intrusion on science? Nope.
Here in this Chamber, a Senator, then the ranking member on the
Environment and Public Works Committee, our senior Senator from
Oklahoma, publicly called for a criminal investigation into American
and British scientists who had worked on the U.N. report or had
communications with the University of East Anglia's Climate Research
Unit. The Senator claimed that scientific data ``was contrived and
fabricated'' and that ``in an attempt to conceal the manipulation of
climate data, information disclosure laws may have been violated.'' He
even named 17 key players in the controversy, including--wouldn't you
know it--that UVA scientist who had been the subject of harassment by
the attorney general. His staff report suggested that the scientists
violated fundamental ethical principles and ``may have violated Federal
law.'' He called scientists at the Climate Research Unit ``scientists
who commit crimes.''
Wow. There you go--a Senator calling for criminal investigation of
actual climate scientists. That must have set these mouthpieces
squawking about the intrusion of investigation into science; right?
Well, actually, no. Again, there was not a peep of concern.
Mr. President, climate science constantly finds itself in the
crosshairs of a climate denial apparatus that has an ugly side.
InsideClimate News reports climate scientists often face death threats,
vituperation, claims of fraud, and other forms of intimidation. And
science is starting to look at that denial apparatus. Sound, peer-
reviewed academic work shows how a carefully built apparatus of
disinformation has been misleading the public and policymakers about
the risks of carbon. That is scientific work. Sound, peer-reviewed
academic scientific work shows how disinformation campaigns, funded by
fossil fuel interests, have sowed doubt about climate science and have
been effective in shaping American public opinion.
A recent study by 16 scientists, including John Cook of the
University of Queensland, Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University, and
Peter Doran of Louisiana State University, examined the discrepancy
between what the public thinks and what scientists know about climate
change, and they found ``the consensus that humans are causing recent
global warming is shared by 90-100 percent of publishing climate
scientists.'' Why the gap in public recognition from what the
scientists know? Because of a persistent effort ``manufacturing doubt
about the scientific consensus on climate change.''
Part of the work of this denial apparatus has been to harass and
investigate climate scientists over and over and over again. So when
these mouthpieces with one or two degrees of separation from the fossil
fuel industry

[[Page S2663]]

have an outburst about the sanctity of science from any investigation,
well, that deserves an eyebrow. And when the only time their concern
for scientific integrity appears is when an investigation might look at
the fossil fuel industry, but they are quiet as mice whenever actual
climate scientists are being investigated, well, that merits further
skepticism.
There are a lot of reasons why the scientific integrity argument
doesn't apply to a fraud investigation of the fossil fuel industry and
its front groups. Actually, there are too many reasons for me to go
into here and now in the allotted time. But here is the bottom line.
No. 1, the argument is a phony, designed to protect from investigation
an industry that may well have engaged in deliberate fraud on a massive
scale. No. 2, the clamor is phony, whipped up a hundredfold but through
industry mouthpieces. And, No. 3, the sincerity is completely phony
because the mouthpieces have had nothing to say for years, when real
climate scientists were actually investigated. They only swung into
action when the possibility emerged that the fossil fuel industry may
have to face investigation for fraud.
There is a wooden cross in faraway Antarctica memorializing the Scott
expedition to the South Pole. It is carved with the closing line from
Alfred Lord Tennyson's ``Ulysses'': ``To strive, to seek, to find, and
not to yield.''
To the real physicists, chemists, oceanographers, meteorologists,
geologists, and climatologists actually engaged in climate science, let
me say, you embody this spirit of discovery and perseverance. The real
scientists have not shrunk in the face of fossil fuel threats,
investigations, and intimidation. The fossil fuel campaign of denial
has not stymied the flow of new climate research nor dimmed the fervor
with which the real climate scientists pursue and share their
knowledge. These men and women--hardworking and often unsung--deserve
our praise, and, after some of the nonsense they have been put through,
they probably also deserve an apology. But right now they must be
looking on in wonderment--and, I hope, with some wry humor--at the
sudden outburst of newfound concern from fossil fuel mouthpieces for
the so-called sanctity of the scientific process. Of all the people to
make that claim, this crew has the least business making it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). The Senator from Arkansas.

Tribute to Mary Lorraine Wood Borman

Mr. COTTON. Madam President, today I would like to honor Mary
Lorraine Wood Borman, of Fayetteville, AR, as this week's Arkansan of
the Week for her commitment to the National Down Syndrome Society as a
self-advocate ambassador for the great State of Arkansas. Her advocacy
to improve the quality of life for those living with Down syndrome is
noteworthy, and she is a joy and inspiration to many across the State.
Outside her work as an activist, Mary is an involved and
multitalented junior at Fayetteville High School in Fayetteville, AR.
Not only does she excel academically--as indicated by her track record
as an honor roll student--but she is also a gifted athlete and has won
awards in swimming events at the Arkansas State Special Olympics for 3
years. Mary is also a talented dancer and actress, specializing in hip-
hop, jazz, and the waltz.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Mary when she visited my
Washington, DC, office while in town for the Buddy Walk, hosted each
year by the National Down Syndrome Society. Because of Mary's advocacy
and compelling reasoning, I cosponsored the ABLE to Work Act of 2016
shortly after our meeting. This bill will help persons with
disabilities save additional amounts in their ABLE accounts.
Mary has big dreams, and I am confident she will achieve them. I look
forward to keeping track of her many accomplishments in the future.
Arkansas is lucky to have someone like Mary Borman fighting to make our
State a better place, and I applaud her for her work. Her story is a
testimony of our spirit as Arkansans, and I am certain it will inspire
others to take action on causes they believe in.
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. GARDNER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Tribute to Admiral William Gortney

Mr. GARDNER. Madam President, I rise to recognize and commend ADM
Bill Gortney, who will retire on June 1 of this year after 39 years of
exceptional leadership and service to our country. Most recently,
Admiral Gortney served as commander of the North American Aerospace
Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command headquartered at Peterson Air
Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO.
In his current capacity, Admiral Gortney is responsible for homeland
defense, defense support for civil authorities, and theater security
cooperation with Mexico and the Bahamas. Additionally, as head of the
binational NORAD command with Canada, he is responsible for aerospace
warning, aerospace control, and maritime warning in the defense of
North America. For those of you who have children, I think you may know
what NORAD also does, which is, of course, the very famous Santa
tracker every year on Christmas Eve. It has been a tremendous pleasure
to work closely with Admiral Gortney since joining the Senate. In
particular, as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on
East Asia and the Pacific, I have often sought his advice and counsel
to gauge the threat of North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile
program to our homeland.
Born to William and Gloria Gortney in La Jolla, CA, Admiral Gortney
is no stranger to military service. He is a second-generation naval
aviator. His father retired as a captain in the Navy in 1970, after 28
years of service that included time in World War II, the Korean war,
and Vietnam.
Admiral Gortney received his Wings of Gold in 1978 at Naval Air
Station in Beeville, TX, and began an illustrious career as a naval
aviator under the call sign ``shortney.''
Admiral Gortney has completed numerous successful fleet and staff
assignments both in the United States and abroad. His first opportunity
for command was on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt from 1994 to 1995.
From there he amassed an impressive resume of command experience,
including three command tours in the U.S. Central Command area of
operations, providing support to maritime security operations and
combat operations of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
These assignments included commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central
Command/U.S. 5th Fleet/Combined Maritime Forces, Bahrain; commander of
Carrier Strike Group 10 on board the USS Harry S. Truman; and commander
of Carrier Air Wing 7 on board the USS John F. Kennedy.
His first flight tour was as the deputy chief of staff for Global
Force Management and Joint Operations, U.S. Fleet Forces Command,
Norfolk, VA. More recently, he served as director of the Joint Staff,
then commanded U.S. Fleet Forces Command prior to taking command at
NORAD and USNORTHCOM.
Admiral Gortney has flown over 5,360 mishap-free flight hours on the
Corsair II and F/A-18 Hornet and completed 1,265 carrier-arrested
landings. His military decorations include: the Defense Distinguished
Service Medal, two awards; Navy Distinguished Service Medal, two
awards; Defense Superior Service Medal; Legion of Merit, four awards;
and Bronze Star, among many others.
From other nations, his military decorations include: the French
National Order of the Legion of Honor Award; the Bahrain Medal, First
Class; the Secretary of the National Defense for Mexico Military Merit
1st Class Medal; and Secretary of the Mexican Navy Naval Distinction
2nd Class Medal.
Admiral Gortney's unique combination of operational experience,
charismatic leadership, and unyielding patriotism has served him well
in a lifetime of military service. Today we honor his admirable service
to our Nation and all the airmen, sailors, soldiers, marines, and
civilians who have served alongside him.

[[Page S2664]]

We offer our heartfelt appreciation to Bill, his wife Sherry, their
children Stephanie and Billy, daughter-in-law Jackie, and grandchildren
Gavin and Grayson for all of their sacrifice and support to our
country.
On behalf of the Senate and a grateful nation, I congratulate him on
a job well done and wish him the best as he begins a hard-earned
retirement. I just wish that his retirement would land him in Colorado
Springs, but I think he has other ideas.
Admiral Gortney, we thank you for your service.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Remembering Bob Bennett

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this morning I joined many of my
colleagues in bidding a formal farewell to our colleague, Senator Bob
Bennett, who died last week. It was great to see Senators from both
sides of the aisle at Senator Bennett's viewing and funeral service. It
was fitting. Bob Bennett was a proud conservative, he was an old-
fashioned conservative, but he understood that the Senate only really
works when we talk to each other and reason things out. He was old
school. He understood that principled compromise is not a moral or
political sin. It is an ideal we should strive for. It is how we solve
big problems in America. It is the only way the Senate can work.
I served with Bob Bennett for years on the Senate Appropriations
Committee. He was an honorable man, a dyed-in-the-wool fiscal
conservative. He had an 84-percent lifetime approval rating from the
American Conservative Union, but he was a real-world conservative, not
an ideologue. No vote demonstrated that more clearly than the vote he
cast in 2008 to create the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as
TARP.
I am not going to forget the day when Hank Paulson, Treasury
Secretary under President George W. Bush, came to talk to us about the
economy. Lehman Brothers had just declared bankruptcy. Secretary
Paulson told us that the entire U.S. financial system could collapse
within days, maybe hours. He warned that such a collapse of the U.S.
financial system would trigger a global economic cataclysm.
Bob Bennett knew that he was taking a supreme political risk, but Bob
Bennett voted to create the TARP program anyway. He risked his
political career rather than risk the life savings of untold millions
in America and around the world. He paid a price for it. In 2010 Bob
Bennett became the first incumbent Senator in Utah in 70 years to lose
reelection after he was toppled in his party caucus.
Senator Bennett challenged orthodoxy on a lot of other issues as
well. Bob Bennett, a devout Mormon, supported embryonic stem cell
research, with very careful restrictions. In 1996 he was one of only
three Senators from his party to vote against amending the U.S.
Constitution to criminalize flag-burning. He said that he thought flag-
burning was reprehensible--as we all do--but that it occurred far too
infrequently to warrant changing the Constitution. That amendment
failed in the Senate by one vote.
When the Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform in 2006,
Senator Bob Bennett of Utah was one of the many Members of his party to
stand up and support it. Four years later, when the Senate voted on the
DREAM Act--a key part of that earlier bill and one that I introduced 15
years ago--the political winds on the right had shifted dramatically.
There were only three of my colleagues from across the aisle on the
Republican side who supported passing the DREAM Act in 2010. Bob
Bennett was one of them. I will never forget it. I will always be
grateful to him for that courageous vote. He understood that we needed
a realistic, humane way to deal with immigration in this Nation of
immigrants.
Robert Bennett was a member of one of his State's leading families.
His grandfather, Heber J. Grant, was the president of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His father, Wallace Bennett, served
four terms in the Senate.
Bob came to Washington in 1962 to work as an aide in his father's
office, when such arrangements were still allowed. In 1969 he took a
job as a top congressional liaison for the U.S. Transportation
Department under President Nixon. His short tenure at Transportation
earned him an unlikely footnote in history. For decades, some
conspiracy theorists speculated that he was Deep Throat--the Nixon
administration insider who helped steer the Washington Post's Bob
Woodward and Carl Bernstein in reporting the Watergate scandal. That
theory was finally disproved with the death of former FBI Deputy
Director Mark Felt, who was, in fact, the real Deep Throat.
Bob Bennett did not need public service. He had already built a
successful career in business before he decided to run in 1992 for the
seat his father once held. He took a pay cut to serve his State and our
Nation in the Senate.
Bob Bennett and I disagreed on many issues. When we did, he was
always principled and polite. I suspect that was a reflection of his
upbringing, watching his father serve in the Senate, where Members of
differing political parties could disagree without questioning the
other Senator's motives.
In his last political race in 2010, Senator Bennett was targeted by
the force we now refer to as the tea party. After his loss, he spoke to
a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. He said, ``The political
atmosphere obviously has been toxic, and it is very clear that some of
the votes I have cast have added to that toxic environment.''
Then Bob Bennett said something that any Senator would be fortunate
to be able to say at the end of his tenure. ``Looking back on them--
with one or two very minor exceptions--I wouldn't have cast any of them
any differently even if I'd known at the time it would cost me my
career because I have always done the best I can to cast the vote that
I think is best for the state and best for the country.''

I extend my condolences to Senator Bennett's family--a wonderful,
large family--that includes his brother and sister, his widow Joyce,
their six children--Julie, Robert, James, Wendy, Heather, and Heidi--
and 20 grandchildren. There are so many of Bob Bennett's former
staffers and friends who join me in paying this great tribute.

Amendment No. 3878

Mr. President, Congress is supposed to be working on an
appropriations bill, and we were moving in that direction until the
Senator from Arkansas sought to add an amendment to the Energy and
Water appropriations bill. This amendment was designed to undermine the
historic agreement that the Obama administration reached with Iran for
the sole purpose of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The Senator who offered this amendment had led an unprecedented
letter to Iranian hardliners in the middle of President Obama's
negotiations. He said to the hardliners in Iran--with a letter signed,
I believe, by 46 other Republican letters--that they were wasting their
time negotiating with this President, that whatever he agreed to would
be undermined by Congress and particularly by the next President.
In all of the time I have followed the history of the Senate, I
cannot remember a letter of that nature being sent by Senators of
either political party to undermine a delicate negotiation involving
peace in an important part of the world.
Now we are stuck until we deal with his amendment. Regardless of
whether you agree with the Iran agreement, adding this amendment to the
Energy and Water appropriations bill would destroy all of the hard work
that Senators Alexander and Feinstein have put into drafting this
bipartisan bill.
I wish to tell you why this amendment from the Senator from Arkansas
is a poison pill. This amendment would prevent the Department of Energy
from spending any fiscal year 2017 funds to purchase heavy water
produced in Iran.
The JCPOA agreement closed four pathways through which Iran could get
to breakout time for a nuclear weapon in less than a year. It bought
valuable

[[Page S2665]]

time for Israel, for other nations in the Middle East, and for the
United States before Iran could violate the agreement and build a
nuclear weapon.
As part of this agreement, Iran agreed to limit the amount of heavy
water it would accumulate. Any heavy water in excess of 130 metric tons
had to be disposed of, moved out of Iran.
The Department of Energy has announced that its Isotope Program will
purchase 32 metric tons of heavy water from Iran to fulfill a
significant amount of the domestic heavy water needed in America for
research and industrial applications. There is no American domestic
source for this heavy water. This transaction provides U.S. industry
with a critical product, and it enables Iran to rid itself of excess
heavy water, ensuring this product will never be used for developing a
nuclear weapon.
Heavy water is used in the development, production, and sale of
compounds used in biomedical and diagnostic research such as MRIs and
pharmaceutical development, as well as chemistry, physics, and
environmental analysis.
A portion of this heavy water will be used at the Spallation Neutron
Source, or SNS, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The
heavy water will increase the intensity of the beam, which will--
according to Laboratory Director Thom Mason--benefit hundreds of
research teams.
While the administration does not anticipate undertaking another
purchase of heavy water from Iran, we should not give up--with this
amendment offered by the Senator from Arkansas--the ability to ensure
that this material, which potentially could be used in Iran's nuclear
industry, is instead put to use in the United States by our industry
for peaceful research and product development.
The amendment offered by the Senator from Arkansas really focuses on
one thing--to undermine this agreement with Iran. After we have seen
tons of fissile material removed from Iran, 16,000 centrifuges
destroyed, and a major potentially dangerous reactor decommissioned,
this Senator from Arkansas believes it was a bad agreement and we ought
to let the Iranians go about their business.
I couldn't disagree more. Taking this heavy water out of Iran makes
that region of the world safer for Israel and for the other countries
in the region. For Iran to keep this heavy water is a temptation that
we should eliminate by defeating this amendment by the Senator from
Arkansas.
His amendment will jeopardize an historic agreement that limits
Iran's ability to produce nuclear arms. That is an important protection
for the entire world. It would deny researchers and industries in our
country a resource they need to make new scientific discoveries,
medical diagnoses, and probably save lives. That is more than enough
reason to reject the amendment being offered by the Senator from
Arkansas.
I urge my colleagues to do so.

Zika Virus

Mr. President, 3 months ago, the President asked Congress for funding
to help prepare for and combat the Zika virus. That very week I sat in
an Appropriations Committee hearing with the representatives for the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes
of Health, who talked about how time sensitive that request was.
In the 13 weeks since that hearing, Republicans have put up
roadblocks, set preconditions, and really mocked the administration for
arguing that there was urgency to fight the Zika virus--a virus which
is dangerous for pregnant women, children, and many others.
What has happened in the 13 weeks while the President's request for
$1.9 billion has languished before the Republican-controlled Congress?
Over 1,100 Americans in 43 States, Washington, DC, and U.S.
territories--including over 100 pregnant women--have contracted the
Zika virus. Six more have contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, an
autoimmune disorder that can cause paralysis and death.
Recently, the first Zika-caused death was reported in Puerto Rico. In
Illinois, 13 people have tested positive for Zika, with at least 3
pregnant women. Over the last 13 weeks, while the Republican leadership
in Congress has ignored the President's request for emergency funding,
we have learned even more about Zika and its danger. We now know it is
linked to serious neurological damage and birth defects. We now know it
can be sexually transmitted. Warmer weather is coming, and we know the
spread of Zika will grow even worse. It seems as if everyone across the
world recognizes the urgency of this public health threat to the United
States except for the Republicans in Congress.
Last week, Major League Baseball announced it was canceling two
scheduled ball games to be played in Puerto Rico because the players
were concerned about contracting the Zika virus.
I spoke with CDC Director Tom Frieden 2 weeks ago. He told me this is
no way to seriously fight a public health danger. We need a multiyear
commitment so CDC, NIH, and public health departments can begin studies
to understand the risks to others, improve our surveillance system,
study how long these mosquitoes actually carry the virus, and develop a
vaccine as quickly as possible.
The CDC takes this seriously. The Centers for Disease Control is the
frontline of defense of the United States of America when it comes to
public health danger. How seriously do they take the Zika virus? They
have dedicated 1,000 staff members to fighting it. They understand this
is a public health emergency, and we have a limited opportunity to
catch up and try to stop its spread.
Last week I held a roundtable event in Chicago with local health
department officials, medical professionals, and vector control
experts. They are doing everything they can to prepare for Zika in
high-risk areas--laying traps to collect mosquitoes for testing and
ramping up health communications to providers and the public. We are
lucky because in our part of the United States there is no evidence of
the mosquito that is the carrier. However, travelers who have
contracted the virus in other places can bring it back to our region,
and they can be the carriers for it to be spread to other people.
As a major transportation hub in Chicago and Illinois, we must be
prepared to deal with these travelers carrying the Zika virus. I have
the highest confidence in our State and in local health officials, but
they need a helping hand.
Because congressional Republicans have refused to pass the emergency
supplemental Zika funding, the administration has been forced to divert
resources from Illinois to States such as Florida, Texas, Louisiana,
and Mississippi to fight Zika. We are taking public health resources
out of other States to send them to the frontline States on the Zika
virus. I understand it, but it is totally unnecessary. If the
Republican leadership in Congress accepted their responsibility, took
this seriously, and realized lives were at stake, we would have
approved the President's emergency request long ago.
My State of Illinois and the city of Chicago just lost a total of $2
million in CDC public health emergency preparedness grants--money
diverted from our State to deal with local public health challenges
with the Zika virus in frontline States.
The Illinois Public Health Director told me: ``We don't get to be
eight percent less prepared, even with eight percent less money'' from
the CDC.
Health departments across Illinois use these grants to prepare and
respond to outbreaks of all kinds, such as Ebola, Zika, and a new
bacterial outbreak--Elizabethkingia. Already that has taken six
people's lives in my State. So we are removing the money to protect the
people in Illinois to go to the frontline of the Zika virus attack
because the Republican majority in Congress will not approve the
President's emergency supplemental request.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul is shortsighted. We need to ensure we
aren't diverting necessary Ebola money to use for the Zika virus. I
don't understand it. In the last election, many Republicans were making
a big issue about Ebola and its threat to the United States, and now
they are so sanguine and so calm as to take the money away from
protecting us from the spread of Ebola and spend it on Zika on a
temporary basis because

[[Page S2666]]

they won't address the serious threat of both problems. The CDC,
incidentally, is reporting new flare-ups of Ebola in Guinea after
learning that the virus can stay in a man's system for over a year.
Just because it may not be front-page news anymore, the Ebola crisis,
incidentally, is not over. Funding is still needed.
We have seen Zika coming for many months. We were warned, and we have
had the administration's detailed comprehensive plan sitting on the
desk of the Republican leaders in the House and Senate.
Right before Congress adjourned 2 weeks ago, Senate Democrats sent a
letter to Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell urging immediate
action on the Zika supplemental, and we introduced a bill to provide
the necessary funding. We tried to bring it up. We were blocked by the
Republican leadership.
So what do Republicans think we should do--send a memo to mosquitoes
telling them not to buzz and bite until they get around to funding the
President's emergency request?
I have news for them. The summer mosquito season is about to hit and
hit hard in some parts of our country. Where this mosquito that carries
the Zika can be found, people will be in danger.
Researchers at NASA have forecasted that by midsummer, cities
nationwide, such as St. Louis, Kansas City, New York City--not just
southern cities like Miami and Houston--could possibly be a venue for
these Zika-carrying mosquitoes. They found that not just geography but
rainfall, transportation hubs, and challenging socioeconomic conditions
translate to less air conditioning and worse housing infrastructure.
They can all contribute to the presence of these mosquitoes. We are
learning more and more about Zika and the cases are growing.
As we near the summer travel season and we start hearing more about
the Rio Olympic Games, inaction and further delay will put many women--
particularly childbearing women--and their kids in danger.
I urge my Republican colleagues in both chambers: Work with us to
approve this money this week before it is too late.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on one additional
issue.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Judicial Nominations

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, there are publications given to us on the
floor of the Senate. One of them is the Executive Calendar.
This Executive Calendar and parts of it may be characterized as a
political obituary column because, you see, these are the nominees of
the Obama administration for important posts across America--the names
on here--and many of them have been sitting for months and some for
over a year, and they are waiting for Senate action.
So far this Congress we have approved 17 Federal judges--2 circuit
court judges, and 15 district court judges. There are 20 judicial
nominees still sitting on this calendar. You think to yourself: Well,
they must be pretty controversial if they are still sitting on the
calendar.
Every single one of them was reported unanimously from the Senate
Judiciary Committee. There were no dissenting votes, no objections.
Still they just sit and sit and sit on the calendar.
Why? Well, we know we have a serious problem with not just these 20,
but there is the fact that we have 87 vacancies in the Federal
judiciary, many of them in an emergency situation.
Why? Why in the world would some of these nominees, some of whom have
been supported by Republican Senators--why aren't they being called for
a vote, a routine vote on the floor of the Senate? It is part of the
obstruction that the Republican Party has decided to make part of their
leadership in the Senate. And, of course, exhibit A in that obstruction
is the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, occasioned by the untimely
death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

It has been nearly 2 months since President Obama nominated Chief
Judge Merrick Garland to fill the Scalia vacancy on the Supreme Court.
It has been 3 months since Justice Scalia passed away--3 months--and
still the Republican-led Senate has refused to consider President
Obama's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. We ought to be doing
that right now.
Today we received all of the investigative materials and binders and
questionnaire answers from Judge Garland--boxes and boxes, thousands of
pages--available to be reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and
every Member of the Senate. It is the Senate's constitutional
obligation under article II, section 2, to provide advice and consent
when the President submits such a nomination.
Mr. President, it is rare for a political figure or a publicly
elected official to stand up and use the word ``never,'' but I am about
to use it. We have never--never in the history of the U.S. Senate--
denied a Supreme Court nominee from a President a hearing or a vote--
never. For 100 years, these nominees have been sent through the Senate
Judiciary Committee with a public hearing. And every pending nominee
for an open Supreme Court vacancy has been voted upon at some point by
Senators.
We had a press conference today, and we talked about the precedent.
Senator Franken of Minnesota noted the time when John Adams had lost
the Presidential election but filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court by
nominating John Marshall to be a member of that Court. So here was John
Adams, a defeated President, making a nomination to fill a vacancy on
the Supreme Court.
In the Senate, in those days, there were still Founding Fathers, men
who had actually written the Constitution. Five of them were Members of
the Senate when John Marshall's nomination came before them. If there
was ever a lameduck, it was John Adams, who had been defeated for
reelection and had a few months more to serve but who made a nomination
for the Supreme Court and, by voice vote, the U.S. Senate approved him,
including the five Founding Fathers who joined in that effort.
The argument being made on the Republican side is: Well, we can't
fill this vacancy until after the election. We have to wait to see if
President Trump will be chosen by the American people, and then he will
get to fill this vacancy on the Supreme Court. Interesting. I missed
it. I read the Constitution and thought for sure that President Obama
was elected for 4 years in 2012. By the Republicans' math, it was 3
years and 2 months. He's a lameduck and has no power left. Well, they
are wrong. By a margin of 5 million votes, Barack Obama was reelected
President over Mitt Romney. Now this decision by the Republicans to
stop this President from exercising his constitutional authority is
just wrong.
What about Judge Garland? Judge Garland is one of the most
extraordinary nominees ever presented to this Senate. He is now the
chief judge of the DC Circuit Court. That is the second highest court
in the land. He is well respected. He has received the endorsement of
many different groups, and people who are conservative and liberal
alike respect his judgment, as they should. He has done his job and
done it well, but the Republicans in the Senate refuse to do their job.
They say it is because they want the next President to fill that seat.
I cannot even imagine the nominee that a President Donald Trump would
send to the Senate.
Last week, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, a man
named Reince Priebus, announced that Mr. Trump was the presumptive
nominee of the Republican Party. It is astonishing to me that Senate
Republicans would seriously want to put Donald Trump in charge of
filling Supreme Court vacancies. How would they explain that to their
constituents? Most of them are saying they are not even going to attend
the Republican convention for fear of what it will do to their
political reputations, and yet they are trusting the judgment of Donald
Trump to shape the highest Court of the United States of America?
Make no mistake. By failing to move on Merrick Garland's nomination
now in a timely and fair way, Republicans have cast their lot with Mr.
Trump. That is a risky bet for the American people. The American people
also understand Merrick Garland is well qualified and rock solid. Every
week we see more praise for him.
Last week, nine former Solicitors General, Republicans and Democrats

[[Page S2667]]

alike, sent a public letter praising Judge Garland. The list of people
who signed this letter includes prominent Republicans and Democrats:
Ken Starr, Drew Days, Walter Dellinger, Ted Olson, and Paul Clement. We
know the Solicitor General serves as the Federal Government's chief
advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court. They know the Supreme Court as
well as anyone, and they know a good judge when they see one. Here is
what they said about Judge Garland:

As a group, we have argued hundreds of cases before the
United States Supreme Court and the Federal Courts of
Appeals. Each of us has served as the United States
Government's top representative before the Supreme Court. And
while we have served in different administrations, we are
unified in our belief that Judge Garland is superbly
qualified to serve on the Supreme Court if he were confirmed.
We are confident that Judge Garland would bring his
brilliance, work ethic, and broad experience to the cases
that come before him.

That is very high praise, isn't it? Clearly, President Obama selected
a nominee highly regarded by advocates who know the Supreme Court
better than most. Yet my Republican colleagues will not even give this
superbly qualified nominee the dignity of a public hearing. They would
rather keep a Supreme Court seat vacant for more than a year and allow
the Court to deadlock for a year with 4-to-4 votes on key cases and
wait in hopes they can roll the dice with President Donald Trump and
his Supreme Court nominee. It is hard to fathom how this strategy is
respectful of the constitution or in the best interest of our Nation.
Not only are Senate Republicans failing to do their job in
considering Judge Garland's nomination, they are obstructing 20 other
well-qualified judicial nominees who are currently pending on the
Senate floor.
The Senate Republicans, as I have said, have held votes on only 17
judicial nominees this Congress. That is the lowest total in decades,
far fewer than the 68 judges the Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed
in the last 2 years of George W. Bush's administration. Republicans are
apparently content to leave vacancies on courts across the United
States and even on the Supreme Court of the United States. Is that why
they were elected, to leave vacancies on these courts? They cannot hide
from the fact that there is a need in this country for competent
jurists to guide us in these Federal courts.
I hope a few more of my Republican colleagues will come to their
senses. Rather than saving judicial seats for Donald Trump to fill,
they should do their job and give President Obama's well-qualified
nominees a hearing and a vote, and they should start with Merrick
Garland.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the letter from these Solicitors General.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

May 5, 2016.
Hon. Mitch McConnell,
Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Harry Reid,
Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Chuck Grassley,
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Patrick Leahy,
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Reid,
Chairman Grassley, and Ranking Member Leahy: Each of us
headed the Office of the Solicitor General. Our service took
place under both Republican and Democratic Presidents. We
write collectively in support of Judge Merrick Garland's
qualifications to serve as an Associate Justice of the United
States Supreme Court. We believe that Judge Garland has
demonstrated the temperament, intellect, and experience to
serve in this capacity.
Merrick Garland has a history of excellence in the Law. He
served in high ranking Justice Department posts, as a partner
at a major law firm, an Assistant United States Attorney, a
law clerk on the United States Supreme Court, a law clerk on
the Second Circuit for the legendary Judge Henry Friendly,
and, of course, for nearly the last two decades, as a Judge
on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
He presently serves as the Chief Judge of that Circuit, where
he is known for his collegiality and is widely respected by
his colleagues and litigants who have come before him.
As a group, we have argued hundreds of cases before the
United States Supreme Court and the federal Courts of
Appeals. Each of us has served as the United States
Government's top representative before the Supreme Court. And
while we have served in different Administrations, we are
unified in our belief that Judge Garland is superbly
qualified to serve on the Supreme Court if he were confirmed.
We are confident that Judge Garland would bring his
brilliance, work ethic, and broad experience to the cases
that come before him. Please do not hesitate to contact us if
you have questions.
Respectfully submitted,
Neal K. Katyal (Acting Solicitor General, 2010-2011),
Gregory G. Garre (Solicitor General, 2008-2009), Paul
D. Clement (Solicitor General, 2005-2008), Theodore B.
Olson (Solicitor General, 2001-2004), Barbara D.
Underwood (Acting Solicitor General, 2001), Seth P.
Waxman (Solicitor General, 1997-2001), Walter E.
Dellinger III (Acting Solicitor General, 1996-1997),
Drew S. Days III (Solicitor General, 1993-1996),
Kenneth W. Starr (Solicitor General, 1989-1993).

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________