Datasets:

jkruk

/

dw_instance_sm

like 0

formal

terrorism

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as the Senate convenes this afternoon, we find our Nation facing two grave and serious choices. One concerns our unity at home and the future of our Constitution. The other involves our strength abroad and the security of our homeland. Both situations demand serious, sober treatment from Congress. Both require that we put enduring national interests ahead of the factionalism and short-termism the Founding Fathers warned us about. But, unfortunately, seriousness has been in short supply lately--in very short supply--from the determined critics of President Trump, and our Nation, of course, is worse for it. Last Thursday, the United States took decisive action to end the murderous scheming of Iran's chief terrorist. Qasem Soleimani had spent numerous years masterminding attacks on American servicemembers and our partners throughout the Middle East and expanding Iran's influence. Despite sanctions and despite prohibitions by the U.N. Security Council, he roamed throughout the region with impunity. His hands bore the blood of more American servicemembers than anyone else alive. Hundreds of American families have buried loved ones because of him. Veterans have learned to live with permanent injuries inflicted by his terrorists. In Iraq, Syria, and beyond, theentire region felt the effects of his evil tactics. We should welcome his death and its complication of Tehran's terrorism-industrial complex, but we must remain vigilant and soberly prepared for even further aggression. It is completely appropriate that this decision would generate interest and questions from this body. We can and we should learn more about the intelligence and thinking that led to this operation and the plan to defend American personnel and interests in the wake of it. I am glad the administration will hold an all-Senators briefing on Wednesday. It will be led by Secretary of Defense Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley, Secretary of State Pompeo, and CIA Director Haspel. Unfortunately, in this toxic political environment, some of our colleagues rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts, rushed to split hairs about intelligence before being briefed on it, and rushed to downplay Soleimani's evil while presenting our own President as the villain. Soon after the news broke, one of our distinguished colleagues made a public statement that rightly called Soleimani a ``murderer'' and then, amazingly, walked that message back when the far left objected to the factual statement. Since then, I believe all of her criticism has been directed at our own President. Another of our Democratic colleagues has been thinking out loud about Middle East policy on social media. Mere days before President Trump's decision, this Senator tore into the White House for what he described as weakness and inaction. ``No one fears us'' he complained. ``Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East.'' But since the strike, he has done a complete 180. That same Senator has harshly criticized our own President for getting tough. Ludicrously, he and others on the left have accused the administration of committing an illegal act and equated the removal of this terrorist leader with a foreign power assassinating our own Secretary of Defense. Here is what one expert had to say about it. Jeh Johnson, President Obama's own former Pentagon general counsel and Secretary of Homeland Security, said: If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective, and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without-- Without-- an additional congressional authorization. Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective. That was the former Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, Jeh Johnson, an expert on these things. Our former colleague, Joe Lieberman, who ran for Vice President on the Democratic ticket in 2000, wrote this morning: ``In their uniformly skeptical or negative reactions to Soleimani's death, Democrats are . . . creating the risk that the U.S. will be seen as acting and speaking with less authority abroad at this important time.'' That is how a former Democratic Senator sees it. The Senate is supposed to be the Chamber where overheated partisan passions give way to sober judgment. Can we not at least wait until we know the facts? Can we not maintain a shred--just a shred--of national unity for 5 minutes--for 5 minutes--before deepening the partisan trenches? Must Democrats' distaste for this President dominate every thought they express and every decision they make? Is that really the seriousness that this situation deserves? The full Senate will be briefed on Wednesday. I expect the committees of oversight will also conduct hearings and that the Senators will have plenty of opportunities to discuss our interests and policies in the region. I urge my colleagues to bring a full awareness of the facts, mindfulness of the long history of Iran's aggression toward the United States and its allies, and a sober understanding of the threat Iran continues to pose. Could we at least remember we are all Americans first, and we are all in this together?

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS11-8

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as the Senate convenes this afternoon, we find our Nation facing two grave and serious choices. One concerns our unity at home and the future of our Constitution. The other involves our strength abroad and the security of our homeland. Both situations demand serious, sober treatment from Congress. Both require that we put enduring national interests ahead of the factionalism and short-termism the Founding Fathers warned us about. But, unfortunately, seriousness has been in short supply lately--in very short supply--from the determined critics of President Trump, and our Nation, of course, is worse for it. Last Thursday, the United States took decisive action to end the murderous scheming of Iran's chief terrorist. Qasem Soleimani had spent numerous years masterminding attacks on American servicemembers and our partners throughout the Middle East and expanding Iran's influence. Despite sanctions and despite prohibitions by the U.N. Security Council, he roamed throughout the region with impunity. His hands bore the blood of more American servicemembers than anyone else alive. Hundreds of American families have buried loved ones because of him. Veterans have learned to live with permanent injuries inflicted by his terrorists. In Iraq, Syria, and beyond, theentire region felt the effects of his evil tactics. We should welcome his death and its complication of Tehran's terrorism-industrial complex, but we must remain vigilant and soberly prepared for even further aggression. It is completely appropriate that this decision would generate interest and questions from this body. We can and we should learn more about the intelligence and thinking that led to this operation and the plan to defend American personnel and interests in the wake of it. I am glad the administration will hold an all-Senators briefing on Wednesday. It will be led by Secretary of Defense Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley, Secretary of State Pompeo, and CIA Director Haspel. Unfortunately, in this toxic political environment, some of our colleagues rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts, rushed to split hairs about intelligence before being briefed on it, and rushed to downplay Soleimani's evil while presenting our own President as the villain. Soon after the news broke, one of our distinguished colleagues made a public statement that rightly called Soleimani a ``murderer'' and then, amazingly, walked that message back when the far left objected to the factual statement. Since then, I believe all of her criticism has been directed at our own President. Another of our Democratic colleagues has been thinking out loud about Middle East policy on social media. Mere days before President Trump's decision, this Senator tore into the White House for what he described as weakness and inaction. ``No one fears us'' he complained. ``Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East.'' But since the strike, he has done a complete 180. That same Senator has harshly criticized our own President for getting tough. Ludicrously, he and others on the left have accused the administration of committing an illegal act and equated the removal of this terrorist leader with a foreign power assassinating our own Secretary of Defense. Here is what one expert had to say about it. Jeh Johnson, President Obama's own former Pentagon general counsel and Secretary of Homeland Security, said: If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective, and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without-- Without-- an additional congressional authorization. Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective. That was the former Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, Jeh Johnson, an expert on these things. Our former colleague, Joe Lieberman, who ran for Vice President on the Democratic ticket in 2000, wrote this morning: ``In their uniformly skeptical or negative reactions to Soleimani's death, Democrats are . . . creating the risk that the U.S. will be seen as acting and speaking with less authority abroad at this important time.'' That is how a former Democratic Senator sees it. The Senate is supposed to be the Chamber where overheated partisan passions give way to sober judgment. Can we not at least wait until we know the facts? Can we not maintain a shred--just a shred--of national unity for 5 minutes--for 5 minutes--before deepening the partisan trenches? Must Democrats' distaste for this President dominate every thought they express and every decision they make? Is that really the seriousness that this situation deserves? The full Senate will be briefed on Wednesday. I expect the committees of oversight will also conduct hearings and that the Senators will have plenty of opportunities to discuss our interests and policies in the region. I urge my colleagues to bring a full awareness of the facts, mindfulness of the long history of Iran's aggression toward the United States and its allies, and a sober understanding of the threat Iran continues to pose. Could we at least remember we are all Americans first, and we are all in this together?

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS11-8

formal

terrorists

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as the Senate convenes this afternoon, we find our Nation facing two grave and serious choices. One concerns our unity at home and the future of our Constitution. The other involves our strength abroad and the security of our homeland. Both situations demand serious, sober treatment from Congress. Both require that we put enduring national interests ahead of the factionalism and short-termism the Founding Fathers warned us about. But, unfortunately, seriousness has been in short supply lately--in very short supply--from the determined critics of President Trump, and our Nation, of course, is worse for it. Last Thursday, the United States took decisive action to end the murderous scheming of Iran's chief terrorist. Qasem Soleimani had spent numerous years masterminding attacks on American servicemembers and our partners throughout the Middle East and expanding Iran's influence. Despite sanctions and despite prohibitions by the U.N. Security Council, he roamed throughout the region with impunity. His hands bore the blood of more American servicemembers than anyone else alive. Hundreds of American families have buried loved ones because of him. Veterans have learned to live with permanent injuries inflicted by his terrorists. In Iraq, Syria, and beyond, theentire region felt the effects of his evil tactics. We should welcome his death and its complication of Tehran's terrorism-industrial complex, but we must remain vigilant and soberly prepared for even further aggression. It is completely appropriate that this decision would generate interest and questions from this body. We can and we should learn more about the intelligence and thinking that led to this operation and the plan to defend American personnel and interests in the wake of it. I am glad the administration will hold an all-Senators briefing on Wednesday. It will be led by Secretary of Defense Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley, Secretary of State Pompeo, and CIA Director Haspel. Unfortunately, in this toxic political environment, some of our colleagues rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts, rushed to split hairs about intelligence before being briefed on it, and rushed to downplay Soleimani's evil while presenting our own President as the villain. Soon after the news broke, one of our distinguished colleagues made a public statement that rightly called Soleimani a ``murderer'' and then, amazingly, walked that message back when the far left objected to the factual statement. Since then, I believe all of her criticism has been directed at our own President. Another of our Democratic colleagues has been thinking out loud about Middle East policy on social media. Mere days before President Trump's decision, this Senator tore into the White House for what he described as weakness and inaction. ``No one fears us'' he complained. ``Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East.'' But since the strike, he has done a complete 180. That same Senator has harshly criticized our own President for getting tough. Ludicrously, he and others on the left have accused the administration of committing an illegal act and equated the removal of this terrorist leader with a foreign power assassinating our own Secretary of Defense. Here is what one expert had to say about it. Jeh Johnson, President Obama's own former Pentagon general counsel and Secretary of Homeland Security, said: If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective, and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without-- Without-- an additional congressional authorization. Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective. That was the former Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, Jeh Johnson, an expert on these things. Our former colleague, Joe Lieberman, who ran for Vice President on the Democratic ticket in 2000, wrote this morning: ``In their uniformly skeptical or negative reactions to Soleimani's death, Democrats are . . . creating the risk that the U.S. will be seen as acting and speaking with less authority abroad at this important time.'' That is how a former Democratic Senator sees it. The Senate is supposed to be the Chamber where overheated partisan passions give way to sober judgment. Can we not at least wait until we know the facts? Can we not maintain a shred--just a shred--of national unity for 5 minutes--for 5 minutes--before deepening the partisan trenches? Must Democrats' distaste for this President dominate every thought they express and every decision they make? Is that really the seriousness that this situation deserves? The full Senate will be briefed on Wednesday. I expect the committees of oversight will also conduct hearings and that the Senators will have plenty of opportunities to discuss our interests and policies in the region. I urge my colleagues to bring a full awareness of the facts, mindfulness of the long history of Iran's aggression toward the United States and its allies, and a sober understanding of the threat Iran continues to pose. Could we at least remember we are all Americans first, and we are all in this together?

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS11-8

formal

single

homophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, in the meantime, at this dangerous time, House Democrats continue to play political games with their partisan impeachment of the Commander in Chief. Last year, House Democrats conducted the least thorough, most rushed, most unfair impeachment inquiry in history. For weeks, Democrats said they could not wait for due process, could not conduct a normal or fair inquiry because removing the President from office was so incredibly urgent--incredibly urgent. Well, the unseriousness was obvious then and should be even more obvious now because Speaker Pelosi is now sitting on the articles she claimed were so very urgent. She has delayed this indefinitely so the architects of the failed House process can look for ways to reach over here into the Senate and dictate our process as well. Democrats have tried to insist that the Senate deviate from the unanimous bipartisan precedent set in the 1999 trial of President Clinton and write new rules for President Trump. They have tried to precommit the Senate to redoing House Democrats' slapdash work for them and pursuing avenues Chairman Schiff himself didn't bother to pursue. The Senate has a unanimous bipartisan precedent for when to handle midtrial questions such as witnesses: in the middle of the trial. That is when that was done the last time, and that is the way it should be done this time. In 1999, every single U.S. Senator agreed to establish basic parameters for the start of the trial upfront and reserve midtrial questions, such as witnesses, until later. The vote was 100 to 0. That was good enough for President Clinton, so it ought to be good enough for President Trump. Fair is fair. House Democrats' hunger to break our Senate precedents, just like they broke their own House precedents, could not be more telling, but the Senate does not just bob along on the currents of every news cycle. The House may have been content to scrap their own norms to hurt President Trump, but that is not the Senate. Even with a process this constitutionally serious, even with tensions rising in the Middle East, House Democrats are treating impeachment like a political toy--like a political toy--treating their own effort to remove our Commander in Chief like some frivolous game. These bizarre stunts do not serve our Constitution or our national security. They erode both. My Democratic colleagues should not plow away American unity in some bizarre intramural competition to see who dislikes the President more. They should not disdain our Constitution by rushing through a purely partisan impeachment process and then toying around with it. Governing is serious business. The American people deserve better, a lot better than this.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS12

formal

based

white supremacist

Impeachment Mr. President, as my colleagues return from the holiday recess, one question looms before us: Will the Senate conduct a fair impeachment trial of the President of the United States? Will we search for all of the facts, or will we look for a coverup--a sham trial--on one of the most important powers the Founding Fathers gave the American people? The Framers gave the Senate the sole power to try Presidential impeachments because they could not imagine another body with ``confidence enough'' in its own status to ``preserve the necessary impartiality.'' It is up to every Senator now to live up to that awesome and profound responsibility. At the moment, there is a very clear difference of opinion between the Republican leader and myself about what it means to have a fair trial. I believe a fair trial is one that considers all the relevant facts and allows relevant witnesses and documents--a feature of every single impeachment trial of a President in the history of our Nation. We have never had one with no witnesses--not once. Leader McConnell likes to cite precedent. That precedent stares him in the face, and he can't answer it. My Republican counterpart believes that a trial should feature no relevant witnesses and none of the relevant documents. He has made clear in his public appearance on FOX News that it should proceed according to the desires of the White House--the defendant in this case. Glaringly, the Republican leader has yet to make one single argument why witnesses should not testify. I am waiting to hear it, Leader McConnell. Give us specific answers why these witnesses should not come forward. Don't call names. Don't finger-point. Don't get angry at Nancy Pelosi. Tell us why, here in the Senate, witnesses and documents should not come forward that are directly relevant to the charges against the President of the United States of America. Leader McConnell has sort of exempted himself from fair debate. He doesn't want a fair trial; he wants a quick and sham trial. Now it is up to every Senator. Every Senator will have a say in deciding which of the two views wins out. Will we have a fair trial or a coverup? Will we hear the evidence, or will we try to hide it? It will not be me and not the Republican leader alone but a majority of Senators who will decide whether we have a fair trial with facts and evidence or a Senate-sponsored coverup of the President's alleged misconduct. Make no mistake--there will be votes on whether to call each of the four witnesses we proposed and subpoena the documents we have identified. Under the rules of the Senate trial, the minority will be able to offer motions subject to a majority vote. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, your constituents and the voice of history are watching. You will be required to vote on whether we have a fair trial with witnesses and with documents, or you will say: I am running away from the facts. I am scared of the facts. I will go for a coverup. A few hours ago, the momentum for uncovering the truth in a Senate trial gathered even more momentum. One of the key witnesses I have asked for, Mr. John Bolton, former National Security Advisor to President Trump, correctly acknowledged that he needs to comply with a Senate subpoena for his testimony, if issued. Previously, Mr. Bolton said he was leaving the question of his testimony up to the courts. Today, he made it perfectly clear that he will come if the Senate asks, as he should. The other potential witnesses we have identified--Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Duffey, and Mr. Blair--should do the same. We know that Mr. Bolton, like Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Duffey, and Mr. Blair--the three other witnesses--has crucial, eyewitness knowledge of the President's dealings with Ukraine, about how decisions were made to withhold security assistance and how opposition within the administration to that delay President Trump seemed to want was overcome. A simple majority is all it takes to ensure that the Senate issues a subpoena for these witnesses. If only four Republicans decide that Mr. Bolton and the three other witnesses ought to be heard, they will be heard, because every Democrat will vote to hear them. It is now up to four Senate Republicans to support bringing in Mr. Bolton and the three other witnesses, as well as the key documents we have requested, to ensure that all the evidence is presented at the outset of the Senate trial. Given that Mr. Bolton's lawyers have stated he has new and relevant information to share, if any Senate Republican opposes issuing subpoenas to the four witnesses and documents we have requested, they would make it absolutely clear they are participating in a coverup on one of the most sacred duties we have in this Congress--in this Senate--and that is to keep a President in check. Leader McConnell has suggested we follow the 1999 example of beginning the impeachment trial first and then deciding on witnesses and documentsafter the arguments are complete. He keeps making this argument. It doesn't gather any steam because it is such a foolish one. Let me again respond for the benefit of my colleagues. Witnesses and documents are the most important issue, and we should deal with them first. To hear Leader McConnell say ``no witnesses now but maybe some later'' is just another indication that he has no argument against witnesses and documents on the merits. He is afraid to address the argument because he knows it is a loser for him, so he says: Let's decide it later. Why? There is no reason. In fact, it is sort of backward. We are going to have all the arguments--pro and con--then say maybe we will have witnesses and documents? We will have the arguments first and the evidence later? As I have said, Leader McConnell's view of the trial is an ``Alice in Wonderland'' view--first the trial, then the evidence. More important than precedent is the fact that his analogy plainly doesn't make sense because you don't have both sides present their arguments first and then afterward ask for the evidence that we know is out there. The evidence should inform the trial, not the other way around. When Leader McConnell proposes that we follow the 1999 precedent, he is essentially arguing that we should conduct the entire impeachment trial first and then once it is over, decide on whether we need witnesses and documents. Again, McConnell's view is ``Alice in Wonderland,'' where we first have the trial and then the evidence. If the Senate were to agree to Leader McConnell's proposal, the Senate would act as little more than a nationally televised meeting of a mock trial club. Leader McConnell's proposal on witnesses and documents later is a poorly disguised trap. He has already actually made clear what his goals are. He said it on FOX News radio: ``After we've heard the arguments, we ought to vote and move on'' with no witnesses and no documents. Well, at least 47 Democrats and I hope some Republicans won't fall for that kind of specious logic. What McConnell said doesn't sound like someone who will reasonably consider witnesses and documents at a later date; he sounds more like someone who has already made up his mind. You cannot have a fair trial without the facts and without the testimony from witnesses with knowledge of the events and related documents. A trial without all the facts is a farce. If the President is acquitted at the end of a partisan sham trial with no witnesses and no documents, then his acquittal will not carry much weight in the minds of the American people or in the judgment of history. President Trump, if you are hurting about this impeachment and you are wishing for a fair trial and a real acquittal, join us in asking for the witnesses to come forward. Join us in asking for the documents. What are you hiding, President Trump? What are you afraid of, President Trump? If you think that you have done nothing wrong, you wouldn't mind having your own witnesses come here. These are people you appointed. Most Americans know that President Trump seems to be afraid of the truth. And 64 percent of all Republicans who almost always side with President Trump in the polling data say there should be witnesses and documents--64 percent. A trial without all the facts is a farce. The verdicts of a kangaroo court are empty. It is time for a bipartisan majority in this Chamber, Democrat and Republican, to support the rules and procedures of a fair trial. A vote to allow witnesses and documents does not presume a vote for conviction in any way. It merely ensures that when the ultimate judgment is rendered, whatever that judgment will be, it will be based on the facts. We don't know what the witnesses will say; it could be exculpatory for President Trump or it could be more condemning. Whatever it will be, we should have the facts come out and let the chips fall where they may. The Senate Democrats believe we must conduct a fair trial. As for the Senate Republicans, we will see. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS14

formal

single

homophobic

Impeachment Mr. President, as my colleagues return from the holiday recess, one question looms before us: Will the Senate conduct a fair impeachment trial of the President of the United States? Will we search for all of the facts, or will we look for a coverup--a sham trial--on one of the most important powers the Founding Fathers gave the American people? The Framers gave the Senate the sole power to try Presidential impeachments because they could not imagine another body with ``confidence enough'' in its own status to ``preserve the necessary impartiality.'' It is up to every Senator now to live up to that awesome and profound responsibility. At the moment, there is a very clear difference of opinion between the Republican leader and myself about what it means to have a fair trial. I believe a fair trial is one that considers all the relevant facts and allows relevant witnesses and documents--a feature of every single impeachment trial of a President in the history of our Nation. We have never had one with no witnesses--not once. Leader McConnell likes to cite precedent. That precedent stares him in the face, and he can't answer it. My Republican counterpart believes that a trial should feature no relevant witnesses and none of the relevant documents. He has made clear in his public appearance on FOX News that it should proceed according to the desires of the White House--the defendant in this case. Glaringly, the Republican leader has yet to make one single argument why witnesses should not testify. I am waiting to hear it, Leader McConnell. Give us specific answers why these witnesses should not come forward. Don't call names. Don't finger-point. Don't get angry at Nancy Pelosi. Tell us why, here in the Senate, witnesses and documents should not come forward that are directly relevant to the charges against the President of the United States of America. Leader McConnell has sort of exempted himself from fair debate. He doesn't want a fair trial; he wants a quick and sham trial. Now it is up to every Senator. Every Senator will have a say in deciding which of the two views wins out. Will we have a fair trial or a coverup? Will we hear the evidence, or will we try to hide it? It will not be me and not the Republican leader alone but a majority of Senators who will decide whether we have a fair trial with facts and evidence or a Senate-sponsored coverup of the President's alleged misconduct. Make no mistake--there will be votes on whether to call each of the four witnesses we proposed and subpoena the documents we have identified. Under the rules of the Senate trial, the minority will be able to offer motions subject to a majority vote. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, your constituents and the voice of history are watching. You will be required to vote on whether we have a fair trial with witnesses and with documents, or you will say: I am running away from the facts. I am scared of the facts. I will go for a coverup. A few hours ago, the momentum for uncovering the truth in a Senate trial gathered even more momentum. One of the key witnesses I have asked for, Mr. John Bolton, former National Security Advisor to President Trump, correctly acknowledged that he needs to comply with a Senate subpoena for his testimony, if issued. Previously, Mr. Bolton said he was leaving the question of his testimony up to the courts. Today, he made it perfectly clear that he will come if the Senate asks, as he should. The other potential witnesses we have identified--Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Duffey, and Mr. Blair--should do the same. We know that Mr. Bolton, like Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Duffey, and Mr. Blair--the three other witnesses--has crucial, eyewitness knowledge of the President's dealings with Ukraine, about how decisions were made to withhold security assistance and how opposition within the administration to that delay President Trump seemed to want was overcome. A simple majority is all it takes to ensure that the Senate issues a subpoena for these witnesses. If only four Republicans decide that Mr. Bolton and the three other witnesses ought to be heard, they will be heard, because every Democrat will vote to hear them. It is now up to four Senate Republicans to support bringing in Mr. Bolton and the three other witnesses, as well as the key documents we have requested, to ensure that all the evidence is presented at the outset of the Senate trial. Given that Mr. Bolton's lawyers have stated he has new and relevant information to share, if any Senate Republican opposes issuing subpoenas to the four witnesses and documents we have requested, they would make it absolutely clear they are participating in a coverup on one of the most sacred duties we have in this Congress--in this Senate--and that is to keep a President in check. Leader McConnell has suggested we follow the 1999 example of beginning the impeachment trial first and then deciding on witnesses and documentsafter the arguments are complete. He keeps making this argument. It doesn't gather any steam because it is such a foolish one. Let me again respond for the benefit of my colleagues. Witnesses and documents are the most important issue, and we should deal with them first. To hear Leader McConnell say ``no witnesses now but maybe some later'' is just another indication that he has no argument against witnesses and documents on the merits. He is afraid to address the argument because he knows it is a loser for him, so he says: Let's decide it later. Why? There is no reason. In fact, it is sort of backward. We are going to have all the arguments--pro and con--then say maybe we will have witnesses and documents? We will have the arguments first and the evidence later? As I have said, Leader McConnell's view of the trial is an ``Alice in Wonderland'' view--first the trial, then the evidence. More important than precedent is the fact that his analogy plainly doesn't make sense because you don't have both sides present their arguments first and then afterward ask for the evidence that we know is out there. The evidence should inform the trial, not the other way around. When Leader McConnell proposes that we follow the 1999 precedent, he is essentially arguing that we should conduct the entire impeachment trial first and then once it is over, decide on whether we need witnesses and documents. Again, McConnell's view is ``Alice in Wonderland,'' where we first have the trial and then the evidence. If the Senate were to agree to Leader McConnell's proposal, the Senate would act as little more than a nationally televised meeting of a mock trial club. Leader McConnell's proposal on witnesses and documents later is a poorly disguised trap. He has already actually made clear what his goals are. He said it on FOX News radio: ``After we've heard the arguments, we ought to vote and move on'' with no witnesses and no documents. Well, at least 47 Democrats and I hope some Republicans won't fall for that kind of specious logic. What McConnell said doesn't sound like someone who will reasonably consider witnesses and documents at a later date; he sounds more like someone who has already made up his mind. You cannot have a fair trial without the facts and without the testimony from witnesses with knowledge of the events and related documents. A trial without all the facts is a farce. If the President is acquitted at the end of a partisan sham trial with no witnesses and no documents, then his acquittal will not carry much weight in the minds of the American people or in the judgment of history. President Trump, if you are hurting about this impeachment and you are wishing for a fair trial and a real acquittal, join us in asking for the witnesses to come forward. Join us in asking for the documents. What are you hiding, President Trump? What are you afraid of, President Trump? If you think that you have done nothing wrong, you wouldn't mind having your own witnesses come here. These are people you appointed. Most Americans know that President Trump seems to be afraid of the truth. And 64 percent of all Republicans who almost always side with President Trump in the polling data say there should be witnesses and documents--64 percent. A trial without all the facts is a farce. The verdicts of a kangaroo court are empty. It is time for a bipartisan majority in this Chamber, Democrat and Republican, to support the rules and procedures of a fair trial. A vote to allow witnesses and documents does not presume a vote for conviction in any way. It merely ensures that when the ultimate judgment is rendered, whatever that judgment will be, it will be based on the facts. We don't know what the witnesses will say; it could be exculpatory for President Trump or it could be more condemning. Whatever it will be, we should have the facts come out and let the chips fall where they may. The Senate Democrats believe we must conduct a fair trial. As for the Senate Republicans, we will see. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS14

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Iran Madam President, on another matter, last Friday, Americans woke up to the news that one of the most brutal terrorist leaders in the world had been killed. Qasem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike by America's military, finally bringing an end to his decades-long reign of terror. You could legitimately call General Soleimani a master of disaster because that defined his entire professional life as the leader of Iran's military. Actually, he was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. General Soleimani was the most consequential military leader in Iran, which has been designated by the U.S. State Departmentas a state sponsor of international terrorism since 1984. General Soleimani orchestrated Iran's efforts to squash democracy movements both at home and abroad by any means necessary. He and his army of terrorists exported violence around the region and engaged in gross human rights violations against the Iranian people. If you are curious how the Iranian Government treats its own citizens, just look at the recent protests that started as complaints over increased gas prices. When the Iranian citizens took to the streets in peaceful protest, the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, called them enemy agents and thugs, and the government attacked. As many as 450 Iranians were killed in those peaceful protests, with some 2,000 injured and 7,000 detained. This is not a government that is protecting its people; it is a network of criminals that masquerades as a government. One of the Ayatollah's most loyal henchmen was Soleimani. In addition to leading attacks on the Iranian people and fueling terrorist operations throughout the Middle East, he also played a crucial role in fomenting Syria's civil war. Soleimani helped to finance and aid the butcher, known as Bashar al-Assad, in the slaughter of the Syrian people. The death toll of the Syrian civil war is estimated to be as high as a half a million Syrians, and the number of refugees and internally displaced persons goes into the millions. While the greatest death and destruction orchestrated by Soleimani was concentrated in the Middle East, the United States was one of his and Iran's biggest targets. From the Iranian hostage crisis back in 1979, to the Khobar Towers bombing, to the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone, to the death of an American contractor in Iraq, Iran's actions at every turn have demonstrated a desire to make the chant ``Death to America'' a reality. Soleimani was known to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. He and the Iranian regime supplied explosively formed penetrators that cut through American armor like a hot knife through butter and left hundreds of American soldiers--indeed, maybe 1,000 or more--disabled as a result of this deadly instrument of war. Since 2003, at least 600 U.S. soldiers have been killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq, and as I have said, many more have been injured. I and others in this Chamber have seen their activities firsthand at Brooke Army Medical Center, the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, and at other places where they have received treatment, like at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. It is where the victims of these Iranian improvised explosive devices were treated for amputation, for burns, or functional limb loss if they survived those injuries in the first place. These soldiers are a reminder of the selfless commitment our men and women in uniform make each day as well as the perilous threat posed by Iran under Soleimani's leadership. For decades, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has waged war against the United States and our allies, and recent reports indicate that Soleimani was in the process of plotting even more acts of aggression against the United States and U.S. interests, which is hardly surprising, though, since he had been doing that for many years. That is precisely why he was targeted. Just as quickly as the news of this attack spread, so did anti-Trump rhetoric. Instead of celebrating the fact that Iran's chief terrorist was dead and could kill no more, a number of our Democratic colleagues chose to bash the President instead. They claimed his action was unauthorized, even illegal, or that he should have sought congressional approval beforehand. None of that is true. The President not only has the authority under the Constitution but the responsibility to defend the United States from terrorist organizations like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leaders like General Soleimani. This was neither an assassination--a particularly loathsome allegation that has been made on social media--nor an unprovoked attack. This was the President of the United States exercising his lawful authority to protect the United States, our allies, and our national interests just as Presidents before have done. Perhaps the most stark comparison is when Barack Obama directed the killing of Osama bin Laden. Where were the people who now claim that Soleimani's death is an abuse of power? I don't recall anyone calling the killing of Osama bin Laden an assassination. When he was killed, they were not on cable TV, criticizing the move; we were all celebrating. Some of our Democratic friends will simply never pass on an opportunity to criticize the President--no matter how unfair. Thank goodness there are Democrats like former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Senator Joe Lieberman said: President Trump's order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats. I am also grateful for the informed comments by luminaries like former CENTCOM Commander and former CIA Director General Petraeus as well as Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have both rightly said that this action was authorized and necessary. It is unquestionable that the death of Soleimani was a major blow to the Iranian regime and a strong message of deterrence to all state sponsors of terrorism. The blood of hundreds of American soldiers and countless civilians is on Soleimani's hands, and because of the decisive action taken by President Trump, he is gone. I fully support this move by the President, and I commend the President's willingness to send a strong message of deterrence to the terrorist threat in the Middle East, particularly against the United States, our citizens, and our interests. Finally, I join my fellow Senators in thanking the brave men and women in uniform who fought and continue to fight terrorist acts brought about by people like General Soleimani and the Quds Force as part of the IRGC. I especially thank those who are fighting and who are prepared to defend our interests in the Middle East today. America must never back down in the face of this evil. Our world is safer today because Qasem Soleimani is dead. It would not have been possible without the actions that President Trump has undertaken or without the resolve of our military leaders and our courageous servicemembers who put their lives on the line each day. 116th Congress Madam President, on another matter, briefly, we have now crossed the halfway point of the 116th Congress, and it is safe to say that 2019 was an unconventional and a somewhat bumpy year. After 2 years with Republicans controlling both Chambers of Congress and the White House, we were all prepared for the challenges that would come with a Democratically controlled House. Despite the unnecessary foot-dragging and political gaming and obsession with foiling the President, we were still able to accomplish a lot of good for the country and the people of my State of Texas. Last month alone, we made major moves to strengthen our military and support our troops. We passed a funding bill that increased the funding by nearly $20 billion--necessary to restore our readiness--and gave our troops the largest pay raise they had received in a decade. This complemented the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized $400 million for military construction projects in Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be built in Fort Worth. It also included a number of provisions that I introduced to support our servicemembers and veterans. In 2016, only 46 percent of Active-Duty military voted by absentee ballot, and one-third of those who didn't vote said that the absentee voting process was simply too complicated. To make that better, I introduced the Military Voter Protection Act, which became law last month. It makes the absentee voter registration process easier for servicemembers stationed overseas so that a complicated trail of paperwork doesn't prevent them from casting their well-deserved ballots. I have also heard from my Texas constituents who are veterans, who havefallen on hard times and had to fight for their VA and Department of Defense disability benefits in bankruptcy proceedings. That should never be the case. Another bill I introduced called the HAVEN Act, which is now law, shields those benefits in the same way that Social Security disability is exempted. No veteran should be penalized for receiving the disability compensation that they are rightly due. Of course, perhaps the biggest headline news is our continued work on judicial nominations. Under this administration, we have confirmed more than 180 Federal judges, including 20 in Texas, plus 2 Supreme Court Justices. Although we are still 1 year shy of the end of President Trump's first term, we have already confirmed more circuit court judges than in any other President's first term in the past four decades. Having these impressive judges on the Federal bench will be a tremendous benefit to the entire country for generations to come, and we will keep working to confirm even more. Over the last year, we have also built on our work to support victims of Hurricane Harvey, including the release of $4.6 billion in additional funding from a bill to support communities across the country, including those in Texas, recovering from natural disasters. More than 2 years after the storm, many Texans are still rebuilding and, sadly, have had the added struggle of fighting to get their hands on Federal funds already approved by Congress. In February 2018, Congress passed a funding package that included more than $4 billion in disaster mitigation for Texas, but more than a year later, folks at home still hadn't seen a dime of that money. This summer, I introduced a bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to send those and any future funds approved by Congress within 90 days of their appropriation by Congress. Government bureaucrats should not be allowed to stand in the way between communities in need and funds already approved by Congress, and I am happy that those funds are finally going out the door to these Texas communities. Another challenge we have faced over the last year is the ongoing crisis at the border, which hit its peak in May. Local communities in Texas helped carry the weight of this humanitarian crisis, which has placed serious strain on their ability to deliver basic services at the municipal and State levels. They diverted taxpayer dollars from things like public safety, power, and clean drinking water to do a job that should have been done by the Federal Government in the first place to secure our border. To right this wrong, we passed a funding agreement, at my request, which provided $30 million in reimbursements for local governments, States, and charitable organizations that have spent millions of dollars in response to this crisis, which seems to be ignored too often here in Washington, DC. Nearly 40 percent of this initial funding went to Texas to meet immediate needs, and I expect another round to come soon to cover additional expenses. Another big victory came in the form of international trade. Through my role as chairman of the Senate Finance Trade Subcommittee, I worked with the administration on three trade agreements with Japan, the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement--and China, all of which, I think, will inure to the benefit of all Americans, including Texans. I commend President Trump and Ambassador Lighthizer for their courage in confronting unfair trade practices, opening new markets, and providing economic certainty as we move into this election year. On top of all of this, we passed the bipartisan Taxpayer First Act, which includes some of the most significant reforms to the Internal Revenue Service in two decades. We stood with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by finally passing the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act, which strengthens our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We helped provide additional resources to secure America's elections against foreign interference, and the list goes on and on and on. It is safe to say, though, that there are a number of items that could have been added to this list of accomplishments, had they not been pulled into the political fray and this obsessive impeachment mania by the House of Representatives. Two things we could have done that were not accomplished as a result of this obsession were bills to reduce prescription drug pricing and to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, for which the Presiding Officer has played such an important leadership role. In both cases, there is broad bipartisan support for action, and in both cases, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided that political point scoring was more important than actually getting the job done; thus, we found ourselves at an impasse. As we gear up for a new year, those will be two of the top items on my priority list, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will work with us this time around to get them done. We are kicking off 2020 with a big, looming question mark hanging over this Chamber in the form of this impeachment trial, which was an urgent constitutional imperative until it wasn't. We are anxious to see what Speaker Pelosi will finally decide, and we are waiting for the House to transmit the Articles of Impeachment, but we are not going to let the grass grow under our feet in the interim. We are going to keep working to notch more wins for the American people, confirm more Federal judges, and pass the USMCA trade agreement, hopefully, before further delay. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS15

formal

terrorism

Islamophobic

Iran Madam President, on another matter, last Friday, Americans woke up to the news that one of the most brutal terrorist leaders in the world had been killed. Qasem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike by America's military, finally bringing an end to his decades-long reign of terror. You could legitimately call General Soleimani a master of disaster because that defined his entire professional life as the leader of Iran's military. Actually, he was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. General Soleimani was the most consequential military leader in Iran, which has been designated by the U.S. State Departmentas a state sponsor of international terrorism since 1984. General Soleimani orchestrated Iran's efforts to squash democracy movements both at home and abroad by any means necessary. He and his army of terrorists exported violence around the region and engaged in gross human rights violations against the Iranian people. If you are curious how the Iranian Government treats its own citizens, just look at the recent protests that started as complaints over increased gas prices. When the Iranian citizens took to the streets in peaceful protest, the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, called them enemy agents and thugs, and the government attacked. As many as 450 Iranians were killed in those peaceful protests, with some 2,000 injured and 7,000 detained. This is not a government that is protecting its people; it is a network of criminals that masquerades as a government. One of the Ayatollah's most loyal henchmen was Soleimani. In addition to leading attacks on the Iranian people and fueling terrorist operations throughout the Middle East, he also played a crucial role in fomenting Syria's civil war. Soleimani helped to finance and aid the butcher, known as Bashar al-Assad, in the slaughter of the Syrian people. The death toll of the Syrian civil war is estimated to be as high as a half a million Syrians, and the number of refugees and internally displaced persons goes into the millions. While the greatest death and destruction orchestrated by Soleimani was concentrated in the Middle East, the United States was one of his and Iran's biggest targets. From the Iranian hostage crisis back in 1979, to the Khobar Towers bombing, to the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone, to the death of an American contractor in Iraq, Iran's actions at every turn have demonstrated a desire to make the chant ``Death to America'' a reality. Soleimani was known to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. He and the Iranian regime supplied explosively formed penetrators that cut through American armor like a hot knife through butter and left hundreds of American soldiers--indeed, maybe 1,000 or more--disabled as a result of this deadly instrument of war. Since 2003, at least 600 U.S. soldiers have been killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq, and as I have said, many more have been injured. I and others in this Chamber have seen their activities firsthand at Brooke Army Medical Center, the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, and at other places where they have received treatment, like at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. It is where the victims of these Iranian improvised explosive devices were treated for amputation, for burns, or functional limb loss if they survived those injuries in the first place. These soldiers are a reminder of the selfless commitment our men and women in uniform make each day as well as the perilous threat posed by Iran under Soleimani's leadership. For decades, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has waged war against the United States and our allies, and recent reports indicate that Soleimani was in the process of plotting even more acts of aggression against the United States and U.S. interests, which is hardly surprising, though, since he had been doing that for many years. That is precisely why he was targeted. Just as quickly as the news of this attack spread, so did anti-Trump rhetoric. Instead of celebrating the fact that Iran's chief terrorist was dead and could kill no more, a number of our Democratic colleagues chose to bash the President instead. They claimed his action was unauthorized, even illegal, or that he should have sought congressional approval beforehand. None of that is true. The President not only has the authority under the Constitution but the responsibility to defend the United States from terrorist organizations like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leaders like General Soleimani. This was neither an assassination--a particularly loathsome allegation that has been made on social media--nor an unprovoked attack. This was the President of the United States exercising his lawful authority to protect the United States, our allies, and our national interests just as Presidents before have done. Perhaps the most stark comparison is when Barack Obama directed the killing of Osama bin Laden. Where were the people who now claim that Soleimani's death is an abuse of power? I don't recall anyone calling the killing of Osama bin Laden an assassination. When he was killed, they were not on cable TV, criticizing the move; we were all celebrating. Some of our Democratic friends will simply never pass on an opportunity to criticize the President--no matter how unfair. Thank goodness there are Democrats like former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Senator Joe Lieberman said: President Trump's order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats. I am also grateful for the informed comments by luminaries like former CENTCOM Commander and former CIA Director General Petraeus as well as Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have both rightly said that this action was authorized and necessary. It is unquestionable that the death of Soleimani was a major blow to the Iranian regime and a strong message of deterrence to all state sponsors of terrorism. The blood of hundreds of American soldiers and countless civilians is on Soleimani's hands, and because of the decisive action taken by President Trump, he is gone. I fully support this move by the President, and I commend the President's willingness to send a strong message of deterrence to the terrorist threat in the Middle East, particularly against the United States, our citizens, and our interests. Finally, I join my fellow Senators in thanking the brave men and women in uniform who fought and continue to fight terrorist acts brought about by people like General Soleimani and the Quds Force as part of the IRGC. I especially thank those who are fighting and who are prepared to defend our interests in the Middle East today. America must never back down in the face of this evil. Our world is safer today because Qasem Soleimani is dead. It would not have been possible without the actions that President Trump has undertaken or without the resolve of our military leaders and our courageous servicemembers who put their lives on the line each day. 116th Congress Madam President, on another matter, briefly, we have now crossed the halfway point of the 116th Congress, and it is safe to say that 2019 was an unconventional and a somewhat bumpy year. After 2 years with Republicans controlling both Chambers of Congress and the White House, we were all prepared for the challenges that would come with a Democratically controlled House. Despite the unnecessary foot-dragging and political gaming and obsession with foiling the President, we were still able to accomplish a lot of good for the country and the people of my State of Texas. Last month alone, we made major moves to strengthen our military and support our troops. We passed a funding bill that increased the funding by nearly $20 billion--necessary to restore our readiness--and gave our troops the largest pay raise they had received in a decade. This complemented the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized $400 million for military construction projects in Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be built in Fort Worth. It also included a number of provisions that I introduced to support our servicemembers and veterans. In 2016, only 46 percent of Active-Duty military voted by absentee ballot, and one-third of those who didn't vote said that the absentee voting process was simply too complicated. To make that better, I introduced the Military Voter Protection Act, which became law last month. It makes the absentee voter registration process easier for servicemembers stationed overseas so that a complicated trail of paperwork doesn't prevent them from casting their well-deserved ballots. I have also heard from my Texas constituents who are veterans, who havefallen on hard times and had to fight for their VA and Department of Defense disability benefits in bankruptcy proceedings. That should never be the case. Another bill I introduced called the HAVEN Act, which is now law, shields those benefits in the same way that Social Security disability is exempted. No veteran should be penalized for receiving the disability compensation that they are rightly due. Of course, perhaps the biggest headline news is our continued work on judicial nominations. Under this administration, we have confirmed more than 180 Federal judges, including 20 in Texas, plus 2 Supreme Court Justices. Although we are still 1 year shy of the end of President Trump's first term, we have already confirmed more circuit court judges than in any other President's first term in the past four decades. Having these impressive judges on the Federal bench will be a tremendous benefit to the entire country for generations to come, and we will keep working to confirm even more. Over the last year, we have also built on our work to support victims of Hurricane Harvey, including the release of $4.6 billion in additional funding from a bill to support communities across the country, including those in Texas, recovering from natural disasters. More than 2 years after the storm, many Texans are still rebuilding and, sadly, have had the added struggle of fighting to get their hands on Federal funds already approved by Congress. In February 2018, Congress passed a funding package that included more than $4 billion in disaster mitigation for Texas, but more than a year later, folks at home still hadn't seen a dime of that money. This summer, I introduced a bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to send those and any future funds approved by Congress within 90 days of their appropriation by Congress. Government bureaucrats should not be allowed to stand in the way between communities in need and funds already approved by Congress, and I am happy that those funds are finally going out the door to these Texas communities. Another challenge we have faced over the last year is the ongoing crisis at the border, which hit its peak in May. Local communities in Texas helped carry the weight of this humanitarian crisis, which has placed serious strain on their ability to deliver basic services at the municipal and State levels. They diverted taxpayer dollars from things like public safety, power, and clean drinking water to do a job that should have been done by the Federal Government in the first place to secure our border. To right this wrong, we passed a funding agreement, at my request, which provided $30 million in reimbursements for local governments, States, and charitable organizations that have spent millions of dollars in response to this crisis, which seems to be ignored too often here in Washington, DC. Nearly 40 percent of this initial funding went to Texas to meet immediate needs, and I expect another round to come soon to cover additional expenses. Another big victory came in the form of international trade. Through my role as chairman of the Senate Finance Trade Subcommittee, I worked with the administration on three trade agreements with Japan, the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement--and China, all of which, I think, will inure to the benefit of all Americans, including Texans. I commend President Trump and Ambassador Lighthizer for their courage in confronting unfair trade practices, opening new markets, and providing economic certainty as we move into this election year. On top of all of this, we passed the bipartisan Taxpayer First Act, which includes some of the most significant reforms to the Internal Revenue Service in two decades. We stood with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by finally passing the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act, which strengthens our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We helped provide additional resources to secure America's elections against foreign interference, and the list goes on and on and on. It is safe to say, though, that there are a number of items that could have been added to this list of accomplishments, had they not been pulled into the political fray and this obsessive impeachment mania by the House of Representatives. Two things we could have done that were not accomplished as a result of this obsession were bills to reduce prescription drug pricing and to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, for which the Presiding Officer has played such an important leadership role. In both cases, there is broad bipartisan support for action, and in both cases, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided that political point scoring was more important than actually getting the job done; thus, we found ourselves at an impasse. As we gear up for a new year, those will be two of the top items on my priority list, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will work with us this time around to get them done. We are kicking off 2020 with a big, looming question mark hanging over this Chamber in the form of this impeachment trial, which was an urgent constitutional imperative until it wasn't. We are anxious to see what Speaker Pelosi will finally decide, and we are waiting for the House to transmit the Articles of Impeachment, but we are not going to let the grass grow under our feet in the interim. We are going to keep working to notch more wins for the American people, confirm more Federal judges, and pass the USMCA trade agreement, hopefully, before further delay. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS15

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Iran Madam President, on another matter, last Friday, Americans woke up to the news that one of the most brutal terrorist leaders in the world had been killed. Qasem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike by America's military, finally bringing an end to his decades-long reign of terror. You could legitimately call General Soleimani a master of disaster because that defined his entire professional life as the leader of Iran's military. Actually, he was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. General Soleimani was the most consequential military leader in Iran, which has been designated by the U.S. State Departmentas a state sponsor of international terrorism since 1984. General Soleimani orchestrated Iran's efforts to squash democracy movements both at home and abroad by any means necessary. He and his army of terrorists exported violence around the region and engaged in gross human rights violations against the Iranian people. If you are curious how the Iranian Government treats its own citizens, just look at the recent protests that started as complaints over increased gas prices. When the Iranian citizens took to the streets in peaceful protest, the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, called them enemy agents and thugs, and the government attacked. As many as 450 Iranians were killed in those peaceful protests, with some 2,000 injured and 7,000 detained. This is not a government that is protecting its people; it is a network of criminals that masquerades as a government. One of the Ayatollah's most loyal henchmen was Soleimani. In addition to leading attacks on the Iranian people and fueling terrorist operations throughout the Middle East, he also played a crucial role in fomenting Syria's civil war. Soleimani helped to finance and aid the butcher, known as Bashar al-Assad, in the slaughter of the Syrian people. The death toll of the Syrian civil war is estimated to be as high as a half a million Syrians, and the number of refugees and internally displaced persons goes into the millions. While the greatest death and destruction orchestrated by Soleimani was concentrated in the Middle East, the United States was one of his and Iran's biggest targets. From the Iranian hostage crisis back in 1979, to the Khobar Towers bombing, to the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone, to the death of an American contractor in Iraq, Iran's actions at every turn have demonstrated a desire to make the chant ``Death to America'' a reality. Soleimani was known to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. He and the Iranian regime supplied explosively formed penetrators that cut through American armor like a hot knife through butter and left hundreds of American soldiers--indeed, maybe 1,000 or more--disabled as a result of this deadly instrument of war. Since 2003, at least 600 U.S. soldiers have been killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq, and as I have said, many more have been injured. I and others in this Chamber have seen their activities firsthand at Brooke Army Medical Center, the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, and at other places where they have received treatment, like at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. It is where the victims of these Iranian improvised explosive devices were treated for amputation, for burns, or functional limb loss if they survived those injuries in the first place. These soldiers are a reminder of the selfless commitment our men and women in uniform make each day as well as the perilous threat posed by Iran under Soleimani's leadership. For decades, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has waged war against the United States and our allies, and recent reports indicate that Soleimani was in the process of plotting even more acts of aggression against the United States and U.S. interests, which is hardly surprising, though, since he had been doing that for many years. That is precisely why he was targeted. Just as quickly as the news of this attack spread, so did anti-Trump rhetoric. Instead of celebrating the fact that Iran's chief terrorist was dead and could kill no more, a number of our Democratic colleagues chose to bash the President instead. They claimed his action was unauthorized, even illegal, or that he should have sought congressional approval beforehand. None of that is true. The President not only has the authority under the Constitution but the responsibility to defend the United States from terrorist organizations like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leaders like General Soleimani. This was neither an assassination--a particularly loathsome allegation that has been made on social media--nor an unprovoked attack. This was the President of the United States exercising his lawful authority to protect the United States, our allies, and our national interests just as Presidents before have done. Perhaps the most stark comparison is when Barack Obama directed the killing of Osama bin Laden. Where were the people who now claim that Soleimani's death is an abuse of power? I don't recall anyone calling the killing of Osama bin Laden an assassination. When he was killed, they were not on cable TV, criticizing the move; we were all celebrating. Some of our Democratic friends will simply never pass on an opportunity to criticize the President--no matter how unfair. Thank goodness there are Democrats like former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Senator Joe Lieberman said: President Trump's order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats. I am also grateful for the informed comments by luminaries like former CENTCOM Commander and former CIA Director General Petraeus as well as Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have both rightly said that this action was authorized and necessary. It is unquestionable that the death of Soleimani was a major blow to the Iranian regime and a strong message of deterrence to all state sponsors of terrorism. The blood of hundreds of American soldiers and countless civilians is on Soleimani's hands, and because of the decisive action taken by President Trump, he is gone. I fully support this move by the President, and I commend the President's willingness to send a strong message of deterrence to the terrorist threat in the Middle East, particularly against the United States, our citizens, and our interests. Finally, I join my fellow Senators in thanking the brave men and women in uniform who fought and continue to fight terrorist acts brought about by people like General Soleimani and the Quds Force as part of the IRGC. I especially thank those who are fighting and who are prepared to defend our interests in the Middle East today. America must never back down in the face of this evil. Our world is safer today because Qasem Soleimani is dead. It would not have been possible without the actions that President Trump has undertaken or without the resolve of our military leaders and our courageous servicemembers who put their lives on the line each day. 116th Congress Madam President, on another matter, briefly, we have now crossed the halfway point of the 116th Congress, and it is safe to say that 2019 was an unconventional and a somewhat bumpy year. After 2 years with Republicans controlling both Chambers of Congress and the White House, we were all prepared for the challenges that would come with a Democratically controlled House. Despite the unnecessary foot-dragging and political gaming and obsession with foiling the President, we were still able to accomplish a lot of good for the country and the people of my State of Texas. Last month alone, we made major moves to strengthen our military and support our troops. We passed a funding bill that increased the funding by nearly $20 billion--necessary to restore our readiness--and gave our troops the largest pay raise they had received in a decade. This complemented the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized $400 million for military construction projects in Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be built in Fort Worth. It also included a number of provisions that I introduced to support our servicemembers and veterans. In 2016, only 46 percent of Active-Duty military voted by absentee ballot, and one-third of those who didn't vote said that the absentee voting process was simply too complicated. To make that better, I introduced the Military Voter Protection Act, which became law last month. It makes the absentee voter registration process easier for servicemembers stationed overseas so that a complicated trail of paperwork doesn't prevent them from casting their well-deserved ballots. I have also heard from my Texas constituents who are veterans, who havefallen on hard times and had to fight for their VA and Department of Defense disability benefits in bankruptcy proceedings. That should never be the case. Another bill I introduced called the HAVEN Act, which is now law, shields those benefits in the same way that Social Security disability is exempted. No veteran should be penalized for receiving the disability compensation that they are rightly due. Of course, perhaps the biggest headline news is our continued work on judicial nominations. Under this administration, we have confirmed more than 180 Federal judges, including 20 in Texas, plus 2 Supreme Court Justices. Although we are still 1 year shy of the end of President Trump's first term, we have already confirmed more circuit court judges than in any other President's first term in the past four decades. Having these impressive judges on the Federal bench will be a tremendous benefit to the entire country for generations to come, and we will keep working to confirm even more. Over the last year, we have also built on our work to support victims of Hurricane Harvey, including the release of $4.6 billion in additional funding from a bill to support communities across the country, including those in Texas, recovering from natural disasters. More than 2 years after the storm, many Texans are still rebuilding and, sadly, have had the added struggle of fighting to get their hands on Federal funds already approved by Congress. In February 2018, Congress passed a funding package that included more than $4 billion in disaster mitigation for Texas, but more than a year later, folks at home still hadn't seen a dime of that money. This summer, I introduced a bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to send those and any future funds approved by Congress within 90 days of their appropriation by Congress. Government bureaucrats should not be allowed to stand in the way between communities in need and funds already approved by Congress, and I am happy that those funds are finally going out the door to these Texas communities. Another challenge we have faced over the last year is the ongoing crisis at the border, which hit its peak in May. Local communities in Texas helped carry the weight of this humanitarian crisis, which has placed serious strain on their ability to deliver basic services at the municipal and State levels. They diverted taxpayer dollars from things like public safety, power, and clean drinking water to do a job that should have been done by the Federal Government in the first place to secure our border. To right this wrong, we passed a funding agreement, at my request, which provided $30 million in reimbursements for local governments, States, and charitable organizations that have spent millions of dollars in response to this crisis, which seems to be ignored too often here in Washington, DC. Nearly 40 percent of this initial funding went to Texas to meet immediate needs, and I expect another round to come soon to cover additional expenses. Another big victory came in the form of international trade. Through my role as chairman of the Senate Finance Trade Subcommittee, I worked with the administration on three trade agreements with Japan, the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement--and China, all of which, I think, will inure to the benefit of all Americans, including Texans. I commend President Trump and Ambassador Lighthizer for their courage in confronting unfair trade practices, opening new markets, and providing economic certainty as we move into this election year. On top of all of this, we passed the bipartisan Taxpayer First Act, which includes some of the most significant reforms to the Internal Revenue Service in two decades. We stood with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by finally passing the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act, which strengthens our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We helped provide additional resources to secure America's elections against foreign interference, and the list goes on and on and on. It is safe to say, though, that there are a number of items that could have been added to this list of accomplishments, had they not been pulled into the political fray and this obsessive impeachment mania by the House of Representatives. Two things we could have done that were not accomplished as a result of this obsession were bills to reduce prescription drug pricing and to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, for which the Presiding Officer has played such an important leadership role. In both cases, there is broad bipartisan support for action, and in both cases, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided that political point scoring was more important than actually getting the job done; thus, we found ourselves at an impasse. As we gear up for a new year, those will be two of the top items on my priority list, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will work with us this time around to get them done. We are kicking off 2020 with a big, looming question mark hanging over this Chamber in the form of this impeachment trial, which was an urgent constitutional imperative until it wasn't. We are anxious to see what Speaker Pelosi will finally decide, and we are waiting for the House to transmit the Articles of Impeachment, but we are not going to let the grass grow under our feet in the interim. We are going to keep working to notch more wins for the American people, confirm more Federal judges, and pass the USMCA trade agreement, hopefully, before further delay. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS15

formal

terrorists

Islamophobic

Iran Madam President, on another matter, last Friday, Americans woke up to the news that one of the most brutal terrorist leaders in the world had been killed. Qasem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike by America's military, finally bringing an end to his decades-long reign of terror. You could legitimately call General Soleimani a master of disaster because that defined his entire professional life as the leader of Iran's military. Actually, he was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. General Soleimani was the most consequential military leader in Iran, which has been designated by the U.S. State Departmentas a state sponsor of international terrorism since 1984. General Soleimani orchestrated Iran's efforts to squash democracy movements both at home and abroad by any means necessary. He and his army of terrorists exported violence around the region and engaged in gross human rights violations against the Iranian people. If you are curious how the Iranian Government treats its own citizens, just look at the recent protests that started as complaints over increased gas prices. When the Iranian citizens took to the streets in peaceful protest, the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, called them enemy agents and thugs, and the government attacked. As many as 450 Iranians were killed in those peaceful protests, with some 2,000 injured and 7,000 detained. This is not a government that is protecting its people; it is a network of criminals that masquerades as a government. One of the Ayatollah's most loyal henchmen was Soleimani. In addition to leading attacks on the Iranian people and fueling terrorist operations throughout the Middle East, he also played a crucial role in fomenting Syria's civil war. Soleimani helped to finance and aid the butcher, known as Bashar al-Assad, in the slaughter of the Syrian people. The death toll of the Syrian civil war is estimated to be as high as a half a million Syrians, and the number of refugees and internally displaced persons goes into the millions. While the greatest death and destruction orchestrated by Soleimani was concentrated in the Middle East, the United States was one of his and Iran's biggest targets. From the Iranian hostage crisis back in 1979, to the Khobar Towers bombing, to the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone, to the death of an American contractor in Iraq, Iran's actions at every turn have demonstrated a desire to make the chant ``Death to America'' a reality. Soleimani was known to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. He and the Iranian regime supplied explosively formed penetrators that cut through American armor like a hot knife through butter and left hundreds of American soldiers--indeed, maybe 1,000 or more--disabled as a result of this deadly instrument of war. Since 2003, at least 600 U.S. soldiers have been killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq, and as I have said, many more have been injured. I and others in this Chamber have seen their activities firsthand at Brooke Army Medical Center, the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, and at other places where they have received treatment, like at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. It is where the victims of these Iranian improvised explosive devices were treated for amputation, for burns, or functional limb loss if they survived those injuries in the first place. These soldiers are a reminder of the selfless commitment our men and women in uniform make each day as well as the perilous threat posed by Iran under Soleimani's leadership. For decades, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has waged war against the United States and our allies, and recent reports indicate that Soleimani was in the process of plotting even more acts of aggression against the United States and U.S. interests, which is hardly surprising, though, since he had been doing that for many years. That is precisely why he was targeted. Just as quickly as the news of this attack spread, so did anti-Trump rhetoric. Instead of celebrating the fact that Iran's chief terrorist was dead and could kill no more, a number of our Democratic colleagues chose to bash the President instead. They claimed his action was unauthorized, even illegal, or that he should have sought congressional approval beforehand. None of that is true. The President not only has the authority under the Constitution but the responsibility to defend the United States from terrorist organizations like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leaders like General Soleimani. This was neither an assassination--a particularly loathsome allegation that has been made on social media--nor an unprovoked attack. This was the President of the United States exercising his lawful authority to protect the United States, our allies, and our national interests just as Presidents before have done. Perhaps the most stark comparison is when Barack Obama directed the killing of Osama bin Laden. Where were the people who now claim that Soleimani's death is an abuse of power? I don't recall anyone calling the killing of Osama bin Laden an assassination. When he was killed, they were not on cable TV, criticizing the move; we were all celebrating. Some of our Democratic friends will simply never pass on an opportunity to criticize the President--no matter how unfair. Thank goodness there are Democrats like former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Senator Joe Lieberman said: President Trump's order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats. I am also grateful for the informed comments by luminaries like former CENTCOM Commander and former CIA Director General Petraeus as well as Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have both rightly said that this action was authorized and necessary. It is unquestionable that the death of Soleimani was a major blow to the Iranian regime and a strong message of deterrence to all state sponsors of terrorism. The blood of hundreds of American soldiers and countless civilians is on Soleimani's hands, and because of the decisive action taken by President Trump, he is gone. I fully support this move by the President, and I commend the President's willingness to send a strong message of deterrence to the terrorist threat in the Middle East, particularly against the United States, our citizens, and our interests. Finally, I join my fellow Senators in thanking the brave men and women in uniform who fought and continue to fight terrorist acts brought about by people like General Soleimani and the Quds Force as part of the IRGC. I especially thank those who are fighting and who are prepared to defend our interests in the Middle East today. America must never back down in the face of this evil. Our world is safer today because Qasem Soleimani is dead. It would not have been possible without the actions that President Trump has undertaken or without the resolve of our military leaders and our courageous servicemembers who put their lives on the line each day. 116th Congress Madam President, on another matter, briefly, we have now crossed the halfway point of the 116th Congress, and it is safe to say that 2019 was an unconventional and a somewhat bumpy year. After 2 years with Republicans controlling both Chambers of Congress and the White House, we were all prepared for the challenges that would come with a Democratically controlled House. Despite the unnecessary foot-dragging and political gaming and obsession with foiling the President, we were still able to accomplish a lot of good for the country and the people of my State of Texas. Last month alone, we made major moves to strengthen our military and support our troops. We passed a funding bill that increased the funding by nearly $20 billion--necessary to restore our readiness--and gave our troops the largest pay raise they had received in a decade. This complemented the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized $400 million for military construction projects in Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be built in Fort Worth. It also included a number of provisions that I introduced to support our servicemembers and veterans. In 2016, only 46 percent of Active-Duty military voted by absentee ballot, and one-third of those who didn't vote said that the absentee voting process was simply too complicated. To make that better, I introduced the Military Voter Protection Act, which became law last month. It makes the absentee voter registration process easier for servicemembers stationed overseas so that a complicated trail of paperwork doesn't prevent them from casting their well-deserved ballots. I have also heard from my Texas constituents who are veterans, who havefallen on hard times and had to fight for their VA and Department of Defense disability benefits in bankruptcy proceedings. That should never be the case. Another bill I introduced called the HAVEN Act, which is now law, shields those benefits in the same way that Social Security disability is exempted. No veteran should be penalized for receiving the disability compensation that they are rightly due. Of course, perhaps the biggest headline news is our continued work on judicial nominations. Under this administration, we have confirmed more than 180 Federal judges, including 20 in Texas, plus 2 Supreme Court Justices. Although we are still 1 year shy of the end of President Trump's first term, we have already confirmed more circuit court judges than in any other President's first term in the past four decades. Having these impressive judges on the Federal bench will be a tremendous benefit to the entire country for generations to come, and we will keep working to confirm even more. Over the last year, we have also built on our work to support victims of Hurricane Harvey, including the release of $4.6 billion in additional funding from a bill to support communities across the country, including those in Texas, recovering from natural disasters. More than 2 years after the storm, many Texans are still rebuilding and, sadly, have had the added struggle of fighting to get their hands on Federal funds already approved by Congress. In February 2018, Congress passed a funding package that included more than $4 billion in disaster mitigation for Texas, but more than a year later, folks at home still hadn't seen a dime of that money. This summer, I introduced a bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to send those and any future funds approved by Congress within 90 days of their appropriation by Congress. Government bureaucrats should not be allowed to stand in the way between communities in need and funds already approved by Congress, and I am happy that those funds are finally going out the door to these Texas communities. Another challenge we have faced over the last year is the ongoing crisis at the border, which hit its peak in May. Local communities in Texas helped carry the weight of this humanitarian crisis, which has placed serious strain on their ability to deliver basic services at the municipal and State levels. They diverted taxpayer dollars from things like public safety, power, and clean drinking water to do a job that should have been done by the Federal Government in the first place to secure our border. To right this wrong, we passed a funding agreement, at my request, which provided $30 million in reimbursements for local governments, States, and charitable organizations that have spent millions of dollars in response to this crisis, which seems to be ignored too often here in Washington, DC. Nearly 40 percent of this initial funding went to Texas to meet immediate needs, and I expect another round to come soon to cover additional expenses. Another big victory came in the form of international trade. Through my role as chairman of the Senate Finance Trade Subcommittee, I worked with the administration on three trade agreements with Japan, the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement--and China, all of which, I think, will inure to the benefit of all Americans, including Texans. I commend President Trump and Ambassador Lighthizer for their courage in confronting unfair trade practices, opening new markets, and providing economic certainty as we move into this election year. On top of all of this, we passed the bipartisan Taxpayer First Act, which includes some of the most significant reforms to the Internal Revenue Service in two decades. We stood with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by finally passing the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act, which strengthens our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We helped provide additional resources to secure America's elections against foreign interference, and the list goes on and on and on. It is safe to say, though, that there are a number of items that could have been added to this list of accomplishments, had they not been pulled into the political fray and this obsessive impeachment mania by the House of Representatives. Two things we could have done that were not accomplished as a result of this obsession were bills to reduce prescription drug pricing and to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, for which the Presiding Officer has played such an important leadership role. In both cases, there is broad bipartisan support for action, and in both cases, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided that political point scoring was more important than actually getting the job done; thus, we found ourselves at an impasse. As we gear up for a new year, those will be two of the top items on my priority list, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will work with us this time around to get them done. We are kicking off 2020 with a big, looming question mark hanging over this Chamber in the form of this impeachment trial, which was an urgent constitutional imperative until it wasn't. We are anxious to see what Speaker Pelosi will finally decide, and we are waiting for the House to transmit the Articles of Impeachment, but we are not going to let the grass grow under our feet in the interim. We are going to keep working to notch more wins for the American people, confirm more Federal judges, and pass the USMCA trade agreement, hopefully, before further delay. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS15

formal

secure our border

anti-Latino

Iran Madam President, on another matter, last Friday, Americans woke up to the news that one of the most brutal terrorist leaders in the world had been killed. Qasem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike by America's military, finally bringing an end to his decades-long reign of terror. You could legitimately call General Soleimani a master of disaster because that defined his entire professional life as the leader of Iran's military. Actually, he was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. General Soleimani was the most consequential military leader in Iran, which has been designated by the U.S. State Departmentas a state sponsor of international terrorism since 1984. General Soleimani orchestrated Iran's efforts to squash democracy movements both at home and abroad by any means necessary. He and his army of terrorists exported violence around the region and engaged in gross human rights violations against the Iranian people. If you are curious how the Iranian Government treats its own citizens, just look at the recent protests that started as complaints over increased gas prices. When the Iranian citizens took to the streets in peaceful protest, the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, called them enemy agents and thugs, and the government attacked. As many as 450 Iranians were killed in those peaceful protests, with some 2,000 injured and 7,000 detained. This is not a government that is protecting its people; it is a network of criminals that masquerades as a government. One of the Ayatollah's most loyal henchmen was Soleimani. In addition to leading attacks on the Iranian people and fueling terrorist operations throughout the Middle East, he also played a crucial role in fomenting Syria's civil war. Soleimani helped to finance and aid the butcher, known as Bashar al-Assad, in the slaughter of the Syrian people. The death toll of the Syrian civil war is estimated to be as high as a half a million Syrians, and the number of refugees and internally displaced persons goes into the millions. While the greatest death and destruction orchestrated by Soleimani was concentrated in the Middle East, the United States was one of his and Iran's biggest targets. From the Iranian hostage crisis back in 1979, to the Khobar Towers bombing, to the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone, to the death of an American contractor in Iraq, Iran's actions at every turn have demonstrated a desire to make the chant ``Death to America'' a reality. Soleimani was known to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. He and the Iranian regime supplied explosively formed penetrators that cut through American armor like a hot knife through butter and left hundreds of American soldiers--indeed, maybe 1,000 or more--disabled as a result of this deadly instrument of war. Since 2003, at least 600 U.S. soldiers have been killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq, and as I have said, many more have been injured. I and others in this Chamber have seen their activities firsthand at Brooke Army Medical Center, the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, and at other places where they have received treatment, like at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. It is where the victims of these Iranian improvised explosive devices were treated for amputation, for burns, or functional limb loss if they survived those injuries in the first place. These soldiers are a reminder of the selfless commitment our men and women in uniform make each day as well as the perilous threat posed by Iran under Soleimani's leadership. For decades, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has waged war against the United States and our allies, and recent reports indicate that Soleimani was in the process of plotting even more acts of aggression against the United States and U.S. interests, which is hardly surprising, though, since he had been doing that for many years. That is precisely why he was targeted. Just as quickly as the news of this attack spread, so did anti-Trump rhetoric. Instead of celebrating the fact that Iran's chief terrorist was dead and could kill no more, a number of our Democratic colleagues chose to bash the President instead. They claimed his action was unauthorized, even illegal, or that he should have sought congressional approval beforehand. None of that is true. The President not only has the authority under the Constitution but the responsibility to defend the United States from terrorist organizations like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leaders like General Soleimani. This was neither an assassination--a particularly loathsome allegation that has been made on social media--nor an unprovoked attack. This was the President of the United States exercising his lawful authority to protect the United States, our allies, and our national interests just as Presidents before have done. Perhaps the most stark comparison is when Barack Obama directed the killing of Osama bin Laden. Where were the people who now claim that Soleimani's death is an abuse of power? I don't recall anyone calling the killing of Osama bin Laden an assassination. When he was killed, they were not on cable TV, criticizing the move; we were all celebrating. Some of our Democratic friends will simply never pass on an opportunity to criticize the President--no matter how unfair. Thank goodness there are Democrats like former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Senator Joe Lieberman said: President Trump's order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats. I am also grateful for the informed comments by luminaries like former CENTCOM Commander and former CIA Director General Petraeus as well as Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have both rightly said that this action was authorized and necessary. It is unquestionable that the death of Soleimani was a major blow to the Iranian regime and a strong message of deterrence to all state sponsors of terrorism. The blood of hundreds of American soldiers and countless civilians is on Soleimani's hands, and because of the decisive action taken by President Trump, he is gone. I fully support this move by the President, and I commend the President's willingness to send a strong message of deterrence to the terrorist threat in the Middle East, particularly against the United States, our citizens, and our interests. Finally, I join my fellow Senators in thanking the brave men and women in uniform who fought and continue to fight terrorist acts brought about by people like General Soleimani and the Quds Force as part of the IRGC. I especially thank those who are fighting and who are prepared to defend our interests in the Middle East today. America must never back down in the face of this evil. Our world is safer today because Qasem Soleimani is dead. It would not have been possible without the actions that President Trump has undertaken or without the resolve of our military leaders and our courageous servicemembers who put their lives on the line each day. 116th Congress Madam President, on another matter, briefly, we have now crossed the halfway point of the 116th Congress, and it is safe to say that 2019 was an unconventional and a somewhat bumpy year. After 2 years with Republicans controlling both Chambers of Congress and the White House, we were all prepared for the challenges that would come with a Democratically controlled House. Despite the unnecessary foot-dragging and political gaming and obsession with foiling the President, we were still able to accomplish a lot of good for the country and the people of my State of Texas. Last month alone, we made major moves to strengthen our military and support our troops. We passed a funding bill that increased the funding by nearly $20 billion--necessary to restore our readiness--and gave our troops the largest pay raise they had received in a decade. This complemented the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized $400 million for military construction projects in Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be built in Fort Worth. It also included a number of provisions that I introduced to support our servicemembers and veterans. In 2016, only 46 percent of Active-Duty military voted by absentee ballot, and one-third of those who didn't vote said that the absentee voting process was simply too complicated. To make that better, I introduced the Military Voter Protection Act, which became law last month. It makes the absentee voter registration process easier for servicemembers stationed overseas so that a complicated trail of paperwork doesn't prevent them from casting their well-deserved ballots. I have also heard from my Texas constituents who are veterans, who havefallen on hard times and had to fight for their VA and Department of Defense disability benefits in bankruptcy proceedings. That should never be the case. Another bill I introduced called the HAVEN Act, which is now law, shields those benefits in the same way that Social Security disability is exempted. No veteran should be penalized for receiving the disability compensation that they are rightly due. Of course, perhaps the biggest headline news is our continued work on judicial nominations. Under this administration, we have confirmed more than 180 Federal judges, including 20 in Texas, plus 2 Supreme Court Justices. Although we are still 1 year shy of the end of President Trump's first term, we have already confirmed more circuit court judges than in any other President's first term in the past four decades. Having these impressive judges on the Federal bench will be a tremendous benefit to the entire country for generations to come, and we will keep working to confirm even more. Over the last year, we have also built on our work to support victims of Hurricane Harvey, including the release of $4.6 billion in additional funding from a bill to support communities across the country, including those in Texas, recovering from natural disasters. More than 2 years after the storm, many Texans are still rebuilding and, sadly, have had the added struggle of fighting to get their hands on Federal funds already approved by Congress. In February 2018, Congress passed a funding package that included more than $4 billion in disaster mitigation for Texas, but more than a year later, folks at home still hadn't seen a dime of that money. This summer, I introduced a bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to send those and any future funds approved by Congress within 90 days of their appropriation by Congress. Government bureaucrats should not be allowed to stand in the way between communities in need and funds already approved by Congress, and I am happy that those funds are finally going out the door to these Texas communities. Another challenge we have faced over the last year is the ongoing crisis at the border, which hit its peak in May. Local communities in Texas helped carry the weight of this humanitarian crisis, which has placed serious strain on their ability to deliver basic services at the municipal and State levels. They diverted taxpayer dollars from things like public safety, power, and clean drinking water to do a job that should have been done by the Federal Government in the first place to secure our border. To right this wrong, we passed a funding agreement, at my request, which provided $30 million in reimbursements for local governments, States, and charitable organizations that have spent millions of dollars in response to this crisis, which seems to be ignored too often here in Washington, DC. Nearly 40 percent of this initial funding went to Texas to meet immediate needs, and I expect another round to come soon to cover additional expenses. Another big victory came in the form of international trade. Through my role as chairman of the Senate Finance Trade Subcommittee, I worked with the administration on three trade agreements with Japan, the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement--and China, all of which, I think, will inure to the benefit of all Americans, including Texans. I commend President Trump and Ambassador Lighthizer for their courage in confronting unfair trade practices, opening new markets, and providing economic certainty as we move into this election year. On top of all of this, we passed the bipartisan Taxpayer First Act, which includes some of the most significant reforms to the Internal Revenue Service in two decades. We stood with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by finally passing the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act, which strengthens our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We helped provide additional resources to secure America's elections against foreign interference, and the list goes on and on and on. It is safe to say, though, that there are a number of items that could have been added to this list of accomplishments, had they not been pulled into the political fray and this obsessive impeachment mania by the House of Representatives. Two things we could have done that were not accomplished as a result of this obsession were bills to reduce prescription drug pricing and to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, for which the Presiding Officer has played such an important leadership role. In both cases, there is broad bipartisan support for action, and in both cases, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided that political point scoring was more important than actually getting the job done; thus, we found ourselves at an impasse. As we gear up for a new year, those will be two of the top items on my priority list, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will work with us this time around to get them done. We are kicking off 2020 with a big, looming question mark hanging over this Chamber in the form of this impeachment trial, which was an urgent constitutional imperative until it wasn't. We are anxious to see what Speaker Pelosi will finally decide, and we are waiting for the House to transmit the Articles of Impeachment, but we are not going to let the grass grow under our feet in the interim. We are going to keep working to notch more wins for the American people, confirm more Federal judges, and pass the USMCA trade agreement, hopefully, before further delay. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS15

formal

thugs

racist

Iran Madam President, on another matter, last Friday, Americans woke up to the news that one of the most brutal terrorist leaders in the world had been killed. Qasem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike by America's military, finally bringing an end to his decades-long reign of terror. You could legitimately call General Soleimani a master of disaster because that defined his entire professional life as the leader of Iran's military. Actually, he was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. General Soleimani was the most consequential military leader in Iran, which has been designated by the U.S. State Departmentas a state sponsor of international terrorism since 1984. General Soleimani orchestrated Iran's efforts to squash democracy movements both at home and abroad by any means necessary. He and his army of terrorists exported violence around the region and engaged in gross human rights violations against the Iranian people. If you are curious how the Iranian Government treats its own citizens, just look at the recent protests that started as complaints over increased gas prices. When the Iranian citizens took to the streets in peaceful protest, the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, called them enemy agents and thugs, and the government attacked. As many as 450 Iranians were killed in those peaceful protests, with some 2,000 injured and 7,000 detained. This is not a government that is protecting its people; it is a network of criminals that masquerades as a government. One of the Ayatollah's most loyal henchmen was Soleimani. In addition to leading attacks on the Iranian people and fueling terrorist operations throughout the Middle East, he also played a crucial role in fomenting Syria's civil war. Soleimani helped to finance and aid the butcher, known as Bashar al-Assad, in the slaughter of the Syrian people. The death toll of the Syrian civil war is estimated to be as high as a half a million Syrians, and the number of refugees and internally displaced persons goes into the millions. While the greatest death and destruction orchestrated by Soleimani was concentrated in the Middle East, the United States was one of his and Iran's biggest targets. From the Iranian hostage crisis back in 1979, to the Khobar Towers bombing, to the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone, to the death of an American contractor in Iraq, Iran's actions at every turn have demonstrated a desire to make the chant ``Death to America'' a reality. Soleimani was known to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. He and the Iranian regime supplied explosively formed penetrators that cut through American armor like a hot knife through butter and left hundreds of American soldiers--indeed, maybe 1,000 or more--disabled as a result of this deadly instrument of war. Since 2003, at least 600 U.S. soldiers have been killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq, and as I have said, many more have been injured. I and others in this Chamber have seen their activities firsthand at Brooke Army Medical Center, the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, and at other places where they have received treatment, like at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. It is where the victims of these Iranian improvised explosive devices were treated for amputation, for burns, or functional limb loss if they survived those injuries in the first place. These soldiers are a reminder of the selfless commitment our men and women in uniform make each day as well as the perilous threat posed by Iran under Soleimani's leadership. For decades, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has waged war against the United States and our allies, and recent reports indicate that Soleimani was in the process of plotting even more acts of aggression against the United States and U.S. interests, which is hardly surprising, though, since he had been doing that for many years. That is precisely why he was targeted. Just as quickly as the news of this attack spread, so did anti-Trump rhetoric. Instead of celebrating the fact that Iran's chief terrorist was dead and could kill no more, a number of our Democratic colleagues chose to bash the President instead. They claimed his action was unauthorized, even illegal, or that he should have sought congressional approval beforehand. None of that is true. The President not only has the authority under the Constitution but the responsibility to defend the United States from terrorist organizations like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leaders like General Soleimani. This was neither an assassination--a particularly loathsome allegation that has been made on social media--nor an unprovoked attack. This was the President of the United States exercising his lawful authority to protect the United States, our allies, and our national interests just as Presidents before have done. Perhaps the most stark comparison is when Barack Obama directed the killing of Osama bin Laden. Where were the people who now claim that Soleimani's death is an abuse of power? I don't recall anyone calling the killing of Osama bin Laden an assassination. When he was killed, they were not on cable TV, criticizing the move; we were all celebrating. Some of our Democratic friends will simply never pass on an opportunity to criticize the President--no matter how unfair. Thank goodness there are Democrats like former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Senator Joe Lieberman said: President Trump's order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats. I am also grateful for the informed comments by luminaries like former CENTCOM Commander and former CIA Director General Petraeus as well as Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have both rightly said that this action was authorized and necessary. It is unquestionable that the death of Soleimani was a major blow to the Iranian regime and a strong message of deterrence to all state sponsors of terrorism. The blood of hundreds of American soldiers and countless civilians is on Soleimani's hands, and because of the decisive action taken by President Trump, he is gone. I fully support this move by the President, and I commend the President's willingness to send a strong message of deterrence to the terrorist threat in the Middle East, particularly against the United States, our citizens, and our interests. Finally, I join my fellow Senators in thanking the brave men and women in uniform who fought and continue to fight terrorist acts brought about by people like General Soleimani and the Quds Force as part of the IRGC. I especially thank those who are fighting and who are prepared to defend our interests in the Middle East today. America must never back down in the face of this evil. Our world is safer today because Qasem Soleimani is dead. It would not have been possible without the actions that President Trump has undertaken or without the resolve of our military leaders and our courageous servicemembers who put their lives on the line each day. 116th Congress Madam President, on another matter, briefly, we have now crossed the halfway point of the 116th Congress, and it is safe to say that 2019 was an unconventional and a somewhat bumpy year. After 2 years with Republicans controlling both Chambers of Congress and the White House, we were all prepared for the challenges that would come with a Democratically controlled House. Despite the unnecessary foot-dragging and political gaming and obsession with foiling the President, we were still able to accomplish a lot of good for the country and the people of my State of Texas. Last month alone, we made major moves to strengthen our military and support our troops. We passed a funding bill that increased the funding by nearly $20 billion--necessary to restore our readiness--and gave our troops the largest pay raise they had received in a decade. This complemented the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized $400 million for military construction projects in Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be built in Fort Worth. It also included a number of provisions that I introduced to support our servicemembers and veterans. In 2016, only 46 percent of Active-Duty military voted by absentee ballot, and one-third of those who didn't vote said that the absentee voting process was simply too complicated. To make that better, I introduced the Military Voter Protection Act, which became law last month. It makes the absentee voter registration process easier for servicemembers stationed overseas so that a complicated trail of paperwork doesn't prevent them from casting their well-deserved ballots. I have also heard from my Texas constituents who are veterans, who havefallen on hard times and had to fight for their VA and Department of Defense disability benefits in bankruptcy proceedings. That should never be the case. Another bill I introduced called the HAVEN Act, which is now law, shields those benefits in the same way that Social Security disability is exempted. No veteran should be penalized for receiving the disability compensation that they are rightly due. Of course, perhaps the biggest headline news is our continued work on judicial nominations. Under this administration, we have confirmed more than 180 Federal judges, including 20 in Texas, plus 2 Supreme Court Justices. Although we are still 1 year shy of the end of President Trump's first term, we have already confirmed more circuit court judges than in any other President's first term in the past four decades. Having these impressive judges on the Federal bench will be a tremendous benefit to the entire country for generations to come, and we will keep working to confirm even more. Over the last year, we have also built on our work to support victims of Hurricane Harvey, including the release of $4.6 billion in additional funding from a bill to support communities across the country, including those in Texas, recovering from natural disasters. More than 2 years after the storm, many Texans are still rebuilding and, sadly, have had the added struggle of fighting to get their hands on Federal funds already approved by Congress. In February 2018, Congress passed a funding package that included more than $4 billion in disaster mitigation for Texas, but more than a year later, folks at home still hadn't seen a dime of that money. This summer, I introduced a bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to send those and any future funds approved by Congress within 90 days of their appropriation by Congress. Government bureaucrats should not be allowed to stand in the way between communities in need and funds already approved by Congress, and I am happy that those funds are finally going out the door to these Texas communities. Another challenge we have faced over the last year is the ongoing crisis at the border, which hit its peak in May. Local communities in Texas helped carry the weight of this humanitarian crisis, which has placed serious strain on their ability to deliver basic services at the municipal and State levels. They diverted taxpayer dollars from things like public safety, power, and clean drinking water to do a job that should have been done by the Federal Government in the first place to secure our border. To right this wrong, we passed a funding agreement, at my request, which provided $30 million in reimbursements for local governments, States, and charitable organizations that have spent millions of dollars in response to this crisis, which seems to be ignored too often here in Washington, DC. Nearly 40 percent of this initial funding went to Texas to meet immediate needs, and I expect another round to come soon to cover additional expenses. Another big victory came in the form of international trade. Through my role as chairman of the Senate Finance Trade Subcommittee, I worked with the administration on three trade agreements with Japan, the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement--and China, all of which, I think, will inure to the benefit of all Americans, including Texans. I commend President Trump and Ambassador Lighthizer for their courage in confronting unfair trade practices, opening new markets, and providing economic certainty as we move into this election year. On top of all of this, we passed the bipartisan Taxpayer First Act, which includes some of the most significant reforms to the Internal Revenue Service in two decades. We stood with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by finally passing the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act, which strengthens our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We helped provide additional resources to secure America's elections against foreign interference, and the list goes on and on and on. It is safe to say, though, that there are a number of items that could have been added to this list of accomplishments, had they not been pulled into the political fray and this obsessive impeachment mania by the House of Representatives. Two things we could have done that were not accomplished as a result of this obsession were bills to reduce prescription drug pricing and to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, for which the Presiding Officer has played such an important leadership role. In both cases, there is broad bipartisan support for action, and in both cases, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided that political point scoring was more important than actually getting the job done; thus, we found ourselves at an impasse. As we gear up for a new year, those will be two of the top items on my priority list, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will work with us this time around to get them done. We are kicking off 2020 with a big, looming question mark hanging over this Chamber in the form of this impeachment trial, which was an urgent constitutional imperative until it wasn't. We are anxious to see what Speaker Pelosi will finally decide, and we are waiting for the House to transmit the Articles of Impeachment, but we are not going to let the grass grow under our feet in the interim. We are going to keep working to notch more wins for the American people, confirm more Federal judges, and pass the USMCA trade agreement, hopefully, before further delay. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS15

formal

tax cut

racist

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue that the Senate may address on the floor this week. Tomorrow in the Senate Finance Committee, we are going to take up the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. One of my proudest votes as a Member of the House a long time ago was to vote against the North American Free Trade Agreement, to vote against NAFTA. I have voted no on every trade agreement since then because every trade agreement that has come in front of this body was written by corporate interests for their corporate executives and stockholders. They maximize profits always--every one of these trade agreements--CAFTA, NAFTA, PNTR with China, which is not technically a trade agreement, but it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck. Every one of these trade agreements, in every case, has looked out for corporate interests and jettisoned the interests of workers. We see the consequences. Corporate profits soar every time. Executive compensation explodes upward every time. Workers continue to produce more than ever before. Even though corporate profits are up and executive compensation is up, workers' wages are flat. Often, they can't join a union, and the middle class continues to shrink. I know what that has meant in the Presiding Officer's State of Arkansas. I know what it has meant in Ohio. I know what it has done to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what these trade agreements do to Dayton and Cleveland and Cincinnati and Canton and Youngstown and Toledo. Then-Candidate Trump said that he was going to renegotiate NAFTA. Well, that was his promise. He did, but he gave us the same thing. His economic policies overall have been that, but his renegotiated NAFTA, which he brought to this Congress originally--the negotiation that he made with Mexico and Canada--was another corporate trade agreement written for corporate interests. Again, this President betrays workers with his tax giveaways to corporations, to his judges who put their thumbs on the scale, choosing corporations over workers, choosing Wall Street over consumers. Then, last year, as he has done one betrayal of workers after another, squeezing the middle class even more--last year, when we got the initial draft of this agreement from the administration, the renegotiated NAFTA was another betrayal. His first NAFTA draft was nowhere near the good deal for workers that President Trump promised. He had fundamentally negotiated another corporate trade deal--a deal that helps corporate executives, that helps stockholders, that betrays workers again and again, another trade deal just like that. It meant nothing for workers. It meant a sellout to drug companies. It took us months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden and trade unions to improve this deal and take the real and important steps toward putting workers at the center of our trade policies. These trade policies should be written for workers so that they increase their income and expand the middle class, not written for corporations in trickle-down economics. We know what happens on every tax bill that comes before this Congress, written by the administration and Senator McConnell. We know it is the same thing. Instead of building the economy from the middle out so that the middle class grows and America overwhelmingly prospers, just like the tax cuts--the tax cuts for the rich that may, they tell us, trickle down and help the middle class--that is the way this trade agreement was written. That is the way these tax bills in this Congress were written. It took months of fighting alongside Senator Wyden and organized labor and Speaker Pelosi. We now have a provision in the labor chapter, and the President has finally agreed to this provision. He knew he wasn't going to get a renegotiated NAFTA unless he followed what we said on workers. For the first time, we have a provision in the labor chapter. For instance, it says that violence against workers is always a violation of the agreement. The language the President gave us said: Well, the first time you commit violence against workers, we might fine you. The second time, we might fine you. Only if you do it over and over is it a violation. Really? If there is violence against workers, the people who committed that violence ought to pay for it. So we fixed that in this agreement. We have improved some of the legalese that since the beginning has been included in trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to successfully win a case when a country violates its labor commitments. We secured the Wyden provision, which amounts to, by far, the strongest ever labor enforcement in the U.S. trade deal. This provision that Senator Wyden and I wrote and fought for is the first improvement to enforcing labor standards in our trade agreements since we have been negotiating them. We know why companies closed factories in Ohio and opened them in Mexico. They can pay lower wages. They can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. They can keep unions from organizing. American workers can't compete with that kind of low-wage lack of enforcement of labor laws. What happens? There is a race to the bottom on wages. So if a company threatens to move to Mexico and they tell their workforce ``We are going to move unless you do some wage givebacks,'' they either move and the American workers lose their jobs or they use that as a way to put downward pressure on wages for American workers. I know what that has done to Mansfield, OH. I know what it has done to Gallipolis, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Dayton, Huber Heights, and every other community. The only way to stop this is by raising labor standards in every country we trade with and, most importantly, making sure those standards are actually enforced. If corporations are forced to pay workers a living wage and treat them with dignity no matter where the workers are, we take away the incentive for those companies to move jobs abroad. That is what the Brown-Wyden provision does. A worker in Mexico now, under this agreement--the reason I am supporting this, the first-ever trade agreement that I am supporting--workers in Mexico will be able to report a company that is violating their rights. They can actually call a toll-free number and report violations against the workers. Aworker can actually make that request. They have never had that right in Mexico. They, often enough, don't have it here. We can then determine whether worker rights have been violated and then take action against the company that did it. We have never done it that way. We haven't had good results because of that. We can apply punitive damages when companies stop workers from organizing. If they keep doing it, we stop their goods from coming into the United States. You enforce it at the factory level by saying: If you keep violating this trade agreement, you are not sending your products into the United States. That will make them behave. When Mexican workers have the power to form real unions and negotiate for higher wages, it helps our workers. Right now, Mexican workers can be paid as little as $6.50--not an hour but a day. We have been asking American workers to compete with that. We have already heard some critics say that Brown-Wyden will force Mexican wages to rise. I plead guilty. That is the entire point--to take away the incentive. If Mexican wages go up, it makes U.S. companies less likely to shut down production in Steubenville or Lisbon or in Bryan, OH, and move overseas. It takes away the incentive for those companies to relocate. I want to be clear. I will always be straight with American workers. This is not a perfect agreement. One trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that put corporations over workers. This deal will not stop outsourcing when we have President Trump's tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send American jobs to Mexico. Here is how the President's tax bill that was rammed through this Senate a year or so ago works: If you are in Springfield, OH, your corporate tax rate is 21 percent. If you move--pull up stakes and move to Mexico or anywhere else--your tax rate is 10.5 percent. Even with this good trade agreement, we cannot stop that kind of outsourcing because the President insists on helping his corporate buddies. I will keep fighting his corporate trade policies and tax policies just as we did in this agreement. We have a lot more work to do to make our trade agreements more pro-worker. I will vote yes for the first time ever on a trade agreement because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker. We set an important precedent for the future that Brown-Wyden must now be included in every trade agreement in the years ahead. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. BROWN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS22

formal

tax cuts

racist

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue that the Senate may address on the floor this week. Tomorrow in the Senate Finance Committee, we are going to take up the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. One of my proudest votes as a Member of the House a long time ago was to vote against the North American Free Trade Agreement, to vote against NAFTA. I have voted no on every trade agreement since then because every trade agreement that has come in front of this body was written by corporate interests for their corporate executives and stockholders. They maximize profits always--every one of these trade agreements--CAFTA, NAFTA, PNTR with China, which is not technically a trade agreement, but it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck. Every one of these trade agreements, in every case, has looked out for corporate interests and jettisoned the interests of workers. We see the consequences. Corporate profits soar every time. Executive compensation explodes upward every time. Workers continue to produce more than ever before. Even though corporate profits are up and executive compensation is up, workers' wages are flat. Often, they can't join a union, and the middle class continues to shrink. I know what that has meant in the Presiding Officer's State of Arkansas. I know what it has meant in Ohio. I know what it has done to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what these trade agreements do to Dayton and Cleveland and Cincinnati and Canton and Youngstown and Toledo. Then-Candidate Trump said that he was going to renegotiate NAFTA. Well, that was his promise. He did, but he gave us the same thing. His economic policies overall have been that, but his renegotiated NAFTA, which he brought to this Congress originally--the negotiation that he made with Mexico and Canada--was another corporate trade agreement written for corporate interests. Again, this President betrays workers with his tax giveaways to corporations, to his judges who put their thumbs on the scale, choosing corporations over workers, choosing Wall Street over consumers. Then, last year, as he has done one betrayal of workers after another, squeezing the middle class even more--last year, when we got the initial draft of this agreement from the administration, the renegotiated NAFTA was another betrayal. His first NAFTA draft was nowhere near the good deal for workers that President Trump promised. He had fundamentally negotiated another corporate trade deal--a deal that helps corporate executives, that helps stockholders, that betrays workers again and again, another trade deal just like that. It meant nothing for workers. It meant a sellout to drug companies. It took us months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden and trade unions to improve this deal and take the real and important steps toward putting workers at the center of our trade policies. These trade policies should be written for workers so that they increase their income and expand the middle class, not written for corporations in trickle-down economics. We know what happens on every tax bill that comes before this Congress, written by the administration and Senator McConnell. We know it is the same thing. Instead of building the economy from the middle out so that the middle class grows and America overwhelmingly prospers, just like the tax cuts--the tax cuts for the rich that may, they tell us, trickle down and help the middle class--that is the way this trade agreement was written. That is the way these tax bills in this Congress were written. It took months of fighting alongside Senator Wyden and organized labor and Speaker Pelosi. We now have a provision in the labor chapter, and the President has finally agreed to this provision. He knew he wasn't going to get a renegotiated NAFTA unless he followed what we said on workers. For the first time, we have a provision in the labor chapter. For instance, it says that violence against workers is always a violation of the agreement. The language the President gave us said: Well, the first time you commit violence against workers, we might fine you. The second time, we might fine you. Only if you do it over and over is it a violation. Really? If there is violence against workers, the people who committed that violence ought to pay for it. So we fixed that in this agreement. We have improved some of the legalese that since the beginning has been included in trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to successfully win a case when a country violates its labor commitments. We secured the Wyden provision, which amounts to, by far, the strongest ever labor enforcement in the U.S. trade deal. This provision that Senator Wyden and I wrote and fought for is the first improvement to enforcing labor standards in our trade agreements since we have been negotiating them. We know why companies closed factories in Ohio and opened them in Mexico. They can pay lower wages. They can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. They can keep unions from organizing. American workers can't compete with that kind of low-wage lack of enforcement of labor laws. What happens? There is a race to the bottom on wages. So if a company threatens to move to Mexico and they tell their workforce ``We are going to move unless you do some wage givebacks,'' they either move and the American workers lose their jobs or they use that as a way to put downward pressure on wages for American workers. I know what that has done to Mansfield, OH. I know what it has done to Gallipolis, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Dayton, Huber Heights, and every other community. The only way to stop this is by raising labor standards in every country we trade with and, most importantly, making sure those standards are actually enforced. If corporations are forced to pay workers a living wage and treat them with dignity no matter where the workers are, we take away the incentive for those companies to move jobs abroad. That is what the Brown-Wyden provision does. A worker in Mexico now, under this agreement--the reason I am supporting this, the first-ever trade agreement that I am supporting--workers in Mexico will be able to report a company that is violating their rights. They can actually call a toll-free number and report violations against the workers. Aworker can actually make that request. They have never had that right in Mexico. They, often enough, don't have it here. We can then determine whether worker rights have been violated and then take action against the company that did it. We have never done it that way. We haven't had good results because of that. We can apply punitive damages when companies stop workers from organizing. If they keep doing it, we stop their goods from coming into the United States. You enforce it at the factory level by saying: If you keep violating this trade agreement, you are not sending your products into the United States. That will make them behave. When Mexican workers have the power to form real unions and negotiate for higher wages, it helps our workers. Right now, Mexican workers can be paid as little as $6.50--not an hour but a day. We have been asking American workers to compete with that. We have already heard some critics say that Brown-Wyden will force Mexican wages to rise. I plead guilty. That is the entire point--to take away the incentive. If Mexican wages go up, it makes U.S. companies less likely to shut down production in Steubenville or Lisbon or in Bryan, OH, and move overseas. It takes away the incentive for those companies to relocate. I want to be clear. I will always be straight with American workers. This is not a perfect agreement. One trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that put corporations over workers. This deal will not stop outsourcing when we have President Trump's tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send American jobs to Mexico. Here is how the President's tax bill that was rammed through this Senate a year or so ago works: If you are in Springfield, OH, your corporate tax rate is 21 percent. If you move--pull up stakes and move to Mexico or anywhere else--your tax rate is 10.5 percent. Even with this good trade agreement, we cannot stop that kind of outsourcing because the President insists on helping his corporate buddies. I will keep fighting his corporate trade policies and tax policies just as we did in this agreement. We have a lot more work to do to make our trade agreements more pro-worker. I will vote yes for the first time ever on a trade agreement because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker. We set an important precedent for the future that Brown-Wyden must now be included in every trade agreement in the years ahead. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. BROWN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS22

formal

middle class

racist

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue that the Senate may address on the floor this week. Tomorrow in the Senate Finance Committee, we are going to take up the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. One of my proudest votes as a Member of the House a long time ago was to vote against the North American Free Trade Agreement, to vote against NAFTA. I have voted no on every trade agreement since then because every trade agreement that has come in front of this body was written by corporate interests for their corporate executives and stockholders. They maximize profits always--every one of these trade agreements--CAFTA, NAFTA, PNTR with China, which is not technically a trade agreement, but it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck. Every one of these trade agreements, in every case, has looked out for corporate interests and jettisoned the interests of workers. We see the consequences. Corporate profits soar every time. Executive compensation explodes upward every time. Workers continue to produce more than ever before. Even though corporate profits are up and executive compensation is up, workers' wages are flat. Often, they can't join a union, and the middle class continues to shrink. I know what that has meant in the Presiding Officer's State of Arkansas. I know what it has meant in Ohio. I know what it has done to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what these trade agreements do to Dayton and Cleveland and Cincinnati and Canton and Youngstown and Toledo. Then-Candidate Trump said that he was going to renegotiate NAFTA. Well, that was his promise. He did, but he gave us the same thing. His economic policies overall have been that, but his renegotiated NAFTA, which he brought to this Congress originally--the negotiation that he made with Mexico and Canada--was another corporate trade agreement written for corporate interests. Again, this President betrays workers with his tax giveaways to corporations, to his judges who put their thumbs on the scale, choosing corporations over workers, choosing Wall Street over consumers. Then, last year, as he has done one betrayal of workers after another, squeezing the middle class even more--last year, when we got the initial draft of this agreement from the administration, the renegotiated NAFTA was another betrayal. His first NAFTA draft was nowhere near the good deal for workers that President Trump promised. He had fundamentally negotiated another corporate trade deal--a deal that helps corporate executives, that helps stockholders, that betrays workers again and again, another trade deal just like that. It meant nothing for workers. It meant a sellout to drug companies. It took us months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden and trade unions to improve this deal and take the real and important steps toward putting workers at the center of our trade policies. These trade policies should be written for workers so that they increase their income and expand the middle class, not written for corporations in trickle-down economics. We know what happens on every tax bill that comes before this Congress, written by the administration and Senator McConnell. We know it is the same thing. Instead of building the economy from the middle out so that the middle class grows and America overwhelmingly prospers, just like the tax cuts--the tax cuts for the rich that may, they tell us, trickle down and help the middle class--that is the way this trade agreement was written. That is the way these tax bills in this Congress were written. It took months of fighting alongside Senator Wyden and organized labor and Speaker Pelosi. We now have a provision in the labor chapter, and the President has finally agreed to this provision. He knew he wasn't going to get a renegotiated NAFTA unless he followed what we said on workers. For the first time, we have a provision in the labor chapter. For instance, it says that violence against workers is always a violation of the agreement. The language the President gave us said: Well, the first time you commit violence against workers, we might fine you. The second time, we might fine you. Only if you do it over and over is it a violation. Really? If there is violence against workers, the people who committed that violence ought to pay for it. So we fixed that in this agreement. We have improved some of the legalese that since the beginning has been included in trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to successfully win a case when a country violates its labor commitments. We secured the Wyden provision, which amounts to, by far, the strongest ever labor enforcement in the U.S. trade deal. This provision that Senator Wyden and I wrote and fought for is the first improvement to enforcing labor standards in our trade agreements since we have been negotiating them. We know why companies closed factories in Ohio and opened them in Mexico. They can pay lower wages. They can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. They can keep unions from organizing. American workers can't compete with that kind of low-wage lack of enforcement of labor laws. What happens? There is a race to the bottom on wages. So if a company threatens to move to Mexico and they tell their workforce ``We are going to move unless you do some wage givebacks,'' they either move and the American workers lose their jobs or they use that as a way to put downward pressure on wages for American workers. I know what that has done to Mansfield, OH. I know what it has done to Gallipolis, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Dayton, Huber Heights, and every other community. The only way to stop this is by raising labor standards in every country we trade with and, most importantly, making sure those standards are actually enforced. If corporations are forced to pay workers a living wage and treat them with dignity no matter where the workers are, we take away the incentive for those companies to move jobs abroad. That is what the Brown-Wyden provision does. A worker in Mexico now, under this agreement--the reason I am supporting this, the first-ever trade agreement that I am supporting--workers in Mexico will be able to report a company that is violating their rights. They can actually call a toll-free number and report violations against the workers. Aworker can actually make that request. They have never had that right in Mexico. They, often enough, don't have it here. We can then determine whether worker rights have been violated and then take action against the company that did it. We have never done it that way. We haven't had good results because of that. We can apply punitive damages when companies stop workers from organizing. If they keep doing it, we stop their goods from coming into the United States. You enforce it at the factory level by saying: If you keep violating this trade agreement, you are not sending your products into the United States. That will make them behave. When Mexican workers have the power to form real unions and negotiate for higher wages, it helps our workers. Right now, Mexican workers can be paid as little as $6.50--not an hour but a day. We have been asking American workers to compete with that. We have already heard some critics say that Brown-Wyden will force Mexican wages to rise. I plead guilty. That is the entire point--to take away the incentive. If Mexican wages go up, it makes U.S. companies less likely to shut down production in Steubenville or Lisbon or in Bryan, OH, and move overseas. It takes away the incentive for those companies to relocate. I want to be clear. I will always be straight with American workers. This is not a perfect agreement. One trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that put corporations over workers. This deal will not stop outsourcing when we have President Trump's tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send American jobs to Mexico. Here is how the President's tax bill that was rammed through this Senate a year or so ago works: If you are in Springfield, OH, your corporate tax rate is 21 percent. If you move--pull up stakes and move to Mexico or anywhere else--your tax rate is 10.5 percent. Even with this good trade agreement, we cannot stop that kind of outsourcing because the President insists on helping his corporate buddies. I will keep fighting his corporate trade policies and tax policies just as we did in this agreement. We have a lot more work to do to make our trade agreements more pro-worker. I will vote yes for the first time ever on a trade agreement because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker. We set an important precedent for the future that Brown-Wyden must now be included in every trade agreement in the years ahead. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. BROWN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS22

formal

Cleveland

racist

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue that the Senate may address on the floor this week. Tomorrow in the Senate Finance Committee, we are going to take up the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. One of my proudest votes as a Member of the House a long time ago was to vote against the North American Free Trade Agreement, to vote against NAFTA. I have voted no on every trade agreement since then because every trade agreement that has come in front of this body was written by corporate interests for their corporate executives and stockholders. They maximize profits always--every one of these trade agreements--CAFTA, NAFTA, PNTR with China, which is not technically a trade agreement, but it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck. Every one of these trade agreements, in every case, has looked out for corporate interests and jettisoned the interests of workers. We see the consequences. Corporate profits soar every time. Executive compensation explodes upward every time. Workers continue to produce more than ever before. Even though corporate profits are up and executive compensation is up, workers' wages are flat. Often, they can't join a union, and the middle class continues to shrink. I know what that has meant in the Presiding Officer's State of Arkansas. I know what it has meant in Ohio. I know what it has done to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what these trade agreements do to Dayton and Cleveland and Cincinnati and Canton and Youngstown and Toledo. Then-Candidate Trump said that he was going to renegotiate NAFTA. Well, that was his promise. He did, but he gave us the same thing. His economic policies overall have been that, but his renegotiated NAFTA, which he brought to this Congress originally--the negotiation that he made with Mexico and Canada--was another corporate trade agreement written for corporate interests. Again, this President betrays workers with his tax giveaways to corporations, to his judges who put their thumbs on the scale, choosing corporations over workers, choosing Wall Street over consumers. Then, last year, as he has done one betrayal of workers after another, squeezing the middle class even more--last year, when we got the initial draft of this agreement from the administration, the renegotiated NAFTA was another betrayal. His first NAFTA draft was nowhere near the good deal for workers that President Trump promised. He had fundamentally negotiated another corporate trade deal--a deal that helps corporate executives, that helps stockholders, that betrays workers again and again, another trade deal just like that. It meant nothing for workers. It meant a sellout to drug companies. It took us months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden and trade unions to improve this deal and take the real and important steps toward putting workers at the center of our trade policies. These trade policies should be written for workers so that they increase their income and expand the middle class, not written for corporations in trickle-down economics. We know what happens on every tax bill that comes before this Congress, written by the administration and Senator McConnell. We know it is the same thing. Instead of building the economy from the middle out so that the middle class grows and America overwhelmingly prospers, just like the tax cuts--the tax cuts for the rich that may, they tell us, trickle down and help the middle class--that is the way this trade agreement was written. That is the way these tax bills in this Congress were written. It took months of fighting alongside Senator Wyden and organized labor and Speaker Pelosi. We now have a provision in the labor chapter, and the President has finally agreed to this provision. He knew he wasn't going to get a renegotiated NAFTA unless he followed what we said on workers. For the first time, we have a provision in the labor chapter. For instance, it says that violence against workers is always a violation of the agreement. The language the President gave us said: Well, the first time you commit violence against workers, we might fine you. The second time, we might fine you. Only if you do it over and over is it a violation. Really? If there is violence against workers, the people who committed that violence ought to pay for it. So we fixed that in this agreement. We have improved some of the legalese that since the beginning has been included in trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to successfully win a case when a country violates its labor commitments. We secured the Wyden provision, which amounts to, by far, the strongest ever labor enforcement in the U.S. trade deal. This provision that Senator Wyden and I wrote and fought for is the first improvement to enforcing labor standards in our trade agreements since we have been negotiating them. We know why companies closed factories in Ohio and opened them in Mexico. They can pay lower wages. They can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. They can keep unions from organizing. American workers can't compete with that kind of low-wage lack of enforcement of labor laws. What happens? There is a race to the bottom on wages. So if a company threatens to move to Mexico and they tell their workforce ``We are going to move unless you do some wage givebacks,'' they either move and the American workers lose their jobs or they use that as a way to put downward pressure on wages for American workers. I know what that has done to Mansfield, OH. I know what it has done to Gallipolis, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Dayton, Huber Heights, and every other community. The only way to stop this is by raising labor standards in every country we trade with and, most importantly, making sure those standards are actually enforced. If corporations are forced to pay workers a living wage and treat them with dignity no matter where the workers are, we take away the incentive for those companies to move jobs abroad. That is what the Brown-Wyden provision does. A worker in Mexico now, under this agreement--the reason I am supporting this, the first-ever trade agreement that I am supporting--workers in Mexico will be able to report a company that is violating their rights. They can actually call a toll-free number and report violations against the workers. Aworker can actually make that request. They have never had that right in Mexico. They, often enough, don't have it here. We can then determine whether worker rights have been violated and then take action against the company that did it. We have never done it that way. We haven't had good results because of that. We can apply punitive damages when companies stop workers from organizing. If they keep doing it, we stop their goods from coming into the United States. You enforce it at the factory level by saying: If you keep violating this trade agreement, you are not sending your products into the United States. That will make them behave. When Mexican workers have the power to form real unions and negotiate for higher wages, it helps our workers. Right now, Mexican workers can be paid as little as $6.50--not an hour but a day. We have been asking American workers to compete with that. We have already heard some critics say that Brown-Wyden will force Mexican wages to rise. I plead guilty. That is the entire point--to take away the incentive. If Mexican wages go up, it makes U.S. companies less likely to shut down production in Steubenville or Lisbon or in Bryan, OH, and move overseas. It takes away the incentive for those companies to relocate. I want to be clear. I will always be straight with American workers. This is not a perfect agreement. One trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that put corporations over workers. This deal will not stop outsourcing when we have President Trump's tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send American jobs to Mexico. Here is how the President's tax bill that was rammed through this Senate a year or so ago works: If you are in Springfield, OH, your corporate tax rate is 21 percent. If you move--pull up stakes and move to Mexico or anywhere else--your tax rate is 10.5 percent. Even with this good trade agreement, we cannot stop that kind of outsourcing because the President insists on helping his corporate buddies. I will keep fighting his corporate trade policies and tax policies just as we did in this agreement. We have a lot more work to do to make our trade agreements more pro-worker. I will vote yes for the first time ever on a trade agreement because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker. We set an important precedent for the future that Brown-Wyden must now be included in every trade agreement in the years ahead. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. BROWN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-06-pt1-PgS22

formal

terrorism

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I spoke yesterday about President Trump's decision to remove the chief architect of Tehran's terrorism from the battlefield, and I discussed the Senate's obligation to approach this in a manner that is serious, sober, and factual. It is right for Senators to want to learn more about the President's major decision. Once again, I encourage all of our colleagues to attend the classified briefing which the administration will provide tomorrow. The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA Director will give a classified context behind the President's decision, and they will discuss the administration's strategy to protect our personnel and defend our Nation's interests in the new landscape. I would ask every Senator on both sides to bring an open mind to this briefing. In particular, we should all remember that the history of Iranian aggression began long, long before this news cycle or this Presidency. In the decades since the Islamic revolution of 1979, as the White House has changed parties and our administrations have changed strategies, Tehran's simmering anti-American hatred, proxy violence, and steady support for terrorism worldwide have remained entirely constant through all of these years. In effect, Iran has been at war with the United States for years. While it has taken pains to avoid direct conflict, Iran's authoritarian regime has shown no compunction about kidnapping, torturing, and killing Americans since its earliest days--or Iraqis or fellow Iranians, for that matter. From the 52 diplomatic personnel held hostage in Tehran for 444 days back in 1979, to the hundreds of U.S. servicemembers killed in bombings carried out by Iran's proxies--Beirut in 1983, Riyadh in 1995, Khobar in 1996--to the hundreds more killed or maimed in Iraq by the explosives and indirect fire attacks ordered by General Soleimani himself, to the constant flows of resources and equipment that prop up despots and terrorist organizations throughout the region, Iran's game plan has been an open book: Use third-party terrorism to inflict death and suffering on its enemies while avoiding direct confrontation. The threat Iran poses is, certainly, not new. Its violence is not some unique reaction to President Trump or to Prime Minister Netanyahu or to any other current leader. Violence runs in the bloodstream of this evil regime. In particular, our colleagues who apparently want to blame President Trump for Iranian provocative foreign policy should reflect on the previous administration's recent history. Iran exploited President Obama's withdrawal from Iraq. Soleimani and his agents filled the void and dramatically expanded Iranian influence inside Iraq. They were able to impose a sectarian vision on Iraq that disenfranchised the Sunnis, fueled the rise of ISIS, and plunged the region into chaos. Over in Syria, more weakness from the Obama administration opened yet another door for Iran. The Democratic administration failed to confront the Iranian-backed Assad regime as it slaughtered literally hundreds of thousands of Syrians and displaced millions more. Once again, amid the chaos, Soleimani worked and thrived. Of course, all of this was the backdrop for the brazen, legacy-shoppingnuclear arrangement that sent billions of dollars to fuel Iran's further violence. Even my friend the current Democratic leader knew it at the time. Before he himself voted for a resolution of disapproval on President Obama's deal, Senator Schumer said: ``After 10 years, if Iran is the same nation as it is today, we will be worse off with this agreement than without it.'' That was the Democratic leader, who opposed President Obama's Iran nuclear deal, and the Democratic leader was prescient, for that is exactly what happened. The previous administration failed to confront Iran when necessary. So the mullahs used their windfall from the disastrous nuclear deal to double down on hegemonic aspirations all across the Middle East. A Democratic administration just had 8 years to deal with the growing threat posed by Iran, and it failed demonstrably. Iran was stronger and more lethal at the end of the Obama Presidency than at the beginning. So I would ask my Democratic colleagues today not to rush to lash out at President Trump when he actually demonstrates that he means what he says--when he enforces his redlines, when he takes real action to counter lethal threats against Americans. Wishing away tensions with Iran is really not an option. The Iranians have spent decades making that perfectly clear to all of us. The question is whether we as a body would prefer the administration to stand by as Iran kills Americans or whether we are prepared to work with the President to stand up to Tehran's terrorism and shadow wars.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS31-6

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I spoke yesterday about President Trump's decision to remove the chief architect of Tehran's terrorism from the battlefield, and I discussed the Senate's obligation to approach this in a manner that is serious, sober, and factual. It is right for Senators to want to learn more about the President's major decision. Once again, I encourage all of our colleagues to attend the classified briefing which the administration will provide tomorrow. The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA Director will give a classified context behind the President's decision, and they will discuss the administration's strategy to protect our personnel and defend our Nation's interests in the new landscape. I would ask every Senator on both sides to bring an open mind to this briefing. In particular, we should all remember that the history of Iranian aggression began long, long before this news cycle or this Presidency. In the decades since the Islamic revolution of 1979, as the White House has changed parties and our administrations have changed strategies, Tehran's simmering anti-American hatred, proxy violence, and steady support for terrorism worldwide have remained entirely constant through all of these years. In effect, Iran has been at war with the United States for years. While it has taken pains to avoid direct conflict, Iran's authoritarian regime has shown no compunction about kidnapping, torturing, and killing Americans since its earliest days--or Iraqis or fellow Iranians, for that matter. From the 52 diplomatic personnel held hostage in Tehran for 444 days back in 1979, to the hundreds of U.S. servicemembers killed in bombings carried out by Iran's proxies--Beirut in 1983, Riyadh in 1995, Khobar in 1996--to the hundreds more killed or maimed in Iraq by the explosives and indirect fire attacks ordered by General Soleimani himself, to the constant flows of resources and equipment that prop up despots and terrorist organizations throughout the region, Iran's game plan has been an open book: Use third-party terrorism to inflict death and suffering on its enemies while avoiding direct confrontation. The threat Iran poses is, certainly, not new. Its violence is not some unique reaction to President Trump or to Prime Minister Netanyahu or to any other current leader. Violence runs in the bloodstream of this evil regime. In particular, our colleagues who apparently want to blame President Trump for Iranian provocative foreign policy should reflect on the previous administration's recent history. Iran exploited President Obama's withdrawal from Iraq. Soleimani and his agents filled the void and dramatically expanded Iranian influence inside Iraq. They were able to impose a sectarian vision on Iraq that disenfranchised the Sunnis, fueled the rise of ISIS, and plunged the region into chaos. Over in Syria, more weakness from the Obama administration opened yet another door for Iran. The Democratic administration failed to confront the Iranian-backed Assad regime as it slaughtered literally hundreds of thousands of Syrians and displaced millions more. Once again, amid the chaos, Soleimani worked and thrived. Of course, all of this was the backdrop for the brazen, legacy-shoppingnuclear arrangement that sent billions of dollars to fuel Iran's further violence. Even my friend the current Democratic leader knew it at the time. Before he himself voted for a resolution of disapproval on President Obama's deal, Senator Schumer said: ``After 10 years, if Iran is the same nation as it is today, we will be worse off with this agreement than without it.'' That was the Democratic leader, who opposed President Obama's Iran nuclear deal, and the Democratic leader was prescient, for that is exactly what happened. The previous administration failed to confront Iran when necessary. So the mullahs used their windfall from the disastrous nuclear deal to double down on hegemonic aspirations all across the Middle East. A Democratic administration just had 8 years to deal with the growing threat posed by Iran, and it failed demonstrably. Iran was stronger and more lethal at the end of the Obama Presidency than at the beginning. So I would ask my Democratic colleagues today not to rush to lash out at President Trump when he actually demonstrates that he means what he says--when he enforces his redlines, when he takes real action to counter lethal threats against Americans. Wishing away tensions with Iran is really not an option. The Iranians have spent decades making that perfectly clear to all of us. The question is whether we as a body would prefer the administration to stand by as Iran kills Americans or whether we are prepared to work with the President to stand up to Tehran's terrorism and shadow wars.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS31-6

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, on another matter, every day that the House Democrats refuse to stand behind their historically partisan impeachment, it deepens the embarrassment for the leaders who chose to take our Nation down this road. You can't say we didn't warn them. You can't even say they didn't warn themselves. It was less than 1 year ago that Speaker Pelosi said: ``Impeachment is so divisive . . . unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path.'' That was the Speaker a year ago. Back during the Clinton impeachment, it was Congressman Jerry Nadler who said: ``An impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other . . . will lack legitimacy.'' Chairman Nadler was right 20 years ago. At this point, they may wish they had taken their own advice. Instead, what the country got was the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair Presidential impeachment in American history, and now the prosecution seems to have gotten cold feet. Nearly 3 weeks after the rushed vote they claim was so urgent, they are still debating whether or not they even want to see the trial proceed. They voted for it 3 weeks ago. The House Democrats say they are waiting for some mythical leverage. I have had difficulty figuring out where the leverage is. Apparently, this is their proposition: If the Senate does not agree to break with our own unanimous, bipartisan precedent from 1999 and agree to let Speaker Pelosi hand-design a different procedure for this Senate trial, then, they might not ever dump this mess in our lap. It is one cynical political game right on top of another. It was not enough for the House to blow through its own norms and precedents and succumb to the partisan temptation of a subjective impeachment that every other House had resisted for 230 years. Now it needs to erode our constitutional order even further. Those in the House want to invent a new, sort of pretrial hostage negotiation wherein the House gets to run the show over here in the Senate. Meanwhile, they are creating exactly the kind of unfair and dangerous delay in impeachment that Alexander Hamilton specifically warned against in the Federalist Papers. This is already the longest delay in American history between the impeachment vote and the delivery of the House's impeachment message. It is almost as though this House Democrat majority systematically took all of the Framers' warnings about partisan abuses of the impeachment power--took everything the Founders said not to do--and thought: Now, there is an idea. Why don't we try that? Impeaching a President is just about the most serious action that any House of Representatives can ever take. How inappropriate and how embarrassing to rush forward on a partisan basis and then treat what you have done like a political toy. How contemptuous of the American people to tell them, for weeks, that you feel this extraordinary step is so urgent and then delay it indefinitely for political purposes. How embarrassing, but also how revealing. Speaker Pelosi's actions over the past 3 weeks have confirmed what many Americans have suspected about this impeachment process all along--that the House Democrats have only ever wanted to abuse this grave constitutional process for partisan ends right from the beginning. Well, here is where we are. The Senate is not about to let the Speaker corrode our own Senate process and precedents in the same way. The first organizing registration resolution for the 1999 Clinton trial was approved unanimously, 100 to nothing. It left midtrial questions to the middle of the trial where they belong. If that unanimous bipartisan precedent was good enough for President Clinton, it should be our template for President Trump. Fair is fair. The Speaker of the House is not going to handwrite new rules for the Senate. It is not going to happen. Look, these are serious matters. At some point in time, the Democrats' rage at this particular President will begin to fade, but the sad precedent they are setting will live on. The American people deserve a lot better than this.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS32

formal

single

homophobic

Impeachment Madam President, on impeachment, this morning, I return to the most pressing question facing my colleagues at this moment: Will the Senate conduct a fair impeachment trial of the President of the United States of America? The Framers suspected that any impeachment would ignite the passions of the public and naturally would create partisans who are either sympathetic or inimical to the President's interests. That is why the Framers gave the Senate the responsibility to try impeachment cases. When it came to a matter as serious as the potential removal of a President, they believed the Senate was the only body of government with enough independence to rise above partisan considerations and act with the necessary impartiality. Will we live up to that vision? Right now, the Republican leader and I have very different ideas about what it means to conduct a fair trial. Democrats believe a fair trial considers all the relevant facts and allows for witnesses and documents. We don't know what the evidence will say. It may exculpate the President. It may further incriminate him. We only want a trial that examines all the facts and lets the chips fall where they may. The Republican leader, in contrast, apparently believes that a trial should feature no witnesses, no relevant documents, and proceed according to the desires of the White House, the defendant. The Republican leader seems more concerned with being able to claim he went through the constitutional motions than actually carrying out our constitutional duty. Because the Republican leader has been completely unwilling to help get the facts for a Senate trial, the question will have to be decided by the majority of Senators in this Chamber. That means four Republican Senators at any point can compel the Senate to call the fact witnesses and subpoena the relevant documents that we know will shed additional light on the truth. I have heard several arguments from the other side as to why we shouldn't vote on witnesses and documents at the outset of the trial. The Republican leader and several Republican Senators have suggested that each side complete their arguments, and then we will decide on witnesses. This idea is as backward as it sounds. Trials should be informed by witnesses and documents; they are not an afterthought. Their reasoning and McConnell's reasoning has an ``Alice in Wonderland'' logic to it: Let's have each side make their case, he says, and then vote on whether the prosecutors and defense should have all the available evidence to make those cases. We know what is going on here. Our Republican colleagues, even Leader McConnell, knows that the American people want witnesses and documents. Sixty percent of Republicans do. They are afraid to say no, but they don't want to vote on them because that might offend the defendant in this trial, President Trump, so they are trying to kick the can down the road. It is a strange position for Republican colleagues to take. They are willing to kick the can down the road, as I said, on questions of witnesses and documents, but they are not willing to say when or if they will ever support it. Just yesterday, one of the four witnesses we have requested, former National Security Advisor Bolton, said he is ready to testify and has new information to share related to the case at hand. Republicans were dodging and twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain why someone with direct knowledge of what the President did shouldn't testify under oath immediately. I believe that illustrates the fundamental weakness of the Republican position. None of our Republican colleagues can advance an argument about why this evidence shouldn't be part of a trial from the beginning. To put it another way, none of our Republicans have advanced an argument about why it would make sense for the Senate to wait until the end of the trial to obtain all the evidence. Make no mistake, on the question of witnesses and documents, Republicans may run, but they can't hide. There will be votes at the beginning on whether to call the four witnesses we have proposed and subpoena the documents we have identified. America and the eyes of history will be watching what my Republican colleagues do. Another argument I have heard from the other side is that it is not the Senate's job to go outside of the record established by the House impeachment probe. I would reply that it very much is the Senate's job. The Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to try impeachment cases, not review impeachment cases, not go over impeachment cases but the sole power to try them. It is not the Senate's job to put the House impeachment proceedings on a weeklong rerun on C-SPAN. Our job is to try the case, to hold a real, fair, and honest trial. That means examining the arguments. That means letting the prosecutors request witnesses and documents to make their case. This is not just my view. It has been the view of every Senate facing impeachment trial in our history. Every single impeachment trial of a President has featured witnesses. Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial had 41 witnesses. Several of my Republican colleagues here today voted for witnesses in the Clinton trial. Except for one solitary case, every impeachment trial of any official, in the history of the Senate--and there have been a bunch--had witnesses. A trial isn't a trial without evidence. A trial without all the facts is a farce. If the President is ultimately acquitted at the end of a sham trial, his acquittal will be meaningless. That is why the President himself should demand a full and fair trial. President Trump, if you have nothing to hide, if you think the case is as flimsy as you say, call your Chief of Staff. Tell him to release the documents. Call Leader McConnell and tell him what you already told the country; that you would ``love'' for your aides to testify in a Senate trial. President Trump, if you believe you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of from witnesses and documents. To thecontrary, if you are afraid of witnesses and documents, most Americans will believe you have something to hide and that you fear you have done something very, very wrong. If my Republican colleagues believe the President has done nothing wrong, they should have nothing to fear from witnesses and documents. In fact, they should welcome them. What better way to prove to the American people that we are treating this matter with the gravity it requires. What better way to prove to their constituents that they are not just doing the President's bidding and not just making this a sham trial because of obeisance to the President of the United States. If every Senate Republican votes to prevent witnesses and documents from coming before the Senate, if every Republican Senator votes for a rigged trial that hides the truth, the American people will see that the Republican Senate is part of a large and awful coverup. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS33

formal

single

homophobic

For-Profit Colleges and Universities Madam President, I have come to the floor many times to speak to the American people about an industry, the most heavily federally subsidized industry in America today. No, it is not a defense contractor. It has nothing to do with American agriculture. What I am speaking of are the for-profit colleges and universities of the United States. These colleges and universities, sadly, have written a notorious record when it comes to the treatment of their students. They have often cheated their students, luring them into signing up for expensive, often worthless college courses with false promises and inflated outcomes if they graduate. At the end, the students are left with massive student debts, a diploma that is worthless, credits that can't be transferred to any other reputable college or university, and the prospects of a job that is almost impossible to find. In many cases, these sham operations actually go out of business in the middle of the student's education. As an industry, for-profit colleges need to be remembered for two numbers--two numbers that tell the story of this industry. Nine percent of all postsecondary students go to for-profit colleges and universities in the United States. The University of Phoenix, DeVry--you have heard their names. They advertise quite widely. Nine percent of students are attracted to these for-profit colleges and universities. But 33 percent of all of the federal student loan defaults in the United States are by the students who chose to attend those colleges and universities. What is going on here, with 9 percent of the students and 33 percent of the student loan defaults? The answer is obvious. The cost of education at for-profit colleges and universities is toohigh. Students incur more debt than they would by attending community colleges, city colleges, or other universities and colleges that have good reputations. Secondly, the education is substandard. You can advertise everything online about this great education. I can recall an ad that was on television in the Washington, DC, area a few years ago, and it showed a young woman--probably a teenager, not much beyond--in her pajamas, on her bed, saying: I am going to college on my laptop here. Well, that kind of easy education, many times, is no education at all. At for-profit colleges and universities, too many students end up taking these expensive courses that are meaningless. It turns out that none of these courses can be transferred to some other school or university. When you take these courses and you spend your money and you spend your time and you end up with so-called college credits by for-profit colleges and universities, no one else will take them. No one else accepts them. They laugh at them. Then the students, if they can hang in there long enough with massive student debt, end up with a diploma that is a joke, a diploma that can't even lead to a job. That is what the for-profit colleges and universities are all about. Despite the fact that they have been pretty widespread across the United States, many of them have gone bankrupt. What happens to you as a student if you have gone to one of these universities that has made all these promises to you along the way about taking college courses and how it is going to end up being an education that will lead to a job, and it turns out they were all lies, fraud, deceit, deception? You have the debt, right? You have the student debt, but you can't find a job. You went through 4, 5 years of these so-called courses at for-profit colleges and universities, and the only thing you have to show for it is a debt that is going to decide the rest of your life. It is not just the for-profit college industry that is burdening and exploiting our students. I come to the floor this morning because, sadly, at this moment in time, an agency of our government is complicit. Secretary Betsy DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education have made a fateful decision for hundreds of thousands of American students that I have just described. Let me explain. After a for-profit college defrauds a student--lies to the student--Federal law gives that student the right to have his or her Federal student loan discharged under a provision known as borrower defense. Follow me. I have gone to a school and incurred a debt. They lied to me about their courses leading to a certain degree or to a job. Now the college is going out of business, and I still have the debt, but, under American law, I am protected as a student. The law says that if you were defrauded, you can use something called a borrower defense to discharge the student debt, wipe it clean, and get another chance at life. Congress has rightly decided with this law that we shouldn't leave students holding the bag when these schools should be held responsible. Is that something most Americans agree with? Take a look at this New America poll. Americans agree that students should have their Federal student loan debt canceled if their college deceived them. For Republicans, 71 percent agree with that statement; Democrats, 87 percent. Seventy-eight percent of the American people say that if these colleges lied to them, the students shouldn't end up holding the bag. It is pretty obvious. But sadly, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is trying to make it difficult, if not impossible, for defrauded student borrowers to get the relief. Secretary DeVos has allowed a backlog of--listen to this--more than 223,000 claims of students with student debt who claimed they were defrauded by these colleges and universities. There are 223,000 queued up, waiting in line for the Department of Education to implement the law. For more than a year, she has also failed to approve one single claim of the 223,000 who say they were defrauded--not one. She couldn't help one student who was defrauded out of 223,000. Now she wants to change the rules to make it impossible for future student borrowers to be relieved from their student debt when the schools have deceived them and defrauded them. She has put forward a new rule that places unreasonable burdens on student borrowers to seek and receive relief. Under this rule, the applicants looking for discharge of their student debt must prove that the school intentionally misled them. How is the student supposed to prove intention on the part of the school? Borrowers must also file a claim within 3 years of leaving the school, even though the conduct is often not discovered until many years later. The new rule also requires borrowers to apply individually instead of receiving automatic discharge when they are part of a group who has been harmed by similar widespread misconduct. We have seen it before. Some of these names may ring a bell with you: Corinthian Colleges. They were all over the United States. They went bankrupt. It turned out they were defrauding students, saying: Go take these courses, and you can end up being qualified for these jobs. It turned out it was a lie. After they went bankrupt, under the Obama administration, many of the students, as a group, were protected by this law, the borrower defense rule. Secretary DeVos says: Every student, you are on your own at this point. Lawyer up. You are going to have to prove your case as an individual. This new rule requires borrowers to apply individually, instead of receiving this automatic discharge, which was the case under the Obama administration. With this new rule, Secretary DeVos is saying to borrowers: We are not on your side. You are on your own. In addition, if a borrower's claim for relief is denied, they would not be allowed to appeal under Secretary DeVos's new rule. Even if more evidence of deception and misconduct is found. This new rule also puts taxpayers on the hook for relief, shielding schools from being held directly accountable by students. The DeVos rule eliminated the current prohibition on institutions using class action restrictions and mandatory arbitrations as conditions of enrollment. These practices, which you have seen over and over again by Corinthian and ITT Tech and others, require borrowers to sign away their rights when they go to school. Think about that. You are 19 years old, and you are starting your college education. You are going before one of these schools. They push in front of you that you have to sign up for $10,000 or $20,000 in tuition and sign the following contract. There you are, at age 19 without much life experience, being asked to sign up. Do you know what the fine print says? The fine print says that if I am lying to you, you can't go to court. Most students don't even understand that. They sign it because they are off to college, thinking, finally, here is our opportunity to be educated and have a life, a future. They don't know they are being deceived by these schools. Secretary DeVos has said: Sorry students, you signed that paper when you were 19, and now you are stuck with it. It is impossible for student borrowers to get relief under this new rule by Secretary DeVos. According to an analysis by the Institute of College Access & Success, the new Secretary DeVos rule will end up forgiving, at most, 3 percent of the loans associated with school misconduct. They will be able to recoup just 33 percent of that relief from the schools themselves, and taxpayers will foot the difference. The current rule is estimated to forgive 53 percent of loans associated with misconduct and recoup a greater percentage of the relief from schools. Secretary DeVos has loaded up the U.S. Department of Education with people who were in the for-profit college industry. These are folks who are devising rules good for their industry but not good for the American student borrowers. The bottom line is, the DeVos rule makes it harder for borrowers to receive relief, and the schools who commit the misconduct will pay for a lower portion of the relief that is given. I introduced S.J. Res. 56 last September to overturn Secretary DeVos's borrower defense rule. Representative Susie Lee of Nevada introduced a companion resolution in the House. Many organizations have endorsed my bill, including the Leadership Conference onCivil and Human Rights, the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, Consumer Federation of America, Student Veterans of America, and the NAACP, but there is one most recently that I want to share with you because I think it is important that Members of the Senate of both political parties realize that we now have a major organization--a nonpartisan organization--that speaks for the veterans of America who have endorsed this effort. I have in my hand a letter submitted to me by James Oxford, who goes by the nickname ``Bill,'' national commander of the American Legion of the United States of America, sent to me on December 18, 2019. He tells the story of veterans who were exploited by these for-profit colleges and universities. They ended up serving our country, earning their GI bill of rights, then losing their benefits to these schools--these worthless schools--and going further in debt to pay for their education. Commander Oxford sent this letter. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS35-3

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Iran Mr. President, on Friday, we learned that Iranian General Qasem Soleimani had been killed in a U.S. airstrike. Iran's terrorist activities throughout the Middle East are well known. Iran is a key backer of Hamas and Hezbollah and has fomented conflict throughout the entire Middle East--escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, fueling civil war in Yemen, and supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime. At the end of December, the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah, or KH, as they are called, fired more than 30 rockets at an Iraqi military base, killing an American contractor and wounding 4 U.S. troops. Days later, Iran-backed protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, conducting a 2-day siege of the Embassy before withdrawing--although not without setting fire to parts of the Embassy's exterior. The list of Iranian terror activities is long, and at the center of all these activities has been General Qasem Soleimani. As head of the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Soleimani has been masterminding Iran's terrorist activities for two decades. Iran has been linked to one in six military deaths in Iraq, notably through the IEDs that have become so emblematic of the War on Terror. This was Soleimani's work. He is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of innocent civilians throughout the Middle East. It is a good thing that his reign of terror is over. While I hope we can all agree that Soleimani was a just target, there are naturally questions about the timing of the strike and what options were laid before President Trump. The Senate will be briefed tomorrow, and I hope my colleagues and I will be given a clear intelligence picture of the imminent and significant threat Secretary of State Pompeo and other administration officials have described. Soleimani's death provides Iran with an opportunity to change course and to rethink its participation in terrorist activities throughout the Middle East and its aggression against the United States. Unfortunately, Iran doesn't seem ready to take that opportunity, and there are rightfully concerns about how Iran might retaliate for Soleimani's death. Iran has vowed severe revenge, but I hope Iran's leaders recognize that the United States will not tolerate Iran's aggressions. The United States is obviously closely monitoring any Iranian response or escalation, from attempted cyber attacks to threats against U.S. troops or citizens or our allies. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, has cautioned that there remains a significant risk, and we have seen the Department of Defense and the State Department adjust their postures accordingly. As I said, with Soleimani's removal, Iran has the opportunity to change course. In both Iran and Iraq, we have seen protests bravely displaying the desire for a new way forward and, in the case of Iraq, for freedom from Iran's malign influence. The path to that new day is a difficult one. Soleimani's decades of work building terrorist networks will not easily be undone, and his replacement has already been named and has vowed revenge. In addition, under pressure from Iran, Iraq's Parliament advanced a nonbinding resolution calling for the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq. I hope that cooler heads will prevail in Iraq and that we can come to an agreement that upholds our mutual security interests and is beneficial to both the United States and to the people of Iraq. We have invested a lot in regional security efforts that we should see through. As we know all too well from the rise of ISIS, the consequences of leaving a power vacuum can be dire. I hope that power vacuum will not be resurrected as the United States suspends counter-ISIS operations in order to defend our installations. The world may enjoy a degree of closure with the killing of Qasem Soleimani. Citizens of the Middle East who suffered at the hand of Soleimani's terror may have hope for a safer future, but this will require the Iranian regime to recognize the opportunity it now has to rid itself of Soleimani's agenda and chart a new course. Iran's leadership knows full well the consequences of maintaining its vendetta against America, our allies, and those who seek to live in peace and freedom. It got a preview of our military and intelligence capabilities last week. This is not a call for escalation but a frank acknowledgment that the United States will stand resolutely against those who threaten American lives. While the initial reaction from Iran has not been promising, I hope General Soleimani's death will encourage Iran to think carefully before it proceeds any further on its path of terror. I look forward to talking with the Defense Secretary, the CIA Director, and others tomorrow about what we need to do to minimize the threat of retaliation and to keep Americans and our allies safe. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS40

formal

terrorists

Islamophobic

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, Members of the Senate, I rise first to express my grave concern over President Trump's recent actions and words that have brought us to the brink of an unauthorized war with Iran. Today I am introducing a resolution with Senator Warren and Senators Leahy and Reed and Booker and Wyden because, on Saturday, President Trump tweeted that his administration is targeting 52 sites, some of which are cultural sites treasured by the Iranian people. My resolution is very simple. It says that attacks on cultural sites in Iran are war crimes. It is as straightforward as that. The President would compound the mistake he has made and turn it into something that could be catastrophic for that region, for our country, for the world. President Trump's repeated threats to add Iranian cultural sites to his military target list is a betrayal of American values. It is wrong. It is a needless escalation which ignores international law and the Defense Department's own policies. Attacking cultural sites is a violation of international law. Article 53 of protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions prohibits any act of hostility against cultural objects, including making cultural sites the target of reprisals. The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which has been ratified by this body, also prohibits the attack or destruction of cultural sites. Attacking cultural sites would also violate the Defense Department's own policies. The Department of Defense Law of War Manual states that cultural property, the areas immediatelysurrounding it, and appliances in use for its protection should be safeguarded and respected. The fact that President Trump's threatened attacks of cultural sites in Iran violate international law and Department of Defense policies may be why, yesterday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper appeared forced to contradict the President. When asked if cultural sites would be targeted as the President had suggested over the weekend, Secretary Esper stated that the United States ``follow[s] the laws of armed conflict.'' Well, the U.S. Senate then should speak clearly with one voice to tell President Trump it does not condone attacks on cultural sites in Iran. Given Secretary Esper's comments yesterday, I cannot see why my friends on the other side of the aisle would not support this resolution to make that statement very clear and to make it now before Iran potentially retaliates against us, and the President begins to select the targets inside of Iran. Attacking cultural sites is what ISIS does. It is what al-Qaida does. It is what the world's most heinous terrorists do. There is no excuse for the President to threaten war crimes by intentionally targeting the cultural sites of another country. This is not who we are. We are the United States of America. We are better than this. We actually fight against this. We condemn ISIS. We condemn others who destroy the culturally sacred objects in other countries. Just a few years ago, in 2017, the Trump administration itself opposed and condemned the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage at the hands of ISIS. As a top U.S. official to the United Nations, U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N. Michele Sison said on the President's behalf: The unlawful destruction or trafficking of cultural heritage is deplorable. We unequivocally oppose it and we will take all feasible steps to halt, limit, and to discourage it. Now the President himself is threatening to engage in exactly these sorts of illegal and reprehensible attacks on Iran. The United States had a choice to make during World War II because our military kept putting Japan's ancient capital Kyoto back on the target list for the atomic bomb. Kyoto is home to more than 2,000 Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, including 17 world heritage sites. It was Secretary of War Henry Stimson who went directly to President Truman to argue that Kyoto should be removed because ``the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us.'' So if we want any ultimate reconciliation with Iran, we cannot allow Donald Trump to order the destruction of the cultural history of Iran so that reconciliation may never be possible. Imagine the outcry the American people would have if our symbols of cultural heritage were destroyed--the Statue of Liberty destroyed; Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted, destroyed; the memorials along the National Mall destroyed. These places house and embody our collective history and the culture of the United States of America. The assassination of General Soleimani was a massive, deliberate, and dangerous escalation of conflict with Iran. What conditions prompt us to go to war? The U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act leave little ambiguity. The Congress, not the President, has the power to make or authorize the war. The Congress has the authority to determine when and how we go to war. We cannot and must not get drawn into a costly war with Iran. We need to deescalate now. But President Trump's threat to illegally attack cultural sites in Iran only aligns us with the world's most sinister and draws us further along the path to war. Some might say: Well, Secretary of Defense Esper says that President Trump will not do this. Let me read you President Trump's tweet at 5:52 p.m. on Saturday evening. Here is what he said: ``targeted 52 Iranian sites . . . some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.'' That was by the President of the United States just Saturday night at 5:52 p.m., and we are supposed to be assured by Secretary of Defense Esper that we don't have to worry? Well, here is what we have learned in just the last couple of days. The generals were stunned. The generals were shocked that President Trump ordered the assassination of Soleimani. So we can't depend upon the representations of Secretary Esper. We have to make a statement ourselves because no one in his administration controls Donald Trump. If he says that he is going to target the most valuable cultural sites inside Iran, we should believe him. He does what he says he is going to do. He wanted to kill Soleimani. Even if the generals were shocked, he did it. He doesn't understand the long-term consequences. From his perspective, just get over it. Well, if we sow the wind, we are going to reap the whirlwind in Iran. If the President decides to take the next step after Iran retaliates--and they say that they are--and these sacred cultural sites are on the list, then taking Secretary Stimson's advice from World War II, our ability to ever reconcile may be impossible. This is the moment that we have to speak as a Senate because we do not know how much time will elapse before Iran strikes back at us, as they have promised. We should make our statement right now to Donald Trump in the Oval Office that we do not want him under any circumstances to order the destruction of the most sacred cultural sites inside Iran. It would be a war crime. It would be a violation of the Geneva Convention. It would be a violation of the Hague Convention. It would have catastrophic consequences for our country and for the Middle East for a generation. So this is the time for us to speak--before it happens, before the President fulfills his promise to destroy those sites. He is the Commander in Chief. He said that he wants to do this. He just killed--assassinated--the top military official, the second most powerful person in Iran, to the shock of his own generals. So do not think for a second he will not do this. This is a potential tragedy for our country. This is a potential source of eternal friction between our two countries. Reconciliation with Iran would become nearly impossible. So let's make this statement as the U.S. Senate. Let's follow up on what Secretary of Defense Esper represents as the position of President Trump and of the administration--that they don't want to destroy it. But let's make the statement because we know that the Defense Secretary just may not speak for Donald Trump. No one speaks for Donald Trump. Only his tweets speak for Donald Trump, and we know what his tweet said: ``at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.'' We have a chance here to make a statement before this happens. Forewarned is forearmed. We have been forewarned, and our ability to act is with a unanimous resolution here from the floor of the U.S. Senate, saying to the President as Secretary Stimson said to President Truman in 1945: Do not do this, Mr. President. It will be a mistake of historic proportions and a war crime. Do not order a war crime to be conducted in the name of the American people. So the resolution that I bring to the floor is intended to have this body vote and vote unanimously for him not to take that action. This is our moment to speak before he compounds his original mistake--the assassination of General Soleimani--and turns it into a tragedy, which we will have to live with for a generation. Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Con. Res. 32 submitted earlier today. I further ask that the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

2020-01-06

Mr. MARKEY

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS47

formal

based

white supremacist

Mr. RISCH. Madam President, I wish to commemorate the life of David Blee, who tragically passed away on December 29, 2019, at the age of 66. David was the founder and president of the United States Nuclear Industry Council, USNIC. During his long and distinguished career in the nuclear industry, David concentrated on nuclear supply chain and reactor technology and actively worked to increase support for nuclear power in the United States and abroad. David also worked with the National Laboratories, including Idaho National Laboratory, often running conferences in conjunction with them. At the time of his passing, David held an appointment to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Civil Nuclear Trade Advisory Committee, CINTAC, an achievement that spoke to his incredible expertise. David graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania with a degree in economics, but he soon began working in politics and public service. After managing several political campaigns, David became chief of staff to former Representative and Senator Connie Mack while Mack served in the House of Representatives. David then served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary and, later, Director of Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of Energy during the Reagan administration. He also served as the executive vice president for NAC International, a U.S.-based energy services and technology company, where he directed the company's worldwide consulting group and marketing and business development portfolios. One of David's best attributes was his ability to work with people and bring organizations together. Composed of over 80 companies, USNIC represents the ``who's who'' of the nuclear energy supply chain, including technology developers, fuel cycle companies, and others that demonstrate the importance of maintaining the nuclear industry. These companies working in conjunction would not have been possible without the dedicated effort of David Blee. In July of last year, I was honored to be presented with the U.S. Nuclear Energy Distinguished Leadership Award by USNIC. The coalition of groups attending that award ceremony personified the great unifying effect that David had on the nuclear industry. He was a leader and a motivator, and his advocacy for the nuclear industry will be remembered. I am grateful for the work that he completed during his lifetime and his lasting legacy as a respected leader in the nuclear field.

2020-01-06

Mr. RISCH

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS54

formal

Reagan

white supremacist

Mr. RISCH. Madam President, I wish to commemorate the life of David Blee, who tragically passed away on December 29, 2019, at the age of 66. David was the founder and president of the United States Nuclear Industry Council, USNIC. During his long and distinguished career in the nuclear industry, David concentrated on nuclear supply chain and reactor technology and actively worked to increase support for nuclear power in the United States and abroad. David also worked with the National Laboratories, including Idaho National Laboratory, often running conferences in conjunction with them. At the time of his passing, David held an appointment to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Civil Nuclear Trade Advisory Committee, CINTAC, an achievement that spoke to his incredible expertise. David graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania with a degree in economics, but he soon began working in politics and public service. After managing several political campaigns, David became chief of staff to former Representative and Senator Connie Mack while Mack served in the House of Representatives. David then served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary and, later, Director of Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of Energy during the Reagan administration. He also served as the executive vice president for NAC International, a U.S.-based energy services and technology company, where he directed the company's worldwide consulting group and marketing and business development portfolios. One of David's best attributes was his ability to work with people and bring organizations together. Composed of over 80 companies, USNIC represents the ``who's who'' of the nuclear energy supply chain, including technology developers, fuel cycle companies, and others that demonstrate the importance of maintaining the nuclear industry. These companies working in conjunction would not have been possible without the dedicated effort of David Blee. In July of last year, I was honored to be presented with the U.S. Nuclear Energy Distinguished Leadership Award by USNIC. The coalition of groups attending that award ceremony personified the great unifying effect that David had on the nuclear industry. He was a leader and a motivator, and his advocacy for the nuclear industry will be remembered. I am grateful for the work that he completed during his lifetime and his lasting legacy as a respected leader in the nuclear field.

2020-01-06

Mr. RISCH

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS54

formal

terrorism

Islamophobic

The following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated: EC-3589. A communication from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Review of Defense Solicitations by Procurement Center Representatives'' ((RIN0750-AK43) (DFARS Case 2019-D008)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-3590. A communication from the Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Annual Report on the Truth in Lending Act, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, and the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3591. A communication from the Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on College Credit Card Agreements; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3592. A communication from the Secretary of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to the export to the People's Republic of China of items not detrimental to the U.S. space launch industry; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3593. A communication from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic report on the national emergency with respect to Belarus that was declared in Executive Order 13405 of June 16, 2006; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3594. A communication from the Secretary of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report on the continuation of a national emergency declared in Executive Order 13222 with respect to the lapse of the Export Administration Act of 1979; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3595. A communication from the Program Specialist, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Capital Treatment for High Volatility Commercial Real Estate (HVCRE) Exposures'' (RIN1557-AE48) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3596. A communication from the Counsel, Legal Division, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Home Mortgage Disclosure (Regulation C) Adjustment to Asset-Size Exemption Threshold'' (12 CFR Part 1003) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3597. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Capital Treatment for High Volatility Commercial Real Estate (HVCRE) Exposures'' (RIN3064-AE90) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3598. A communication from the Acting General Counsel of the National Credit Union Administration, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Delay of Effective Date of the Risk-Based Capital Rules'' (RIN3133- AF01) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3599. A communication from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Risk Mitigation Techniques for Uncleared Security-Based Swaps'' (RIN3235-AL83) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3600. A communication from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Rule Amendments and Guidance Addressing Cross-Border Application of Certain Security-Based Swap Requirements'' (RIN3235-AM13) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3601. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to the designation as an emergency requirement all funding so designated by the Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, pursuant to section 251 (b) (2) (A) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, for the enclosed list of accounts; to the Committee on the Budget. EC-3602. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to the designation for Overseas Contingency Operations/Global War on Terrorism all funding (including the rescission of funds) and contributions from foreign governments so designated by the Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, pursuant to section 251 (b) (2) (A) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, for the enclosed list of accounts; to the Committee on the Budget. EC-3603. A communication from the Secretary of the Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, an annual report related to the Colorado River System Reservoirs for 2020; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. EC-3604. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of the Army, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report entitled ``The Innovative Materials and Advanced Technologies Report''; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3605. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Extension of Photochemical Assessment Monitoring Stations Compliance Deadline'' (FRL No. 10003-87-OAR) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 23, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3606. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Partial Approval, Partial Disapproval and Promulgation of State Plans for Designated Facilities and Pollutants; California; Control of Emissions from Existing Municipal Solid Waste Landfills'' (FRL No. 10000-52-Region 9) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 23, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3607. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Tennessee; Approval of Plan for Control of Emissions from Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incineration Units'' (FRL No. 9997-01-Region 4) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3608. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``2020 Annual Adjustment: Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment'' (FRL No. 10003-77-OECA) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3609. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District; Stationary Source Permits'' (FRL No. 10002-05-Region 9) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3610. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Indiana; Limited Maintenance Plans for the 1997 Oxone NAAQS; Evansville, Fort Wayne, Greene County, Jackson County, Muncie, and Terre Haute areas'' (FRL No. 10003-54-Region 5) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3611. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Air Plan Approval; South Carolina; Interstate Transport for the 2008 8-hour Ozone NAAQS'' (FRL No. 10003- 56-Region 4) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3612. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Air Plan Approval; Tennessee; Infrastructure Requirements for the 2015 8-hour Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard'' (FRL No. 10003-55-Region 4) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3613. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Alabama; Approval of Plan for Control of Emissions from Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incineration Units'' (FRL No. 9996-80-Region 4) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3614. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Idaho; Final Approval of State Underground Storage Tank Program Revisions, Codification and Incorporation by Reference'' (FRL No. 10003-28-Region 10) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3615. A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Protection of Stratospheric Ozone; Adjustments to the Allowance System for Controlling HCFC Production and Import, 2020-2029; and Other Updates'' (FRL No. 10003-80-OAR) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3616. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to a consolidated budget justification display that includes all programs and activities of the Department of Defense combating terrorism program (OSS-2019-1354); to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-3617. A communication from the Assistant Secretary, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report consistent with the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (P.L. 107-243) and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 1991 (P.L. 102-1) for the September 10, 2019 to November 9, 2019 reporting period; to the Committee on Foreign Relations. EC-3618. A communication from the Assistant Secretary, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 36(c) of the Arms Export Control Act, the certification of a proposed license for the export of defense articles, including technical data and defense services, to the United Kingdom for the support and installation of the MK 45 mod 4 naval gun system, type 26 ammunition handling system, and ammunition lift on the type 26 Maritime Indirect Fire System (MIFS) frigates in the amount of $100,000,000 or more (Transmittal No. DDTC 19-067); to the Committee on Foreign Relations. EC-3619. A communication from the Executive Secretary, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), transmitting, pursuant to law, two (2) reports relative to vacancies in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Foreign Relations. EC-3620. A communication from the Chair, Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report entitled ``Oversight of Institutions for Mental Diseases''; to the Committee on Finance. EC-3621. A communication from the Director, Office of Regulations and Reports Clearance, Social Security Administration, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Setting the Manner for the Appearance of Parties and Witnesses at a Hearing'' (RIN0960-AI09) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 18, 2019; to the Committee on Finance. EC-3622. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Guidance under Section 355(e) Regarding Predecessors, Successors, and Limitation on Gain Recognition; Guidance under Section 355(f)'' ((RIN1545-BN18) (TD 9888)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 20, 2019; to the Committee on Finance. EC-3623. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Guidance on Income Tax Withholding from Retirement and Annuity Distributions'' (Notice 2020-3) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 20, 2019; to the Committee on Finance. EC-3624. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Extension of the Phase-in Period for the Enforcement and Administration of Section 871(m)'' (Notice 2020-2) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 20, 2019; to the Committee on Finance. EC-3625. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Dividend Equivalents from Sources within the United States'' ((RIN1545-BN76) (TD 9887)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 20, 2019; to the Committee on Finance. EC-3626. A communication from the Regulations Coordinator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Exchange Program Integrity'' (RIN0938-AT53) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-3627. A communication from the Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Regulatory Affairs, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Allocation of Assets in Single-Employer Plans; Benefits Payable in Terminated Single-Employer Plans; Interest Assumptions for Valuing and Paying Benefits'' (29 CFR Parts 4022 and 4044) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-3628. A communication from the Regulations Coordinator, Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Head Start Program'' (RIN0970- AC78) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-3629. A communication from the Chairwoman, U.S. Election Assistance Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Commission's Semiannual Report of the Inspector General for the period from April 1, 2019 through September 30, 2019; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. EC-3630. A communication from the Chairman, Federal Maritime Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the 21st Century IDEA 2019 report; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. EC-3631. A communication from the Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report on D.C. Act 23-278, ``Sense of the Council Supporting the Protection of Immigrant Families Resolution of 2019''; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. EC-3632. A communication from the Secretary of Labor, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Department's Semiannual Report of the Inspector General for the period from April 1, 2019 through September 30, 2019; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. EC-3633. A communication from the Officer, Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the fiscal year 2018 annual report for the Department's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; to the Committees on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; the Judiciary; and Select Committee on Intelligence. EC-3634. A communication from the Director of the Office of Regulatory Affairs and Collaborative Action, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Rights-of- Way on Indian Land; Bond Exemption'' (RIN1076-AF20 and RIN1076-AF37) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Indian Affairs. EC-3635. A communication from the Director of the Office of Regulatory Affairs and Collaborative Action, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Tribal Energy Resource Agreements under the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self Determination Act'' (RIN1076-AF47) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Indian Affairs. EC-3636. A communication from the Regulatory Documentation Specialist, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``List of Courts of Indian Offenses; Future Publication of Updates'' (RIN1076-AF46) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Indian Affairs. EC-3637. A communication from the Assistant Administrator of the Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of Cyclopropyl Fentanyl, Methoxyacetyl fentanyl, ortho-Fluorofentanyl, and para- Fluorobutyryl Fentanyl in Schedule I'' ((21 CFR Part 1308) (Docket No. DEA-507)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on the Judiciary. EC-3638. A communication from the Assistant Administrator of the Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Schedules of Controlled Substances: Extension of Temporary Placement of FUB-AMB in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act'' ((21 CFR Part 1308) (Docket No. DEA-472a)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on the Judiciary. EC-3639. A communication from the Assistant Administrator of the Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Technical Correction to Regulation Regarding Registration'' ((21 CFR Part 1301) (Docket No. DEA-511)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on the Judiciary. EC-3640. A communication from the Director, Office of Regulation Policy and Management, Department of Veterans Affairs, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Contracts and Provider Agreements for State Home Nursing Home Care'' (RIN2900-AO57) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 19, 2019; to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. EC-3641. A communication from the Director, Office of Regulation Policy and Management, Department of Veterans Affairs, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Reimbursement of Qualifying Adoption Expenses for Certain Veterans'' (RIN2900-AQ01) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 19, 2019; to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. EC-3642. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Manpower and Reserve Affairs), transmitting, pursuant to law, a report on the mobilizations of selected reserve units, received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 3, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-3643. A communication from the Secretary of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Public Rulemaking Procedures'' (RIN3038-AE90) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. EC-3644. A communication from the Chief Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Suspension of Community Eligibility'' ((44 CFR Part 64) (Docket No. FEMA-2019-0003)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 19, 2019; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3645. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Addition of Software Specially Designed to Automate the Analysis of Geospatial Imagery to the Export Control Classification Number 0Y521 Series'' (RIN0694-AH89) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3646. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Community Reinvestment Act Regulations'' (RIN3064-AF20) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 3, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3647. A communication from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the six-month periodic report on the national emergency with respect to the Western Balkans that was declared in Executive Order 13219 of June 26, 2001; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3648. A communication from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the six-month periodic report on the national emergency with respect to North Korea that was declared in Executive Order 13466 of June 26, 2008; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-3649. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Criteria for Preparation and Evaluation of Radiological Emergency Response Plans and Preparedness in Support of Nuclear Power Plants'' (NRC-2012-0026) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 3, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-3650. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Opening of the third six-year remedial amendment cycle for pre-approved defined benefit plans'' ((Rev. Proc. 2020-10) (RP-117256-19)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 20, 2019; to the Committee on Finance.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS55-3

formal

single

homophobic

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, 3\1/2\ years or so ago, I live in Cleveland, and I was in my State watching the Presidential campaign. I heard Candidate Trump repeatedly talking about renegotiating NAFTA or getting rid of the North America Free Trade Agreement. While I did not support his candidacy and have generally disagreed with most of what he has said and done, it was a bit of music to my ears to hear Candidate Trump talk about renegotiating or getting rid of NAFTA. I have voted, in my time in the Senate and before this, every single trade agreement starting with the North America Free Trade Agreement of two-plus decades ago, I have voted no in these trade agreements. I never voted for a trade agreement because, frankly, every trade agreement coming in front of the House or Senate has been a corporate trade agreement. It has been written by corporate lobbyists to serve corporate executives to serve their biggest stockholders. That is what these trade agreements are about. In every case, it was an attack on the middle class. In every case, it undermined worker protections. It depressed wages. It meant loss of jobs. I know what these corporate trade agreements did to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what it did in Mansfield, OH. I know what they have done to my adoptive city of Cleveland, OH, and I know what they have done to the entire industrial Midwest--well beyond that, too, in places like Arizona and elsewhere. I have seen what these corporate trade deals do. So Candidate Trump is elected President. He then says he is going to do away, back out, or renegotiate NAFTA. I looked at that with optimism. I talked to the U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Lighthizer, a number of times. I spoke with the President about it. I offered my assistance, and then, lo and behold, about a year ago, the President came out with a renegotiated NAFTA. It was the same old, same old. It was another corporate trade agreement that served his corporate interests, that served the drug companies, and that served those companies that are looking for cheap labor across the Rio Grande River. Under the President's new NAFTA--he called it USMCA--United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement--under the President's new NAFTA, it was the same corporate template, the same corporate trade agreement that helps corporate investors, that undermines workers, that gives incentives to companies to shut down production in Zanesville, in Gallipolis, in Marietta, in Cleveland, in Lima, in Toledo, and in Bryan and move their jobs to Mexico. So what did we do? Instead, initially, I continued to talk to the U.S. Trade Representative, as did some of my colleagues, knowing this first NAFTA draft was unacceptable and was not nearly what the President said he would do for workers. In fact, it was more than that. It was another betrayal of workers. This same President has betrayed low-income workers by refusing to raise the minimum wage. It has been more than a decade. This same President took away the new overtime rule, costing at least 50,000 Ohioans--that is just 50,000 in my State, thousands in Arizona, probably 100,000 in California, tens of thousands around the country and different States--cost them their overtime pay, meaning they would work 50 hours a week, and they would only get paid for 40. We saw that this President again was betraying workers. It has taken us months and months and months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden--the senior Democrat of the Finance Committee--and unions and organized labor to secure the Brown-Wyden provisions that now, with USMCA, amount to the strongest labor enforcement in a U.S. trade agreement ever. It means that wages will go up in Mexico, which is good news for American workers because fewer jobs will move to Mexico. A worker in Mexico now will be able to report a company that violates her labor rights or worker rights. Within months, we can determine whether worker rights have been violated and can take action against that company. Now, for the first time in my whole career, I will vote for a trade agreement. I wouldn't have voted for the Trump trade. I didn't vote for NAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, PNTR with China and South Korea, and all these other trade agreements. I would not have voted against the Trump USMCA because it didn't look out for workers. Instead of putting workers at the center of trade agreements, which is what we should do, it was a trade agreement written by and for corporate interests. What Senator Wyden and I did and others is we are now about to pass a trade agreement that puts workers in the center of the trade agreement, meaning a stronger middle class and meaning workers will get a fair shake. It means that Ohio workers will be able to compete. We know why companies took advantage of these corporate trade agreements. They shut down production in Ohio and moved to Mexico so they can pay lower wages and they can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. American workers can't compete with that when it is a race to the bottom on wages. Brown-Wyden will work to stop that, and for the first time ever, as I said, it will put workers in the center of a trade agreement. We must be straight with American workers. This isn't a perfect trade agreement. One trade deal the Democrats fixed--even though the President resisted it, finally gave in--a trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that puts corporations over workers and appoints judges who put their thumbs on the scales of justice to support corporations over workers and to support Wall Street over consumers. I voted yes. I voted yes today in the Finance Committee. It is the first time I ever have on a trade deal because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker, and, equally as important, we set an important precedent that Brown-Wyden must be included in every future trade agreement that comes in front of this body. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. BROWN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS60-3

formal

middle class

racist

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, 3\1/2\ years or so ago, I live in Cleveland, and I was in my State watching the Presidential campaign. I heard Candidate Trump repeatedly talking about renegotiating NAFTA or getting rid of the North America Free Trade Agreement. While I did not support his candidacy and have generally disagreed with most of what he has said and done, it was a bit of music to my ears to hear Candidate Trump talk about renegotiating or getting rid of NAFTA. I have voted, in my time in the Senate and before this, every single trade agreement starting with the North America Free Trade Agreement of two-plus decades ago, I have voted no in these trade agreements. I never voted for a trade agreement because, frankly, every trade agreement coming in front of the House or Senate has been a corporate trade agreement. It has been written by corporate lobbyists to serve corporate executives to serve their biggest stockholders. That is what these trade agreements are about. In every case, it was an attack on the middle class. In every case, it undermined worker protections. It depressed wages. It meant loss of jobs. I know what these corporate trade agreements did to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what it did in Mansfield, OH. I know what they have done to my adoptive city of Cleveland, OH, and I know what they have done to the entire industrial Midwest--well beyond that, too, in places like Arizona and elsewhere. I have seen what these corporate trade deals do. So Candidate Trump is elected President. He then says he is going to do away, back out, or renegotiate NAFTA. I looked at that with optimism. I talked to the U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Lighthizer, a number of times. I spoke with the President about it. I offered my assistance, and then, lo and behold, about a year ago, the President came out with a renegotiated NAFTA. It was the same old, same old. It was another corporate trade agreement that served his corporate interests, that served the drug companies, and that served those companies that are looking for cheap labor across the Rio Grande River. Under the President's new NAFTA--he called it USMCA--United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement--under the President's new NAFTA, it was the same corporate template, the same corporate trade agreement that helps corporate investors, that undermines workers, that gives incentives to companies to shut down production in Zanesville, in Gallipolis, in Marietta, in Cleveland, in Lima, in Toledo, and in Bryan and move their jobs to Mexico. So what did we do? Instead, initially, I continued to talk to the U.S. Trade Representative, as did some of my colleagues, knowing this first NAFTA draft was unacceptable and was not nearly what the President said he would do for workers. In fact, it was more than that. It was another betrayal of workers. This same President has betrayed low-income workers by refusing to raise the minimum wage. It has been more than a decade. This same President took away the new overtime rule, costing at least 50,000 Ohioans--that is just 50,000 in my State, thousands in Arizona, probably 100,000 in California, tens of thousands around the country and different States--cost them their overtime pay, meaning they would work 50 hours a week, and they would only get paid for 40. We saw that this President again was betraying workers. It has taken us months and months and months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden--the senior Democrat of the Finance Committee--and unions and organized labor to secure the Brown-Wyden provisions that now, with USMCA, amount to the strongest labor enforcement in a U.S. trade agreement ever. It means that wages will go up in Mexico, which is good news for American workers because fewer jobs will move to Mexico. A worker in Mexico now will be able to report a company that violates her labor rights or worker rights. Within months, we can determine whether worker rights have been violated and can take action against that company. Now, for the first time in my whole career, I will vote for a trade agreement. I wouldn't have voted for the Trump trade. I didn't vote for NAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, PNTR with China and South Korea, and all these other trade agreements. I would not have voted against the Trump USMCA because it didn't look out for workers. Instead of putting workers at the center of trade agreements, which is what we should do, it was a trade agreement written by and for corporate interests. What Senator Wyden and I did and others is we are now about to pass a trade agreement that puts workers in the center of the trade agreement, meaning a stronger middle class and meaning workers will get a fair shake. It means that Ohio workers will be able to compete. We know why companies took advantage of these corporate trade agreements. They shut down production in Ohio and moved to Mexico so they can pay lower wages and they can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. American workers can't compete with that when it is a race to the bottom on wages. Brown-Wyden will work to stop that, and for the first time ever, as I said, it will put workers in the center of a trade agreement. We must be straight with American workers. This isn't a perfect trade agreement. One trade deal the Democrats fixed--even though the President resisted it, finally gave in--a trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that puts corporations over workers and appoints judges who put their thumbs on the scales of justice to support corporations over workers and to support Wall Street over consumers. I voted yes. I voted yes today in the Finance Committee. It is the first time I ever have on a trade deal because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker, and, equally as important, we set an important precedent that Brown-Wyden must be included in every future trade agreement that comes in front of this body. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. BROWN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS60-3

formal

Cleveland

racist

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, 3\1/2\ years or so ago, I live in Cleveland, and I was in my State watching the Presidential campaign. I heard Candidate Trump repeatedly talking about renegotiating NAFTA or getting rid of the North America Free Trade Agreement. While I did not support his candidacy and have generally disagreed with most of what he has said and done, it was a bit of music to my ears to hear Candidate Trump talk about renegotiating or getting rid of NAFTA. I have voted, in my time in the Senate and before this, every single trade agreement starting with the North America Free Trade Agreement of two-plus decades ago, I have voted no in these trade agreements. I never voted for a trade agreement because, frankly, every trade agreement coming in front of the House or Senate has been a corporate trade agreement. It has been written by corporate lobbyists to serve corporate executives to serve their biggest stockholders. That is what these trade agreements are about. In every case, it was an attack on the middle class. In every case, it undermined worker protections. It depressed wages. It meant loss of jobs. I know what these corporate trade agreements did to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what it did in Mansfield, OH. I know what they have done to my adoptive city of Cleveland, OH, and I know what they have done to the entire industrial Midwest--well beyond that, too, in places like Arizona and elsewhere. I have seen what these corporate trade deals do. So Candidate Trump is elected President. He then says he is going to do away, back out, or renegotiate NAFTA. I looked at that with optimism. I talked to the U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Lighthizer, a number of times. I spoke with the President about it. I offered my assistance, and then, lo and behold, about a year ago, the President came out with a renegotiated NAFTA. It was the same old, same old. It was another corporate trade agreement that served his corporate interests, that served the drug companies, and that served those companies that are looking for cheap labor across the Rio Grande River. Under the President's new NAFTA--he called it USMCA--United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement--under the President's new NAFTA, it was the same corporate template, the same corporate trade agreement that helps corporate investors, that undermines workers, that gives incentives to companies to shut down production in Zanesville, in Gallipolis, in Marietta, in Cleveland, in Lima, in Toledo, and in Bryan and move their jobs to Mexico. So what did we do? Instead, initially, I continued to talk to the U.S. Trade Representative, as did some of my colleagues, knowing this first NAFTA draft was unacceptable and was not nearly what the President said he would do for workers. In fact, it was more than that. It was another betrayal of workers. This same President has betrayed low-income workers by refusing to raise the minimum wage. It has been more than a decade. This same President took away the new overtime rule, costing at least 50,000 Ohioans--that is just 50,000 in my State, thousands in Arizona, probably 100,000 in California, tens of thousands around the country and different States--cost them their overtime pay, meaning they would work 50 hours a week, and they would only get paid for 40. We saw that this President again was betraying workers. It has taken us months and months and months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden--the senior Democrat of the Finance Committee--and unions and organized labor to secure the Brown-Wyden provisions that now, with USMCA, amount to the strongest labor enforcement in a U.S. trade agreement ever. It means that wages will go up in Mexico, which is good news for American workers because fewer jobs will move to Mexico. A worker in Mexico now will be able to report a company that violates her labor rights or worker rights. Within months, we can determine whether worker rights have been violated and can take action against that company. Now, for the first time in my whole career, I will vote for a trade agreement. I wouldn't have voted for the Trump trade. I didn't vote for NAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, PNTR with China and South Korea, and all these other trade agreements. I would not have voted against the Trump USMCA because it didn't look out for workers. Instead of putting workers at the center of trade agreements, which is what we should do, it was a trade agreement written by and for corporate interests. What Senator Wyden and I did and others is we are now about to pass a trade agreement that puts workers in the center of the trade agreement, meaning a stronger middle class and meaning workers will get a fair shake. It means that Ohio workers will be able to compete. We know why companies took advantage of these corporate trade agreements. They shut down production in Ohio and moved to Mexico so they can pay lower wages and they can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. American workers can't compete with that when it is a race to the bottom on wages. Brown-Wyden will work to stop that, and for the first time ever, as I said, it will put workers in the center of a trade agreement. We must be straight with American workers. This isn't a perfect trade agreement. One trade deal the Democrats fixed--even though the President resisted it, finally gave in--a trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that puts corporations over workers and appoints judges who put their thumbs on the scales of justice to support corporations over workers and to support Wall Street over consumers. I voted yes. I voted yes today in the Finance Committee. It is the first time I ever have on a trade deal because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker, and, equally as important, we set an important precedent that Brown-Wyden must be included in every future trade agreement that comes in front of this body. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. BROWN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-07-pt1-PgS60-3

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the Chair will postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules on which a recorded vote or the yeas and nays are ordered, or votes objected to under clause 6 of rule XX. The House will resume proceedings on postponed questions at a later time.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER pro tempore

House

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgH30-3

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on ordering the previous question on the resolution (H. Res. 779) providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 535) to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to designate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER pro tempore

House

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgH49-2

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Proceedings will resume on questions previously postponed. Votes will be taken in the following order: Ordering the previous question on House Resolution 779; Adoption of House Resolution 779, if ordered; and The motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 2881. The first electronic vote will be conducted as a 15-minute vote. Pursuant to clause 9 of rule XX, remaining electronic votes will be conducted as 5-minute votes.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER pro tempore

House

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgH49

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2881) to require the Presidentto develop a strategy to ensure the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems and infrastructure in the United States and to assist allies and strategic partners in maximizing the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems, infrastructure, and software, and for other purposes, as amended, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER pro tempore

House

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgH50-2

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Under clause 3 of rule XII, memorials were presented and referred as follows: 152. The SPEAKER presented a memorial of the Senate of the State of New Jersey, relative to Senate Resolution No. 163, urging the President and Congress of the United States to enact legislation establishing a safe daily level of cannabidiol consumption; to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 153. Also, a memorial of the General Assembly of the State of New Jersey, relative to Assembly Resolution No. 244, urging the President and Congress of the United States to enact a law prohibiting an airline from counting breast milk or breast pumps against the airline's carry-on limit or restricting passengers from carrying breast milk onto the aircraft; to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 154. Also, a memorial of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, relative to Amended House Concurrent Resolution No. 10, urging the federal government to designate certain drug cartels operating as foreign terrorist organizations; jointly to the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs.

2020-01-06

Unknown

House

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgH63-2

formal

based

white supremacist

Under clause 3 of rule XII, petitions and papers were laid on the clerk's desk and referred as follows: 75. The SPEAKER presented a petition of Mr. Gregory D. Watson, a citizen of Austin, TX, relative to requesting that Congress propose, pursuant to Article V, a constitutional amendment establishing English as the official language of the United States in which all Federal Government business is to be conducted; to the Committee on the Judiciary. 76. Also, a petition of Council of the District of Columbia, relative to Resolution 23-278, calling upon Congress to enact legislation granting security and permanent legal status to residents living under the Temporary Protected Status program and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, including parents of United States citizens and recipients of these programs, to expand family-based legal immigration and to ensure the prevention of separation of families as a result of immigration status; to the Committee on the Judiciary. 77. Also, a petition of the Board of County Commissioners of Broward County, FL, relative to Resolution No. 2019-689, urging the United States Congress to enact the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2019; jointly to the Committees on Foreign Affairs and the Judiciary.

2020-01-06

Unknown

House

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgH65-2

formal

single

homophobic

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, there is a story that we often hear about in high school and government classes where George Washington is said to have told Jefferson that the Senate was created to ``cool'' House legislation as a saucer is used to cool hot tea. Whether that is historically accurate or not, it is a good summation of the role of the U.S. Senate. Now I am going to quote from Federalist 62 what Madison said. He could have made this quote a little easier to understand, but here it is anyway: ``The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.'' That is the end of Madison's quote, Federalist 62. Now, considering Madison's admonition, it should be no surprise to anyone whatsoever that the Senate passes fewer bills than the House and always has. But how come those who parrot the partisan talking points that the Senate is a legislative graveyard don't also talk about the over 200 Senate bills on Speaker Pelosi's desk? I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. GRASSLEY

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS63-4

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I had planned to discuss the corrosive political games that the Speaker of the House continues to play with the solemn issue of Presidential impeachment, but the deadly serious events of yesterday evening threw those political squabbles into the starkest possible relief. I was troubled but not surprised by reports that Iran fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq last night. As I have warned, the threat posed by Iraq has been growing for years, and this threat will continue even beyond the death of Tehran's master terrorist, Soleimani. We must remain vigilant in the face of serious threats posed by Tehran. Apparently, these strikes did not kill or wound Americans, but they demonstrate the significant progress Iran has made over the last decade in building a large, long-range, and accurate ballistic missile force. Many of us have long cited the absence of any constraint on Iran's sophisticated missile program as one of the primary shortcomings of the Obama Iran deal, and this strike stands as a reminder to the world of this growing threat. We rightly talk a lot in this Chamber about American interests, but last night was another stark reminder that Iran and its proxies have been a cancer on Iraq's sovereignty and Iraq's politics for some time. Tehran has long shown disregard for Iraqi lives. Just in the last few weeks, its militia proxies have slaughtered innocent Iraqi protesters, and it has launched ballistic missiles at its territory. The millions of Iraqis who have been taking to the streets for months to protest have understood this perfectly well. I spoke to the President last night. I am grateful for his patience and prudence as he and his Cabinet deliberate on how to respond appropriately to the latest Iranian provocation. As a superpower, we have the capacity to exercise restraint and to respond at a time and place of our choosing, if need be. I believe the President wants to avoid conflict or needless loss of life but is rightly prepared to protect American lives and interests. I hope Iran's leaders do not miscalculate by questioning our collective will and launching further attacks. For our part, I certainly hope our own congressional deliberations do not give Tehran a reason to question our national will. Top officials will provide a classified briefing to Senators today. As I havesaid before, I hope all Senators will wait for the facts before they pass judgment on the recent strike on Soleimani. Patience, caution, and restraint can sometimes be in short supply around here, but when matters of national security are at hand, it is imperative that we seek out the facts, restrain our partisan urges, and concentrate on protecting our country. For this reason, it has troubled me that Speaker Pelosi responded to the earliest reports yesterday by leaping to blame ``needless provocations'' by our administration. In other words, she was blaming the United States. So let's be clear. We can and should debate how to responsibly respond to Iranian threats, but the notion that our administration is to blame for Iranian aggression--that is nonsense. Utter nonsense. For 40 years since the founding of the Islamic Republic, Iran has consistently pursued aggression against the United States, against Israel, and against its Arab neighbors. The question before us is not who is to blame for the aggression. It is how best to deter and defend against it.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS63-6

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Senate Accomplishments Mr. President, on another matter, I spoke last week on the Senate floor about some of the great things that have been accomplished this last year for our country, including my home State of Texas. I pointed out that we notched a number of wins for the American military as well as our veterans. We sent much needed assistance to communities devastated by natural disasters, like Hurricane Harvey and others. We confirmed more qualified judges to the Federal bench. We invested heavily in securing America's elections from the sort of interference we saw occur in the last Presidential election, and I am proud to say we strengthened our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We made strides, big and small, to improve the lives of the American people, and I am eager to add more wins to that list this year. Unfortunately, Congress is starting this year in a rather inauspicious way, not designed to regain the confidence of the American people and our ability to do what benefits them as opposed to satisfying some partisan political interest. High on that list of pretty embarrassing developments are the Articles of Impeachment that the House passed. Three weeks after the House said this urgent matter must be pushed through to protect the country and defend the Constitution, Speaker Pelosi is still refusing to send those Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and we are waiting. Now, I would be happy if she never sent the Articles of Impeachment here and realizes the error of the House's ways, but I don't expect that to happen. In the meantime, we are going to continue to confirm well-qualified nominees, as we are today, and hopefully we will be able to do work on the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement--which, as the Presiding Officer knows, we voted out of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday but which has to clear six other committees before it is ready for floor action. Hopefully, we will be able to get that done sooner rather than later. With an impending impeachment trial consuming most of the oxygen here in Washington, there is not a lot of opportunity, let alone political will, to get actual legislating done. There is a laundry list of bills we could add to our accomplishments in 2020, but there is an opportunity cost when we are squandering our time on this ill-considered impeachment mania. The time and effort we are spending on that could well be used to pass these other pieces of legislation, but these pieces of legislation wait in impeachment purgatory. At the top of my list this year is legislation to bring down healthcare costs to the American people, particularly out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs--something I thought was a high priority for Members on both sides of the aisle as well as the White House. Over the summer, the Senate Judiciary, Finance, and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees passed bipartisan bills which deal with everything from high prescription drug prices to surprise medical billing. While we knew there was still additional work that needed to be done, everyone was somewhat optimistic that we could pass some combination of these bills by the end of last year. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Negotiations are continuing, but I had hoped we could make progress on some noncontroversial bills in the meantime, like the one I introduced to stop drugmakers from gaming the patent system. I just read this morning that the manufacturer of HUMIRA, which is an incredible drug and the most widely prescribed drug in America, is raising their list price by 7 percent. This is a drug that has generic competitors overseas, but they are not approved here in the United States because HUMIRA has gamed the patent system by acquiring more than 120 different patents on this drug, the same one that is being sold cheaper and more widely available in Europe. The bill I introduced with Mr. Blumenthal, the Senator from Connecticut, to deal with that is called the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act. It strikes a delicate balance of protecting innovation while increasing competition. It would be a win for every American who has felt the sticker shock at the pharmacy. This bill is a modest bill, but it represents real progress. Bipartisan support--check that box. I introduced this bill with Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut, as I mentioned, and I am proud to have the support of the minority whip as well as the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. This passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously. Well, does it increase the deficit? No, it actually helps the deficit, so we can check that box. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would save the government more than half a billion dollars over the next decade, not to mention what it might do to private insurance costs. During simpler times, this bill would have been quickly approved by the Senate and sent to the House for their consideration and the President's signature. If we have learned anything these last few years, it is that nothing is simple here in Congress or in Washington. So, after waiting for months, I came to the Senate floor to ask that the bill be passed. After all, it sailed through the process, and I hadn't heard a single Senator with any substantive objection to the bill. That is when the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York, came down here to block it, and he did it not once but twice. He didn't object on substance. In fact, he admitted it was a good bill. As I said, it checks every box when it comes to good legislation, so it certainly wasn't because it fell short there. The only reason the Democratic leader objected to this legislation on two separate occasions is because of politics. He has chosen to participate in political games with a bill that is noncontroversial and straightforward, which would stop Big Pharma from abusing the patent system to increase their profits and increase prices to consumers. At a time when he views his most critical priority as minority leader to oppose the President and, in turn, Senate Republicans, he couldn't stand to see a bill introduced by a Republican actually advance and become law. I am sure his constituents in New York can't be too happy about that because they are paying the high price of patent gamesmanship too. I can guarantee you that Big Pharma is rejoicing over his obstruction. Well, as I said just this last week, big drug companies have already begun to announce their price increases. According to their analysis, 445 different drugs have had their prices raised already by an average of 5 percent, and we are only 1 week into the new year. It is particularly maddening that even consensus legislation is getting caught up in this hyperpartisan environment. But I am hoping that, once this looming impeachment trial is behind us, we can find a way to work together and make some progress. Another bill that I am anxious to see pass this year is a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which again has gotten caught up in partisan gamesmanship. Last year the House passed an ultrapartisan bill, which both parties knew would be dead on arrival in the Senate. Our friends, the House Democrats, chose to include a variety of poison pills in order to prove a point and perhaps gain some political advantage rather than to actually get a bill to the President's desk. Well, that is where Senator Feinstein, the Senator from California, and Senator Ernst, the Senator from Iowa, to their credit, tried long and hard to try to come up with a bill that we could take up here on the Senate floor, but all of a sudden, late in the game, our friends across the aisle walked away from the negotiating table and chose to introduce a near replica of the House's partisan piece of legislation. Unfortunately, they succumbed to the politics of the moment rather than solving the problem that would actually help support victims of violence and reauthorize that legislation. Despite our Democratic colleagues leaving those negotiations, though, our colleague from Iowa, Senator Ernst, continued to work in good faith on a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, and I am proud to be a cosponsor. I urge the majority leader to put that piece of legislation on the floor and to do it at the earliest possible moment so that we can have a vote, we can have a debate, we can offer amendments, but we can actually get the job done rather than continuing to use this as a political football. It sends more funding and resources than the bill that the Democrats have proposed, and it authorizes the program for twice as long. It is not just an alternative; it is a better choice for victims of sexual assault and violence. It includes a whole lot more than funding, though. It addresses a number of horrific crimes that are being committed against women and girls around the country, which are not included in our Democrat colleagues' version. I regret that we were unable to pass a reauthorization for the ViolenceAgainst Women Act, and I hope our colleagues across the aisle will reconsider and come back to the negotiating table and work with us so that we can finally reauthorize this program.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS70-3

formal

single

homophobic

Senate Accomplishments Mr. President, on another matter, I spoke last week on the Senate floor about some of the great things that have been accomplished this last year for our country, including my home State of Texas. I pointed out that we notched a number of wins for the American military as well as our veterans. We sent much needed assistance to communities devastated by natural disasters, like Hurricane Harvey and others. We confirmed more qualified judges to the Federal bench. We invested heavily in securing America's elections from the sort of interference we saw occur in the last Presidential election, and I am proud to say we strengthened our fight to end the rape kit backlog. We made strides, big and small, to improve the lives of the American people, and I am eager to add more wins to that list this year. Unfortunately, Congress is starting this year in a rather inauspicious way, not designed to regain the confidence of the American people and our ability to do what benefits them as opposed to satisfying some partisan political interest. High on that list of pretty embarrassing developments are the Articles of Impeachment that the House passed. Three weeks after the House said this urgent matter must be pushed through to protect the country and defend the Constitution, Speaker Pelosi is still refusing to send those Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and we are waiting. Now, I would be happy if she never sent the Articles of Impeachment here and realizes the error of the House's ways, but I don't expect that to happen. In the meantime, we are going to continue to confirm well-qualified nominees, as we are today, and hopefully we will be able to do work on the USMCA--the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement--which, as the Presiding Officer knows, we voted out of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday but which has to clear six other committees before it is ready for floor action. Hopefully, we will be able to get that done sooner rather than later. With an impending impeachment trial consuming most of the oxygen here in Washington, there is not a lot of opportunity, let alone political will, to get actual legislating done. There is a laundry list of bills we could add to our accomplishments in 2020, but there is an opportunity cost when we are squandering our time on this ill-considered impeachment mania. The time and effort we are spending on that could well be used to pass these other pieces of legislation, but these pieces of legislation wait in impeachment purgatory. At the top of my list this year is legislation to bring down healthcare costs to the American people, particularly out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs--something I thought was a high priority for Members on both sides of the aisle as well as the White House. Over the summer, the Senate Judiciary, Finance, and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees passed bipartisan bills which deal with everything from high prescription drug prices to surprise medical billing. While we knew there was still additional work that needed to be done, everyone was somewhat optimistic that we could pass some combination of these bills by the end of last year. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Negotiations are continuing, but I had hoped we could make progress on some noncontroversial bills in the meantime, like the one I introduced to stop drugmakers from gaming the patent system. I just read this morning that the manufacturer of HUMIRA, which is an incredible drug and the most widely prescribed drug in America, is raising their list price by 7 percent. This is a drug that has generic competitors overseas, but they are not approved here in the United States because HUMIRA has gamed the patent system by acquiring more than 120 different patents on this drug, the same one that is being sold cheaper and more widely available in Europe. The bill I introduced with Mr. Blumenthal, the Senator from Connecticut, to deal with that is called the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act. It strikes a delicate balance of protecting innovation while increasing competition. It would be a win for every American who has felt the sticker shock at the pharmacy. This bill is a modest bill, but it represents real progress. Bipartisan support--check that box. I introduced this bill with Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut, as I mentioned, and I am proud to have the support of the minority whip as well as the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. This passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously. Well, does it increase the deficit? No, it actually helps the deficit, so we can check that box. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would save the government more than half a billion dollars over the next decade, not to mention what it might do to private insurance costs. During simpler times, this bill would have been quickly approved by the Senate and sent to the House for their consideration and the President's signature. If we have learned anything these last few years, it is that nothing is simple here in Congress or in Washington. So, after waiting for months, I came to the Senate floor to ask that the bill be passed. After all, it sailed through the process, and I hadn't heard a single Senator with any substantive objection to the bill. That is when the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York, came down here to block it, and he did it not once but twice. He didn't object on substance. In fact, he admitted it was a good bill. As I said, it checks every box when it comes to good legislation, so it certainly wasn't because it fell short there. The only reason the Democratic leader objected to this legislation on two separate occasions is because of politics. He has chosen to participate in political games with a bill that is noncontroversial and straightforward, which would stop Big Pharma from abusing the patent system to increase their profits and increase prices to consumers. At a time when he views his most critical priority as minority leader to oppose the President and, in turn, Senate Republicans, he couldn't stand to see a bill introduced by a Republican actually advance and become law. I am sure his constituents in New York can't be too happy about that because they are paying the high price of patent gamesmanship too. I can guarantee you that Big Pharma is rejoicing over his obstruction. Well, as I said just this last week, big drug companies have already begun to announce their price increases. According to their analysis, 445 different drugs have had their prices raised already by an average of 5 percent, and we are only 1 week into the new year. It is particularly maddening that even consensus legislation is getting caught up in this hyperpartisan environment. But I am hoping that, once this looming impeachment trial is behind us, we can find a way to work together and make some progress. Another bill that I am anxious to see pass this year is a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which again has gotten caught up in partisan gamesmanship. Last year the House passed an ultrapartisan bill, which both parties knew would be dead on arrival in the Senate. Our friends, the House Democrats, chose to include a variety of poison pills in order to prove a point and perhaps gain some political advantage rather than to actually get a bill to the President's desk. Well, that is where Senator Feinstein, the Senator from California, and Senator Ernst, the Senator from Iowa, to their credit, tried long and hard to try to come up with a bill that we could take up here on the Senate floor, but all of a sudden, late in the game, our friends across the aisle walked away from the negotiating table and chose to introduce a near replica of the House's partisan piece of legislation. Unfortunately, they succumbed to the politics of the moment rather than solving the problem that would actually help support victims of violence and reauthorize that legislation. Despite our Democratic colleagues leaving those negotiations, though, our colleague from Iowa, Senator Ernst, continued to work in good faith on a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, and I am proud to be a cosponsor. I urge the majority leader to put that piece of legislation on the floor and to do it at the earliest possible moment so that we can have a vote, we can have a debate, we can offer amendments, but we can actually get the job done rather than continuing to use this as a political football. It sends more funding and resources than the bill that the Democrats have proposed, and it authorizes the program for twice as long. It is not just an alternative; it is a better choice for victims of sexual assault and violence. It includes a whole lot more than funding, though. It addresses a number of horrific crimes that are being committed against women and girls around the country, which are not included in our Democrat colleagues' version. I regret that we were unable to pass a reauthorization for the ViolenceAgainst Women Act, and I hope our colleagues across the aisle will reconsider and come back to the negotiating table and work with us so that we can finally reauthorize this program.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS70-3

formal

family values

homophobic

Political Prisoners Mr. President, I come to the floor to address three specific issues. One of the first is a matter that I didn't know would actually be part of my responsibility as a Senator, but over the years my staff came to me and talked to me about political prisoners in far-flung nations around the world, men and women literally in jail because they are exercising their right to speak, to be journalists, to assemble, to run for political office. My staff said: They are forgotten. Nobody knows they are there. They languish in prisons for months andyears and sometimes die there. Nobody even mentions their name. Would you consider coming to the floor of the Senate and saying something, perhaps writing a letter to the Embassy of the country where they are being held prisoner? I was skeptical as to whether or not that would even be worth the effort, but I have learned over the years it is. I have come to the Senate floor to raise the cases of political prisoners around the world, typically journalists or activists who found themselves jailed for defending basic freedoms we take for granted. In some cases, with the help of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we have seen the release of some of these prisoners. Others still languish. I bring their pictures to the floor because mentioning their names is important, but seeing them tells a story too. Raif Badawi and Waleed Abulkhair, in Saudi Arabia, and interim Venezuelan President Guaido's chief of staff Roberto Marrero continue to languish unjustly in prison. We continue to press for their release. I always thought that trying to secure the release of political prisoners was worthwhile because it spoke to our values as Americans. I have had a chance to meet some of them after they were released. It is an amazing feeling after someone has spent years--literally years--in prison and comes to my office in the Capitol and breaks down in tears in gratitude. It reminds me that they shouldn't be forgotten, and neither should many others. Unfortunately, this President is too comfortable with these autocratic leaders who imprison people around the world. I wish he weren't. That brings me to the Philippines, one of our key democratic allies in Asia. Over the Christmas break, I thought my friends were joking with me when they came to me and said: Well, I guess you will not be going to the Philippines soon. I didn't know what they were talking about. It turns out that in my home State, in Illinois, there are many Filipino Americans. It is one of the largest immigrant groups coming to our country. What an incredible population Filipino Americans are. As I have come to know them, they have strong family values and strong religious values, and they are hard-working folks. They open these little shops and sit in them for 16 hours or 18 hours a day because that is the way an immigrating Filipino sets the stage for their son and daughter to have a better life. Over the holiday recess, the President of the Philippines, President Duterte, announced that he was banning Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, as well as myself and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, from ever visiting the Philippines. I was kind of shocked to see that. I didn't expect that. What precipitated this reaction? He also, incidentally, threatened to restrict the travel of all Americans to the Philippines. For some time, several of us, including Senator Leahy and Senator Markey, have been advocating for the release of Filipina Senator Leila de Lima. Senator de Lima was a former head of the National Human Rights Commission of the Philippines and an internationally recognized human rights champion critical of President Duterte's extrajudicial killings. What did that lead to? Her arrest and her being sentenced and imprisoned for up to 3 years in jail for speaking out against the current President of the Philippines. Here is a photo of her being taken to court after she was arrested a little over 3 years ago. Who is behind her release? Not just Senators Leahy, Durbin, and Markey and many of our colleagues, but also Amnesty International, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, and the Raoul Wallenberg Center. Let me read an excerpt from the letter she sent me. As you can imagine, I may be the one currently in detention, but I am not the only victim suffering in this situation . . . so are the victims of extrajudicial killings and their families, so are all defenders of human rights . . . and ultimately, so are all of us all over the world who defend democracy and rule of law. Senator Markey has a resolution calling for Senator de Lima's release and an end to the harassment of Filipina journalist Maria Ressa, which I am proud to cosponsor and hope will pass the Senate soon. Last year, Senator Leahy joined me in an amendment to the State and Foreign Operations bill, denying U.S. visas to those involved in Senator de Lima's politically motivated incarceration. It was our little measure in that appropriations bill that led President Duterte to ban us from ever traveling to the Philippines. There is an easy and honorable way forward. The Duterte regime should stop threatening the travel of Filipino Americans and so many others who travel between our nations and, instead, ensure a quick and credible trial for Senator de Lima or simply do the right thing and release her. In the end, her freedom and the end of government harassment of journalists like Maria Ressa will be important tests of whether the cherished democratic norms we share with our longstanding Filipino allies will be respected by President Duterte.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS72-3

formal

based

white supremacist

United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement Mr. President, finally, another priority that I alluded to a moment ago that I hope we can get to soon is to pass the USMCA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which will succeed NAFTA and guide our trading relationships with Mexico and Canada into the future. NAFTA has been a boon for our economy--especially in my State, in Texas--but it is time to bring this more than quarter-century-old agreement into the 21st century. That is precisely what the USMCA will do. It modernizes trade with our northern and southern neighbors and lays the foundation for better economies, more jobs, and greater prosperity for each of our countries. The process of getting that bill across the Senate floor has been more than a year in the making, but we are making some progress, as I indicated, starting yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee. It was reported out with a bipartisan vote of 25 for and 3 against. I haven't been shy about expressing my concerns about how this process has played out, especially cutting the Senate out of its negotiating position under trade promotion authority, but I do believe, on net, that this agreement is beneficial and will support it. So I look forward to getting an opportunity, presumably once Speaker Pelosi sends the Articles of Impeachment over here and it meets its expected fate. Nobody I know expects 67 Senators to vote to convict and to remove President Trump based on the thin gruel presented by the two Articles of Impeachment that were voted on by the House in an ultrapartisan manner. Once we get past all of that, I hope we can continue along the series of wins for our country in 2020, and I, for one, am eager to work on that. I hope we will be able to chart a path forward on an impeachment trial in the near future so that we can begin focusing on this legislation that will help the American people over the next 12 months and not squander a minute more than absolutely necessary. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS72

formal

middle class

racist

United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement Mr. President, trade agreements are controversial. They come before the Senate and the House infrequently and are usually very hard to pass. It takes months and months of work. One of those trade agreements, which is known as the USMCA, or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or NAFTA 2.0, is one that I have watched carefully. I voted for the original NAFTA agreement when I was a Member of the House of Representatives. It was not a popular vote among many people in Illinois, but I felt that it was the right thing to do. I felt that moving the Mexican economy forward, watching it mature, with the creation of a middle class, would mean that it would be a more stable nation and a nation that would consume many goods produced in the United States. That happened, but it happened at an expense, too, to be very honest. Many companies in the United States saw the low wage rates in Mexico, closed their plants in places like Galesburg, IL, and moved operations to Mexico. Some moved to China and other places. That displacement of jobs was painful. It was hard to explain to families that this was a transition that ultimately was for the good of all nations involved. If it was your family, you didn't care about the good of a nation. You wanted to know if dad had a job. The pain we went through over the last 25 years led me into this conversation about the USMCA with some skepticism. I didn't want to be behind any effort that would ultimately result in more American jobs being lost unnecessarily. I am proud to say that this negotiation, unlike many things in this town, turned out to be a bipartisan success. President Trump presented us with an original version of the USMCA, and many of us took exception to some of its contents. I was particularly worried about one provision in there relating to the price of prescription drugs and some other provisions in the original measure. Then, a fulsome negotiation took place. Democrats and Republicans sat down. The net result was a positive thing. Just this last week, the Senate Finance Committee reported this USMCA by a vote of 25 to 3. I believe this bill--this new measure, this new NAFTA--enjoys broad bipartisan support. This morning, I went on a conference call with the agriculture leaders of Illinois. I am proud to say we have one of the strongest agricultural States in the Nation and some of the best women and men who farm our land and produce food and fiber for people to consume all across America and around the world. They have gone through some very tough times. The President's trade problems with China have hurt us especially. Our soybean producers have seen a 93-percent decline in their exports of soybeans and soybean products from the State of Illinois. They have paid heavily for the decision in this administration to cut back on renewable fuels and to issue waivers to oil companies so they don't have to blend them in the fuel they sell us at gas stations. They have seen the decline in the net foreign income, an increase in foreign debt, and we have sent aid payments to them, which they reluctantly accept as just the only lifeline they have to keep their farms in the family. They are happy to see that we are moving forward on this new trade agreement. A new NAFTA--the USMCA--means the top trading partners of the State of Illinois, Mexico and Canada, will have a new lease on a relationship that can improve as we increase trade among our nations. The three nations will prosper. Our bounty, which we produce in the farmlands of Illinois, will be shared with Mexico, Canada, and many nations far beyond them. It is a step forward for us. I am glad it was done on a bipartisan basis, and I am particularly happy to see the overwhelming majority of labor organizations in my State of Illinois and in the Nation support the USMCA. It is great to have both labor and business and farm communities together in this effort. It is far from perfect. This is a bill that moves in the right direction, and I hope we bring it up for consideration and a vote very soon on the floor of the Senate.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS73

formal

based

white supremacist

E-Cigarettes Mr. President, for many years, I have had a battle on with the tobacco lobby. It is personal. I lost my father to lung cancer when I was 14 and he was 53. I watched and stood by his bedside for literally 100 days as he languished and ultimately died from lung cancer. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. When I came to the U.S. House of Representatives, I was determined to try to do something about the deaths that were being caused by tobacco products across America. I proposed a measure, which seemed pretty modest at the time, that banned smoking on airplane flights. It was an inconvenience and a mess to get on a plane with the so-called smoking and nonsmoking sections. So I thought: Let's get rid of it once and for all. It was quite a battle in the House of Representatives. We passed it by a handful of votes, to ban smoking on airplanes. Luckily, I found a great colleague and friend, former Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, who took up the cause on the floor of the Senate, and we banned smoking on airplanes over 25 years ago. I didn't know that it was anything more than elimination of an inconvenience while people took airplane flights. It turned out to be much more. It turned out to be a tipping point. People across America said: If it is unhealthy to breathe in second-hand smoke on an airplane, how about trains? How about buses? How about offices? How about hospitals? How about restaurants? At the end of the day, we know what happened. If someone walked into your home or your place of business and lit up a cigarette, you would look at them and think: Where are you from? We don't do that anymore. We certainly don't do it without asking permission. But that is what has happened in America. We had to fight the tobacco lobby every step of the way, and we have had some success. The number of young people who were using tobacco cigarette products declined dramatically, from over 20 percent to around 8 percent. We were winning the battle because these tobacco companies were recruiting our kids at an early age with a nicotine addiction they couldn't shake later in life. Guess what happened. The tobacco companies invented a new product that is called e-cigarette, or vaping. If you think I am making this connection up, take a look at the largest vendor of vaping devices, JUUL, and look at the major shareholder of JUUL. It turns out to be Altria, which also turns out to be a major tobacco company. Now the tobacco companies have decided that since kids don't gravitate toward tobacco cigarettes, they will give them an alternative. The alternative is an e-cigarette, or a vaping device. You know what has happened, Mr. President, in your State and in my mine? High school kids are taking up this vaping addiction in numbers unimaginable. The latest report suggests that almost 29 percent of high school students across the United States are currently vaping. What they are doing is using pods and flavor pods with nicotine included and using an electronic device to inhale this vapor and blow it out. Unfortunately, in inhaling it into their lungs, they are also inhaling nicotine and developing a terrible addiction. Students from New York came to my office a few weeks ago, and they said: Senator, don't kid yourself. It is not 28 or 29 percent. It is over 50 percent of students who are vaping today, and they are desperate to buy these flavor pods and to buy these new JUUL devices. When the teacher in a classroom steps out, they are all vaping, right there in the classroom. They do it in the restrooms and the classrooms and the cafeterias and outside the schools. They are doing desperate things to be able to afford these devices. On September 11 of this year, President Trump and the First Lady held a press conference in the Oval Office. Though I have been critical of this President for many things, I applauded what they said. They recognized this vaping crisis, and they said that we are going to stop it and that we are going to make the moves necessary to make sure that these flavor pods that are enticing children are finally taken from the market. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard it. Here was President Trump stepping up to do the right thing. Perhaps he and his wife, as a father and a mother of a teenager, understand this better than some. But whatever the reason, whatever the motivation, they came forward with what I thought was the best proposal: End the flavor pods once and for all. After they made their announcements, the vaping industry went to work. They started buying ads on FOX--naturally, that is where the President watches television--and they started saying to the people that it was unfair to take away these flavor pods. Sadly, these flavor pods, when you look at them very closely, are just an enticement for young people to use this product. Now the vaping industry tries to argue: Well, wait a minute. People who want tobacco cigarettes ought to have vaping as an alternative. It is safer. Well, marginally it may be, if that were the end of the story. But it turns out that vaping device is also becoming an enticement for young people to use flavor pods and to develop this addiction to nicotine of vaping devices. It is impossible to argue that some veteran smoker of tobacco products is going to be enticed to vaping if he can buy candy flavors, bubble gum flavors, fruit flavors, or other flavors. Can you imagine some 50-year-old who has been smoking Marlboro for years, and says: Man, if I could just get my hands on some Unicorn milk flavor pods, I would give up tobacco and move to e-cigarettes. We know better. These pods are designed to entice children. (Mr. ROMNEY assumed the chair.) We waited to see what would happen after the President's September announcement. We were lucky to have one of our own colleagues, from the State of Utah, who has now taken the Chair, who was present at the meeting with the President on the issue of vaping. I salute him for his friendship and leadership on this issue. Last week, after delays, President Trump finally announced a plan to ban some of the e-cigarette flavors that are hooking our kids on nicotine. Within 30 days, some flavored e-cigarette pods and cartridges will be removed from the market. This is an important step, but it is not nearly enough. For instance, menthol pods are exempt, so I am afraid kids are just going to move to JUUL's menthol flavor. Further, liquid e-cigarette flavors that are used in open-tank vaping shops are also exempt. The vaping shops are still in business, unaffected by this new policy of the administration. Liquid nicotine is sold in flavors like Gummy Bear, Whip Cream, Sugar Cookie, and Unicorn Milk. These flavors, definitely intended for kids, will stay under President Trump's new policy. This week's announcement is not what the President said would happen in the Oval Office a few months ago. That is why the public health community and this Senator are so disappointed. We know the President decided to water down the e-cigarette flavor ban. Heavy lobbying by Big Tobacco and Big Vape were behind it. When announcing this new restriction, President Trump said some words that may tell the story. He said: We have to protect our families. At the same time, it's a big industry. We want to protect the industry. Protect the vaping industry? It makes sense why these companieswanted the President to backtrack on his promise. They make a lot of money off our kids. They addict them, and the kids spend money because of the addiction. Why doesn't it make sense for the President to stand up to Big Tobacco and Big Vaping on behalf of our kids across America? The fight is not over. Fewer than 4 percent of adults use e-cigarettes, while 30 percent, at least, of high school kids across America are using them. Now the FDA--with a new leader, Dr. Stephen Hahn--has to come off the sidelines and do their job to protect the kids. By court order, all e-cigarette companies will have to submit applications to the Food and Drug Administration in May if they want to keep their devices and flavors on the market. If they do not submit an application in May, they will have to come off the market immediately. The FDA must enforce this fully. For companies that do submit an application, the FDA has up to 1 year to decide whether they stay in the market. The FDA must reject the applications of any vaping products that are clearly designed to appeal to children, period. And if they are significantly used by children, they should be taken off the market. I have told Commissioner Hahn that the FDA must evaluate these applications based on science, not anecdotes. What matters is that e-cigarette companies prove their health claims, which, to date, they have never been able to do. Do e-cigarettes actually help smokers quit cigarettes? Are they actually safe? Or are they, in fact, hooking children on nicotine? Those are the important questions that should be answered with science, not with politics. There are ways to preserve e-cigarette access for adult smokers without allowing an entire generation of kids to be hooked on nicotine. This means getting rid of all of the flavors, taking illegal products off the market immediately, and rejecting e-cigarette applications that fail to show a strong public health benefit. To date, the FDA has not been as active or aggressive as it should. For the sake of our children and the families who love them, it is time for the FDA to get off the sidelines and make sure that we do everything in our power, including in Congress, to make certain that this epidemic--and the FDA came up with the word--this epidemic of e-vaping and e-cigarettes comes to an end in America. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS74

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Iran Madam President, I want to commend our brave troopers and our intelligence officers and the President for the daring strike last week on Qasem Soleimani. Qasem Soleimani had the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands, and he was plotting to kill more Americans just like his terrorist proxies had killed in Iraq on December 27. He even was picked up, when he landed at Baghdad International Airport, by a terrorist culpable for the bombing of our Embassy in Kuwait in 1983. You would think that everyone would celebrate the death of a terrorist monster, but, no, you would be wrong. You would be wrong. Our Democratic friends have been criticizing and complaining ever since Qasem Soleimani died Thursday night. Two particularly surprising complaints I have heard are that the Democrats weren't notified in advance and that Qasem Soleimani's plot wasn't imminent. Let's think about those criticisms. The Speaker of the House and the minority leader weren't notified in advance of a target of opportunity against a terrorist mastermind. I am sorry, but what did you expect? Is the President or Secretary of Defense or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff supposed to call hours in advance when they don't even know if the target will show up where our intelligence expects? Were they supposed to call when the missile was in the air? Give me a break. Give me a break. I will share what the majority leader told us yesterday about the raid on Osama bin Laden. Do you think he got notified in advance? No. Did he expect to be notified in advance? No. He said the Secretary of Defense called him after the strike to give him a brief summary of what had happened, and the majority leader, in 2011, simply said: ``Congratulations.'' He put out a public statement to the exact same effect. Where is that sense of patriotism and pride from the Speaker of the House and from the minority leader today with the elimination of Qasem Soleimani? Second, this critique that, well, Qasem Soleimani wasn't plotting an imminent attack--I mean, we are talking about how many terrorists can dance on the head of a pin here. Qasem Soleimani had been killing Americans for 30 years. He was flying around the Middle East to meet with his terrorist proxies in Syria and Lebanon and Iraq to plan how to kill more Americans. We just had a briefing downstairs with the Director of the CIA and the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in which they said: Yes, the plot was imminent. Intelligence is never ironclad, though. It can rarely say a strike is going to happen at thistime on this day at this target. That is apparently the standard the Democrats want to hold the President to--not weeks, not even days, not even a period of days against a hard target that presented an opportunity, as Qasem Soleimani did last Thursday night. Let me say this: Imminence is ultimately a question of judgment that has to be made by the people we have elected to make those decisions for our country. It is not a question of intelligence. Our intelligence officers have great skills and capabilities. They can tell us the best intelligence they have that suggests the timing of such attacks. But it is ultimately the people's elected representatives who make those judgments. I will just submit that if you are a soldier sitting in Iraq with Qasem Soleimani flying around trying to decide when to kill you, the question of imminence probably looks a lot different than if you are a comfortable Senator sitting behind guarded doors with armed security details protecting your every movement. I will simply say yet again that Qasem Soleimani got exactly what he deserved. All those Americans he killed and their families also got what they deserved: justice. America and the world are a safer place because Qasem Soleimani is no longer a part of this world. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS87

formal

terrorists

Islamophobic

Iran Madam President, I want to commend our brave troopers and our intelligence officers and the President for the daring strike last week on Qasem Soleimani. Qasem Soleimani had the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands, and he was plotting to kill more Americans just like his terrorist proxies had killed in Iraq on December 27. He even was picked up, when he landed at Baghdad International Airport, by a terrorist culpable for the bombing of our Embassy in Kuwait in 1983. You would think that everyone would celebrate the death of a terrorist monster, but, no, you would be wrong. You would be wrong. Our Democratic friends have been criticizing and complaining ever since Qasem Soleimani died Thursday night. Two particularly surprising complaints I have heard are that the Democrats weren't notified in advance and that Qasem Soleimani's plot wasn't imminent. Let's think about those criticisms. The Speaker of the House and the minority leader weren't notified in advance of a target of opportunity against a terrorist mastermind. I am sorry, but what did you expect? Is the President or Secretary of Defense or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff supposed to call hours in advance when they don't even know if the target will show up where our intelligence expects? Were they supposed to call when the missile was in the air? Give me a break. Give me a break. I will share what the majority leader told us yesterday about the raid on Osama bin Laden. Do you think he got notified in advance? No. Did he expect to be notified in advance? No. He said the Secretary of Defense called him after the strike to give him a brief summary of what had happened, and the majority leader, in 2011, simply said: ``Congratulations.'' He put out a public statement to the exact same effect. Where is that sense of patriotism and pride from the Speaker of the House and from the minority leader today with the elimination of Qasem Soleimani? Second, this critique that, well, Qasem Soleimani wasn't plotting an imminent attack--I mean, we are talking about how many terrorists can dance on the head of a pin here. Qasem Soleimani had been killing Americans for 30 years. He was flying around the Middle East to meet with his terrorist proxies in Syria and Lebanon and Iraq to plan how to kill more Americans. We just had a briefing downstairs with the Director of the CIA and the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in which they said: Yes, the plot was imminent. Intelligence is never ironclad, though. It can rarely say a strike is going to happen at thistime on this day at this target. That is apparently the standard the Democrats want to hold the President to--not weeks, not even days, not even a period of days against a hard target that presented an opportunity, as Qasem Soleimani did last Thursday night. Let me say this: Imminence is ultimately a question of judgment that has to be made by the people we have elected to make those decisions for our country. It is not a question of intelligence. Our intelligence officers have great skills and capabilities. They can tell us the best intelligence they have that suggests the timing of such attacks. But it is ultimately the people's elected representatives who make those judgments. I will just submit that if you are a soldier sitting in Iraq with Qasem Soleimani flying around trying to decide when to kill you, the question of imminence probably looks a lot different than if you are a comfortable Senator sitting behind guarded doors with armed security details protecting your every movement. I will simply say yet again that Qasem Soleimani got exactly what he deserved. All those Americans he killed and their families also got what they deserved: justice. America and the world are a safer place because Qasem Soleimani is no longer a part of this world. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS87

formal

working families

racist

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, Kay Hagan was a kind and passionate public servant. She fought from the heart for women, children, students, servicemembers, and working people in North Carolina and across the country. In 2013, when interest rates on Federal student loans were about to double so that the government could increase profits off of the backs of our students, Kay said no. Together, with our colleague Senator Jack Reed, we put forward commonsense legislation to keep interest rates low for students across the country. In this instance and so many others, Kay stood for fairness and served as a voice for those who needed it most. Kay and I may not have agreed on every issue, but on those key issues that matter to working families--like equal pay, raising the minimum wage, and helping students getting crushed by debt--we were proud to fight side by side. My thoughts are with her husband Chip, their children and family, and the people of North Carolina as they mourn Kay's loss and celebrate her memory.

2020-01-06

Ms. WARREN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS89-2

formal

XX

transphobic

The following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated: EC-3651. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment), transmitting, pursuant to law, quarterly exception Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) as of September 30, 2019; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-3652. A communication from the Alternate Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Commissary Credit and Debit Card User Fee'' (RIN0790-AK92) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 7, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-3653. A communication from the Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Director for Financial Management, Office of the Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary for Administration, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Civil Monetary Penalty Adjustments for Inflation'' (RIN0605-AA54) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3654. A communication from the Deputy Bureau Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain Through FCC Programs; Huawei Designations; ZTE Designations'' ((FCC 19-121) (WC Docket No. 18-89)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3655. A communication from the Program Analyst, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Odometer Disclosure Requirements'' (RIN2127-AL39) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 6, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3656. A communication from the Senior Attorney, Federal Railroad Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Training, Qualification, and Oversight for Safety-Related Railroad Employees'' (RIN2130-AC86) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3657. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0960)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3658. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019- 0252)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3659. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019- 0487)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3660. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Limited (Type Certificate Previously Held by Bombardier, Inc.) Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0675)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3661. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Embraer S.A. Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0519)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3662. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Engine Alliance Turbofan Engines'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019- 0912)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3663. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; 328 Support Services GmbH (Type Certificate previously Held by AvCraft Aerospace GmbH Fairchild Dornier GmbH; Dornier Luftahrt GmbH) Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0674)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3664. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0481)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3665. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Standard Instrument Approach Procedures; Miscellaneous Amendments; Amendment No. 3883'' ((RIN2120- AA65) (Docket No. 31287)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3666. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019- 0406)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3667. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Dassault Aviation Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0698)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3668. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0704)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3669. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Dassault Aviation Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0604)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3670. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0326)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3671. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019- 0980)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3672. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Establishment of Class E Airspace; St. Simmons, GA and Brunswick, GA; Revocation of Class E Airspace; Brunswick, GA; and, Amendment of Class E Airspace Brunswick, GA'' ((RIN2120-AA66) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0591)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3673. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Revocation and Amendment of the Class E Airspace; Lafayette, LA'' ((RIN2120-AA66) (Docket No. FAA- 2019-0613)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3674. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Amendment of Class E Airspace; Pittsfield, MA'' ((RIN2120-AA66) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0563)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3675. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Amendment of Class E Airspace; Grove City, PA'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0590)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3676. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; Leonardo S.p.A. Helicopters'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019-0813)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3677. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes'' ((RIN2120-AA64) (Docket No. FAA-2019- 0992)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3678. A communication from the Management and Program Analyst, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Standard Instrument Approach Procedures; Miscellaneous Amendments; Amendment No. 3884'' ((RIN2120- AA65) (Docket No. 31288)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on December 30, 2019; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3679. A communication from the Attorney, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Tensaw River, Hurricane, AL'' ((RIN1625-AA09) (Docket No. USCG-2018-0956)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3680. A communication from the Attorney-Advisor, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Security Zone; San Diego Bay, San Diego, CA'' ((RIN1625-AA87) (Docket No. USCG-2019-0953)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3681. A communication from the Attorney, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Niantic Bridge, Niantic, CT'' ((RIN1625-AA09) (Docket No. USCG-2019-0545)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3682. A communication from the Attorney-Advisor, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Safety Zone; Isabel Holmes Bridge, Wilmington NC'' ((RIN1625-AA00) (Docket No. USCG-2019-0904)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3683. A communication from the Attorney-Advisor, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Safety Zone; Ohio River, Brookport, IL'' ((RIN1625-AA00) (Docket No. USCG- 2019-0486)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3684. A communication from the Attorney-Advisor, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Special Local Regulation; Temporary Change for Recurring Marine Event in the Seventh Coast Guard District'' ((RIN1625-AA08) (Docket No. USCG-2019-0908)) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3685. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, Office of Protected Resources, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Sea Turtle Conservation; Shrimp Trawling Requirements'' (RIN0648-BG45) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3686. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Pacific Whiting; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 2104; Catch Share Program, 5-Year Review, Follow-on Actions'' (RIN0648-BI35) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3687. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Annual Specifications and Management Measures for the 2019 Tribal and Non-Tribal Fisheries for Pacific Whiting, and Requirement To Consider Chinook Salmon Bycatch Before Reapportioning Tribal Whiting; Correction'' (RIN0648-BI67) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3688. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Seabird Bycatch Avoidance Measures'' (RIN0648-BI99) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3689. A communication from the Acting Director, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Limited Reopening of the 2019 U.S. Pelagic Longline Fishery for Bigeye Tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean'' (RIN0648-XP005) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3690. A communication from the Acting Director, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Atlantic Bluefish Fishery; Quota Transfer From NC to RI'' (RIN0648- XX028) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3691. A communication from the Acting Director, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Summer Flounder Fishery; Quota Transfer From NC to VA'' (RIN0648- XX030) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3692. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Essential Fish Habitat'' (RIN0648-BJ45) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3693. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Biennial Specifications'' (RIN0648-BJ22) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3694. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Taking and Importing Marine Mammals Incidental to Construction and Operation of the Liberty Drilling and Production Island, Beaufort Sea, Alaska'' (RIN0648-BI00) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3695. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Pacific Ocean Perch in the Bering Sea Subarea of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area'' (RIN0648- XY056) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3696. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Halibut Deck Sorting Monitoring Requirements for Trawl Catcher/Processors Operating in Non-Pollock Groundfish Fisheries Off Alaska; Correction'' (RIN0648-BI53) received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 2, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-3697. A communication from the Assistant Secretary, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 36(c) of the Arms Export Control Act, the certification of a proposed license for the export of defense articles, including technical data and defense services, to Australia of 120mm.50 caliber inbore sub-caliber training devices in the amount of $1,000,000 or more (Transmittal No. DDTC 19-091); to the Committee on Foreign Relations. EC-3698. A communication from the Division Director for Policy, Legislation, and Regulation, Employment and Training Administration, Department of Labor, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Wagner-Peyser Act Staffing Flexibility'' (RIN1205-AB87) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on January 6, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-3699. A communication from the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Justice, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Department of Justice's Indian Country Investigations and Prosecution Report for calendar year 2018; to the Committee on Indian Affairs.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS91-2

formal

Cleveland

racist

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 2 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 8, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 8, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, December 10, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: William Scott Hardy, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, John F. Heil III, to be United States District Judge for the Northern, Eastern and Western Districts of Oklahoma, David Cleveland Joseph, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana, Cory T. Wilson, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Mississippi, and Edward Hulvey Meyers, of Maryland, to be a Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.

2020-01-06

Mr. CORNYN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-08-pt1-PgS97

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5078) to amend the Small Business Act to provide re-entry entrepreneurship counseling and training services for incarcerated individuals, and for other purposes, as amended, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER pro tempore

House

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgH116

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Cheryl L. Johnson, Clerk of the House, reported and found truly enrolled a bill of the House of the following title, which was thereupon signed by the Speaker: H.R. 2476. An ACT to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide funding to secure nonprofit facilities from terrorist attacks, and for other purposes.

2020-01-06

Unknown

House

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgH146-4

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the question on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal, which the Chair will put de novo. The question is on the Speaker's approval of the Journal. Pursuant to clause 1, rule I, the Journal stands approved.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER pro tempore

House

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgH92

formal

based

white supremacist

Impeachment Madam President, on impeachment, I have to respond to Leader McConnell's hyperbolic accusations that the Speaker is trying to dictate terms of the Senate trial. I know the Republican leader must be upset he cannot exert total control over this process, but Speaker Pelosi has done just the right thing. I can understand why Leader McConnell is so frustrated. If the Speaker had sent the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate immediately after they passed, Senate Republicans could have moved to dismiss the articles. There was a lot of talk about that a while ago. There wouldn't have been a fair or even a cursory trial, and they might have even tried to dismiss the whole articles before Christmas. Instead, over the past few weeks, not only have they been prevented from doing that, there have been several crucial disclosures of evidence that appear to further incriminate the President, each disclosure bolstering the arguments we Democrats have made for a trial that features the relevant witnesses and documents. That has been Speaker Pelosi's focus from the very beginning and has been my focus from the very beginning: getting a fair trial that considers the facts and only the facts. As I have said repeatedly on this Senate floor, as Joe Friday said in ``Dragnet,'' ``Just the facts, ma'am.'' The Speaker and I are in complete agreement on that point, and because the Republican leader has been unable to bring up the articles and dismiss them or stampede through a trial over the Christmas period, the focus of the country has been on witnesses and documents. Leader McConnell will do everything he can to divert attention from that focus on witnesses and documents. He knows his Senators are under huge pressure not to just truncate a trial and have no evidence; that it will play very badly in America and back home in their States. He is a very clever fellow, so he doesn't just say no. He says: Let's delay this for a while and see what happens. I have little doubt most people who follow this--most Republicans probably quietly--have little doubt that Leader McConnell has no interest in witnesses and documents, no interest in a fair trial. When we say ``fair trial,'' we mean facts; we mean witnesses; we mean documents. When the impeachment trial begins in the Senate, the issue will return to witnesses and documents. It has been out there all along but will come back even stronger. That question will not be decided, fortunately, just by Leader McConnell. Every Senator will have to vote on that question. Those votes at the beginning of the trial will not be the last votes on witnesses and documents. Make no mistake, we will continue to revisit the issue because it is so important to our constitutional prerogative to hold a fair impeachment trial. The American people believe, overwhelmingly, and regardless of partisan affiliation, that the Senate should conduct a fair trial. A fair trial means that we get to hear the evidence, the facts, the truth. Every Presidential impeachment trial in history has featured witnesses and documents. The trial of the President should be no different. The Leader has accused the Speaker of making up her own rules. Mr. Leader, you are making up your own rules. Every trial has had witnesses. Will you support this trial having witnesses or are you making up your own rules to serve the President's purpose of covering up? The argument in favor of witnesses is so strong and has such common sense behind it that my Republican colleagues cannot even argue against it on the merits. They can only say: We should punt the question. Maybe we will decide on that later, after both sides finish making their cases. As already explained over and over again, but it is worth repeating, that position makes no sense from a trial perspective. Have both sides finish their presentations and then vote on whether there should be evidence? The presentation should be based on evidence, on witnesses, on documents. It should not be an afterthought. I say to my Republican colleagues, this strategy of voting on witnesses later lives on borrowed time. To repeat, once the trial begins, there will--there will be a vote about the question of witnesses and documents, and the spotlight will be on four Republican Senators, who at any point could join Democrats and form a majority in favor of witnesses and documents. Four Republicans could stand up and do the right thing. Four Republicans could make a difference between a fair trial and a coverup. Four Republicans could do what the Founding Fathers wanted us to do: hold a fair trial with all the facts. All Leader McConnell can do right now is try to divert attention, call names--he is good at that--and delay the inevitable, but he can only delay it. Every single one of us in this Senate will have to take a stand. How do my Republican friends want the American people, their constituents, and history to remember them? We shall see. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS101

formal

single

homophobic

Impeachment Madam President, on impeachment, I have to respond to Leader McConnell's hyperbolic accusations that the Speaker is trying to dictate terms of the Senate trial. I know the Republican leader must be upset he cannot exert total control over this process, but Speaker Pelosi has done just the right thing. I can understand why Leader McConnell is so frustrated. If the Speaker had sent the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate immediately after they passed, Senate Republicans could have moved to dismiss the articles. There was a lot of talk about that a while ago. There wouldn't have been a fair or even a cursory trial, and they might have even tried to dismiss the whole articles before Christmas. Instead, over the past few weeks, not only have they been prevented from doing that, there have been several crucial disclosures of evidence that appear to further incriminate the President, each disclosure bolstering the arguments we Democrats have made for a trial that features the relevant witnesses and documents. That has been Speaker Pelosi's focus from the very beginning and has been my focus from the very beginning: getting a fair trial that considers the facts and only the facts. As I have said repeatedly on this Senate floor, as Joe Friday said in ``Dragnet,'' ``Just the facts, ma'am.'' The Speaker and I are in complete agreement on that point, and because the Republican leader has been unable to bring up the articles and dismiss them or stampede through a trial over the Christmas period, the focus of the country has been on witnesses and documents. Leader McConnell will do everything he can to divert attention from that focus on witnesses and documents. He knows his Senators are under huge pressure not to just truncate a trial and have no evidence; that it will play very badly in America and back home in their States. He is a very clever fellow, so he doesn't just say no. He says: Let's delay this for a while and see what happens. I have little doubt most people who follow this--most Republicans probably quietly--have little doubt that Leader McConnell has no interest in witnesses and documents, no interest in a fair trial. When we say ``fair trial,'' we mean facts; we mean witnesses; we mean documents. When the impeachment trial begins in the Senate, the issue will return to witnesses and documents. It has been out there all along but will come back even stronger. That question will not be decided, fortunately, just by Leader McConnell. Every Senator will have to vote on that question. Those votes at the beginning of the trial will not be the last votes on witnesses and documents. Make no mistake, we will continue to revisit the issue because it is so important to our constitutional prerogative to hold a fair impeachment trial. The American people believe, overwhelmingly, and regardless of partisan affiliation, that the Senate should conduct a fair trial. A fair trial means that we get to hear the evidence, the facts, the truth. Every Presidential impeachment trial in history has featured witnesses and documents. The trial of the President should be no different. The Leader has accused the Speaker of making up her own rules. Mr. Leader, you are making up your own rules. Every trial has had witnesses. Will you support this trial having witnesses or are you making up your own rules to serve the President's purpose of covering up? The argument in favor of witnesses is so strong and has such common sense behind it that my Republican colleagues cannot even argue against it on the merits. They can only say: We should punt the question. Maybe we will decide on that later, after both sides finish making their cases. As already explained over and over again, but it is worth repeating, that position makes no sense from a trial perspective. Have both sides finish their presentations and then vote on whether there should be evidence? The presentation should be based on evidence, on witnesses, on documents. It should not be an afterthought. I say to my Republican colleagues, this strategy of voting on witnesses later lives on borrowed time. To repeat, once the trial begins, there will--there will be a vote about the question of witnesses and documents, and the spotlight will be on four Republican Senators, who at any point could join Democrats and form a majority in favor of witnesses and documents. Four Republicans could stand up and do the right thing. Four Republicans could make a difference between a fair trial and a coverup. Four Republicans could do what the Founding Fathers wanted us to do: hold a fair trial with all the facts. All Leader McConnell can do right now is try to divert attention, call names--he is good at that--and delay the inevitable, but he can only delay it. Every single one of us in this Senate will have to take a stand. How do my Republican friends want the American people, their constituents, and history to remember them? We shall see. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS101

formal

based

white supremacist

TRACED Act Madam President, it is safe to say that pretty much every American has been subjected to annoying and illegal robocalls. Who hasn't picked up the phone to discover it is an automated message telling you that you have won a trip to the Bahamas, which you can secure by passing along your credit card information, or asking for important banking information so your account won't be closed? These calls are a major nuisance, and too often they are more than a nuisance. Every day, vulnerable Americans fall prey to ever more sophisticated scammers and have money or their identities stolen. Individuals who fall prey to scammers can spend months or years struggling to get their lives back. I have been working on the issue of robocalls for several years now, first as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and now as chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet. I worked with Senator Markey to lobby the Federal Communications Commission to create a single, comprehensive database of reassigned telephone numbers so that legal callers could avoid contacting people who hadn't signed up for messages. I have spent a lot of time examining ways to discourage illegal robocalling. While Commerce Committee chairman, I held a hearing with notorious mass robocaller Adrian Abramovich. His testimony made clear that current penalties for illegal robocallers were not sufficient. Illegal robocallers have been building the cost of fines into their activities, and so far, there has been no effective mechanism for criminal prosecution. Based upon Abramovich's testimony and testimony from Federal enforcers, I developed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, or what we call the TRACED Act, along with Senator Markey. At the end of December, the President signed our bill into law. The TRACED Act provides tools to discourage illegal robocalls, protect consumers, and crack down on offenders. As I mentioned earlier, criminal prosecution of illegal robocallers can be difficult. Scammers are frequently based abroad and can quickly shut down shop before authorities can get to them. I believe we need to make sure there is a credible threat of criminal prosecution and prison for those who use robocalls to prey upon the elderly and other vulnerable Americans. To that end, the TRACED Act convenes a working group with representatives from the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, State attorneys general, and others to identify ways to criminally prosecute illegal robocalling. In the meantime, it expands the window in which the Federal Communications Commission can pursuescammers and levy fines from 1 year to 4 years. The bill also makes it easier for your cell phone carrier to lawfully block calls that aren't properly authenticated, which will ultimately help stop scammers from getting through to your phone. The TRACED Act also tackles the issue of spoofed calls--where scammers make the call appear as if it is coming from a known number. TRACED addresses the issue of one-ring scams, where international scammers try to get individuals to return their calls so they can charge them exorbitant fees. The bill directs the Federal Communications Commission to convene a working group to address the problem of illegal robocalls being made to hospitals. There are too many stories of hospital telephone lines being flooded with robocalls, disrupting critical lines of communication for hours. Will the TRACED Act completely solve the problem of illegal robocalls? No. But it will go a long way toward making it safe to answer your phone again, and it will help ensure those who exploit vulnerable individuals face punishment for their actions. I am grateful to Senator Markey for partnering with me on this legislation. The Washington Post praised the TRACED Act as an example of ``good old-fashioned legislating.'' I am proud of the strong bipartisan support it received in both Houses of Congress. I look forward to monitoring the implementation of the TRACED Act and continuing to work to protect Americans from illegal and abusive robocalls. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS102

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

TRACED Act Madam President, it is safe to say that pretty much every American has been subjected to annoying and illegal robocalls. Who hasn't picked up the phone to discover it is an automated message telling you that you have won a trip to the Bahamas, which you can secure by passing along your credit card information, or asking for important banking information so your account won't be closed? These calls are a major nuisance, and too often they are more than a nuisance. Every day, vulnerable Americans fall prey to ever more sophisticated scammers and have money or their identities stolen. Individuals who fall prey to scammers can spend months or years struggling to get their lives back. I have been working on the issue of robocalls for several years now, first as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and now as chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet. I worked with Senator Markey to lobby the Federal Communications Commission to create a single, comprehensive database of reassigned telephone numbers so that legal callers could avoid contacting people who hadn't signed up for messages. I have spent a lot of time examining ways to discourage illegal robocalling. While Commerce Committee chairman, I held a hearing with notorious mass robocaller Adrian Abramovich. His testimony made clear that current penalties for illegal robocallers were not sufficient. Illegal robocallers have been building the cost of fines into their activities, and so far, there has been no effective mechanism for criminal prosecution. Based upon Abramovich's testimony and testimony from Federal enforcers, I developed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, or what we call the TRACED Act, along with Senator Markey. At the end of December, the President signed our bill into law. The TRACED Act provides tools to discourage illegal robocalls, protect consumers, and crack down on offenders. As I mentioned earlier, criminal prosecution of illegal robocallers can be difficult. Scammers are frequently based abroad and can quickly shut down shop before authorities can get to them. I believe we need to make sure there is a credible threat of criminal prosecution and prison for those who use robocalls to prey upon the elderly and other vulnerable Americans. To that end, the TRACED Act convenes a working group with representatives from the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, State attorneys general, and others to identify ways to criminally prosecute illegal robocalling. In the meantime, it expands the window in which the Federal Communications Commission can pursuescammers and levy fines from 1 year to 4 years. The bill also makes it easier for your cell phone carrier to lawfully block calls that aren't properly authenticated, which will ultimately help stop scammers from getting through to your phone. The TRACED Act also tackles the issue of spoofed calls--where scammers make the call appear as if it is coming from a known number. TRACED addresses the issue of one-ring scams, where international scammers try to get individuals to return their calls so they can charge them exorbitant fees. The bill directs the Federal Communications Commission to convene a working group to address the problem of illegal robocalls being made to hospitals. There are too many stories of hospital telephone lines being flooded with robocalls, disrupting critical lines of communication for hours. Will the TRACED Act completely solve the problem of illegal robocalls? No. But it will go a long way toward making it safe to answer your phone again, and it will help ensure those who exploit vulnerable individuals face punishment for their actions. I am grateful to Senator Markey for partnering with me on this legislation. The Washington Post praised the TRACED Act as an example of ``good old-fashioned legislating.'' I am proud of the strong bipartisan support it received in both Houses of Congress. I look forward to monitoring the implementation of the TRACED Act and continuing to work to protect Americans from illegal and abusive robocalls. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS102

formal

single

homophobic

TRACED Act Madam President, it is safe to say that pretty much every American has been subjected to annoying and illegal robocalls. Who hasn't picked up the phone to discover it is an automated message telling you that you have won a trip to the Bahamas, which you can secure by passing along your credit card information, or asking for important banking information so your account won't be closed? These calls are a major nuisance, and too often they are more than a nuisance. Every day, vulnerable Americans fall prey to ever more sophisticated scammers and have money or their identities stolen. Individuals who fall prey to scammers can spend months or years struggling to get their lives back. I have been working on the issue of robocalls for several years now, first as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and now as chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet. I worked with Senator Markey to lobby the Federal Communications Commission to create a single, comprehensive database of reassigned telephone numbers so that legal callers could avoid contacting people who hadn't signed up for messages. I have spent a lot of time examining ways to discourage illegal robocalling. While Commerce Committee chairman, I held a hearing with notorious mass robocaller Adrian Abramovich. His testimony made clear that current penalties for illegal robocallers were not sufficient. Illegal robocallers have been building the cost of fines into their activities, and so far, there has been no effective mechanism for criminal prosecution. Based upon Abramovich's testimony and testimony from Federal enforcers, I developed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, or what we call the TRACED Act, along with Senator Markey. At the end of December, the President signed our bill into law. The TRACED Act provides tools to discourage illegal robocalls, protect consumers, and crack down on offenders. As I mentioned earlier, criminal prosecution of illegal robocallers can be difficult. Scammers are frequently based abroad and can quickly shut down shop before authorities can get to them. I believe we need to make sure there is a credible threat of criminal prosecution and prison for those who use robocalls to prey upon the elderly and other vulnerable Americans. To that end, the TRACED Act convenes a working group with representatives from the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, State attorneys general, and others to identify ways to criminally prosecute illegal robocalling. In the meantime, it expands the window in which the Federal Communications Commission can pursuescammers and levy fines from 1 year to 4 years. The bill also makes it easier for your cell phone carrier to lawfully block calls that aren't properly authenticated, which will ultimately help stop scammers from getting through to your phone. The TRACED Act also tackles the issue of spoofed calls--where scammers make the call appear as if it is coming from a known number. TRACED addresses the issue of one-ring scams, where international scammers try to get individuals to return their calls so they can charge them exorbitant fees. The bill directs the Federal Communications Commission to convene a working group to address the problem of illegal robocalls being made to hospitals. There are too many stories of hospital telephone lines being flooded with robocalls, disrupting critical lines of communication for hours. Will the TRACED Act completely solve the problem of illegal robocalls? No. But it will go a long way toward making it safe to answer your phone again, and it will help ensure those who exploit vulnerable individuals face punishment for their actions. I am grateful to Senator Markey for partnering with me on this legislation. The Washington Post praised the TRACED Act as an example of ``good old-fashioned legislating.'' I am proud of the strong bipartisan support it received in both Houses of Congress. I look forward to monitoring the implementation of the TRACED Act and continuing to work to protect Americans from illegal and abusive robocalls. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS102

formal

Baltimore

racist

United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement Madam President, shortly we will be considering the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the USMCA. It updates and replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. I support the USMCA and supported it earlier this week, when it passed the Senate Finance Committee on a strong 25-to-3 vote. This strong vote was possible because of the hard work of Democrats in the House and Senate to make this agreement the strongest, fully enforceable, pro-environment, pro-labor trade agreement the United States has ever entered into. First let me talk about why I think trade is important. I would point out to my colleagues that the maiden speech I gave in the House of Representatives when I was first elected was on trade and the importance of trade agreements. I recognized how important the Port of Baltimore was to our economy and how important free trade and trade was to the Port of Baltimore. So, clearly, trade agreements are critically important to the people of Maryland, and they are important to this country. First, international trade can lead to better economic outcomes. From leveling the playing field for American businesses to ensuring our trading partners have adequate labor standards to make competition fair, trade can be the catalyst for these outcomes. Second, trade can raise the standard of living for citizens in this country. Tariffs can disproportionally harm lower income Americans. If the cost of things like milk, soap, or school supplies goes up because of higher tariffs, it doesn't mean these families will stop buying these essentials. It means they will have less to spend on other essentials they depend on to keep their families safe and healthy, like clothes and medicine. Trade agreements allow us to ensure a zero or low tariff price for these items on which Americans depend, which raises the standard of living for all of us. Third, trade is important to U.S. foreign policy. The world can be better, safer, and a fairer place when we are working with our allies. Trade agreements ensure the rest of the world starts to act a little bit more as we do, with our values. This administration's harmful and nonstrategic trade policy has strained our relationship with our allies, including Canada and Mexico. I think it has been misguided and damaging to the future of our country, but this agreement has the potential to begin a healing process with our North American neighbors: Canada and Mexico. As we move forward with trade agreements, it is important that our values are represented in those agreements, that we strengthen American values. I support good governance and protecting workers and our environment, and I am pleased that they are included in such agreements. For more than 25 years since the enactment of NAFTA, our economy has changed dramatically, from the proliferation of the Internet, which has changed how businesses can easily be connected to the rest of the world, to how consumers shop, compare prices, and buy goods and services from all around the world, and it is clear that NAFTA is a trade agreement that didn't foresee these changes with our two largest trading partners. In addition, over time, we identified weaknesses in NAFTA and other free trade agreements that needed to be addressed. All that is to say that NAFTA is overdue for an update. For the past 2\1/2\ years, the administration, congressional leaders, and our trading partners have been engaged in the process to update NAFTA to be a trade agreement for the 21st century. In late 2018, an agreement was reached between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Importantly, reaching this agreement alleviated the threat of this administration to unilaterally withdraw from NAFTA. The agreement reached in 2018 was, in my view, incomplete and largely just continued the existing NAFTA, but it did have some provisions important to me and my constituents in the State of Maryland. Maryland is home to a thriving poultry industry. The agreement includes new market access to Canada for U.S. poultry. Maryland farms produced $1 billion worth of chickens in 2017, surpassing that milestone for the first time. Our poultry industry production grew 12 percent from 2016 to 2017. The growth in value came even as the amount of chickens produced on the Eastern Shore declined by about 10,000 pounds to about 1.84 million pounds. Maryland is the Nation's ninth largest producer of broiler chickens. This additional market access is good for Maryland's poultry industry because it means more poultry produced in Maryland will make its way to Canada and Mexico, creating jobs and supporting the economy here locally. The agreement also included a few provisions that are very important for small businesses. Most important to many small businesses is a provision that raises the level of the so-called de minimis customs and tariff treatment of goods. The de minimis system is important to small businesses. For example, small sellers who list their goods on eBay or Amazon frequently ship to consumers not in the United States. Under the de minimis system, if a shipment under the de minimis level crosses the border, it enjoys expedited customs and lower tariff treatment than larger shipments would. Under this agreement, the United States agreed to increase its customs de minimis levels to $800 for exports to Mexico and Canada, and Mexico and Canada have made favorable changes to their systems. As ranking member of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, this was a welcome change to ensure small businesses aren't bogged down by unnecessary redtape. The agreement's small business chapter also includes support for small businesses to promote cross-border cooperation, tools for small businesses to identify potential opportunities and increase competitiveness, and public-sharing tools to promote access to capital. These are important issues to highlight for small businesses. Finally, the initial agreement included a landmark achievement for the first time in U.S. trade history: It included a full chapter on anti-corruption. During 2015, when the Senate was considering so-called fast-track trade promotion authority, under which the USMCA is now being considered, I authored a principal negotiating objective in the trade promotion authority legislation that requires any trade agreement the USTR negotiates to emphasize good governance, human rights, and the rule of law. These are our values. These values need to be reflected in our trade agreement. It is an important step toward a level playing field for trade with the United States for our farmers, our producers, and our manufacturers. We know our system is a fair system, but in so many other countries we deal with, that is not the case. This principal negotiating objective really represents an enduring theme in the way I approach trade. I believe we should use the economic power of the United States to advance human rights and good governance in other countries that may comparatively struggle on that front. I also believe we should not have favorable free-trade agreements with countries that do not believe human rights and good governance are important to uphold. Because of my focus on this requirement in 2015 and thanks to USTR Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, the USMCA is a trade agreement that for the first time includes a chapter on anti-corruption and good governance. This is our first agreement that includes such a chapter, and I anticipate this will be the template for any future trade agreement involving the United States. The USMCA's anti-corruption chapter includes a number of commitments on transparency, integrity, and accountability of public institutions and officials. First, on anti-corruption laws, under the USMCA, countries are required to outlaw embezzlement and solicitation of bribes by public officials and must make it a criminal offense for anyone to offer bribes to public officials to influence their official duties or to officials of foreign governments or international organizations to gain a business advantage. I know that sounds like a no-brainer. Why wouldn't all countries already have those types of laws? But the reality is that they don't. The reality is that many of our trading partners have corrupt systems, and that puts American companies at a disadvantage. But also, we should be using our economic power to advance our values. This chapter carries that out. Second, on transparency and accountability, under the USMCA, countries must take proactive steps against corruption by implementing and maintaining accounting and auditing standards and measures that prohibit the creation of false transaction records and off-the-book accounts. Third, the USMCA requires parties to create codes of conduct and procedures for removal of corrupt officials, as well as adopt measures requiring officials to disclose outside activities, investments, and gifts that could create conflicts of interest. Fourth, on public engagement, under USMCA, countries must agree to promote the engagement of the business community, NGOs, and civil societies in anti-corruption efforts through information campaigns, developing ethics programs, and protecting the freedom to publish information about corruption. Finally, on good regulatory practices, under the USMCA, countries must follow a transparent regulatory rulemaking process, which the agreement clarifies includes publishing the proposed regulation with its regulatory impact assessment, an explanation of the proposed regulation, a descriptionof the underlining data and other information, and the contact information of responsible officials. USMCA further requires parties to follow the U.S.-like system of notice and comment periods for proposed regulatory rulemaking in which the regulators are required to consider comments of any interested party, regardless of nationality, which means Americans will have input in the regulatory process in Canada and Mexico, which has direct effect on our access to their markets. The countries also agreed to publish an early planning document of regulations the country intends to revise in the next 12 months and to ensure that regulations are written in a clear, concise, and understandable manner. The USMCA encourages authorities to consider the impact of new regulations when they are being developed, with particular attention to the benefits and costs of regulations and the feasibility of other approaches. This is an incredibly important achievement, and it is important as a model for U.S. agreements going forward. By including the good governance and anti-corruption provisions in the USMCA, we are signaling to our trading partners and the rest of the world what our values are--yes, economic values, but also the principles we advance. However, with these good achievements in the original USMCA, the agreement did not go far enough. There was no deadline to getting it done quickly, so we chose to get it done right. I wanted to see strict, high standards in the USMCA on labor, environment, and more. Democrats were united in this message. Democrats worked behind the scenes with labor and environmental stakeholders to identify issues and create solutions that could make this agreement one we could support. Do I think the USMCA lives up to these standards? Yes, I do. The updated USMCA includes important provisions regarding labor standards, which have the potential to improve working conditions and create a more level playing field for U.S. workers. These changes include the Brown-Wyden rapid-response mechanism, which enables the United States to take swift enforcement action against imports from individual facilities, and stronger labor obligations in the agreement. The changes include a number of other important labor issues, including strengthened labor obligations, new labor-monitoring mechanisms, and extra funding for labor efforts. The implementing bill includes new mechanisms and resources to ensure that the U.S. Government effectively monitors Mexico's compliance with the labor obligations. The result of these labor additions earned support for the USMCA by the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Truly, this is an agreement that is good for labor. Another critical aspect of the USMCA is that it ensures that our trading partners meet the environmental standards of this country. We want a level playing field. We also want to help our environment. With respect to the environment, the updated USMCA is a significant improvement over the original NAFTA. The USMCA incorporates environmental obligations into the agreement itself, which are subject to dispute settlement, unlike the original NAFTA, which only included an unenforceable side-agreement. The USMCA includes upgraded commitments on topics including fisheries subsidies, marine litter, and conservation of marine species. Democrats secured amendments to the agreement, as well as provisions in the implementing bill, to strengthen the ability of the United States to monitor and enforce the obligations and ensure that the parties are bound to their environmental obligations. I want to acknowledge my colleague Senator Carper, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which I also sit on. Together, we pushed to improve this agreement with respect to the enforceability of the environmental provisions. We were happy to see this agreement include many of the things Senator Carper and I worked and pushed to have done. Included in the new USMCA is a new trigger mechanism to give environmental stakeholders an expanded role in environmental enforcement matters and create accountability for the administration with regard to seeking environmental enforcement actions under USMCA. Under the existing NAFTA, any person in a NAFTA country can make a submission to an intergovernmental organization established by NAFTA to address environmental issues, alleging that a NAFTA partner is not living up to its environmental obligations. You can do that. Submissions undergo a public factfinding process by the head of that body, which produces a factual record if the allegation is found to have merit. Here is where the problem comes in: Once the production of that factual record is done, there is no enforcement mechanism. We have corrected that. Through this new trigger mechanism in the USMCA that was developed, if a factual record is produced, the new Interagency Environment Committee, headed by the USTR, will have 30 days to review the record and make a determination as to whether to pursue enforcement actions under USMCA against the violating country. If the committee, headed by the USTR, decides not to pursue enforcement actions under USMCA, within 30 days after its determination, the committee must provide Congress with a written explanation and justification of its decision. This is a huge step forward in quickly identifying and addressing any environmental action that needs to be taken under this agreement. In addition, the agreement includes an additional $88 million of funding appropriated over the next 4 years for environmental monitoring and enforcement to ensure that the goals of the USMCA's environment chapter can be realized. This includes $40 million appropriated over the next 4 years for the new environment sub-fund Senator Carper and I pushed to create under the USTR's existing Trade Enforcement Trust Fund, which will be dedicated to enforcement of the USMCA's environmental obligations. As I mentioned, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement establishes an Interagency Environment Committee, led by the USTR, which will coordinate U.S. Government efforts to monitor implementation of its environmental goals. It also establishes up to three new environment-focused attaches in Mexico City to help ensure Mexico is living up to its environmental obligations. It includes new reporting requirements to regularly assess the status of Mexico's laws and regulations that are intended to implement its environmental obligations to help ensure Mexico is living up to its commitments. We believe the USMCA is a strong, enforceable agreement that makes positive strides in protecting the environment. As this agreement is implemented, I will be watching to ensure that the other parties to this agreement live up to the promises they are making in this bill. In closing, I support the USMCA because it will help raise the living standards for Marylanders, cuts redtape for small businesses, and unites us with our allies. The provisions of the USMCA protect the environment, help labor organizing efforts, fights for good governance and against corruption, and is enforceable. I urge my colleagues to support the legislation when it comes to the floor. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS108-2

formal

based

white supremacist

Nomination of Paul J. Ray Madam President, let me talk about Paul Ray. Paul Ray is a bright young man. He is the kind of person I think most of us would say: He ought to be in an administration. I don't care if it is a Democratic administration or a Republican administration. He is smart, well educated, and has good experience. He has been the nominee to head something called OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an entity that exists within OMB. I have met him. He has come to my office to talk with me. He is a very polite young man. He has been before our committee. I voted today against his confirmation. I will tell you why. The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs used to be the Committee on Governmental Affairs. I served on it for 19 years. One of the things I love about that committee is that we have oversight over the whole Federal Government. Every committee we serve on, including committees the Presiding Officer serves on, all have an oversight role. A lot of that oversight deals with the administration as part of our checks and balances. We can only do that job so well if the administration allows us to do our job. During the confirmation process--as the Presiding Officer knows--witnesses and nominees come before us from the administration. They have been vetted by the administration. They have gone through staff interviews. Then they come to a committee hearing. We also ask questions of the nominees that are relevant to the jobs they are going to do. Every now and then, you have a nominee for a particular position who is not forthcoming in his or her responses, so we do something called QFRs, which are questions for the record. They are designed to give the nominee another bite at the apple in responding to the questions that Democrats and Republicans have. A lot of times, the nominees are forthcoming, and that is good. The nominations then move forward, and they get confirmed. I have learned, if nominees are not forthcoming and are not responsive to the oversight questions we ask before they get confirmed, good luck after they get confirmed, for it doesn't get any better. I don't care whether you happen to be a Democrat or a Republican; you have to be concerned about the reluctance and the unwillingness of nominees to respond to reasonable questions regardless of who is in the White House and regardless of who is in the majority of this body. Let me say a word or two about OIRA. OIRA plays a central role in establishing regulatory and information collection policies across our entire Federal Government. OIRA oversees the rulemaking process from start to finish--from the reviewing of drafts of proposed and final rules, to managing the interagency review process, to ensuring agencies make rulemaking decisions based on sound cost-benefit analyses. The Administrator of OIRA is a critically important position because, at the end of the day, he or she is responsible for ensuring that rules promulgated by agencies benefit our society, protect our quality of life, protect our health, protect our safety, and protect our environment. Earlier today, I joined a number of my colleagues on the Committee on Environment and Public Works in a letter to Mr. Ray. We asked him to review concerns that have been raised recently by the EPA's Science Advisory Board about four specific rulemakings that are currently under review. The EPA's Science Advisory Board found serious concerns with the Trump administration's clean car standards rule, with the administration's proposed mercury and air toxics rule, with the administration's clean water rule rollbacks, as well as with a proposed EPA secret science rule, which will have the effect of limiting the sciencethe EPA can actually use in rulemakings. The Science Advisory Board found serious shortcomings with how the EPA conducted these rulemakings. Either the cost-benefit analysis was deficient or insufficient, the Agency did not use the best available science, or the legal rationale that underpinned the rule was faulty. In case you are wondering who selects the members of this EPA Science Advisory Board, as it turns out, it is the President. In this case, all 44 members of the EPA Science Advisory Board were nominated or were renominated under this administration, by this President. They said that there are serious problems with the four rulemakings that I just mentioned. They are not Obama's people. They were nominated by this President. Mr. Ray has served in top leadership positions at OIRA since June of 2018. First, he was an Associate Administrator. Then, in March of last year, he was promoted to Acting Administrator. Mr. Ray has presided over or has been involved with dozens of controversial rulemaking decisions in the last year and a half at OIRA, including the rulemakings outlined in the letter that I mentioned we are sending him today. That is why, during the vetting process of his nomination, I, along with my colleagues on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, asked for information about Mr. Ray's background and his work in the last year and a half at OIRA, which is within the OMB. Specifically, we asked him about his involvement in many controversial regulatory rulemaking decisions that have been put forward by the current administration. Unfortunately--sadly, really--Mr. Ray and the Office of Management and Budget have refused to provide the Senate with the information needed to vet Mr. Ray's nomination. As best as I can tell, they didn't even try. Unfortunately, throughout the vetting process, Mr. Ray apparently refused to answer the Senators' questions by asserting privilege or deferring to the OMB's General Counsel more frequently than any past OIRA nominee who has ever appeared before our committee. Something is wrong with that. I don't care if you are a Democrat or a Republican in this body or if the nominee comes from a Democratic President or a Republican President; something is wrong with that. In fact, Mr. Ray asserted privilege or deferred to counsel 19 times in his prehearing questionnaire responses alone. Is that a lot? That may well be more times than any other nominee in the history of this agency. Think about that. While it might be appropriate to withhold or redact particular content in some narrow circumstances, Mr. Ray and the OMB's Office of General Counsel have misapplied overly broad privileges to avoid providing Congress with critical information and documents related to his work at OIRA. Have you ever heard of checks and balances? There is a reason we have oversight. There is a reason we don't have Kings or Monarchs here who can do anything they want without a check or a balance. Sadly, this nomination process, at least for this nominee--and I think he is well qualified and bright--takes a thumb and sticks it in the eye of checks and balances. Unfortunately, should this body vote to confirm Mr. Ray, his general approach of nonresponsiveness to the committee's vetting process sets a concerning precedent, not just for him and not just for nominees of this agency, but for future nominees and subsequent oversight efforts to hold the executive branch accountable. It has been my privilege to serve on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for 19 years now. We are an oversight committee that conducts oversight not just over the whole Federal Government but on matters that are important to our Nation outside of the government. One of our core duties is to ensure that nominees are forthcoming and provide the Senate with the information we need to do our jobs. Eventually, we are going to have an election. Who knows who is going to win the next time and who will be in the majority here in this body? Yet, under any administration, we should expect the nominees who appear before the Senate to be forthcoming and to provide us with the relevant information we need to adequately vet their nominations. For these reasons, I must reluctantly note my opposition to Mr. Ray's nomination for now and urge my colleagues to do the same. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS112

formal

terrorism

Islamophobic

Iran Mr. President, I also want to say a few things about the situation in Iran and about some of the comments that we have heard here on the floor today. First of all, I think it is important to set the record straight when it comes to the Iran deal. We hear people say: Well, we never should have walked away from it. Let me tell you something. We should never have been in it in the first place. We should never have been in this. How in heaven's name could anybody have thought it was a good idea to put $1.7 billion of cash on a pallet, stick it on a plane, and fly it to Iran? Whoever would have thought that? The Iran nuclear deal was not something that helped to stabilize an issue; it incentivized Iran to do bad things. See, the Iran deal included a lifting of sanctions on Qasem Soleimani. Where was the first place he went? Where was the first place he went to get somebody to help to fund the Quds Force--to help fund all of this terrorism? He went to Russia--to his friends. This is why the Iran deal was not a good thing. Now, you can say they had to open their nuclear facilities to the IAEA, but there was a little caveat in there that doesn't get talked about a lot. They opened it with notification. Well, if you are going to get prior notification that somebody is going to look at your company, to look at your operation, to look at your house, to look at your country, what are you going to do? You are going to clean it up, and you are going to hide things. That is the Iran deal. They didn't stop enriching uranium. What they did was enrich it right up to the point at which it was just under the mark. Did they give it up? No, they didn't give it up. My colleague had mentioned the Reagan term of ``trust but verify.'' Thank goodness we have a President who decided he would verify, and thank goodness we have an intel community and a U.S. military that did the heavy lifting of figuring out what needed to be done. When you hear one of my colleagues ask, ``How do we put this back together or can we ever put it back together?'' we have started putting it back together. We have done it by saying: All right, folks, here is our redline. Guess what. This redline means something. This redline is drawn with the blood of hundreds of Americans who have been killed by this murderous villain. It is a redline of justice. So let's not have happy talk when it comes to this situation with Iran. Let's make certain we understand what has transpired. We know that our military and our intel communities watched for 8 months as there was escalating violence. We know that violence was orchestrated by none other thanSoleimani himself. Intelligence provided to senior administration officials prior to the strike confirmed that Soleimani had posed a defined threat to the United States. When we speak about Iran in the context of conflict versus deterrence, we are not referring to a government or a military organization. It is important to note and for the American people to know that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Do you know who it points that terrorism to? Isn't it interesting. Iran tends to have little bywords. It says: This is our goal--to destroy America, to destroy Israel. That is what Iran has been up to. It has nurtured a proxy network that has helped it to claw its way into the heads of regional leaders who are either too weak or who are wholly unwilling to resist those overtures. Relationships with Russia and with Bashar al-Assad in Syria have kept Iranian leaders a part of mainstream conversations about national security. Hezbollah in Lebanon is a close friend of Iran, and their support of militias and Houthi rebels in Yemen adds to the aura of chaos around Iran's activities. So what does all of this have to do with a targeted strike on one man? That one man has spent a lifetime doing exactly what he was doing the day he died--using violence and intimidation to bring Shiite ideology into prominence and, to quote the notorious Ayatollah Khamenei, ``end the corrupting presence of America in the Middle East.'' That is what they thought. Those are their comments, their words--not mine, not the President's, not the military's, not the intel's--the Ayatollah's. That is what he said. Soleimani took to the frontlines with the Revolutionary Guard in 1979. That may trigger some thoughts of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and American diplomats and citizens that were held hostage. Soleimani was not a new arrival to the terrorist community. Sometime between 1997 and 1998 he was named commander of the Quds Force. Under his leadership, the Revolutionary Guard has gained control of over 20 percent of Iran's economy, and the Quds Force has extended its influence to all Gulf States, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. He controlled Iran's intervention in support of Assad in Syria and was the primary architect of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have built up and trained scores of Hezbollah and Houthi fighters, as well as Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and those Iraqi militias killed more than 600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. Soleimani made much of his militaristic role, but he was a general in name only. He hid behind a uniform while designing, devising, conducting, and advising terror plots, and that is what earned him a spot on the list of people sanctioned by the EU, the United States, and the U.N. He wasn't a bureaucrat. He was not one of many respected generals. The Ayatollah called him a living martyr in his lifetime, but I intend to call him exactly what he was--a ruthless terrorist and a shameless, even proud, engineer of hatred, death, and destruction. That is his legacy. His tendency toward violence as a default was thrown into full relief when President Trump withdrew from that Iranian nuclear deal, just as I said a moment ago. In early May of last year, the intel indicated an increased threat from Tehran, and between May and September, Iran and its proxies perpetrated more than 80 violent attacks in the region--80--on us and our allies, 80 attacks. They attacked multiple tankers and commercial vessels. They downed an American drone. They took out 5 percent of the world's oil supply. Now we find out that they have taken out a jetliner. They used their own drones to attack a Saudi airport. A suicide bomber murdered four Afghans and wounded four U.S. troops traveling in a convoy in eastern Kabul. Soleimani was very confident, but perhaps he should have thought a little harder about the increased level of vulnerability he had built into his expanding network, because he didn't die in a hidden bunker or behind the walls of a fortified compound. He died in public while traversing the Middle East, defining impunity and even taking selfies with proxy terrorists. He did every bit of this in violation of U.N. resolutions. He died because his aggression morphed into a pattern of arrogance and violent escalation that U.S. officials could not, in good conscience, continue to allow. This month Iranian officials lost their chief terrorist, but they have gained an opportunity, and, I will tell you, the ball is in their court. Their retaliatory strikes against our shared bases in Iraq did nothing to repair their image as a belligerent and deeply vulnerable regime. If their lack of precision was calculated, no one got the intended message. The Iranians are now left with two choices, and they are theirs. Pick one. We hope they choose well. Option No. 1, they can come to the table and behave like a normal country. They are a country rich in resources and smart, educated people. Come to the table and behave like a normal country in the community of nations and allow deterrence to make a comeback. Option No. 2, they can risk being reminded that the United States will defend to the death the redline that separates justice from chaos, and the American people are going to make certain that we continue to go after monsters who crusade as the declared enemies of freedom. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS113-3

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Iran Mr. President, I also want to say a few things about the situation in Iran and about some of the comments that we have heard here on the floor today. First of all, I think it is important to set the record straight when it comes to the Iran deal. We hear people say: Well, we never should have walked away from it. Let me tell you something. We should never have been in it in the first place. We should never have been in this. How in heaven's name could anybody have thought it was a good idea to put $1.7 billion of cash on a pallet, stick it on a plane, and fly it to Iran? Whoever would have thought that? The Iran nuclear deal was not something that helped to stabilize an issue; it incentivized Iran to do bad things. See, the Iran deal included a lifting of sanctions on Qasem Soleimani. Where was the first place he went? Where was the first place he went to get somebody to help to fund the Quds Force--to help fund all of this terrorism? He went to Russia--to his friends. This is why the Iran deal was not a good thing. Now, you can say they had to open their nuclear facilities to the IAEA, but there was a little caveat in there that doesn't get talked about a lot. They opened it with notification. Well, if you are going to get prior notification that somebody is going to look at your company, to look at your operation, to look at your house, to look at your country, what are you going to do? You are going to clean it up, and you are going to hide things. That is the Iran deal. They didn't stop enriching uranium. What they did was enrich it right up to the point at which it was just under the mark. Did they give it up? No, they didn't give it up. My colleague had mentioned the Reagan term of ``trust but verify.'' Thank goodness we have a President who decided he would verify, and thank goodness we have an intel community and a U.S. military that did the heavy lifting of figuring out what needed to be done. When you hear one of my colleagues ask, ``How do we put this back together or can we ever put it back together?'' we have started putting it back together. We have done it by saying: All right, folks, here is our redline. Guess what. This redline means something. This redline is drawn with the blood of hundreds of Americans who have been killed by this murderous villain. It is a redline of justice. So let's not have happy talk when it comes to this situation with Iran. Let's make certain we understand what has transpired. We know that our military and our intel communities watched for 8 months as there was escalating violence. We know that violence was orchestrated by none other thanSoleimani himself. Intelligence provided to senior administration officials prior to the strike confirmed that Soleimani had posed a defined threat to the United States. When we speak about Iran in the context of conflict versus deterrence, we are not referring to a government or a military organization. It is important to note and for the American people to know that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Do you know who it points that terrorism to? Isn't it interesting. Iran tends to have little bywords. It says: This is our goal--to destroy America, to destroy Israel. That is what Iran has been up to. It has nurtured a proxy network that has helped it to claw its way into the heads of regional leaders who are either too weak or who are wholly unwilling to resist those overtures. Relationships with Russia and with Bashar al-Assad in Syria have kept Iranian leaders a part of mainstream conversations about national security. Hezbollah in Lebanon is a close friend of Iran, and their support of militias and Houthi rebels in Yemen adds to the aura of chaos around Iran's activities. So what does all of this have to do with a targeted strike on one man? That one man has spent a lifetime doing exactly what he was doing the day he died--using violence and intimidation to bring Shiite ideology into prominence and, to quote the notorious Ayatollah Khamenei, ``end the corrupting presence of America in the Middle East.'' That is what they thought. Those are their comments, their words--not mine, not the President's, not the military's, not the intel's--the Ayatollah's. That is what he said. Soleimani took to the frontlines with the Revolutionary Guard in 1979. That may trigger some thoughts of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and American diplomats and citizens that were held hostage. Soleimani was not a new arrival to the terrorist community. Sometime between 1997 and 1998 he was named commander of the Quds Force. Under his leadership, the Revolutionary Guard has gained control of over 20 percent of Iran's economy, and the Quds Force has extended its influence to all Gulf States, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. He controlled Iran's intervention in support of Assad in Syria and was the primary architect of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have built up and trained scores of Hezbollah and Houthi fighters, as well as Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and those Iraqi militias killed more than 600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. Soleimani made much of his militaristic role, but he was a general in name only. He hid behind a uniform while designing, devising, conducting, and advising terror plots, and that is what earned him a spot on the list of people sanctioned by the EU, the United States, and the U.N. He wasn't a bureaucrat. He was not one of many respected generals. The Ayatollah called him a living martyr in his lifetime, but I intend to call him exactly what he was--a ruthless terrorist and a shameless, even proud, engineer of hatred, death, and destruction. That is his legacy. His tendency toward violence as a default was thrown into full relief when President Trump withdrew from that Iranian nuclear deal, just as I said a moment ago. In early May of last year, the intel indicated an increased threat from Tehran, and between May and September, Iran and its proxies perpetrated more than 80 violent attacks in the region--80--on us and our allies, 80 attacks. They attacked multiple tankers and commercial vessels. They downed an American drone. They took out 5 percent of the world's oil supply. Now we find out that they have taken out a jetliner. They used their own drones to attack a Saudi airport. A suicide bomber murdered four Afghans and wounded four U.S. troops traveling in a convoy in eastern Kabul. Soleimani was very confident, but perhaps he should have thought a little harder about the increased level of vulnerability he had built into his expanding network, because he didn't die in a hidden bunker or behind the walls of a fortified compound. He died in public while traversing the Middle East, defining impunity and even taking selfies with proxy terrorists. He did every bit of this in violation of U.N. resolutions. He died because his aggression morphed into a pattern of arrogance and violent escalation that U.S. officials could not, in good conscience, continue to allow. This month Iranian officials lost their chief terrorist, but they have gained an opportunity, and, I will tell you, the ball is in their court. Their retaliatory strikes against our shared bases in Iraq did nothing to repair their image as a belligerent and deeply vulnerable regime. If their lack of precision was calculated, no one got the intended message. The Iranians are now left with two choices, and they are theirs. Pick one. We hope they choose well. Option No. 1, they can come to the table and behave like a normal country. They are a country rich in resources and smart, educated people. Come to the table and behave like a normal country in the community of nations and allow deterrence to make a comeback. Option No. 2, they can risk being reminded that the United States will defend to the death the redline that separates justice from chaos, and the American people are going to make certain that we continue to go after monsters who crusade as the declared enemies of freedom. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS113-3

formal

terrorists

Islamophobic

Iran Mr. President, I also want to say a few things about the situation in Iran and about some of the comments that we have heard here on the floor today. First of all, I think it is important to set the record straight when it comes to the Iran deal. We hear people say: Well, we never should have walked away from it. Let me tell you something. We should never have been in it in the first place. We should never have been in this. How in heaven's name could anybody have thought it was a good idea to put $1.7 billion of cash on a pallet, stick it on a plane, and fly it to Iran? Whoever would have thought that? The Iran nuclear deal was not something that helped to stabilize an issue; it incentivized Iran to do bad things. See, the Iran deal included a lifting of sanctions on Qasem Soleimani. Where was the first place he went? Where was the first place he went to get somebody to help to fund the Quds Force--to help fund all of this terrorism? He went to Russia--to his friends. This is why the Iran deal was not a good thing. Now, you can say they had to open their nuclear facilities to the IAEA, but there was a little caveat in there that doesn't get talked about a lot. They opened it with notification. Well, if you are going to get prior notification that somebody is going to look at your company, to look at your operation, to look at your house, to look at your country, what are you going to do? You are going to clean it up, and you are going to hide things. That is the Iran deal. They didn't stop enriching uranium. What they did was enrich it right up to the point at which it was just under the mark. Did they give it up? No, they didn't give it up. My colleague had mentioned the Reagan term of ``trust but verify.'' Thank goodness we have a President who decided he would verify, and thank goodness we have an intel community and a U.S. military that did the heavy lifting of figuring out what needed to be done. When you hear one of my colleagues ask, ``How do we put this back together or can we ever put it back together?'' we have started putting it back together. We have done it by saying: All right, folks, here is our redline. Guess what. This redline means something. This redline is drawn with the blood of hundreds of Americans who have been killed by this murderous villain. It is a redline of justice. So let's not have happy talk when it comes to this situation with Iran. Let's make certain we understand what has transpired. We know that our military and our intel communities watched for 8 months as there was escalating violence. We know that violence was orchestrated by none other thanSoleimani himself. Intelligence provided to senior administration officials prior to the strike confirmed that Soleimani had posed a defined threat to the United States. When we speak about Iran in the context of conflict versus deterrence, we are not referring to a government or a military organization. It is important to note and for the American people to know that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Do you know who it points that terrorism to? Isn't it interesting. Iran tends to have little bywords. It says: This is our goal--to destroy America, to destroy Israel. That is what Iran has been up to. It has nurtured a proxy network that has helped it to claw its way into the heads of regional leaders who are either too weak or who are wholly unwilling to resist those overtures. Relationships with Russia and with Bashar al-Assad in Syria have kept Iranian leaders a part of mainstream conversations about national security. Hezbollah in Lebanon is a close friend of Iran, and their support of militias and Houthi rebels in Yemen adds to the aura of chaos around Iran's activities. So what does all of this have to do with a targeted strike on one man? That one man has spent a lifetime doing exactly what he was doing the day he died--using violence and intimidation to bring Shiite ideology into prominence and, to quote the notorious Ayatollah Khamenei, ``end the corrupting presence of America in the Middle East.'' That is what they thought. Those are their comments, their words--not mine, not the President's, not the military's, not the intel's--the Ayatollah's. That is what he said. Soleimani took to the frontlines with the Revolutionary Guard in 1979. That may trigger some thoughts of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and American diplomats and citizens that were held hostage. Soleimani was not a new arrival to the terrorist community. Sometime between 1997 and 1998 he was named commander of the Quds Force. Under his leadership, the Revolutionary Guard has gained control of over 20 percent of Iran's economy, and the Quds Force has extended its influence to all Gulf States, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. He controlled Iran's intervention in support of Assad in Syria and was the primary architect of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have built up and trained scores of Hezbollah and Houthi fighters, as well as Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and those Iraqi militias killed more than 600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. Soleimani made much of his militaristic role, but he was a general in name only. He hid behind a uniform while designing, devising, conducting, and advising terror plots, and that is what earned him a spot on the list of people sanctioned by the EU, the United States, and the U.N. He wasn't a bureaucrat. He was not one of many respected generals. The Ayatollah called him a living martyr in his lifetime, but I intend to call him exactly what he was--a ruthless terrorist and a shameless, even proud, engineer of hatred, death, and destruction. That is his legacy. His tendency toward violence as a default was thrown into full relief when President Trump withdrew from that Iranian nuclear deal, just as I said a moment ago. In early May of last year, the intel indicated an increased threat from Tehran, and between May and September, Iran and its proxies perpetrated more than 80 violent attacks in the region--80--on us and our allies, 80 attacks. They attacked multiple tankers and commercial vessels. They downed an American drone. They took out 5 percent of the world's oil supply. Now we find out that they have taken out a jetliner. They used their own drones to attack a Saudi airport. A suicide bomber murdered four Afghans and wounded four U.S. troops traveling in a convoy in eastern Kabul. Soleimani was very confident, but perhaps he should have thought a little harder about the increased level of vulnerability he had built into his expanding network, because he didn't die in a hidden bunker or behind the walls of a fortified compound. He died in public while traversing the Middle East, defining impunity and even taking selfies with proxy terrorists. He did every bit of this in violation of U.N. resolutions. He died because his aggression morphed into a pattern of arrogance and violent escalation that U.S. officials could not, in good conscience, continue to allow. This month Iranian officials lost their chief terrorist, but they have gained an opportunity, and, I will tell you, the ball is in their court. Their retaliatory strikes against our shared bases in Iraq did nothing to repair their image as a belligerent and deeply vulnerable regime. If their lack of precision was calculated, no one got the intended message. The Iranians are now left with two choices, and they are theirs. Pick one. We hope they choose well. Option No. 1, they can come to the table and behave like a normal country. They are a country rich in resources and smart, educated people. Come to the table and behave like a normal country in the community of nations and allow deterrence to make a comeback. Option No. 2, they can risk being reminded that the United States will defend to the death the redline that separates justice from chaos, and the American people are going to make certain that we continue to go after monsters who crusade as the declared enemies of freedom. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS113-3

formal

Reagan

white supremacist

Iran Mr. President, I also want to say a few things about the situation in Iran and about some of the comments that we have heard here on the floor today. First of all, I think it is important to set the record straight when it comes to the Iran deal. We hear people say: Well, we never should have walked away from it. Let me tell you something. We should never have been in it in the first place. We should never have been in this. How in heaven's name could anybody have thought it was a good idea to put $1.7 billion of cash on a pallet, stick it on a plane, and fly it to Iran? Whoever would have thought that? The Iran nuclear deal was not something that helped to stabilize an issue; it incentivized Iran to do bad things. See, the Iran deal included a lifting of sanctions on Qasem Soleimani. Where was the first place he went? Where was the first place he went to get somebody to help to fund the Quds Force--to help fund all of this terrorism? He went to Russia--to his friends. This is why the Iran deal was not a good thing. Now, you can say they had to open their nuclear facilities to the IAEA, but there was a little caveat in there that doesn't get talked about a lot. They opened it with notification. Well, if you are going to get prior notification that somebody is going to look at your company, to look at your operation, to look at your house, to look at your country, what are you going to do? You are going to clean it up, and you are going to hide things. That is the Iran deal. They didn't stop enriching uranium. What they did was enrich it right up to the point at which it was just under the mark. Did they give it up? No, they didn't give it up. My colleague had mentioned the Reagan term of ``trust but verify.'' Thank goodness we have a President who decided he would verify, and thank goodness we have an intel community and a U.S. military that did the heavy lifting of figuring out what needed to be done. When you hear one of my colleagues ask, ``How do we put this back together or can we ever put it back together?'' we have started putting it back together. We have done it by saying: All right, folks, here is our redline. Guess what. This redline means something. This redline is drawn with the blood of hundreds of Americans who have been killed by this murderous villain. It is a redline of justice. So let's not have happy talk when it comes to this situation with Iran. Let's make certain we understand what has transpired. We know that our military and our intel communities watched for 8 months as there was escalating violence. We know that violence was orchestrated by none other thanSoleimani himself. Intelligence provided to senior administration officials prior to the strike confirmed that Soleimani had posed a defined threat to the United States. When we speak about Iran in the context of conflict versus deterrence, we are not referring to a government or a military organization. It is important to note and for the American people to know that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Do you know who it points that terrorism to? Isn't it interesting. Iran tends to have little bywords. It says: This is our goal--to destroy America, to destroy Israel. That is what Iran has been up to. It has nurtured a proxy network that has helped it to claw its way into the heads of regional leaders who are either too weak or who are wholly unwilling to resist those overtures. Relationships with Russia and with Bashar al-Assad in Syria have kept Iranian leaders a part of mainstream conversations about national security. Hezbollah in Lebanon is a close friend of Iran, and their support of militias and Houthi rebels in Yemen adds to the aura of chaos around Iran's activities. So what does all of this have to do with a targeted strike on one man? That one man has spent a lifetime doing exactly what he was doing the day he died--using violence and intimidation to bring Shiite ideology into prominence and, to quote the notorious Ayatollah Khamenei, ``end the corrupting presence of America in the Middle East.'' That is what they thought. Those are their comments, their words--not mine, not the President's, not the military's, not the intel's--the Ayatollah's. That is what he said. Soleimani took to the frontlines with the Revolutionary Guard in 1979. That may trigger some thoughts of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and American diplomats and citizens that were held hostage. Soleimani was not a new arrival to the terrorist community. Sometime between 1997 and 1998 he was named commander of the Quds Force. Under his leadership, the Revolutionary Guard has gained control of over 20 percent of Iran's economy, and the Quds Force has extended its influence to all Gulf States, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. He controlled Iran's intervention in support of Assad in Syria and was the primary architect of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have built up and trained scores of Hezbollah and Houthi fighters, as well as Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and those Iraqi militias killed more than 600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. Soleimani made much of his militaristic role, but he was a general in name only. He hid behind a uniform while designing, devising, conducting, and advising terror plots, and that is what earned him a spot on the list of people sanctioned by the EU, the United States, and the U.N. He wasn't a bureaucrat. He was not one of many respected generals. The Ayatollah called him a living martyr in his lifetime, but I intend to call him exactly what he was--a ruthless terrorist and a shameless, even proud, engineer of hatred, death, and destruction. That is his legacy. His tendency toward violence as a default was thrown into full relief when President Trump withdrew from that Iranian nuclear deal, just as I said a moment ago. In early May of last year, the intel indicated an increased threat from Tehran, and between May and September, Iran and its proxies perpetrated more than 80 violent attacks in the region--80--on us and our allies, 80 attacks. They attacked multiple tankers and commercial vessels. They downed an American drone. They took out 5 percent of the world's oil supply. Now we find out that they have taken out a jetliner. They used their own drones to attack a Saudi airport. A suicide bomber murdered four Afghans and wounded four U.S. troops traveling in a convoy in eastern Kabul. Soleimani was very confident, but perhaps he should have thought a little harder about the increased level of vulnerability he had built into his expanding network, because he didn't die in a hidden bunker or behind the walls of a fortified compound. He died in public while traversing the Middle East, defining impunity and even taking selfies with proxy terrorists. He did every bit of this in violation of U.N. resolutions. He died because his aggression morphed into a pattern of arrogance and violent escalation that U.S. officials could not, in good conscience, continue to allow. This month Iranian officials lost their chief terrorist, but they have gained an opportunity, and, I will tell you, the ball is in their court. Their retaliatory strikes against our shared bases in Iraq did nothing to repair their image as a belligerent and deeply vulnerable regime. If their lack of precision was calculated, no one got the intended message. The Iranians are now left with two choices, and they are theirs. Pick one. We hope they choose well. Option No. 1, they can come to the table and behave like a normal country. They are a country rich in resources and smart, educated people. Come to the table and behave like a normal country in the community of nations and allow deterrence to make a comeback. Option No. 2, they can risk being reminded that the United States will defend to the death the redline that separates justice from chaos, and the American people are going to make certain that we continue to go after monsters who crusade as the declared enemies of freedom. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS113-3

formal

you know who

antisemitic

Iran Mr. President, I also want to say a few things about the situation in Iran and about some of the comments that we have heard here on the floor today. First of all, I think it is important to set the record straight when it comes to the Iran deal. We hear people say: Well, we never should have walked away from it. Let me tell you something. We should never have been in it in the first place. We should never have been in this. How in heaven's name could anybody have thought it was a good idea to put $1.7 billion of cash on a pallet, stick it on a plane, and fly it to Iran? Whoever would have thought that? The Iran nuclear deal was not something that helped to stabilize an issue; it incentivized Iran to do bad things. See, the Iran deal included a lifting of sanctions on Qasem Soleimani. Where was the first place he went? Where was the first place he went to get somebody to help to fund the Quds Force--to help fund all of this terrorism? He went to Russia--to his friends. This is why the Iran deal was not a good thing. Now, you can say they had to open their nuclear facilities to the IAEA, but there was a little caveat in there that doesn't get talked about a lot. They opened it with notification. Well, if you are going to get prior notification that somebody is going to look at your company, to look at your operation, to look at your house, to look at your country, what are you going to do? You are going to clean it up, and you are going to hide things. That is the Iran deal. They didn't stop enriching uranium. What they did was enrich it right up to the point at which it was just under the mark. Did they give it up? No, they didn't give it up. My colleague had mentioned the Reagan term of ``trust but verify.'' Thank goodness we have a President who decided he would verify, and thank goodness we have an intel community and a U.S. military that did the heavy lifting of figuring out what needed to be done. When you hear one of my colleagues ask, ``How do we put this back together or can we ever put it back together?'' we have started putting it back together. We have done it by saying: All right, folks, here is our redline. Guess what. This redline means something. This redline is drawn with the blood of hundreds of Americans who have been killed by this murderous villain. It is a redline of justice. So let's not have happy talk when it comes to this situation with Iran. Let's make certain we understand what has transpired. We know that our military and our intel communities watched for 8 months as there was escalating violence. We know that violence was orchestrated by none other thanSoleimani himself. Intelligence provided to senior administration officials prior to the strike confirmed that Soleimani had posed a defined threat to the United States. When we speak about Iran in the context of conflict versus deterrence, we are not referring to a government or a military organization. It is important to note and for the American people to know that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Do you know who it points that terrorism to? Isn't it interesting. Iran tends to have little bywords. It says: This is our goal--to destroy America, to destroy Israel. That is what Iran has been up to. It has nurtured a proxy network that has helped it to claw its way into the heads of regional leaders who are either too weak or who are wholly unwilling to resist those overtures. Relationships with Russia and with Bashar al-Assad in Syria have kept Iranian leaders a part of mainstream conversations about national security. Hezbollah in Lebanon is a close friend of Iran, and their support of militias and Houthi rebels in Yemen adds to the aura of chaos around Iran's activities. So what does all of this have to do with a targeted strike on one man? That one man has spent a lifetime doing exactly what he was doing the day he died--using violence and intimidation to bring Shiite ideology into prominence and, to quote the notorious Ayatollah Khamenei, ``end the corrupting presence of America in the Middle East.'' That is what they thought. Those are their comments, their words--not mine, not the President's, not the military's, not the intel's--the Ayatollah's. That is what he said. Soleimani took to the frontlines with the Revolutionary Guard in 1979. That may trigger some thoughts of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and American diplomats and citizens that were held hostage. Soleimani was not a new arrival to the terrorist community. Sometime between 1997 and 1998 he was named commander of the Quds Force. Under his leadership, the Revolutionary Guard has gained control of over 20 percent of Iran's economy, and the Quds Force has extended its influence to all Gulf States, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. He controlled Iran's intervention in support of Assad in Syria and was the primary architect of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have built up and trained scores of Hezbollah and Houthi fighters, as well as Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and those Iraqi militias killed more than 600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. Soleimani made much of his militaristic role, but he was a general in name only. He hid behind a uniform while designing, devising, conducting, and advising terror plots, and that is what earned him a spot on the list of people sanctioned by the EU, the United States, and the U.N. He wasn't a bureaucrat. He was not one of many respected generals. The Ayatollah called him a living martyr in his lifetime, but I intend to call him exactly what he was--a ruthless terrorist and a shameless, even proud, engineer of hatred, death, and destruction. That is his legacy. His tendency toward violence as a default was thrown into full relief when President Trump withdrew from that Iranian nuclear deal, just as I said a moment ago. In early May of last year, the intel indicated an increased threat from Tehran, and between May and September, Iran and its proxies perpetrated more than 80 violent attacks in the region--80--on us and our allies, 80 attacks. They attacked multiple tankers and commercial vessels. They downed an American drone. They took out 5 percent of the world's oil supply. Now we find out that they have taken out a jetliner. They used their own drones to attack a Saudi airport. A suicide bomber murdered four Afghans and wounded four U.S. troops traveling in a convoy in eastern Kabul. Soleimani was very confident, but perhaps he should have thought a little harder about the increased level of vulnerability he had built into his expanding network, because he didn't die in a hidden bunker or behind the walls of a fortified compound. He died in public while traversing the Middle East, defining impunity and even taking selfies with proxy terrorists. He did every bit of this in violation of U.N. resolutions. He died because his aggression morphed into a pattern of arrogance and violent escalation that U.S. officials could not, in good conscience, continue to allow. This month Iranian officials lost their chief terrorist, but they have gained an opportunity, and, I will tell you, the ball is in their court. Their retaliatory strikes against our shared bases in Iraq did nothing to repair their image as a belligerent and deeply vulnerable regime. If their lack of precision was calculated, no one got the intended message. The Iranians are now left with two choices, and they are theirs. Pick one. We hope they choose well. Option No. 1, they can come to the table and behave like a normal country. They are a country rich in resources and smart, educated people. Come to the table and behave like a normal country in the community of nations and allow deterrence to make a comeback. Option No. 2, they can risk being reminded that the United States will defend to the death the redline that separates justice from chaos, and the American people are going to make certain that we continue to go after monsters who crusade as the declared enemies of freedom. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS113-3

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as my good friend Carter Hendricks prepares to end his service as the mayor of Hopkinsville, he certainly has a lot to show for his years of leadership in Southwestern Kentucky. He has helped the region take full advantage of its great potential, and I know I join his friends and constituents in expressing our gratitude. Today, I would like to honor this remarkable Kentuckian and wish him well as he embarks on his next chapter. When he was first elected in 2014, Carter made headlines for becoming the second youngest mayor in Hopkinsville's two centuries of history. The local newspaper, the highly regarded Kentucky New Era, also reported that Carter was only the city's second Republican mayor. He quickly mobilized the city's administration with a bold strategy to make Hopkinsville an attractive destination for economic development. His flagship initiative, called ``Hoptown WINS,'' was a nearly $15 million capital campaign involving downtown improvements, as well as new parks, a sports complex, and a visitors center. These state-of-the-art amenities are meant to help draw investment and good jobs into Hopkinsville and the surrounding areas. Now halfway through his second term, Carter and his constituents are beginning to see the positive results of his leadership. His vision of Hopkinsville's bright future is helping to create the conditions for growth and prosperity. Carter had been encouraging economic growth in the region long before he first stepped foot into the mayor's office. For nearly a decade, Carter worked in senior positions at the Christian County Chamber of Commerce, including 4 years as its president and CEO. With local leaders and the business community, he helped develop creative solutions to the county's challenges. I have had the great privilege to work with Carter in both of these capacities. When I heard the area's lack of access to a Federal interstate was obstructing business investment, Carter and I teamed up to find a solution. In 2017, Senator Rand Paul and I secured the designation of a nearby section of the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway as Interstate 169. When President Trump signed our provision into law, he helped connect Christian County to the Federal interstate system and bolstered Carter's efforts to encourage growth in the area. We also partnered to support the brave men and women stationed at Fort Campbell in Christian County. The installation is part of Kentucky's critical role in our national defense structure, and the local community takes seriously its responsibility to support Fort Campbell's mission and the servicemembers stationed there. During his time with the chamber, Carter led the business community's efforts to be strong and supportive neighbors. Together, we wanted to welcomeall members of the military and their families to Kentucky, make them feel at home, and help them prosper in this community. Carter said he didn't take the decision to leave the mayor's office lightly. When the chance to lead the South Western Kentucky Economic Development Council became available, however, he leapt at the opportunity. Formed in 2012, the organization represents Christian, Todd, and Trigg Counties and engages with job creators looking for their new home. Carter admits the job will present new challenges, but I am confident he will bring the same knowledge, determination, and high energy that has led to so much success. Although the city will certainly miss Carter's daily leadership, he said, ``I'm not leaving the team--if anything I'm just in a slightly different position.'' At the economic development council, Carter will continue supporting the city's efforts and continue working toward the same goal. He is certainly lucky to have a proud cheering section in his wife Faye and their two children. I would like to thank Carter for his constant dedication to creating opportunities for families in West Kentucky and to congratulate him on his great achievements. I hope my Senate colleagues will join me in commending this talented Kentuckian for his leadership and service and in extending our best wishes as he steps into a new role. Mr. President, the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville recently published a profile of Carter's distinguished service. I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS119-4

formal

job creator

conservative

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as my good friend Carter Hendricks prepares to end his service as the mayor of Hopkinsville, he certainly has a lot to show for his years of leadership in Southwestern Kentucky. He has helped the region take full advantage of its great potential, and I know I join his friends and constituents in expressing our gratitude. Today, I would like to honor this remarkable Kentuckian and wish him well as he embarks on his next chapter. When he was first elected in 2014, Carter made headlines for becoming the second youngest mayor in Hopkinsville's two centuries of history. The local newspaper, the highly regarded Kentucky New Era, also reported that Carter was only the city's second Republican mayor. He quickly mobilized the city's administration with a bold strategy to make Hopkinsville an attractive destination for economic development. His flagship initiative, called ``Hoptown WINS,'' was a nearly $15 million capital campaign involving downtown improvements, as well as new parks, a sports complex, and a visitors center. These state-of-the-art amenities are meant to help draw investment and good jobs into Hopkinsville and the surrounding areas. Now halfway through his second term, Carter and his constituents are beginning to see the positive results of his leadership. His vision of Hopkinsville's bright future is helping to create the conditions for growth and prosperity. Carter had been encouraging economic growth in the region long before he first stepped foot into the mayor's office. For nearly a decade, Carter worked in senior positions at the Christian County Chamber of Commerce, including 4 years as its president and CEO. With local leaders and the business community, he helped develop creative solutions to the county's challenges. I have had the great privilege to work with Carter in both of these capacities. When I heard the area's lack of access to a Federal interstate was obstructing business investment, Carter and I teamed up to find a solution. In 2017, Senator Rand Paul and I secured the designation of a nearby section of the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway as Interstate 169. When President Trump signed our provision into law, he helped connect Christian County to the Federal interstate system and bolstered Carter's efforts to encourage growth in the area. We also partnered to support the brave men and women stationed at Fort Campbell in Christian County. The installation is part of Kentucky's critical role in our national defense structure, and the local community takes seriously its responsibility to support Fort Campbell's mission and the servicemembers stationed there. During his time with the chamber, Carter led the business community's efforts to be strong and supportive neighbors. Together, we wanted to welcomeall members of the military and their families to Kentucky, make them feel at home, and help them prosper in this community. Carter said he didn't take the decision to leave the mayor's office lightly. When the chance to lead the South Western Kentucky Economic Development Council became available, however, he leapt at the opportunity. Formed in 2012, the organization represents Christian, Todd, and Trigg Counties and engages with job creators looking for their new home. Carter admits the job will present new challenges, but I am confident he will bring the same knowledge, determination, and high energy that has led to so much success. Although the city will certainly miss Carter's daily leadership, he said, ``I'm not leaving the team--if anything I'm just in a slightly different position.'' At the economic development council, Carter will continue supporting the city's efforts and continue working toward the same goal. He is certainly lucky to have a proud cheering section in his wife Faye and their two children. I would like to thank Carter for his constant dedication to creating opportunities for families in West Kentucky and to congratulate him on his great achievements. I hope my Senate colleagues will join me in commending this talented Kentuckian for his leadership and service and in extending our best wishes as he steps into a new role. Mr. President, the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville recently published a profile of Carter's distinguished service. I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS119-4

formal

job creators

conservative

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as my good friend Carter Hendricks prepares to end his service as the mayor of Hopkinsville, he certainly has a lot to show for his years of leadership in Southwestern Kentucky. He has helped the region take full advantage of its great potential, and I know I join his friends and constituents in expressing our gratitude. Today, I would like to honor this remarkable Kentuckian and wish him well as he embarks on his next chapter. When he was first elected in 2014, Carter made headlines for becoming the second youngest mayor in Hopkinsville's two centuries of history. The local newspaper, the highly regarded Kentucky New Era, also reported that Carter was only the city's second Republican mayor. He quickly mobilized the city's administration with a bold strategy to make Hopkinsville an attractive destination for economic development. His flagship initiative, called ``Hoptown WINS,'' was a nearly $15 million capital campaign involving downtown improvements, as well as new parks, a sports complex, and a visitors center. These state-of-the-art amenities are meant to help draw investment and good jobs into Hopkinsville and the surrounding areas. Now halfway through his second term, Carter and his constituents are beginning to see the positive results of his leadership. His vision of Hopkinsville's bright future is helping to create the conditions for growth and prosperity. Carter had been encouraging economic growth in the region long before he first stepped foot into the mayor's office. For nearly a decade, Carter worked in senior positions at the Christian County Chamber of Commerce, including 4 years as its president and CEO. With local leaders and the business community, he helped develop creative solutions to the county's challenges. I have had the great privilege to work with Carter in both of these capacities. When I heard the area's lack of access to a Federal interstate was obstructing business investment, Carter and I teamed up to find a solution. In 2017, Senator Rand Paul and I secured the designation of a nearby section of the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway as Interstate 169. When President Trump signed our provision into law, he helped connect Christian County to the Federal interstate system and bolstered Carter's efforts to encourage growth in the area. We also partnered to support the brave men and women stationed at Fort Campbell in Christian County. The installation is part of Kentucky's critical role in our national defense structure, and the local community takes seriously its responsibility to support Fort Campbell's mission and the servicemembers stationed there. During his time with the chamber, Carter led the business community's efforts to be strong and supportive neighbors. Together, we wanted to welcomeall members of the military and their families to Kentucky, make them feel at home, and help them prosper in this community. Carter said he didn't take the decision to leave the mayor's office lightly. When the chance to lead the South Western Kentucky Economic Development Council became available, however, he leapt at the opportunity. Formed in 2012, the organization represents Christian, Todd, and Trigg Counties and engages with job creators looking for their new home. Carter admits the job will present new challenges, but I am confident he will bring the same knowledge, determination, and high energy that has led to so much success. Although the city will certainly miss Carter's daily leadership, he said, ``I'm not leaving the team--if anything I'm just in a slightly different position.'' At the economic development council, Carter will continue supporting the city's efforts and continue working toward the same goal. He is certainly lucky to have a proud cheering section in his wife Faye and their two children. I would like to thank Carter for his constant dedication to creating opportunities for families in West Kentucky and to congratulate him on his great achievements. I hope my Senate colleagues will join me in commending this talented Kentuckian for his leadership and service and in extending our best wishes as he steps into a new role. Mr. President, the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville recently published a profile of Carter's distinguished service. I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS119-4

formal

based

white supremacist

Ms. McSALLY. Mr. President, in April of 1981, President George H.W. Bush said ``think about every problem, every challenge, we face. The solution to each starts with education.'' These words were true then, and they are just as true today. Education is the bedrock of our society, and it allows our country to advance. It is difficult to think of someone who exemplifies President Bush's words more than Vail School District Superintendent Calvin Baker. I have been privileged to get to know Cal and his wife Nancy over the last many years. I also live in Vail School District--VSD--so I have seen the impact he has made in our community firsthand. Cal moved back to Arizona in 1987 to become the principal of the only school in the Vail School District, serving 500 students. He was appointed as the superintendent of the district in 1988 and has been at the helm ever since. During his nearly 33 years of service to students and families in our community, Cal led the growth to now 22 schools serving over 14,000 students. The growth was not by accident. Families want to move to VSD so their kids can experience the world-class educational experience thanks to Cal's extraordinary leadership and success. As with any organization, leadership matters, and for effective leadership, character matters. Calvin Baker sets the example of integrity, selfless service, and humility for all to follow. He is truly a good man. In his tenure, Cal built an impressive team of educators and support staff and created a culture of innovation, parent involvement, and dedication to students. Cal's vision for success was based on the principle that education is a community effort. He has been the glue that kept our growing and diverse community together united with a common goal of educational excellence. In a recent letter Cal sent to parents in his district, he said, ``I encourage each of you to invest deeply in your child's education and our local schools. It is that investment that is the `secret sauce' of Vail's success.'' Calvin Baker is a trailblazer on innovation in education for so many other districts in the State and country to follow. Empire High School was the first school in the United States to eliminate textbooks in favor of computers. He pioneered the Beyond Textbooks program that combines Vail's successful instructional methodology with an online delivery system. Cal didn't just want Vail students to benefit from this effective approach. Now, 115 school districts across Arizona and six other States use this program, some of which have become top performing districts in their States. Baker's creative and visionary leadership didn't stop there. When enrollment in the district surpassed capacity, he developed a year-round track system to ensure educational standards were high while new infrastructure was planned and built. Under his leadership, Vail schools are consistently labeled as ``A+'' by the Arizona Department of Education. Calvin Baker's legacy is immense and immeasurable. It will continue on with the thousands of children in a generation who received an amazing education in Vail School District under his leadership, propelling them on a path of opportunity for their futures. Cal is the longest serving superintendent of any school district in Arizona and has left an indelible mark on education for Arizona and the country. Appropriately, Pima County passed a resolution naming December 20 as Calvin Baker Appreciation Day, an honor in which Cal is more than deserving. Last year, Cal confronted another challenge when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. His example of faith, grit, and courage as he faced the diagnosis and treatment continues to be an inspiration to us all. I want to personally thank Cal for his service and wish him, Nancy, and their whole family all the best in his much-deserved retirement.

2020-01-06

Ms. McSALLY

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS123-2

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

At 10:02 a.m., a message from the House of Representatives, delivered by Mrs. Cole, one of its reading clerks, announced that the House passed the following bills, in which it requests the concurrence of the Senate: H.R. 2881. An act to require the President to develop a strategy to ensure the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems and infrastructure in the United States and to assist allies and strategic partners in maximizing the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems, infrastructure, and software, and for other purposes. H.R. 3763. An act to direct the Federal Government to provide assistance and technical expertise to enhance the representation and leadership of the United States at international standards-setting bodies that set standards for equipment, systems, software, and virtually-defined networks that support 5th and future generations mobile telecommunications systems and infrastructure, and for other purposes. H.R. 4500. An act to direct the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information to take certain actions to enhance the representation of the United States and promote United States leadership in communications standards-setting bodies, and for other purposes. H.R. 5065. An act to amend the Small Business Act to provide re-entry entrepreneurship counseling and training services for formerly incarcerated individuals, and for other purposes. H.R. 5130. An act to amend the Small Business Act to adjust the employment size standard requirements for determining whether a manufacturing concern is a small business concern, and for other purposes. H.R. 5146. An act to amend the Small Business Act to require contracting officers to take a small business concern's past performance as part of a joint venture into account when evaluating the small business concern, and for other purposes.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS123-5

formal

TIM

transphobic

______ TRIBUTE TO TIM McALLISTER

2020-01-06

None

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS123

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

The following bills were read the first and the second times by unanimous consent, and referred as indicated: H.R. 3763. An act to direct the Federal Government to provide assistance and technical expertise to enhance the representation and leadership of the United States at international standards-setting bodies that set standards for equipment, systems, software, and virtually-defined networks that support 5th and future generations mobile telecommunications systems and infrastructure, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Foreign Relations. H.R. 4500. An act to direct the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information to take certain actions to enhance the representation of the United States and promote United States leadership in communications standards-setting bodies, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. H.R. 5065. An act to amend the Small Business Act to provide re-entry entrepreneurship counseling and training services for formerly incarcerated individuals, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. H.R. 5130. An act to amend the Small Business Act to adjust the employment size standard requirements for determining whether a manufacturing concern is a small business concern, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. H.R. 5146. An act to amend the Small Business Act to require contracting officers to take a small business concern's past performance as part of a joint venture into account when evaluating the small business concern, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS124

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, over the past year, the Iranian regime has been increasingly aggressive, attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, shooting down a U.S. drone, seizing a British tanker, attacking a Saudi oil facility, attacking U.S. military bases in Iraq, and storming the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The U.S. response to Iran's increasing provocations had been too measured, to the point that we risked Iran's leaders mistaking restraint on the part of America for weakness and encouraging further escalation. Another attack that risked many American lives was in the works when President Trump ordered U.S. forces to take out the terrorist mastermind of the Iranian regime. Now, think about it. Sometimes you have to stand up to a bully to get him to back off or else we might be inviting further aggression. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. GRASSLEY

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS99-4

formal

working families

racist

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, first, this morning I want to associate myself with a statement made yesterday by one of our distinguished colleagues about the House Democrats treating impeachment like a political toy. Here is what the Senator said: ``If it's serious and urgent, send them over. If it isn't, don't.'' That was our Democratic colleague, the senior Senator from California, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. She wasn't alone. ``It's time to get on with it.'' That is our Democratic colleague the junior Senator from Delaware. ``At some point, it's appropriate to send them and pass the baton to Senators.'' That is our Democratic colleague, the senior Senator from Connecticut. ``I think the time has past. She should send the articles.'' That is our Democratic colleague the junior Senator from Connecticut. Now, this is a challenging time to create bipartisan agreement in the Senate on any subject, but the Speaker of the House has managed to do the impossible. She has created this growing bipartisan unity here in the Senate in opposition to her own reckless behavior. The Senators may not agree on much, but it appears most of us still recognize the threat to our institution when we see one. Article I, section 3, says: ``The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments''--period. The House can begin the process, and Speaker Pelosi's majority has certainly done that, but the Senate alone can resolve it. Yet, for weeks now, the House majority has blocked the Senate from fulfilling our constitutional duty. In a precedent-breaking display of partisanship, the Speaker has refused to let her own allegations proceed normally to trial unless she gets to hand-design various elements of our Senate process. In other words, the House Democrats already spent 12 weeks undermining the institution of the Presidency with a historically unfair and subjective impeachment, and now, for a sequel, they have come after the institution of the Senate as well. That is where we are. The dwindling number of our Senate Democratic colleagues who remain complicit in this must realize what they are doing. Should future House majorities feel empowered to waste our time with junior varsity political hostage situations? Should future Speakers be permitted to conjure up this sword of Damocles at will and leave it hanging over the Senate unless we do what they say? Of course not. This week, a majority of the Senate stepped forward to make it perfectly clear that this conversation is over. A majority of this body has said definitively that we are not ceding our constitutional authority to the partisan designs of the Speaker. We will not letthe House extend its precedent-breaking spree over here to our Chamber. There will be no unfair new rule book written solely for President Trump. The basic organization of the first phase of this trial will track the phase one of the Clinton trial, which all 100 Senators voted for in 1999. I have said for months that this is our preferred route. By the way, that is exactly what the American people want. Seventy-seven percent told a Harvard-Harris survey that the basic outline of a Clinton trial, reserving the witness question until later in the proceedings, ought to be good enough for this President as well. Fair is fair. In the same survey, 58 percent of Americans said they want Speaker Pelosi to do her job and send the articles to the Senate rather than continue delaying. It makes sense that American families have lost patience with this act just like we Senators have lost patience with it because this is not just some intramural tiff between the two Houses in our bicameral legislature. This recklessness affects our entire country. When you take a step back, what has really happened over the last 3 weeks? What has happened? When you take a step back from the political noise and the pundits discussing ``leverage''--by the way, that never existed--what have House Democrats actually done? This is what they have done. They have initiated one of the most grave and most unsettling processes in our Constitution and then refused to allow a resolution of it. The Speaker began something that she herself predicted would be ``so divisive to the country,'' and now she is unilaterally saying it cannot move forward to resolution. It is bad enough that House Democrats gave in to the temptation of subjective impeachment that every previous House for 230 years has managed to resist. However unwise, that is their constitutional prerogative. They get to start it, if they choose, but they do not get to declare that it can never be finished. They do not get to trap our entire country into an unending ``Groundhog Day'' of impeachment without resolution. Alexander Hamilton specifically warned against a procrastinated resolution of impeachments. In part, that is because our duly-elected President deserves a verdict, just like every American who is accused by their government deserves a speedy trial. This goes deeper than fairness to one individual. This is about what is fair to the entire country. There is a reason why the Framers did not contemplate a permanently unsettled Presidency. That is true under any circumstances, but consider especially the circumstances of recent days. Even as the Democrats have prolonged this game, we have seen Iran escalate tensions with our Nation. We live in a dangerous world. So, yes, the House majority can create this temporary cloud over a Commander in Chief if they choose--if they choose--but they do not get to keep the cloud in place forever. Look, there is real business for the American people that the Senate needs to complete. If the Speaker continues to refuse to take her own accusations to trial, the Senate will move forward next week with the business of our people. We will operate on the assumption that House Democrats are too embarrassed--too embarrassed--to ever move forward, and we will get back to the people's business. For example, the Senate continues to process President Trump's landmark trade deal, the USMCA, through our committees of jurisdiction. It passed the Senate Finance Committee this week by a landslide vote of 25 to 3, a major victory for the President and for working families. Now our other committees will continue their consideration. And there is more. The epidemic of opioids, fentanyl, and other substance abuse continues to plague our Nation. Some colleagues have signaled they may raise privileged resolutions on war powers. The Senate has plenty of serious work to do for our country. So while the Speaker continues her irresponsible games, we will continue doing the people's business.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-09-pt1-PgS99-6

formal

quota

racist

Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 3484. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations System, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's interim rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Covered Defense Telecommunications Equipment or Serviced (DFARS Case 2018-D022) [Docket: DARS-2019-0063] (RIN: 0750-AJ84) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3485. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations System, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Demonstration Project for Contractors Employing Persons with Disabilities (DFARS Case 2018-D058) (RIN: 0750- AK19) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3486. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations Systems, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Review of Defense Solicitations by Procurement Center Representatives (DFARS Case 2019-D008) [Docket: DARS- 2019-0034] (RIN: 0750-AK43) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3487. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations System, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Trade Agreements Thresholds (DFARS Case 2019- D035) [Docket: DARS-2019-0069] (RIN: 0750-AK75) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3488. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations Systems, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Contractor Purchasing System Review Threshold (DFARS Case 2017-D038) [Docket: DARS-2019-0024] (RIN: 0750- AJ48) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3489. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations Systems, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Restriction on the Acquisition of Certain Magnets and Tungsten (DFARS Case 2018-D054) [Docket: DARS-2019-0016] (RIN: 0750-AK15) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3490. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's joint final rule -- Community Reinvestment Act Regulations (RIN: 3064-AF20) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3491. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Legal, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's final rule -- Regulatory Capital Treatment for High Volatility Commercial Real Estate (HVCRE) Exposures (RIN: 3064-AE90) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3492. A letter from the Acting General Counsel, National Credit Union Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Federal Credit Union Bylaws (RIN: 3313-AE86) received December 17, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3493. A letter from the Acting General Counsel, National Credit Union Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Delay of Effective Date of the Risk-Based Capital Rules (RIN: 3133-AF01) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3494. A letter from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rules -- Rule Amendments and Guidance Addressing Cross-Border Application of Certain Security-Based Swap Requirements [Release No.: 34- 87780; File No.: S7-07-19] (RIN: 3235-AM13) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104- 121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3495. A letter from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Risk Mitigation Techniques for Uncleared Security-Based Swaps [Release No.: 34-87782; File No.: S7-28-18] (RIN: 3235-AL83) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3496. A letter from the Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Regulatory Affairs, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's final rule -- Allocation of Assets in Single-Employer Plans; Valuation of Benefits and Assets; Expected Retirement Age received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Education and Labor. 3497. A letter from the Deputy Bureau Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain Through FCC Programs [WC Docket No.: 18-89]; Huawei Designation [PS Docket No.: 19-351]; ZTE Designation [PS Docket No.: 19-352] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 3498. A letter from the Director, Office of Financial Reporting and Policy, Department of Commerce, transmitting the Department's FY 2019 Agency Financial Report, pursuant to 31 U.S.C. 3515(a)(1); Public Law 101-576, Sec. 303(a)(1) (as amended by Public Law 107-289, Sec. 2(a)); (116 Stat. 2049); to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 3499. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's temporary rule -- Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Pacific Ocean Perch in the Bering Sea Subarea of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area [Docket No.: 180713633-9174-02; RTID 0648-XY056] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3500. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Halibut Deck Sorting Monitoring Requirements for Trawl Catcher/Processors Operating in Non-Pollock Groundfish Fisheries Off Alaska; Correction [Docket No.: 191203-0100] (RIN: 0648-BI53) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3501. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Essential Fish Habitat [Docket No.: 191212-0110] (RIN: 0648- BJ45) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3502. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's notice -- Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Summer Flounder Fishery; Quota Transfer From NC to VA [RTID: 0648-XX030] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3503. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's notification of a quota transfer -- Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Atlantic Bluefish Fishery; Quota Transfer From NC to RI [Docket No.: 181010932-9124-02; RTID: 0648-XX028] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3504. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's temporary rule -- International Fisheries; Western and Central Pacific Fisheries for Highly Migratory Species; Limited Reopening of the 2019 U.S. Pelagic Longline Fishery for Bigeye Tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean [Docket No.: 180209155- 8589-02; RTID 0648-XP005] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3505. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Seabird Bycatch Avoidance Measures [Docket No.: 191204-0101] (RIN: 0648-BI99) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3506. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Annual Specifications and Management Measures for the 2019 Tribal and Non-Tribal Fisheries for Pacific Whiting, and Requirement To Consider Chinook Salmon Bycatch Before Reapportioning Tribal Whiting; Correction [Docket No.: 191125-0091] (RIN: 0648-BI67) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3507. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Pacific Whiting; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 21-4; Catch Share Program, 5-Year Review, Follow-On Actions [Docket No.: 191211-0107] (RIN: 0648-BI35) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104- 121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3508. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Biennial Specifications [Docket No.: 191125-0089] (RIN: 0648-BJ22) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3509. A letter from the Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Director for Financial Management, Office CFO and Assistant Secretary for Administration, Department of Commerce, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Civil Monetary Penalty Adjustments for Inflation [Docket No.: 191216-0114] (RIN: 0605-AA54) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on the Judiciary. 3510. A letter from the Attorney, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting the Department's final rule -- 2013 Liquid Chemical Categorization Updates [Docket No.: USCG-2013-0423] (RIN: 1625-AB94) received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3511. A letter from the Assistant Administrator, Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Technical Correction to Regulation Regarding Registration [Docket No.: DEA-511] received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); jointly to the Committees on Energy and Commerce and the Judiciary. 3512. A letter from the Assistant Administrator, Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting the Department's temporary rule -- Schedules of Controlled Substances: Extension of Temporary Placement of FUB-AMB in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act [Docket No.: DEA-472a] received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); jointly to the Committees on the Judiciary and Energy and Commerce. 3513. A letter from the Assistant Administrator, Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting the Department's final amendment -- Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of Cyclopropyl Fentanyl, Methoxyacetyl fentanyl, ortho-Fluorofentanyl, and para-Fluorobutyryl Fentanyl in Schedule I [Docket No. DEA- 507] received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); jointly to the Committees on the Judiciary and Energy and Commerce.

2020-01-06

Unknown

House

CREC-2020-01-10-pt1-PgH178-3

formal

XX

transphobic

Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 3484. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations System, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's interim rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Covered Defense Telecommunications Equipment or Serviced (DFARS Case 2018-D022) [Docket: DARS-2019-0063] (RIN: 0750-AJ84) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3485. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations System, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Demonstration Project for Contractors Employing Persons with Disabilities (DFARS Case 2018-D058) (RIN: 0750- AK19) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3486. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations Systems, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Review of Defense Solicitations by Procurement Center Representatives (DFARS Case 2019-D008) [Docket: DARS- 2019-0034] (RIN: 0750-AK43) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3487. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations System, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Trade Agreements Thresholds (DFARS Case 2019- D035) [Docket: DARS-2019-0069] (RIN: 0750-AK75) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3488. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations Systems, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Contractor Purchasing System Review Threshold (DFARS Case 2017-D038) [Docket: DARS-2019-0024] (RIN: 0750- AJ48) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3489. A letter from the Acting Principal Director, Defense Pricing and Contracting, Defense Acquisition Regulations Systems, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Restriction on the Acquisition of Certain Magnets and Tungsten (DFARS Case 2018-D054) [Docket: DARS-2019-0016] (RIN: 0750-AK15) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3490. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's joint final rule -- Community Reinvestment Act Regulations (RIN: 3064-AF20) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3491. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Legal, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's final rule -- Regulatory Capital Treatment for High Volatility Commercial Real Estate (HVCRE) Exposures (RIN: 3064-AE90) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3492. A letter from the Acting General Counsel, National Credit Union Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Federal Credit Union Bylaws (RIN: 3313-AE86) received December 17, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3493. A letter from the Acting General Counsel, National Credit Union Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Delay of Effective Date of the Risk-Based Capital Rules (RIN: 3133-AF01) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3494. A letter from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rules -- Rule Amendments and Guidance Addressing Cross-Border Application of Certain Security-Based Swap Requirements [Release No.: 34- 87780; File No.: S7-07-19] (RIN: 3235-AM13) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104- 121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3495. A letter from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Risk Mitigation Techniques for Uncleared Security-Based Swaps [Release No.: 34-87782; File No.: S7-28-18] (RIN: 3235-AL83) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3496. A letter from the Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Regulatory Affairs, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's final rule -- Allocation of Assets in Single-Employer Plans; Valuation of Benefits and Assets; Expected Retirement Age received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Education and Labor. 3497. A letter from the Deputy Bureau Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain Through FCC Programs [WC Docket No.: 18-89]; Huawei Designation [PS Docket No.: 19-351]; ZTE Designation [PS Docket No.: 19-352] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 3498. A letter from the Director, Office of Financial Reporting and Policy, Department of Commerce, transmitting the Department's FY 2019 Agency Financial Report, pursuant to 31 U.S.C. 3515(a)(1); Public Law 101-576, Sec. 303(a)(1) (as amended by Public Law 107-289, Sec. 2(a)); (116 Stat. 2049); to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 3499. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's temporary rule -- Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Pacific Ocean Perch in the Bering Sea Subarea of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area [Docket No.: 180713633-9174-02; RTID 0648-XY056] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3500. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Halibut Deck Sorting Monitoring Requirements for Trawl Catcher/Processors Operating in Non-Pollock Groundfish Fisheries Off Alaska; Correction [Docket No.: 191203-0100] (RIN: 0648-BI53) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3501. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Essential Fish Habitat [Docket No.: 191212-0110] (RIN: 0648- BJ45) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3502. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's notice -- Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Summer Flounder Fishery; Quota Transfer From NC to VA [RTID: 0648-XX030] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3503. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's notification of a quota transfer -- Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Atlantic Bluefish Fishery; Quota Transfer From NC to RI [Docket No.: 181010932-9124-02; RTID: 0648-XX028] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3504. A letter from the Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's temporary rule -- International Fisheries; Western and Central Pacific Fisheries for Highly Migratory Species; Limited Reopening of the 2019 U.S. Pelagic Longline Fishery for Bigeye Tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean [Docket No.: 180209155- 8589-02; RTID 0648-XP005] received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3505. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Seabird Bycatch Avoidance Measures [Docket No.: 191204-0101] (RIN: 0648-BI99) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3506. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Annual Specifications and Management Measures for the 2019 Tribal and Non-Tribal Fisheries for Pacific Whiting, and Requirement To Consider Chinook Salmon Bycatch Before Reapportioning Tribal Whiting; Correction [Docket No.: 191125-0091] (RIN: 0648-BI67) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3507. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Pacific Whiting; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 21-4; Catch Share Program, 5-Year Review, Follow-On Actions [Docket No.: 191211-0107] (RIN: 0648-BI35) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104- 121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3508. A letter from the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, NMFS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Biennial Specifications [Docket No.: 191125-0089] (RIN: 0648-BJ22) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Natural Resources. 3509. A letter from the Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Director for Financial Management, Office CFO and Assistant Secretary for Administration, Department of Commerce, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Civil Monetary Penalty Adjustments for Inflation [Docket No.: 191216-0114] (RIN: 0605-AA54) received January 3, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on the Judiciary. 3510. A letter from the Attorney, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting the Department's final rule -- 2013 Liquid Chemical Categorization Updates [Docket No.: USCG-2013-0423] (RIN: 1625-AB94) received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3511. A letter from the Assistant Administrator, Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Technical Correction to Regulation Regarding Registration [Docket No.: DEA-511] received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); jointly to the Committees on Energy and Commerce and the Judiciary. 3512. A letter from the Assistant Administrator, Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting the Department's temporary rule -- Schedules of Controlled Substances: Extension of Temporary Placement of FUB-AMB in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act [Docket No.: DEA-472a] received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); jointly to the Committees on the Judiciary and Energy and Commerce. 3513. A letter from the Assistant Administrator, Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, transmitting the Department's final amendment -- Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of Cyclopropyl Fentanyl, Methoxyacetyl fentanyl, ortho-Fluorofentanyl, and para-Fluorobutyryl Fentanyl in Schedule I [Docket No. DEA- 507] received December 20, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); jointly to the Committees on the Judiciary and Energy and Commerce.

2020-01-06

Unknown

House

CREC-2020-01-10-pt1-PgH178-3

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the Chairwill postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules on which a recorded vote or the yeas and nays are ordered, or votes objected to under clause 6 of rule XX. The House will resume proceedings on postponed questions at a later time.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER pro tempore

House

CREC-2020-01-13-pt1-PgH184-11

formal

Federal Reserve

antisemitic

Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4458) to require the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to issue reports on cybersecurity with respect to the functions of the Federal Reserve System, and for other purposes, as amended.

2020-01-06

Ms. WATERS

House

CREC-2020-01-13-pt1-PgH195

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4458) to require the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to issue reports on cybersecurity with respect to the functions of the Federal Reserve System, and for other purposes, as amended.

2020-01-06

Ms. WATERS

House

CREC-2020-01-13-pt1-PgH195

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Under clause 3 of rule XII, petitions and papers were laid on the clerk's desk and referred as follows: 78. The SPEAKER presented a petition of Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, relative to House Resolution 21-18, strongly supporting U.S. Senate Bill 2218 and U.S. House Resolution 4821, ``To amend title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 to restore Medicaid coverage for citizens of the Freely Associated States lawfully residing in the United States under the Compacts of Free Association between Government of the United States and the Governments of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau''; to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 79. Also, a petition of the Wise County, VA Board of Supervisors, relative to a Resolution stating and confirming its approval and support for the legislation House Resolution 934: The Health Benefits for Miners Act of 2019, and Senate Bill 27: The American Miners Act; to the Committee on Natural Resources. 80. Also, a petition of the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, CA, relative to Resolution No. 540-19, supporting United States House Resolution No. 763 (Deutch) -- The Energy and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019; jointly to the Committees on Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Foreign Affairs.

2020-01-06

Unknown

House

CREC-2020-01-13-pt1-PgH209-2

formal

based

white supremacist

Impeachment Mr. President, on Friday Speaker Pelosi signaled that she may finally wind down her one-woman blockade of a fair and timely impeachment trial. It has certainly been revealing to see House Democrats first claim that impeachment was so urgent--so urgent--that they could not even wait to fill out the factual record and then, subsequently, delay it for weeks. I am glad the Speaker finally realized she never had any leverage in the first place to dictate Senate procedure to Senators and is giving in to bipartisan pressure to move forward. In terms of influencing Senate proceedings, this strange gambit has achieved absolutely nothing, but it has produced one unintended side effect: The Speaker's efforts to precommit the Senate to carry on an investigation with which her own House lost patience concedes that the House case is rushed, weak, and incomplete. Let me say that again. By trying and failing to get the Senate to precommit to redoing the House's investigation, House Democrats admitted that even they did not believe their own case is persuasive. Think about the message it sends when the prosecutors are this desperate to get the judge and jury to redo their homework for them, and think about the separation of powers. The House, knowingly--knowingly--declined to spend time on legal battles and due process that it would have needed to pursue the certain avenues. Now, after declining to fight their own fight, they want the Senate to precommit ourselves to wage these potentially protracted legal battles on their behalf. They wanted Senators to precommit ourselves to not only judge the case that House Democrats are actually going to send over but, also, to reopen the investigatory stage and maybe supplement Chairman Schiff's slapdash work. In other words, the President's opponents are afraid of having the Senate judge the case they actually are going to send us. They are afraid of having the Senate judge the case they themselves voted on. That alone speaks volumes. A few weeks ago, in real time, many Senators and legal experts tried to warn House Democrats that they were nowhere near a finished product--nowhere near--and that the Articles of Impeachment they had drafted were more like a censure resolution based on partisan anger than an actual impeachment based on careful investigation. The House ignored us at the time. They rushed ahead to meet a political timetable. Now they have spent almost a month conceding that their own case does not stand on its own and searching for ways to supplement it from the outside. This is exactly the kind of toxic new precedent that many of us warned about back in December--that Speaker Pelosi's House was not sending the Senate a thorough investigation. They were just tossing up a jump ball and hoping that the political winds might blow things their way. So here we are. The Senate was never going to precommit ourselves to redoing the prosecutors' homework for them, and we were never going to allow the Speaker of the House to dictate Senate proceedings to Senators. House Democrats have already done enough damage to the precedent, to national unity, and to our institutions of government. The Senate will not be sucked into this precedent-breaking path. We will fulfill our constitutional duty. We will honor the reason for which the Founders created this body: to ensure our institutions and our Republic can rise above short-term, factional fever. The House has done enough damage. The Senate is ready to fulfill our duty. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-13-pt1-PgS152

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 11, the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Peter Gaynor to be Administrator of the Federal Management Agency. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted yea.

2020-01-06

Mr. DURBIN

Senate

CREC-2020-01-13-pt1-PgS159-2

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Enrolled Bill Signed Under the authority of the order of the Senate of January 3, 2019, the Secretary of the Senate, on January 10, 2020, during the adjournment of the Senate, received a message from the House of Representatives announcing that the Speaker had signed the following enrolled bill: H.R. 2476. An act to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide funding to secure nonprofit facilities from terrorist attacks, and for other purposes.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-13-pt1-PgS160-4

formal

XX

transphobic

The SPEAKER. Under clause 5(d) of rule XX, the Chair announces to the House that, in light of the resignation of the gentleman from California, Mr. Hunter, the whole number of the House is 430.

2020-01-06

The SPEAKER

House

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgH214-6

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 3539. A letter from the Administrator, Agricultural Marketing Service, Science and Technology Program, Department of Agriculture, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Regulations and Procedures Under the Plant Variety Protection Act [Doc. No.: AMS-ST-19-004] received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Agriculture. 3540. A letter from the Administrator, Agricultural Marketing Service, Specialty Crops Program, Department of Agriculture, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Marketing Order Regulating the Handling of Apricots Grown in Designated Counties in Washington; Increased Assessment Rate [Doc. No.: AMS-SC-19-0048; SC16-922-1 FR] received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104- 121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Agriculture. 3541. A letter from the FPAC-BC, Commodity Credit Corporation, Department of Agriculture, transmitting the Department's Major interim rule -- Agricultural Conservation Easement Program [Docket ID: NRCS-2019-0006] (RIN: 0578-AA66) received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Agriculture. 3542. A letter from the FPAC-BC, Commodity Credit Corporation, Department of Agriculture, transmitting the Department's Major interim rule -- Environmental Quality Incentives Program [Docket ID: NRCS-2019-0009] (RIN: 0578- AA68) received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Agriculture. 3543. A letter from the Administrator, Livestock and Poultry Program, Agricultural Marketing Service, Department of Agriculture, transmitting the Department's direct final rule -- Beef Promotion and Research Rules and Regulations [No.: AMS-LP-19-0054] received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Agriculture. 3544. A letter from the Director, Regulations Management Division, Rural Development Innovation Center, Rural Development, Department of Agriculture, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Advanced Biofuel Payment Program (RIN: 0570-AA75) received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Agriculture. 3545. A letter from the Alternate OSD FRLO, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting the Department's interim final rule -- Commissary Credit and Debit Card User Fee [Docket ID: DOD-2019-OS-0131] (RIN: 0790- AK92) received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Armed Services. 3546. A letter from the Counsel, Legal Division, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, transmitting the Bureau's final rule -- Truth in Lending Act (Regulation Z) Adjustment to Asset-Size Exemption Threshold received January 8, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3547. A letter from the Program Specialist, Chief Counsel's Office, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Department of the Treasury, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Regulatory Capital Rule: Capital Simplification for Qualifying Community Banking Organizations; Technical Correction [Docket ID: OCC-2018-0040] (RIN: 1557-AE59) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3548. A letter from the Acting General Counsel, National Credit Union Administration, transmitting the Administration's final rule -- Payday Alternative Loans (RIN: 3133-AE84) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 3549. A letter from the Director, Regulations Policy and Management Staff, FDA, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Medical Device Submissions: Amending Premarket Regulations That Require Multiple Copies and Specify Paper Copies To Be Required in Electronic Format [Docket No.: FDA-2018-N-0628] (RIN: 0910-AH48) received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 3550. A letter from the Director, Regulations Policy and Management Staff, FDA, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Regulation Requiring an Approved New Drug Application for Drugs Sterilized by Irradiation [Docket No.: FDA-2017-N-6924] (RIN: 0910-AH47) received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 3551. A letter from the Director, Office of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting the Commission's final NUREG -- Surface Deformation [NUREG-0800, Chapter 2] received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 3552. A letter from the Chair, National Advisory Council on Indian Education, transmitting the Council's 2018-2019 Annual Report to Congress; to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 3553. A letter from the Federal Register Liaison Officer, U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, transmitting the Department's notice of final rulemaking -- Temporary Suspension of the Population Estimates Challenge Program [Docket Number: 191211-0109] (RIN: 0607-AA57) received January 13, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 3554. A letter from the Acting Assistant General Counsel for Regulatory Services, Office of General Counsel, Department of Education, transmitting the Department's final regulations -- Adjustment of Civil Monetary Penalties for Inflation (RIN: 1801-AA20) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on the Judiciary. 3555. A letter from the Secretary, Department of Education, transmitting the Department's final regulations -- Adjustment of Civil Monetary Penalties for Inflation (RIN: 1801-AA20) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on the Judiciary. 3556. A letter from the Assistant General Counsel for Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency, Office of the General Counsel, Department of Energy, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Inflation Adjustment of Civil Monetary Penalties received January 8, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on the Judiciary. 3557. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Amendment of Class E Airspace; Redding, CA [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0625; Airspace Docket No.: 19-AWP-2] (RIN: 2120-AA66) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3558. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Amendment of the Class E Airspace; Coudersport, PA; and Revocation of Class E Airspace; Galeton, PA [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0757; Airspace Docket No.: 19-AEA- 13] (RIN: 2120-AA66) received January 9, 2019, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3559. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2016-9072; Product Identifier 2015-NM-110-AD; Amendment 39-19797; AD 2019-23-04] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3560. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0983; Product Identifier 2019-NM-171-AD; Amendment 39-21010; AD 2019-25-12] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3561. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Embraer S.A. Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0499; Product Identifier 2019-NM-088-AD; Amendment 39-21015; AD 2019-25-16] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3562. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0603; Product Identifier 2019-NM-087-AD; Amendment 39-21013; AD 2019-25-14] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3563. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Viking Air Limited (Type Certificate Previously Held by Bombardier, Inc.; Canadair Limited) Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0710; Product Identifier 2019-NM-060-AD; Amendment 39-21009; AD 2019-25-11] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3564. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Fokker Services B.V. Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0709; Product Identifier 2019-NM-127-AD; Amendment 39-21008; AD 2019-25-10] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3565. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Bombardier, Inc., Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0993; Product Identifier 2019-NM-198-AD; Amendment 39-21017; AD 2019-25-18] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3566. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Fokker Services B.V. Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0703; Product Identifier 2019-NM-106-AD; Amendment 39-21014; AD 2019-25-15] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3567. A letter from the Management and Program Analyst, FAA, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Airworthiness Directives; Bombardier, Inc., Airplanes [Docket No.: FAA-2019-0256; Product Identifier 2019-NM-027-AD; Amendment 39-19786; AD 2019-22-07] (RIN: 2120-AA64) received January 9, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 3568. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule -- Revenue Procedure 2020-5 (I.R.B. 2020-1) received January 10, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means.

2020-01-06

Unknown

House

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgH236-3

formal

based

white supremacist

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, tomorrow will be 4 weeks--4 weeks--since House Democrats impeached the President of the United States with purely partisan support. Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff did not wait to fill out the factual record. They did not even wait to see their own subpoenas through the legal system. They plowed ahead for two reasons: They said impeachment was too urgent to wait--too urgent to wait--and they said they had already proven their case. But since then, House Democrats have spent 4 weeks contradicting both of those claims. They spent 4 weeks demonstrating through their actions that impeachment is actually not that urgent--not that urgent--and they do not actually have much confidence in their case. An arbitrary 4-week delay does not show urgency. These demands for the Senate to precommit to reopening the House investigation do not show confidence. There is a reason why the House inquiry that led to President Nixon's resignation took 14 months of hearings in addition to the separate special prosecutor. There is a reason why the Clinton impeachment inquiry drew on years of prior investigation and mountains of testimony from firsthand fact witnesses. That is because both of those Houses of Representatives knew they had to prove their case--prove their case before submitting it to the Senate for judgment. Both situations involved legal battles over executive privilege and extensive litigation, both times not after a trial had been handed to the Senate but beforehand. When the cases were actually being compiled, there were mountains of evidence, mountains of testimony, and long legal battles over privilege. None of this discovery took place over here in the Senate. The Constitution gives the sole power of impeachment to the House. If the House majority wants to impeach a President, the ball is in their court, but they have to do the work. They have to prove their case. Nothing--nothing in our history or our Constitution says a House majority can pass what amounts to a half-baked censure resolution and then insist that the Senate fill in the blanks. There is no constitutional exception for a House majority with a short attention span. I think everyone knows this process has not been some earnest, factfinding mission with House Democrats following each thread wherever it leads. The Speaker of the House did not reluctantly decide to impeach after pouring over secondhand impressions ofcivil servants. This was a predetermined political conclusion. Members of her conference had been publicly promising it literally for years. That is why the investigation stopped long before the House had come anywhere near proving what they allege. They pulled the plug early because the facts were never the point. They were never the point. The point was to check a political box. For goodness' sake, the very morning after the House's historic vote, Speaker Pelosi literally chastised reporters for asking too many questions about impeachment. She tried to change the subject to economic policy. She said: Any other questions? . . . Anybody want to talk about the SALT tax. . . . I'm not going to answer any more questions on this-- Referring to impeachment. Really? Really? You impeach a President of the United States, and the very next morning, there is nothing to see here? Does that sound like the Speaker of the House really thinks the survival of the Republic is on the line? Does anyone really think that if Democrats truly believe the President of the United States was a criminal who is imperiling our country, they would have abandoned the search for evidence because they didn't want to make time for due process; that they would have pulled the plug on the investigation just because it sounded good to finish by Christmas; that they would have delayed the trial for months while they test-drove new talking points; that they would have been trying to change the subject 12 hours after the vote? I cannot say what Democrats do and do not really believe, but they certainly do not seem to display the urgency or the seriousness you would expect from people who actually thought they had proven the President should be removed. On television last weekend, the Speaker bragged that ``this President is impeached for life,'' regardless of what the Senate does--regardless of what the Senate does, as if the ultimate verdict were sort of an afterthought. Likewise, the Senate Democratic leader recently said that as long as he can try to use the trial process to hurt some Republicans' reelection chances, ``it's a win-win.'' That is what this is all about. The Democratic leader just laid it right out there in case anybody had any doubt. What a revealing admission. Forget about the fate of the Presidency. Forget about the Constitution. As long as the process helps Democrats' political fortunes, our Democratic colleagues call it a ``win-win.'' Do these sound like leaders who really believe we are in a constitutional crisis, one that requires the most severe remedy in our entire system of government? Does it sound like that? Here is how deep we have come into bizarro world. The latest Democratic talking point is, if the Senate conducts a trial based on what the House itself looked at, we will be engaged in a coverup. Did you get that? Unless the Senate steps outside of our lane and takes it upon ourselves to supplement the House case, it is a coverup? Do they think the entire country has forgotten what they were saying just a couple of days ago? We heard over and over that the House case, on its own, was totally damming and convincing. That is what they were saying a few days ago. Clearly, a majority of the House felt that it was sufficient to impeach, and a number of Senate Democrats were happy to prejudge the case publicly and suggest the House had proven enough for removal. But now, all of a sudden, the story has reversed. Now, we hardly know anything. Now, the investigation is just beginning. Now, what the House has produced is so weak that they are calling their own investigation a coverup. Who would be the author of this coverup--Chairman Schiff? We have arrived at a simple contradiction. Two things cannot both be true. House Democrats' case cannot simultaneously be so robust that it was enough to impeach in the first place but also so weak that the Senate needs to go fishing. If the existing case is strong, there is no need for the judge and the jury to reopen the investigation. If the existing case is weak, House Democrats should not have impeached in the first place. I think I am beginning to understand why the Speaker wanted to change the subject to tax policy. Unfortunately, no matter how irresponsibly this has been handled across the Capitol, impeachment is not a political game, and the U.S. Senate will not treat it like one. A House majority fueled by political animus may have started this with frivolity, but it will fall to the Senate--to the Senate--to end it with seriousness and sobriety. It will fall to us to do what the Founders intended: to take the long view, to move beyond partisan passions, and to do what the long-term good of our institution and our Nation demands.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS167-6

formal

extremists

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, every day brings more repudiation of the conventional wisdom of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, breathlessly--breathlessly--amplified by the mainstream media, that the strike on Soleimani would unite Iranians behind the regime. Remember, that is what they were all saying, that the strike on Soleimani would unite Iranians behind the regime. Proud Iranians continue, however, to take to the streets not to rage against America or Israel but to vent their frustration against the corrupt, theocratic regime that has led Iran down a ruinous path. I spoke about these protests before the strike on Soleimani, and I will continue to speak out about them. I have long believed the United States should care about human rights and democracy, whether in Russia, China, Hong Kong, Burma, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, or Iran. The promotion of human rights and the defense of democracy should not necessarily be the driving force of our foreign policy, but it should be an important component. I ask my Democratic colleagues who share this view to set aside their hatred for Donald Trump--even just for a moment--and to step back to look at what has been happening across Iran for years: the repression of women, the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, and the brutal suppression of dissent. Was the Obama administration right to meet the 2009 Green Revolution with silence? Consider the story of Iran's only female Olympic medalist, who this week defected--defected--from Iran and requested asylum; or the Iranian state TV broadcasters who quit, apologizing to the public for years of lying on behalf of the mullahs; or the innocent protesters who are being killed and wounded by agents of the state. These are well-known realities. They were well known when, 12 days ago, the United States took the most dangerous terrorist off the battlefield, but mystifyingly, many voices here in Washington and the media sought to blame the escalating tensions in the region on President Trump. We heard from leading Democrats that the operation to eliminate Soleimani was one of the administration's ``needless provocations''--needless provocations. We heard that the cycle of violence was America's responsibility. All of this--all of it--flies in the face of the reasonable analysis some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were offering before--before--Donald Trump became President. In 2007, 30 Democratic Senators joined Republicans to support an amendment warning of the need to prevent ``Iran from turning Shia militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or coopting institutions of the legitimate government of Iraq.'' That was back in 2007, with 30 Democrats. Few more prescient warnings have been pronounced by this body, but, unfortunately, it went unheeded by the Obama administration, which withdrew U.S. forces from Iraq, effectively abandoning it to Soleimani and his proxies. As recently as 2015, the Democratic leader warned that the JCPAO failed to address Iran's destabilizing malign activities and that Iran would use its windfall to ``redouble its efforts to create even more trouble in the Middle East and, perhaps, beyond.'' That was the Democratic leader in 2015. Senator Menendez hit the nail on the head as well. He warned: ``If thereis a fear of war in the region, it will be fueled by Iran and its proxies and exacerbated by an agreement that allows Iran to possess an industrial-sized nuclear program and enough money in sanctions relief to significantly continue to fund its hegemonic intentions throughout the region.'' Senator Menendez. So many of our Democratic colleagues understood all this quite clearly when a Democrat occupied the White House, and it came true. It came true. Iran's aggression only accelerated after the Obama administration's deal. The question for us is not whom to blame. That much is clear. The question is what to do about it. As Iran's aggression became focused on the United States, as the risk to our personnel and interests grew, after months of repeated warnings, President Trump took action. I am glad the strike against Soleimani has provided some justice--some justice--to his countless victims, hundreds of Americans and many more across the Middle East. We don't yet know if Soleimani will prove irreplaceable, but his death will significantly disrupt Iran's death machine and will change Iran's long-held misconception that they could literally get away with the murder of Americans without a meaningful response. President Trump's strategy seems to have reestablished deterrence. The Senate risks jeopardizing what we have gained with this strike if it ties the military's hands and tells Iran that we have no stomach for this. America can hardly be defeated on the battlefield, but we can be defeated at home on the political front. We can allow ourselves to become divided and play into the hands of our adversaries. Our divisions at home are significant. Let us not allow them to pollute our judgment on foreign affairs. Let's not make our adversaries' lives easier by tying our military's hands.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS168

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, every day brings more repudiation of the conventional wisdom of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, breathlessly--breathlessly--amplified by the mainstream media, that the strike on Soleimani would unite Iranians behind the regime. Remember, that is what they were all saying, that the strike on Soleimani would unite Iranians behind the regime. Proud Iranians continue, however, to take to the streets not to rage against America or Israel but to vent their frustration against the corrupt, theocratic regime that has led Iran down a ruinous path. I spoke about these protests before the strike on Soleimani, and I will continue to speak out about them. I have long believed the United States should care about human rights and democracy, whether in Russia, China, Hong Kong, Burma, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, or Iran. The promotion of human rights and the defense of democracy should not necessarily be the driving force of our foreign policy, but it should be an important component. I ask my Democratic colleagues who share this view to set aside their hatred for Donald Trump--even just for a moment--and to step back to look at what has been happening across Iran for years: the repression of women, the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, and the brutal suppression of dissent. Was the Obama administration right to meet the 2009 Green Revolution with silence? Consider the story of Iran's only female Olympic medalist, who this week defected--defected--from Iran and requested asylum; or the Iranian state TV broadcasters who quit, apologizing to the public for years of lying on behalf of the mullahs; or the innocent protesters who are being killed and wounded by agents of the state. These are well-known realities. They were well known when, 12 days ago, the United States took the most dangerous terrorist off the battlefield, but mystifyingly, many voices here in Washington and the media sought to blame the escalating tensions in the region on President Trump. We heard from leading Democrats that the operation to eliminate Soleimani was one of the administration's ``needless provocations''--needless provocations. We heard that the cycle of violence was America's responsibility. All of this--all of it--flies in the face of the reasonable analysis some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were offering before--before--Donald Trump became President. In 2007, 30 Democratic Senators joined Republicans to support an amendment warning of the need to prevent ``Iran from turning Shia militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or coopting institutions of the legitimate government of Iraq.'' That was back in 2007, with 30 Democrats. Few more prescient warnings have been pronounced by this body, but, unfortunately, it went unheeded by the Obama administration, which withdrew U.S. forces from Iraq, effectively abandoning it to Soleimani and his proxies. As recently as 2015, the Democratic leader warned that the JCPAO failed to address Iran's destabilizing malign activities and that Iran would use its windfall to ``redouble its efforts to create even more trouble in the Middle East and, perhaps, beyond.'' That was the Democratic leader in 2015. Senator Menendez hit the nail on the head as well. He warned: ``If thereis a fear of war in the region, it will be fueled by Iran and its proxies and exacerbated by an agreement that allows Iran to possess an industrial-sized nuclear program and enough money in sanctions relief to significantly continue to fund its hegemonic intentions throughout the region.'' Senator Menendez. So many of our Democratic colleagues understood all this quite clearly when a Democrat occupied the White House, and it came true. It came true. Iran's aggression only accelerated after the Obama administration's deal. The question for us is not whom to blame. That much is clear. The question is what to do about it. As Iran's aggression became focused on the United States, as the risk to our personnel and interests grew, after months of repeated warnings, President Trump took action. I am glad the strike against Soleimani has provided some justice--some justice--to his countless victims, hundreds of Americans and many more across the Middle East. We don't yet know if Soleimani will prove irreplaceable, but his death will significantly disrupt Iran's death machine and will change Iran's long-held misconception that they could literally get away with the murder of Americans without a meaningful response. President Trump's strategy seems to have reestablished deterrence. The Senate risks jeopardizing what we have gained with this strike if it ties the military's hands and tells Iran that we have no stomach for this. America can hardly be defeated on the battlefield, but we can be defeated at home on the political front. We can allow ourselves to become divided and play into the hands of our adversaries. Our divisions at home are significant. Let us not allow them to pollute our judgment on foreign affairs. Let's not make our adversaries' lives easier by tying our military's hands.

2020-01-06

Mr. McCONNELL

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS168

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report. The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Peter Gaynor, of Rhode Island, to be Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security.

2020-01-06

The PRESIDING OFFICER

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS169-3

formal

single

homophobic

Impeachment Madam President, on an issue closer to home, at the end of last week, Speaker Pelosi announced that she was finally ready to send over the Articles of Impeachment--the next step in a saga that began 3 years ago. That is right, on January 20, 2017--Inauguration Day--the Washington Post ran an article entitled ``The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.'' It is important that we not forget this. We need to remember how we got here. Democrats would like to think that this impeachment was the result of a high-minded, impartial, thoughtful procession. It wasn't. It was the result of a 3-year-long partisan crusade to damage or remove this President. It is fair to say that the actual impeachment process was the most rushed, most biased, and least impartial impeachment process in history. For evidence, look no further than the Democrats' behavior in the wake of the impeachment vote. Democrats rushed the Articles of Impeachment through the House because, we were told, it was urgent that the President be removed from office. One Democrat even said that the House was acting hastily because there was ``a crime spree in progress.'' And then what did Democrats do? Instead ofsending the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate so the Senate could conduct a trial, Speaker Pelosi and the House Democratic caucus sat on the articles for close to a month. The delay was so flagrantly unjustified that even Senate Democrats started to express their impatience with the House. ``If it's serious and urgent, send them over.'' That is a quote from the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She went on to say: ``If it isn't, don't send it over.'' A fair point. But House Democrats never really believed in the seriousness and urgency of the articles. If they had, they would have sent them over to the Senate immediately. Of course, while Senate Democrats have gotten impatient with the House, Senate Democrats have also demonstrated a healthy dose of partisanship around the impeachment. Senate Republicans have proposed modeling the rules for the first phase of this impeachment trial on the rules that governed the Clinton impeachment trial--rules that were agreed to unanimously by Democrats and Republicans at the time--but Senate Democrats are having none of it. These rules were eminently fair and, as I said, were supported by every single Democrat before President Clinton's impeachment trial. These rules gave both sides--the House impeachment managers and the President and his team--an opportunity to make their case, and they gave Senators an opportunity to question both sides and only then make a determination as to whether additional information or witnesses were needed. These rules were good enough for Democrats and Republicans back then; they ought to be good enough for Democrats and Republicans today. I am glad Speaker Pelosi is finally sending over the articles so we can move forward with this process and then get back to doing the work the American people sent us here to do, but I am saddened by the damage Democrats have done to the institution and the processes of government. The overturning of an election--the overturning of the American people's choice--is a very serious thing. It is a remedy to be wielded only with careful deliberation, in the most serious circumstances. The Democrats have spent the past 3 years treating impeachment not as a remedy of last resort but as a way of overturning an election where they didn't like the outcome. That is not what impeachment was intended to be. By hijacking the impeachment process for political purposes, Democrats have made it clear that they believe election outcomes don't matter and that they believe it should be the Democratic Party, not the democratic process, that decides elections. And that is profoundly disturbing. This fall, the American people will have a chance to render their verdict on the Trump Presidency. In fact, Presidential primary voting begins in just a few short weeks. It is a great pity that Democrats have sought to preempt the next Presidential election with a partisan impeachment process in Washington, DC. I hope we can move beyond this impeachment and the hyper-partisanship the Democrats have engaged in over the past 3 years. This institution should be in the business of governing, not endlessly trying to overturn an election. I hope in the future we can keep impeachment as a serious remedy for the most serious of crimes, not as a political weapon to be used whenever a partisan majority in Congress despises the occupant in the White House. We will do our constitutional duty in the Senate over the next few weeks, and after that, I look forward to getting back to the business of the American people. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS170-4

formal

single

homophobic

War Powers Resolution Madam President, let me speak to an issue that has been raised this morning, which is timely and critically important. The President tweeted last week to the country: ``All is well.'' As we were teetering on the verge of war with Iran, he tweeted: ``All is well.'' But now details have come to light, and it is clear that all is not well. U.S. servicemembers of Ain Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq faced a sustained hour and a half of Iranian retaliatory attacks last week--a barrage described by one of the most senior commanders on the base as ``designed and organized to inflict as many casualties as possible.'' Contrary to the tweet by our President that all is well, reports from witnesses suggest that despite heroic planning, we were, in fact, very fortunate--if not lucky--that none of our U.S. personnel were killed. This gets me to the issue that needs to be brought before the Senate, one that goes to the heart of this Senate's critical, often neglected, constitutional responsibility. It is not whether Iranian General Soleimani was an enemy with American blood on his hands--that is a fact--but it is too simplistic to stop there. We have known that fact for a long time. Previous Presidents of both political parties have known General Soleimani's background--it is not in dispute--but it is a distraction to stop with that conversation. The real question is whether President Trump, when he made the decision to target General Soleimani, considered the possibility that it would quickly escalate into a much larger confrontation with Iran, which is the possibility of a war--a distinct possibility and one never authorized by Congress. Based on the administration's briefing last week, which I sat through, Idoubt if even they think they need congressional authorization to ask our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters to participate in another war in the Middle East. The first question asked by Senator McConnell at the briefing, which was attended by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was whether there was a need for authorization under the War Powers Act before the United States continued to have its conflict with Iran. The answer that came from the Secretary of Defense was that there was no authorization necessary. He went on to say that he thought even the debate over authorization could be unsettling and troublesome for our troops if it appeared that we were uncertain as to whether we were ready to go to war. Based on that briefing, I doubt this administration believes any congressional authorization is needed for the military action that has been taken or that might even be contemplated. Quite simply, the fact that the Senate has not exercised its constitutional right, authority, and responsibility to determine whether we should go to war with Iran troubles me. I am deeply concerned that if Iran retaliates further or if the President decides to escalate the confrontation, this Chamber will not even recognize--let alone act on--its constitutional responsibility under Article I, Section 8. That is why I have joined my colleague and friend Senator Tim Kaine, of Virginia, in invoking the War Powers Act--a law passed over President Nixon's veto after Presidents of both parties deliberately misled the American people on the Vietnam war. It is hard for those who did not live during that era to appreciate what that war did to this Nation. First and foremost, it cost us almost 50,000 American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Americans were injured--men and women in uniform who bravely served our country. They gave their lives and came home with the scars they carried for their lifetimes. The billions of dollars that were spent and our involvement in that war, which divided this country at its core, are hard to put into words in just a few moments. At the end of it, though, Congress realized that it had failed in its own responsibility to even declare a war against Vietnam. So we passed the War Powers Act and set up a process that said we are not going to let that happen again, that the American people will participate in any future decisions about whether we go to war, and that they will do it through their elected Congressmen and elected Senators. The War Powers Act passed the Congress, and it was sent to President Nixon. He vetoed it and said we didn't want to give that additional authority to Congress. Then, in a rare, rare moment, Congress overrode President Nixon's veto, and the War Powers Act became the law of the land. That War Powers Act, I believe, applies to the current situation that is escalating with Iran. That is why I have joined with Senator Kaine in his invoking the War Powers Resolution. What I find particularly troubling about the administration's march to war in Iran is that the administration's own actions have contributed to the current tensions and problems we have with Iran. Before taking office, Iran's nuclear weapons program was halted because of an historic agreement President Obama negotiated. In cooperation with our allies in Europe, as well as with China and Russia, President Obama negotiated a treaty that required international inspectors to be on the ground in Iran to make certain that Iran lived up to its terms. Of course, Iran was not happy about these inspectors, but it accepted them. On several different occasions, we had representatives of those inspectors come and say, yes, that they had had virtually unlimited access to Iran in order to make certain Iran didn't violate the nuclear agreement. Iran continued in its malign behaviors in the region, but containment was easier without the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb. During the campaign, President Trump said the first thing he would do would be to eliminate that international agreement that required international inspectors, which is what stopped Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. It made no sense for the President to take the position that he did, but that is the position that he announced during the campaign, and that is exactly what he did after he was elected President. He withdrew the United States from this agreement that stopped Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Then he increased sanctions on Iran, and the tensions between our countries grew. The President pursued a policy of regime change that is very difficult to explain, if not to justify--trying to flatter on one day and to confront on the next day. He proposed to meet with President Rouhani, of Iran, to negotiate a supposedly bigger deal, a better deal. Then he threatened Iran militarily and tightened sanctions soon after. These efforts went nowhere except to increase tensions between the United States and Iran. Iran lashed out on American interests. We were alienated from many of our allies, particularly those who were party to the nuclear agreement, and Iran inched closer to restarting its nuclear program. In recent weeks alone, President Trump has managed to reverse the recent Iraqi protest settlement that warned Iran to stop meddling in its particular politics, which has led to the real possibility that American troops in Iraq that are critical to countering ISIS will be expelled. Similarly, after months of anti-government protests in Iran, President Trump has almost instantaneously united the Iranian public opinion against us with the targeting of General Soleimani. Iran has now announced it will exceed the limits of the nuclear program that were imposed by the nuclear agreement, from which President Trump walked away, and our interests around the region are on high alert for fear of a retaliatory attack by the Iranians. So there are real questions as to how President Trump's Iran policy serves long-term American security interests and as to whether this body is ready to at least debate the possibility of another war with Iran. Before President Trump plunges us into another reckless Middle East war, shouldn't we first remember how we were fooled into invading Iraq in the first place? I remember full well. I was a Member of the Senate when we were given the proposal of taking military action against Iraq because of its purported possession of these military devices that were threatening to the United States and to the region. Many of us were skeptical. The weapons of mass destruction charge didn't have the evidence that we thought was convincing. In the end, 23 Senators--22 Democrats and 1 Republican--joined in voting against the invasion of Iraq. I was one of those Senators. I was not convinced there were weapons of mass destruction. After the invasion and after careful inspection, it turned out that there were no weapons of mass destruction--the single event that really brought us into the conflict. Then, as now, we were led to believe there was an urgent spiraling of events that required U.S. military intervention. Mark me down as skeptical--skeptical as to whether another invasion by the United States of a Muslim nation in the Middle East is in the best interest of national security. Many around President Trump, particularly Secretary of State Pompeo, have been speaking of this conflict with Iraq for a long period of time. Some of them are the same people who endorsed the invasion of Iraq almost 20 years ago. We are still in Iraq. We have given up more than 5,000 American lives, with many having been injured and with $1 trillion or more having been spent. It is possible the Iraqis will just ask us to leave. Think of that. After all that we have put into their country, their legislature--their Parliament--voted several weeks ago to tell us to leave. In fact, one of the great tragedies of the Iraq war and one that few of its architects ever owned up to was that the Iraq war was actually empowering Iran in the region. Iran became a potent force because, in many respects, in its efforts in the Middle East, the United States created that opportunity. These same unrepentant voices are again beating the drums for regime change in Iran and another war in the Middle East. They do so with a President who has made more than 15,000 false or misleading statements while he has been in office--15,000--with hiseven going so far as to trust Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, over our own intelligence sources, making it impossible to trust anything he says when it comes to matters as grave as war. Some have even had the audacity to argue that the 2001 authorization for use of military force in Iraq is somehow a permission slip for the invasion of Iran. That is preposterous. I cannot imagine anyone here who took that vote 18 years ago thought that he was authorizing for future Presidents 18 years later to invade another country in the Middle East. I certainly didn't. The Constitution is clear. Article I, section 8 says the power to declare war is an explicit power of Congress, as it should be. One should never send our sons and daughters into war without having the knowledge and consent of the American people. Our Founding Fathers were wise in making sure this awesome power did not rest with a King or a Queen or anyone pretending to be but with the people of the United States and their elected Representatives. I have made this same argument and much of the same speech in the past regardless of whether the occupant of the White House was a Democrat or a Republican. This Congress, already afraid to stand up to many of President Trump's worst instincts, must not do so in a march to another war in the Middle East. As such, I urge my colleagues here to do our job and reaffirm the Senate's constitutional role in matters of war. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Unknown

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS172

formal

based

white supremacist

Mr. COTTON. Madam President, in the next few days, Senate Democrats will move to discharge a War Powers Resolution to tie the President's hands in defending this Nation against Iran and terrorist masterminds like Qasem Soleimani. Let's think about how we got here and the implications of this reckless action. Qasem Soleimani has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands and hundreds of thousands of innocent souls across the Middle East. For more than 20 years, he was the Supreme Leader's most trusted lieutenant, Iran's terror mastermind, and the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by supplying the most deadly kinds of roadside bombs soldiers ever faced. He and his proxies and Iranian leaders like him are responsible for bombings of our Embassies in places like Lebanon and Kuwait. They are, in no small part, responsible for the ongoing horror of the Syrian civil war, for the civil war in Yemen. There is no doubt, based on the intelligence we have and this bloodthirsty past, that Qasem Soleimani was in Baghdad on January 2 to plot something very dangerous and very big that was going to target Americans once again. We should all be thankful that Qasem Soleimani no longer walks the Earth, and we should be proud of the troops who executed that mission. The world is a safer place and America is a safer nation because of it. The people of Iran have been given a voice against the man who was responsible for mowing them down in protests over the years and whose death they have been out on the streets celebrating even though they risk being mowed down by their own security forces once again. Yet, over the last 2 weeks, the Democrats have been able to do nothing but express their regret for the President's decision to eliminate Qasem Soleimani. And make no mistake--this War Powers Resolution is not about the future; it is about delivering an implicit or, if you listen to their words and don't just read the resolution, an explicit rebuke to the President for ordering the killing of Qasem Soleimani. They certainly want to prevent the President from doing anything like that in the future. That is why they have introduced this War Powers Resolution. We should always remind ourselves when we are having a war powers debate, as we do from time to time, the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional. It was passed by a liberal Congress in 1973 at the height of Watergate, and not a single President since then has acknowledged its constitutionality--not a single one, to include all the Democrats. I hear a lot about the Constitution these days and reclaiming our authority to declare war and to constrain the Executive. I guess all those constitutional experts missed the Federalist Papers and their authoritative explanation of the Constitution and why we have the government we do. We have a House of Representatives with 435 people to be the institution that is most closely tied to popular opinion. We have a Senate to act as the cool and deliberate sense of community. And we have a single President--a single President--to act on behalf of the entire Nation in moments of peril. Federalist 70, if they would just open up that authoritative explanation of the Constitution, says why there is one President, not a council of two or three or four, as some of the States had at the time of the founding. Because of the division of opinion and perspective and temperament that an executive council would have, there is one President--one President--who can act, as Federalist 70 said, with energy and dispatch and, yes, in some occasions, with secrecy. So if the Founders didn't think we should have an executive council of 3 or 4 or 5 people, imagine what they would have thought about 535 commanders in chief making operational decisions about when to take action on the battlefield. These debates about War Powers Resolutions are really about how many lawyers and armchair rangers can dance on the head of a pin. Do you think wars and battles are won with paper resolutions? Those wars and battles are won with iron resolution. Do you think the ayatollahs are intimidated by ``whereas'' clauses and joint resolutions? The ayatollahs are intimidated, deterred, and scared when we incinerate their terror mastermind and we tell them that we will do it again if they harm another American. Even if you grant the War Powers Resolution constitutional, look at the actual text of this resolution. It makes no exception for Iran developing a nuclear weapon. The ayatollahs could hold a press conference tomorrow or the Supreme Leader could tweet that they are going to rush to a nuclear breakout. The President would have to come to Congress if he would want to take any kind of action to deter it. It makes no exception for designated terrorist organizations and individuals, like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, who have killed so many Americans and continue to target them today. It makes no exception for attacks on our allies in the Middle East, nations like Israel. The sponsor of this resolution will say: Oh, it makes an exception for imminent attacks. We have seen what that gets us over the last couple of weeks--again, lawyers and armchair rangers arguing about the meaning of ``imminence.'' Well, I have to say that whether an attack is imminent looks pretty different if you are a soldier on patrol in Iraq than if you are a comfortable Senator sitting behind secure walls and armed guards. None of this means Congress has no role in matters of life and death on the battlefield. It is very far from it, in fact, and I will take a back seat to no one in asserting that constitutional authority. I would remind my colleagues that when we had an opportunity to insist that Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran be submitted to this Chamber as a treaty, there was one Senator who voted to insist on that--only one. This guy. Ninety-eight other Senators were perfectly willing to create some made-up, phony-baloney procedure that allowed Barack Obama to submit a nuclear arms agreement with a sworn and mortal enemy that chants ``Death to America'' and put it into effect with a large majority opposed to him, as opposed to the two-thirds majority that our Constitution requires for treaties. We do have a tremendous degree of constitutional authority in the Congress. We regulate interstate commerce, which means sanctions. We confirm Ambassadors. We confirm the President's Cabinet. We declare war, which we have done only a few times in our past despite hundreds of instances of introducing troops. But most importantly, and the way to constrain the Executive if this Congress thinks he should be constrained in a particular case, we have the spending power--in particular, the spending power for our Armed Forces. That is the way the Congress--any Congress with any President--can control the use of the Armed Forces by the President. It is something this Congress has done a lot in the past. We did it in Vietnam, did it in Nicaragua, and did it in Somalia. There were plenty of times where the President has acted in some ways in a much more aggressive and far-reaching fashion than President Trump did just a couple weeks ago--the first Taiwan Strait crisis, Granada in 1983, Libya in 1986, and Iran in 1988. I would even say Libya again in 2011, although most of my Democratic colleagues like to send that down the memory hole since it was a Democratic President. So I would simply say that if you disagree with the President's decision to kill the world's most sadistic, bloodthirsty, terrorist mastermind and you want to stop him from doing so again, file your bill to prohibit the use of any taxpayer funds for such operations. It is very simple. It is one page. I will help you write it, if you need help--one page: No funds will be used to support operations by the Armed Forces against the Government of Iran or any of its officials. Do it. Have the courage of your convictions. Why are we not seeing that bill? Because it failed just last year. All of these same politicians offered language on our annual Defense bill to try to prohibit the use of any funds in operations like we just saw, and it failed. We passed a defense bill, as we always do, by overwhelming majorities, which means they don't have the votes because they know their position is not popular with the American people. Not surprisingly, the American people don't want their elected leaders to act as lawyers for the ayatollahs. So if you are not going to act in what is our true constitutional power, spare us the unconstitutional and dangerous War Powers Resolutions and simply let the people who are serious about our national security--from troops on up to the top--do what is necessary to keep this country safe. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. COTTON

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS176-4

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Mr. COTTON. Madam President, in the next few days, Senate Democrats will move to discharge a War Powers Resolution to tie the President's hands in defending this Nation against Iran and terrorist masterminds like Qasem Soleimani. Let's think about how we got here and the implications of this reckless action. Qasem Soleimani has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands and hundreds of thousands of innocent souls across the Middle East. For more than 20 years, he was the Supreme Leader's most trusted lieutenant, Iran's terror mastermind, and the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by supplying the most deadly kinds of roadside bombs soldiers ever faced. He and his proxies and Iranian leaders like him are responsible for bombings of our Embassies in places like Lebanon and Kuwait. They are, in no small part, responsible for the ongoing horror of the Syrian civil war, for the civil war in Yemen. There is no doubt, based on the intelligence we have and this bloodthirsty past, that Qasem Soleimani was in Baghdad on January 2 to plot something very dangerous and very big that was going to target Americans once again. We should all be thankful that Qasem Soleimani no longer walks the Earth, and we should be proud of the troops who executed that mission. The world is a safer place and America is a safer nation because of it. The people of Iran have been given a voice against the man who was responsible for mowing them down in protests over the years and whose death they have been out on the streets celebrating even though they risk being mowed down by their own security forces once again. Yet, over the last 2 weeks, the Democrats have been able to do nothing but express their regret for the President's decision to eliminate Qasem Soleimani. And make no mistake--this War Powers Resolution is not about the future; it is about delivering an implicit or, if you listen to their words and don't just read the resolution, an explicit rebuke to the President for ordering the killing of Qasem Soleimani. They certainly want to prevent the President from doing anything like that in the future. That is why they have introduced this War Powers Resolution. We should always remind ourselves when we are having a war powers debate, as we do from time to time, the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional. It was passed by a liberal Congress in 1973 at the height of Watergate, and not a single President since then has acknowledged its constitutionality--not a single one, to include all the Democrats. I hear a lot about the Constitution these days and reclaiming our authority to declare war and to constrain the Executive. I guess all those constitutional experts missed the Federalist Papers and their authoritative explanation of the Constitution and why we have the government we do. We have a House of Representatives with 435 people to be the institution that is most closely tied to popular opinion. We have a Senate to act as the cool and deliberate sense of community. And we have a single President--a single President--to act on behalf of the entire Nation in moments of peril. Federalist 70, if they would just open up that authoritative explanation of the Constitution, says why there is one President, not a council of two or three or four, as some of the States had at the time of the founding. Because of the division of opinion and perspective and temperament that an executive council would have, there is one President--one President--who can act, as Federalist 70 said, with energy and dispatch and, yes, in some occasions, with secrecy. So if the Founders didn't think we should have an executive council of 3 or 4 or 5 people, imagine what they would have thought about 535 commanders in chief making operational decisions about when to take action on the battlefield. These debates about War Powers Resolutions are really about how many lawyers and armchair rangers can dance on the head of a pin. Do you think wars and battles are won with paper resolutions? Those wars and battles are won with iron resolution. Do you think the ayatollahs are intimidated by ``whereas'' clauses and joint resolutions? The ayatollahs are intimidated, deterred, and scared when we incinerate their terror mastermind and we tell them that we will do it again if they harm another American. Even if you grant the War Powers Resolution constitutional, look at the actual text of this resolution. It makes no exception for Iran developing a nuclear weapon. The ayatollahs could hold a press conference tomorrow or the Supreme Leader could tweet that they are going to rush to a nuclear breakout. The President would have to come to Congress if he would want to take any kind of action to deter it. It makes no exception for designated terrorist organizations and individuals, like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, who have killed so many Americans and continue to target them today. It makes no exception for attacks on our allies in the Middle East, nations like Israel. The sponsor of this resolution will say: Oh, it makes an exception for imminent attacks. We have seen what that gets us over the last couple of weeks--again, lawyers and armchair rangers arguing about the meaning of ``imminence.'' Well, I have to say that whether an attack is imminent looks pretty different if you are a soldier on patrol in Iraq than if you are a comfortable Senator sitting behind secure walls and armed guards. None of this means Congress has no role in matters of life and death on the battlefield. It is very far from it, in fact, and I will take a back seat to no one in asserting that constitutional authority. I would remind my colleagues that when we had an opportunity to insist that Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran be submitted to this Chamber as a treaty, there was one Senator who voted to insist on that--only one. This guy. Ninety-eight other Senators were perfectly willing to create some made-up, phony-baloney procedure that allowed Barack Obama to submit a nuclear arms agreement with a sworn and mortal enemy that chants ``Death to America'' and put it into effect with a large majority opposed to him, as opposed to the two-thirds majority that our Constitution requires for treaties. We do have a tremendous degree of constitutional authority in the Congress. We regulate interstate commerce, which means sanctions. We confirm Ambassadors. We confirm the President's Cabinet. We declare war, which we have done only a few times in our past despite hundreds of instances of introducing troops. But most importantly, and the way to constrain the Executive if this Congress thinks he should be constrained in a particular case, we have the spending power--in particular, the spending power for our Armed Forces. That is the way the Congress--any Congress with any President--can control the use of the Armed Forces by the President. It is something this Congress has done a lot in the past. We did it in Vietnam, did it in Nicaragua, and did it in Somalia. There were plenty of times where the President has acted in some ways in a much more aggressive and far-reaching fashion than President Trump did just a couple weeks ago--the first Taiwan Strait crisis, Granada in 1983, Libya in 1986, and Iran in 1988. I would even say Libya again in 2011, although most of my Democratic colleagues like to send that down the memory hole since it was a Democratic President. So I would simply say that if you disagree with the President's decision to kill the world's most sadistic, bloodthirsty, terrorist mastermind and you want to stop him from doing so again, file your bill to prohibit the use of any taxpayer funds for such operations. It is very simple. It is one page. I will help you write it, if you need help--one page: No funds will be used to support operations by the Armed Forces against the Government of Iran or any of its officials. Do it. Have the courage of your convictions. Why are we not seeing that bill? Because it failed just last year. All of these same politicians offered language on our annual Defense bill to try to prohibit the use of any funds in operations like we just saw, and it failed. We passed a defense bill, as we always do, by overwhelming majorities, which means they don't have the votes because they know their position is not popular with the American people. Not surprisingly, the American people don't want their elected leaders to act as lawyers for the ayatollahs. So if you are not going to act in what is our true constitutional power, spare us the unconstitutional and dangerous War Powers Resolutions and simply let the people who are serious about our national security--from troops on up to the top--do what is necessary to keep this country safe. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. COTTON

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS176-4

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Mr. COTTON. Madam President, in the next few days, Senate Democrats will move to discharge a War Powers Resolution to tie the President's hands in defending this Nation against Iran and terrorist masterminds like Qasem Soleimani. Let's think about how we got here and the implications of this reckless action. Qasem Soleimani has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands and hundreds of thousands of innocent souls across the Middle East. For more than 20 years, he was the Supreme Leader's most trusted lieutenant, Iran's terror mastermind, and the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by supplying the most deadly kinds of roadside bombs soldiers ever faced. He and his proxies and Iranian leaders like him are responsible for bombings of our Embassies in places like Lebanon and Kuwait. They are, in no small part, responsible for the ongoing horror of the Syrian civil war, for the civil war in Yemen. There is no doubt, based on the intelligence we have and this bloodthirsty past, that Qasem Soleimani was in Baghdad on January 2 to plot something very dangerous and very big that was going to target Americans once again. We should all be thankful that Qasem Soleimani no longer walks the Earth, and we should be proud of the troops who executed that mission. The world is a safer place and America is a safer nation because of it. The people of Iran have been given a voice against the man who was responsible for mowing them down in protests over the years and whose death they have been out on the streets celebrating even though they risk being mowed down by their own security forces once again. Yet, over the last 2 weeks, the Democrats have been able to do nothing but express their regret for the President's decision to eliminate Qasem Soleimani. And make no mistake--this War Powers Resolution is not about the future; it is about delivering an implicit or, if you listen to their words and don't just read the resolution, an explicit rebuke to the President for ordering the killing of Qasem Soleimani. They certainly want to prevent the President from doing anything like that in the future. That is why they have introduced this War Powers Resolution. We should always remind ourselves when we are having a war powers debate, as we do from time to time, the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional. It was passed by a liberal Congress in 1973 at the height of Watergate, and not a single President since then has acknowledged its constitutionality--not a single one, to include all the Democrats. I hear a lot about the Constitution these days and reclaiming our authority to declare war and to constrain the Executive. I guess all those constitutional experts missed the Federalist Papers and their authoritative explanation of the Constitution and why we have the government we do. We have a House of Representatives with 435 people to be the institution that is most closely tied to popular opinion. We have a Senate to act as the cool and deliberate sense of community. And we have a single President--a single President--to act on behalf of the entire Nation in moments of peril. Federalist 70, if they would just open up that authoritative explanation of the Constitution, says why there is one President, not a council of two or three or four, as some of the States had at the time of the founding. Because of the division of opinion and perspective and temperament that an executive council would have, there is one President--one President--who can act, as Federalist 70 said, with energy and dispatch and, yes, in some occasions, with secrecy. So if the Founders didn't think we should have an executive council of 3 or 4 or 5 people, imagine what they would have thought about 535 commanders in chief making operational decisions about when to take action on the battlefield. These debates about War Powers Resolutions are really about how many lawyers and armchair rangers can dance on the head of a pin. Do you think wars and battles are won with paper resolutions? Those wars and battles are won with iron resolution. Do you think the ayatollahs are intimidated by ``whereas'' clauses and joint resolutions? The ayatollahs are intimidated, deterred, and scared when we incinerate their terror mastermind and we tell them that we will do it again if they harm another American. Even if you grant the War Powers Resolution constitutional, look at the actual text of this resolution. It makes no exception for Iran developing a nuclear weapon. The ayatollahs could hold a press conference tomorrow or the Supreme Leader could tweet that they are going to rush to a nuclear breakout. The President would have to come to Congress if he would want to take any kind of action to deter it. It makes no exception for designated terrorist organizations and individuals, like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, who have killed so many Americans and continue to target them today. It makes no exception for attacks on our allies in the Middle East, nations like Israel. The sponsor of this resolution will say: Oh, it makes an exception for imminent attacks. We have seen what that gets us over the last couple of weeks--again, lawyers and armchair rangers arguing about the meaning of ``imminence.'' Well, I have to say that whether an attack is imminent looks pretty different if you are a soldier on patrol in Iraq than if you are a comfortable Senator sitting behind secure walls and armed guards. None of this means Congress has no role in matters of life and death on the battlefield. It is very far from it, in fact, and I will take a back seat to no one in asserting that constitutional authority. I would remind my colleagues that when we had an opportunity to insist that Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran be submitted to this Chamber as a treaty, there was one Senator who voted to insist on that--only one. This guy. Ninety-eight other Senators were perfectly willing to create some made-up, phony-baloney procedure that allowed Barack Obama to submit a nuclear arms agreement with a sworn and mortal enemy that chants ``Death to America'' and put it into effect with a large majority opposed to him, as opposed to the two-thirds majority that our Constitution requires for treaties. We do have a tremendous degree of constitutional authority in the Congress. We regulate interstate commerce, which means sanctions. We confirm Ambassadors. We confirm the President's Cabinet. We declare war, which we have done only a few times in our past despite hundreds of instances of introducing troops. But most importantly, and the way to constrain the Executive if this Congress thinks he should be constrained in a particular case, we have the spending power--in particular, the spending power for our Armed Forces. That is the way the Congress--any Congress with any President--can control the use of the Armed Forces by the President. It is something this Congress has done a lot in the past. We did it in Vietnam, did it in Nicaragua, and did it in Somalia. There were plenty of times where the President has acted in some ways in a much more aggressive and far-reaching fashion than President Trump did just a couple weeks ago--the first Taiwan Strait crisis, Granada in 1983, Libya in 1986, and Iran in 1988. I would even say Libya again in 2011, although most of my Democratic colleagues like to send that down the memory hole since it was a Democratic President. So I would simply say that if you disagree with the President's decision to kill the world's most sadistic, bloodthirsty, terrorist mastermind and you want to stop him from doing so again, file your bill to prohibit the use of any taxpayer funds for such operations. It is very simple. It is one page. I will help you write it, if you need help--one page: No funds will be used to support operations by the Armed Forces against the Government of Iran or any of its officials. Do it. Have the courage of your convictions. Why are we not seeing that bill? Because it failed just last year. All of these same politicians offered language on our annual Defense bill to try to prohibit the use of any funds in operations like we just saw, and it failed. We passed a defense bill, as we always do, by overwhelming majorities, which means they don't have the votes because they know their position is not popular with the American people. Not surprisingly, the American people don't want their elected leaders to act as lawyers for the ayatollahs. So if you are not going to act in what is our true constitutional power, spare us the unconstitutional and dangerous War Powers Resolutions and simply let the people who are serious about our national security--from troops on up to the top--do what is necessary to keep this country safe. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. COTTON

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS176-4

formal

single

homophobic

Mr. COTTON. Madam President, in the next few days, Senate Democrats will move to discharge a War Powers Resolution to tie the President's hands in defending this Nation against Iran and terrorist masterminds like Qasem Soleimani. Let's think about how we got here and the implications of this reckless action. Qasem Soleimani has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands and hundreds of thousands of innocent souls across the Middle East. For more than 20 years, he was the Supreme Leader's most trusted lieutenant, Iran's terror mastermind, and the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by supplying the most deadly kinds of roadside bombs soldiers ever faced. He and his proxies and Iranian leaders like him are responsible for bombings of our Embassies in places like Lebanon and Kuwait. They are, in no small part, responsible for the ongoing horror of the Syrian civil war, for the civil war in Yemen. There is no doubt, based on the intelligence we have and this bloodthirsty past, that Qasem Soleimani was in Baghdad on January 2 to plot something very dangerous and very big that was going to target Americans once again. We should all be thankful that Qasem Soleimani no longer walks the Earth, and we should be proud of the troops who executed that mission. The world is a safer place and America is a safer nation because of it. The people of Iran have been given a voice against the man who was responsible for mowing them down in protests over the years and whose death they have been out on the streets celebrating even though they risk being mowed down by their own security forces once again. Yet, over the last 2 weeks, the Democrats have been able to do nothing but express their regret for the President's decision to eliminate Qasem Soleimani. And make no mistake--this War Powers Resolution is not about the future; it is about delivering an implicit or, if you listen to their words and don't just read the resolution, an explicit rebuke to the President for ordering the killing of Qasem Soleimani. They certainly want to prevent the President from doing anything like that in the future. That is why they have introduced this War Powers Resolution. We should always remind ourselves when we are having a war powers debate, as we do from time to time, the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional. It was passed by a liberal Congress in 1973 at the height of Watergate, and not a single President since then has acknowledged its constitutionality--not a single one, to include all the Democrats. I hear a lot about the Constitution these days and reclaiming our authority to declare war and to constrain the Executive. I guess all those constitutional experts missed the Federalist Papers and their authoritative explanation of the Constitution and why we have the government we do. We have a House of Representatives with 435 people to be the institution that is most closely tied to popular opinion. We have a Senate to act as the cool and deliberate sense of community. And we have a single President--a single President--to act on behalf of the entire Nation in moments of peril. Federalist 70, if they would just open up that authoritative explanation of the Constitution, says why there is one President, not a council of two or three or four, as some of the States had at the time of the founding. Because of the division of opinion and perspective and temperament that an executive council would have, there is one President--one President--who can act, as Federalist 70 said, with energy and dispatch and, yes, in some occasions, with secrecy. So if the Founders didn't think we should have an executive council of 3 or 4 or 5 people, imagine what they would have thought about 535 commanders in chief making operational decisions about when to take action on the battlefield. These debates about War Powers Resolutions are really about how many lawyers and armchair rangers can dance on the head of a pin. Do you think wars and battles are won with paper resolutions? Those wars and battles are won with iron resolution. Do you think the ayatollahs are intimidated by ``whereas'' clauses and joint resolutions? The ayatollahs are intimidated, deterred, and scared when we incinerate their terror mastermind and we tell them that we will do it again if they harm another American. Even if you grant the War Powers Resolution constitutional, look at the actual text of this resolution. It makes no exception for Iran developing a nuclear weapon. The ayatollahs could hold a press conference tomorrow or the Supreme Leader could tweet that they are going to rush to a nuclear breakout. The President would have to come to Congress if he would want to take any kind of action to deter it. It makes no exception for designated terrorist organizations and individuals, like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, who have killed so many Americans and continue to target them today. It makes no exception for attacks on our allies in the Middle East, nations like Israel. The sponsor of this resolution will say: Oh, it makes an exception for imminent attacks. We have seen what that gets us over the last couple of weeks--again, lawyers and armchair rangers arguing about the meaning of ``imminence.'' Well, I have to say that whether an attack is imminent looks pretty different if you are a soldier on patrol in Iraq than if you are a comfortable Senator sitting behind secure walls and armed guards. None of this means Congress has no role in matters of life and death on the battlefield. It is very far from it, in fact, and I will take a back seat to no one in asserting that constitutional authority. I would remind my colleagues that when we had an opportunity to insist that Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran be submitted to this Chamber as a treaty, there was one Senator who voted to insist on that--only one. This guy. Ninety-eight other Senators were perfectly willing to create some made-up, phony-baloney procedure that allowed Barack Obama to submit a nuclear arms agreement with a sworn and mortal enemy that chants ``Death to America'' and put it into effect with a large majority opposed to him, as opposed to the two-thirds majority that our Constitution requires for treaties. We do have a tremendous degree of constitutional authority in the Congress. We regulate interstate commerce, which means sanctions. We confirm Ambassadors. We confirm the President's Cabinet. We declare war, which we have done only a few times in our past despite hundreds of instances of introducing troops. But most importantly, and the way to constrain the Executive if this Congress thinks he should be constrained in a particular case, we have the spending power--in particular, the spending power for our Armed Forces. That is the way the Congress--any Congress with any President--can control the use of the Armed Forces by the President. It is something this Congress has done a lot in the past. We did it in Vietnam, did it in Nicaragua, and did it in Somalia. There were plenty of times where the President has acted in some ways in a much more aggressive and far-reaching fashion than President Trump did just a couple weeks ago--the first Taiwan Strait crisis, Granada in 1983, Libya in 1986, and Iran in 1988. I would even say Libya again in 2011, although most of my Democratic colleagues like to send that down the memory hole since it was a Democratic President. So I would simply say that if you disagree with the President's decision to kill the world's most sadistic, bloodthirsty, terrorist mastermind and you want to stop him from doing so again, file your bill to prohibit the use of any taxpayer funds for such operations. It is very simple. It is one page. I will help you write it, if you need help--one page: No funds will be used to support operations by the Armed Forces against the Government of Iran or any of its officials. Do it. Have the courage of your convictions. Why are we not seeing that bill? Because it failed just last year. All of these same politicians offered language on our annual Defense bill to try to prohibit the use of any funds in operations like we just saw, and it failed. We passed a defense bill, as we always do, by overwhelming majorities, which means they don't have the votes because they know their position is not popular with the American people. Not surprisingly, the American people don't want their elected leaders to act as lawyers for the ayatollahs. So if you are not going to act in what is our true constitutional power, spare us the unconstitutional and dangerous War Powers Resolutions and simply let the people who are serious about our national security--from troops on up to the top--do what is necessary to keep this country safe. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

2020-01-06

Mr. COTTON

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS176-4

formal

job creator

conservative

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to mark another major milestone for the landmark U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. This morning, Madam President, with you in the committee in voting, the Environment and Public Works Committee overwhelmingly passed the USMCA. With the approval of our committee, the USMCA is now one step closer to final passage in the Senate. We all know that it isn't perfect, but, still, it is an important deal that benefits all Americans. Passing this deal provides much needed certainty for America's manufacturers. Our ranchers and our farmers--certainly, in Wyoming but across the breadbasket of the country and the Rocky Mountain West--are counting on it as well. Americans have waited patiently now for over a year. Speaker Pelosi was the roadblock and held this hostage for an extended period of time. She finally allowed the House to vote on it. Now the Senate is working to move this critical piece of legislation forward and to the President. Passing USMCA will start the next chapter in the American economic success story. The deal is going to increase our gross domestic product by $70 billion. Above all, it is a win for American workers. It is going to create 180,000 U.S. jobs, and you know that is just the start. Already, our strong, healthy, and growing economy has been setting records across the board. It is thanks to Republican pro-growth policies. That is what we look to and point to when we take a look at the record job growth we have had since President Trump has taken office. In just 3 years, we have created over 7 million new jobs in America. The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. It is astonishing. Wage growth is the fastest it has been in a decade, especially benefiting lower income workers. Everyone is better off with this growing economy. There is still some untapped potential, and we need to unlock it now. My home State of Wyoming is poised to reap huge benefits not only from USMCA; our State has much to gain from new trade agreements with China and with Japan as well. The China trade agreement is scheduled to be signed tomorrow and Japan on January 1. Together, these America-first trade deals mean expanded access to export markets. Wyoming farmers and ranchers are very eager to seize these opportunities for future growth. I would just say, as I conclude, that here is the bottom line. Passing USMCA means more jobs, and it means economic growth. It means more certainty and more stability for our job creators. It means more opportunity and more prosperity for America's working families. That is the real measure of this. It is time now for the Senate to pass the USMCA. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. BARRASSO

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS177

formal

job creators

conservative

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to mark another major milestone for the landmark U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. This morning, Madam President, with you in the committee in voting, the Environment and Public Works Committee overwhelmingly passed the USMCA. With the approval of our committee, the USMCA is now one step closer to final passage in the Senate. We all know that it isn't perfect, but, still, it is an important deal that benefits all Americans. Passing this deal provides much needed certainty for America's manufacturers. Our ranchers and our farmers--certainly, in Wyoming but across the breadbasket of the country and the Rocky Mountain West--are counting on it as well. Americans have waited patiently now for over a year. Speaker Pelosi was the roadblock and held this hostage for an extended period of time. She finally allowed the House to vote on it. Now the Senate is working to move this critical piece of legislation forward and to the President. Passing USMCA will start the next chapter in the American economic success story. The deal is going to increase our gross domestic product by $70 billion. Above all, it is a win for American workers. It is going to create 180,000 U.S. jobs, and you know that is just the start. Already, our strong, healthy, and growing economy has been setting records across the board. It is thanks to Republican pro-growth policies. That is what we look to and point to when we take a look at the record job growth we have had since President Trump has taken office. In just 3 years, we have created over 7 million new jobs in America. The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. It is astonishing. Wage growth is the fastest it has been in a decade, especially benefiting lower income workers. Everyone is better off with this growing economy. There is still some untapped potential, and we need to unlock it now. My home State of Wyoming is poised to reap huge benefits not only from USMCA; our State has much to gain from new trade agreements with China and with Japan as well. The China trade agreement is scheduled to be signed tomorrow and Japan on January 1. Together, these America-first trade deals mean expanded access to export markets. Wyoming farmers and ranchers are very eager to seize these opportunities for future growth. I would just say, as I conclude, that here is the bottom line. Passing USMCA means more jobs, and it means economic growth. It means more certainty and more stability for our job creators. It means more opportunity and more prosperity for America's working families. That is the real measure of this. It is time now for the Senate to pass the USMCA. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. BARRASSO

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS177

formal

working families

racist

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to mark another major milestone for the landmark U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. This morning, Madam President, with you in the committee in voting, the Environment and Public Works Committee overwhelmingly passed the USMCA. With the approval of our committee, the USMCA is now one step closer to final passage in the Senate. We all know that it isn't perfect, but, still, it is an important deal that benefits all Americans. Passing this deal provides much needed certainty for America's manufacturers. Our ranchers and our farmers--certainly, in Wyoming but across the breadbasket of the country and the Rocky Mountain West--are counting on it as well. Americans have waited patiently now for over a year. Speaker Pelosi was the roadblock and held this hostage for an extended period of time. She finally allowed the House to vote on it. Now the Senate is working to move this critical piece of legislation forward and to the President. Passing USMCA will start the next chapter in the American economic success story. The deal is going to increase our gross domestic product by $70 billion. Above all, it is a win for American workers. It is going to create 180,000 U.S. jobs, and you know that is just the start. Already, our strong, healthy, and growing economy has been setting records across the board. It is thanks to Republican pro-growth policies. That is what we look to and point to when we take a look at the record job growth we have had since President Trump has taken office. In just 3 years, we have created over 7 million new jobs in America. The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. It is astonishing. Wage growth is the fastest it has been in a decade, especially benefiting lower income workers. Everyone is better off with this growing economy. There is still some untapped potential, and we need to unlock it now. My home State of Wyoming is poised to reap huge benefits not only from USMCA; our State has much to gain from new trade agreements with China and with Japan as well. The China trade agreement is scheduled to be signed tomorrow and Japan on January 1. Together, these America-first trade deals mean expanded access to export markets. Wyoming farmers and ranchers are very eager to seize these opportunities for future growth. I would just say, as I conclude, that here is the bottom line. Passing USMCA means more jobs, and it means economic growth. It means more certainty and more stability for our job creators. It means more opportunity and more prosperity for America's working families. That is the real measure of this. It is time now for the Senate to pass the USMCA. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. BARRASSO

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS177

formal

single

homophobic

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, we have here a picture of Jerry Brown--Jeralyn Joy Brown--age 89, who passed away peacefully on Wednesday, January 8, 2020, at the Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital in Thermopolis, WY. She was surrounded by her loving family. For many years, Jerry was a dominant force in Wyoming. For the last 12 years, she was the single most influential voice with the Wyoming Senate delegation. She is my wife Bobbi's mom. Yet Senator Enzi knew her long before I did. Senator Enzi.

2020-01-06

Mr. BARRASSO

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS178

formal

terrorism

Islamophobic

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, as we go back through the calendar just a few months and get some context of what has been building for a while, in May of 2019, four different vessels that were traveling just outside of the Gulf of Oman were hit by mines laid by Iranian leadership. In June, just a month later, two different vessels hit Iranian mines. Those mines weren't just placed in the water flippantly; they were actually placed on the ship. In June of 2019, a U.S. Navy surveillance drone was flying through the Strait of Hormuz in international airspace and was downed by an Iranian missile attack. As we continue to move forward, we tracked an increase in Iranian activity in cyber attacks across the United States, but at the same time, individuals within our military bases in Iraq were facing more and more of a push against them in not just an external conversation, an actual kinetic attack. Our supply lines in the fall of last year, as trucks that were leaving from Baghdad and driving down to Kuwait for our supply lines there, were increasingly facing improvised explosive devices, something we had not seen in a long time. Those explosive devices were created and placed by Shia militias with materials provided by Iran. Then, in October, there were multiple attacks on our facility in Baghdad. In November, there were multiple attacks again on our facility in Baghdad. In December, there were multiple attacks again, each time increasing with more and more attacks. We hear that term ``attack,'' and it seems almost flippant, but we realize, for the thousands of Americans who work in that area of that diplomatic mission that is there in Iraq, there is a day that happens--it could be the middle of the night, it could be the middle of the afternoon, but a moment happens, month after month, week after week, and sometimes within that, day after day--where the sirens go off, and everyone on campus runs into a bomb shelter, and then the explosions begin around the grounds. These were not just random attacks. These were designed kinetic rocket attacks coming into our Embassy that built up toward an attack on the U.S. Embassy on December 31, where thousands of people broke through the outer section, setting fires to the building, attacking the facility, smashingagainst the glass, trying to get into the next layer that they were not able to penetrate--into the inner layer in the Embassy. But thousands and thousands of rioters were moving toward the base. As calm was restored on the outside and a security perimeter was established on the outside, they could read what was written on the walls, spray-painted now on the Embassy: ``Soleimani is our leader.'' I was interested in talking to a friend of mine just a couple of weekends ago, and he made an interesting comment to me. He said: I didn't know who Qasem Soleimani was. I had never heard that name before, and then I went back and started doing some research to find out who this guy is and what he is all about. His comment to me was: I went back and did some research and found out he is a bad guy. I said: Yes, you don't know the half of it. Soleimani is the leader of the Quds Force for the Iranians, was responsible for training the Shia militias in Iraq on how to kill Americans. Over 600 Americans died because of the training and equipping that Soleimani did for the Iraqis who were fighting against us at that time, specifically the Shia militias that Soleimani actually directed. My neighbor was surprised to learn that Soleimani was the one who actually organized all things with Hezbollah in Lebanon. He had organized Hezbollah also in Iraq. He is the one who was coordinating all that was happening in Yemen, in the civil war that is currently ongoing in Yemen. He was surprised to see that he was in Syria working with Bashar Assad and to see all that he was doing for that ruthless leader that murdered thousands of his own people. That was Soleimani. For those of us who are tracking the direct threats against the United States, we are very aware of who he was and what he was all about because he was the point person to try to take the fight to the United States. In the past 6 months, that fight had gone from an ``I am going to try to find individuals within Hezbollah or Shia militias somewhere to attack the United States'' to being more strategic to bringing the attack directly from his forces under his command to try to take the attack to us. He had become more and more overt and more and more obsessed with attacking the United States. Over the course of that time period, the Trump administration, over and over again, sent a message to the Iranian leadership: You are playing a very dangerous game, continually attacking American facilities, launching rockets randomly in there, starting fires, stirring up militias to attack us at every turn, attacking our supply lines. If an American is killed, President Trump made it very clear, the United States will respond. In December, Soleimani pushed it to a whole new level, with a multiple rocket attack into an American facility, killing an American and wounding four others. The President responded with a very reasoned response: taking an attack to where the Shia militias and Hezbollah were storing the munitions they were using to attack us, destroying that facility, destroying those munitions, taking the fight to four different training facilities where they were equipping the people to bring the attack to us but then also tracking very carefully the person who was actually planning the next set of attacks--Soleimani himself. The time came in January, when Soleimani had been traveling through Syria, through Lebanon, working with Hezbollah, and then back into Iraq, and he was personally meeting with another terrorist leader in Iraq--one terrorist leader, Soleimani, leading a terrorist organization, meeting with another terrorist leading a terrorist organization there. Both of them were planning together and met up that morning at the airport. A little after 4 o'clock in the morning, they left from the airport, headed to go have their next meeting and planning their next set of attacks. At that time, the Trump administration took the opportunity, while they were both far from civilians and no one else was on the road, to have a surgical strike and take out two different terrorist leaders, both in the process of planning their next attacks. What has been interesting to me has been the response of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House and some of the debate there. We should debate issues like this. These are difficult moments in difficult days. We are not at war with Iran, nor should we be at war with Iran. There are millions of peaceful people in Iran. Thousands and thousands of those people are protesting on the streets right now in Iran against their own government. They are furious at the corruption in their government. They are furious that the people in Iran can't get food and can't get fuel because the regime there is spending their money attacking Yemen, attacking Syria, feeding money to Hezbollah and Iraq, feeding money to Hezbollah and Lebanon. The money that should be going to help their own people, the Iranian regime is sending out all over the region to spur their terrorism. The people there are frustrated and upset with their own government, and they are taking it to the streets under a threat of their own life. In the not-too-recent past, Iranians--whether it be the Green Revolution 10 years ago or just in days past and months past--had taken to the streets by the thousands, and some of them have faced all kinds of retribution coming back at them. We should be supporting the good people of Iran who are miserable living under that regime. We are not at war with the people of Iran, but we are very clear as a nation, when you are planning an attack against us, and we are aware of that attack and you have shown the due diligence to take prior attacks, we know you are not just thinking about it. You are actually planning it and about to carry it out. We have learned our lesson from 9/11, and for the last three administrations, the policy has been very clear. If we know you are in the process of bringing an attack to us in the days and weeks ahead, we will strike first to protect American lives. We will not wait until you kill Americans to come bring a strike to you. That is what happened with Soleimani. The debate that is happening on the floor now about a War Powers Resolution has been interesting to me because much of the language just affirms the current law. It almost seems to imply the Trump administration didn't follow the law when they did. The Trump administration continued to track an imminent threat that was coming into the United States. There has been some argument about how imminent is imminent. Some of my colleagues want to know that Soleimani was in the process of carrying out an attack within the next 30 minutes, and if he wasn't carrying out an attack immediately, in the next day or next hours, we shouldn't respond. I will tell you, intelligence is not that exquisite. You only know in the movies that someone is about to attack an exact spot at an exact time. That is not real life. With real-life intelligence, you gather information to track what you think is coming, but you don't get exact dates and exact locations like that. We knew he was planning this attack. They were zeroing in on the locations, but he was very specific as to the Americans he was coming after. To be able to bring the attack to him and to notify Congress within 48 hours, which is the law, is consistent with the War Powers Resolution. The President did follow the law. He was justified in being able to carry out the strike against a known, declared terrorist leader--in fact, two of them--in the process of planning their next attack against Americans. The key thing I join my colleagues in talking about is not trying to be able to press back on the administration but to say that none of us want a war in Iran, including the Trump administration. In every conversation I have had with anyone in the administration, they have all been very clear. They are not planning a war with Iran. They don't want a war with Iran, but they do want Iran to stop their belligerent terrorist activities against us, against our allies, and against any American they seem to find in the region. I join my colleagues in warning Iran and assuring Iran at the same time that we have no desire for a war with the regime or with the good people of Iran. We should be able to find a way to work together. Since 1979, when this regime was coming into power, they have taken the fight to Americans and to all of our allies. It is time we pushed back andsaid: Stop shedding blood, and let's sit down at the table and be able to work this out. In the meantime, let's not assume that Soleimani was some innocent bystander. He had a lot of American blood on his hands. Let's take into real life what it really means to live in Baghdad and serve in our diplomatic mission and hour after hour run to bomb shelters as rockets are raining down randomly on your facility. There is plenty of provocation. Now it is time for diplomacy. Let's get this worked out. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. LANKFORD

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS179

formal

terrorist

Islamophobic

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, as we go back through the calendar just a few months and get some context of what has been building for a while, in May of 2019, four different vessels that were traveling just outside of the Gulf of Oman were hit by mines laid by Iranian leadership. In June, just a month later, two different vessels hit Iranian mines. Those mines weren't just placed in the water flippantly; they were actually placed on the ship. In June of 2019, a U.S. Navy surveillance drone was flying through the Strait of Hormuz in international airspace and was downed by an Iranian missile attack. As we continue to move forward, we tracked an increase in Iranian activity in cyber attacks across the United States, but at the same time, individuals within our military bases in Iraq were facing more and more of a push against them in not just an external conversation, an actual kinetic attack. Our supply lines in the fall of last year, as trucks that were leaving from Baghdad and driving down to Kuwait for our supply lines there, were increasingly facing improvised explosive devices, something we had not seen in a long time. Those explosive devices were created and placed by Shia militias with materials provided by Iran. Then, in October, there were multiple attacks on our facility in Baghdad. In November, there were multiple attacks again on our facility in Baghdad. In December, there were multiple attacks again, each time increasing with more and more attacks. We hear that term ``attack,'' and it seems almost flippant, but we realize, for the thousands of Americans who work in that area of that diplomatic mission that is there in Iraq, there is a day that happens--it could be the middle of the night, it could be the middle of the afternoon, but a moment happens, month after month, week after week, and sometimes within that, day after day--where the sirens go off, and everyone on campus runs into a bomb shelter, and then the explosions begin around the grounds. These were not just random attacks. These were designed kinetic rocket attacks coming into our Embassy that built up toward an attack on the U.S. Embassy on December 31, where thousands of people broke through the outer section, setting fires to the building, attacking the facility, smashingagainst the glass, trying to get into the next layer that they were not able to penetrate--into the inner layer in the Embassy. But thousands and thousands of rioters were moving toward the base. As calm was restored on the outside and a security perimeter was established on the outside, they could read what was written on the walls, spray-painted now on the Embassy: ``Soleimani is our leader.'' I was interested in talking to a friend of mine just a couple of weekends ago, and he made an interesting comment to me. He said: I didn't know who Qasem Soleimani was. I had never heard that name before, and then I went back and started doing some research to find out who this guy is and what he is all about. His comment to me was: I went back and did some research and found out he is a bad guy. I said: Yes, you don't know the half of it. Soleimani is the leader of the Quds Force for the Iranians, was responsible for training the Shia militias in Iraq on how to kill Americans. Over 600 Americans died because of the training and equipping that Soleimani did for the Iraqis who were fighting against us at that time, specifically the Shia militias that Soleimani actually directed. My neighbor was surprised to learn that Soleimani was the one who actually organized all things with Hezbollah in Lebanon. He had organized Hezbollah also in Iraq. He is the one who was coordinating all that was happening in Yemen, in the civil war that is currently ongoing in Yemen. He was surprised to see that he was in Syria working with Bashar Assad and to see all that he was doing for that ruthless leader that murdered thousands of his own people. That was Soleimani. For those of us who are tracking the direct threats against the United States, we are very aware of who he was and what he was all about because he was the point person to try to take the fight to the United States. In the past 6 months, that fight had gone from an ``I am going to try to find individuals within Hezbollah or Shia militias somewhere to attack the United States'' to being more strategic to bringing the attack directly from his forces under his command to try to take the attack to us. He had become more and more overt and more and more obsessed with attacking the United States. Over the course of that time period, the Trump administration, over and over again, sent a message to the Iranian leadership: You are playing a very dangerous game, continually attacking American facilities, launching rockets randomly in there, starting fires, stirring up militias to attack us at every turn, attacking our supply lines. If an American is killed, President Trump made it very clear, the United States will respond. In December, Soleimani pushed it to a whole new level, with a multiple rocket attack into an American facility, killing an American and wounding four others. The President responded with a very reasoned response: taking an attack to where the Shia militias and Hezbollah were storing the munitions they were using to attack us, destroying that facility, destroying those munitions, taking the fight to four different training facilities where they were equipping the people to bring the attack to us but then also tracking very carefully the person who was actually planning the next set of attacks--Soleimani himself. The time came in January, when Soleimani had been traveling through Syria, through Lebanon, working with Hezbollah, and then back into Iraq, and he was personally meeting with another terrorist leader in Iraq--one terrorist leader, Soleimani, leading a terrorist organization, meeting with another terrorist leading a terrorist organization there. Both of them were planning together and met up that morning at the airport. A little after 4 o'clock in the morning, they left from the airport, headed to go have their next meeting and planning their next set of attacks. At that time, the Trump administration took the opportunity, while they were both far from civilians and no one else was on the road, to have a surgical strike and take out two different terrorist leaders, both in the process of planning their next attacks. What has been interesting to me has been the response of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House and some of the debate there. We should debate issues like this. These are difficult moments in difficult days. We are not at war with Iran, nor should we be at war with Iran. There are millions of peaceful people in Iran. Thousands and thousands of those people are protesting on the streets right now in Iran against their own government. They are furious at the corruption in their government. They are furious that the people in Iran can't get food and can't get fuel because the regime there is spending their money attacking Yemen, attacking Syria, feeding money to Hezbollah and Iraq, feeding money to Hezbollah and Lebanon. The money that should be going to help their own people, the Iranian regime is sending out all over the region to spur their terrorism. The people there are frustrated and upset with their own government, and they are taking it to the streets under a threat of their own life. In the not-too-recent past, Iranians--whether it be the Green Revolution 10 years ago or just in days past and months past--had taken to the streets by the thousands, and some of them have faced all kinds of retribution coming back at them. We should be supporting the good people of Iran who are miserable living under that regime. We are not at war with the people of Iran, but we are very clear as a nation, when you are planning an attack against us, and we are aware of that attack and you have shown the due diligence to take prior attacks, we know you are not just thinking about it. You are actually planning it and about to carry it out. We have learned our lesson from 9/11, and for the last three administrations, the policy has been very clear. If we know you are in the process of bringing an attack to us in the days and weeks ahead, we will strike first to protect American lives. We will not wait until you kill Americans to come bring a strike to you. That is what happened with Soleimani. The debate that is happening on the floor now about a War Powers Resolution has been interesting to me because much of the language just affirms the current law. It almost seems to imply the Trump administration didn't follow the law when they did. The Trump administration continued to track an imminent threat that was coming into the United States. There has been some argument about how imminent is imminent. Some of my colleagues want to know that Soleimani was in the process of carrying out an attack within the next 30 minutes, and if he wasn't carrying out an attack immediately, in the next day or next hours, we shouldn't respond. I will tell you, intelligence is not that exquisite. You only know in the movies that someone is about to attack an exact spot at an exact time. That is not real life. With real-life intelligence, you gather information to track what you think is coming, but you don't get exact dates and exact locations like that. We knew he was planning this attack. They were zeroing in on the locations, but he was very specific as to the Americans he was coming after. To be able to bring the attack to him and to notify Congress within 48 hours, which is the law, is consistent with the War Powers Resolution. The President did follow the law. He was justified in being able to carry out the strike against a known, declared terrorist leader--in fact, two of them--in the process of planning their next attack against Americans. The key thing I join my colleagues in talking about is not trying to be able to press back on the administration but to say that none of us want a war in Iran, including the Trump administration. In every conversation I have had with anyone in the administration, they have all been very clear. They are not planning a war with Iran. They don't want a war with Iran, but they do want Iran to stop their belligerent terrorist activities against us, against our allies, and against any American they seem to find in the region. I join my colleagues in warning Iran and assuring Iran at the same time that we have no desire for a war with the regime or with the good people of Iran. We should be able to find a way to work together. Since 1979, when this regime was coming into power, they have taken the fight to Americans and to all of our allies. It is time we pushed back andsaid: Stop shedding blood, and let's sit down at the table and be able to work this out. In the meantime, let's not assume that Soleimani was some innocent bystander. He had a lot of American blood on his hands. Let's take into real life what it really means to live in Baghdad and serve in our diplomatic mission and hour after hour run to bomb shelters as rockets are raining down randomly on your facility. There is plenty of provocation. Now it is time for diplomacy. Let's get this worked out. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. LANKFORD

Senate

CREC-2020-01-14-pt1-PgS179

formal

the Fed

antisemitic

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, one area where this Senate and the Congress, in general, along with the administration, have made significant progress is combating the ongoing drug addiction crisis in America that has affected so many families represented by all of us in this Chamber. In my home State of Ohio, we have been on the frontline of this crisis for years. Opioids, in particular, have taken a heavy toll in our communities. In fact, in 2017, our opioid overdose rate in Ohio was almost three times the national average, with nearly a dozen Ohioans dying from these dangerous drugs every single day, making it the No. 1 cause of death in Ohio, surpassing car accidents. Since 2017, we have begun to make progress, finally, to be able to turn the tide on opioids. In 2018, after a decade of increased overdose deaths every year for the previous dozen years, we finally had a reduction, a 22-percent reduction in overdose deaths. By the way, that led the Nation in terms of the percent decrease. It is still way too high--unacceptably high--but we are starting to make progress. A lot of it goes back to what is being done here at the Federal level, but also the State level and local level, to address this problem. We have dramatically increased funding here for treatment for recovery, including providing Narcan as a way to save people's lives. It is a miracle drug that reverses the effects of an overdose. We have done some things that are very important. More recently, we have sent these resources through legislation that the President signed into law just last year. There are resources also provided by the State opioid response grants and also by our bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, helping our first responders to be ableto use innovative and new approaches to ensure that individuals whose overdoses are reversed go into treatment rather than just overdosing again and again. The good news is that at the end of the year, the spending bill that Congress passed secured a record $658 million in funding for these Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act grants, or CARA grants. I was the author of that legislation, initially, along with Sheldon Whitehouse on the other side of the aisle. We started off with closer to $200 million. Now, we are at $658 million. Why? Because it is working. I have been back home, going from place to place, seeing how it works. I have watched some of these first responders in action with social workers and treatment providers who are going into people's homes and getting people into treatment who previously were not. We can't rest on our laurels because we have to do a lot more to address all forms of addiction that are increasingly becoming a problem. We have seen in Ohio and around the country that psychostimulants have now come back with a vengeance. This would be crystal meth from Mexico and cocaine. It is surging in communities across our State. According to our deputy attorney general in Ohio, law enforcement officials in 2018 tested double the amount of methamphetamine samples as they had in 2017 and triple the amount from 2016. In other words, crystal meth is growing. Higher and higher amounts of it are coming in and more and more people are being affected by this. I heard this at roundtable discussions around the State. I was in Knox County last year, learning that the prosecutor's office estimates that 80 to 90 percent of all drug incidents included crystal meth. Opioids used to be their biggest problem in Knox County, as it has been in all 80 counties in Ohio until recently. Now it is pure crystal meth coming in from Mexico. I am pleased that the spending bill at the end of last year that we passed just last month changed the way in which our funding is delivered in the fight against addiction. Specifically, included in that is my Combating Meth and Cocaine Act. This is an important bill that allows States the flexibility to use the roughly $1.5 billion in grant funds allocated specifically to combat opioids. The 21st Century Cures grants, now called the State response grants, can all be used for the treatment and recovery services for new threats like crystal meth and cocaine. Giving our local communities that flexibility is incredibly important. I have heard it constantly when I am back home. We have now done that. We have been able to help even further to try to reverse the effects, not just of the opioid crisis but of the drug crisis and all forms of addiction. We have made significant strides in ensuring that we can respond to this ever-changing addiction crisis. I am proud we are able to do it. As I said at the beginning of this speech, this is a pretty divisive time in Washington, to say the least. No one can deny that. What I hoped to show by highlighting these achievements over the past year is that even in a highly partisan environment, it is possible to bring people together to get things done and pass laws that make a fundamental improvement to the lives of the people we represent. While lots of time finding that common ground takes more work, it is worth it. The extra effort goes a long way. Fortunately, we are coming into this new session of Congress having already laid the groundwork that we need to do to continue to fight this addiction crisis. Critical right now to that fight is passing bipartisan legislation that will help us to push back against a particular kind of opioid, the synthetic opioid called fentanyl. Fentanyl came on the scene 5 or 6 years ago with a vengeance. Just as we were making progress on reducing the use of heroin and prescription drugs, suddenly, this fentanyl arrives. It is a synthetic opioid. It is 50 times more powerful on average than heroin. It is now the No. 1 killer. It has been the last few years. In States like mine, Ohio, when you look at the numbers over the past few years, although we are making progress on other opioids, we are not making progress on fentanyl. Why? Because it is being mixed into all kinds of other drugs, including crystal meth, including opioids, including all street drugs. The improvements we have seen are significant, but fentanyl continues to be the No. 1 killer. Fentanyl, unfortunately, knows no ZIP Code and is devastating individuals and families all across the country. According to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 72,000 drug-related deaths in the United States in 2017, and 40 percent of those deaths were involving fentanyl. That data showed that the overdose deaths due to fentanyl had increased at a rate of 88 percent per year, on average, since 2013. It is a real threat to our States. In 2017 alone, we had a record 3,500 overdose deaths in Ohio that were attributable to fentanyl. Last fall, our Narcotics and Gun Enforcement Task Force seized 45 pounds of fentanyl in a single bust in Montgomery County, in Dayton, OH. There was enough of the drug to kill the entire population of Ohio. That is why the Drug Enforcement Agency made the right call in 2018 to make fentanyl-related substances illegal to possess, transport, or manufacture. This means they have been scheduled. Thanks to that designation, our law enforcement officials have been able to better protect our communities by seizing and destroying large amounts of these fentanyl-related substances, which are the analogs to fentanyl. So that is good. Unfortunately, due to Federal law, the DEA was only able to make these dangerous substances illegal on a temporary basis. Think about that. You have this deadly drug that is 50 times more powerful than heroin. Back in 2018, we were able to finally make not just fentanyl but all of its analogs--fentanyl-related substances--illegal. Law enforcement was using that to begin to push back, and now we find it was only temporary. Guess what. We are fast approaching the end of that designation. Next month, on February 6, which is 3 weeks from this Thursday, fentanyl-related substances will once again be legal, and it will be much harder to keep vulnerable communities safe from these deadly substances. We cannot let that happen. I met earlier today with former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who is now our Ambassador to China. For years, many of us have been pushing China to do more to crack down on fentanyl because most of the fentanyl that comes to this country and kills individuals in our communities comes from China. Most of it has been coming through our mail system. We have done a lot to stop that. We have passed the STOP Act, which tightens up the post office's screening process, which has worked very well over the last year. We have also provided more money under the INTERDICT Act in order to provide better equipment not just to our Postal Service but also to the private carriers like DHL and FedEx. What has happened is, China has also done a better job of making fentanyl illegal and scheduling the precursors and analogs to fentanyl, and we have pushed them very hard on that. I have myself been to China and have personally done that, and I know Ambassador Branstad has pushed China hard on this. Finally, China has begun to start addressing this rampant production in its country. Terry Branstad told me today--and I agree with him--that the credibility of the United States to continue to provide pressure to China to do the right thing will be eroded dramatically if we don't continue to schedule fentanyl. As we are asking China to do it, we cannot let this designation lapse here. Obviously, what is most important is that we not let it lapse because it is the wrong thing to do and because it will affect all of our communities and all of our families who have been affected by this dangerous drug. We can't let it happen. That is why, last fall, Senator Joe Manchin and I introduced a bill called FIGHT Fentanyl, which codifies the Drug Enforcement Agency's precedent to permanently schedule fentanyl-related substances. So forget these temporary designations that have caused these issues; let's permanently schedule these fentanyl-related substances. It has very strong bipartisan support. In fact, as of a couple of weeks ago,every single U.S. State's and territory's attorney general has now endorsed our bill. That is all 50 States and 6 territories. That doesn't happen very often. This is a bipartisan group of law enforcement officials who has said: We support this legislation, the FIGHT Fentanyl Act, that we introduced last fall. I am confident we can get it passed if it comes to the floor for a vote. There are other approaches to it as well that are slightly different than ours. I support those as well. The point is, we need to pass legislation to ensure that February 6 doesn't come and go without our scheduling these fentanyl analogs. It is a good example of the need to continue working across the aisle on this issue. We have done a good job with it so far. As I have said, even in these contentious times, we have to do it again, and we have to do it soon. I am told that during impeachment, it is impossible or at least very difficult to legislate on any other topic without having unanimous consent. So we need to get this done before next week, before we get the Articles of Impeachment and before the U.S. Senate begins the impeachment trial. I urge all of our colleagues to focus today on this issue. Join us in this commonsense, lifesaving legislation. Let's work together. The Committee on the Judiciary has been working on this, and others have worked on this. We have legislation at the desk to be able to solve it. I hope we can do it by unanimous consent, but we have to do it. This is lifesaving legislation to keep fentanyl from spreading its poison even further. I yield the floor.

2020-01-06

Mr. PORTMAN

Senate

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