[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 52 (Wednesday, April 6, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1680-S1702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICA'S SMALL BUSINESS TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2015--MOTION TO PROCEED
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 636, which the
clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 55, H.R. 636, a bill to
amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend
increased expensing limitations, and for other purposes.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Filling the Supreme Court Vacancy
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, for weeks now we have seen Democratic
Senators come to the floor and attack the chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee. The tone of these attacks against Senator Grassley
have been vicious and they have been very personal. I believe Democrats
have embarrassed themselves, and they have done a disservice to their
constituents and to the U.S. Senate.
Senator Grassley is an outstanding public servant. He has been
relentless in representing the interests and the views of the people of
his home State of Iowa. He has not missed a vote in 27 years. He holds
townhall meetings in every one of Iowa's 99 counties every
[[Page S1681]]
single year. That is how seriously Chuck Grassley takes his
responsibility to serve and to represent the people of his home State.
Every other Member of this body should be trying to copy his example,
not coming to the floor to criticize him or take cheap shots, as the
Democrats have been doing in an attempt for political gain.
What Senator Grassley wants should be the same thing all of us want
when it comes to momentous decisions--decisions like who will have a
lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. He
wants to give the people a voice. That is what Senator Grassley wants
for the people of Iowa, and that is what I want for the people of
Wyoming.
Senator Enzi and I had a telephone townhall meeting last month,
talking to people around the State of Wyoming. The great majority of
the folks in Wyoming agree with Senator Grassley, agree with Senator
Enzi, and agree with me about the next Supreme Court Justice and giving
the people a voice. This isn't just something that Republicans are
making up because we don't like this nominee, although there is plenty
not to like; it is what past chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee
have done, Democrats as well as Republicans.
In 1992 Senator Joe Biden--now Vice President Joe Biden, but then
Senator Joe Biden--came to the Senate floor to explain his rule, called
the Biden rule, and it had to do with Supreme Court nominations. On
this Senate floor, Joe Biden said that once the Presidential election
is underway, ``action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off
until after the election campaign is over.'' That is what Vice
President Joe Biden said when he was a Senator. Those are Joe Biden's
words--former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is the
same position Senator Chuck Grassley currently holds. Senator Biden at
the time said the temporary vacancy on the Court was ``quite minor''--
``quite minor,'' he said--``compared to the cost that a nominee, the
president, the Senate, and our nation would have to pay for what would
assuredly be a bitter fight.''
Senator Biden was one of the Democrats who voted to filibuster Samuel
Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. So was Senator Pat Leahy, who
once also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Obama and
Senator Harry Reid--that is right, Barack Obama, currently President of
the United States, then-Senator Obama, and Senator Harry Reid, once
majority leader, now minority leader--voted for that filibuster.
Back in 2005, when Senator Reid was the Democratic leader, he said:
``Nowhere in [the Constitution] does it say the Senate has a duty to
give presidential nominees a vote.'' Senator Reid even went so far as
to unilaterally change the rules of the Senate on nominations a few
years ago. He was in the majority then; now he is in the minority.
That is what Democrats have done and what they have said about things
like nominations to the Supreme Court and other important jobs for the
country.
We have elections in this country for a reason--it is so we can hear
directly from the people what they think and how they want us to act on
their behalf.
In 2014, the American people rejected the path the Democrats in
Washington were taking. They put Republicans in charge of the House and
the Senate because they wanted us to act as a check and a balance on
what President Obama was doing. Democrats want to ignore the will of
the people on this Supreme Court nomination.
The President wants to say it is his decision and his alone. Well, it
is not just his decision. Now that the election season is upon us, it
should be the people's decision. Republicans understand that, Senator
Grassley clearly understands that, and Democrats actually used to
understand it. We need to give the people a voice.
Energy Industry Jobs
Mr. President, I would also like to speak briefly about something
going on in my home State of Wyoming. Late last week, two of our
State's largest coal mines announced they would let go 15 percent of
their workers--465 families now living with the terrible pain of loss
of a job. Wyoming has seen thousands of hard-working men and women lose
their jobs in the energy industry over the past few years, people
working in oil, gas, and coal.
Democrats in Washington should never forget that the regulations they
and this administration impose have real impact on real people. When
Members of the Congress focus obsessively--and it is a misguided
obsession--on ideas like climate change, they do grave damage to the
hard-working families all across this country who are trying to provide
energy for America and provide for their families.
When Democratic Presidential candidates say they want to keep our
resources in the ground, they send shock waves through communities that
depend on energy jobs. When the Obama administration promotes green
energy at any cost, it does great harm to Americans who are working to
produce red, white, and blue energy. Seven years of overregulation has
taken its toll on coal country. The Obama administration has taken away
these people's jobs, and now it is trying to take away their dignity
because a person's job is related to their identity and dignity in so
many ways.
My goal is to make American energy as clean as we can, as fast as we
can, without raising costs and causing pain to American families. That
means investing in new ways to develop Wyoming's incredible energy
resources and finding new markets for those resources. Energy is known
as the master resource. It is the master resource for a reason, and
America provides and produces the energy we need for a strong economy
as well as a healthy environment. There are bipartisan ideas and bills
here in the Senate to help us do both. We should never give up on that
goal.
American energy production has powered our economic recovery and has
been the workhorse for the American economy for the last 7 years
through the economic recovery. It is time for us here in the Senate,
here in the country, certainly here in Washington, to return that favor
and to help get these Americans back to work.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
proceed to Calendar No. 55, H.R. 636, an act to amend the
Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend increased
expensing limitations, and for other purposes.
Mitch McConnell, Orrin G. Hatch, Daniel Coats, Lamar
Alexander, John Boozman, James M. Inhofe, Chuck
Grassley, Mike Crapo, Richard Burr, Thad Cochran,
Johnny Isakson, Roy Blunt, Dean Heller, John Thune,
John McCain, John Cornyn, Steve Daines.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
motion to proceed to H.R. 636, an act to amend the Internal Revenue
Code of 1986 to permanently extend increased expensing limitations, and
for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Texas (Mr. Cruz).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is
necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 98, nays 0, as follows:
[[Page S1682]]
[Rollcall Vote No. 40 Leg.]
YEAS--98
Alexander
Ayotte
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Boxer
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Coats
Cochran
Collins
Coons
Corker
Cornyn
Cotton
Crapo
Daines
Donnelly
Durbin
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Flake
Franken
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Heller
Hirono
Hoeven
Inhofe
Isakson
Johnson
Kaine
King
Kirk
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Lee
Manchin
Markey
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Paul
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Reid
Risch
Roberts
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Schatz
Schumer
Scott
Sessions
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Udall
Vitter
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Cruz
Sanders
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 98, the nays are 0.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
The Senator from Iowa.
Whistleblower Investigation
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to tell a story
about how a distinguished naval career was ruined by abuse of suspected
whistleblowers. The end result is a mixed bag of good and bad.
In doing oversight of the Defense Department whistleblower cases, I
have learned a difficult lesson. As hard as we may try, whistleblower
cases rarely have good outcomes. Now, true, a wrong may be made right,
a measure of justice may have been meted out, but the victims--the
whistleblowers--have been left out in the cold. They may never get the
remedy they seek and deserve.
At the center of this case is an honored naval officer, RADM Brian L.
Losey. He can only blame himself for what happened. No matter how you
cut it, though, the destruction of a distinguished military career--
especially one devoted to hazardous duty in Special Operations--is very
unfortunate and very sad as well. Yet that is accountability's harsh
reality. This admiral allegedly broke the law and must now pay the
price.
In the end, under pressure from several quarters, Secretary of the
Navy Ray Mabus was forced to deny Admiral Losey his second star. This
promotion was hanging fire for 5 long years, mostly because of ongoing
investigations. Admiral Losey had allegedly retaliated against several
whistleblowers.
If the Secretary of the Navy and the Navy's top brass had their way,
Admiral Losey would be wearing that second star today, but late last
year it got tossed into a boiling cauldron. Mounting opposition was
coming from four different directions.
First, on November 13 of last year, after learning about the
controversy, a bipartisan group of Senators weighed in with a request
for all the reports on the Losey matter. The requests came from
Senators Wyden, Kirk, Boxer, Johnson, Markey, McCaskill, and Baldwin,
along with this Senator from Iowa. We happen to be members of the
Whistleblower Protection Caucus. Other Senators also made similar
requests for those reports.
The second operation. On December 2, 2015, we received four of the
five Department of Defense Office of Inspector General reports on that
investigation. One is still being reviewed, and I will tell you about
that particular report in a minute.
In reviewing these documents, we quickly realized that Admiral Losey
appeared to be a serial retaliator of whistleblowers. The evidence was
overwhelming. He allegedly broke the law.
It all began in July 2011 at the Norfolk naval base Travel Office.
There was a minor dispute over who should pay for his daughter's
airline ticket to Germany. As a Coast Guard Academy cadet, that
daughter was not entitled to travel as a dependent at taxpayers'
expense. Although Admiral Losey, his wife, and staff allegedly
``pestered'' the Travel Office to pay for the ticket, Admiral Losey
eventually purchased it with his own money. Nonetheless, this incident
triggered a hotline complaint on July 13, 2011. Admiral Losey was
informed of the complaint 2 months later, and then from that point it
was all downhill.
After learning of the anonymous hotline tip, Admiral Losey was
reportedly ``livid.'' He saw it as an act of disloyalty and ``a
conspiracy to undermine his command.'' He reportedly developed a list
of suspects and began a punitive hunt for more. Reports indicate he was
determined to find out who blew the whistle, and when he did, he
allegedly said he ``would cut the head off this snake and end this.''
So in his drive to root out moles, he created a toxic environment in
his command. His seemingly reckless behavior and blatant disregard for
the law and well-being of his subordinates led to his downfall. The end
result of the admiral's misguided search for moles was a series of
reprisals against suspected--just suspected--whistleblowers.
His choice of suspects was gravely mistaken. No one, in fact, had
blown the whistle. Yet each was allegedly subjected to adverse
personnel action at his direction and with his concurrence. His targets
were mostly senior members of his command staff at Stuttgart, Germany.
The person who actually blew the whistle worked at the Travel Office in
Norfolk, VA. Clearly, this was a case of misdirected retaliation, which
makes his alleged abuses even more egregious.
As soon as Senators finished reviewing these reports and started
asking pointed questions, the Navy knew the watchdogs were on the case.
The Navy brass went to general quarters. According to reports in the
Washington Post, the top brass turned up the pressure. They arbitrarily
dismissed the inspector general's findings and put the promotion on a
fast track.
Now for the third part of this story. My good friend from Oregon,
Senator Ron Wyden, on December 18 of last year, upset the apple cart.
He placed a hold on the pending nomination for a new Under Secretary of
the Navy, Dr. Davidson. His hold was not directed at Dr. Davidson;
instead, it was directed at Admiral Losey's pending promotion. He had
grave concerns about revelations in the inspector general's reports.
His hold restored much needed leverage lost when the Senate confirmed
the admiral's promotion in December 2011. He wanted the Secretary of
the Navy to reconsider the promotion. So I commend my friend from
Oregon for taking this action because it was an immediate game-changer.
Fourth, on January 14, 2016, there came a bolt out of the blue. The
Senate Committee on Armed Services fired a shot across the bow that
stopped the Navy dead in the water. The committee's letter to the
Secretary of the Navy began with this damaging assessment. After
reviewing the investigative reports, we--meaning the committee--
``maintain deep reservations'' about Admiral Losey's ability to
successfully perform as a two-star admiral. This was the death knell,
but the committee's condemnation didn't end there. If it had known in
2011 what it knew in January of this year, the committee said it would
never have confirmed Admiral Losey's nomination in the first place. The
inspector general's damaging investigative reports had turned its
earlier assessment upside down. The committee then very much slammed
the door shut.
The committee urged the Secretary of the Navy to use his authority to
deny the promotion. There was no gentle nudge. This letter effectively
ended Admiral Losey's career. The Secretary of the Navy had run out of
options. The Secretary had to do what he had to do. The committee of
jurisdiction had laid down the law. The admiral should not be promoted.
End of story. Admiral Losey will now step down as leader of the Naval
Special War Command and retire.
The committee's groundbreaking letter was signed by Chairman McCain
and Ranking Member Reed, and what is important about this letter is
that it is a very sharp departure from actions taken by past Armed
Services Committees in questioning a lot of these things that go on in
the Defense Department. During the course of my oversight work, I have
had several beefs with this committee over issues exactly like this.
All were about the need to hold senior officers accountable for alleged
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misconduct based on evidence in inspector general reports. The response
back then was very different from what I see of the work of the
committee today.
I see this letter as a breakthrough. I see it as a masterpiece. I am
proud of the Committee on Armed Services. This about-face came under
new leadership, and I hope it signals the dawning of a bright new day.
So it shouldn't surprise anyone that I would thank Chairman McCain and
thank Ranking Member Reed from the bottom of my heart for this
outstanding leadership. Their actions send a message to whistleblowers:
Reprisals will not be tolerated. That is a real morale booster for all
whistleblowers suffering under the weight of reprisals.
From what I know about whistleblowers, most of them are very
patriotic people. They just want the government to follow the law and
spend the money appropriately. They just want the government to do what
the government is supposed to do. When they see it isn't being done,
and they work up the chain of command but do not see any changes, then
they come to Members of the Senate and the Congress. So I thank them
again for having the courage to do the right thing. Holding such a
distinguished naval officer accountable was no easy task. To the
contrary, it was as difficult as they get.
Mr. President, now that the question of the admiral's promotion has
been laid to rest, I would like to turn to that unfinished business I
earlier referred to. The true scope of the admiral's retaliation
actions is still being examined because there is a fifth report out
there. The focus of the fifth and final report of the Losey
investigation is more like a phantom than a real report.
Over 1,150 days have passed since this investigation began, and it is
still not finished. It should be a piece of cake. The cast of
characters, the facts, the evidence, and the findings should be
essentially the same as in other Losey reports published long ago.
So I ask: What is really going on here? I have received several
anonymous tips. What I hear is very disturbing. This report is
allegedly being doctored, causing bitter internal dispute over across
the river. On one side are the investigators just doing their job. They
appear--as we would expect--to be guided by the evidence. On the other
side is top management at the Defense Department. They appear very
eager to line up with the Navy's decision to arbitrarily dismiss
evidence.
From the get-go, the findings in the draft report substantiated
reprisal allegations against Admiral Losey--consistent with the other
reports. Top management initially concurred with those findings. So
then, what is wrong? Why not issue the report?
However, in response to alleged pressure from the Secretary of the
Navy's office, they caved and agreed to take Losey out of the report.
How could they get such a bad case of weak knees? The evidence staring
them in the face seems irrefutable--rock solid. Plus, it was just
reaffirmed by an unlikely source--the U.S. Air Force.
Because two Air Force officers were allegedly involved, the Air Force
had to conduct its own review. The Air Force also found the evidence
very compelling. As a result, the Air Force officer--who was Admiral
Losey's command attorney--reportedly faces potential legal trouble. He
allegedly facilitated the admiral's retaliatory actions against the
whistleblowers. The other officer will retire.
Despite the red flags and the need for caution, caution has been
tossed to the wind. On March 31, 2015, Deputy Inspector General
Marguerite Garrison gave the Navy a green light to proceed. She
notified Admiral Losey by letter that he ``was no longer a subject of
the investigation.'' How could she do such a thing with all the
evidence that is already out there in the other four reports and what
we think we know in this report that is not public?
At that point in time, Admiral Losey's alleged retaliation was the
centerpiece of the report. True, it was a draft report in the midst of
review. True, there were questions about Admiral Losey's role. Yet,
after the passage of 1 year, the dispute remains unresolved. The report
is still in draft and, obviously, mired in controversy.
I think this all shows that there is something rotten at the
Pentagon. To send such a letter, which was inconsistent with the
evidence in an unfinished report, seems inappropriate. The Garrison
letter set the stage for what has followed, and I will tell you what
followed.
To conform to the Garrison letter, the findings in the draft report
had to be allegedly changed from ``substantiated'' to ``not
substantiated.'' The investigators, thank God, dug in their heels and
stood their ground. The evidence was apparently on their side.
In early December of last year, as the Losey promotion issue reached
a critical juncture, top management allegedly ``directed'' the
investigators to change the report's findings from ``substantiated'' to
``not substantiated.'' The investigators were also allegedly directed
to change facts and evidence to fit the desired findings. In other
words, key pieces of evidence had to be allegedly ``removed'' to ensure
that the evidence presented in the report was aligned with the
specified conclusions.
These are very serious allegations. Deliberately falsifying
information in an official report constitutes a potential violation of
law. If the directed rewrite of this report really happened, and if it
is allowed to stand, it could undermine the integrity of the whole
investigative process.
The new acting Defense Department inspector general, Mr. Glenn Fine,
whom I know from a similar position in the Justice Department to be a
pretty good inspector general, needs to grab the bull by the horns in
this case, and he has the authority to do it.
He needs to call the top officials involved on the carpet. This would
include Mrs. Garrison, her deputy, Director Nilgun Tolek, and Deputy
Director Michael Shanker. The IG needs to ask them to explain and
justify their actions. Next, he needs to ask the investigators to
present their side of the story. Then, he needs to weigh independently
and objectively the evidence and figure out what needs to be done to
get this solved and get this report out. I think Mr. Fine has the
capability to be independent and objective, and I ask him to do that.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered
Filling the Supreme Court Vacancy
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am here to defend Chief Justice John
Roberts. I am here because he has been attacked, without cause, by the
chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Yesterday afternoon the senior Senator from Iowa hit a new low in
trying to justify his unprecedented obstruction of President Obama's
Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. The chairman of the
Judiciary Committee accused Chief Justice John Roberts of being ``part
of the problem'' when it comes to the politicization of the Supreme
Court. That is without any foundation.
I don't agree with the Chief Justice on every opinion he has
rendered, nor, frankly, do I agree with any of the other seven on
opinions they have rendered. We have had some disagreements on a number
of opinions they have authored and participated in. Again, I don't
agree with the Chief Justice on many of the opinions he has written,
but his observations about the Supreme Court confirmation process have
obviously struck a nerve in the Republican caucus.
Here is what happened. Days before the unfortunate death of Justice
Scalia, before anyone could have anticipated the Supreme Court vacancy,
Chief Justice Roberts made the commonsense assertion in a speech he
gave that partisan politics hurt our Nation's highest Court. This is
what he said:
When you have a sharply political, divisive hearing
process, it increases the danger that whoever comes out of it
will be viewed in these terms. . . . It's natural for some
member of the public to think you must be identified in a
particular way as a result of that process. And that's just
not how--we don't work as Democrats or Republicans. I think
it's a very unfortunate perception the public might get from
the confirmation process.
I was a Member of the Senate when we had the hearings regarding
Justice
[[Page S1684]]
Roberts. He came from the same court on which Merrick Garland served.
They served together, and they are friends. In the past, Justice
Roberts has said many glowing things about Merrick Garland. But
yesterday afternoon on this floor, the senior Senator from Iowa had the
audacity to accuse Roberts of being part of the problem, even going so
far as to tell the Chief Justice--listen to this one--``Physician, heal
thyself.''
I say to the senior Senator from Iowa, Justice Roberts isn't the one
who needs healing. What needs mending is the Judiciary Committee under
his chairmanship, which he has annexed as a political arm of the
Republican leader's office. Senator Grassley has sacrificed the
historical independence of the Judiciary Committee to do the bidding of
the tea party and obviously the Koch brothers.
I have news for Senator Grassley: The American people don't think the
process of nominating a Supreme Court Justice is political because the
Supreme Court's rulings don't match expectations of the political right
or the political left. I have confidence that these men and women who
serve on the Court do the very best they can to rule on the law as they
see it. The American people don't think it is political because the
senior Senator from Iowa is refusing to give a fair hearing to a highly
qualified nominee purely because he was nominated by a Democratic
President. The American people think it is political when the Judiciary
Committee and the Republicans on his committee meet behind closed doors
and make pacts to blockade our Nation's judiciary, from the Supreme
Court, to the circuit courts, to the district courts.
I know that my friend, with whom I have served for decades in this
body, is grasping for something, anything to get himself off the hook.
President Harry Truman said, ``The buck stops here.'' Senator Grassley
wants the buck to stop with anyone but himself. He has done more to
politicize the process than any chairman of the Judiciary Committee in
the history of this country.
If the senior Senator from Iowa really wants to understand why
Americans think the process of nominating Supreme Court Justices is so
partisan, he should consider his own actions. He has only himself to
blame for not doing his job.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, just a little earlier today, the Senate
moved to proceed to the FAA reauthorization bill. My hope is that we--
the distinguished Senator from Florida, who is the ranking member on
the Commerce Committee, and I--will move to have a substitute
considered, and, hopefully, that will happen very soon.
At this time, I wish to speak about the subject that is before us,
and that is the FAA reauthorization bill.
This week the Senate is taking up something that is a very important
piece of legislation when it comes to aviation reforms that will
support U.S. jobs, increase safety, improve drone operations, and make
travel easier for airline passengers. The bill before us today, the
Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2016, will help
update aviation law to reflect the rapid advances in technology we have
seen over the last few years.
For example, since the last reauthorization of the Federal Aviation
Administration in 2012, the use of drones has increased dramatically.
The FAA has sought to keep up by using the authority it already has to
safely advance this burgeoning industry, but there are limits to what
the FAA can do with only outdated authority to manage this rapidly
advancing technology. Passing this reform bill will help the FAA remove
barriers to innovation and address unacceptable safety risks when it
comes to unmanned aircraft.
Just last month the Los Angeles Times reported on an incident where a
Lufthansa A380 jumbo jet approaching the Los Angeles International
Airport experienced a near miss with a drone that flew just 200 feet
over the airliner. While fortunately in this case, the two did not
collide, the prospect of a jumbo jet carrying hundreds of passengers
striking a drone while flying over a heavily populated area is
chilling.
Our colleague from California, Senator Feinstein, noted in a
statement on this incident that our FAA bill includes key reforms that
will keep drones out of the path of airliners. She added: ``We must
pass this bill and strengthen the law wherever we can.'' Well, I could
not agree more. To keep drones out of the paths of commercial
airliners, the Senate bill would implement standards so that existing
safety technologies could be built into unmanned aircraft. This
legislation also takes steps to require drone users to learn basic
rules of the sky so they understand the limits of where and when
unmanned aircraft may operate. This is critical as we move into an era
where drones share airspace with commercial aircraft, emergency medical
flights, low-altitude agricultural planes, and general aviation pilots.
Our focus on safety in this legislation doesn't stop at promoting
safe use of unmanned systems. Our legislation addresses safety issues
across the aviation spectrum. Lithium batteries, the batteries that
power laptops and mobile phones, have helped to grow our digital
economy, but the bulk transport of these items poses serious shipping
challenges. Our bill ensures swift implementation of new international
safety standards for the bulk transport of these batteries.
Although the sequence of events preceding the tragic Germanwings
murder-suicide almost certainly would not have happened in the United
States due to existing rules, our bill recognizes the importance of
mental health and strengthens evaluations for commercial pilots.
Our legislation also improves a voluntary safety reporting program
for pilots and sets a deadline for creating a commercial pilot record
database to ensure air carriers have all available information about
pilots' training, testing, and employment histories when hiring.
In response to an independent recommendation completed after our
experience with the 2015 Ebola virus outbreak, our bill directs Federal
agencies to establish aviation preparedness plans for any future
outbreaks of communicable diseases.
Our legislation also directs the FAA to update guidance regarding
flight deck automation, such as the use of autopilot, a key factor in
recent fatal accidents. This legislation also makes existing funds
available for a $400 million increase in the Airport Improvement
Program to strengthen infrastructure and safety measures at our
airports.
While our top priority is safety, the Senate's aviation bill also
makes consumer friendly reforms to improve air travel for passengers. I
commute weekly from my home in South Dakota to Washington, DC. So I
understand the many frustrations that passengers face, and my
colleagues and I are immensely proud of the pro-consumer provisions in
this bill. Our legislation has been hailed by a consumer columnist for
the Washington Post as ``one of the most passenger-friendly Federal
Aviation Administration reauthorization bills in a generation.''
Under our bill, airlines must return fees consumers have paid for
baggage if items are lost or delayed. We also require airlines to
automatically return fees for services purchased but not delivered so
that travelers don't have to go through the hassle of trying to reclaim
their money from an airline. And for customers frustrated by lengthy
legal jargon that can make it difficult to understand fees, our bill
creates a new and easy-to-read uniform standard for disclosing baggage,
ticket change, seat selection, and other fees. Our proposal also helps
families with children find flights where they can sit together without
additional costs by requiring airlines to tell purchasers about
available seat locations at the time of booking.
As a resident of a rural State, the needs of the general aviation
community were a priority of mine when we wrote this bill. I am pleased
we were able to build a consensus for including reforms from the
Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 offered by many of my colleagues and led by
Senators Inhofe and Manchin.
[[Page S1685]]
These provisions include reforms to the third class medical certificate
required for noncommercial pilots and new protections for pilots in
their interactions with the FAA.
To reduce the risk of aircraft accidents for low-altitude fliers,
such as agricultural applicators, our bill includes requirements for
highly visible physical markings on small towers posing hazards.
This bill would also strengthen the aviation industry by improving
the FAA's process for certifying aircraft designs and modifications and
ensuring that these certifications benefit manufacturers competing in
global markets. This would help manufacturers move U.S. aerospace
products to market faster without compromising safety standards.
While I expect and encourage robust debate on this bill, I hope the
debate will go forward with the same bipartisan and constructive spirit
that Senator Nelson and I witnessed during consideration of this bill
in the Commerce Committee. At the committee markup, we voted to include
dozens of amendments reflecting ideas from both sides of the aisle. On
final passage, we approved this bill by a voice vote, without a single
committee member recording an objection. Part of reaching this
consensus was an agreement Senator Nelson and I had reached not to
include certain proposals that would divide our colleagues. We worked
hard to find middle ground on a number of issues to enable us to move
this bill forward. Air traffic control reform and a passenger facility
charge increase were excluded from the package because, at present,
these proposals lack sufficient support and their inclusion could have
jeopardized the legislation. Senator Nelson and I also agreed to limit
the length of this bill to 18 months. This allows us to enact important
reforms now while providing an opportunity to revisit other issues
reasonably soon.
As we debate this bill, we should remember the urgent need for safety
improvements and good government reforms to improve our aviation
industry. There are numerous reforms in this bill that are simply too
important to delay, and I look forward to a productive debate.
Finally, I took to the floor earlier this week to discuss the recent
horrific attacks perpetrated by ISIS and the implications for security
and our aviation policy. In addition to this FAA bill, the Commerce
Committee has approved two bipartisan aviation security bills. The
first is S. 2361, the Airport Security Enhancement and Oversight Act,
which Senator Nelson and I introduced along with the bipartisan
leadership of the Homeland Security Committee as cosponsors, and the
second is H.R. 2843, which is the TSA PreCheck Expansion Act offered by
Representative John Katko in the House.
Historically, the Senate has passed aviation security enhancements
separate from a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.
While I still prefer this separate approach, I will pursue every option
to enact these improvements and will vigorously oppose any efforts to
water down the security enhancements in these bills.
I know we all share the goal of keeping aviation secure, and I will
listen to the views of my colleagues on whether we pursue enactment of
these bipartisan aviation security proposals through this
reauthorization or through separate legislation.
I thank my partner on the Commerce Committee, Ranking Member Bill
Nelson, as well as Senators Kelly Ayotte and Maria Cantwell, who lead
our Aviation Subcommittee, for their work on the Federal Aviation
Administration Reauthorization Act.
I look forward to the ensuing debate on the bill, and I urge--at the
end of that debate--my colleagues to move forward and pass this
legislation because it is important for America's economy and the
safety of our traveling public.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I think the chairman, Senator Thune, has
pointed out that what we have tried to exhibit is the way the Senate is
supposed to work. We are supposed to work in a bipartisan way to forge
consensus in order to be able to govern. The subject matter of the FAA
reauthorization bill is one that we shouldn't dilly-dally around.
Indeed, we take some of the very serious consequences we are facing
with our national aviation system head-on.
I also want the chairman to know how much I appreciate the spirit
with which we have worked, not only on this issue but on the many
issues we have discussed in the Commerce Committee. I think the proof
is in the pudding, and I think we will see an amendment process that
will run fairly smoothly as a result of the example and the spirit we
have tried to set with regard to this legislation.
This is a comprehensive bill. It has been months in the making, and
in working together in the fashion that I indicated, the bill reflects
our broad agreement on aviation. At the same time, we have refrained
from the controversial proposals, such as the plan in the House bill
that has come out of the House committee and has not gone to the floor.
They had a plan to privatize air traffic control and that has stopped
the House FAA bill dead in its tracks.
We have a good bill in front of us here in the Senate, and in this
robust process we will consider many amendments and improvements as we
continue the legislative process. There is no basis for the chatter
coming from some in the House that hearts and minds will change here in
the Senate on air traffic control privatization. Air traffic control
privatization is just not going to happen. I have made myself very
clear on that issue. Such a privatization scheme would seriously impact
the overall success of our aviation system. It would dismantle the
longstanding partnership between the FAA and the Department of Defense
and needlessly disrupt the progress the FAA is making in its
modernization efforts. Let me underscore that. The Defense Department
operates in about 20 percent of our airspace. They cannot afford to
have a private company handling that airspace. Of course, this
privatization could also lead to increased costs for the traveling
public and users of the National Airspace System.
We think the measured approach we are taking in this bill is the
better path, and we are not alone in this view. This bipartisan bill
enjoys the support of a huge number of organizations. Now, nothing is
perfect, and so it was my hope that we could find a way to help our
busiest airports by increasing the resources they need to improve and
maintain vital facilities. We couldn't reach that agreement. That is
one reason the term of this bill is somewhat limited through fiscal
year 2017, so we have an additional opportunity to revisit this and
other issues in the not-too-distant future. It is a consensus bill, and
it contains, as the chairman has just mentioned, many new consumer
protections for airline passengers, critical improvements in drone
safety, and reforms that boost U.S. aircraft manufacturing and exports,
and it will do all of this without disrupting the safest and most
efficient air transportation system in the world.
Let me highlight some of these consumer protections. How irritating
is it to passengers that they don't know about this-and-that fee, this-
and-that charge? At the end of the day, consumers feel nickeled and
dimed. They deserve to know, and they need some relief. Well, this bill
makes progress on that. Last summer, this Senator released a report
that found that airlines failed to adequately disclose the extra fees
and the add-on costs charged to the flying public. In many cases,
passengers didn't know they could get a seat without having to request
a special seat with a fee. In many cases, passengers didn't know about
the fees they had to pay for airline baggage. That report had a number
of comprehensive recommendations, and this legislation builds on that
report to protect the flying public--many things in the bill. For
example, it requires fee refunds for lost or delayed baggage. It
requires new standardized disclosure of fees for consumers. It requires
increased protections for disabled passengers.
As the chairman mentioned, drone safety is a very important area of
this bill. Remember Captain Sully Sullenberger, who became a national
hero when, upon takeoff and ascending out of LaGuardia, he encountered
a flock of seagulls which were sucked into his jet engines? Now, that
is flesh
[[Page S1686]]
and blood and feathers and webbed feet. You can imagine what would
happen if a plane, on ascent or on descent of a passenger airline,
sucks in the plastic and metal of a drone. There are lives at risk, and
there might not be a Hudson River that Captain Sullenberger could belly
it in, in the Hudson River, and save all the lives of his passengers.
Last year alone, the FAA recorded over 1,000 drone sightings near
airports and aircraft. That is unacceptable, and we must do everything
we can to protect the flying public from these dangers posed by drones.
So this bill creates a pilot program to test various technologies to
keep drones away from airports, and it requires the FAA to work with
NASA to test and develop a drone traffic management system. We have
seen the technology already available that can suddenly capture a
drone, if it goes into a prohibited area, and land that drone or take
over that drone and take it someplace else. The identification of
drones that go in and out of prohibited areas is also important. We are
going to have to face this because, sooner or later, it will not be
what happened at the Miami International Airport with a drone within
hundreds of feet of an inbound American Airlines airliner into Miami
International. So we want to avoid that catastrophic outcome. This
legislation also provides reforms in the FAA certification process that
will boost U.S. manufacturing and exports and most importantly create
really good jobs for hard-working Americans.
Those are just some of the key features in the bill when it comes to
reauthorizing the FAA, and that is what brings us here today with the
bill on the floor. We know we are in a new context of world terrorism,
having just been reminded in Brussels. The dual attacks on a Brussels
metro station and the airport are a grim reminder that both aviation
and surface transportation networks remain attractive targets for
terrorists. It is now almost 15 years after September 11. The
terrorists are still out there seeking these vulnerabilities. In
November of last year, we saw the ability to penetrate airport
perimeter security in Egypt enabled an employee to get an explosive
device on a Russian passenger jet, and that killed 224 civilians. So we
have amendments to address these issues. We think these amendments are
noncontroversial, we think they are bipartisan, and they certainly are
timely.
As our debate unfolds over the next few days, aviation security will
be an important factor in the discussion. The chairman and I have
talked at length, and we have some of the ideas that we are going to
present for consideration on security. One such proposal, as the
chairman has mentioned in his opening remarks, we already passed in the
commerce committee. It is right there, the Airport Security Enhancement
and Oversight Act. That bipartisan legislation, sponsored by a number
of us on the committee, would improve background checks for airport
workers and increase employee screenings--obviously, a reminder of the
Russian jetliner--this is important--and a reminder of the gun-running
scheme in the Atlanta airport: over 100 guns over a 3-month period put
on airliners, transporting them from the Atlanta Airport to New York.
It is an area that requires attention.
So I look forward to collaborating with our colleagues as we move
these important issues.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Filling the Supreme Court Vacancy
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about an issue that
affects a part of our Constitution. The Constitution begins with these
three words: ``We the people.'' You can talk in any townhall across
America and ask ``What are the first three words of the Constitution?''
and they will respond ``We the people.'' They know that the
Constitution starts with those words written in a super-sized font,
because that is really the heart of what our system of government is
all about--not ``we the powerful commercial interests,'' not ``we the
titans of industry,'' not ``we the richest in America.'' No. ``We the
people,'' the citizens, ordinary citizens. Our Constitution, our system
of government is set up to honor and respect and address the concerns
of ordinary citizens. That is very different from so many other
countries where our early residents came from, from across the sea. So
those three words capture the spirit of what our new Nation was all
about, or, as President Lincoln later summarized, a government of the
people, by the people, and for the people.
I have come to the floor periodically to address various issues
related to ``we the people,'' related certainly to honoring the spirit
of the Constitution. In that regard, this week I am coming to the floor
to address the responsibility of our Senate and its advice and consent
role under our Constitution.
The President's duty is to nominate a Supreme Court Justice when
there is a vacancy. That responsibility is clearly written into our
Constitution. The Senate's duty is to consider whether that nominee
merits being appointed. In the early ages of our country, as we went
from the Revolution of 1776 to the drafting of the Constitution, our
Founders were of mixed minds as to how this appointment process should
work. Some said the appointments should all be done by what they
referred to as the assembly--that is, by all of us in Congress. So the
executive branch would have a check on it, but the position would be
filled by Congress. Others said: No, no, no, no, that is too difficult.
Too much horse trading is going to be going on. The responsibility
needs to be vested in the President. That is accountability.
But what happens if the President engages in appointments of dubious
merit, people of dubious character, of dubious qualifications? So they
came out with this compromise that the President nominates and our
responsibility here in the Senate is to determine whether the nominee
is of fit character.
One can get a little flavor of this from the writings of Hamilton in
the Federalist Papers, Paper No. 76. He writes:
To what purpose then require the cooperation of the Senate?
I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have
a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would
be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the
president, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment
of unfit characters.
That is our responsibility--to vet the nominee and to vote upon
determining whether the individual is of fit character, and that
certainly can be broadly interpreted to include personal
characteristics and qualifications for a job that requires specific
qualifications. That is our responsibility.
Every Senator here took an oath to the Constitution, pledged to honor
their responsibilities here as they are laid out in the Constitution.
That is why I am so disturbed that at this moment we have Senators in
this body who have said: I am not going to do my responsibility under
the Constitution. I am going on a job strike. I don't want to work and
do my responsibility under advice and consent. I don't want to do the
work of vetting candidates and voting on candidates. I am just going to
sit on my hands and sing ``la la la'' instead of doing the work the
Constitution requires.
That is unacceptable. To my colleagues who are sitting on their hands
and failing to do their constitutional responsibility, I simply say: Do
your job.
On March 16 President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to serve on the
U.S. Supreme Court. Certainly the President has now fulfilled his
responsibility under the Constitution. He put forward a nominee to fill
this critical vacancy on the Supreme Court. I certainly look forward to
meeting with Merrick Garland, reviewing his credentials, and learning
more about his vision for the Supreme Court. That is part of the
vetting process. That is something all of us should be doing. Then it
will be time for the Senate as a body to act. That means the Judiciary
Committee proceeds to collect information on Mr. Garland's background
and on his decisions, and then they hold a hearing and members of
[[Page S1687]]
the committee ask penetrating questions: Why did you say this in a
particular opinion? He has a whole record to be examined, and that is
what we should be doing right now.
Not since the Civil War have we left a vacancy on the Supreme Court
for over a year, but the job strike my colleagues are engaged in today
says: We are going to leave this vacancy on the Court. We are going on
a job strike for an entire year and not do our responsibility under the
Constitution because we just don't want to.
That is a dereliction of duty, and I encourage my colleagues to
rethink their positions.
Since 1975 it has taken on average only 67 days to vet and vote on a
Supreme Court nominee--just 67 days or a little over 2 months.
There are some folks here in the Chamber who say: Well, this is a
unique circumstance because we are in the last year of a Presidency,
and therefore we should just wait and leave the Court spot empty for a
year. Wait until the election next November and wait for the new
President to come in in January and then get a new nominee and hold
hearings then.
That argument fails on several accounts. First of all, there is
nothing in the Constitution that says one will only do their job in a
year, if you will, that is in the first 3 years of the Presidency
instead of the fourth year. That is not written in the Constitution.
For any of my colleagues who make this argument, I would be happy to
read the Constitution to them. Better yet, read it yourselves. Look at
the Constitution and our responsibilities under the Constitution. The
President is required to nominate in all 4 years, and we here in the
Senate are required to proceed to determine whether that nominee is of
unfit character or of fit character, and that means vetting and that
means voting. The President doesn't get a break in his fourth year and
get told to do nothing, and we don't get a break in our sixth year. We
are not told that in the sixth year we should wait to make decisions
because we have to run for reelection and therefore we should wait
until our citizens vote. No. We have a term that runs a full 6 years,
and we have a responsibility for the entire 6 years. The President has
a term of 4 years, and he or she has the responsibility for the entire
4 years. There is nothing in the advice and consent clause that says
that at a certain point in time, we are just not going to do our advice
and consent responsibility.
It is conceivable that the Founders could have written into the
Constitution that in the fourth year of a Presidency, the Senate will
not fill any positions, but they didn't write that into the
Constitution, and it would not have made sense for them to have done so
because the work of the Court is ongoing and the work of the executive
branch is ongoing.
Indeed, if we want any form of precedent, we can look to the recent
past. Justice Kennedy, who sits on the Court today, was confirmed in
the last year of President Reagan's final term, and he was confirmed
under a Democratically controlled Senate. I have not heard a single
Member come to this floor and say that if they had been here in that
year, they would have advised that we leave President Reagan's nominee
hanging, unvetted, not voted on for an entire year, waiting for the
next President. No one here made that argument back then, and nobody is
making it now. What we are seeing is a purely political effort to pack
the Court to politicize an institution that shouldn't be politicized.
From the moment of nomination through the end of this administration,
we still have 310 days. The average, after a nomination, to confirm a
nomination, is 66 days. In other words, we have five times as many days
as needed for the average to confirm. There is no argument that there
is not enough time.
A job strike based purely on partisan politics designed to polarize
and pack the Court is going to do a tremendous amount of damage to this
important institution.
Our Founders laid out in the Constitution a vision of three coequal
branches, but, colleagues, if you take the advice and consent power to
undermine the ability of the executive branch to operate or the ability
of the Court to operate, you will damage in a serious way the quality
of the three branches. You will be saying that one branch has the power
to derail the ability of the other two to function. That is absolutely,
clearly, completely, 100 percent not the vision that was laid out in
the Constitution and not the vision that was laid out for advice and
consent.
Let me remind you that advice and consent is the responsibility to
determine if the nominee is of unfit character. How can we determine if
someone is of unfit character if we won't meet with them? How can we
determine if someone is of unfit character if we are not willing to
review their writings? How can we determine if they are of unfit
character if the Judiciary Committee doesn't hold a hearing to actually
raise questions and ask the nominee to respond to them? How can we as a
body determine and make the decision that someone is of unfit character
if we don't hold a vote?
Consider the precedent that is being established and the damage it
will do. Let's say for example that by refusing to do their job, my
Republican colleagues delay until the next administration comes in. It
is a Republican administration, and they get a nominee who they feel
has far-right views that they like better than the nominee before us.
By the way, Merrick Garland's views are about as straight down the
center as anyone can ask for. He has been praised voluminously by
Republicans in the past. Justice Roberts said that if one disagreed
with Justice Garland, one would really have to look carefully as to
why. A key Member of this body who has been here a very long time said:
If someone like Justice Garland was nominated, well, that would be a
very reasonable nomination. So we have a very reasonable, down-the-
middle nomination.
But what if this tactic of going on strike and failing to do your job
worked, so that in the next administration you could secure a Supreme
Court Justice who is way to the right?
First, it has been a clear and complete effort to pack the Court. You
have destroyed the integrity of the Court as one that rises above
partisan politics.
Then along comes another vacancy, and you have a different President
and/or maybe the same President. Now the minority says: Well, we are
going to go on strike, or maybe the majority is going to go on strike
because they don't like this particular President or they don't like
this particular nominee. And they say: We are not going to vet, we are
not going to vote, we are going to wait. It is only 3 years until the
next President. Let's let the people decide or wait till the next
President.
Perhaps if the Republican side succeeds in packing the Court and then
the question becomes another vacancy, Democrats say: Well, look, we
have to restore the balance of the Court, so we are going to absolutely
refuse to act on the next nominee of this Republican President.
This you can see. This precedent is not only a dereliction of duty;
it is deeply damaging to the integrity of the Court. It is deeply
destructive of the integrity of the Court. This is a path we do not
want to go down as a body, exercising our advice and consent
responsibilities, politicizing our judicial system, polarizing our
judicial system, destroying the integrity of our judicial system.
I appeal to my colleagues, rethink the oath of office that you took
to do your job, decide to end this job strike, and do your job. Rethink
how important the responsibility that we have as a Senate is to
maintain the integrity of our institutions. For short-term gain,
destroying the Supreme Court, polarizing, diminishing the Supreme Court
is not in the interest of our Nation.
I will go back to where I began, with our system of ``we the
people''--our ``we the people'' Constitution--designed to create laws
of, by, and for the people. There are three coequal branches of
government; one creating laws, one executing those laws, and one
determining whether or not those laws are within the balance of our
Constitution.
This action of trying to pack the Court through a job strike is
equivalent to shredding key parts of this beautiful document. It is
wrong in terms of the short-term action, and it is certainly wrong in
terms of our long-term responsibilities.
[[Page S1688]]
Let's end this show. Let's end this highly politicized moment. Let's
actually hold the hearing to vet the candidate. Let's meet with the
candidate so we can develop our individual understandings. Let's review
the candidate's writings, and let's gather on the floor to vote whether
we believe this candidate is a fit character or unfit character. That
is our responsibility. Let's do our responsibility.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Nuclear Deal With Iran
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last Saturday marked the 1-year
anniversary of the Obama administration's deal with Iran, known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This is the nuclear deal with Iran
that officially went into effect last October.
Briefly summarized, in exchange for billions of dollars in near-term
and long-term sanctions relief, Iran made some very modest nuclear
concessions--and that is if you believe the inspection regime is not
fundamentally flawed, which I do not believe. So instead of trust and
verify, we can't even verify Iran is complying with the terms of the
agreement. Indeed, I think we can pretty much be guaranteed that Iran
will do its dead-level best to cheat.
To make matters worse, the administration all but admitted the deal
wasn't going to stop Iran from exporting terrorism--which is the No. 1
state sponsor of terrorism in the world--or violating the human rights
of its own citizens or advancing its ballistic missile program. We have
seen a lot of evidence of that recently.
All of these major bipartisan concerns were highlighted by Congress
but totally ignored by the administration. President Obama himself
warned that ``this deal is not''--is not--``contingent on Iran changing
its behavior. That is the President of the United States, the leader of
the free world, the Commander in Chief. The President of the United
States said: ``This deal is not contingent on Iran changing its
behavior.'' Unbelievable and outrageous.
My concerns with this agreement have done nothing but grow ever since
the deal was done, and Iran continues to prove it was not negotiating
in good faith--to the contrary, that it was negotiating in bad faith
and would take every advantage it could to advance its nuclear
ambitions and to continue its state sponsorship of global terrorism.
Iran is still working to undercut the United States and its
priorities in the Middle East by fueling proxy wars in the region in
places such as Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. The administration has even made
clear that it knew the money that was released as a result of the
sanctions relief--that it knew--that the tens of billions of dollars of
intermediate sanctions relief going to Iran would be funneled to
terrorist groups across the Middle East. So we have an unverifiable
deal, and we have money going to finance terrorism. What is not to love
about that? That is the administration's attitude.
In fact, earlier this week it was reported that the U.S. Navy--the
U.S. Navy--for the third time in just 2 months intercepted an Iranian
shipment of weapons in the Arabian Sea believed to be headed from Iran
to rebel groups in Yemen.
One has to wonder how Iran paid for those weapons. Well, one logical
explanation would be perhaps with the sanctions relief authorized by
the President's misbegotten deal with Iran. That was a huge cash
infusion. It is only logical to believe that Iran used that money to
pay for the weapons they were then trying to ship to the rebels in
Yemen. And, of course, as we have seen recently, the deal certainly
didn't keep Iran's Revolutionary Guard from test-firing ballistic
missiles. The fact is, the Iranian nuclear deal is not worth the paper
it is written on. I hope the next President will rip it to shreds day
one in office and give it the sort of respect that it has really
earned.
Unfortunately, Iran serves as just one of the many examples of how
the administration's rudderless strategy is advancing America's
interests in the complex world we are living in. On President Obama's
watch, the United States has methodically ceded our irreplaceable
leadership role throughout the world. This is most evident in the
Middle East--a caldron of violence and instability.
In Syria, we don't see the JV team that President Obama referred to
in ISIS. We see an emboldened terrorist group that exports death and
destruction to our allies in cities such as Paris and Brussels, with
the intention to do the same thing right here in the United States,
anywhere and everywhere they can, including places such as Garland, TX,
where thankfully an alert security guard was able to thwart two ISIS-
inspired terrorists from killing innocent civilians.
In Iraq, where Americans spent their treasure and spilled their blood
to bring relative peace and stability just a few short years ago, we
now find complete chaos. President Obama's precipitous withdrawal of
U.S. forces from Iraq helped turn the region back into a powder keg.
Much like the Obama administration's promised redline on chemical
weapons in Syria, the border between Syria and Iraq has literally been
erased. It doesn't exist anymore. As the Obama administration has stood
by, today the black flag of ISIS flies high over places such as Mosul
and Fallujah.
We all know that ISIS has carved out a safe haven in the heart of the
Middle East, while Syria has plunged deeper and deeper into civil war
and chaos. Millions of people have become displaced as refugees, both
internally in Syria and in surrounding countries, causing further
instability in the region. And now, of course, we are seeing them not
only in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, but escaping to
Europe and creating huge challenges for the governments in Europe. That
is not even to mention the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have
lost their lives in this civil war while the world has stood back and
by and large watched with negligible strategy or effort to try to
change the outcome.
What is the result? Well, beyond this hard reality, this sends a
message to our allies and our adversaries. Our allies are questioning
our commitment and our reliability. Our adversaries are interpreting
our lack of strategy and action as weakness and opportunity. Israel,
along with several of our gulf partners, has found a White House that
repeatedly seems to care more about the interests of our common enemy
than Israel's security interests. In Europe, North Atlantic Treaty
Organization countries--NATO countries--question our dedication and
commitment to transatlantic peace and prosperity as Russia prowls at
their back door. Our adversaries have noticed. They have been
emboldened by the lack of American leadership and strategy, and they
have taken full advantage.
This administration's abdication of leadership has allowed China to
grow more belligerent in the Asia-Pacific; North Korea to test what
they claim is a hydrogen bomb and to threaten our allies, such as South
Korea and Japan; and Russia to quickly fill the leadership vacuum left
by the United States in Europe and the Middle East.
If we had any doubt about it, once again we have learned a hard
lesson, and that is, weakness is itself a provocation. Weakness is a
provocation. What this world needs, what America needs, is leadership
and a strategic vision that doesn't just respond to every crisis on an
ad hoc basis.
Fortunately, the Founding Fathers gave the Congress some tools to be
able to help when the Chief Executive of the country seems to be
without any particular direction or without a particular strategy. The
Senate can play an active role in holding the administration
accountable and putting forth a strategy to help keep us safe.
For example, yesterday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a
hearing to discuss Iran's recent transgressions. I am glad the chairman
of that committee, Senator Corker, and the ranking member, Senator
Cardin, are working together on a bipartisan basis on legislation to
levy more comprehensive sanctions on the Iranian regime to make up for
what should have been done in the Iran nuclear deal but was essentially
ignored. The administration had consciously decided to ignore Iran's
role as a state sponsor of
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terrorism and decided we are just going to try to deal with the Iranian
nuclear aspirations and not the terrorism aspirations. In doing so, I
think they literally failed on both counts. They not only created a
testing regime that can't actually verify when Iran is cheating, but at
the same time they have unleashed tens of billions of dollars to help
finance terrorist activity.
The administration has made clear that it simply doesn't have much
interest in holding Iran accountable. They seem now absolutely nervous
about doing anything that Iran might use as an excuse to walk away from
the nuclear deal, which they could do on a moment's notice, meanwhile
keeping the benefits they have already gotten from this deal; namely,
the billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
I hope the Senate will move forward on this legislation soon. Our
allies and our friends need to know that if the President will not
stand by them and challenge our adversaries, Congress will.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Filling The Supreme Court Vacancy
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise once again to address the Supreme
Court vacancy created by the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The Constitution gives the nomination power to the President and gives
the advice and consent power to the Senate but does not tell either how
to exercise their power. Our job of advice and consent begins with
deciding how best to exercise this power in each situation, and the
Senate has done so in different ways at different times under different
circumstances. I don't think there is any question about that.
For two reasons, I am convinced that the best way to exercise our
power of advice and consent regarding the Scalia vacancy is to defer
the confirmation process until the current Presidential season is over.
The first reason is that the circumstances we face today make this the
wrong time for the confirmation process. This vacancy occurred in a
Presidential election year with the campaigns and voting already
underway. Different parties control the nomination and confirmation
phases of the judicial appointment process. The confirmation process,
especially for Supreme Court nominees, has been racked by discord in
the past, and this is one of the bitterest and dirtiest Presidential
campaigns we have seen in modern times. Combining a Supreme Court
confirmation fight and a nasty Presidential campaign would create the
perfect storm that would do more harm than good for the Court, the
Senate, and of course, our Nation.
The circumstances I mentioned are identical to those that led Vice
President Biden in 1992 to recommend exactly what we are doing today.
In June of 1992, when he chaired the Judiciary Committee, he identified
these very circumstances and concluded: ``[O]nce the political season
is under way, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be
put off until after the election campaign is over.'' To be fair,
something significant has changed since 1992. The confirmation process
has become even more partisan, contentious, and divisive.
In 2001 Democrats plotted a procedural revolution by launching new
tactics to prevent Republican judicial nominees from being confirmed.
Over the next several years, they led 20 filibusters of appeals court
nominees and prevented several from ever getting appointed.
Then in 2013, Democrats used a parliamentary maneuver to abolish the
very filibusters they had used so aggressively. The minority leader
knows this because he was in the middle of it all. If the condition of
the confirmation process was bad enough in 1992 for Chairman Biden to
recommend deferring it to a less politically charged time, Democrats'
actions since then have only made this conclusion more compelling
today.
The second reason for deferring the confirmation process for the
Scalia vacancy is that elections have consequences. In 2012 the
election obviously had consequences for the President and his power to
nominate, but the 2014 election had its own consequences for the Senate
and its power of advice and consent. The reason the American people
gave Senate control to Republicans was to be a more effective check on
how the President is exceeding his constitutional authority.
The 2016 election also has consequences for the judiciary. The timing
of the Scalia vacancy creates a unique opportunity for the American
people to voice their opinion about the direction of the courts.
On Monday the minority leader reminded us of an important axiom. Let
me refer to the chart again. ``No matter how many times you say a
falsehood, it is still false.'' I agree.
The minority leader claims that the Senate has a constitutional duty,
a constitutional obligation to hold a prompt hearing and timely floor
vote for the President's nominee to the Scalia vacancy. Yesterday The
Hill quoted him saying this: ``The obligation is for them to hold
hearings and to have a vote. That's in the Constitution.'' By my count,
then, the minority leader has made this claim here on the Senate floor
more than 40 times. He said it as recently as this morning. No matter
how many times he says this falsehood, it is still false. The minority
leader's claim is false because the Constitution says no such thing.
This is what the Constitution actually says about appointing judges:
The President ``shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent
of the Senate, shall appoint.'' Nothing about hearings or votes,
nothing about a timetable or schedule.
I say this to my Democratic colleagues: Do you really want to stand
behind a completely fictional, patently false claim like that? Do you
really want to base your position on what the Washington Post Fact
Checker called a ``politically convenient fairytale''? I understand
that you want the Senate to conduct the confirmation process now for
the President's nominee. We can and should debate that. But will none
of you be honest enough to at least say what everyone in this Chamber
knows--that the Constitution does not require us to do things that way?
The minority leader not only contradicts the Constitution; he
contradicts himself. The minority leader was serving here in the Senate
in 1992. Senator Reid took no issue with Chairman Biden's conclusion
that the circumstances at the time--the same circumstances that exist
today--counseled deferring the confirmation process. Senator Reid did
not tell Chairman Biden that the Senate must do its job. Senator Reid
did not assert then what he repeats so often today--that the Senate has
a constitutional duty to give nominees prompt hearings and timely floor
votes.
On May 19, 2005, during the debate on the nomination of Priscilla
Owen to the U.S. court of appeals, the minority leader said of the
Constitution--and I will refer to this chart again--``Nowhere in that
document does it say that the Senate has a duty to give Presidential
appointees a vote.''
In that 2005 speech, the minority leader was particularly adamant
about this point. Claiming that the Senate has a duty to promptly
consider each nominee and give them an up-or-down vote, he said, would
``rewrite the Constitution and reinvent reality.'' That is what the
minority leader said then. The circumstances have changed, of course.
Today the political shoe is on the minority leader's other foot, and he
is the one claiming that nominees must have prompt consideration and
up-or-down votes. By his own standard, the minority leader is rewriting
the Constitution and reinventing reality. Now that it serves his own
political interests and that of his party, the minority leader has
reversed course and claimed in a recent Washington Post opinion column
that the Senate has a constitutional duty to give nominees ``a fair and
timely hearing.''
Let me once again mention 1992, when Chairman Biden denied a hearing
to more than 50 Republican judicial nominees. He allowed no hearing at
all, whether fair or unfair, timely or otherwise. In September 1992 the
New York Times reported on page 1 that this was part of an obstruction
strategy to keep judicial vacancies open in the hopes
[[Page S1690]]
that Bill Clinton would be elected. Senator Reid served here at that
time, but I can find no record of him demanding that every nominee get
a timely hearing. Instead, he wholeheartedly supported his party's
strategy of obstruction.
In his recent Washington Post column, the minority leader also wrote
that the Senate has a constitutional duty to give nominees a floor
vote. Between 2003 and 2007, however, he voted 25 times to deny any
floor vote at all to Republican judicial nominees. As far as I can
tell, we have the same Constitution today as we did in 1992, 2003,
2005, and 2007. We have the same Constitution today with a Democrat in
the White House as we did in the past with a Republican President in
the White House. The minority leader cannot have it both ways. He
cannot today insist that the Constitution requires the very hearings
and floor votes he and his fellow Democrats blocked in the past. I
suppose they will say those were lesser court judges. Well, they were
still judicial nominees.
On Monday, the minority leader again attacked the Judiciary Committee
and its distinguished chairman, Senator Grassley. You have to go a long
way to find anybody who is nicer, more competent, and more dedicated
than Senator Grassley; yet he is being attacked again. I guess they
think that somehow makes a difference.
The minority leader held up a quote from an editorial in an Iowa
paper about how the chairman is conducting the confirmation process. I
don't know when the minority leader started caring about what hometown
newspaper editorials said about the confirmation process, but this
appears to be yet another epiphany.
On February 19, 2003, the Reno Gazette-Journal criticized Democrats
for their filibuster of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals. A
few weeks later, the Las Vegas Review-Journal called the filibuster
campaign promoted by Senator Reid ``nothing more than ideological
posturing and partisan blustering.''
As I mentioned earlier, the minority leader went on to vote 25 times
for filibusters of Republican judicial nominees.
Also on Monday, the minority leader claimed that the Judiciary
Committee is not doing its job and that the chairman is ``taking his
marching orders from the Republican leader.'' Later in the day, the
Senate unanimously passed the Defend Trade Secrets Act. The minority
leader dismissed this legislative accomplishment because it was
reported out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously. He said: ``I don't
see today why the Judiciary Committee should be given a few pats on the
back.'' Well, that is OK with me; we don't need pats on the back. The
minority leader knows better though. He knows that the strong
bipartisan outcome for this legislation was the result of nearly two
years of work behind the scenes, primarily at the staff level.
It is painfully obvious that the minority leader desperately wants to
score political points and to spin everything he can to his advantage,
but to disparage and belittle the arduous work of both Democrats and
Republicans, by both staff and Senators, is disgraceful and insulting.
Before he denigrated this significant bipartisan achievement, he should
have read the Obama administration's statement of policy on the bill.
The Defend Trade Secrets Act will, the administration says, promote
innovation and help minimize threats to American businesses, the
economy, and national security interests. The Obama administration
calls this an ``important piece of legislation'' that would ``provide
important protection to the Nation's businesses and industries.''
This morning, the minority leader once again said that the Senate
must do its job regarding the Scalia vacancy, and he asked, ``What is
that job?'' The Senate's job is to determine how best to exercise its
advice and consent power under the particular circumstances we face
today. We have made that determination. We have done our job. We are
making the same determination that the minority leader apparently
supported in 1992. The Constitution no more dictates our decision than
it did in 2009 when the minority leader correctly said that the Senate
is not required to vote on nominations.
No matter how many times you say a falsehood, it is still false. No
matter how many times the minority leader falsely claims that the
Constitution dictates how and when the Senate must conduct the
confirmation process, it is still false. No matter how many times he
claims that the Senate is not doing its job, it is still false. No
matter how many times the minority leader questions the integrity and
character of the Judiciary Committee chairman, those questions are
still false. No matter how many times the minority leader contradicts
himself and tries to avoid his own judicial confirmation record, his
claims today are still false.
The Senate today has the same power of advice and consent as when
Democrats were the majority. We have the same responsibility to
determine the best way to exercise that power in each situation. In
1992 Chairman Biden recommended deferring the confirmation process so
that ``partisan bickering and political posturing'' did not overwhelm
everything else. The false claims and disreputable tactics being used
today, including by the minority leader, only confirm Chairman Biden's
judgment and its application today.
All of this is disappointing to me, to be honest with you. We have an
honest disagreement as to when this nomination should be brought up. We
have an honest disagreement as to how it should be brought up. We have
an honest disagreement about the times we are in. We think this
Presidential race is horrific on both sides. And I, for one, as former
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, am deeply concerned that we bring
up this nominee in the middle of this awful mess called the
Presidential election, with all of the politics and screaming and
shouting and arguing from both sides. Considering a nominee now would
demean the Court. It would demean what we are trying to do around here.
Waiting to consider a nominee only makes sense given that voting in
this election is already underway. For reasons I have explained
before--and no doubt will do so again--the confirmation process for the
Scalia vacancy should be deferred until the election season is over.
I am also troubled by the minority leader's attacks on Chairman
Grassley. I am concerned because I think that to have any leader attack
somebody as decent and as honorable as Chuck Grassley is below the
dignity of this body. Whether someone has disagreements with Chuck or
not, they can explain those disagreements without being slanderous or
libelous.
There are very few people in this body who are as honest and as
decent as Chuck Grassley. I think all of my colleagues are honest and
decent, but very few of them would rise to the level Chuck Grassley
does. He is an old farmer who believes in doing right and who, to the
best of his ability, always does right. I have been around Chairman
Grassley for a long time, and I have the utmost respect for him. He is
not even an attorney. Yet he is running the Judiciary Committee very
well. He is a good man. He deserves to be treated like a good man and a
good leader and a good chairman.
We are going to have our differences in this body, but we should
treat each other with the utmost respect and not accuse people of being
things they are not. I can say one thing. I have served here for 40
years and Chuck Grassley has been one of the best people I have served
with on either side.
I think my friends on the other side understand that I care a great
deal for them and that I like working with them. Sometimes we have to
modify things so they are pleased, but that is part of this process.
Sometimes we very vehemently disagree. That is one of the great things
about the Senate--we can disagree without being disagreeable. We can
find fault in the issues, but I think it is time to quit finding
unnecessary fault in each other.
This is the greatest deliberative body in the world. I feel good to
have been able to serve as long as I have here, and I respect my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
Even so, we have a disagreement on when this body should consider a
nominee, and that disagreement is a sincere one. The fact is, it would
be terrible to bring up the nominee in the middle of this particular
Presidential election.
Let me just conclude by saying I love this body and I love my
colleagues. I
[[Page S1691]]
just hope we can open the door to understanding each side a little bit
better than we do.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Iran
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the recent bad
behavior of Iran and some important steps that have been taken by the
administration to push back on their support for terrorism, for illegal
actions, and for their support for disorder in the Middle East but to
also sound the alarm that this series of steady actions continues to
raise the specter that Iran has an expanding reach in the region and
poses a greater and greater threat to our allies and, in particular,
our vital ally, Israel.
Just over a year ago, leading world powers came together in support
of a framework for blocking Iran's path to developing a nuclear weapon.
That framework ultimately became the JCPOA, or the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action. In the months since that agreement took effect, Iran
has taken steps to significantly restrain its nuclear program. That is
true. They filled with concrete the core of their reactor at Arak. They
shipped out of the country 98 percent of their accumulated stockpile of
enriched uranium, and they have allowed searching inspections by the
IAEA. Those are all good steps. Yet the Iran regime continues to engage
in dangerous actions outside the nuclear agreement, including ongoing
human rights abuses, support for terrorism in the Middle East, and its
repeated illegal ballistic missile tests. All of those are ongoing
reminders to us that America's security and the security of our allies
demand constant vigilance and close scrutiny of Iran's actions.
Since last September, I have regularly called upon my congressional
colleagues, the Obama administration, and our European allies to be
wary of Iran's intentions and to continue to seek ways to effectively
push back on its bad behavior.
The international community and the United States possess three major
nonmilitary tools to lawfully counter Iran's continued bad behavior:
financial sanctions, criminal charges, and weapons seizures. So let me
first offer a number of examples of how each of these tools have
recently been put to work.
First, financial sanctions. On March 24, the Treasury Department
imposed new sanction designations on a number of entities and
individuals who have supported Iran's ballistic missile program and on
an Iranian airline, Mahan Air, which provides support services--
transportation--to the Quds Force, an elite Iranian military corps
designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department.
On this floor in early March, I called for the United States and our
European allies to further punish Mahan Air by eliminating the
airline's access to international markets and airports. Since then, the
Treasury Department has taken action against two companies, one based
in the United Kingdom, another in the United Arab Emirates, that have
provided financial and materiel support to Mahan Air.
I commend the Obama administration for effectively deploying another
tool in our diplomatic toolkit--criminal charges. On March 21, the
Justice Department unsealed charges against three individuals who
allegedly acted on behalf of the Iranian Government and associated
entities to engage in hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions
barred by U.S. sanctions. These three Iranian individuals stand accused
of illegally laundering the proceeds of these transactions and
defrauding the banks to which the transactions were processed.
Two days later, on March 23, a consultant to Iran's mission to the
United Nations was also charged with violating U.S. law. The seven
charges levied against this individual include conspiracy to evade U.S.
sanctions against Iran, money laundering, and arranging false tax
returns.
Then the following day, March 24, the Justice Department unsealed an
indictment of seven Iranian ``experienced computer hackers'' who led a
coordinated campaign of cyber attacks from 2011 to 2013 that targeted
46 U.S. banks and a dam in Upstate New York in Rye. Unsurprisingly, the
seven individuals charged have been linked to the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps, the IRGC, the hardline conservative military force
committed to the preservation of the radical revolutionary Iranian
regime.
Just yesterday, the Justice Department announced that the United
States negotiated the extradition from Indonesia of a Singaporean man
conspiring to send U.S. equipment to Iran--equipment later found in
unexploded roadside bombs in Iraq.
These various criminal charges demonstrate to Iran and the world that
responsible members of the international community seek to resolve
disputes through international norms and institutions or accepted ways
of conduct, not provocative missile tests and ongoing violations of
sanctions.
In addition, the fact that each of these indictments occurred after
the implementation of the nuclear deal--while Iran did fulfill the
letter of its commitments under the agreement--these ongoing violations
demonstrate that the United States can continue to counter Iran's bad
behavior and regional aggression without undermining the ongoing
implementation and enforcement of the JCPOA.
That brings us to the third tool in our arsenal: weapons seizures. On
Monday, the U.S. Navy announced that the previous week, the USS Sirocco
and USS Gravely intercepted a vessel in the Arabian Sea that contained
an illicit Iranian arms shipment to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. After
boarding the ship, American sailors confiscated 1,500 AK-47s, 200
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and 21 .50-caliber machine guns,
including the various weapons pictured in this photograph I have in the
Chamber. This marks the third successful interdiction of illicit arms
in the Arabian Sea since late February. On March 20, a French Naval
destroyer seized nearly 2,000 AK-47s, 64 sniper rifles, nine anti-tank
missiles, and much more. That followed an interdiction a month earlier,
on February 27, in which an Australian naval crew intercepted another
shipment off the coast of Oman that contained 1,900 AK-47s, 100 grenade
launchers, 49 machine guns, and other illicit arms, headed to Yemen by
way of Somalia. All of these interdictions were done with coordination
and support of the United States.
These interdictions are not just military exercises. They prevent
weapons from falling into the hands of dangerous terrorists or Houthi
rebels. Just as importantly, these actions send a strong signal to Iran
that the international community continues to refuse to tolerate Iran's
destabilizing actions and its support for terrorism.
The picture to my right shows an Australian vessel, the crew from the
HMAS Darwin, part of a U.S.-led, multinational coalition intercepting
and boarding a dhow that held a shipment of illicit arms, likely
intended for the Houthi rebels of Yemen. The conflict in Yemen pits the
Yemeni government stacked by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia
against the Houthis, a group allied with a former President and the
radical Iranian regime.
Iran's support for the Houthis has devastated Yemen and the Yemeni
people. Over a year of fighting has led to more than 6,000 deaths,
including thousands of civilians, and more than 30,000 injuries. The
human suffering has been dramatic. According to the World Health
Organization, more than 21 million people--more than 80 percent of
Yemen's population--today require humanitarian aid. Instead of aid,
Iran sends weapons. These are not the actions of a responsible member
of the international community. These are not the actions of a
government the U.S. can trust. As the United Arab Emirates' Ambassador
to the United States, Yousef Al Otabia, recently wrote in the Wall
Street Journal, ``The international community must intensify its
actions to check Iran's strategic ambitions.''
While I am pleased at recent actions by the U.S. Navy and our key
allies from Europe and around the world in the region off the Arabian
Sea, I think there is more that we can and should do. That is why in
the months to come,
[[Page S1692]]
instead of talking about giving Iranians access to U.S. dollar
transactions, I think the U.S. should lead coordinated international
efforts to enforce existing sanctions and seize the illicit arms
shipments through which Iran continues to fan violence, terror, and
instability--not just in Yemen, but in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and the
broader Middle East.
The imposition of further sanctions, the levying of criminal charges,
and the successful interdiction of weapons all show that the
international community has an array of tools to push back against
Iran. But just having the tools is not enough. We must continue to take
action, and when multilateral mechanisms fail, Congress should work on
a bipartisan basis to see what new tools or authorities we can give the
administration to further crack down on Iran unilaterally.
Lest we need another reminder that Iran remains unwilling to meet the
obligations required of a responsible member of the international
community, on March 30, their Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei claimed
that ballistic missiles are central to Iran's future--despite Iran's
commitments under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231.
The Obama administration should continue to designate bad actors for
sanctions, pursue criminal charges where appropriate, and seek
accountability for Iran's ballistic missile tests in the U.N. Security
Council.
We must continue to work hand-in-hand with our international partners
to interdict arms shipments to Hezbollah, to the Houthis in Yemen, and
to the murderous Assad regime in Syria. We must not accommodate Iran in
any way, given its continued ballistic missile launches, its repeated
human rights abuses, and its continued support for terrorism.
I remain concerned about the message sent by rumors of allowing
offshore financial institutions to access U.S. dollars for foreign
currency trades in support of so-called legitimate business with Iran.
We must keep in mind that both our words and our deeds send a strong
signal to Iran, to our European allies, and our vital ally, Israel.
In the months and years to come, we must make clear to Iran not just
that we will not waiver in enforcing the terms of the JCPOA, but also
that our commitment to a successful nuclear agreement will not prevent
us from taking action when Iran's bad behavior warrants it.
With that, I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk a little about the Court and
the vacancy on the Court.
First of all, I want to express my shared concern with my good friend
from Delaware about what is happening in Iran and how we are reacting
to what is happening in Iran and how much we need to be focused on that
country, still understood to be the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in
the world and designated by the current administration and current
security agencies that it is bad. I am pleased to see that topic is one
of the things we are talking about today.
Filling of the Supreme Court Vacancy
Mr. President, the Supreme Court has gotten a lot of attention since
the unfortunate loss of Justice Scalia. When I was home a few days ago,
in at least one meeting when this question came up, somebody said:
Well, the Constitution says that the President is supposed to nominate
somebody and the Senate is supposed to have hearings.
Well, I am not a lawyer. I have been a history teacher, and some days
that is better than being a lawyer. In fact, I have argued that most
days it might be better than being a lawyer. But when that came up, I
said that is not what the Constitution says at all. It is easy to talk
about what the Constitution says, but that is not what the Constitution
says. The Constitution says the President will nominate someone to
serve on the Court, and the Senate will give its advice and consent.
This is a 50-50 obligation, a two-part puzzle that has to come together
before this happens.
Understand that the people at the Constitutional Convention thought
about doing it differently than that. They thought about doing it so
that the President would nominate, and if no one in the Senate objected
or the majority of the Senate didn't object, then the nominee would
just serve. They decided not to do that. What they decided to do was to
have both things happen in order for someone to serve.
Early on, it was clear that there were no hearings about who would be
on the Court. There was no Judiciary Committee, and there were no
hearings to be held. As a rule, either someone was confirmed or often,
when they weren't confirmed, the Senate just didn't deal with the
nomination because their part of the necessary things that had to come
together wasn't ready to come together.
What the Senate has to decide when there is a nomination to the
Supreme Court is this: Is this the right time for this vacancy to be
filled, and then is this the right person?
In election years, the Senate for most of the history of the country
has decided it wasn't the right time. The last time a vacancy was
filled in an election year was March of 1988, but that was a vacancy
that occurred in the middle of 1987. Then the Senate, with President
Reagan, went through hearings for Judge Bork, and they looked at Judge
Ginsburg--not the Justice Ginsburg that is currently on the Court, but
another Judge Ginsburg--and, eventually, 9 months or so later, Justice
Kennedy was put on the Court. That wasn't a vacancy that occurred in an
election year. It took 9 months to fill a vacancy that occurred in the
year before the election year.
The job of the Senate has always been to decide if this was the right
time to do it. The last time a vacancy that was created in an election
year was filled was 1932. The last time a vacancy was filled in a
previous election year when the House, Senate, and Presidency were of
different parties was 1888. In 1968, President Johnson tried to move
Abe Fortas from Justice on the Supreme Court to the Chief Justice, and
Democrats in control of the Senate would not let the President fill
that vacancy in an election year.
The idea that there is anything extraordinary going on here--the case
has been made over and over again by our friends on the other side and
even by the Vice President himself that filling a vacancy in an
election year is just something the Senate should be very thoughtful
about. If you follow what Vice President Biden said or what Senator
Schumer said or what Senator Reid said, what they were saying is: Don't
fill a vacancy in a Presidential election year. They were right.
They were right because we are now 7 months from the Presidential
election. One of the things people ought to be thinking about is what
happens when whoever is elected President puts someone on the Supreme
Court for life. This is an appointment that if the person determines
that they are going to serve for the entire rest of their life, they
can.
Justice Scalia, whose death created this vacancy, was put on the
Court by Ronald Reagan and served more than a quarter of a century
after Ronald Reagan left the Presidency. He was put on the court by
Ronald Reagan and served more than 12 years after Ronald Reagan died.
This is a long shadow or a long ray of sunlight, however you want to
look at it, that goes out way beyond the life of this President.
You can make the argument that, well, we had a Presidential election
already, and why couldn't that election that was held in 2012--why
wouldn't that determine--why wouldn't that be good enough? Well, No. 1,
it was held in 2012, and following the election that was held in 2014,
the American people sent a Republican Senate. The most recent election
of those two parts it takes to fill this vacancy produced a Republican
Senate that is at least 50 percent of this determination of who goes on
the Court. We can wait.
It is not unusual in the history of the country for the Court to have
an even number. In fact, the first Court had six people. Is there
anything in the Constitution about the size of the Court? No. The
Constitution creates a Supreme Court and other courts as the Congress
determines necessary.
Originally, there were six Justices on the Court, mostly because that
is how many circuits the original Congress thought were needed. Those
Supreme Court Justices each served as a circuit judge in the six
circuits in the country.
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So you actually had something we don't see now, where a Supreme Court
Justice would sit on an appeals case of a case where that same person
had been the original circuit judge, the lower appeal before the Court.
There was no thought that the Court was going to be a legislative
body, no idea that you would have to worry about a tie-breaker because
these six people were supposed to figure out what the Constitution and
the law said and reach the conclusion that six good lawyers would
reach. Very often, in the next 100 years, the Court had an even number.
It had a changing number that changed with some frequency, but it
wasn't seen that the Court couldn't function if somehow there were
fewer than nine Justices. In fact, there have been at least 15 times
since World War II when there were eight Justices. The longest Court
that had 8 Justices was 13 months. When Justice Fortas resigned in May
of 1969, the Democrats in the Senate didn't fill that vacancy until
June of 1970--13 months, 8 Justices. No one has come forward talking
about what great devastation was done to the country while we were
waiting to get the right person for the country--at least what the
Senate at the time thought was the right person for the country to
serve for the rest of their working lifetime, which has generally been
the standard.
When Justices are split, they always have the opportunity to just
defer to the lower court and say: Well, there is an appeals court
decision here. We can't decide it better than the appeals court did, so
that becomes the decision.
They also can say: This is complicated enough. You might have
differing views of two different courts of appeals. We need to rehear
this at a later date.
That also would not be unusual.
While only one time in the 20th century have we had a vacancy of over
300 days, there have been 10 times when the Court had vacancies above
200 days, 300 days in the life of the Court. Of the 36 people who have
been nominated to the Court who didn't get on the Court under the
Congress they were nominated, 25 of them didn't have a vote.
We are not plowing any new ground. We are not coming up with any new
legal philosophy. In fact, we are looking at what the Senate is
supposed to do.
I think the President of the United States has done exactly what he
should do. There is a vacancy, and the President's job is to nominate
somebody to fill that vacancy, but often that nominee has not been put
on the Court or not been put on the Court by that Congress at that
time.
I can speculate that the only good reason for that--certainly in
recent years--has been the argument that people need to have a voice in
this decision. This is a decision that in all likelihood will outlast
the next Presidency. Even if the next Presidency is a two-term
Presidency, the person who goes on the Court--more likely than not--
will serve beyond the time that this President is elected.
When John Tyler was President, he nominated nine people. He made nine
nominations of people who didn't get on the Court. By the time he left
the Presidency, I think there were multiple vacancies on the Court
because the Senate was not prepared to confirm the people he nominated.
Probably their excuse at the time was he was the first Vice President
to become President, so maybe they wondered, well, maybe this is not
someone who gets the deference of a President, and Presidents in their
last year have never received much deference.
This is a lifetime appointment. These are important cases. As an
example, just look at the cases that are before the Court now. There is
a case on appeal from a Texas Circuit Court where the President--as
many of us said at the time, the Court says the President's amnesty
Executive decision was way beyond the power of the President. If the
President wants to change immigration laws, he has to come to the
Congress and change the law.
As much as--maybe more--than this President would like to do it,
Presidents don't have the authority to change the law by themselves.
They can do a lot of things with the law, but the one thing they cannot
do is change the law. The Texas Court of Appeals said you can't change
the law. The Texas Circuit Court said you can't change the law, and we
will see what the Supreme Court says about that. If they are tied,
unless they decide to rehear it, the result will be they cannot change
the law. Executive amnesty doesn't work, and you are not going to be
allowed to make it work.
The administration is suing a number of religious entities. One is
the Little Sisters of the Poor. The lawsuit is that they are trying to
force those entities--Little Sisters of the Poor is an example--to have
health insurance coverage that violates their faith principles. As I
understand it, the purpose of the Little Sisters of the Poor, the order
of the Little Sisters of the Poor, is something such as this: We are
here to serve elderly people without means, no matter what their faith
is, as if they were Jesus Christ. It doesn't sound like a bad thing for
somebody to be willing to do, a Christian organization to serve elderly
people without means no matter what their faith is--as if they came to
the door and they were Jesus Christ. That is what their order says.
Would the United States of America be irreparably harmed if the
government allowed the Little Sisters of the Poor to have health
insurance that met with their faith principles? I don't think so.
Would the country be harmed in a significant way if we decide it is
the overwhelming purpose of the government to make you do things for no
particular reason at all that violates your faith principles? The first
freedom in the First Amendment is freedom of religion. I don't think
that is by accident. Those are the kinds of cases the Court decides.
In a regulatory case that they just heard a few days ago, the
argument appeared to be with a company in Minnesota that grows peat
moss. The EPA is saying we have the authority to regulate navigable
waters, and so we are going to get involved in your peat moss farm,
because even though it is 120 miles from any navigable waters, the
water from your peat moss farm could run into other water that could
run into other water that 120 miles away would run into navigable
waters. Look right here in the Clean Air Act. It says we have the
ability to regulate navigable waters.
No reasonable person would believe that is what ``navigable waters''
means, but that is the kind of thing we ask the Supreme Court to do. It
is not just what the Court will do in the next 7 months. Even if
somehow a nominee began the process right now, I think the average has
been about 54 days. That is the 9 months it took to get to Judge
Kennedy and less than that it took to get to somebody else. By the time
you are through the 54 days, you are through most of the arguing period
for this Court anyway, and you are not supposed to participate in the
decision if you didn't hear the argument.
This is a lifetime appointment to the Court. This is an appointment
that has to be nominated by the President and approved by the Senate.
They both have to agree, before it is over, that this is the right
person at the right time.
I think the history of these nominations and the common sense of
Americans would lead them to believe that the American people deserve
to be heard on a decision that has this much impact and lasts this
long.
While I am not on the Judiciary Committee, I certainly am supportive
of the determination that the chairman and others on this committee
have made. There will be time to deal with this lifetime appointment
when the American people have had a chance to weigh in one more time 7
months or so from today.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor to address the question
of the ongoing vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. I listened with great
interest to the remarks of my friend and colleague from the State of
Missouri, and I think we have reached a different conclusion about how
and when the American people should have their say in the question of
the filling of this vacancy.
In my view, vacancies on the Supreme Court of the United States have
consequences, and vacancies that go on for a great length of time have
even bigger consequences. I don't believe there has been a vacancy that
has
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lasted a year since roughly the time of the Civil War. Although we
don't know this today, we don't know how long this vacancy may last.
My concern is that in the absence of a willingness to meet with the
President's nominee--to hold hearings and to proceed to a vote--should
that position remain firm on the part of my colleagues on the other
side, we are likely looking at a year-long vacancy.
I certainly agree with my colleague, my friend from Missouri, that
the Supreme Court plays an absolutely central role in our
constitutional order. As he recited at length, the cases decided are of
great significance. I bring to my colleague's attention that in recent
weeks, on March 22 and March 29, the Court handed down tied decisions
in two central cases. These four decisions are not just a waste of
judicial resources, they fail to provide clarity to the litigants, the
American people, and leave lower courts without a controlling
precedent.
In the 3 weeks since President Obama did his job under the
Constitution and nominated Chief Judge Merrick Garland to fill the
vacancy created by the untimely passing of Justice Scalia, we have
already seen these consequences of the Senate's refusal to engage
proactively in advice and consent and consider this nomination.
Much has been made of what was said on this floor by my predecessor
in this seat, the now-Vice President, then-chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, former Senator Joe Biden. I just wish to draw my
colleague's attention to the entire remarks made by Senator Biden. His
entire remarks include a section near the end where he said that if the
President--there was not then a vacancy on the Supreme Court--would
consult with the Senate and moderate in his choice and advance a
consensus candidate, that candidate might well be deserving of it,
might well win then-Senator Biden's support, as had been the case in
several other nominations.
I will simply put to my friend and my colleague that President Obama
has advanced for our consideration a nomination in Chief Judge Garland
who is genuinely qualified and who has a long record in his 19 years on
the DC Circuit of rendering decisions that put him right in the center
of the American judiciary.
I very much look forward to having the opportunity to meet with him
in person tomorrow. I think it is important that all of us give the
deference and respect to the President's constitutional role implicit
in our being willing to meet with his nominee. Frankly, I have profound
questions about whether advice and consent by this body can be given by
refusing to hold hearings and refusing to take a vote.
My Republican colleagues, friends, have asserted that the American
people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court
Justice, and I agree. I think the best way for the American people to
exercise that voice is for this body to do its job, for the Senate
Judiciary Committee to conduct full, fair, and open hearings, and to
allow Judge Garland to answer searching questions of the sort that many
of us are asking him privately, but then we should ask publicly and
then have a vote--a vote by the people's representatives in this body.
That is the purpose of this Senate. There has been an election for
President, the President has done his job under the Constitution, and
we have a nominee. This is a fully constituted Senate--some of us in
our last year of service, some in our sixth, and some in our first or
second. We can be the appropriate channel of the people's voice
following an open hearing, and we should cast a vote. We should not
leave this Supreme Court with a vacancy that lasts months and months,
maybe as long as a year.
Every term the Supreme Court receives over 7,000 petitions for
certiorari. The Supreme Court hears a carefully chosen fraction of
those cases, weighing constitutional principles and legal issues that
are dividing the circuit courts. It is a sacred duty, a central duty in
our constitutional order for the Supreme Court to be rendering
important and meaningful decisions. Why would we delay the filling of
this vacancy on the Supreme Court a full year? I can't see the value in
that position. I understand many of my colleagues have cited precedent,
have cited history, and have reached different conclusions than me.
I simply hope the 16 of my Republican colleagues who have expressed a
willingness to meet with Judge Garland will continue to grow and that
more of my colleagues will meet with him and then consider carefully
what the consequences are for our role in advice and consent, not just
for this vacancy but for the many more that may follow in the decades
to come.
Thank you.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Gun Violence
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, as my colleagues know, I come to the floor
every week or so to share the stories of those victims who have been
lost to the epidemic of gun violence that is plaguing this Nation. The
news covers the episodes of mass shootings, such as those that happened
in my State in Sandy Hook, but, of course, on average there are 80
people who are killed in episodes of gun violence every day.
Approximately 50 or so of those are suicides, the remaining 30 are in
ones and twos and threes and fours and fives all across the country.
I think the data alone is overwhelming, and I am not sure why the
numbers alone have not caused us to act. There are a variety of ways
that we could step up and act. We could do something about illegal guns
on the street, we could fix our broken mental health care system, and
we could give law enforcement more power so they could track illegal
guns and criminals. But we don't do any of that. We remain silent and
complicit even with this rash of murder.
The data hasn't moved this Congress, and so my hope is that the
stories of those who have been lost and the families they have left
behind might move this place to action. So today I will focus on those
victims of gun homicides who were at the hands of their domestic
partner. Of those 30 or so people who are killed by guns that are not
suicides, an alarming percentage of them every single day are killed by
someone they know--a husband or a spouse or a boyfriend. It is usually
someone who is very close to them. They often leave notes. Oftentimes
they have notified the police that they were in danger, but somehow
that loved one still managed to find a way to get their hands on a
firearm and to commit the heinous act of murder.
On February 27 of this year in Woodbridge, VA, which is only a short
drive away from where we sit today, Crystal Hamilton was killed.
Crystal's friends described her as kind, humble, and energetic--a
wonderful person. She actually spent her time working with wounded
soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
One of her friends said:
She was so beautiful. She dressed to the nines and loved
her high heels. She didn't need any makeup.
She had an 11-year-old son who is now left without a mother. She was
supposed to be going out one Saturday night for a girls' night with a
group of her friends, but after arguing all day with her husband, she
finally called 911. She was really upset and feeling gravely in danger,
and it is believed that at some point between when she called 911 and
when the police arrived, her husband fatally shot her.
A neighbor said that she saw the 11-year-old running away and looking
back at the house as he ran down the street. She said:
He ran so fast I can't even imagine how scared he must have
been. It broke my heart.
About a month later, on March 29--just about 2 weeks ago--Ruby
Stiglmeier was shot and killed in what was believed to have been a
murder-suicide by her boyfriend. Ruby was a dental hygienist in a small
firm in Orchard Park, NY. She worked there for 20 years. Her coworkers
said that her patients absolutely loved Ruby. Ruby was friendly,
outgoing, athletic, and loved life. Her coworkers said that Ruby had
been a rock for her family after the recent deaths of both of her
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parents. Her boyfriend shot her three times before turning the gun on
himself. They had been dating on and off for about 2 years.
Just last week, Christina Fisher, 34 years old, was killed in
Leesburg, VA. She was the proud mother of three young children, a
teenage daughter and two young boys. She was shot multiple times and
killed inside her home on Saturday evening, April 2, by her ex-
boyfriend during a domestic dispute. Her 15-year-old daughter was home
at the time of the altercation and promptly called 911, but by the time
she got to the hospital, it was too late.
Her friends remembered Christina much in the same way as the previous
victims. They said:
[Christina] was so sweet, so caring . . . she was a great
mom. She did everything she could for her kids.
Christina leaves behind her teenage daughter and two young boys.
This is just a sample of three people in the last 3 months who have
been killed in episodes of gun homicides by their boyfriend, domestic
partner, or husband. We should just know that there is something
happening in the United States that isn't happening anywhere else in
the world. As a woman, you are about 10 times more likely to die in an
episode of domestic violence by your husband or boyfriend than you are
in any other OECD country. It is hard not to read the difference as
anything other than a difference in gun laws--a difference in the
number of guns that are available to people who would decide to murder
their spouse. Why? Because there is no evidence that men are less
violent in any of these other countries. There is no evidence that
these countries spend any more money on mental health. In fact, the
United States, on average, likely spends more. But there is nothing
different about the United States other than the number of guns that we
have and the relatively loose gun laws that create this tragic outlier
status.
The data on a State-by-State basis backs up the idea that there is
something about our gun laws that tells us the story of women being in
danger and being killed by their spouse. What we know is that in States
that do require a background check for every handgun that is sold,
there are 38 percent fewer women who are shot to death by an intimate
partner. We can't get around that fact. In States that are universal in
their application of background checks, there are 38 percent fewer
women shot by their intimate partner. You can't argue about that. There
are States that are universal in their applicability of background
checks and there are States that are not. The data on women murdered by
their husbands with guns is publicly available. It is not a 5, 10, 20,
or 25 percent difference. It is a 38-percent difference.
Women's lives could be saved if we required people to go through
background checks. Why is that? Well, because there have been 250,000
gun sales that have been blocked to domestic abusers since the National
Instant Criminal Background Check System was started. These are people
who were convicted of domestic abuse crimes and known to be domestic
abusers, walked into a gun store, tried to buy a gun, and were stopped
from doing so because of the Federal law.
Now, that is just the number of people who walked into the store and
had the audacity to try to buy a gun even though they knew they had
been convicted of domestic abuse. Again, that number is 250,000.
Obviously there are 10 times that number who never walked into the gun
dealership because they knew they weren't going to be able to buy the
weapon. So guess where they went. They went online or to gun shows. In
2012 alone it is estimated that 6.6 million guns were exchanged in
private transfers without a criminal background check. In just 1 year
alone, over 6 million guns were transferred without the purchaser
having to prove that they weren't a domestic abuser or that they hadn't
committed murder in the past with a weapon. It is easy to buy guns at
gun shows or online, and so that is why 90 percent of Americans believe
that we should have universal background checks--because it works and
because increasingly people who want to buy guns and use them for
malevolent purposes are able to do so outside of the criminal
background check system.
The numbers are not small, and 38 percent fewer women die in States
that do universal background checks. The States that have decided to
fill the loophole that we, as a Congress, have created have 38 percent
fewer women die from gunshot wounds. We have blood on our hands because
if we just got together and closed that loophole, the data tells us
there would be fewer deaths.
Let me close by suggesting a couple of other ways that we could try
to address this epidemic of domestic abuse and gun homicide perpetuated
by intimate partners. Let me first do so by telling the story of Lori
Jackson, who was 32 years old when she died in 2014 in Oxford, CT.
Lori and her husband Scott had a long and difficult history together.
All of her friends knew about the difficulty that the two of them were
having. It finally caused Lori to go and submit an application for a
temporary restraining order. Scott had become that violent. In the
application she wrote:
Scott yelled in my face . . . and got very angry. I felt
threatened and told him I didn't feel safe and was going to
leave with the twins.
She had 18-month-old twins.
She said:
He then told me I wasn't going anywhere and grabbed my
right thumb and twisted my wrist.
That happened while the two children were in her arms.
She said:
He acts out violently and I am afraid for my kids and
myself.
Judge Robert Malone ordered Scott to stay away from his wife and the
two 18-month-old twins. But because there is a loophole in the law that
allows you to buy and own guns while you have a temporary restraining
order--not when you have a permanent restraining order--one day before
that temporary restraining order was going to become permanent, Scott
shot Lori Jackson Gellatly four times in the head and torso with a .38-
caliber handgun. So today her two little twins have no mother, their
father is in jail, and the twins will grow up only hearing stories
about her. Why? Because we can't pass a bill that says when you have a
temporary restraining order against you, you shouldn't be able to buy a
gun. During that moment of terror for the domestic spouse, the police
should be able to go in and see if you have weapons that you might use
in that immediate moment of anger. We could come together on that. We
could come together on simply saying that while you have a temporary
restraining order, you can't buy guns. You are on the list of
prohibited purchasers during a restraining order period of time. If we
had done that prior to 2014, Lori Jackson might be alive today.
Let's take the case of Jennifer Magnano. She was killed in
Terryville, CT, in 2007. She was in the process of trying to end her
marriage to her husband Scott, who was a controlling and abusive
husband. Scott and Jennifer had two children, and Jennifer had an older
daughter who had been sexually abused by Scott for about 3 years.
On April 14, 2007, while he was taking a shower, she finally escaped.
After the end of their time together, Scott became so angry that he
came back to their house and murdered her. She was always posting
inspirational sayings on to Web sites. She was a really positive
person, but that couldn't stop her husband from murdering her.
Now, Scott had a protective order that was permanent. So he was
actually prohibited from purchasing a weapon, but he walked into a gun
store and asked to see two handguns. He was handed weapons and the
ammunition for each of them, and despite being the only customer in the
store, he was left alone. He saw an opportunity, and so he walked out
of the store with the handguns and the ammunition and went straight to
kill his wife. Now, the store didn't report the stolen weapons for 3
days. By that time, it was too late. Had they monitored the weapons so
they couldn't have been taken out of the store or reported the stolen
weapons, it is possible Jennifer might be still alive today.
Well, the administrator of Jennifer's estate filed a lawsuit against
the retailer bringing claims regarding their inability to secure the
weapons and their complete inability to notify local law enforcement
that somebody, who they themselves said looked like a suspicious
customer, stole weapons from the store. The judge dismissed that
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lawsuit, saying a statute Congress passed giving gunmakers and dealers
virtual immunity for their actions ``goes directly to the heart of the
jurisdiction here.'' Congress was clear these cases must be dismissed.
Congress has granted gunmakers and gun dealers almost complete immunity
from lawsuits that would hold them liable for irresponsibly selling
weapons or irresponsibly making unsafe weapons.
The fact is, the gun industry is held to a standard that no other
product maker is held to. They are granted an immunity that is carved
out from the broader products liability law. In fact, the maker of a
toy gun is held to a higher standard of liability than a maker of a
real gun. This Congress passed that statute simply because the gun
industry asked for it and because they knew they were liable for making
guns that were intentionally unsafe because they knew there were
dealers that were conducting their activities in an irresponsible
manner.
So for the Magnano family, they don't even get to bring their case to
court. They don't even get to litigate this claim simply because
Congress has given a level of immunity to the gun industry that they
give to no other industry. If we were to repeal that law, it would be
another way to address this epidemic of gun violence that plagues this
country and specifically women who have the great misfortune of being
the subject of domestic abuse.
I am going to continue to come down to the floor and tell these
stories. I hope there are ways we can come together. I understand we
might not be able to pass a background checks amendment between now and
the end of the year, but we could close that domestic violence
loophole. We could put more resources into the mental health system. We
could give more resources to law enforcement. There has to be an answer
to the thousands of women who are being killed all across this country
by domestic abusers and 80 individuals a day who are being killed by
guns all across the United States of America.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield back.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the Senate floor as
we begin the debate and discussion of legislation that I think is
critical to certainly my home State of Kansas and important and
valuable to the rest of the Nation as well. Kansas is known as an
aviation State. Wichita, KS, is known as the air capital of the world,
and one would expect a Senator from Kansas to be especially supportive
of things that improve the opportunity for aviation, and that is
certainly true.
We care about the jobs that are in our State as a result of general
aviation manufacturing, as a result of aviation manufacturing for large
commercial airlines, and it matters. The FAA is an important component
of the environment in our State as a driver of our State's economy, but
I also point out that I am a strong supporter of general aviation and
reauthorization of the FAA as a result of representing a very rural
State. Kansas is made up of a number of larger communities, but small
cities and towns dot our State. Those local airports and the ability to
connect with those communities as a result of general aviation--the
ability to fly to visit somebody but perhaps more importantly the
ability for a business to be in a community, a small rural community--
exist in part because of those general aviation airports and those
planes and pilots. So in communities across our State, we are able to
have manufacturing and service industries that probably otherwise, in
the absence of an airport and aviation, would have to be located in
larger cities in Kansas or elsewhere.
GA and FAA reauthorization is important to every Kansan, regardless
of whether they are a factory line worker or engineer in Wichita and
South Central Kansas or whether they are a hospital, a manufacturing
business, or a service located in a small community in our State.
I am pleased the Senate is beginning to do its work on the FAA
reauthorization. I serve on the Committee on Commerce responsible for
this product, and I am pleased the chairman and ranking member have
worked closely together to get us to this point today in a bill that I
hope--I assume subject to some amendments--I hope this bill then passes
with strong support across both sides of the aisle.
This FAA Reauthorization Act of 2016 will strengthen the industry by
improving the FAA's process for certifying aircraft. Again, in that
manufacturing sector in our State, one of the things that would be of
great value is to have a process by which an improvement, a
development, the manufacturing process, the product we manufacture is
more readily and more quickly, more efficiently certified by the
Federal Aviation Administration, making certain that those
certifications allow those airplane manufacturers to compete in the
global marketplace.
This bill also addresses the Pilot's Bill of Rights. I see I have
been joined on the Senate floor by the Senator from Oklahoma, the
champion of this issue. We are pleased it is in this bill, and it
reforms, among other things, the third-class medical certificate
process for general aviation pilots--something that has been long
overdue and something the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, has
championed and continues to champion. Just this week, he called me
asking for assistance as we make certain that this bill advances and
the House approves language that is included in this bill.
Another essential piece of this bill text, S. 2549, is the TSA
Fairness Act. This is a bipartisan piece of legislation that was
originally introduced by Senator Merkley and Senator Barrasso. The
language provides protection for some of our small airports that have
commercial air service. Generally, it is possible that air service is
there, that small commercial airline flight is there because of the
Essential Air Service Program, but in order for Essential Air Service
to work and to meet the needs of a community and the traveling public,
we need to make certain the TSA, the Transportation Security
Administration, provides the necessary screeners and screening
equipment that you would find in a larger airport.
We want to make certain our rural communities that have commercial
service--often flying to Denver International Airport--are screened
before they enter the plane to fly to DIA, and this legislation
includes language that would enhance that circumstance.
I am also encouraged by the efforts in this bill to address the
rapidly evolving circumstance we face with unmanned aerial vehicles.
That industry is moving forward, again another Kansas industry that
matters greatly. This legislation moves the ball forward for an
environment where businesses, universities, and countless others can
tap into the potential and the vast economic benefits of UASs, while
maintaining high safety standards we would expect in the aviation
world.
I know my colleagues remember--I remember well--the 23 short-term FAA
reauthorizations that have occurred leading up to the 2012 FAA
reauthorization bill. It is hugely detrimental to our aviation system
to have to tolerate, to have to figure out how to abide by these short-
term extensions that eliminate the opportunity for long-term planning
and create great uncertainty. I am pleased we are headed down the path
of a longer term, more permanent FAA Reauthorization Act represented by
this legislation, this act of 2016.
I would ask my colleagues to work, all of us together, to make sure
the end product is something we can be proud of. We certainly start in
a position in which that is the case.
Again, I commend Mr. Thune, the Senator from South Dakota, for his
leadership and working with the Senator from Florida, Mr. Nelson,
getting us to this point today. This is an important piece of
legislation for our country, its economy, and our citizens, and matters
greatly to the folks back in Kansas.
Mr. President, I yield the floor to the Senator from Oklahoma.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
[[Page S1697]]
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent to
be recognized as in morning business to use as much time as I shall
consume.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I want to comment that I have dramatically
shortened my presentation, as I was crossing off things from my list
that have already been more eloquently expressed by my friend from
Kansas, and I think it shows. He brought out a point I think is
significant; that the first of the year we were able to pass the
highway bill, which is a major piece of legislation. It is the first
time since 1998 we were able to get that reauthorization bill, and it
was because of the interim period of time we had the short-term fixes
that the Senator from Kansas was talking about. Those are expensive,
and you can't do major overhauls, improvements, and modernization
unless you have an authorization bill, and this covers a lot of areas.
I want to repeat one thing the Senator from Kansas stated, and that
is in reference to Senators Thune and Nelson. Any time you--and I would
say this to all of the members of the Commerce Committee--any time you
get a major piece of legislation that covers a lot of stuff, there is
always a lot of confusion and some opposition, although not as much
opposition to this as we had anticipated would be taking place.
So there are areas I want to visit that I have a special interest in.
One is the certification process for general aviation pilots. I know
this was mentioned by Senator Moran, but this is something that is very
significant. I want to cover it in perhaps a little bit more detail,
along with the other areas and an amendment we have. I am getting a lot
of Democratic support on my amendment, amending the use of drones, the
allowable use of drones.
First of all, on the Pilot's Bill of Rights, I refresh everyone's
memory that the first Pilot's Bill of Rights was something we passed in
2012. It was one that for the first time took care of a problem that
had been out there. The only group of people in America who did not
have the opportunity of the protections, the legal protections in our
jurisprudence system, was general aviation pilots and other pilots
because it allowed the FAA to come in and make all kinds of accusations
without giving people the benefit of the evidence that was being used
against them. We passed a good bill called the Pilot's Bill of Rights.
Last year, in Oshkosh--Oshkosh is the largest general aviation event
of the year. It is one that involves hundreds of thousands of people
and actually thousands of aircraft on the field. I say to the Presiding
Officer, I can remember this was the 37th annual convention that I have
attended and flown in, in the last 37 years, so I am very familiar with
this. Of course, when I got there, they were interested in the
successes that were in the Pilot's Bill of Rights, but there are some
things that weren't in there that should have been in there. So we had
a session with people--I mean, there are people from all 50 States and
countries around the world, and so one of the areas of concern has been
about the medical certification process. It is called a third-class
medical. A third-class medical is something that goes into a lot of
things that are not necessary and sometimes deter the safety factor
that is built into medical certification. So we reformed that system.
By the way, I have to say that we have already passed this bill in
the Senate. The last thing we did before breaking for Christmas, 10
minutes before we recessed, was to pass a freestanding bill that is
worded exactly the same way that is in this bill. This is a backup.
Since that got bogged down in the House for a period of time, we
thought we would put this in here just to make sure that one way or
another this does become a reality. It is singularly the greatest
concern for large organizations, including the Experimental Aircraft
Association and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the AOPA.
We put a system in there that provides--first of all, the pilots will
still have to do some of the elements of what was considered to be a
third-class medical. A third-class medical--10 years ago we repealed
that, or reformed it, for pilots of very small aircraft, the light
aircraft. In fact, there hasn't been one injury or death in the last 10
years that could be related to anything, any change that was made in
that system. So this just allows the other pilots to have the same
benefits the pilots did in the small aircraft.
Pilots still have to complete an online medical education course.
Pilots are going to have to maintain verification that they have seen a
doctor concerning anything that might impair their ability to safely
fly an airplane. Pilots have to complete a comprehensive medical review
initially by the FAA. So those safeguards are built in.
The Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 increases its due process protections
established for pilots in the original Pilot's Bill of Rights. The
original Pilot's Bill of Rights--since I have been active in aviation
for over 60 years, it was only natural that when problems came up,
people would contact me as opposed to their own Senators, in many
cases. I was concerned and always tried to help people. But until those
abuses occurred to me, and I realized all of a sudden that I was at
risk of losing a pilot certificate and didn't have the means to defend
myself--that is when this whole effort started.
Well, this was carried out in the reforms that we intended to put in
the first bill that were not really strong enough to get the FAA to
comply with, which we have in this bill. One of those is called NOTAMs,
Notices to Airmen.
By the way, when I talk about this, this doesn't mean a lot to a lot
of other people, but there are 590,000 single-issue general aviation
pilots in America to whom it means a lot. So these guys are all very
much concerned about it, and they are all anxious for this to become a
reality.
A Notice to Airmen is something that is required and has been
required for a long period of time so that people will know--if you are
going to make a flight from airport A to airport B, if there is any
problem at that airport where you are going to land in terms of work on
the runway or in terms of lights being out or new towers being erected
or something like that, they have NOTAMs, which are Notices to Airmen.
So this is going to carry into reality the reform that we intended to
do in 2012.
It also ensures that pilots are going to have access to the flight
data, such as air traffic communication tapes and that type of thing.
So it is good. I know it doesn't mean a lot to a lot of other people,
but it sure does to 509,000 people.
The contract towers--this is a major program. It is kind of
interesting. We established a program of contract towers intended to
reach areas that didn't really have the unique, normal necessity of
information and assistance that we would have in normal towers, and the
towers do a great job. And I am now talking about the regular towers,
but the contract towers have also done a good job.
In 2013 the Obama administration targeted our Nation's air traffic
control towers as an unnecessary mechanism to make the public feel the
pain of nondefense budget cuts. Well, that was back during
sequestration time, and at that time they were going to close all of
the contract towers. They were saying that these towers don't--one of
the arguments they used is that they don't have the traffic that many
other towers have. Well, I suggest to my colleagues that in my State of
Oklahoma, we have a number of great universities and colleges, and the
two largest are Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma University. They
are located in Stillwater, OK, and Norman, OK. I can tell my colleagues
right now that if they had been successful in closing down those two
contract towers, on football days, when we have literally hundreds of
airplanes coming in, all converging at about the same time, it would
have been a life-threatening event. We now have been able to maintain
those contract towers in a cost-sharing program that has been very
successful in the past, and that is in this bill also.
Aircraft certification is an issue some of us are very concerned
about. The Oklahoma aerospace industry is a vital and growing component
of the State's economy. It is responsible for billions of dollars of
economic output and employs thousands of people. The aerospace industry
in Oklahoma includes commercial, military, and general aviation
manufacturing, testing
[[Page S1698]]
and maintenance activities, as well as a vibrant and cutting-edge
culture of research and development that is located in my State of
Oklahoma. Both of our major universities are an important part of this.
With this in mind, I applaud the bill's inclusion of reforms to the
FAA's process for certifying general aviation aircraft and aviation
products such as engines and avionics, removing government redtape that
is so prevalent that we are all so sensitive to and aware of.
The bill also ensures that the FAA maintains strong engagement with
industry stakeholders, so the FAA's safety oversight and certification
process includes performance-based objectives and tracks performance-
based metrics. This is key to eliminating bureaucratic delays and
having increased accountability between the FAA and the aviation
community for type certificate resolution or the installation of
safety-enhancing technology on small general aviation aircraft.
Now, I have an amendment. The Senator from Kansas was talking about
some of the uses and restrictions and the expansion of the use of the
UAVs. We are talking about drones now. Drones sometimes have a bad
reputation, and normally it is not well-founded. But there are some
areas where there were restrictions in the use of drones, which we
are--I have an amendment that will allow drones to be used in areas
where it does make sense. I already have several Democratic supporters
and cosponsors of this amendment, including Senator Whitehouse and
Senator Heitkamp and Senator Booker, who are all very enthused about
this.
It would direct the FAA to establish rules to allow critical
infrastructure owners and operators to use unmanned aircraft systems to
carry out federally mandated patrols of an area, and that could be a
pipeline or anything else that is currently being patrolled, some by
foot and some by aircraft, and this would allow unmanned aircraft to do
that same thing. It is a safety thing because some of these patrols
have to take place in bad weather and sometimes risk is involved. But
if you don't have a person in the airplane--an unmanned plane--then
this is an ideal use for it. It does establish a pathway for critical
infrastructure operators to use the airspace under the FAA guidelines.
It is still under FAA guidelines, but nonetheless it is an opportunity
to use it.
Today, critical infrastructure owners and operators are required to
comply with significant requirements to monitor facilities and assets,
which can stretch thousands of miles. This is something to which I
think there should not be any opposition. We haven't had anyone whom I
have asked to be a cosponsor deny us so far, and I don't anticipate
that we will have a problem.
The amendment is supported by a wide array of stakeholders, including
the National Rural Electric Cooperative, the American Public Power
Association, Edison Electric Institute, CTIA--The Wireless Association,
the American Gas Association, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of
America, the American Petroleum Institute, and I could go on and on. So
far, there is neither organized nor just normal opposition, as one
would normally find, so it is very popular. No one that I know of is
against it. This is an amendment I will be offering as soon as we start
working on amendments. This amendment will make this bill an even
better bill.
Again, I applaud all the work that has been done by the members of
the Commerce Committee and particularly by the chairman and the ranking
member, Senators Thune and Nelson, in getting this done. We are getting
into an area where we are really being productive in this body, and I
am very proud to be a part of it.
We need to keep our eyes open on this. I would encourage any Members
who have amendments they want to be included in this to come to the
floor with their amendments and do what I am doing right now so that we
can get in the queue, we can get started and get this done. I don't
know when we are anticipating finishing this bill, but I don't see any
reason why we can't do it, if everyone gets amendments done, by the end
of next week.
With that, I will yield the floor. I think we have several speakers
lined up who are going to be here.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about an amendment
which Senator Toomey and I are working on, amendment No. 3458. I will
have some remarks about this amendment, as will my colleague from
Pennsylvania, Senator Toomey.
We know that since 9/11, we have made a good deal of progress on
airline security, but we know there are still a number of commonsense
steps we can take to bolster security at our airports and on our
airplanes. We also know that since 9/11, there have been 15 hijacking
attempts around the world, and we know that terrorists still aim to
repeat those actions and improve on their deadly tactics. It is also a
concern that Federal programs designed to increase aviation security,
such as the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program--the acronym being
FFDO--to train and arm pilots, continue to experience drastic cuts and
reduced budgets.
After 9/11, Congress mandated the installation of reinforced cockpit
doors, and the FAA regulations stated that the reinforced cockpit doors
should remain locked while closed. However, pilots and flight
attendants must open the door frequently for a variety of reasons, all
of them reasons we understand, whether it is to use the restroom, get a
meal, or rest times for pilots on international flights when they are
not in the cockpit. So we know they have to open that door on a regular
basis. Simulations have shown that when the door of the cockpit is
open, the cockpit can, in fact, be breached and the plane can be
hijacked--by one estimate, in less than 4 seconds.
A voluntary airline industry movement toward adopting secondary
barriers--meaning a barrier other than the actual cockpit door--began
in 2003, but a commitment to deploying these devices has waned
significantly since the year 2010.
Senator Toomey and I have submitted an amendment that would close a
gaping hole in our airline aviation security systems, thus achieving
what Congress intended when it mandated installation of the fortress
door after 9/11. The amendment we are working on together is named
after a Bucks County, PA, resident, Captain Victor Saracini, who
piloted United Flight 175 when it was hijacked by terrorists and flown
into the World Trade Center. The amendment would require that each new
commercial aircraft install a barrier other than the cockpit door to
prevent access to the flight deck of an aircraft.
A secondary cockpit barrier is a lightweight wire mesh gate installed
between the passenger cabin and the cockpit door that is locked into
place and blocks access to the flight deck. While the cockpit doors are
currently reinforced, secondary barriers provide significantly more
security to airline companies, their employees, the pilots, and, of
course, more security for passengers as well.
A 2007 study concluded that the secondary barrier dramatically
improves the effectiveness of the other onboard security measures
currently in place and also works as a stand-alone security layer and
is the most cost-effective, efficient, and safest way to protect the
cockpit.
There is no way to fully and completely pay tribute to the
extraordinary courage of Captain Saracini and the others who were lost
on that tragic day. He gave the full measure of his life--as Lincoln
said in another context, the last full measure of devotion to his
country. He also, of course, gave the full measure not only for his
Nation but for his wife Ellen and his family. Ellen, whom I have come
to know, and others have worked tirelessly in the years since to
increase airline safety for other pilots, passengers, and the airlines
themselves.
I am urging our colleagues in the Senate to adopt this amendment to
continue to strengthen and secure our Nation's airspace and to further
improve airline safety.
[[Page S1699]]
I look forward to hearing Senator Toomey's remarks, and I am grateful
to be working with him on this amendment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you, Mr. President.
I want to thank Senator Casey for his great work on this. We have
been partnering on getting this accomplished for some time now. This is
the opportunity to do it. This is the right legislative vehicle. This
is the right bill. This is the FAA reauthorization bill. This is
exactly where we ought to be taking a commonsense step toward making
commercial aircraft safer. It is as simple as that.
I am hoping that very soon we will adopt the motion to proceed so
that we are on the bill. We have already filed this amendment. As soon
as we can, we will bring it up so that it is pending, so that we can
adopt this amendment.
This passed the House Transportation Committee unanimously. I don't
know why it wouldn't have the same outcome here. I want us to get on
this bill, I want to offer this amendment, and I want to get on with
this because Senator Casey is exactly right. In the immediate aftermath
of that appalling attack on September 11, Congress passed legislation
to require that the cabin door be reinforced, become a stronger
barrier, and that is exactly what happened. It is a terrific barrier.
It is very hard to see how anyone could break down the cabin door and
access the cockpit when that door is closed. The problem is that the
door is not always closed. As Senator Casey pointed out, it is
necessarily opened from time to time during a flight. This creates the
threat. It creates the opportunity for a terrorist who is so inclined
to rush that open door. A very well reinforced door is useless when
open, but that is the risk.
That isn't just our assessment; the FAA has acknowledged the very
serious nature of this threat. Let me quote from their April 2015
advisory. The FAA said:
On long fights, as a matter of necessity, crewmembers must
open the flight deck door to access lavatory facilities, to
transfer meals to flightcrew members, or to switch crew
positions for crew rest purposes. The opening and closing of
the flight deck door (referred to as ``door transition'')
reduces the protective anti-intrusion/anti-penetration
benefits of the reinforced door. . . . During this door
transition, the flight deck is vulnerable.
This is not some theory; this is an objective fact. It is observed by
the FAA advisory. The 9/11 Commission also observed that terrorists
were very keyed in to the notion that the best time to strike would be
when the door was open. That was at a time when the primary door was
not as reinforced as it is now. The opening of the door clearly creates
the opportunity for terrorists. This threat is real. It persists. There
have been attempts to breach cockpits since 9/11. There have been
successful attempts, including the successful hijacking of a Turkish
Airlines flight in 2006.
We know that the secondary barrier Senator Casey and I are proposing
would be extremely effective. It is low cost, it is lightweight, and it
is not intrusive. It is not deployed at all except immediately prior to
opening the primary door. This is just a commonsense solution. It will
provide a significant upgrade in the safety of these aircraft.
We have an amendment. It has been filed, and as soon as we can, we
would like to make this pending. I would urge all of my colleagues to
support this amendment. Let's get this adopted. Let's pass the FAA
reauthorization bill and get it to the President.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member of
the Commerce Committee for all their hard work on this FAA
reauthorization bill. The Commerce Committee has done very hard work on
it. I am especially pleased the committee included a provision that
directly affects my home State and the city in which I live, Phoenix,
AZ.
Since September of 2014, residents in Arizona around the Phoenix Sky
Harbor International Airport have had their daily lives impacted by
changes to flight paths. These changes were made without formal
notification to the airport or community engagement before the changes
were implemented.
These flight changes in Phoenix were made as part of the Federal
Aviation Administration's ongoing implementation of NextGen. I support
the aims of NextGen to improve the safety and efficiency of air travel
and modernize our Nation's air space. We will all benefit from the
improvements that come from NextGen, and this provision is not intended
to undermine those efforts or diminish the efficiencies that have
already been achieved through NextGen.
However, the experience my constituents have gone through in Arizona
demonstrates that improvements need to be made to the process
surrounding the implementation of NextGen. The airport and affected
community must be part of the process before these changes are made.
It is important that those on the ground--the individuals who have
their daily lives impacted the most by this process--have an
opportunity to be heard. Input from local stakeholders is necessary to
ensure that community planning and noise mitigation efforts that have
been underway for decades are now taken into full account.
The language in this bill would require the FAA to review certain
past decisions and take steps to mitigate impacts when flight path
changes have a significant impact on affected communities, and that is
certainly the case in my home city of Phoenix, AZ.
Importantly, this provision would also require the FAA to notify and
consult with those communities before making significant changes to
flight paths moving forward, as has happened, which has caused so much
difficulty and so many ill effects on the citizens of Phoenix, AZ--
indeed, the entire valley.
The FAA has acknowledged the need to improve community outreach and
is undertaking efforts to update their community outreach manual, but
more needs to be done to guarantee this outreach takes place.
The Senate had previously agreed unanimously to this language as an
amendment to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development
appropriations bill. However, that bill did not advance in the Senate.
Also, the FAA reauthorization bill that passed the House Transportation
and Infrastructure Committee earlier this year also included similar
language at the request of myself and my colleague Senator Flake.
This legislation is necessary to create a long-awaited, much needed
opportunity for residents around Phoenix Sky Harbor International
Airport negatively impacted by flight noise to have their voices heard
by the FAA. It is important that the process surrounding changes to
flight paths include the local officials, airport representatives, and
residents--most of all, residents--who know the issues best, both
around Sky Harbor and in communities across the country.
I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
I also thank my colleague Senator Flake for working hard on this
reauthorization and this provision that is in this bill. He and I both
have been contacted by literally thousands of our fellow citizens and
the people we represent in Phoenix, AZ, concerning the noise problems
around Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. It didn't have to
happen this way. I hope the FAA will go back and meet with the people
and hear the complaints, hear their problems, and fix them.
I thank my colleague Senator Flake for his hard work on this issue.
Again, I appreciate the Commerce Committee and its chairman and ranking
member for including this language in this legislation that is so
important to our community.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words on this subject,
and I thank the senior Senator from Arizona for all the work he has put
into this. As he has mentioned, we have heard from thousands of
residents in the Phoenix area who have been impacted.
This language is important because in September of 2014, the FAA
instituted new flight path changes for Phoenix Sky Harbor International
Airport without adequately engaging the community and the stakeholders.
These flight paths, as Senator McCain said,
[[Page S1700]]
have greatly impacted residents in the surrounding areas. We have heard
from them with concerns about both the noise and the frequency of these
flights.
Section 5002 of the FAA reauthorization bill would simply approve the
FAA's process for instituting new flight paths. The fact that this
language is retroactive is especially important because of what we have
mentioned. Communities in Phoenix have already been negatively impacted
by these recent flight path changes.
This language would create a process to review those changes and to
require the FAA to consult with airports and to determine steps to
mitigate the negative effects, including the consideration of new or
alternative flight paths. Going forward, this language would ensure
that communities and airports have the opportunity to fully engage with
the FAA before these flight paths changes are made.
Again, I commend Chairman Thune and Ranking Member Nelson for
including this critical language. I hope that it is supported. We have
support for this amendment.
With that, I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Tribute to Federal Employees
John Wagner
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today to call attention to the
significant contributions public servants make to our Nation every day.
Since 2010, I have tried to come to the Senate floor on a fairly
regular basis to recognize exemplary Federal employees. This is a
tradition started by my friend Senator Ted Kaufman from Delaware when
he was here for a few years--somebody who, as much as anybody in this
body, having served as a staff member for so long, recognized the
enormous value that people who work for our Federal Government provide
to our national purpose and to making sure we get things done.
Earlier this week, I met with some of these outstanding public
servants. Convened under the umbrella of the Performance Improvement
Council, I had a discussion with individuals participating in the
Leaders Delivery Network and the White House Leadership Development
Program fellowships. These senior administration officials, who are
working--oftentimes in obscurity--to improve government performance,
come together on a regular basis to collaborate and share best
practices.
Oftentimes on this floor, we talk about costs and budget issues. One
challenge I think we don't spend enough time on is oversight. The fact
is, there are many folks within the Federal Government who are focusing
on improving government performance and making sure that we at the end
of that also save resources.
In the spirit of the work of the PIC, with which I met earlier this
week, I am pleased to honor one exceptional Federal employee today who
happens to be a Virginian--John Wagner.
As Deputy Assistant Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, Mr. Wagner conceived, developed, and implemented two
groundbreaking programs that overhauled the way American citizens and a
growing number of foreign travelers enter the United States.
At the time, CBP was facing the need for heightened security--
obviously, something that continues--while contending with an increase
in the number of international travelers, which resulted in long wait
times for arriving passengers, a surge in missed flight connections,
and strained personnel capacity.
Mr. Wagner's innovative solutions to making our century-old process
work more effectively and efficiently are now familiar to millions of
travelers worldwide: the Global Entry Trusted Traveler Program and the
kiosk-based Automated Passport Control Program.
As somebody who participates in the Global Entry Trusted Traveler
Program, it has obviously sped my transit through many international
airports. Global Entry saves travelers time and ensures a high level of
security by employing a screening process that includes background
checks, personal interviews, and fingerprinting. Approved travelers
then bypass the regular immigration control lanes and proceed to the
automated, biometrics-based, self-service kiosks that validate
passports, verify fingerprints, and perform database queries. This
back-end security allows approved travelers to quickly clear through
Customs without the need for an interview with a Customs officer.
Global Entry is now offered at 48 U.S. airports, including Dulles
International Airport in my State of Virginia.
In addition to streamlining the international arrivals process, the
program has resulted in saving over 287,000 working hours and reducing
the average wait time for members 84 percent when compared to travelers
not enrolled in the program.
Mr. Wagner's other brainchild has shown similar results. The kiosk-
based Automated Passport Control Program automates the entry processes
for those with U.S. passports and travelers from a number of foreign
countries. This automation allows CBP officers to focus solely on
questioning the individual and observing his or her behavioral
responses, rather than getting bogged down with administrative
procedures. The automated kiosks have resulted in decreases in average
wait times for travelers and efficiencies in allocating human
resources.
Mr. Wagner described his work best, saying that ``it has contributed
to the national security of the country, helped promote travel and
tourism that benefits the economy, and delivered a public service that
has been well received.''
I hope my colleagues will join me in thanking Mr. Wagner and
government employees at all levels for their willingness to shake up
the status quo and their commitment to providing exceptional service to
Americans across the country.
Today the Presiding Officer and I were at a budget hearing where, as
former business members, we sometimes feel like our heads will explode
in terms of our ability to get an appropriate audit of Federal spending
and Federal programs. We talked about different processes, like the
DATA Act, where we try to get more transparency. We have to do all
this, but we also have to recognize and celebrate Federal employees
who, at the work level, are coming up with great innovative programs,
such as Mr. Wagner has done.
So while we may disagree on many items in terms of how we get to
ultimate policy issues--the Presiding Officer has had a very successful
career in business--we know, as former businesspersons, that oftentimes
some of the best ideas come from the workforce, and we need to do more
to celebrate individuals like Mr. Wagner who come forth with good ideas
that have been implemented on a cost-effective basis and that save
time, save money, and increase national security.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business
for up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Filling The Supreme Court Vacancy
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, in 1988--almost 30 years ago--when Justice
Kennedy was elected to the Supreme Court, President Reagan said:
``Every day that passes with a Supreme Court below full strength
impairs the people's business in that crucially important body.''
President Reagan realized in 1988, during the last year of his
Presidency, what President Obama realizes in 2016, the last year of his
Presidency: that an eight-person Supreme Court runs counter to our
national interest and runs counter, frankly, to the intent of our
Founders, especially as we modernized the Supreme Court.
There is a reason the Supreme Court--I believe for 150 years or
something like that--has had an odd number of Justices, and that is so
they can
[[Page S1701]]
make decisions. Since Justice Scalia's death, we have seen the Supreme
Court deadlock a couple of times, and when the Supreme Court deadlocks,
it is as if the cases weren't even heard. It also means that if there
are two different appellate cases that contradict one another, the
Supreme Court would rule, as a referee would, to decide on the law of
the land. When there is a vote of 4 to 4, it is as if there were no
Supreme Court decision at all, and as a result, we have conflicting
laws in different parts of the country. So you can live under one set
of rules in Ohio and live a few miles away in Pittsburgh under another
set of rules. As a result, this prolonged vacancy is damaging to our
country's highest Court.
Fifty cases remain on the docket for this term, and the Supreme Court
is going to likely set a record for most tied votes. The 50 cases are
for this term right now. When the Court meets again--according to
Senator McConnell, it will be before Judge Garland is considered and
brought up for a vote, if he is ever brought up for a vote--there will
be another whole set of issues Judge Garland will not be able to rule
on.
We are really sentencing ourselves as a nation to a potential 4-to-4
vote on case after case after case, week after week after week, month
after month after month, through two Supreme Court calendar years, for
want of a better term. No term since 1990 has included more than two
tied votes--a benchmark the Court has now hit in a single week. It
means we have no national standard on important issues, and it
diminishes the important role the Supreme Court plays in our country.
It is part of a pattern that is damaging the judiciary. Last year the
Senate confirmed just 11 Federal judges--the fewest in any year since
1960. It is the fewest in almost six decades.
Chief Judge Garland's qualifications are without question. The
President really did reach across party lines--reaching into the center
aisle, perhaps--in choosing Judge Garland. He picked somebody who is
significantly older as a nominee, which is something most Presidents
don't want to do. They want to pick somebody in his or her forties or
early fifties so they have--at least mathematically--the opportunity to
serve more years. He picked somebody who had Republican support in the
past and has had glowing things said about him by people like the
former judiciary Republican chairman, Senator Hatch. His qualifications
are without question, but in the end, the Senate has said they don't
want to do their job.
The last time there was a vacancy on the Supreme Court for more than
a year was during the Civil War, and it was because we were in a civil
war. The last time a Republican Senate ratified or confirmed a
Democratic Presidential nominee on the Supreme Court was 1895.
This is a Senate that needs to do its job. When I hear Senator
McConnell say he doesn't care and will not do anything until the next
election, well, we had an election. President Obama was elected to a 4-
year term--not a 3-year term and not three-fifths of a term but a 4-
year term. He is doing his job. The Constitution says that the
President shall nominate and the Senate shall advise and consent.
The Senate needs to meet with this nominee--and I will meet with
Judge Garland tomorrow--the Senate needs to have hearings on Judge
Garland, and the Senate then needs to bring him to a vote.
Of the eight Supreme Court Justices sitting on the Court today, the
average time was 66 days to confirm that Justice. This President still
has close to 300 days left in his term. There is plenty of time to do
that. Pure and simple, the Senate needs to do its job. It is incredible
to the country, and it is incredible to all of us who really love this
institution and think our government should work--and does work most of
the time--that Senators are so dug in that most of my Republican
colleagues will not even meet with Judge Garland. None of them, except
for a couple of courageous exceptions, called for hearings. I believe
only one or two said we should vote on his confirmation. The country
doesn't understand why Republicans are failing to do their jobs. It is
important, election year or not, that the Congress do its job.
The Steel Industry
Mr. President, for generations our steelworkers and manufacturers
have made the steel that built this country. Manufacturers are the
cornerstone of our economy. We know that every dollar invested in
manufacturing adds an additional $1.48 to the economy, but our steel
industry is being left behind. Years of outsourcing and years of
illegal dumping--dumping means foreign competitors will sell steel into
the United States below the cost of production so it is just impossible
to compete on price or quality with them--have taken their toll on our
companies and our workers.
I want to read a letter I got this year from a group of Ohio
steelworkers. I want to read one that I chose to read from this. Thomas
Kelling wrote:
As of January 11, 2016, there are 12,000 steelworkers laid
off. I am one of them. When you include other manufacturers
that deal with steel--aluminum, refractory, etc.--there are
35,000 men and women out of work.
Thousands of immigrants came to this country looking for
work years ago, and the steel industry supplied them with
work. Without the steel industry, the country would not be
what it is today. Every building, car, motorcycle, bridge,
and so on is made of steel.
The steel industry has taken a big hit because of illegal
dumping by China, Korea, India, and Italy, among others.
These countries subsidize their companies--
I would add--he didn't say this in the letter--sometimes these
companies are State owned and subsidized by the State.
These countries subsidize their companies so they are able
to sell steel at a much lower cost, which in turn causes the
U.S. steel industry to decline--hurting thousands of
families, and the economy in general.
Mr. Kelling is right. It is time for us to stand up for American
steel manufacturers and workers who play by the rules but drown under a
sea of illegal, subsidized imports. Far too many politicians seem
content to throw up their hands and write off the industry and say:
Well, that is an old industry. We can buy our steel from somewhere
else. They seem to assume that because it is a tough problem, because
it is complicated, it is not even worth trying to fix. Imagine if we
had said that about the auto industry. I know what this body did. I
know there was a lot of Republican opposition. Some Republicans like
Senator Voinovich, my colleague from Ohio back then, were supportive.
Most of my Republican colleagues tried to block the Bush
administration--a fellow Republican. Then with the Obama
administration, they really dug in in opposition to the auto rescue.
We know what happened. Chrysler posted 7 percent gains in sales last
year. GM and Ford were not far behind with 5 percent. More vehicles
were sold in 2015 than at any time in American history. When that
number had dropped close to 10 million, it was back up to 16 million
vehicles. That is a lot of autoworker jobs in Ohio at Chrysler, Ford,
GM, and Honda. It is also a lot of autoworkers' supply chain jobs--some
union, some not, some autoworker union, some other unions, some
nonunion, but thousands of jobs in the supply chain making glass and
tires and all kinds of hubcaps and metal tops--hard tops for the
Chrysler, whatever they are--in gear shifts and transmissions and
engines in plants all over Ohio.
So don't tell me we can't save the steel industry. Don't tell workers
like Thomas Kelling it isn't worth saving. There are concrete steps to
enforce a level playing field. We enacted a law last year to make it
easier to petition our government when foreign producers are cheating
on the rules. We know this happens all too often, especially in this
industry, because so many countries around the world have their own
steel industry. Some don't even use much of the steel they make but
know they have a country--us--where they can dump the steel. This law
is only as strong as its enforcement.
The Commerce Department needs to apply so-called adverse facts
available, or AFA, in trade cases where a foreign company is not
cooperating. If we don't apply adverse facts when it is warranted, we
allow countries and companies that are cheating to get away with
violating the law at the expense of our companies, at the expense of
workers in Lorain, Niles, Youngstown, and Middletown--all over our
State and all over our country.
Second, we need to fully fund the Office of Enforcement and
Compliance. This office investigates charges of illegal subsidies and
dumping by foreign
[[Page S1702]]
producers. There are so many violations, this office is overwhelmed.
Trade investigations are lengthy. They are difficult. They are labor
intensive. We are a Nation of laws. We enforce laws. We enforce rules.
We follow laws. We follow the rules so that we can play fair on trade
cases, but that takes time and expertise, and that is why we need to
fund the Office of Enforcement and Compliance.
Third, the administration needs to do everything in its power to
address global overcapacity, particularly from China. It is the single
biggest challenge facing our domestic steel industry. China has excess
steelmaking capacity of 300 million metric tons. Was does that mean?
They can make 300 million metric tons more than they use in their
country. What does that mean? That means they are looking for a market,
and they are willing to subsidize their steel production to dump their
steel into Ohio, into Detroit, in auto plants, and dump their steel
where we build roads, bridges, and appliances.
Last year, China exported more steel than the total tonnage of steel
produced by U.S. manufacturers. Think of that. Chinese capacity in
steelmaking is about the same as the rest of the world combined. As I
said, China exported more steel last year than the total tonnage of
steel produced by U.S. manufacturers. No wonder our companies face such
serious challenges. China is the single biggest contributor in excess
capacity, but the problem is spreading elsewhere. The Chinese have
committed to reducing steel production, but have failed to follow
through.
Our steel industry has done the right thing. Our industry
restructured to a sustainable model a decade ago--competitive, smart,
productive--but it is now under threat again from Chinese imports. We
have to file complaints and petitions against this unfair competition.
These cases take too long.
To stop the flood of cheap illegal imports once and for all, we need
a permanent shutdown of production in countries where the steel
industry is not driven by the market. Let me give you an example. South
Korea was making something called oil country tubular goods, OCTG.
These are pipes made for drilling, for fracking, for drilling for oil
and gas. It makes sense, right? Except South Korea didn't have a
domestic industry. They used not one of these steel pipes that they
manufacture. What were they doing? They were selling them under cost to
the United States. They basically created an industry to make steel, to
dump that steel in the United States and keep their workers going at
the expense of our companies and our workers. We won trade cases
against them, but it often took long, and by the time we won these
cases, a lot of damage was done to those companies and those workers.
Finally, renegotiate the auto rules of origin, the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. These provisions determine how much of a car is made in
these 12 countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership regions.
Unfortunately, the TPP rules of origin are even weaker than they were
in the North American Free Trade Agreement. What does that mean? That
means only 40 percent of an auto sold in a TPP country needs to be made
in TPP countries. So what that means is that more than 50 percent of
the components for a newly made car can come from China sold into the
United States or Mexico or Canada or any of the 12 countries with no
tariffs. The whole point of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is to
strengthen the auto supply chain and strengthen these countries'
economies, but the way our negotiators did it was to drop the
percentage components--the so-called rules of origin--from 60-some
percent to 40-some percent so China could backdoor.
Think about this: 35,000 women and men out of work--35,000 families
have been forced to have terrible conversations around the kitchen
table. They have to sell their house. Maybe they are going to get
foreclosed on because they are not working. They have to cut back on
sports at the local school because, frankly, of a State government in
our State that underfunds schools. If kids want to play sports--no
matter if they are low-income kids--they have to pay for it. There was
nothing like that when I was growing up, but it is a different world.
We have a State government that doesn't respond in so many ways to the
concerns of young parents that they have to come up with money. They
can't do that now. They have lost their jobs. All of this impacts
families.
The bad news doesn't stop with family layoffs. These conversations
don't stop with mom and dad getting laid off. They lead to mom having
to take a second job at night and to selling a car to save the house
from being foreclosed.
Mr. Kelling writes: ``The livelihood of thousands are counting on
you.'' I ask my colleagues to think about what that means. That doesn't
just mean their income and job; it is so much more important than that.
It is the ability to put food on the table, send their kids to college,
and save something for retirement. It is the difference between a
thriving community and a dying community.
We can't stand by and watch communities turn to ghost towns because
foreign competitors don't play by the rules. It means we have to take
action that levels the playing field and holds our trading partners
accountable. If the administration doesn't take bold, decisive action
soon, we will get thousands more letters, as do more and more of my
colleagues who also get these letters. Thousands more workers like
Thomas are going to lose their livelihoods, and our country will be
worse off because of that.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the motion
to proceed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
If not, the question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
The motion was agreed to.
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